The Five Gates of Hell (52 page)

He put his jacket back on. No lightening of the sky yet, but dawn could only be an hour away. There were blue flashes in the east, as if someone further down the coast was watching a giant TV. He decided to walk to the train station in Sweetwater. There used to be an all-night café under the platforms. He'd sit in the café and drink a cup of coffee and wait for the first train to the city. He searched his pockets for candy. Just a few fragments of Peanut Brittle and a handful of empty wrappers.

It was two miles to the station and as he splashed along in his sandals he could taste blood in his mouth. Sharon's lazy voice came back to him: You won't like it. Men don't.

She was high that night, almost gone, otherwise she never would've let it happen. It was one of his rare nights off, and she'd come round to his two rooms under the Palace with a litre of mescal in a brown paper bag and half an ounce of grass in her bra. They were sprawled across his single bed, most of their clothes on the floor.

‘It'll get everywhere.' But she had this grin draped over her face.

‘It's my place,' he told her. ‘I don't care where it gets.'

‘Well, all right. But don't make a habit of it.'

He put his mouth to her cunt. People think blood always tastes the same. That's because they don't know. There's sweet blood and there's sour blood. There's blood that's old and blood that tastes brand-new. Sometimes blood tastes cheap, like tin cans or cutlery, other times it tastes as rich as gold. Sharon's blood tasted sugary that night. But with an edge to it, like fresh lime. He was down there so long that she came twice just from his tongue. She said nobody had ever done that to her before. Then they fucked and she was right, it did get everywhere. The next day he had to throw half his bed in the garbage. It was only later, with Celia, that he took to keeping the sheets. That had been her idea. Towards the end she became almost religious about it. Blood as sacrament, an emblem of their union. Blood as affirmation. Blood as power.

The café was open. He drank a coffee and watched the clock go round. 4.55. 5.10. 5.23. Someone had left an early edition of the paper on the table next to him. He read it from front to back. 5.41. He thought of Sharon and her cunt brimming with that sweet, dark blood. Then he remembered how she'd rationed him. They'd been on and off for almost three years, and yet he could count the times. Once in the Palace, once in the storeroom. That was it. He wondered if Max liked it. Probably not. Men don't.

The city train came in at 6.05. It was crowded. Hundreds of people with sleep in their eyes and their heads nodding on their necks. The train rattled over the river. Between the grey metal struts he caught glimpses of the Witch's Fingers glistening in the grainy light. Sometimes Celia's body had looked like that, when it was hot, a silvering along the edges of her skin. Don't make a habit of it. Of course, with Celia, that was precisely what it had become. A habit. Same time every month. And that evening when she turned to him on their sheet that was stained with roses, the power station lit up behind her like a
twisted heap of pearls, and she said, ‘You know the really weird thing? It takes the pain away.' Something went through him in that moment, it moved so fast he only saw its heels, but now, thinking back on it, he thought it might've been the closest he had ever got to love.

A man fell against him, muttered an apology. He must've fallen asleep on his feet.

The train dipped underground at Y Street. The lights flickered on, they trembled on and off, like the eyelids of someone who's dreaming. Three minutes later they were pulling into Central Station. One screech of the brakes, and a lurch that sent people staggering.

He bought two bags of Iceberg Mints at the news-stand, then he took the escalator up to the street. He thought he'd stroll down to the ocean, find himself a deck chair and a piece of shadow, doze for a few hours. Later he could breakfast at the Aquarium Café. He took the direct route, south from Central, through the M Street mall and down the hill past the Palace Hotel. He hadn't meant to pass the Palace. He didn't want any memories this morning. Not memories like that, anyway. They were knots in the smooth grain of a wood. They made the saw jump. You could lose a finger that way. He stared up at the building as he passed and knew why Creed had chosen it. The respectability, the grandeur, the sheer weight of that façade, they all told lies about him.

Lies.

His gaze dropped back to ground-level. The revolving doors began to spin, flick over, like the pages of a book, and out of the book stepped two figures, men.

Jed edged back into the shade of a tree. Without taking his eyes off the doors, he unwrapped a mint. Fed it into his mouth, crushed it to fragments with his teeth.

