Albatross (11 page)

Suddenly then, though she didn’t know exactly how, Jen understood, and when she spoke, her words came out in a whisper so soft that the sound of them sent shivers of her own cascading up and down Deacon’s spine.

Now it was she who had him.

“Show me…”

The Grotto

             
Deacon slowly rolled his top up from the bottom, and Jen pushed it up and over his head, her hands trembling as she did so, running her fingers and palms over his stomach and chest.

              From what Jen could see and feel, from Deacon’s hips up to his chest, his body was so well defined that it may as well have been sculpted. She was too caught up in the moment however, and besides, that wasn’t the only thing she was focusing on.

              In an instant Jen’s hands found the scars on his chest and ribs that she had felt beneath his shirt, and she glanced down to see them. They were silvery and smooth and rough all at once, and she touched them delicately, a little afraid even.

              The worst of them was the first one she’d found, two inches long, thin, though there were three in total across his broad chest.

The kinds of scars a blade would leave behind.

              Jen ran her hands round to the sides of Deacon’s ribs, and found yet even more scars than she’d discovered earlier, and she traced her fingers over them delicately, kissing his chest softly.

They were like puncture wounds, slipping between his ribs here and there.

              But then, the most terrifying of all, came when Jen slid her hands gracefully round to run tenderly up and down Deacon’s back. Her eyes widened and she swallowed nervously, though she did not speak, and continued to kiss his chest fondly, wishing she could heal his wounds and erase all memory of them completely.

              Raising her hands up onto his shoulders, Jen slowly turned Deacon so that he was facing away from her, and he complied, allowing her to move him, turning slowly and dropping his arms to his sides as if in defeat.

              His torso and shoulders were broad and strong, though his back tapered in at his waist, giving his body a lean, triangular shape.

              When she saw his back however, her mouth agape slightly, Jen caressed it with her fingers as softly as she possibly could, not wanting to hurt him. Of course, she knew the scars didn’t hurt now, but the pain they must have caused him in the past, she daren’t even begin to imagine.

              Lined across his back, taking Jen’s breath away and bringing tears to her eyes, were literally hundreds of scars, long and straight and thin, each one at least half a foot in length. They all sat horizontally, or just slightly off, one by one on top of each other, all the way up and down his back, from the very tops of his shoulders, right down to his coccyx.

              Deacon cringed and winced slightly and Jen ran her hands across them, tracing her fingers lightly up and down his spine. His shoulders lifted a little as he tensed reflexively, but after a few moments he began to relax, settling, and his shoulders dropped again.

              Jen kissed him gently on his back, making her way up and across the arch of his shoulders.

              Deacon leaned his head back and rested it gently against Jen’s as she clutched him tightly, kissing the back of his neck and wishing he’d never had to suffer so.

              Sometime later, Jen’s hand was in Deacon’s, as it seemed to be almost permanently now, and that was just the way she liked it.

The afternoon sun looked down pleasantly upon them as they walked, and bathed them in its warm tenderness.

              Deacon had driven her most of the way back home, but they’d stopped off by the coast before they’d reached Keepers Cottage.

              They weren’t finished yet.

              “I’ve never told anybody about this before…” Deacon admitted. “It was my dad mainly. Everybody else was scared of him, so they just did what he told them…”

              Jen didn’t speak.

She just listened, squeezing Deacon’s hand tightly.

              She knew this couldn’t have been easy.

              “I think my mom used to try to stand up to him, but he would beat her until she was unconscious, wait for her to wake up, and then beat her again. She stopped trying to fight him a long time ago…”

              Deacon sighed heavily.

              “It was hard times. We lived in a rough area.” He continued. “My dad thought drawing and painting was soft. He said it was a waste of time and money. He always said he would beat it out of me. Ever since I was little…”

              He smiled ruefully then, defiance clear in his eyes.

              “He hasn’t managed it yet, but if I was still there, I know he’d still be trying. I had to get out. I had to get away…”

              Jen nodded, though she was physically incapable of imagining what it must have been like.

It must have been awful.

“How…?” She managed to ask then, her voice a little shaky.

“With a belt, usually.” Deacon replied casually, as if shrugging the whole thing off. “But with whatever he had to hand at the time really.”

“What about the…?” Jen started. Faltering for a moment. “What about the others…?” She asked, and Deacon knew exactly what she meant.

The ones that looked like puncture wounds.

He nodded slowly, as if confirming her worst fears.

“They were from a knife…”

Jen’s breath caught and she felt physically sick to her stomach.

“They weren’t about the drawings though…” Deacon began to explain. “They were when he came home drunk one night. Don’t get me wrong, he came home drunk most nights. But this time he was ruthless…”

Even Jen’s breaths quivered as Deacon spoke, and she found that she was shaking slightly, petrified.

“He came back late. Really late. My mom said something. I don’t know what, but it annoyed him. It really annoyed him. He went nuts.”

Deacon spoke in short, sharp breaths; stating only fact.

As they walked, the coastline in view now, though upon a section of it that Jen did not know, Deacon’s gaze was everywhere, and she knew that he saw everything, both in the past and in the present.

“He started to hit her.” He continued. “Hard. I was getting older, and I’d had enough. It was stupid, but I was only protecting her. I threw myself in between them. I tried to fight him off.”

Jen wanted to ask a hundred and more questions.

She wanted to hold him and make all the painful memories vanish.

But she couldn’t.

She knew they would be with him forever.

And she understood that perhaps better than most.

