Joe Treasure - The Book of Air

‘Because I was afraid.’

‘You’re not afraid of anything.’

‘I’m more afraid than you know. If you weren’t here I don’t know what I’d do.’

I wait for her to tell me her secret, thinking she could hardly guess how hard it would be to shock me.

‘Do you think sometimes,’ she says, ‘that we’ve known each other all our lives?’

‘My life stopped, and began again when I woke up in this house.’

‘But we knew each other before.’

‘Is this about reincarnation?’

‘I don’t know what that is. But we did know each other. I was in Hebron. I was on the Jesus bus.’

And I am shocked after all. ‘What do you know about the Jesus bus?’

‘Everything. I was there. With my grandma. Grandma Cheryl. We left my mother in London because she didn’t want to come. I mean… because she was a streetwalker – that’s what Grandma Cheryl said. I think it must have been a hard life. I barely remember her and I never saw her again after we left.’

‘Abigail? I don’t remember any Abigail.’

‘I wasn’t Abigail then. Caleb gave us all new names, remember, when we reached Hebron. I was Tiffany before.’

‘Tiffany!’ I search her face for that child, that pudgy kid bundled up in clothes too big for her and clinging to Penny’s skirt. It is her. Now I see it, I wonder that I didn’t see it before. ‘But how come you’re here? It’s unbelievable.’ It makes me laugh with astonishment.

‘No, not unbelievable. I saw the house when you did. When we were getting apples in the orchard. And you said, one day you’d buy it and live in it and I asked if I could come too. I knew if I was ever going to find you it would be here – back along the road from Lloyd’s farm. Not that far away. Three days walk, as it turned out. When most of the others were dead and there was no one left to nurse.’

‘You grew up on Lloyd’s farm.’

‘Yes, Hebron.’

‘So you knew Penny.’

‘Yes.’

‘And my mother.’

‘Yes.’

‘And Derek and Walter and all of them.’

‘Walter I remember vaguely. He died when I was quite young. Just after you left. They said it killed him when you ran away.’

‘That’s a lie. He was dead already. I watched him go.’

‘And Caleb – Derek – that’s the part I was afraid to tell you.’

‘Why? What about him?’

‘I was his wife. One of his wives. After your mother died, and your sister ran away, he chose me. Then later a girl called Sarah, and then Maud.’

‘Three of you?’

‘It was better when it wasn’t just me. We took care of each other. I loved Sarah. We were everything to each other.’

‘You were all his wives?’

‘Yes, like in the time of the patriarchs, Caleb said.’

‘I bet he did. Were there any children?’

‘No, none of us had children.’

‘He was infertile, then, I suppose.’

‘Maybe, I don’t know if that’s the word for it. It’s hard to explain.’

‘Don’t tell me if you don’t want to.’

There’s a pale movement overhead and I see the owl swooping among the trees to settle on a branch.

‘I knew what it was supposed to be like,’ Abigail says. ‘My grandma told me not to be scared, that it was nice when you got used to it. All good fun really, she said, as long as you don’t fight it. She saw me, one day, looking at the stallion in the field across the river with his pizzle hanging under his belly like something that didn’t belong to him, and she laughed and said it wouldn’t be that size. I knew that anyway. I’d seen one of the boys… you know… doing himself behind the barn. But it turned out different than I expected. Caleb never got hard like that. He’d get on top of me, but only to kiss me and rub against me.’ She stopped. ‘I didn’t think I’d tell you this. No reason to tell anyone now. I told Sarah, so she’d know what to expect. And Maud, later on. But I’ve no reason to tell you.’

‘Yes you have. So that you don’t have to carry it around all by yourself.’ I’m thinking of Penny, of what she told me when I found her squatting in my property with Jack or Zac – that sex with Derek was worse than she’d expected.

‘Well, I was supposed to use my hands and sometimes my mouth. It took a long time, longer than the boy behind the barn, a lot longer than the horse, and quite often nothing happened and he’d give up or fall asleep.’

‘And what if you didn’t? What if you refused?’

‘He never forced me. He never hit me or anything. Not for that. But I always did it as thoroughly as I could, and Sarah as well, to keep Maud from having to. Sarah and I could laugh about it. He wasn’t bad, Caleb. Just an old man who wanted to feel big and strong when he wasn’t any more. But it was difficult for Maud. She never got used to it.’

‘And that’s why she doesn’t talk?’

‘ I do was the last thing I ever heard her say. Are you disgusted with me now?’

‘Why should I be?’

‘I was always half afraid of you.’

‘Why?

‘Because you were the bad seed.’

‘And Penny was the good?’

‘Until she ran away. Then it was a wicked streak you’d both inherited.’

‘Not from mum?’

‘No, he loved your mum. We all did. Your mother was a living saint. It was your father, with his fleshly appetites and worldly desires, who’d kept her from the path of righteousness until God cast him down from a high place and raised up Caleb to seek Hebron.’

‘He fell off a ladder. He wasn’t cast down by God. He had a heart attack. I don’t know anything about his fleshly appetites. It was Derek who liked Korean tarts. And the extent of my dad’s worldly desires was to have mum cook him steak and chips for tea on a Friday night and watch a bit of telly.’

‘You miss him.’

‘He would have known how to take care of this house.’

‘You loved him.’

‘Did you believe those stories – about my dad, about me being the bad seed?’

‘I never believed anything bad about you.’

I take her hand and she shivers.

‘Do you want to go back inside?’ she says.

‘No. Do you?

‘No. And you’re not disappointed?’

‘About what?’

‘That I’m not a virgin.’

‘Abigail – you might be the first grown-up virgin I’ve ever met.’

‘You’re teasing me.’

‘It’s hard not to.’ I look her in the face. ‘I’ve had sex with other women you know. I was in London for years before I met Caroline. And Caroline wasn’t a virgin when I met her.’

‘You can tell me that another day. You should stop talking about Caroline now.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s time.’

She kisses me. I realise I didn’t expect her to be passionate. She’s so practical always and so self-contained. And modest, of course, with the headscarf and the heavy skirts – always careful to close the curtain when she washes at the spring. I’ve never seen her flustered before. There’s garlic on her breath. She puts her hand up to my face and I kiss her fingers. The nails are darkened at the rim with soil, and the palms of her hands are rough and calloused. There’s a memory of the milking shed overlaid by vegetable smells – roots and rank weeds and the sweeter scent of sage. Unbuttoning her blouse, I see a fine silver chain and a star of David at the end of it.

‘It was my mother’s.’ she says quickly, as though she has to justify this secret ornament. ‘She gave it me when Grandma Cheryl took me on the Jesus Bus. So I’d remember who I was, she said.’

‘You’re Jewish?’

‘That I was her daughter – she didn’t want me to forget. What do you mean, Jewish?’

‘If Cheryl was Jewish what was she doing on the Jesus bus?’