Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

She pushed a hand down. ‘I’ve got my period.’

‘That doesn’t matter.’

But she twisted round and took him in her dusty hands, he felt the blood pump past her fingers. He heard a clock strike eight. And closed his eyes. Soft shapes colliding, exploding. One colour bled into another. Like bacteria. Her mouth round him now, her teeth grazing that tight skin. Her back so hot, and slick as ice. Their sweat pooling on the sheet. And then the slow ink spreading outwards and the wheels turning and a voice, it was Vasco’s, warning him. He must record. He must record again. To protect himself. To lay himself open. To what? From what? Which rat leaves which ship. That slow ink again. His vision flickering, black round the edges, gaps in the tape. Loyalty and silence. Two wheels, round and round, he couldn’t take his eyes away, and this time it’d be like worship, I dreamed that we were made of gold, he’d seen too much, his eyes were gold, they’d have to melt them down. Turn the clock back. Tell an old truth. Lie. Truth. Maybe it had been like worship then, worship that begins in love and dovetails neatly into hate. Bacteria and radios. Zebra walls. Leather masks and foreign names. Moscow. Brussels. Ollie. Vasco. Vasco? He called out, but the bus had gone. He was alone. Those five gates of hell, he’d be put through every single one of them. Would he? He couldn’t see round the next bend, he must record, tapes were periscopes, his only chance, and the slow ink stolen and the wheels turning, and everything remembered, everything proved, he was whispering now, ‘Why five,’ he was whispering, ‘isn’t one enough?’ and a voice came back, a woman’s, Sharon’s, ‘One what?’

Nathan called Dad long-distance from Seaview Lodge. He didn’t say anything about the letter that Harriet had written him. In fact, he didn’t mention Harriet at all. He just said he was thinking of coming home for a couple of days, if that was all right.

‘Is that all you can manage?’ Dad said. ‘A couple of days?’

‘I’m working, Dad.’

‘Well, try and get here early. I go to bed at nine.’

He took the train down, even though it was twenty-six hours. He wanted to know exactly how far he’d come. He wanted the distance to count. They were held up just north of the city, repairs on the line, and by the time he reached the house on Mahogany Drive it wasn’t early any more, it was after midnight. He tried the front door. It was locked. He tried the french windows. They were locked too. He checked the other windows, knowing at the same time that it was pointless. Dad had always been fanatical about security at night; he even bolted the inside doors. Three years away, all those miles, and now he couldn’t get in. He had to laugh. But it wasn’t funny, not really.

When his laughter had gone, he realised that something was different: lights were showing in the windows. In any other house this would’ve been normal, but in theirs it was eerie, unnatural. Dad worried about electricity, how dangerous it was. He never went to bed without making sure that every single appliance had been switched off. He couldn’t sleep if he thought there might be a plug in a socket somewhere. He was always having visions of the house catching fire at night. All this light spilling on to the driveway, it just wasn’t like him. It was asking for it. Nathan’s heart began to jump. Suppose something had happened. Maybe that was why Dad wasn’t answering. He knocked on the door, but much harder now. And he was calling too. ‘Dad? Dad?’

Nobody came.

He ran round to the back of the house for the second time. He stood in the garden, at the edge of the pool, and looked up at Dad’s window. The curtains drawn, no light. Cupping his hands round his mouth, he called again. ‘Dad?’

He went over to a flowerbed and felt around in the mud. He came back with a handful of pebbles. He missed with the first. The second just touched the glass and fell away. The third almost shattered it. He waited. Nothing happened.

Moonlight lay on the glass roof of the sun-lounge, blue sheets of it, like lightning paralysed. The rain, still fresh on the grass, began to seep through the soles of his boots. He turned and stared at the pool. Those black patches on the surface, they’d be dead leaves. Every time he came home he had to scoop them off the surface. It was one of his jobs. But now the anger rose in him again. All this way and fuck it, I can’t even get in.

He ran round to the front door. This could go on till morning, it was ridiculous. He pushed the mailbox open, pressed his cheek against the metal, and yelled. ‘Dad? Dad? DAD!’

This time he heard a click and knew instantly what it was. That click was printed on his memory. It was the sound of Dad’s bedroom door. He took his mouth away from the mailbox, and put an ear there instead. He could hear Dad’s voice, distant, shaky.

‘Nathan? Is that you?’

‘Yes, it’s me, Dad. It’s only me.’

He saw Dad feeling his way down the last flight of stairs, the pyjamas, the slippers, the blue cardigan cut off just above the elbows, feeling his way through some kind of thick barbiturate mist. He heard keys turning in the locks, bolts being drawn. The door opened, and he moved past Dad, into the hall.

‘Sorry if I look odd, but I was dead out.’ Dad was bent over, locking the door again. ‘Sorry if I look strange.’

And he turned, shy, somehow, and they held each other. Nathan smelt warm sleep, clean skin. If someone had told him that he’d been angry a moment before, he would’ve denied it. ‘You go back to bed now,’ he said gently. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Next morning, after breakfast, Dad said, ‘It was that calling, that word “Dad” in the middle of the night. It took me back all those years. You never forget it.’

They were sitting in the room that overlooked the pool. Dad had taken his pills, and now he was relaxing. Nathan sat next to him. He could hear the au pair girl washing dishes, the mutter of Dad’s radio. It was all so familiar and yet, at the same time, it was utterly remote.

‘When I arrived last night,’ he said, ‘all the lights were on.’

‘Were they?’ Dad was staring at the blank wall above the TV. ‘It must’ve been Helga. She’s new, you see. I haven’t trained her yet.’ He looked at Nathan. ‘Have you been eating properly?’ And then, before Nathan could answer, ‘You look thin to me.’

It was always the same when he went home: Dad didn’t stop talking until his voice hurt.

That morning Dad told his favourite story again, the story of his drive along the coast with Kay, only this time he took it one stage further, down from the cliffs and into the house. It had been lying empty for months, he said. It was almost derelict. A leaking roof, cobwebs slung across the rooms like hammocks, moss growing on the walls. People had broken in too. The downstairs was inches deep in sherry bottles, newspapers, strange men’s shoes, and someone must’ve lit a fire in the kitchen because there was a big black patch on the floor, as if a rocket had taken off. Later that day he found a letter for Kay’s mother lying in the hall. The address on the envelope was ‘Viviente’, 7729 Mahogany Drive, Moon Beach. ‘Viviente’ used to be the name of the house, Kay told him. It meant ‘full of life’.

‘And you know what?’ Dad turned to Nathan. ‘It was almost a miracle, really. The week after we moved in, we discovered she was pregnant. With you.’

‘I never knew that,’ Nathan said.

‘Well, there you are. You learned something.’ Dad sat back, looking pleased with himself.

Nathan smiled. It was no wonder that Dad went back over that day so often, especially in the light of present circumstances. He was returning to a world that had been kind to him, a past he could be sure of. His love for Kay was one love that had never spoiled. It was over, yes, but it would never end.