Staring At The Light (15 page)

‘I can’t believe in a soul incapable of redemption. I
cannot
believe that.’

Silence.

‘You stole from him, didn’t you? It
can’t
simply be pride. You must have done
something
extra.
Did
you?’ More silence. ‘
Did you
? What did you steal?’

Julie was putting the pastry in the fridge, moving awkwardly, the answer a shake of the head. She was embarrassed, tight-lipped.

‘What does he look like?’

Julie grabbed the sleeping kitten from Pauline’s lap and held it against her own face. Her hair had been cropped like theirs;
now it grew. Her eyes were wet. ‘I don’t know. How would I know? I’ve never seen his face. Only a glimpse of his mouth. He
had the fat man put a pillow-case over my head so I could breathe but he couldn’t
see
me. Then he … Then they hit me.’ She raised a stubborn face shiny with tears. ‘I don’t
know
him, but I know it
was
him. Noone knows him except Cannon.’

*

The swimming-cap made her look like a nun. A yellow rubber cap, beneath which Sarah’s red curls lay squashed against her head,
uncomfortable and tight, until she began to swim and forgot everything other than movement. She hated the cap because it was
a rule of this club, all rules were anathema, and she did not much like swimming either but she needed her health, something
to complete the vicious circle of wine and cigarettes and all the rest, and this was one way to do it. The costume and the
cap were all there was to carry; there was no timetable to maintain and the activity was mindless. Up and down, down and up,
like a mechanically propelled toy, counting the lengths and often wanting it to end, enjoyable for the sensation of virtue
afterwards and the water itself. A slab of blue for the carving, her body making the wave, the feeling of weightlessness,
the rasp of her own breath and the sight of the far end coming closer. Turn, push off, turn; sound and reality distorted.

Hockney’s blue pools; Californian blue water and a sun-filled sky; blocks of blue in those pictures that suggested languor
and health. The theme for the picture collection could be the hypnotic effect of water: no-one quite immune to it; drawn like
lemmings to the invitation and the threat. Sarah tried to think of the sea, floated on her back and tried to imagine the screech
of gulls and the sound of waves. The water of the pool, conveniently close to the office, currently empty except for herself,
lapped against the edge with the more prosaic sound of a domestic bath, and the
view of the ceiling showed not sky but white plaster, peeling in places from the damp. It was a place beset by rules: caps,
single-sex swimming sessions, a club run by a martinet, who ignored a falling membership in the interests of a regime. Sarah
floated and wondered how long it would last. A man stood by the entrance to the changing rooms, his arms folded as he surveyed
the scene. He tapped his watch and pointed at her.
Five minutes
, he mouthed. She nodded, understanding. Men only in five minutes. She lingered. wallowing in Saturday-morning privacy. On
a weekday morning it was like a scene from the sinking of the
Titanic
.

As long as she was weightless in the water, the burdens of the mind became weightless, too. As if, mid-length of the blue
pool, they carried themselves alongside rather than within. Threats became mere imaginings, obligations mere bagatelles, time
immaterial in the face of the current challenge.
Five more lengths; just five and you’re finished. Go on, you can do it
.

Another man came out of the changing area. Saw her swimming towards him, the emerald green of her swimsuit and her disfiguring
cap stark against the water. He stopped, changed direction, spat on the tiles and went back in the direction he had come from.
Sarah hauled herself out of the water. Ah, John Smith, oh, for a better look at you. You are shy of the public eye.

Cannon had told her that John Smith came here because of the rules. He did not like to swim in the
same water as a female, in case, by chance, she touched him. As if the contact with a woman’s skin would bring out a rash.
What ailed the man? And what ailed her, that she should want to get closer?

Arrogance. Some dim dream that once John Smith was seen, smiled at, spoken to, he would assume some other, manageable personality,
like other men, reveal his secrets, if not his desires, prove amenable to reasonable suggestions. Arrogant to assume any such
thing, especially of a man who spat at the sight of a woman in
his
stretch of water. As if he owned it. She ran for the changing room before the martinet came out to shout. A gob of spittle
lay shining on the tiles. The air outside the water was as cold as spite.
Mens sana in corpore sano
.

