The Power of Forgetting (51 page)

There was a
rush of noise like trains in tunnels and a brief flash of
brilliance like the glancing of light from a window of a passing
vehicle reflecting the sun. For some reason I was thinking of the
Art Gallery back at home and my agent looking at the canvases and
going “Hummm….” in the softly unaware way that he had. He would
sigh and say something cryptic and weird and then tell me to get
the bubble wrap out. His name was Howard Logan, and he claimed he
was related to royalty; but was never too specific in what way.
“It’s all a game Jay!” he would say; “All a game for dummies. Just
stay out of the game Jay. Stay out of the game.” Then he’d offer me
one of his horribly aromatic roll ups which I always refused, put
on his bush hat over swept back hair and sweep out on a cloud of
Yves Saint Laurent. All things considered we got on really well; he
was one of those incredibly self-absorbed people who were really
appreciative of good quality art. He spared me the trouble of
having to reveal anything telling about myself by constantly
regaling me with tales of terrible clients and loose moraled PAs.
He made me laugh…. which was unusual. I suppose I missed the
irreverent silliness and the buoyed up feeling of confidence he
always left me with. I suppose I never thought about it before; how
people who are in your life in a peripheral way are actually
essential to the working of the whole fabric of your reality.

We ran as fast
as we could towards some rough ground. I saw that Lorraine stumbled
and was helped by Janey. They ran between two trees and immediately
made a sharp left. Joe and Marcia followed. Hanson hung back and
pulled me along by the arm… I was slowing and turning to see where
Davey and Oliver were. But yet I felt as if something was holding
me back. I was turning, looking back… and then I saw a fantail of
colour; a rainbow of light the spread out across the ground. And
there was a shimmer of the faint traces of low buildings; it was as
if there were two things there at once. Then out of the centre of
the colours came spider tendrils of darkness. It was as if I was
drawn to them; like a moth to a candle; but its inversion. The
darkness was beckoning me like a drug I could not resist. Worse
than any compulsion I had ever felt… stronger than Love, or Hate,
or my suicidal obsession with dangerous driving speeds. Or even
perhaps… grating at my soul like some humming sound that got inside
your brain, like the smell of a woman when you know she wants sex
with you… that musk, and the glitter of her eyes at a party…
fuelled partly by drunken loss of inhibitions.

Hanson grabbed
me and forced me to the ground as I took a step back towards the
aperture. There was a rush of sound and a high wind that blasted
outwards from somewhere above and buffeted and blinded us. I could
feel Hanson’s grip on my forearm tighten as we laid there as the
sound and the air stirred up dust and plants and debris. It was
cold too.

‘We must go to
the cave!’ Hanson was shouting at the top of his voice, and I could
barely hear him. My eyes were streaming I wasn’t sure which
direction I was facing. He grabbed my other arm painfully as well
and half pulled me, half dragged me upwards. We staggered through
the roar of a tornado. There were pieces of wood and chunks of
trees and bricks and sharp looking shards flying in all directions.
I started to cough. Hanson pulled the scarf across my mouth from
the neck of the suit. We entered the furious tossing of leaves. I
couldn’t see six inches ahead. Hanson moved slowly then crouched
down, pulling me with him. He crawled forward then turned sharply
to the left. By this time the noise and the wind was so strong that
it wouldn’t have mattered how loud you shouted you wouldn’t have
been able to make yourself heard. I had to trust him. We kept
crawling along.

We were lower
and the sound was above our heads. The air was swirling around
slower as if we were in a hollow below the level of the
uninterrupted wind. Plants brushed by us on both sides. Then all at
once Hanson put his arm on my shoulders and pressed me down to the
ground. He was shoving me forward by unceremoniously heaving me
like a sack of spuds. I was splayed on my stomach and had no
leverage at all.

Suddenly
another pair of hands grabbed my wrists and I was pulled through
into a small dark place. I felt dizzy and disorientated and there
was grit it seemed, on every bit of me. A few more moments of being
dragged and the sound suddenly lessened. Beneath me was loose
earth. I could hear Hanson grunting and scrambling up behind me in
an ungainly way. He bumped into me and then seemed to sit back
heavily. There was a moment or two of groaning behind and then the
sound cut almost completely.

