Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

The driver was searching for a gap in the traffic. ‘It’s like a fucking circus tonight.’

Nathan grinned. Moon Beach taxi-drivers were famous for their pessimism, their own vicious brand of gloom.

‘The paper the other day,’ the driver was saying now, ‘you know what it said? It said people aren’t dying fast enough.’ He put a finger to his temple like a pistol. ‘Is that crazy or what?’

Nathan agreed that it was crazy.

‘The funeral parlours, that’s a business, they got to expand, but people’re living longer than before, advances in medicine, right? So there’s all this advertising to get people to move here. Suntrap of the south, the gold coast, shit like that. They’re giving people tax breaks, casino vouchers, free cars. You name it. You know why? They’ve got to feed the funeral parlours, that’s why. You listen to those buildings sometime. You can almost hear them chewing, man.’

They passed the Moon Beach Hilton. This was the traditional venue of the Annual Day of the Dead Ball. Blue tie and tails, of course. They passed the Paradise Corporation building. That famous cross of white neon would soon be glowing blue. You can almost hear them chewing.

‘Maybe you’re right,’ Nathan said.

‘Sure I’m right. You been away too long is all.’ The driver tipped his head back, without taking his eyes off the road. ‘How long you been away?’

‘About four years.’

‘What did I tell you?’

Nathan conceded the point. ‘And I wouldn’t be back here now if my dad hadn’t died.’

‘Your father died, you say?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m sorry, man.’

‘It’s all right.’

‘No, really, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t’ve talked that way if I knew that.’

They were in Blenheim now. Nathan leaned forwards, stared at scenery that, even in the dark, he knew off by heart and could recite. That tree, that store, that view. And there was the gatepost Dad had driven into because he’d been eyeing some young girl instead of looking where he was going. Nathan smiled. Then they were turning into Mahogany Drive and something lurched inside him, as if it was love he was meeting, not death.

They pulled up outside the house. He put his case on the sidewalk and paid the driver, then he looked over his shoulder.

Viviente.

The name had taken on an ironic, almost malicious air. The whitewashed walls were stained with mould. The windows skulked behind their black wrought-iron grilles. The paint had chipped off the gate. The house must have looked like this, he thought, when his parents first arrived, more than thirty years ago. It had come full circle. Now he could imagine children being frightened of it. Only the bravest would break in, light fires on the tile floors.

He turned to thank the driver, but the taxi had gone. He looked up just in time to see the two red tail-lights drop behind the hill. He shrugged and, picking his case up, walked towards the house.

He rang the bell. The door opened and Harriet stood in front of him. He thought for a moment that time had been operated on. A nip here, a tuck there, and it was seven years ago. But then he noticed her hair, she’d dyed it black, it curved round and down, into her jawbones, and the skin above and below her eyes looked shiny and hard. She’d aged. This realisation touched him, took the shock of seeing her and softened it.

‘I tried to call you this morning,’ she said, ‘but you’d already left.’

‘That’s all right,’ he said and, stepping forwards, he kissed her on the cheek.

As he moved past her, into the hallway, she took his arm.

‘About Yvonne,’ she said.

‘What about her?’

‘It’s been very hard on her.’

‘Is she here too?’

Harriet nodded. ‘I just wanted to warn you.’

He walked down the tile hallway and into the kitchen. It was a big room with a polished oak table and a door that opened to the garden. Yvonne was sitting at the table with a cheroot and a tall glass of wine. Veiled in smoke, only dimly visible, she looked like the result of a magic trick.

‘Yvonne,’ he said.

‘Oh Nathan,’ she cried out, ‘thank God you’re here.’

They embraced. He could smell jasmine, garlic, turpentine, and, closing his eyes, he could cling to the illusion that nothing had changed.

But she was talking into his shoulder. ‘You’re so late. We were worried about you.’

Smiling, he pulled away from her. Her hair was the same bright copper glow, and yet, below it, her face had collapsed in heavy folds, like cloth.

‘I know,’ she said, ‘I look dreadful.’ She shrugged and reached for her cheroot. ‘I supppose it’s the grief.’

‘You look like nobody else,’ he said, ‘same as always.’ He held her again, then he looked round. ‘Where’s George?’

‘She’s going to be late,’ Yvonne said.

Harriet handed him a glass of wine. ‘She said she’d come and wake you up when she got back.’

‘You must be hungry,’ Yvonne said. She made him a sandwich and brought it to the table. He looked down at it, smiling.

‘What’s so funny?’ she said.

He held the sandwich up. ‘It’s the first sandwich you’ve ever made me that hasn’t got any paint on it.’

They opened another bottle of wine and sat round the table. He told them about the journey down, the woman in black, the taxi-driver. Yvonne lit another cheroot, filled the room with the smell of the inside of cupboards. Harriet washed the dishes. The TV muttered in the background. It all seemed quite familiar, ordinary, relaxed. That, in itself, was strange. He felt snapped back into a past that had never happened.

At midnight Yvonne went to bed. There was still some wine left in the bottle, so he stayed up with Harriet to finish it off. Harriet seemed to have forgotten the grievances she’d had against him. It was as if that letter had never been written. He remembered something Georgia had said about her once. ‘The fights we had, they blew away like bad weather. Mostly I got on with her.’

He looked up again just as Harriet spoke. ‘You must’ve been surprised when I answered the door.’

He smiled. ‘Yes, I was.’

‘You weren’t angry?’

He shook his head. ‘No.’ Anger wasn’t something he’d felt even a flicker of.

Her eyes lingered on him, then believed him. ‘You see, I had to come.’

‘Why?’

She tapped her cigarette against the edge of the ashtray. ‘It was like an instinct. I loved him. When you love someone like that you want to say goodbye.’

‘I thought you said goodbye seven years ago.’

Her face hardened. She crushed her cigarette against the side of the ashtray.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean it to sound like that.’

She stared down into her drink. ‘Just because I left him,’ she said, ‘it doesn’t mean I stopped loving him. I just couldn’t live with him any more. I couldn’t breathe.’ She lifted her drink and swirled it around. ‘I just had to get away, that’s all.’

He could imagine the suffocation, he really could. The string that had once been fastened lightly round her toe had tightened during the years of marriage, slowly tightened into a leash. And she’d strained at it, strained at it until it snapped. But, looking into her face, it didn’t seem as if her years of freedom had been particularly kind to her. There were those, of course, who’d say that she’d only herself to blame. She shouldn’t have left, should she?

He turned his glass on its base. ‘What does Yvonne think about you coming back?’

‘I don’t think she minds.’

‘I was going to say. You seem to be getting on pretty well.’

She fastened on to his meaning. ‘Yes, that’s funny, isn’t it? She never had much time for me before.’