‘Michael. What happened to that little boy who got strung up in the basketball hoop, when you were a kid?’
He is silent for a while, and I think he’s going to say he doesn’t remember. Then he says, ‘He was OK. Some guy came along and got him out.’
‘I bet he never tried to join in your game again.’
Michael laughs. That’s the weirdest thing. That’s where you’re wrong, Simone. He did. The next time we played, there he was. Just as if nothing had happened. Waiting. Almost as if he was waiting for us to do it again.’
‘That can’t be true.’
‘Yeah, he was. He was there. It was as if he didn’t have any choice. And it’s taken me all this time to know why he did that.’
‘But it wasn’t a good idea,’ I say.
‘You have to go back. You can’t leave things. You can’t pretend the past didn’t happen.’
‘No one is pretending the past didn’t happen.’
‘The more you hide the more you dig yourself down. You know what I’m talking about, Simone.’
‘You tell me.’ I’m angry now. Let him say it right out.
‘I’ll tell you. I’m not going to be kept out of your life any more.’
‘All right. You tell me something else then. Tell me why you sent me those letters.’
‘You know why.’
‘You shouldn’t have done it. You haven’t got the right to break into my life like this.’
‘And you’re the judge, is that right?’
We haven’t gone any distance. When Michael turns and looks back across the fields we can still see my house. ‘So that’s it,’ says Michael. ‘That’s where you live. You bought a little bit of land with the house, Simone? Is this your kingdom? What you worked so hard to get after you left me.’
‘I didn’t leave you.’
He smiles, a pitying smile as if I am a stupid child. ‘I guess it must have been me that got on the aeroplane then.’ He pauses, then goes on, ‘I brought the pictures.’
‘What pictures?’
‘You know what pictures.’
‘Let me see.’
‘I don’t have them here. They’re back in my room.’
‘Where’re you staying?’
‘Oh. Someplace.’
I smile broadly. ‘This is ridiculous, Michael. You mean you’ve come all the way over here to see me and you’re not even going to tell me where I can visit you?’
He smiles too. ‘Well, if you’re planning to visit …’
‘Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Don’t tell me.’
The idea of breaking into his room and stealing the pictures vanishes as soon as it rises. It is ridiculous. Judge caught burgling motel. ‘So you brought some pictures to show me.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Why do you think I would want to see them?’
‘I don’t think that you want to see them. I think you believe you’re happy the way you are. I don’t think you believe you need me at all. But you do.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? Because I’m your past. I’m what you were. I’m what you think you left behind, but you can’t do that. If you do you’re lying to yourself, your husband and your kids and all those people who have to stand there waiting for you to judge them. You make me into nothing. You make everything we did into nothing. You make your past into nothing.’
‘That’s not true. I don’t talk about it, that’s all.’
‘We’re not discussing something we watched on TV here, Simone.’
‘What are we talking about? You tell me.’
‘We did everything, Simone. We did everything. You know it. That’s how close we were.’ He holds finger and thumb together, narrowing the space until the flesh touches. ‘That was you, Simone.’
‘Was it?’ I ask, and it’s a real, pure question, the only one I’ve asked so far.
He doesn’t answer. The mist is clearing fast and there’s going to be sun. Down on the beach two black-backed gulls are stabbing between the stones for something buried there. We look at the water.
‘Is it always as flat as this?’ he asks.
‘Not always.’
‘It doesn’t look like the ocean to me.’
‘You should go to the west coast. Cornwall or Scotland. It’s the Atlantic there.’
‘I don’t know those places.’
‘Haven’t you travelled around at all?’
‘No. I came to see you.’
‘Do you have friends in England?’
‘Why would I have friends in England? I came to see you. You remember the ocean at Annassett?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Remember how you used to swim? You were always swimming.’
‘I still do.’
‘Is the water clean?’
‘Clean enough.’
‘It looks pretty grey to me.’
