Pat Barker - Double Vision

She was like a kid on the first day of the holidays, he thought, eager for the first glimpse of the sea.

‘Are you sure you feel up to it?’

‘Yes.’ Dad had been asking her that ever since she got out of bed. She felt fine. Only when she looked in the mirror did she understand the reason for the question. Overnight, the bruises had developed. She looked much worse now than she had immediately after the attack. But she felt better. ‘I’m all right.’

Almost at once the mist closed in, becoming thicker the closer they got to the coast. Once they were on the way, Justine forgot the burglary, the shouting and banging, the fetid smell of fear. All her childhood she’d gone to the Farnes at Easter, and to be setting out like this made her feel young again. She knew if she said this to Stephen he’d laugh, but age wasn’t a simple matter of chronology. In the hospital watching the cut-off part of her self pace round the walls she’d felt ancient.

Stephen nodded at the mist. ‘Are you sure they’ll take a boat out in this?’

‘It mightn’t be like this when we get there. It clears very quickly.’

He switched the radio on, found some acceptable music and concentrated on his driving. They were inching forward, the headlights revealing nothing but a wall of mist. Even on the higher ground, where it thinned and became wraith-like, skeins drifting across the road, it was not possible to pick up speed, because the road dipped almost immediately into the next hollow, and there the dense, damp whiteness became impenetrable again. Justine wondered once or twice whether they should turn back, but she couldn’t bear the idea. Talking was impossible. Stephen crouched over the wheel, peering into the blankness ahead. She opened her window and there was the sound of the wheels hissing on the wet road, less disturbing to her than the music. Any loud noise felt like a threat. She looked at the rear window, where drops of rain or distilled mist were trapped, pulsing round the edges of the glass. She was aware of Stephen, the bulk of him, but she didn’t look in his direction. The atmosphere in the car was tense, and she hoped the tension came from the driving rather than from something she’d done or said. Everything today felt fragile.

At last they turned on to the motorway, and she felt him relax, settle back in his seat, because at least the road was flat, there were no sudden white-outs in the hollows, though the hazard warning-lights were flashing and the traffic crawling along.

‘We’ll be lucky to get there at this rate,’ he said.

But then, as quickly as the mist had closed in, it began to clear, and Stephen found himself driving through a landscape that reminded him of Ben’s photographs. Border country. That’s why Ben had loved it and photographed it so obsessively, Stephen thought, because he came back from whatever war he’d been covering to a place where every blade of grass had been fought over, time and time again, for centuries, and now the shouts and cries, the clash of swords on shields had faded into silence, leaving only sunlight heaving on acres of grass, and a curlew crying. He thought now that he understood Ben’s ties to this place; he was beginning to fall in love with it himself. On impulse he reached out and squeezed Justine’s hand.

‘Not long now,’ she said.

Kate put her eye to the spy-hole in the front door and there was Angela, gaping like a fish in a small bowl.

‘Did you hear about the burglary?’ she asked, almost falling into the hall.

‘Yes, Beth rang. Justine wasn’t too badly hurt, was she?’

‘No, she’s back home. We thought they’d keep her in, but they didn’t. In fact, she’s gone out.’

Angela sounded breathless. Almost frenetic. ‘Have some coffee,’ Kate said, resigning herself to a late start. She was so nearly there, it was torture to be kept away from the studio, and yet she dreaded this final effort and would grab any excuse to put it off.

‘Everybody keeps asking if she was raped.’

‘She wasn’t?’ Kate asked.

‘No, thank God.’ She took a mug of coffee and gulped the first few mouthfuls down. ‘That’s what Alec thought. When he got to the hospital, they’d taken all her clothes away, but apparently they were just looking for hairs on her sweater — things like that. Or perhaps they thought she’d been raped. Anyway, there she was and Alec couldn’t bring himself to ask her. He couldn’t say the word. He’s been in quite a state. He says he keeps imagining what he’d do to them if he had them tied up or something, helpless. And he feels dreadful about himself. He says it’s like a waking nightmare and the worst part of it is he’s such a gentle man. He’s not like that at all.’

The trouble was, Kate thought, Alec had always thought of himself as a good man. That made him sound smug and horrible, which he wasn’t, but he did tend to assume that in the great war of good and evil he’d always be on the right side, whereas Kate couldn’t help thinking real adult life starts when you admit the other possibility. ‘We’re all a bit like that, aren’t we?’

‘But he’s worked all his life with young criminals like those two, trying to give them a fresh start.’

‘Yes,’ Kate said drily. ‘We fell out about it a couple of weeks ago. You remember?’

‘Oh. Yes, I’d forgotten that.’ An awkward pause. ‘He came to see her last night.’

‘Peter? What did he have to say?’

‘I don’t know. I’d gone home.’

Kate offered her a second cup of coffee, but she waved it aside. ‘No, better not. It just makes me jumpier than I am already. You must be nervous.’

‘You can’t spend your entire life cowering behind locked doors. If you do that, the bastards have won anyway.’ She poured herself another cup, intending to take it across to the studio with her. ‘Did you say Justine had gone out?’

‘Yes. They’ve gone to the Farnes.’

‘She’s with Alec?’

‘No. With Stephen.’ Angela said grudgingly, ‘I must say he’s been very good.’

‘He’ll take care of her.’

A few minutes later Angela left and Kate walked across to the studio, pausing by the pond to look up at the misty hillside. She hoped it cleared for the crossing. So many times she and Ben had set out to go to the Farnes and nearly always at this time of year. Her heart felt full. A distinct, entirely physical sensation. Possess, as I possessed a season, the countries I resign …

They parked by the seawall and walked down to the quayside booths, where he bought the tickets.

‘You know what we’ve forgotten to bring?’ Justine said. ‘Hats.’

‘Why do we need hats? I don’t mind getting wet.’

She smiled. ‘Wait and see.’

It was a rough crossing. The waves were steely-grey with a fine mist of spray flying off them. Their hair and clothes were wet before they left the harbour, but neither wanted to go into the covered cabin, with its fug of human bodies and damp wool. The boat rocked and dipped, wallowing in the hollow of the deeper waves before rising to face the challenge of the next. All the while the black hulking cliffs, the houses and the harbour dwindled into the mist. Ahead there was as yet no sign of the Farnes, no sight of Holy Island either, though by now both should have been visible. The boat had become its own world, in which they turned to face each other, Justine’s hair blown across her mouth, drops of spray clinging like grey pearls to the surface of her skin.

‘Are you a good sailor?’ she yelled above the noise of the engines.

He opened his mouth to reply and gagged as the next sheet of water hit him in the face. ‘Not bad,’ he yelled when he could speak again.

The boat stopped bumping from wave to wave as they edged into the calmer water between cliffs that rose up out of the mist on either side, grey-black walls of wet granite, streaked white with bird lime. Birds lined all the ledges, lifting off, squabbling, resettling. One of them passed over the boat so low he flinched and could have sworn he heard its wings creak. At the top of the cliffs he could see cormorants, with their serpentine necks and crested royal heads, spreading their black wings out to dry.