Sticky damp skin refused to dry after the shower, no time left; the cloying warmth of the changing room, the whiff of chlorine
in the hair. The pulling on of clothes that twisted and restricted after the cool freedom of the water; the sight of dead-looking
skin on her hands. There were no easier ways of trimming bodily excess and driving those scars back under the skin.

Dressed, warm but shivery, she went up to the gallery and watched him swim. Two of them: the fat minder, carving through the
water with an easy breaststroke so fast and powerful the water purred in his wake; the man himself, slow and clumsy, waddling
in the water with a slow, ungainly crawl of maximum effort and minimum result, rolling around like a loose barrel with kicking
legs; a little laughable,
maybe. The man Matthewson had described to his wife as a clown, and Mrs Matthewson had described to her, looked clownish in
the water, with his trunks ballooning behind him. The little white whale no-one would want to preserve. Who could be afraid
of a man like that?

It was the second time she had spied on him here, the first with an impression endorsed by her own particular spy. She wished
she had not done it. The sight, and the opinion, was making Cannon’s version of a
bête noire
difficult to believe. Sarah counted on her fingers. Cannon, Julie, herself: they could all be wrong. It could all be an innocent
lie. Or a real lie. Maybe that was why Cannon had said, Don’t go near him.

Saturday morning and the City was deserted. Sarah hurried in the cold, which stung the damp hair on the back of her neck,
rammed the hat down harder. She passed the policeman at his outpost on the corner, standing in his little box and rubbing
his gloved hands. They had stood there day and night since the last of the City bombs – the City’s ring of steel against the
antics of terrorists. Cannon might have become one of these, but Cannon was cured of his amorality. She was the one who had
graced him with total belief. She must continue in faith until the Christmas deadline. But somehow she was beginning to doubt.
It was difficult to believe in a devil moulded out of hearsay. The lawyer in her rebelled at it.

Cannon woke because of the cold. Blue patch of skylight, cold feet the death of sleep. Heater, socks,
stumble back to bed, looking at the light. ‘That patch of blue the prisoner calls the sky,’ something forming in his mind.
Supposing he looked up at the skylight and saw someone trying to get in? Not trying to get
out
, as he often envisaged, engineering in his mind a series of ropes and pulleys, Heath Robinson style, but trying to get
in
. There was a construction of a canvas forming in his mind: a figure reclining across the skylight, languid and naked in the
cold. If there was anyone up there, all he would do was invite them down.

It was the second week of December, light was precious; in a minute it would bloom and he could paint in it. He fell asleep
instead, dreaming of the freedom of Christmas. Johnnyboy had promised.

Woke to the rattling of the door, the skylight patch now a rectangle of grey, the heater burning his feet, disoriented, but
not alarmed. He was not in this camp bed, he was in prison; half alive to the sound of shouts and the pounding of feet. Lying
in a bunk with his life seeping away, from four o’clock in the morning when he had first started to cut his wrist with the
sharpened prong of his belt, to the sound of the man in the bunk below, snoring. Two hours, three, before anyone would notice;
easier because the pain in his teeth persisted until he caused a competing pain. He remembered looking at the anatomy of his
wrist with mild curiosity in the dim light. There was always light outside the cell: they were never left in the dark. Such
a treasure trove of veins and sinews beneath that pallid skin. Scratching at it with the
buckle sharpened against the wall, he had felt like primitive man in search of an instrument, angry with the sheer effort
of it, digging into his own disobedient flesh, but at least he bled. Knew enough to clench and unclench his fists to increase
the flow, the man below still snoring and enough blood to
drip, drip, drip
. Cold feet, pain and shame, and still not enough to take away the toothache. He had raved about the toothache later; long
after he dozed and listened to the
drip, drip, drip
, as if the toothache had been the reason – as if it ever could be: he had lived with toothache most of his life. One pain
did not take away another. All he had done was damage.

The rattle at the door was louder. Voices in memory.
Let’s have you, you daft bastard. What you done
? The sound before that of the suicide squad, running towards the cell in a clatter of boots, ready to drag him back into
life for trying to outwit the system. Like an army, pushing everything out of the way, tramping towards him with practised
panic, fear and fury echoing in their voices.
What you done, old man, what you done
?