We look at the grey, smooth water.
‘D’you ever get storms?’
‘Oh yes.’ I glance at him. ‘A long time ago, this is where Viking raiders used to come in.’
He laughs the laugh of a man from a big country.
‘A long time ago, huh?’
‘I suppose so. The first time they came, no one was expecting them. They stripped the church, killed the priest, killed the fighting men, filled their ships with cloth and gold and grain. The second time there wasn’t so much to take. There’d been a warning. A beacon was lit on that hill: there. They ran to the woods with everything they could carry. The Vikings were angry this time, so they fired the thatch. Then they found a woman who hadn’t been able to run away far enough because she’d just given birth. So they all raped her and when they’d finished they threw her on the fire to roast with her baby.’
‘How d’you know all this?’
‘Wait. I’m going to tell you about the third time. As you can imagine, it was a while before they came again. They raided farther up the coast, where they hadn’t been before. But one night, I don’t know how long afterwards it was, the fire burnt on the beacon again. Everyone ran, as they’d run before, except for one woman. She waited until everyone had gone then she ran the other way, down towards the shore and the marshes. She ran bent double with the weight of her bundle on her back. The marshes hadn’t been drained then. There were bogs here that would swallow a herd of horses. She reached the place she was looking for, a piece of high ground which looked over the bog and the sea. There was no sea-wall then. She knew that the light of her fire would shine out to sea where the Viking raiders were coming in on the tide. It would look like the light of food and hearth and home. She took out her fire-pot from under her cloak. It was a wild night, with the moon racing between scraps of cloud, and the wind blew her charcoal red. She knelt and built her bundle of sticks into a pyramid and she set a fire under it. As the flames began to catch she fed them until the fire leapt high with the wind. She stared through the darkness and she thought she heard the chink of oars over the noise of the water, and then the scrape of the longboats being dragged up onto the shingle. She crawled forward, wrapped in her cloak, to the edge of the bog that lay between her and the sea. She came so close to the bog that she heard it muttering to itself. She lay down and whispered to the bog and she looked back over her shoulder and saw her fire burning brightly. The bog was moving deep inside itself with hunger that never goes away.
‘“Lie still,” she said. “Lie still and you’ll get what you want.”
‘And the bog lay still, making itself look as quiet as a field full of fat sheep. She saw them coming. They were less than a hundred yards from her. It looked as if they would be on her in a few seconds. They came in a pack, like wolves. Then the men in front wavered like the air over a fire and they went down. She lay low, watching. She drank up the sound of their cries as the bog swallowed their bodies. Sometimes the bog swallows a man quickly, and sometimes it plays when it has him in its mouth. It lets him think he’s going to get out if he struggles hard enough. But he’
s never going to get out. The more he struggles the deeper he goes. She lay there and listened to the play of the bog as if it was the sweetest music she had ever heard. At the edge men were stumbling, pulling on one another, dragging one another down. Those at the rear were already in flight, back to the ships.’
‘How the hell do you know all this? Those people couldn’t read and write.’
‘They found the men when they were draining the marsh here.’
‘Jesus. Why would she do that? The woman?’
‘Maybe it was her mother who couldn’t run away fast enough. Maybe she was a little girl in that wood, knowing her mother had been left behind. Maybe she went back and found her mother and her baby sister. I’m only guessing. Or maybe I’m just making her up.’ I smile. ‘It’s full of history, this area. When did you arrive?’
‘Five days ago.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Long enough.’
‘You knew where I was. How did you know?’
‘It wasn’t hard.’
He’s right, it wouldn’t have been hard. Now if I’d been called Jones or Carter he would have had his work cut out. What a gift it must have been that I’d kept my name. But it’s not so hard to trace people. And then he would have had to make arrangements, once he was sure where I was. The flight, the accommodation. Spending the money must have felt much more real than posting a letter. He doesn’t look like a man with money.
‘So what are you doing now?’ I ask him.
