Instinctively Maguire reached round his attacker, and his hands found the rent the dogs had made in the shroud. His fingers gripped the open edge of the cloth, and he pulled. He was satisfied to hear the linen tearing along its weave, and the bear-hug fell away from him. The shroud bucked in his hand, the liquefied mouth wide in a silent scream.
Ronnie was feeling an agony he thought he'd left behind him with flesh and bone. But here it was again: pain, pain, pain.
He fluttered away from his mutilator, letting out what cry he could, while Maguire stumbled away up the lawn, his eyes huge. The man was close to madness, surely his mind was as good as broken. But that wasn't enough. He had to kill the bastard; that was his promise to himself and he intended to keep it.
The pain didn't disappear, but he tried to ignore it, putting all his energy into pursuing Maguire up the garden towards the house. But he was so weak now: the wind almost had mastery of him; gusting through his form and catching the frayed entrails of his body. He looked like a war-torn flag, fouled so it was scarcely recognisable, and just about ready to call it a day.
Except, except… Maguire.
Maguire reached the house, and slammed the door. The sheet pressed itself against the window, flapping ludicrously, its Linen hands raking the glass, its almost-lost face demanding vengeance.
"Let me in," it said, "I will come in."
Maguire stumbled backwards across the room into the hall.
"Raquel…"
Where was the woman?
"Raquel…?
"Raquel…"
She wasn't in the kitchen. From the den, the sound of Tracy's singing. He peered in. The little girl was alone. She was sitting in the middle of the floor, headphones clamped over her ears, singing along to some favourite song.
"Mummy?" he mimed at her.
"Upstairs," she replied, without taking off the headphones.
Upstairs. As he climbed the stairs he heard the dogs barking down the garden. What was it doing? What was the fucker doing?
"Raquel…? His voice was so quiet he could barely hear it himself. It was as though he'd prematurely become a ghost in his own house.
There was no noise on the landing.
He stumbled into the brown-tiled bathroom and snapped on the light. It was flattering, and he had always liked to look at himself in it. The mellow radiance dulled the edge of age. But now it refused to lie. His face was that of an old and haunted man.
He flung open the airing cupboard and fumbled amongst the warm towels. There! A gun, nestling in scented comfort, hidden away for emergencies only. The contact made him salivate. He snatched the gun and checked it. All in working order. This weapon had brought Glass down once, and it could do it again. And again. And again.
He opened the bedroom door.
"Raquel -”
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, with Norton inserted between her legs. Both still dressed, one of Raquel's sumptuous breasts teased from her bra and pressed into Norton's accommodating mouth. She looked round, dumb as ever, not knowing what she'd done.
Without thinking, he fired.
The bullet found her open-mouthed, gormless as ever, and blew a sizeable hole in her neck. Norton pulled himself out, no necrophiliac he, and ran towards the window. Quite what he intended wasn't clear. Flight was impossible.
The next bullet caught Norton in the middle of the back, and passed through his body, puncturing the window.
Only then, with her lover dead, did Raquel topple back across the bed, her breast spattered, her legs splayed wide. Maguire watched her fall. The domestic obscenity didn't disgust him; it was quite tolerable. Tit and blood and mouth and lost love and all; it was quite, quite tolerable. Maybe he was becoming insensitive.
He dropped the gun. The dogs had stopped barking.
He slipped out of the room on to the landing, closing the door quietly, so as not to disturb the child.
Mustn't disturb the child. As he walked to the top of the stairs he saw his daughter's winsome face staring up at him from the bottom.
"Daddy."
He stared at her with a puzzled expression.
There was someone at the door. I saw them passing the window."
He started to walk unsteadily down the stairs, one at a time. Slowly does it, he thought. "I opened the door, but there was nobody there." Wall. It must be Wall. He would know what to do for the best. "Was it a tall man?"
"I didn't see him properly, Daddy. Just his face. He was even whiter than you."
The door! Oh Jesus, the door! If she'd left it open. Too late.
The stranger came into the hall and his face crinkled into a kind of smile, which Maguire thought was about the worst thing he'd ever seen.
It wasn't Wall.
