Mountains of the Moon (46 page)

I’ve had a bath. The other letter is six months old, from Tim, to tell me that funding was withdrawn and the pottery has closed.

“Sit down.”

I’m back at the photos again. Margaret and Vernon Pennsylvania USA and me on safari. The Masai Mara, the spin and swirl of it, projected, superimposed. Clouds created the flashing, the strobe, zebras know. I was sure that there weren’t any elephants there, they’re big things, if there were elephants you would definitely see them, but then from a ridge I understood that elephants are six inches tall and china blue in the yellow grass, they come and go in numbers, in hundreds, and the whole threshing force of it bowled me over and over. There’s photographs of us in the campsite at Samburu. Trees full of monkeys. Lake Nakuru’s million flamingoes, acres and acres of pink, flapping and high-stepping. I remember I remembered my mother. You couldn’t imagine a show like it.

“Yes, Nigel, yes! From the top please, Philip.”

Mr. and Mrs. Trickett is on the sofa and Sheba and she int allowed, they got hair on them. I put the tray down careful nice.

“You’re a credit,” Mr. Trickett says.

“Get down Sheba.”

“It’s all right.”

“She don’t like
Carousel
,” I says.

“Stop. Stop!” Mum says. “What are you building there, Nigel—eh? A little shithouse? Out the back, a little fucking shack? If you were a RICH MAN, Nigel, if you were a WEALTHY MAN.”

Mr. Trickett does noughts and crosses with his finger in the velvit cushion then he rubs it out.

“A bungalow now, is it? A prefab? Listen to the words! Listen to the words, Nigel, Great Big House. GREAT. BIG. HOUSE. WITH ROOMS. BY THE DOZ-EN…I’m only seeing two rooms, Nigel.”

Mrs. Trickett picks lumps of hair off her skirt and tries to stick them back on Sheba sactly where they come out from. I sit back down on the floor with my pile of pink and frilly, pick up the needle, gain.

“Crêpe paper,” I says.

“How many aprons are there?” Mrs. Trickett says.

Don’t know how many.

“Boys is having neck chiefs,” I says. I weaves the needle in and out and push the pink frill long the cotton. “And Stetsons.”

Mr. and Mrs. Trickett is looking at me.

“Blister,” I says. “From pinking scissors. Mum got one sactly same.”

“Now build it! A GREAT BIG HOUSE, Nigel. Philip! Stop tinkering, when I’m trying to think!”

Pip keeps on playing the overture for
Carousel
, case he can mind Mum back to the right show. Mr. Trickett yawns.

“I spects you is ready for bedtime?” I says.

“Well, it is nearly three hours past Nigel’s bedtime.” Mrs. Trickett checks her watch. “I think it really is enough, now,” she says. “He is only nine; I think you should fetch him, dear.”

I shakes my head. Lucky, Mrs. Trickett is talking to Mr. Trickett and he stands up. He coughs, checks all his pockets, goes down the hall sideways, past all the pink and white crêpe-paper aprons and butterfly bows, hanging from hangers on the banisters. Knock, knock, knocks. Mr. Trickett coughs. Sheba covers her eyes with her paw. Pip slides off the piana, I spects his fingers is bleeding.

“Dad!” Nigel says. “I forgot you were here!”

“We’ve been here six hours, son,” Mr. Trickett says.

Memory saw Pip running up a ramp, into the school assembly hall with sand in a wheelbarrow. Was it me, was it us, with rakes spreading it out?
Is it deep enough, will the chorus kick it up? Lunchtime is the dress rehearsal and every kid in the school is outside on the netball courts, dressed in pink and white crêpe paper, and they have to be careful case they tear it. Am I five or six? My badge says
Producer
, Pip’s says
Musical Director.
My mother, our mother, in jeans and a knotted shirt, flies up two flights of school stairs with a megaphone in her hand. Leans out of the upstairs windows.

“READY?” she says.

You couldn’t imagine a show like it. Looking at photos of flamingoes on Kenya’s Lake Nakuru I remember Vernon Pennsylvania USA.

Soda. No, not drinking soda.

“It’s a real alkaline mineral, they use it in glass-making. The only thing that can grow in the lake is soda adapt-ated algae. The flamingoes have gotten a way to get the algae from the lake without actually drinking the caustic water.”

You couldn’t imagine a show like it. I remember I remembered my mother.

