Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

‘Just take me home,’ he said.

She was right. In the past it had always been her who needed saving. Now, suddenly, it was him. He could hear the shock in her voice, it sounded almost petulant, like indignation. He could hear the fear.

But she took him home. Ran a hot oil-bath for him. He sank into that water with such gratitude. He felt his body slow, his thoughts cut out. He lay back, let the seconds ripple, drift. Through the perfumed steam and the half-open door he saw clean sheets billowing across a room.

Later, as she tucked him into bed, she said, ‘We’ve got to look after each other. Like that dream you had. Like the jets.’ He smiled. She had the measure of the simple things. She knew what they were.

Time passed, and that simplicity attached to everything. They sat down at the kitchen table and made decisions. First they arranged for the bank to execute Dad’s will on their behalf; it would put Nathan out of Harriet’s reach. Next they accepted an offer on the house. It meant they had just one month to clear the place, but to Nathan that kind of urgency seemed welcome now, intended, even crucial. Apart from anything else, it took his mind off the continuing silence of the newspapers. Working together, they began to sift the past, and they sifted it with an exuberance that bordered, at times, on delirium. One afternoon they built a fire out of all the worst things they could find: carpets, mattresses, hose-pipes, tyres. Black smoke gushed into the air, it looked as if a plane had crashed in their back garden, and some neighbour called the fire department. But they just laughed when the red trucks lined up in the road, it had the look of a joke, they were children answering to nobody. The days ran like clean cold water from a tap. Not even Harriet had any power any more.

Though she made one last attempt to wield it.

It was late one afternoon. The distant beat of helicopters circling above the harbour bridge. A fringe of shadows on the lawn. He was down in the empty pool, scrubbing the tiled sides, when he heard footsteps behind him. He turned round. Harriet was standing in the shallow end. She was smiling with her crimson lips. She thought she’d made an entrance.

‘Well?’ she said, and the empty pool took the word and played ball with it. ‘Have you been thinking about what I said?’

He smiled. ‘Yes, I have.’

‘What did you decide?’

‘If you have any questions about the will,’ he said, ‘you’d better contact the bank. They’re dealing with it now.’

He watched her lips tighten on her teeth. He had to be careful or she would turn him into someone like her. That was the one power she still had left. And so he bore her no ill will, he showed no malice. He simply told the truth. And smiled.

‘I thought they might do a better job,’ he said. ‘I thought they might be more,’ and his smile widened, ‘trustworthy.’

She walked back up the steps, her head set so stiff on her shoulders that it might’ve been glued. It’s hard to make a dramatic exit when there isn’t any door to slam. She had to be content with the screeching of her tyres on the drive. That was the last they’d heard of her.

Within hours of Harriet’s departure, Yvonne called. She asked if she could come and say goodbye to the house. And take some of Dad’s paintings to remember him by.

‘As if you need to ask,’ he said.

She drove down the next day in her station-wagon. When she opened the car door, clouds of smoke poured out as if she’d been lighting fires of her own. She stood on the driveway with her legs astride and a cheroot stuck in the side of her mouth, her copper hair tied back with a piece of paint-stained silk. They ran to her and wrapped their arms round her. She smelt of the inside of cupboards, long journeys, kindness.

Nathan spoke for both of them. ‘We’ve missed you.’

Later that day, walking in the garden, she said, ‘It’s funny, you’ve risked your life so many times saving all these people you don’t know, and all along the only person you ever really wanted to save,’ and she looked at him, ‘but you know that, don’t you?’

He nodded. ‘I know.’

In that moment he also knew that he’d been asking the impossible of himself. He couldn’t have saved Dad. He couldn’t even save Jed. You lose people sometimes. It was one of the laws of the surf. The captain had told him that. Sometimes the ocean’s just too strong, the captain had said. Spring tides, a rip, whatever. There’s someone in trouble, you go after them, they’re there, they’re still there, and he snapped his fingers, then suddenly they’re gone. Don’t pretend it never happened. They were there, you did your best. You live with that. You carry on.

Nathan looked at Yvonne. Her bent teeth stained by cigars, her hair as crunchy as a horse’s mane.

‘You loved him, didn’t you?’ he said. ‘Harriet was right about that.’

She looked away into the lowest part of the sky. It was a look that was both longing and resigned. It was as if she could see all the things that had never happened to her.

‘Love?’ she said. ‘I don’t know. There was just a feeling I got sometimes, when I looked at his hands.’

He took her arm and they crossed the bright grass without another word. They walked up the stone steps and back into the house. It’s one of the hardest things, he thought, when life is miserly to those you care for.

On her last night they barbecued some chicken by the pool. It was so still; they lit candles and ate their dinner under the stars. Yvonne had brought some wine down from the Cape. It was that pale white wine that looks almost green in the glass. They drank to the future of the house without them. They drank to Dad and to themselves. They drank to so many things that Yvonne had to open a third bottle.

‘So tell me,’ she said finally, ‘what are your plans?’

Nathan and Georgia looked at each other. They’d hardly discussed it. It had been enough to move from one day to the next, to feel the days forge links and pick up speed.

‘Summer’s on the way,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should come and stay at my house for a while.’

He didn’t have to look at Georgia this time to know the answer. They watched Yvonne drive away the next day, the back of her station-wagon stacked with paintings, Dad’s red chair strapped to the roof, and knew that they would see her soon.

He leaned back, stretched. It was almost morning. The wind blew some pale blossoms against his thigh. He’d been through hard water all his life, but there was no water harder than the water of the last few weeks. He’d come through, though, he’d been strong enough, and he could build on that. He could learn from Dad too. Not the carefulness, the wariness; not the silence. But the sheer determination, that iron grip on life. Death had brushed past, snatched half each lung and a handful of ribs. But Dad had clung on. What had that nurse at the hospital said? ‘Your father’s been living on borrowed time.’ Crap. Dad didn’t borrow it. He took it. He laid his hands on it and said this is mine. That’s what you do with time. The thought of Dad as some kind of thief brought him to his feet with a smile. He walked towards the house, the lawn warm under his heels, still warm from the day.

The next morning he left the house at around eleven. He was halfway down the hill when he met Mrs Fernandez, the lady who used to clean for Dad sometimes. She put a hand on his wrist. ‘I was so sorry to hear about your father,’ she said. He thanked her. There was sweat on her top lip, he noticed. It was a hot day, but not the thick, wet heat of summer. Not yet. He said goodbye to her and walked on down the street towards the newsagent’s. A breeze picked up. The dry branches of the palm trees clicked and scraped. It was a Tuesday.