Somehow the force of the giant universal will that is strong enough when love is strong enough entered my limbs and I stood and gathered my small sister into my arms. I stumbled and dragged myself and my light load across the sand, over the wall. When I reached the car, there was no way I could open the door and still hold her, but she was beyond standing. She bumped against the tarmac as my arms gave way and I dropped her, and she fell like a small sapling. The earth wanted her and she had wanted its enfolding embrace. I opened the door and gathered her up again. A sear of heat stabbed at the lower part of my back, the muscles in my thighs and arms burned as I got her into the back seat of the car. There was a dull thud as her head came to rest against the window, and her eyes were open as if she could still see out.
I drove as though I too had a death wish, through traffic lights with no thought for if they were red or green. I heard hooters blaring only after the fact, when they were long gone and past me. I did not look back as my engine revved; the straightest road carried us along the sealine, and if the earth had wanted us both, it would have taken us out on that manic trip. But for me there would never be an easy way out. It was my path now to carry, and not to be carried, and for the first time I really felt the weight of my burden, as though the whole of my own body had become embedded in Devin’s. Once she’d been light enough to hold and release; now I held the burden of both of us, and of my mother and father too. The shadows of wayward ghosts haunted the pavements as the car blurred past. When I reached home, I scrambled into the back seat and I put my ear to her mouth and there was no movement; not even the faintest trickle of a hair’s-breadth air escaped to find my cheek. Devin was gone, and I held her lifeless body to me.
I sat in the car in the dark and waited, but I knew she would never come back. I waited for the stars to recede and the heavens to open and accept her in front of my eyes. I waited for silence, but it was already there; it had always been all around me. I’d created it with the absence of my own voice.
There was a light on in the house. Auster was still up, waiting for me, watching television or making a cup of tea or reading a book. I sat in the car and watched that light and I waited for the remnants of my Devin’s soul to leave me.
Thirty-Five
Marshall stood at the back of the church in a dark suit. He seemed unwell, his skin pallid with deep hollows in his face where once there had been full cheeks. He looked older than I remembered and his face had softened and started to fall. My father went to him and I saw the brothers embrace, but I knew that it was really me he was waiting for. I couldn’t deny him forever, but the thought of speaking to him in a church made me want to be sick. While everybody found their way through the church’s front entrance, I slipped through the side door that led out into the courtyard and made my way into the hall where tea had been laid out.
Throughout teatime I busied myself, organising the caterers, talking to people who had come to say goodbye to my sister. Zakes was a reassuring presence who managed to distract Hayley from too much solemnity as Auster assisted with greeting the guests. By the size of the crowd, there were more people who had cared for her than Devin had ever known. I was touched that they’d made the effort, and grateful that in talking to them, the crust of smile fixed in politeness on my face allowed me to avoid my uncle.
In the days that followed Devin’s death, I had craved some solitude to mourn my sister, but the postmortem, the questioning by the police, the eventual release of her body and the organising of the memorial service had allowed me no moments alone. The repetitive questions became a numbing refrain in the days stitched together by deliveries of floral arrangements and dropped-off meals. Why had I taken her away from the hospital? Did I think I had the right to do that? Was Samuel my accomplice? What had happened on the beach? I remained stoic and consistent if a little vague in my sparse answer: I don’t know. How do you explain a gut feeling, a primal response, an indignation so deep it causes you to act on impulse? Did I regret what I had done? Did I realise how disastrous my actions had been? Did I know my sister might have lived? Did I know my actions had probably killed her? Why had I taken her away from the wires and tubes and machines that were keeping her alive? What I knew I never said: that my sister’s demise had begun long ago at the hands of the man who now, at her funeral, skulked his way around the guests, skirting the hall while his eyes intermittently hunted me. I saw him pour himself a cup of coffee at the long trestle table nearby and I moved again, far away to the other side. He sought me out, but I played a game of cat-and-mouse, evading him with every step he took in my direction. But slowly the crowd lessened and people trickled from the hall as they placed their empty plates and cups in a pile, dabbed at their cheeks with tissues and blew their noses and said their goodbyes. The show was over, and they were returning to their real lives. I wanted to stay there, in that hall, for as long as possible. I couldn’t yet understand a reality without my sister in it. As the hall emptied, I panicked. I needed the crowd to hide myself in. I searched the space but suddenly, thankfully, I couldn’t find him. Perhaps he’d already left.
I told my father to wait in the car while I organised the washing of the dishes and paid the caterers. I was the last to leave when the hall was clean and all trace of my sister’s farewell washed away, shut up in boxes with the crockery and cake forks. I locked the door and placed the key in the wooden box that was bolted to the wall beneath the eaves of the building.
He stepped from the shade and my heart leapt and fell as he placed his hand on my shoulder. I moved out from under it, I shrugged him off. He might have looked older, greyer, more frail, but he was still a large man. I still had to look up to see his face. I grew smaller in only a moment.
