Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

They arrived at the Y Street wharf. The chartered boat was already moored by the quay. The traditional awning, white canvas with black edges, fluttered in the breeze. A modest congregation sat underneath on benches.

As they waited for the casket to be hoisted on to the boat, Nathan noticed a preacher on the other side of the quay. You could tell he was a preacher. He had a microphone in his hand and his eyes were set way back in his head, as if he’d seen the Lord once too often. Nathan watched him step on to a crate. There was a crackle and a whine from the microphone.

‘This is God’s distant early-warning system.’

A drunk lay slumped against an oil drum, a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag beside him. At the sound of the preacher’s voice he twitched, wiped one eye with the back of his hand, and looked up, moistening his lips.

‘Heaven is a real place,’ the preacher said. ‘There are people up there right now, enjoying themselves.’

The drunk lifted his bottle and shook the last few drops into his throat. ‘Well, how about that,’ he said and, turning his head in the direction of the preacher, he shouted, ‘Hallelujah,’ then he winked at Nathan, as if they were in this together, and fell back in a heap and shut his eyes.

The preacher turned his volume up. His voice now carried across the quay to the boat, interfering with the sombre piped music. Several members of the congregation looked round.

‘Seven years ago,’ the preacher informed them, ‘I was a useless person.’ He pointed at the drunk. ‘Seven years ago I was like him, but then Jesus,’ and his voice rose and wavered, and his eyes lifted to the sky, ‘yes, Jesus, he came to me and he planted the seeds of truth in me —’

A black woman stood below the preacher. She tilted her head on one side as if she was trying very hard to understand.

Then she must’ve said something.

The preacher levelled a finger at her. ‘You’ve got a filthy mouth.’ His eyes scoured the small audience for support. ‘You see? This here’s what —’

Suddenly Yvonne was standing below him. She reached up, snatched the microphone out of his hands. With two brisk movements she wrenched the wire loose and tossed the microphone into the water. It was so brutal, and yet so matter of fact. It was like watching somebody wring a chicken’s neck.

‘Someone had to do it,’ she hissed through her black veil as she passed Nathan on the way back.

They followed the coffin on to the boat and took their seats in the front row. The engines shuddered, the ropes were loosed; the quay slid backwards like a piece of moving scenery. Nathan could still see the preacher standing, shocked and speechless, on his box. The earthquakes in people’s heads, half the city’s population was cracked, a rabble of doom-merchants, psychos, ghouls. They could smell a funeral a mile off, and out they crawled, out of the woodwork. A funeral lit them up, it was like fuel, it kept them burning for days. It wasn’t just the old and the rich who moved to Moon Beach. The city was like a dangerous bend in a road. If you sat on that bend for long enough you’d be sure to see something.

A shadow passed the length of the boat and Nathan looked up. The bridge arched high above. This was where the harbour ended and the ocean began. The boat lurched as the first real waves lifted the bow and dropped it again. He glanced at Georgia. Though pale, she seemed to be holding up.

She put her head close to his. ‘Everything’s going wrong.’

He squeezed her hand.

‘It’s so quiet,’ she whispered. ‘I hate it.’

He nodded. Then he nudged her. ‘Dad would’ve liked it.’

She smiled at that.

It was quieter still when they reached the place. They passed between two floating pedestals, the gateway to the cemetery.

YOU ARE NOW ENTERING CORAL PASTURES.

The engines cut out, some kind of anchor dropped. Then only the slapping of waves against the hull, the creak and whine of timbers straining, the screech of gulls.

The priest rose to his feet and began to speak. He talked of Dad’s faith. His courage and resilience in the face of adversity. His sense of humour.

Nathan’s mind wandered. His mood seemed like a distillation of his dream. The panic, then the calm. His eyes drifted over the side. They were such queer, still patches of water, the ocean cemeteries. The sites had been chosen carefully, between the main shipping lanes and north of the gulfstream, so they were free of disturbance, both from boats and from currents. The ocean bed was a maze of fissures and ravines. Nobody knew how deep they went. There was a story about an oil tanker that had veered off course and steamed right through Heaven Sound. That was the last anyone heard of it. Helicopters were sent out, teams of divers too, but the water yielded nothing, not a single body, not a trace of oil.

There was a crash. He turned just in time to see the coffin sink below the surface of the waves. The engines spluttered, churned. The congregation shifted on their benches, moved their feet. Somebody coughed. The boat swung round, cutting a neat sickle of white water on the ocean, and Nathan saw the city on the horizon, twelve miles away. It must be a long time, he thought, since Dad had travelled this far.

The wake took place at the house on Mahogany Drive. No more than a dozen people came. Nathan moved among the guests, offering drinks, accepting condolences. His dream came to him in flashes. The packed cathedral. All those people weeping. How sarcastic that now seemed.

After an hour most people had left. Yvonne looked round, assembling a courageous smile. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘at least they’re together now.’

Harriet was standing right behind her. ‘Who’s together?’

And suddenly the air seemed deadened, as if there’d been an explosion. The few guests that remained stood about in small, shocked groups.

It will require, Nathan thought, a certain amount of tact.

‘Who’s together?’ Harriet asked again.

Nathan spoke gently. ‘Dad asked to be buried with our mother. It was in the will.’

Harriet put her glass on the table and left the room. In the hush that followed they heard the back door slam. Through the window Nathan saw Harriet stumbling down the garden.

‘I didn’t mean —’ Yvonne began.

Nathan put an arm around her. ‘I know you didn’t.’

‘Go after her,’ Yvonne said. ‘Make sure she’s all right.’ She turned away. ‘I just wasn’t thinking.’

Nathan left the house by the french windows. He crossed the lawn and passed through a covered archway. The vegetable garden beyond had been allowed to run wild. He walked between rows of fruit trees. The fruit lay rotting, unwanted, in the long grass. He passed through a second archway. The wooden hoop supporting the foliage had almost collapsed beneath its weight. He had to bend double to get through. Once on the other side he stood still and looked around. This was the part of the garden they used to call the Jungle. There was something about the Jungle. It wasn’t big enough to get lost in, but almost. When you stood in the Jungle, the house seemed dimensions away, as if, in order to get back indoors, you had to alter the way your mind worked, you had to think your way back in. How foreign their names sounded when they heard them called. How eerie. And suddenly he remembered standing here, it was dark-green all around him, but the sky above was blue, the sun must’ve been setting, it was quiet, just the creak of a tree, the whir of an insect’s wing, he’d been standing motionless, as if in a trance, and then he heard a voice, his mother’s voice. ‘Nathan?’ she called, and he called back, ‘Yes?’ but there was no second call, and he turned round, and there was nobody there, not a sound, and he felt strange then, he felt as if he’d been visited. It couldn’t have been far from where he was standing now, though he wouldn’t have been able to say where exactly.