‘My teeth hurt,’ he’d said; the last thing on his mind. Bonfire Night, it had been; a few weeks after he got there. Fireworks
in the sky, visible from little windows, driving him mad.

Most people talked such
shit
, Cannon concluded, relying not on contempt, which he did not feel, but on his own experience of doing exactly that under
stress. He had blamed the toothache, which had nothing to do with it; it was feeling useless and desperate,
and wondering what the hell his brother was doing on the outside, that had had everything to do with it … and wanting to make
love to her and cherish her,
all
the time, and not wanting her to die, or to live without him either. If
he
himself was out of the way,
she
would be left alone.

There were qualities of sound, he had decided in prison, that presented themselves in ways that only the subconscious could
judge. He was alarmed by the rattling of the door now, not frightened. The sound of the suicide squad, boots on concrete,
fireworks:
they
were frightening; this was not. Prison senses had refined him, or perhaps these were senses he had already had. The instinctive
knowledge of the dangerous sound; the isolation of the opposite. No-one had rattled the door in quite such a fashion before,
but he knew it was unthreatening. Cannon came into the full realization of his senses with a groan. He had missed the best
of the light, and that was the worst start to a day.

He knew who it was before he removed the chair; regarded her with a wariness and a feeling suspended between gratitude, mystification,
irritation and a kind of awe tinged with affection. Quite simply, he wanted to be in a position to return favours he did not
understand. Sarah looked like a drowned rat. He left her at the door and hurried across to the painting, standing face out
against the wall, and turned it the other way round. He did not wish her to see herself naked with the scars he had given
her. Or to let her know he had forgotten their appointment the way he sometimes forgot the promised daily phone call.

Sarah had none of the timidity of a trespasser: she walked round every place as if it was her own, politely enough but still
as if she might have command of it, like the captain of a ship, respectful of privacy while knowing all the time she could
invade any part of it. She sat. ‘God help me, Cannon, you gave me a fright. Are you awake yet?’

He
knew
she would try not to end his sentences for him as he felt around for the words; she would wait, half knowing what he wanted
to say before he said it, dying to articulate it clearer and quicker than he could.

‘I owe a lot to the suicide squad, let me tell you,’ was all he said.

‘Why’s that, Cannon?’ She knew the answer – she had been part of the equation – but she was always trying to make him talk,
about anything and everything. Practice for the outside, fear that the isolations of his life would make him even less confident,
he guessed, and wondered, for the fourteenth time of asking, why she should care so much and how long she would go on believing
everything he told her. It was a question he never dared ask.

‘Because they stopped me. I seem to have this instinct for self-destruction, don’t I? And if I hadn’t been a suicide risk,
I wouldn’t have been allowed to get my teeth fixed. Prisoners only get stuff like that if they scare people. And if there’s
someone on the outside like your William. He must have fudged the books. He’s nice, your William, isn’t he? Why don’t you
love him?’

‘Well, he isn’t
my
William. And I do love him, for what it’s worth, but he doesn’t want to be loved. He
wants to be approved of. Do you want to do more of the portrait? You said you did on the phone yesterday. That’s why I’m here.
Then we’re going to the exhibition. Remember?’

He shook his head, glanced towards the covered easel. It was an old stand for an archery target, broken when he had found
it. ‘No, not the portrait, if you don’t mind. The light’s bad. Anyway, I want to think about it for a few days. Let it mellow,
if you see what I mean.’

‘Let
me
mellow, you mean.’ She grinned at him. It was infectious: he found himself grinning back, despite his low spirits. She prowled
round the room, not consciously checking for changes but noticing everything just the same. Flakes of wood had fallen from
the beams and been swept to one side. It was tidier than before, as if he was packing to leave, precious few possessions since
the only things Cannon seemed to cherish were his paints and his brushes even if they stopped him travelling light. Not that
there were many paints: too many tubes were only confusing, he said. She stopped. ‘What have you done with it, Cannon?’