“I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

WHEN YOU WALK THROUGH A STORM…

The doorbell blasting shatters the past. Peter. My skin knows it’s him. Woman in the mirror stabs out a cigarette in the ashtray. I press the intercom button; the main entrance door slams below and he comes flying up the stairs. Who is the fairest of them all?

“There you are,” I say.

The mossy smell of him tips back my head. He sniffs air beside my neck, what’s there, on my neck, in the hall, in my apartment? Man smell? One eyebrow queries the timing.

“You look well,” he says.

“You’ve just missed Danny. He took care of the apartment while I was away.”

“Nice bloke,” Pete says. “I called around a while ago to see if you were back.”

“He’s moved just up the hill,” I say. “We’re neighbors now.”

Pete’s shoes splash in the shine on the floor, step around my empty backpack, the few things I brought back from Africa. He sits down on the floor cushions, next to my camera and the Stellenbosch pictures. Puts down his keys and cigarettes.

“I thought you might have married a Masai or a Zulu,” he says.

Habit takes me in to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Lean my forehead on the wall to get control of breathing. In and out. Hear my heart flicking over and him fingering photographs. When I bring the coffee in, he stops looking at the pictures to watch me walk. He looks at the cup, sitting firm on the saucer. All the way to the floor beside him. He cocks his head. The radiator is booming out heat, the open windows are slapped by sleet. His eyes listen, his lips, his skin detects some wind of change, in the room. Danny Fish’s guitar is still here, some chords on a scrap of paper. Pete lights a cigarette. A tremble shows up in the flame. The pack skids across the floor toward me, with the matches on the top. It is Zanzibar hot. He parks his cigarette in the ashtray, pulls a moss-green sweater over his head. It leaves his hair tugged. He rolls the cuffs back loosely on his blousy shirt.

The fridge starts to hum. A car rushes up the hill spraying sludge in the gutter. We look at the white telephone on the floor; Danny has had it installed. A wonderment. Who would phone me? I tip my head back against the wall. An outside air breathes in. A small gasp escapes me. He looks at the woman in the mirror.

“No rattle,” he says.

He picks up a handful of photos, the yellow-gold sequence; sun rising on the swell of ocean. The Transkei. Coffee Bay.

“The dolphins and gannets follow the sardine run along the coast. It’s an annual spectacle.”

He hasn’t heard of such a thing.

“Are you on a boat?”

“A fishing boat, the dolphins just kept coming, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them.”

Now he’s holding the Stellenbosch wine lands, the jeweled colors of ripening vines.

“Nice people?” he says.

“That’s Quentin and his mum, Irene.”

He looks closer at the picture.

“How is he?” The loaded question is light.

“Quentin? He’s confused about a lot of things,” I say. “Absolutely sure on others.”

The woman in the mirror looks at me. Pete looks at her.

“I’ve always loved you,” he says.

I feel sick and stand up to go to the bathroom. He follows me up. His hand on my wrist whips me back, he tries to clamp me against his chest and I hammers on it. When my arms are useless and I can’t stand up he buries me carefully into the wall. He’s angry, really angry.

“I’ve been trying,” he says.

I thrash.

“I’ve been trying to kiss you for twelve years.” His jaw is hard in my cheek. “You
always
turn your face away.”

“Can you stand me up please?” I say. “I feel like a carpet roll.”

I turn my face away. Twelve years. I was in prison for ten of those. He goes in the lounge, picks up his keys. I feel sick and faint.

“You don’t even know my name.” I put my head down between my knees. Have to sit down. I have to sit.

“Whatever else you think, I have always loved you,” he says. “And I know, I know that you have always loved me. You loved me so much, you even went to prison for me.”

What a wonderment. The wrongness of it. I didn’t have my coat. I didn’t have any money or shoes. I didn’t have any nerve left, there wasn’t anywhere to go. I didn’t have any nerve left. Underneath the railway arches I was sitting on a sub-zero fortune, every passing pimp stopped to tell me so, to help me out with a place to stay, with a few thousand little credit card crimes and a shoplifting spree. A little start-up tab from the Crack boss.

“I didn’t go to prison for
you
, Pete.”

“You knew. You knew,” he says.

“I had no reason to link you with Heath. No motive.”

“You didn’t see me?”

“No, I heard the gunshot; thought Heath had let a firework off in the house. I didn’t see anything.”

“It’s good to talk to you,” he says.

“So talk. Tell me about the witch’s house, Pete.”