‘Catherine,’ he said.
‘Hello, Marshall.’
‘I came to say how sorry I am.’
‘I don’t care why you came. I just want you to go.’ I felt like I was talking to a child. This man. This phantom. I held his eyes with my own and I saw that there was nothing in them that I could read. He stood as a mourner and his eyes asked for solace and safekeeping.
‘Catherine. Please. I … I loved Devin too.’
‘You killed Devin. You’re a child abuser, Marshall, and a killer.’
My father was in the car, just around the corner. He wouldn’t wait for me forever. He would come to find out where I was, to see if he could help.
‘You and Samuel are all I have now. You’re the only family I have left,’ he said. ‘Don’t do this.’
‘You’re nothing like family, Marshall.’
‘I want to help.’ He reached a hand into his pocket, brought out a long thin wallet that held a stack of cheques. ‘I thought I could give you something to help cover the medical costs. Maybe the funeral.’
I stepped back and into a flowerbed. I almost toppled like a spinning top losing its own centrifugal force, and he reached out a hand to stop my fall. It rested there on my arm, a waiting predator, and I stared at it so hard my eyes forced it to drop again to his side, but the effect of his touch still stung.
‘The costs? Are you off your head?’
‘Please, Catherine. I didn’t come here to fight. I loved your sister.’
‘You came here to seek my absolution with your stinking money.’ I choked the words out, forced myself to look into his empty eyes as I spoke. ‘You’re here, on the day of her funeral, and you want to pay me for my silence, to make the past go away.’
‘No.’
‘What then?’
He replaced the wallet in his pocket and there was a tremor in the movement, a shaking uncertainty. ‘I’m not proud of my life. I’m getting older, I’m just a lonely old man. I envy my brother. That … that he did things right. That he has you.’
There was something strange about him, something I couldn’t place. There were no horns growing from his head, his eyes shone as though the tears were waiting to break through. I didn’t see evil there. I couldn’t find the thing in him that I now was
certain I hated. He looked pathetic, like any ordinary, lonely man.
‘Samuel won’t take anything from me,’ Marshall said. ‘His pride won’t allow it.’
I backed away towards the road. The film of water in his eyes was thickening into tears. I was afraid. I didn’t want to feel anything for him. I didn’t want to pity him. It would be easier not to see him as a man. I was more comfortable with the idea of the monster that had formed in my head. ‘I have to go, Marshall.’ I said. ‘My dad’s waiting for me. If you come near me again, I’ll go to the police.’
‘Maybe some time later, Catherine—’
I shook my head, backed away from him. ‘No, Marshall. You’re on your own now. I’m sorry, I can’t do it. You have to let us go.’
‘Look, I heard what’s going on with Sam. I know his memory’s going.’
I nodded, looking down. ‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘We’re good though. If you really want to help us, Marshall …?’
He looked at me, the shadow of hope still bruised his face.
‘… you can leave us alone.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Okay.’
I turned from him and walked around the corner and I felt his eyes, motionless on my back, until I’d disappeared.
In the car I sat beside my father and held the steering wheel with both hands, taking a moment to pull myself together before I guided the car out of the parking space.
‘Marshall was there,’ Samuel said.
‘I know.’
‘Did you speak to him?’
‘I don’t want to talk about Marshall. I don’t want to talk about anything.’
He looked out of the window at the shops and the cars and the people on the pavement passing by. ‘He helped us, Monkey. You know that,’ Samuel said after a pause as deep as his own private sea. ‘He got me back on my feet. Gave me a job, gave us all a place to live. I couldn’t have done it without him. I owe my brother everything.’
I bit my lip and tasted the warm, metallic flavour of my own blood. ‘You owe him nothing, Samuel. You’ve paid him with every goddamn thing you ever had.’
If he was still paying attention to the conversation, he showed no sign. Now he watched the buildings outside the window. ‘You know, Monkey,’ he said suddenly, ‘my razor has gone missing. Can’t find it. D’you think Devin has hidden it somewhere?’
I saw Marshall only once after that, with Hayley in the bookshop on that ordinary weekend morning. By then I knew that no child in the world is ever completely safe, and no adult can be wholly redeemed for whatever harm has been done either.
Thirty-Six
I wake and there is just a flat sheet beside me. The time on the clock radio on Auster’s bedside table flashes 4.30. Outside it is dark but here the bathroom light is on and the bedroom door is ajar, allowing a dim glow to enter. I hear my heart beating in my chest – something must have startled me awake and adrenaline pushes through my body.
I imagine waking alone like this, every day, if Auster had to leave me. I look for the unexpected now, the hidden dangers under rocks that are not real. There is a potential emptiness, a finality to the space beside me. It feels as if it could go on into infinity.