‘My Christ,' he whispered.

One of the men was Neville Creed, the other man was Nathan Christie. They knew each other. They not only knew each other, they slept with each other too.

He remembered Mitch's words: I told them. But they already knew.

They already knew.

‘No wonder,' he whispered. ‘No fucking wonder.'

And his mind leapt across seventeen years, a spark jumping between two terminals. The shark run. Nathan Christie had been found guilty in that dark corner of the harbour. If he'd been innocent he would've drowned, and Jed would never've seen him again. Only the guilty came back.

He should've known.

And this knowledge, so late in coming, burst through his head, one explosion, then another, then another, it was like a match dropped in an ammunition dump, and he reached into his pocket, and his hand tightened round the gun.

It even looked as if something was wrong. When he ran up the stairs he saw that Dad's bedroom door was open. All through his childhood he'd been taught to close that door. Pull it until it clicks, Dad used to say, he couldn't sleep if he thought the door wasn't closed properly. And now it was open, wide open, like a raided tomb.

‘George?'

She was lying stretched out on the bed, her head propped on a mass of pillows. She was watching TV. There were no other lights on in the room. Her face was flickering: bright, dark, bright, dark. The whites of her eyes were luminous and fierce. They looked washed clean, somehow. He had the feeling that she'd been crying.

He moved to the side of the bed. ‘Are you OK?'

‘I'm fine,' she said, ‘fine.'

‘You're not dead or anything?'

She smiled faintly. ‘Look at this. It's the wedding.'

‘Wedding? What wedding?' He sat on the edge of the bed. She was surrounded by bottles of pills. The bed clicked and rattled every time he moved. ‘Where did you get all these pills?'

‘They're Dad's. They were in his drawer.'

‘How many have you had?'

‘Not many.'

‘How many?'

She shrugged. ‘About fifteen.'

‘Fifteen? Which ones?'

‘All different.' She looked at him. ‘It doesn't matter anyway. They're mostly stale. They don't do much.'

‘Stale? How can you tell?'

‘The dates on the bottles. Some of them are ten years old.'

He looked at her dubiously.

‘For Christ's sake, Nat,' she said, ‘I'm ALL RIGHT.'

‘You sounded so strange on the phone. Like one of those movie-stars who takes an overdose and then they start making phone-calls.'

‘You called me, remember?'

‘I know. But, you know.'

‘Well, I'm sorry. I certainly didn't mean to sound like one of those movie-stars.'

It was so unlike her to be sarcastic, her face took on a shape he didn't recognise. Waves of anger, and hurt under the anger like a reef. Uncomfortable, he turned to the TV.

City Hall on a bright day, the shadows almost purple. A scrap of paper went tumbling across the wide, stone steps. He could see Dad and Harriet standing just inside the entrance, Dad agitated, smoothing his hair. A chip of white flashed in the gloom. Harriet's teeth. She must've been saying something. Then they emerged, arm in arm. Into the sunlight, blinking. Dad took her hand. Their smiles seemed slowed down. The veins showed on the back of Dad's hand, stood out like weak ropes. Moored in his body, but only just. Dad and Harriet turned to face each other, they were supposed to kiss. A moment's hesitation.

The tape ended suddenly.

‘There's another one somewhere,' Georgia said. ‘I've been watching them all night.'

‘So where've you been?' Nathan asked her.

‘I don't know. Around.'

‘I was trying to find you. Yesterday, it was.'

‘Yesterday?'

‘No, wait. It was the day before. I waited outside your place all afternoon.' He put his hand on hers. ‘I wanted to see you. It was after I had lunch with Harriet.'

‘Talking of Harriet.' Georgia reached down beside the bed and pulled out another video. ‘Here,' she said. ‘Why don't you put this on.'

‘What is it?'

‘Put it on.'

He took the video from her, pushed it into the machine, and pressed PLAY. He sat back on the bed. He glanced at her, but she wouldn't look at him. He faced the TV again.

The back garden. A hot day. Every blade of grass caught the light. The lawn looked sharp, almost metallic. A bed of nails. Harriet lay in the distance, sunbathing.

