Clive Barker - Sacrament

'Have you talked to Bethlynn about any of this?'

'Not about the conversation with Frank. I've got a session with her tomorrow afternoon.' He leaned his head back on the head rest, and closed his eyes. 'We've talked about you a lot, you'll be pleased to know. And she was always pretty acute about you, before she met you. Now she'll be useless. Like the rest of us, flailing around trying to work out what makes you tick.'

'It's no great mystery,' Will said.

'One of these days,' Patrick said lazily, 'I'm going to have a blinding revelation about you, and everything'll suddenly make sense. Why we stayed together. Why we came apart.' He opened one eye and squinted at Will. 'Were you at The Penitent last night, by the way?'

Will wasn't sure. 'Maybe,' he said. 'Why?'

'A friend of Jack's said he saw you coming out, looking like you'd just done some serious mischief. Of course, I protected your honour. But it was you, wasn't it?'

'I don't remember, to be honest.'

'My God, that's something I don't hear very often these days. Everybody's too clean and sober. You don't remember? You're a throwback, Will. Homo Castro, 1975.' Will laughed. 'A primitive simian with an oversized libido and a permanently glazed expression.'

'There were some wild nights.'

'There certainly were,' Patrick said with gentle relish. 'But I don't want to do it again, do you?'

'Honestly?'

'Honestly. I did it, and it was great. But it's over. At least for me. I'm making a connection with something else now.'

'And how does that feel?'

Patrick had again closed his eyes. His voice grew quiet. 'It's wonderful,' he said. 'I feel God here sometimes. Right here with me.' He fell silent; the kind of silence that presages something of significance. Will said nothing. Just waited for the something to come. At last, Patrick said: 'I've got a plan, Will.'

'For what?'

'For when I get very sick.' Again, the silence; and Will waiting. 'I want you here, Will,' Patrick said. 'I want to die looking at you, and you looking at me.'

'Then that's what'll happen.'

'But it might not,' Patrick said. His voice was calm and even, but tears had swelled between his closed lids and ran down his cheeks. 'You might be in the middle of the Serengeti. Who knows? You might still be in England.'

'I won't-'

'Ssh,' Patrick said. 'Let me just get all of this said. I don't want somebody telling you what did or didn't happen and you not knowing whether to believe them or not. So I want you to know: I'm planning to die the way I've lived. Comfortably. Sensibly. Jack's with me on it. So's Rafael, of course. And, like I said, I want you here, too.' He stopped, wiped the tears off his cheeks with the heels of his hands, and then continued in the same contained manner. 'But if you're not, and there's some problem; if Rafael or Jack get into trouble somehow ... we're trying to cover all the legal issues to make sure it doesn't happen but there's still a chance ... I want to be sure you'll get it sorted out. You're good with that kind of stuff, Will. Nobody pushes you around.'

'I'll make sure there's no problem, don't worry.'

'Good. That makes me feel a lot happier.' Without opening his eyes, he reached out and unerringly took Will's hand. 'How am I doing?'

'You're doing fine.'

'I don't like weepers.'

'You're allowed.'

There was another silence, lighter this time, now that the deal had been struck. 'You're right,' Patrick finally said. 'I'm allowed.'

Will glanced at his watch. 'Time to go,' he said.

'Go, baby, go. I won't get up if you don't mind. I'm feeling a little frail.' Will went and hugged him, there in the chair. 'I love you,' he said.

'And I love you back.' He had caught fierce hold of Will's arms, and squeezed hard. 'You do know that, don't you? I mean, you're not just hearing the words?'

'I know it.'

'I wish we'd had longer, Will.'

'Me too,' Will said, 'I've got a lot of stuff I'd need to tell you about, but I got to catch this plane.'

'No, Will, I mean I wish we'd had longer together. I wish we'd taken the time to know one another better.'

'There'll be time,' Will said. Pat held on to Will's arms another moment. 'Not enough,' and then, reluctantly loosening his grip, let Will go.

He Names The Mystery

i

Home to England, and the summer almost gone. August's stars had fallen, and the leaves would follow very soon. Riot and rot in speedy succession.

You'll find the years pass more quickly as you get older, Marcello the resident wise old queen from Buddies in Boston - had told him an age ago. Will hadn't believed it, of course. It wasn't until he was thirtyone, maybe thirty-two, that he'd realized there was truth in the observation. Time wasn't on his side after all; it was gathering speed, season upon season, year upon year. Thirty-five was upon him in a heartbeat, and forty on its heels, the marathon he'd thought he was running in his youth mysteriously became a hundred yard sprint. Determined to achieve something of significance before the race was over he'd turned every minute of his life over to the making of pictures, but they were of small comfort. The books were published, the reviews were clipped and filed, and the animals he had witnessed in their final days went into the hands of taxidermists. Life was not a reversible commodity. Things passed away, never to return: species, hopes, years.

And yet he could still blithely wish hours of his life away when he was bored. Sitting in first class on the eleven-hour flight, he wished a hundred times it was over. He'd brought a bagful of books including the volume of poems Lewis had been distributing at Patrick's party, but nothing held his attention for more than a page or two. One of Lewis's short lyrics intrigued him mainly because he wondered who the hell it was about:

Now, with our fierce brotherhood annulled, I see as if by lightning, all the perfect pains we might have made, had our love's fiction lived another day.

It certainly had the authentic ring of Lewis's voice about it. All his favourite subjects - pain, brotherhood and the impossibility of love - in four lines.

It was noon when he arrived: a muggy, breathless day, its oppressiveness doing nothing for his stupefied state. He claimed his baggage and picked up a hire car without any problem, but once he got onto the motorway, he regretted not also hiring a driver. After two nights of less than satisfactory sleep, he was aching and shorttempered; within the first hour of the four-hour trek north, he was several times perilously close to a collision, the fault always his. He stopped to pick up some coffee, some aspirin and to walk the stiffness out of his joints. The weight and heat of the day were beginning to lift; there was rain beyond Birmingham, he heard somebody say, and worse to come. It was fine by him: a good heavy downpour, to cool the day still further.

He got back into the car in an altogether brighter mood, and the next leg of the journey was uneventful. The traffic thinned, the rain came and went, and though the view from the motorway was seldom inspiring, on occasion it achieved a particularly English grace. Placid hills thumbed out of the clay, all velvety with grass, or patched with straggling woods; harvesters raising ochre dust as they cut and threshed in the fields. And here and there, grander sights: a ridge of naked, sun-struck rock against the grimy sky; a rainbow, leaping from a water-meadow. He felt a remote reminder of those hours on Spruce Street, wandering two revelatory blocks to Bethlynn's house. There wasn't anything like the same level of distraction here, thank God, but he had the same sense that his gaze was cleansed; that he was seeing these sights, none of which were unfamiliar, more clearly than he had ever before. Would it be the same when he got to Burnt Yarley, he wondered. He certainly hoped so. He wanted to see the place made new, if that were possible; to which end he didn't let himself stew in expectation of what lay ahead, but kept his thoughts in the moment: the road, the sky, the passing landscape.