‘Sandstorm.’ it
was unmistakeably Davey’s voice.

‘More like a
bloody log storm! Or Rock Rain?’ Hanson sounded surprized.

‘Let’s have a
look at him.’ That was Davey again.

I realised I
was tensed with my head in my hands in an attempt to cut out the
assault on the senses. It took several minutes for the deep-rooted
instinct to preserve the precious seat of the senses before I could
be persuaded to uncurl from that position.

‘Don’t open
your eyes.’ said Davey, ‘I have some water here.’

For some reason
he touched my wrist with the cool cloth. I shivered.

‘Is everyone
here?’ my lips felt burned too. Davey spent the next few minutes
cleaning of the dust and fragments of broken wood, and a mixture of
seeds and torn up green bits.

No one spoke. I
heard the cool drip, drip of a stream. When I finally opened my
eyes I found myself in a low roofed cavern. There was a glow of dim
illumination somewhere to my right. As my eyes adjusted it seemed
less dark. Everyone was there. Joe, bending and sliding his med
case across the soft floor came and looked at me. There was a sad
kind of resignation in his eyes. I saw then what I didn’t want to
see. Marcia…. They were all; we were all caught in her orbit one
way or another. Janey lay down with her knees drawn up. Marcia sat
cross legged. Hanson, having been cleaned up went to sit next to
her. She stared at me then; I stared back. It was that beat between
one moment and another… why? She should ask me. But she didn’t.
There was nothing to be done with Jared. He would not comply, would
not tell the whole story. There was the question in their eyes of
my friends, which for the moment were too tired to form the words
to the real enquiry. Where would they begin? Would it be at “What
were you doing?” and end up at “Have you betrayed us?”

With a few
words Davey explained that there was a lowered dip behind a rock… a
patch of soft ground into which we could relieve ourselves. Hanson
had taken out another lantern and with Davey’s help was setting a
small stove to boil some water.

I crawled down
to the little private space, and after a few minutes felt the
tension ease. I re-joined the group and sat cross legged on the
floor trying to give the appearance that I was not as tired as I
really was.

‘It’s been
nearly twenty-nine hours without rest or food.’ said Marcia, as if
she answered the question that was forming at that very moment. She
looked up at the assembled company. ‘We will all rest. The first to
wake will tell me straight away.’ There was a sense of consent. I
saw Oliver’s eyes gleam in the torch light. I saw he had some cuts
on his right hand that had been treated.

Hanson and
Davey passed round mugs of tea. Everyone drank them down in a quiet
still atmosphere of contemplative gratitude.

I finished my
tea and handed my mug back to Davey. He smiled at me then. It was
strange…. But it was once of the things I remembered later, that
smile at that moment. Just that…. Simple really. Marcia slid
herself slowly towards me. She moved behind me and sat with her
back against the cavern wall. Oliver turned the first lantern down.
In a little pool of illumination Davey tidied the mugs away.
Lorraine was curled up in a graceful position Oliver was sitting
nearby.

‘Jay?’ softly
she spoke; her lips brushed my neck. I saw the dark tendrils rising
before me. What were they? She was staring at me, and I half turned
towards her. I was watching her face. I must have sighed then, and
I blinked away something that seemed to well up, there was so much
dust.

Marcia bent
towards me and took my mouth and pressed it gently into hers. And
as hollow and tired as I was I felt a tugging of desire like the
tide tugs at a boat on its anchor. There were glimmers in her eyes
like the gleams on the surface of a sea at night. Perhaps she knew.
Perhaps she could foresee all things. But for that one night she
took a little time for herself, and let go of the role of Captain.
The storm would continue for hours, and I could not think of
anything but that awful darkness. Yet here breaking in on that, and
smashing it apart into powerless fragments was Marcia. What is she?
An angel? Or a fool? Does she love the man, or the magic? I didn’t
know.

