Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

‘It’s not easy living there.’ He took Vasco’s stick and jabbed at a rock.

Vasco looked at him sideways. ‘Why don’t you move out?’

‘Where to?’

‘Plenty of room at my place.’

It was winter and the air was sharp. Everything you looked at seemed cut out with scissors. The light fell in blue-and-yellow twists on the surface of the river. Jed could see Sweetwater on the far bank, a plane scorching the air as it lifted over the rooftops. He could almost feel the house shake. He could almost smell the nail polish.

He looked at Vasco. ‘What about your parents?’

‘I haven’t got any.’

‘You must live with someone.’

‘My sister, but she’s hardly ever there. Otherwise there’s only Mario and Reg. But they’re both senile.’

‘Senile? What’s that?’

‘Means when you’re nearly dead. You’re still alive, but only just —’

Jed stopped listening. He was thinking of the men who were all one man doing one thing. He was remembering his mother’s face in her dressing-table mirror. He was imagining her toss his radios casually into oblivion. And he knew then that Vasco was right. But still something reached across the river, something stretched out like arms and tried to claw him back. He didn’t know what it was. He took a step backwards, slipped on the mud and almost fell.

‘Course there won’t be anyone for you to record fucking. My sister does all her fucking at her boyfriend’s. And Mario and Reg, they’ve probably never fucked in their lives.’ Vasco spread his hands. ‘So what do you say?’

Jed nodded, grinned. ‘Does it need saying?’

Vasco bought a bottle of vodka to celebrate and they drank it in the old sailors’ graveyard in Mangrove South. This was where the funeral business had first put down its roots. Over the wall, between two warehouses, Jed could just make out the Witch’s Fingers, four long talons of sand that lay in the mouth of the river. Rumour had it that, on stormy nights a century ago, they used to reach out, gouge holes in passing ships, and drag them down. Hundreds of wrecks lay buried in that glistening silt. The city’s black heart had beaten strongly even then. There was one funeral director, supposedly, who used to put lamps out on the Fingers and lure ships to their doom. Times had changed. There hadn’t been a wreck for years, and all the parlours had moved downtown (their old premises had been converted into speedboat showrooms, fishing-tackle stores), but he could see that, for Vasco, the graveyard might have peculiar significance.

Drunk for the first time in his life, Jed saw Vasco with absolute clarity, as if Vasco was outlined in mercury. Vasco was leaning against a stone, eyes shut, chin tipped, teeth bared. Then his head came down and his eyes opened wide and they were like the windshield of a car that’s never been anywhere. No record of any insects or moisture or dust. They were so wiped clean. Brutal without meaning to be, brutal and vague. It was something Jed knew about, knew by instinct, it was a quality that he possessed himself. But Vasco didn’t seem to know about it at all. He just had it. He was the dreamer who kills people in his sleep.

The next day Jed packed a small bag while his mother was at work. Just before he left he took a pen and a piece of paper and sat down at the breakfast bar. ‘I’ve gone to stay with a friend,’ he wrote. ‘Don’t worry about me.’

Wishful thinking. He was pretty sure that relief would be her first reaction. One less blemish in her life. He wondered, as he folded the paper in half and taped it to the TV screen, whether Pop had left a note when he walked out on her.

It was pure chance that Nathan ever got to know Tip. The city had worked hard to keep them apart. Nathan grew up in Blenheim, a garden suburb on the west shore. Tip, on the other hand, came from the east, some housing project way past Z Street. Definitely the wrong end of the alphabet. Though their swimming styles were just as diverse — Nathan slipped through the water, leaving hardly a crease behind; Tip thrashed it into an angry froth — it was the water that brought them together. They both swam for a team known as the Moon Beach Minnows. They trained three evenings a week in the outdoor pool on Sunset Drive, swimming lap after lap while Marshal, the team coach, patrolled the poolside in his maroon sweatsuit and his snow-white sneakers, booming their times through a rolled-up copy of the sports paper. Between them, they won most of the junior competitions.

One Wednesday, in practice, Nathan raced Tip over one hundred metres and beat him by almost five seconds. He touched the curved tiles at the end of the pool and, rolling on to his back, watched the planes float down through the soft brown sky. The margin of his victory surprised him. His time had been good, but not that good. Tip heaved his hard white body out of the pool and stood with his towel draped round his shoulders. Then he turned his head to one side and spat clear through the wire-mesh fence fifteen feet away. Part habit, part disgust. Nathan grinned. Somehow Tip never left any spit hanging on the wire, it always seemed to soar right into the darkness that lay beyond.

‘I saw you, Stubbs,’ Marshal bellowed.

Tip nodded. ‘Sorry.’

Down in the pool Nathan still had a grin on his face. Tip noticed it, and winked. Maybe they came from different parts of town, but they both knew an old woman when they saw one.

Later that night Nathan left the building just ahead of Tip. While Nathan unlocked his bicycle, Tip stood on the steps, his towel still coiled around his neck, his lips grey in the sodium lights. Nathan could smell the chlorine on his skin.

‘So how come you always ride?’ Tip said. ‘Most people, someone comes for them.’

Nathan shrugged. ‘I like to ride.’ It wasn’t strictly true. He had no choice. There simply wasn’t anyone who could’ve picked him up. Dad hardly ever left the house, and Fosca, the new au pair girl, didn’t know how to drive.

‘Where d’you live?’

‘Blenheim.’

‘Blenheim? Jesus. Long ride.’ Tip must’ve known this already. He was just checking. ‘So what’s your old man do?’

He’d be expecting millionaire or something. Mention Blenheim, that’s what people always thought.

‘He doesn’t do anything,’ Nathan said.

Tip pinched his nose between finger and thumb, flicked his hand at the wall, and then sniffed. ‘What d’you mean, he doesn’t do anything?’

‘He doesn’t do anything. He can’t. He’s disabled.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

Tip looked at the ground, then he looked at Nathan again, sidelong. ‘What kind of disabled?’

Tip was trying to look casual, but Nathan could see he was curious. An old man who was screwed up, that was credentials. It was like that plastic grown-ups had. Amex, Visa, Mastercard. It said something about you, it got you into places.

‘He’s only sort of got about half of each lung,’ Nathan said, ‘and he’s had most of his ribs cut out.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah, and he’s got an orange disc in his car. Means he can park anywhere.’

Tip nodded. ‘Cool.’

Nathan almost pinched his nose between finger and thumb, as Tip had done, but he thought he might get it wrong. He just sniffed instead. ‘What’s your old man do?’

‘He doesn’t do anything either.’

‘How come?’ Nathan said. ‘Not disabled, is he?’

This would probably have started a fight if he’d said it a week ago. Now it drew a slack grin out of Tip. ‘No,’ he said. ‘He used to work in the docks. Got laid off a couple of months back.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Nathan chipped at a weed with his shoe. He hoped it looked sort of sympathetic.

‘Yeah, well.’ Tip stared off in the direction of the football field. ‘I got to be going. See you around.’