And then close-up suddenly, everything tilting, seasick. Harriet was sitting on a blue towel in her bikini, a can of Coke beside her, a radio. She said something, then smiled. Then said something else.
There was tanning oil trapped, like mercury, in the crease that ran across her belly.

Nathan turned to Georgia. ‘Why do you want me to watch this?'

‘Just wait,' Georgia said.

Darkness now. Inside the house. The view from the hallway, looking up the stairs. He noted the banisters, the moon painting that Yvonne had given him, and, high up, the pale oblong of the landing window. The darkness was blue, as if lightning had struck and left a low electric charge behind.

And then a shadow passed the window, coming down the stairs. It was Harriet. At first he thought she was wearing that white silk underwear of hers. Then he realised she was naked. The white areas were the parts of her body that hadn't been exposed to the sun. She came down the stairs, a smile held awkwardly on her face, as if balanced, her eyes lit with a strange glitter. He couldn't take his eyes off her breasts, her groin. So white, raw somehow, almost painful. That smile, her nudity, the blue gloom of the house. He turned to Georgia. ‘I don't think I want to watch this.'

She didn't take her eyes off the screen. ‘It's nearly over.'

‘I don't want to watch any more.'

She looked at him. ‘I thought you liked her.'

He shook his head slowly, a sad smile on his face. ‘That's not why it happened, George.'

‘Why didn't you tell me? I thought,' and her voice shrank, ‘I thought we were brothers.'

‘We are brothers.'

‘So why didn't you tell me, Nathan? Why did I have to hear it from her?'

He began to explain it to her. It had started so long ago, he said, long before they became brothers. He told her everything, and she listened carefully, her head lowered, her fingers wandering among the beads of her necklace.

‘It wasn't like sex,' he finished by saying, ‘not really. It was more like an exorcism or something. She'd screwed me up for so long. I had to get her out of my system.'

Georgia was silent for a while, then she lifted her head and a smile tiptoed on to her face. ‘You know what she told me?'

‘No. What?'

‘She told me you were lousy in bed.'

‘Yes,' he said, ‘I suppose I was.' Then he began to smile.

‘What's so funny?' she asked.

‘I was just thinking. She'll never know.'

‘Never know what?'

‘How good I am in bed.'

She stared at him. ‘But I thought you said you –'

‘We did. But not in bed.'

‘Where then?'

‘In the summerhouse.'

‘You didn't.'

‘We did.' He looked at her and saw that she was laughing, and then he knew he had her back again.

But he hadn't finished yet, he had to go on. This laughter of hers, it would seal her return to him.

‘In the summerhouse,' he said, ‘with all those flowerpots and bicycle pumps. With all those watering cans.' He shook his head. ‘I was just about to come and I knelt on a tomato.'

Tears were sliding down her cheeks. All the tiny bottles of pills tumbled off the bed and rolled across the floor.

‘I was lousy,' he said. ‘I was really lousy.'

Towards midday she dropped into a deep sleep. He didn't want to risk losing her again so he stayed beside her. Those jets were circling in the small sky of the room, circling like vultures, and he took her hand and held it while she slept. He watched TV, he listened to her breathing change. Then, as dusk fell, he grew tired too. He lay down beside her and soon he was asleep.

He woke once, sat upright. ‘What's that?' he said.

‘What?' she murmured.

‘I thought I heard something.'

She turned over. ‘You're getting as bad as Dad.'

He lay down again, and slept.

The next time he woke, his watch said eleven. He couldn't believe he'd slept so long. He left the bed and crossed the landing to his old room. He switched the light on, and jumped. A thin man was sitting in the chair by the window. Blond hair, glasses, dark-red leather jacket. The man reached up and scratched his neck, just to the left of his Adam's apple, with the first two fingers of his right hand. A few flakes of dry skin trickled down through the yellow air.

‘Jed?'

Jed just stared at him.

‘I didn't recognise you,' Nathan said.

Jed looked down at himself, as if he'd forgotten, then he looked up
again. ‘So what's new?' His voice was thin, whittled to a point, like a stick.