Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

The water rose past his knees. Another couple of feet and he’d be able to push himself forwards and begin. Over his shoulder he could see the Womb Boys fanned out on the rocks. Silent now, just watching. This was their evening’s entertainment. A small red light glowed. Vasco’s cigarette. Like the light that shows on a machine when the power’s on. No use delaying this. He faced the container terminal again and pushed himself forwards, into the harbour.

He swam breaststroke, that way he could keep his head out of the water. It also meant he couldn’t cut through the water as efficiently, it meant he was slower. The waves were small, but they came in quick succession, they kept slapping him in the face, always on the same cheek. He tasted oil on his lips.

Halfway across he heard Dad’s voice. Wrap up warm, Dad was saying. Don’t forget to wrap up warm.

Nathan began to laugh. He drank the harbour, one mouthful, then another. He was choking now. He had to stop, tread water, he had to fight for breath. And that was when the fear took hold, in that moment, when he was upright in the water, when his legs were dangling, he pictured what might be lying on the bottom, there’d be bodies, there’d be people who’d turned blue with cold down there, and what if one of them reached up and seized him by the ankle, and then he remembered the sharks, their teeth sinking into him, their grip like ice, just cold where a piece of you’s gone, and he began to swim as fast as he could, he switched to freestyle, swam the way he swam when he was swimming for the city, he was back in the pool on Sunset Drive, he tasted chlorine now instead of oil, he even heard the cheering, that tinny rushing sound, and the next time he looked up he was only twenty-five yards out, and he still had his legs, and he could see the Womb Boys sitting on a parapet, they must’ve run round by the highway, or else Vasco had stolen a car again, he was always doing that, apparently, that was why he’d been expelled.

He lowered his legs, but his feet sank into sludge, so he swam as close to the island as he could and then crawled the last few yards on hands and knees, through the shallows, over cans and bottles and plastic bags, and up on to the towpath, and it wasn’t until then that he heard the voices:

‘Guil-ty, guil-ty, guil-ty.’

Vasco stepped forwards. ‘Sharks must be busy someplace else tonight,’ he said, and everybody laughed.

Nathan wanted to join in, but it was hard to laugh, his teeth were chattering too much. He was beginning to shiver again, and the wind made his skin feel like metal.

‘Where are my clothes?’

Tip threw him his clothes. Nathan wrapped himself in his sweater, and stood hunched, his hands clasped under his chin. Tip handed him the bottle, almost empty now. He took a mouthful, swilled it round, and spat it on the concrete.

‘That water,’ Vasco said, ‘bet that water tastes real bad.’

PS pushed his phones away from his ears. ‘Swallowed about half of it myself,’ he said. ‘Never been the same since.’ And slid his phones back over his ears again. Tss-Tss-Tss.

The gang howled. PS and his jokes.

Jed came over. ‘Bet you were shit-scared.’

‘Anyone would’ve been,’ Nathan said. ‘You would’ve been too.’

Jed pushed his thin lips out and shook his head.

‘Yeah, you would,’ Nathan said.

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ Jed said and, reaching behind him, he produced the sign that said DANGER SHARKS. ‘There’s no sharks out there.’

Nathan was staring at the sign.

‘Yeah, it’s the same sign,’ Jed said. ‘Vasco got it a few weeks back. Didn’t you, Vasco?’

Vasco was smoking a cigarette on the parapet. He seemed bored now, his fires had burned low. He blew a long slow trumpet of smoke into the night. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Ripped it off from some beach. Some beach somewhere.’ He eased down off the wall and flicked his stub into the harbour. Tss. ‘Let’s split.’ He had this way of talking to nobody in particular. The sky or something. But everybody listened.

The Womb Boys began to slope off down the causeway. Nathan picked up the rest of his clothes and was about to follow them when Jed barred his way. ‘Not you.’

He had to find his own way back. By the time he got home, it was after two. Closing the front door, his hand slipped and the lock snapped shut.

‘Shit,’ he whispered, and stood in the hallway, listening.

He heard a creak from Dad’s bed and a click as Dad’s bedroom door opened. Dad’s voice, wary and thin, floated down from the landing. ‘George?’

Standing at the bottom of the stairs, Nathan saw Dad appear at the top, one hand clutching the banisters.

‘It’s me, Dad. Nathan. I’m just going to bed.’

‘I thought I heard the front door.’

‘No, it must’ve been the kitchen you heard.’

Luckily, Dad’s head was blurred with all the pills he took to sleep. The front door and the kitchen door made completely different sounds. Normally he would’ve realised that.

‘Please try and be quiet, Nathan.’

‘Sorry, Dad.’

A few minutes later he lay down in bed and stared into the darkness above his head. It hurt to lie to Dad and he wished he didn’t have to, but Dad was so fragile and the truth could smash him. He only lied to protect Dad. Isn’t that what you did for someone you loved, lied for them? And his lies were soft, like pillows. They were good lies, he told himself. They were white. And, having convinced himself of that, he turned over, and drifted into sleep.

When Vasco went missing, Jed didn’t even notice at first. Vasco was always out, doing his rounds or lying low. He always had business to attend to. There was stuff that was hot to be shifted. He was dealing too. Not that Vasco approved of drugs. It was just that he was fighting a war, and drugs were the most efficient way of raising finance. ‘After all,’ he’d say, ‘politicians do it.’ Sometimes he’d be gone for twenty-four hours. Then he’d call Jed from some apartment, some bar. Or he’d simply turn up at the house. Not this time. This time Jed didn’t hear a thing.

On the third day Jed went upstairs to look for Mario. Maybe Mario would know. Maybe those Gorelli ears had picked something up. He knocked on Mario’s door. Wheels trundled over the floor and the door eased open.

Over Mario’s head Jed saw dark lounge suits hanging from the picture rail, and sepia photographs of the handkerchief factory in its heyday framed in gold. The light in the room was muted and brown, and the air smelt of Mario’s paraffin lamp and the oil that he used to lubricate the moving parts of his two wheelchairs.

‘You know where Vasco is?’ Jed asked.

Mario seemed irritated. ‘How would I know that?’

‘I just thought you might’ve heard something.’

‘No.’ And then Mario’s head tipped cunningly on his neck, and the eye nearest to Jed gleamed, and he lurched forwards, as if he’d been shot in the back, a pearl of spittle on his lower lip. ‘I thought I heard a thousand-dollar bill today. Do you think,’ and his eye gleamed up at Jed, shiny as glass, and just as dead, ‘do you think they make thousand-dollar bills?’

Jed didn’t know about thousand-dollar bills, but he knew about Mario. Just then, suddenly. He knew why Mario had never fucked anyone. Mario was too selfish. He wanted to keep all his sperm to himself. Nobody else deserved it. And so he looked like a Roman emperor and rode around in wheelchairs and pretended he could hear money. What a character, people said. Isn’t he good for his age? they said. But he wasn’t a character and he wasn’t good for his age. He was a piece of shit for his age. He was a fraud.

‘There’s no such thing,’ Jed said, ‘and you fucking know it.’