Wall was flesh and blood: the visitor was a rag-doll. Wall was a grim man; this one smiled. Wall was life and law and order. This thing wasn't.
It was Glass of course.
Maguire shook his head. The child, not seeing the thing wavering on the air behind her, misunderstood.
"What did I do wrong?" she asked.
Ronnie sailed past her up the stairs, more a shadow now than anything remotely manlike, shreds of cloth trailing behind him. Maguire had no time to resist, nor will left to do so. He opened his mouth to say something in defence of his life, and Ronnie thrust his remaining arm, wound into a rope of linen, down Maguire's throat. Maguire choked on it, but Ronnie snaked on, past his protesting epiglottis, forging a rough way down his esophagus into Maguire's stomach. Maguire felt it there, a fullness that was like overeating, except that it squirmed in the middle of his body, raking his stomach wall and catching hold of the lining. It was all so quick, Maguire had no time to die of suffocation. In the event, he might have wished to go that way, horrid as it would have been. Instead, he felt Ronnie's hand convulse in his belly, digging deeper for a decent grip on his colon, on his duodenum. And when the hand had all it could hold, the fuckhead pulled out his arm.
The exit was swift, but for Maguire the moment would seemingly have no end. He doubled up as the disemboweling began, feeling his viscera surge up his throat, turning him inside out. His lights went out through his throat in a welter of fluids, coffee, blood, acid.
Ronnie pulled on the guts and hauled Maguire, his emptied torso collapsing on itself, towards the top of the stairs. Led by a length of his own entrails Maguire reached the top stair and pitched forward. Ronnie relinquished his hold and Maguire fell, head swathed in gut, to the bottom of the stairs, where his daughter still stood.
She seemed, by her expression, not the least alarmed; but then Ronnie knew children could deceive so easily.
The job completed, he began to totter down the stairs, uncoiling his arm, and shaking his head as he tried to recover a smidgen of human appearance. The effort worked. By the time he reached the child at the bottom of the stairs he was able to offer her something very like a human touch. She didn't respond, and all he could do was leave and hope that in time she'd come to forget.
Once he'd gone Tracy went upstairs to find her mother. Raquel was unresponsive to her questions, as was the man on the carpet by the window. But there was something about him that fascinated her. A fat, red snake pressing out from his trousers. It made her laugh, it was such a silly little thing.
The girl was still laughing when Wall of the Yard appeared, late as usual. Though viewing the death-dances the house had jumped to he was, on the whole, glad he'd been a late arrival at that particular party.
In the confessional of St Mary Magdalene's the shroud of Ronnie Glass was now corrupted beyond recognition. He had very little feeling left in him, just the desire, so strong he knew he couldn't resist for very much longer, to let go of this wounded body. It had served him well; he had no complaints to make of it. But now he was out of breath. He could animate the inanimate no longer. He wanted to confess though, wanted to confess so very badly. To tell the Father, to tell the Son, to tell the Holy Ghost what sins he'd performed, dreamt, longe
d for. There was only one thing for it: if Father Rooney wouldn't come to him then he'd go to Father Rooney.
He opened the door of the Confessional. The church was almost empty. It was evening now, he guessed, and who had the time for the lighting of candles when there was food to be cooked, love to be bought, life to be had? Only a Greek florist, praying in the aisle for his sons to be acquitted, saw the shroud stagger from the Confessional towards the door of the Vestry. It looked like some damn-fool adolescent with a filthy sheet slung over his head. The florist hated that kind of Godless behaviour -look where it had got his children – he wanted to beat the kid around a bit, and teach him not to play silly beggars in the House of the Lord.
"Hey, you!" he said, too loudly.
The shroud turned to look at the florist, its eyes like two holes pressed in warm dough. The face of the ghost was so woebegone it froze the words on the florist's lips.
Ronnie tried the handle of the Vestry door. The rattling got him nowhere. The door was locked. From inside, a breathless voice said: "Who is it?" It was Father Rooney speaking. Ronnie tried to reply, but no words would come. All he could do was rattle, like any worthy ghost. "Who is it?" asked the good Father again, a little impatiently. Confess me, Ronnie wanted to say, confess me, for I have sinned.