‘I’ve got a little boat-building business. You know I could always do that stuff. It’s nothing fancy. Mostly repairs, but I get by.’
‘It must have been hard to get started again, after being in hospital.’
I know about that. Employment chances down to zero. No chance of a bank loan to start anything.
‘I know what you’re saying,’ Michael agrees. ‘It’s like you kill something and you have to carry the carcass on your back the rest of your life.’
‘But you didn’t kill anyone.’
His eyes narrow a little. ‘No.’ But there’s a hesitation, a thickening in his voice.
‘That’s history,’ I say. ‘Anyone can have a breakdown.’
‘But not you, Simone,’ says Michael. ‘You’re tough.’
I want to spit at him. Spit it all back at him, everything I’ve done and been since I last saw him. I breathe deeply, move back a little. I am not going to let myself give way.
‘I’ve changed too,’ I say. ‘I’m not the person you knew.’
‘I’ve what way have you changed, Simone? Good or bad?’
The way he repeats my name is getting on my nerves. The more he does it, the less it feels as if he’s really talking to me. And it’s like a stranger taking hold of your arm in the glaring white-tiled corridors of the Underground, and walking you away. Everyone’s glance slides over you as if you’re just another couple, arm in arm. Already it’s too late to cry out.
‘So how did you get started again with the boat-building business? It must have been hard.’
‘I went back home. They know me there.’ He looks up with a half-smile. They’d had plenty of time to clear up.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I was out of my head. That’s why they put me in the hospital.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I believe I smashed up the front of the store.’
‘Was anyone hurt?’
‘Nobody got hurt. I don’t really remember.’
I visualize the front of the store in Annassett. The porch, the flight of wooden steps, the narrow door then the smell of oil, wood, apples. Mac lounging behind the counter working out the next move of a correspondence chess game. There was nobody in Annassett good enough to play him.
‘Lucky the windows were small,’ I say.
‘It’s not like you remember. They’ve expanded. There’s a parking lot for forty cars now. They’re making money.’
‘Is it still Mac and Lucy?’
‘No. New people.’
‘Did they cause trouble?’
‘They were OK.’
‘What about work?’
‘I get plenty of work. I’d rather work than do anything else. I don’t care about the money. People know me, they know I won’t screw up. I treat every boat as if it’s my own.’
He says it all like the plain man I know he isn’t. They trust me. Why don’t you?
‘I must go,’ I say, ‘I’ve got to be at work.’
He reaches forward. He takes my hands. I don’t resist as he folds my hands together and places his around them.
‘I tell you this, Simone, you need to look at yourself before you have the right to judge your fellow human beings.’
‘You don’t understand. I’m not a judge in a criminal court –’
‘I know what you are,’ says Michael sombrely. His hands rock mine as if they are babies. ‘Nobody here knows what you are, Simone, but I know.’
Suddenly I am angry. You’re letting him win, I think. You can do better than this.
‘Nobody here knows what? What exactly is it that people don’t know and you’re going to tell them?’
‘I’m not going to tell anybody anything, Simone. But I think you are. I think you won’t find happiness until you do.’
‘Happiness. How old are you, Michael? OK. Let’s get down to details. Let’s talk about what we’re really talking about. Sex with you. Letting Calvin photograph us. Letting Calvin use a time-delay switch on the camera so he could show the three of us in bed together. Smoking grass with you and Calvin. A bit of cross-dressing. A few more pictures. And you’ve kept the lot. Headlines, is that what you want? Saucy secrets of sexy Judge Simone. Go on. Is that it? Is there any other stuff I haven’t remembered? Is that the whole big deal? It was fine with you then, as far as I remember. I don’t recall any objections.’
‘It was never fine,’ says Michael, with a spurt of anger that seems real now. ‘It was shit.’