She pointed to
the left. We crawled away from the others round a little corner,
down a hollow and up again. Here it was private and silent. A cosy
space in which Marcia’s small lantern made a private room. For
those few minutes following she made a nest of our garments. The
clips on my jacket like those keys in my mind; falling apart one by
one, but this time, to her expert touch.

I shuddered as
she touched my bare skin. So she bent to kiss that place in the
hollow between the throat and the shoulder. I had to admit to
myself; that although I had… well historically at least known a lot
of women; in a physical sense that is…. she was the only one who
made me feel totally helpless. She was an expert. She made love to
a man the way she baked; with a master touch. I was dough in her
expert hands. I had to push my fist in my mouth to stop myself from
gasping. She was pushing me to despair; in the way a master
musician plays music that makes you want to cry. She had me where I
could not cry out, she kissed me until I went beyond the dizziness
of desire. And then touched me gently with her fingertips. I was
moving to her song. She commanded you, you obey her. She was
strong, yet warm and sweet. Marcia always made me think of fruit,
she tasted like peaches, yet had a musky undertone of exotic woods.
I wished that she hadn’t done what she did….and yet I did not
regret it. She was stronger than me, even physically, and she
overwhelmed me, sinking into each pore a sense of her presence. An
imprint that was like a watermark…. somehow it sank into some deep,
very private corner of my soul that was lost in translation. But I
don’t know…. For what happened on that same day…. I want to
remember her differently. And yet I cannot. She was, as she always
had been the strong friend, the trusted confidant. And now she was
revealed as a commanding lover, who made your body respond to her.
We never spoke of love that night. And I suppose that when she
pressed down and I entered her, I wasn’t thinking of any promise
that had passed between us; or even of any future that may exist.
She whispered one thing to me as I shuddered and she took that
essence, and drained me and made me weaker than a child. “Tomorrow,
we will dance.”

Later, as the
evening rocked on a boat at night, and somewhere the storm raged
without, I mumbled something about being sorry for not following
orders. I folded myself into her; that honey warmth, and those
yielding curves that an artist would love to paint.

‘Don’t….’
Marcia said, ‘please Jay…. don’t tell me why…. if you know…. or if
you don’t. Let it be…. Please let it be, one of those things.’

Sometime later,
as she was sleeping, I watched her face…so profound in its
stillness. There is a weariness that finds us all in the end. And
this little group waiting for the storm to pass was weak with
doubt, and confused and ragged, nerves raw from lack of sleep and
too much stress. I touched those soft curls; dark and rich; then
laid my head next to hers and heard her breathing. Why do we love?
What is the point if it is always destined to be broken and lost? I
did not reckon on the thing that would tear us apart. And fool that
I was I never knew how much she loved me. I never saw it…. And as I
dressed myself and let her sleep I slid out from my pocket the
small tag we had found. I took out a black Russian and lit it,
breathing smoothly out as I considered what we had seen. This ghost
of the things that are created; these copies. But of whom? This did
not indicate anything other than a name… and that set of figures
that had so unnerved me back at the freezer lab. I thought that we
wouldn’t get much rest, and that Rimmington, true to form would be
looking for us all the minute the storm abated. I turned it over in
my hand. “Adam J. Shepard” and then below “IV 010801”. It made no
sense at all. There was that disquiet again. So where was Adam? It
seemed reasonable that we should try to get to higher ground. And
if this door way that Amber had told us about was operative, we
could get all the team back to the transport by the morning. If
Janey and I could find a place where there was no anti-shift field,
we could take people in maybe ones or twos. But somehow I realised
that Rimmington would have thought of that. It was not likely even
he would make such a fundamental mistake. We had to move, either
way; up and then down the rising ground. And somewhere there would
be the river’s course. It must rise from the mountains to the east.
We should find a way to cross… but them there was the weather…. So
not really an option; unless we could get beyond the rand of the
freaky weather control that the people exerted. Dieter’s lot had
been stopped from reaching us. So we were on our own.

For some
reason, now I was thinking more about the group, and how to get us
out of this I felt a lot better. It was dreadful yes; but there was
a rationale to the situation that the strange experiences inside
the base had temporarily suspended from my mind.