The door stayed shut. Inside, Father Rooney was busy. He was taking photographs for his private collection; his subject a favourite lady of his by the name of Natalie. A daughter of vice somebody had told him, but he couldn't believe that. She was too obliging, too cherubic, and she wound a rosary around her pert bosom as though she was barely out of a convent.
The jiggling of the handle had stopped now. Good, thought Father Rooney. They'd come back, whoever they were. Nothing was that urgent. Father Rooney grinned at the woman. Natalie's lips pouted back.
In the church Ronnie hauled himself to the altar, and genuflected. Three rows back the florist rose from his prayers, incensed by this desecration. The boy was obviously drunk, the way he was reeling, the man wasn't about to be frightened by a tuppenny-coloured death-mask. Cursing the desecrator in ripe Greek, he snatched at the ghost as it knelt in front of the altar.
There was nothing under the sheet: nothing at all.
The florist felt the living cloth twitch in his hand, and dropped it with a tiny cry. Then he backed off down the aisle, crossing himself back and forth, back and forth, like a demented widow. A few yards from the door of the church he turned tail and ran.
The shroud lay where the florist had dropped it. Ronnie, lingering in the creases, looked up from the crumpled heap at the splendour of the altar. It was radiant, even in the gloom of the candlelit interior, and moved by its beauty, he was content to put the illusion behind him. Unconfessed, but unfearful of judgment, his spirit crept away.
After an hour or so Father Rooney unbolted the Vestry, escorted the chaste Natalie out of the church, and locked the front door. He peered into the Confessional on his way back, to check for hiding children. Empty, the entire church was empty. St Mary Magdalene was a forgotten woman.
As he meandered, whistling, back to the Vestry he caught sight of Ronnie Glass' shroud. It lay sprawled on the altar steps, a forlorn pile of shabby cloth. Ideal, he thought, picking it up. There were some indiscreet stains on the Vestry floor. Just the job to wipe them up.
He sniffed the cloth, he loved to sniff. It smelt of a thousand things. Ether, sweat, dogs, entrails, blood, disinfectant, empty rooms, broken hearts, flowers and loss. Fascinating. This was the thrill of the Parish of Soho, he thought. Something new every day. Mysteries on the doorstep, on the altar-step. Crimes so numerous they would need an ocean of Holy Water to wash them out. Vice for sale on every corner, if you knew where to look.
He tucked the shroud under his arm.
"I bet you've got a tale to tell," he said, snuffing out the votive candles with fingers too hot to feel the flame.
XV: SCAPE-GOATS
It wasn't a real island the tide had carried us on to, it was a lifeless mound of stones. Calling a hunch-backed shit-pile like this an island is flattery. Islands are oases in the sea: green and abundant. This is a forsaken place: no seals in the water around it, no birds in the air above it. I can think of no use for a place like this, except that you could say of it: I saw the heart of nothing, and survived. "It's not on any of the charts," said Ray, poring over the map of the Inner Hebrides, his nail at the spot where he'd calculated that we should be. It was, as he'd said, an empty space on the map, just pale blue sea without the merest speck to sign the existence of this rock. It wasn't just the seals and the birds that ignored it then, the chart-makers had too. There were one or two arrows in the vicinity of Ray's finger, marking the currents that should have been taking us north: tiny red darts on a paper ocean. The rest, like the world outside, was deserted.
Jonathan was jubilant of course, once he discovered that the place wasn't even to be found on the map; he seemed to feel instantly exonerated. The blame for our being here wasn't his any longer, it was the map-makers': he wasn't going to be held responsible for our being beached if the mound wasn't even marked on the charts. The apologetic expression he'd worn since our unscheduled arrival was replaced with a look of self-satisfaction.
"You can't avoid a place that doesn't exist, can you?" he crowed. "I mean, can you?"
"You could have used the eyes God gave you," Ray flung back at him; but Jonathan wasn't about to be cowed by reasonable criticism.
"It was so sudden, Raymond," he said. "I mean, in this mist I didn't have a chance. It was on top of us before I knew it."