‘You’re getting two things confused here. Either this is a moral issue or it isn’t. It doesn’t matter how you feel about it. It’s not about feelings. If it wasn’t wrong then, it’s not wrong now.’
With a visible effort he recovers himself and relaxes his grip on my hands. I slide them free.
‘The thing that’s wrong, Simone, is that what you are doesn’t match what you do. You sit in judgment on your fellow human beings, but you turn your back on me.’
‘I don’t see what that has to do with anything. I haven’t seen you since I was eighteen. I hadn’t even started to study law then.’
He steps back a pace. Behind him the sea is light-filled, crossed by the silent, sailing gulls. How far they fly without a wing-beat. But Michael blots it out.
‘That’s why I’m here,’ he says, ‘that’s why I’ve come, Simone. To help you find a way back.’
I look at him. He’s a man who’s been cracked open and scrubbed hollow. He wants me to be like that too. He won’t hurt me. When I saw him first I thought he’d come to kill me, out here where the nearest house is almost out of sight and the sea carries away as many sounds as it makes. But he doesn’t want to do that. Through me he’s going to prove himself. He’s going to earn himself back.
‘We need to talk some more,’ I say, slowly, watching him still. This is where I must tread forward lightly, not making a single mark that’ll give me away.
‘I’m glad you feel that way,’ he says.
‘But I must go now.’
‘OK.’
Again that waiting, confident pause, fuelled by emotions I can’t begin to gauge. The strangeness of him sweeps over me. This man is absolutely unrecognizable at every point, and yet I know him. I have sucked him, bitten him, swallowed him, sunk into exhausted, sweating sleep at his side. I’ve known the taste and smell of every inch of his body. I told myself every cell was changed but that doesn’t work now, not when we’re face to face. His closeness is like a vertigo, throwing me down towar
ds him.
But the body I knew has gone all the same. It’s all gone. It’s been washed away in those hospital showers for him, with the attendant patrolling the pale, pulpy bodies of his charges. It’s been washed away in long baths for me, with baby Joe or Matt sitting between my legs and playing with their toy boats. They have washed me clean of Michael. They have laughed and put their pudgy hands on my thighs, and wallowed in the water knowing that if they slip for a second my hands will be there quicker than thought. Everything I knew of my body was turned inside out in childbirth. And what happened to him? I can imagine it as if it comes to me through his touch. The lack of solitude. For his own sake there would always be someone watching. Ties and belts would be taken away. He would have no landscape but the square of morning sky. The lights would burn late, for the convenience of the staff getting through their shifts with a crossword. Every night would be full of cries and murmurs. And by day the slop of feet, the blank, astonished faces on their way back from electric shock, the smells of drugs and urine and the sharp sweat of night terrors. Visiting times when nobody comes. The weight going on, the jaw thickening, the walk round the hospital yard a slow shuffle.
‘Well,’ he says.
‘I’ll meet you here,’ I say. ‘We can go walking. I talk better when I walk.’
‘You don’t want me to come to your house.’
But he knows the answer. It’s not a question.
‘Not yet,’ I say. ‘Can you come here early, like this, the day after tomorrow?’
‘Sure. I’ve got nothing else to do.’
‘Nobody else to see?’
‘I don’t know a soul in this country.’
‘Are you comfortable where you’re staying?’
He laughs, a little, surprised laugh, a bit shy. ‘I’m OK. It’s fine. It’s just one of those places. You know.’
‘A bit anonymous.’
‘Yeah, that’s it. They don’t even look you in the eye when they take your money.’
‘We both smile. I’m facing the steps down.
‘Goodbye.’
He doesn’t answer. It’s hard to turn my back and climb down the steps with him watching, but I do it, and my feet touch the clean, springy turf. The sheep are settled now, grazing easily in the full morning light. They don’t even startle as I walk across the field. At the first stile I look back, and he’s still there, standing with one hand shielding his eyes and the other lifted in an awkward salute, held too long, its meaning evaporated. He could be anyone.