He flinches as my words thwap like a crossbow bolt into the tree beside his ear.

“Quentin tells me you and Heath go back a long way, all the way back to tuck shops, all the way back to the woods.”

Pete cuts his thumb pad with an imaginary knife, presses the scar there on a small thumb of air.

“We’re brothers, me and Heath,” he says, “blood brothers.”

“So why this time, why were you
gunning
for him?”

“He fucked me over for the robbery money.” He picks up a match to chew on, looks up in the corner as if something magical is occurring there. “Heath’s instinct was so quick he anticipated the bullet. I didn’t see Quentin there, tied in the chair behind him.”

“Time to go,” I say.

He didn’t quite hear me. The fridge changes key.

Hum-hum.

Hum-hum.

It is a wonderment to him.

“Are you sure?” says the woman in the mirror.

I look at him. He looks at me. My head is going to explode. My heart.

“Bye,” I say.

He picks up his keys. One last look back. A pause. Am I sure? I nod. He lets himself out and closes the door.

I run to the door and open it. Down the stairwell I can see his hand sliding along on the banister.

“Peter!” I call down.

He comes back up, four steps at a time. I push the gold canister into his hands.

“Take your
dad
with you,” I say.

Recovery positions.

…THOUGH YOUR DREAMS BE TOSSED AND BLOWN…

Listen.

Listen to George, Old George, kneeling down in the Grand Hall. George holding my shoulders so tightly and his face flaming and his eyes welling, trying so hard to impart courage. Listen to my heart stop. Memory plays the wheels of the trolley, like a tram on the parquet flooring. I didn’t see them cut him down from the hammer-beamed rafters where they found him hanging. I saw his empty body go past on a trolley. I felt the life die inside me.

Listen.

It starts to rain. It starts to hammer on the grand windowpanes, starts to drip from light fittings, the hammer-beamed roof starts to rock. In the kingdom of heaven, every angel heaves, every angel on every ceiling starts to sob and weep. Every cherub starts to wail. Tears splash down William Shakespeare’s face. Elisabeth the First dabs her cheek. Thomas Holloway starts to cry and the ancient Greeks; monsters bite their own cheeks and weep. The dinner ladies and the gardeners weep.

And George. Old George.

The Angel Michael turns, with his wings up and his arms up weeping. Angels rain down on us, weeping. And Fiddler and Mick. And Leonard and Lizzie. Arthur comes away from the wall. Amy drops down on her knees. Shut-up waves a stick up at angels, shut-up, shut-up, shut-up, she says. Anton left an envelope for me, said
Mitten
on it. The brilliant cut stone dropped into my hand like a tear. And glistened. Everyone’s tears filled my eyes.

I went home to die.

Storm flashes and water falls, thunderous in the dark corridor. The East Wing heaves and shifts and sinks deeper into the mud. I slam my door on life and lie down on my bed to die. The corridor starts to fill and floods rush in under my door. Beech leaves swirl around my bed legs and water slaps at the skirting boards. The kingdom of heaven rocks and cries and falls to pieces but nothing can move me.

Listen.

Ding—

Autumn turns to winter. Everything dies. My eyes roll, with the night and the day and the winter glory skies. Siberia howls through gaps in the planks. Snowflakes can’t settle in the room, not quite green not quite white. Michael brings me food on a tray. His ice skates whoosh down the iced-up corridor. Sheets of ice beside the bed splinter under his blades. My head rolls way from his hand, from the spoon, from his eyes, my cracked tongue pushes the food back out over my cracked bottom lip. He leaves the food and the rats tip the spoon, clattering in the bowls and gnawing at the soft rot. Gasp how close I am.

Ding—

Winter turns to spring. I smell the linseed and lavender oil. I starts to hear him calling. Blossom collects in my eye sockets, sticks to my blistered lips. I turn as thin as an idea, a morning-glory feeling, I’m happy. Gain. Laughing at the clouds, high up above. Angels are crying, glad it’s time. I reach up for an angel’s hand.

Ding—

Somewhere true in the middle of blue.

Ding—

Mitten.
The angels know my name.

But it is Michael, come to say good-bye, winders of light rub into my eyes. I sees Michael’s angel face, one last time with tears and twisted lips, trying to swallow something too bitter.

“I’ve brought these people to help you,” he says.

I see then over his shoulder the solid shapes of strangers. One face comes closer and I know it, the sweet, sweet smell of the horses on him.

“Dear God,” Bernard says.