“He came at me with a knife.” Deacon continued, reminiscing the whole event as clear as day. “We were in the kitchen. It was only a small room. My mother was behind me. I had nowhere to go.”

He laughed suddenly then, though remorsefully, and looked up at the huge expanse of sky swallowing everything below it, his voice thick with emotion.

“I was lucky. He did this one first.” He said, tapping his chest where Jen knew the biggest of the scars was. “He forced the knife through my ribs and wrenched it left and right. He missed my heart though. He only punctured my lung. When I didn’t die straight away, he lost it. He just started stabbing at me wildly, randomly, all over the place.”

Jen knew exactly how many more times Deacon’s father had got him. She had counted the scars herself, but she didn’t interrupt.

“He got me twice more in the chest. Twice in the ribs that side…” He continued, indicating to the left of his torso. “And four times on that side…” He said then, pointing to his right side.

He laughed again, though it wasn’t funny in the slightest.

He was simply dredging humour out of terror.

“Makes sense. He was a lefty…”

“I…I can’t…I can’t imagine…” Jen attempted, but her words were lost in her shock. “Did he...? Did they call someone? An ambulance? The police?”

“It was close.” Deacon admitted. “Very close. I was rushed to hospital in an ambulance. I think the police were probably involved too. I don’t really know. As soon as I was well enough, pretty much as soon as I could stand, I ran.”

Jen reached round to Deacon’s side and pulled him into her arms.

“It gave me a bit of a different perspective on life.” He admitted, pulling Jen close, feeling her body against his.

“I like your perspective.” Jen replied immediately.

And indeed she did.

It was different.

It was unique.

Everything happens for a reason.

              Before long they found themselves on the beachfront, and after the revelations about Deacon’s past, they both needed a moment to let it all soak in. And so they just walked, hand in hand still, the stones crunching beneath their feet, seagulls cawing all around, diving down upon unsuspecting tourists, harassing them and stealing as much food as possible.

              There was no sign of the albatross, Jen noted. But also, and perhaps more unusually, there had been no sign of Clare either.

              Perhaps they were both preoccupied with other things?

              That was an interesting thought, but Jen’s mind didn’t allow her to grasp exactly why, and so she skimmed over the notion without realising quite what she was missing.

              “Come on!” Deacon suddenly exclaimed, pulling Jen by the hand as he surged forwards, cutting down onto the sandy portion of the beach.

              “Where are we going!?” Jen laughed.

              He turned midstride and winked at her slyly.

              “I know a good place…” He replied mysteriously.

              Deacon led Jen down across the sand, right next to where the surf frothed and seethed, and then up again onto the rocks on the far side on the beach. Following what looked at first glance to be an impossible route, Deacon forged round the very furthest corner of the rocky coastline that Jen had spent so many months simply gazing at.

              They skipped from rock to rock, gaining speed and momentum, hurtling faster and faster. He was quick, but then so was she, and she just about managed to keep pace with him as they flung themselves over treacherous crevasses and monstrous drops.

              The rock ledges dropped off suddenly then, their faces sheer and vertical; impossible to traverse, descending all the way down to the water.

              “Where now?” Jen asked, breathing heavily, her lungs heaving, excited.

              The salty wind whipped at her long, curly hair, and the sun kissed her face warmly as it shone down upon the coastline.

              “Here.” Deacon pointed, holding out his hand towards a slight opening in the rock. The crack looked barely wide enough for even a child squeeze through, and Jen could see no more than two feet inside of it, for it was too dark and too narrow.

              “In there?” She questioned, her tone dubious, and quite rightly so.

              “Don’t worry.” He assured her confidently. “It opens up pretty much straight away once you’re inside.”

              Sea spray rocketed up over the ledge upon which they stood, clearing at least two dozen feet from the water far below, as a wave struck the rocks perfectly, sending crashing water off in every direction.

              “Do you trust me?” Deacon asked her, looking at Jen pointedly, and her reply was instant, and automatic.

              “I do.” She breathed, surprising even herself.

But she didn’t have much time to think on it, as Deacon surged forward, letting go of her hand, and dropped down with practiced grace of his own into the crevasse in the rocks so narrow, and disappeared into the rock face itself.

“I’m here!” His voice called up to her from the blackness. “Don’t worry!”

Surprisingly, Deacon’s words spurred Jen on immediately, and also, just as astonishingly, the thought in the back of her mind that this was just the sort of thing Clare would do spurred her on too.

Jen dropped down into the dark, narrow crevasse, following the sound of Deacon’s voice.

She did not see her albatross soar overhead as she descended, looking down upon her with satisfaction in his jet black gaze.

Her descent was not quite as graceful, nor practiced, as Deacon’s, but it got the job done.

She couldn’t tell where she was going at first, and she started to panic, reaching out desperately with one hand and struggling to find her footing. But in an instant he had her, gripping her hand tightly with his, and Jen calmed almost immediately.

Dropping her head beneath an enormous boulder, splaying both her hands on the walls, Jen glanced down, and indeed the narrow cave widened dramatically, just as Deacon had promised.

His legs were planted on either side of the cavern walls, about four or five feet lower than where Jen hovered, quite precariously to say the least.

“Okay?” He checked, and she nodded in response, concentrating on where she was putting her feet. He pointed this way and that to help her, and she placed her feet and hands exactly where he indicated, finding, in fact, that it was actually quite easy. She descended quickly, dropping down at Deacon’s side in barely even a minute.