It had been sudden, no two ways about that. I'd been in the galley preparing breakfast, which had become my responsibility since neither Angela nor Jonathan showed any enthusiasm for the task, when the hull of the "Emmanuelle' grated on shingle, then ploughed her way, juddering, up on to the stony beach. There was a moment's silence: then the shouting began. I climbed up out of the galley to find Jonathan standing on deck, grinning sheepishly and waving his arms around to semaphore his innocence.
"Before you ask," he said, "I don't know how it happened. One minute we were just coasting along -”
"Oh Jesus Christ all-fucking Mighty," Ray was clambering out of the cabin, hauling a pair of jeans on as he did so, and looking much the worse for a night in a bunk with Angela. I'd had the questionable honour of listening to her orgasms all night; she was certainly demanding. Jonathan began his defence-speech again from the beginning: "Before you ask -”, but Ray silenced him with a few choice insults. I retreated into the confines of the galley while the argument raged on deck. It gave me no small satisfaction to hear Jonathan slanged; I even hoped Ray would lose his cool enough to bloody that perfect hook nose.
The galley was a slop bucket. The breakfast I'd been preparing was all over the floor and I left it there, the yolks of the eggs, the gammon and the french toasts all congealing in pools of spilt fat. It was Jonathan's fault; let him clear it up. I poured myself a glass of grapefruit juice, waited until the recriminations died down, and went back up.
It was barely two hours after dawn, and the mist that had shrouded this island from Jonathan's view still covered the sun. If today was anything like the week that we'd had so far, by noon the deck would be too hot to step on barefoot, but now, with the mist still thick, I felt cold wearing just the bottom of my bikini. It didn't matter much, sailing amongst the islands, what you wore. There was no one to see you. I'd got the best all over tan I'd ever had. But this morning the chill drove me back below to find a sweater. There was no wind: the cold was coming up out of the sea. It's still night down there, I thought, just a few yards off the beach; limitless night.
I pulled on a sweater, and went back on deck. The maps were out, and Ray was bending over them. His bare back was peeling from an excess of sun, and I could see the bald patch he tried to hide in his dirty-yellow curls. Jonathan was staring at the beach and stroking his nose.
"Christ, what a place," I said. He glanced at me, trying
a smile. He had this illusion, poor Jonathan, that his face could charm a tortoise out of its shell, and to be fair to him there were a few women who melted if he so much as looked at them. I wasn't one of them, and it irritated him. I'd always thought his Jewish good looks too bland to be beautiful. My indifference was a red rag to him.
A voice, sleepy and pouting, drifted up from below deck. Our Lady of the Bunk was awake at last: time to make her late entrance, coyly wrapping a towel around her nakedness as she emerged. Her face was puffed up with too much red wine, and her hair needed a comb through it. Still she turned on the radiance, eyes wide, Shirley Temple with cleavage.
"What's happening, Ray? Where are we?"
Ray didn't look up from his computations, which earned him a frown.
"We've got a bloody awful navigator, that's all," he said. I don't even know what happened," Jonathan protested, clearly hoping for a show of sympathy from Angela. None was forthcoming.
"But where are we?" she asked again.
"Good morning, Angela," I said; I too was ignored.
"Is it an island?" she said.
"Of course it's an island: I just don't know which one yet," Ray replied.
"Perhaps it's Barra," she suggested.
Ray pulled a face. "We're nowhere near Barra," he said. "If you'll just let me retrace our steps -”
Retrace our steps, in the sea? Just Ray's Jesus fixation, I thought, looking back at the beach. It was impossible to guess how big the place was, the mist erased the landscape after a hundred yards. Perhaps somewhere in that grey wall there was human habitation.
Ray, having located the blank spot on the map where we were supposedly stranded, climbed down on to the beach and took a critical look at the bow. More to be out of Angela's way than anything else I climbed down to join him. The round stones of the beach were cold and slippery on the bare soles of my feet. Ray smoothed his palm down the side of the "Emmanuelle', almost a caress, then crouched to look at the damage to the bow. "I don't think we're holed," he said, “but I can't be sure." "We'll float off come high tide," said Jonathan, posing on the bow, hands on hips, “no sweat," he winked at me, “no sweat at all."