Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

He bought a bag of Hawaiian Teardrops and sat on a wooden bench in the Torch Bay ferry terminal. Hawaiian Teardrops were hard chunks of pineapple candy that were coated with sugar crystals. If you ate too many of them, they took the skin off the inside of your mouth. He ate the whole bag and stared out over the grey water. Rain scratched on the windows, but it was still hot, hard to breathe. He felt the door close again. And that gust of cool air across his face.

He remembered a morning not so long ago. He’d woken to the sound of hammer-blows. He’d reached out, across the gap between the two mattresses, and shoved Vasco in the ribs.

‘What’s that noise?’

‘I don’t know,’ Vasco mumbled. ‘Maybe Reg is crucifying himself again.’

Jed put his glasses on and eased out of bed. He poked his head out of the room. A man in blue dungarees was fitting a lock on Reg’s door.

‘Morning,’ Jed said. ‘Nice lock’

The man patted the lock. ‘This is the business, this is. You can’t get stronger than this.’

The new lock was just the latest addition to Reg’s defence system. They never really found out whether it was to keep Jesus in or the world out. Maybe there was nothing happening behind the door, or maybe there was Reg fastened to a home-made cross, some white cloth draped around his skinny loins, his moustache stained yellow by the vinegar.

Finally it was just another thing you couldn’t get at.

He saw that woman’s eyes widen like wings and leave her face. He saw the blank sockets, smooth as the inside of nests. He had to go and stand on the deck, both hands fastened to the cold rail. The ferry was rolling now, pitching into the waves. Sometimes it stalled, shuddering. Then it pitched forwards into the waves again. The city see-sawed, rain swarmed out of the sky. The inside of his mouth felt sweet but raw. A woman in a green mackintosh asked him if he was all right, she had to ask him three times before he could answer simply, ‘Yes.’

Vasco’s case came up the following month. He was sentenced to eighteen months in a corrective institution. The next thing Jed heard, Vasco was somehow involved in the death of another inmate and he was sent to a top-security detention centre in another county.

Jed had always thought of Vasco as high-frequency. He’d always seen Vasco as a kind of radio, picking up stations that no other radio could pick up. Maybe that was true, but maybe it was also true that he was picking up the wrong stations, stations that were dangerous. Jed had read about people hearing voices. He’d seen it in the paper. Some guy kills fourteen people and then he says, It was the voices, the voices told me to do it. That guy, he’s picking up the wrong stations. And suddenly he feared for his friend.

It was seven years before he saw him again.

The moment Nathan saw Harriet step out of the taxi, he knew that they’d slipped up somewhere. In the five years since their mother died they’d had nine different au pair girls and every single one of them had been ugly. It was basically Dad’s idea. He thought ugly girls were less trouble. Nathan and Georgia would spend entire afternoons sifting through the pictures the agency had sent. It was a game to them, and they often went too far, choosing some girl with a broken nose or a moustache. Even though they were playing by Dad’s rules, it’d be Dad, in the end, who’d object. There’d have to be a compromise: they’d settle on some plain girl who’d grown up on a farm.

But there was Harriet, standing on the sidewalk in a pink sleeveless dress and white shoes with straps round the ankles. Her eyes sent out rays like cut glass turning in the sun. Her hair was light-brown, with a fringe that skimmed her eyebrows. Her limbs were slim and tanned. Nathan’s first thought on that warm September afternoon, and it may also have been Dad’s first thought, judging by the way his voice had lifted an octave in nervousness, was: She’s just not ugly enough.

She was smiling as they walked out to the street to greet her, and Nathan recognised the smile from her picture. Her two front teeth overlapped slightly like fingers crossed for good luck. A moment of carelessness in the construction of her face. The slip that made her beautiful. He watched her run a hand through Georgia’s hair. He still couldn’t understand how they’d come to choose her. It must’ve been an old picture, taken at an unflattering age. Either that, or she just wasn’t photogenic.

He carried her cases upstairs. She followed him. When he reached her room he put the cases down again and held the door open for her. It was a small room, but it faced west, over the garden. The hills rose in the distance, their browns and golds invaded by a wedge of black. There’d been a fire on the ridge that summer.

But she’d stopped inside the doorway. ‘Oh,’ she said, and turned to him. ‘There are bars on the window.’

He smiled. ‘There are bars on all the windows. It’s just the style of architecture. It’s sort of Spanish.’

She reached up, pushed a hand into her fringe. One silver bracelet skittered down her arm.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘It’s not a prison.’

She sat down on the edge of the bed, tested the mattress with one hand. Then she smiled up at him. A wide, uncomplicated smile. ‘I’m glad it’s not a prison.’

She was like no au pair girl they’d ever had before. She couldn’t cook, she played the radio too loud, she went out dancing at night. The house seemed to be admitting more light than it usually did; it was as if someone had knocked a few new windows in the walls. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, though. Perhaps her beauty was, in itself, disturbance enough. Her six months passed and at the end of that time she did what au pair girls always did: she flew home.

Nathan hardly noticed. Not long after Harriet arrived, Mr Marshal had called Dad and asked him whether he’d thought of putting Nathan forward for the Moon Beach Lifesaving Club. Dad hadn’t, but he thoroughly approved of the idea; fitness, a sense of discipline, the ability to set a good example and, if need be, help others, these were all attributes that he held dear. As a result of that phone-call Nathan spent most of the weekday nights that winter training in the outdoor pool on Sunset Drive, and by the time Harriet left in the spring he was ready to apply for membership.

On the first Saturday in April he rode down to the beach to meet with the captain of the Club. It was still early, nobody much about, just a few old people from the hotels; he looked at each of them as a person he might one day save. As he headed across the warm sand towards the look-out tower he passed two lifeguards. He’d met them once, at the pool with Tip. One of them was called Finn, which was a good name for a lifeguard, he thought. The other one was Ade. He told them he was trying out for the Club. They wished him luck.

The captain was waiting by the tower, as arranged. He wore scarlet trunks and every time he moved you saw the muscles shift under his skin. He took one look at Nathan, then he turned his eyes out to the ocean, shook his hands on the end of his wrists. ‘You the guy who wants to join the Club?’

Nathan said he was.

‘Let’s go for a swim.’

They walked down to the waterline. Wave after wave slammed on to the packed sand. A dull hard sound, like a hand brought down on wood. The beach seemed to shudder every time.

‘Dumpers,’ the captain said. ‘Think you can handle it?’

He took a deep breath. ‘I’ll give it a try.’

The captain nodded. ‘You’ve got to get under the first wave. Then get your head up and grab yourself some air before the next wave hits.’