I get up and check on my child in the next room. She’s asleep on her back with both arms up against the pillow as though surrendering to something I cannot see. She’s pushed the covers back too far and they’re around her feet. I pull them over her torso and she shifts and mutters, but she doesn’t wake up.
Auster is at the kitchen table, his laptop aglow in the dark.
‘You’re up so early,’ I say. ‘Couldn’t sleep?’
He starts and turns around, smiles, then looks back at the screen. ‘You were so restless, talking and muttering. It got to two-thirty and I decided it wasn’t worth trying any more.’
‘So it’s my fault.’
‘Not directly. I’m sure you don’t mean it to, but all this stress has implications for me too.’ He gives it to me straight.
‘Sorry.’ I sit down opposite him at the table.
He smiles, but in a distracted way. ‘’s okay. Go back to bed. I’m just getting some work done here.’
‘I won’t sleep now. Now I’m up. Want some tea?’
He shakes his head, intensifies his focus on his work.
I make myself a cup of tea and go to the phone in the hallway. I dial a number and it rings too many times before it’s answered, but I don’t consider that I might be disruptive.
‘Hello?’ Zakes’ voice is blurred from recent sleep.
‘I woke you.’
‘Too right. What the hell is the time? It’s still dark outside.’
‘Sorry. I thought you might be up early.’
‘It’s not yet five o’clock. What’s early for you?’
‘You working today?’
‘Yes, actually.’
‘Any chance of cancelling? I’ve been thinking about the film. We need to go back. I need more footage. I need to talk to Vincent again.’
‘It’s a bit difficult for me today. I’ll see what I can do.’
‘When are you filming?’
‘In the afternoon.’
‘I can have your morning then?’
‘It’ll cost you, Catherine.’
‘I don’t care. I’ll pay what you want. I need to do this now.’
The tip of the winter sun appears over the line of the horizon as we drive from the city. Zakes wears a hand-knitted beanie and a thick cotton pullover that covers the top of his jeans. I look at him in the early light and see his youth, his vigour, and I think of Auster’s face lit by the dim glow of his laptop. I balk inside that my loyalty to Auster has ever buckled, that for a moment I could have thought of Zakes as anything but the loyal friend and colleague he has proved to be. A small rush of air like a sea breeze escapes my mouth.
‘What’s wrong with you, girl?’ Zakes says, sipping at his takeaway coffee. ‘What bee you got in your bonnet this morning?’
‘There’s more to ask him,’ I say. ‘I let him get under my skin last time and it affected the material; it’s obvious when you watch the footage. There’s more, Zakes. We can go deeper.’
‘There’s five days of shooting already. It’s only a half-hour slot. Surely you’ve got all that you need? This is bordering on obsessive.’
‘I don’t know. It feels like I’m missing something.’
‘I think what you’re missing has nothing to do with this film.’
‘Thanks, like I need a narrative on my life.’
‘I’m serious. You’re getting more and more hectic. You need to chill. Take some time out.’
‘I have a social responsibility.’
The roads are quiet at this time. Suddenly it dawns on me that it is a Saturday. I haven’t noticed the day. Hayley will wake up without me.
‘Forget social, Catherine. What you need is closer, at home. You have a responsibility to your family. But mostly to yourself.’
‘We are who we are because of other people.’
He laughs, his face widening, brightening. ‘Come on, Catherine. This is me, remember? Don’t throw clichés around. You are who you are. That’s all.’
‘So other people don’t come into it?’
‘You are who you are because of these kids? Because of that monster? Because of your sister?’
He had to bring it up. After the evening at his flat and along with my fleeting wayward and escapist fancies, he now also carries the weight of my fear. I think of Marshall. Devin.
‘I don’t think so, Catherine.’
‘You have no idea about my life, Zakes. You don’t know where I come from, or where I’ve been.’
He looks at me sideways. I want to meet his gaze, deal with this full-on, but I’m driving. ‘And you have no idea about mine. What we see of each other now is all we have, all there really is. And Catherine?’
I look over to him.
‘What I see of you right now, it isn’t very together.’
&nb
sp; He’s right and I know it. ‘There’s so much about my past that I’m still dealing with. ‘It’s all-consuming, Zakes.’
‘And what is that past? Can you touch it, Catherine? Can you bring it back? It’s so real in your head, but it doesn’t exist except as a thought pattern, one you play over and over again to define yourself by. You’re more than a few negative and repeated thoughts. You’re a full and beautiful being, right here and now. Your past can’t consume that. Not if you don’t let it.’
He looks at life through a camera’s eye, distils it into frames that hold the clarity of truth. What does he see in my face, I wonder. I stare at the road ahead. Trees surround us and my words flounder. It’s like entering a forest, noticing the size of the trees that filter out the light. Sometimes trees have to be cut down to allow what is natural and wild to grow.
In the prison visiting room, Vincent stares at me from his chair. A single guard stands at the door. ‘You didn’t get enough the last time?’ Vincent says.