Nicola Barker - Wide Open

“Where have you been?” he asked, out loud, quite matter of factly. Then shoved in his hands — like a surgeon attending a routine caesarean — grasped hold of the letters and delivered them.

♦

Jim couldn’t tell the difference between waking and dreaming. There was no precise moment when he entered consciousness.

Just hotness. Confusion. He didn’t even know that his eyes were open. But they were open. He was looking into the face of a girl. She was sleeping. It was all so calm. He was not thinking. Just staring, blankly.

A little face. Its brow puckered. He stared at the brow and the pucker. He wished the pucker would go. He imagined it gone. And no sooner had he imagined it than it went. His eyes slid down her nose and landed on her lips, which were neat and dry. He stared at her lips.

A thought entered his head. It said: You could do anything.

He considered the thought. Anything? What did that mean?

I know that I am evil, he told the thought, but I will do no harm here.

There. His heart lifted.

He circled his eyes around her face. Her chin, her cheeks, her brows, her crown. He circled, lime and time again. A mental massage. And as he circled — he was sure of it — her face relaxed, and relaxed, and all the sadness in it departed.

Her breathing grew deeper, then deeper still. The corners of her lips lifted. She was smiling, pretty much. Then she stopped breathing, just for a moment, and finally her eyes opened. She was staring into his face. He did not blink. He expected to see fear in her eyes, but there was nothing there but blue.

“I was dreaming of my father,” she said, her voice riddled with a dozy amazement, “he was standing over me, touching my face. And all the hurt was drawn right out of me. Pulled out in one go, like a bee sting yanked free by tweezers.”

Jim continued to stare, without blinking, stifling everything in his chest, his face; deadening, ignoring what she’d said entirely, determined to feel nothing and, he told himself, succeeding.

“Hello? Are you awake?”

She leaned closer, frowning. “Or are you sleeping?”

He felt her breath on his face.

“Are you sleeping?” she asked again, “with your eyes wide open? Am I in your dreams? Do you see me?”

Connie’imagined herself lost deep inside Jim’s head. This thought tickled her, somehow. She didn’t dare wake him then, so she withdrew, very softly, a mere thought, a twinkle, a Tinkerbell, an Ariel; floating and golden and embossed. Beatific.

♦

Ronny ,

Whose fault is this? Is it my fault? Louis trapped me in a corner and started telling me about how animals had no fear of man before he made them fear him. In the Americas, he said, when people first landed on the Pacific islands, and in New Zealand too…In New Zealand. I don’t know. Hang on. Let me get my facts straight. Should I brush up on my geography?

Screw the facts, anyway. Here’s the gist: there were over sixty types of flightless bird at one time. In the world. Some were up to half a ton in weight. But because they lived in parts of the globe unexplored by man, they had never actually seen him before — this scrappy, fragile, two-legged creature — and so they had no reason to fear him .

They walked among the sweet, pink sailors when they landed, those sailors who were feeling the hard earth under their toes for the first time in so long, yes, they walked among them without apprehension, all peacefulness and openness. Welcoming. And the sailors, barely believing their luck, seeing these gentle creatures so real and trusting among them, raised their clubs and brought them down hard. Harder still. Killed them. Ate them. Extinguished them .

No scruples, Louis said. No bloody scruples .

And now there are no longer sixty types of flightless bird, some up to half a ton in weight. No. Now there are none. They are all gone .

You come from that place, Louis screamed, and there’s no point in denying it. You can’t arrive in these jungles and behave like nothing has happened. History. You can’t come here and act like you aren’t the thing you are. You exist on the back of all this slaughter. You are its product. You are its prize, its very reason .

So that was his basic point, Ronny. I am a success simply because I’m alive. I come from that stock, Louis said, the stock which survived all the wars and the plagues and the hardships. I am a success because I exist. My body is the product of all those previous equations. If life was a sum, my scrappy white torso — this sad, pale shell, this wracked thing — would be the answer to it .

Imagine!

That’s such a responsibility, Ronny, don’t you think?

But naturally I didn’t take it all lying down. (Although I was in my bunk. He keeps waking me and making me talk. In the night. Late. In the morning, early.)

I didn’t take it prone because it made no real sense. I said, “It’s really not like that, Louis. It’s a fluke. You got your logic wrong. You got your sums wrong. You’re doing it back to front. The fact that I exist doesn’t mean anything. My existence is a question, not an answer. It’s a joke, a mystery, a shot in the dark .”

“ You can’t be one of them,” Louis sneered, “no matter how hard you try. You stick out. This whole environment is disgusted by you. By your white face and your thin arms, your long hair, your broken nails… ”

♦

A jangling. Ronny looked up. He closed the letter, gathered all the others into a bundle, rose from the bed and walked towards it.

The phone was ringing in the hallway. It rang and rang.

“Hello?”

It was in his hand and he was speaking.

“Hello?” he repeated.

“ James? ”

A voice, surprised. Off-balance.

Ronny paused, then answered.

“No. Ronny. It’s Ronny.”

Another pause.

“It’s me. It’s Nathan. Where are you?”

“Nathan? Oh…”

Ronny began smiling. “Uh…Is it about the watch?”

“The watch?” Nathan echoed. Another pause.

“No. I’m sorry. I’m confused…In fact…in fact I was actually hoping to speak to Constance. To Connie.”

“Right.” Ronny’s voice became hollow.

“Is she there?”

“No. She’s with Jim.”

“But…”

Almost panic. Confusion. Ronny ignored it and pulled at the zip on the wedding dress with his free hand.

“I can’t really speak right now,” he said softly. He was aching.

“Ronny?”

Then he smiled.

“You know…” his voice was so gentle “…I somehow thought you’d rung for me.”

“Ronny?”

“But I was wrong to think that. I was wrong.”

He hung up.

“Tell me again how you found it.”

Luke was so pleased to have the camera back. Once it was gone he’d started to labour under the misapprehension that its absence symbolized something.

“I don’t know. I just happened across it.”

Sara was a poor liar. And the excitement of what might yet occur was bubbling up within her.

“Inside the hide?”

“Underneath. But I’m certain it didn’t come to any harm.”

He was inspecting it. “It looks just fine.” He paused, frowning.

“What?”

“The film’s been used. I didn’t take any shots myself, at least I don’t remember taking any…”

“Will you develop them?”

Sara was biting her lip.

“Uh. I don’t know…”

“Maybe you should.”

Luke stared into Sara’s face. It was so full of activity. It was burgeoning. It was beautiful.

“You want me to?”