Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

In the afternoon Nathan drove to Georgia’s. She had two rooms above a hardware store in Venus. The place was littered, as Georgia’s places always were, with science fiction, jewellery, sunglasses, invitations, tapes. From the window you could see one thin strip of blue between the houses opposite; her view of the harbour. She made coffee in a dented silver pot and served it in dark-green cups with gold rims and gold handles, cups she’d stolen from home. ‘They were Grandma’s, I think,’ she said. ‘You know, before she went mad.’ She was so jittery at seeing him, she couldn’t keep still. Everything he said, she talked over the end of it. ‘I think I’ll roll a joint,’ she said. ‘Might slow me down.’ She spread her materials on the floor, her legs tucked under her, her tongue stuck to the centre of her top lip. He remembered her painting on brown paper when it rained. It was the same look. It took her so long to roll the joint, she’d slowed down before she even put a match to it.

There was some party they had to go to. As the taxi jolted through the streets of Butterfield, she linked her arm through his and kissed him. ‘You’ve been away so long, I almost forgot what you smelt like.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to know.’

‘No, it’s good. It’s like,’ and she had to smell him again, to remind herself, ‘it’s like fruit.’

Smiling, he stroked her hair. In the three years since he’d last seen her she’d grown it halfway down her back.

‘Do you think Dad’s all right?’ he asked her.

She frowned. ‘It’s hard to tell. All he ever says when I go and see him is, why do have to wear all that stuff on your face, why can’t you be natural?’

He laughed.

She rested her cheek against his shoulder. ‘You know what I’d like?’ ‘What?’

‘I’d like to be your brother.’

He smiled. ‘Sister isn’t enough?’

‘That’s different.’

‘What’s different about it?’

‘Brothers tell each other everything.’ She nodded to herself. ‘Everything.’ And her dark eyes glittered and she ran her tongue over her lips, and then she said, ‘How about it?’

‘Nobody’ll understand.’

‘They never do, do they?’ She smiled up at him. ‘Give me something.’

He stared at her. They ran on parallel tracks, he knew that, but some nights, especially nights like this, she drew ahead of him.

‘You have to give me something,’ she explained. ‘To make it official.’

He unfastened the woven leather bracelet from around his wrist. She watched, eyes wide, as if he was performing magic. He reached into his pocket and took out a pen. On the inside of the bracelet he wrote, ‘To George, my brother for forty years.’

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Put it on.’

She looked at it. ‘Is it special?’

‘It’s very special.’ He told her about the woman with the flute. He told her what he’d said to the woman and how stupid he’d felt. He told her that the bracelet had the woman’s music in it, and sometimes, if you waited for rain and then listened very carefully, you could just hear it, very faintly, like someone playing in the distance.

‘I don’t know.’ Georgia was looking at the bracelet the same way she used to look at the hill when she was five, she was in awe of it, it might be too strong for her. ‘Maybe it’s too special.’

‘Some things there comes a time when they have to go to someone else.’ It sounded exactly like something that India-May might have said. She must be rubbing off on him.

‘You wrote something on it, didn’t you?’

He nodded.

She read the words, then looked at him. ‘Why forty?’

‘It was the most I could imagine.’ He fastened the bracelet on for her. She sat back, looking down at it. Then, suddenly, she leaned forwards again and asked the driver to stop. ‘I’ve just got to get something,’ she told him. ‘I won’t be long.’

Nathan watched her run into a supermarket. Moments later she was out again. She didn’t seem to be carrying anything. She slid into the car and slammed the door. ‘OK, go,’ she said to the driver. ‘Go.’

When they’d turned the corner, she pulled out a bottle of champagne from under her coat. ‘I stole it,’ she said. She took off the wire that held the cork in position and put the bottle beside her, then she set to work. In five minutes she’d fashioned a ring out of the wire. She slipped it over his finger. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Now we’re brothers.’ She glanced at the bottle thoughtfully. ‘I only stole it for the wire,’ she said, ‘but now we’ve got it I suppose we might as well drink it.’

They’d almost reached the place where the party was, but she told the driver to keep going. ‘Just drive around,’ she said. ‘Take us back in twenty minutes.’

They didn’t arrive at the party until they’d finished the bottle. They were both drunker than they’d been for years. She had a bracelet and he had a ring. They’d missed each other so much. The cab fare was thirty-three dollars.

The next morning Dad woke him at eight. ‘You were naughty last night,’ he said. ‘You woke me up.’

‘Did I?’ Nathan said. ‘I didn’t mean to.’

‘It was your door. It made a noise.’

‘Sorry, Dad.’

‘You were very late.’

‘I know. I went to a party with Georgia.’

Dad sighed. He couldn’t understand why anyone went to parties. He even hated the word ‘party’. It was almost as bad as the word ‘hospital’. In his head you probably went straight from one to the other.

‘Don’t worry,’ Nathan said. ‘I’m staying in tonight.’

That evening Dad opened a bottle of wine. As a rule he only drank one glass, but that night he drank three, and when he noticed the full moon in the window he became excited, almost too much white in his eyes and a bulb of spit shining on his front teeth. He watched the moon rise through his binoculars. After a while he offered them to Nathan. ‘Do you want a look?’

Nathan shook his head. ‘Maybe later. When it’s higher.’

‘It’s so clear. You can even see the holes.’

The holes. It was the kind of thing a child might say. Rona, for instance. Yes, Rona might easily have said something like that. He looked at Dad, but Dad was unaware. Under the moon’s influence his mind had flown giddily on, like a witch straddling a broomstick. Here. He was turning again. With something else.

‘Did I ever tell you about Harriet and the spaceship? No? It was the strangest thing.’

Nathan could only stare. He hadn’t expected to hear her name mentioned at all. It had to be the wine. The wine and the excitement of having someone in the house to talk to.

‘I was down here one night, it was about nine, and there was a knock at the door. It was Harriet. She was wearing a dressing-gown, but it was hanging open, and underneath she only had a négligé on, one of those flimsy things, I could see everything. She said she was frightened. I asked her why. She said she’d seen a spaceship and it had frightened her.’

‘A spaceship?’ Nathan said.

‘That’s what I said. “A spaceship?” I said. “Where?” She said she’d seen it in her window. Her curtains were open and it went across her window in the sky. “Did it go fast or slow?” I said. “Slow,” she said. I asked her to show me where she’d seen it. She went to the window, that window,’ and he pointed to the french windows that led out on to the terrace. ‘We stood over there and looked for it. Of course there was nothing. We were standing very close, and I got the feeling that if I opened my arms she’d come inside. I didn’t know what she wanted. Me to kiss her or what. Anyway I put my arm round her. After a while I asked her whether she was all right and she said yes. Then she went back to bed.’ He sipped at his wine again, then put it down on the arm of his chair and, keeping a finger and thumb on the stem, twisted it one way, then the other. ‘At the time I thought it was so, I don’t know, romantic. Now, well. It seems so obvious.’ His excitement had gone. Now there was only bitterness. His binoculars lay abandoned on the floor.