Rupert Thomson - Air and Fire

And then, one afternoon, they came over a stretch of barren ground, a few red rocks, some wiry grass, and there, opening in front of him, was a chasm that was wider and deeper than his eyes could understand, a great gap in the world. He stepped back, dizzy.

‘The Grand Canyon.’

His father stood with his hands in his pockets and his toes close to the precipice.

‘People say the devil got mad and tried to cut the world in two.’ His father turned to him. ‘Would you rather be home now?’

He could only gasp. ‘No.’ All the doubts were chased out of his head by the red-and-violet splendour of the place. All the words too. All the thoughts.

Later they climbed down to where the river, pale-green and lazy, coiled along the canyon floor. He stood on the bank, his shoulder touching his father’s rolled-up shirt-sleeve. His father stared at the water with such defiance, it might have been the source of all his misfortune. But his voice, when he spoke, was gentle.

‘Now this is something to remember,’ he said. ‘This place, us being here — that’s something to remember. But not the rest of it.’ His face opened; he hazarded a smile. ‘At least I showed you something.’

His father had kept the secret for weeks — a child’s desire to surprise him, a deep need to get something right at last.

Standing at his father’s shoulder that afternoon, he was filled with equal measures of happiness and sorrow. When he saw the Grand Canyon again, years later, he could not find the place where they had stood, and yet the same feeling rose in him, a pull in two directions, a spirit divided against itself.

‘Hey! American!’

He came back slowly from the past and peered down between the splintered staves that formed the railing to his balcony. Standing on the street below was the Bony One. He shifted on his chair, preparing to withdraw deep into his room.

‘I’m sorry if I laid into you the other night,’ she called up. ‘I was feeling lousy. I had to take it out on someone.’

‘That’s OK,’ he said.

‘I just want to apologise. I was pretty hard on you.’

‘Forget it.’ Smiling, Wilson leaned against the wall.

‘Really? You forgive me?’

‘I do.’

‘Hey, American!’

He leaned forwards again, looked down.

‘Don’t you think you’re tempting fate,’ she said, ‘sitting on that balcony like that?’

It was the 21st of May, the doctor’s fiftieth birthday, and Captain Legrand, master of the SS Providencia, had organised a dance in his honour. The SS Providencia had docked the day before with a cargo of timber, live piglets and, most important of all, champagne. Twenty-five cases of Clicquot had arrived from Paris, ordered for the occasion by Madame de Romblay (the doctor’s wife being incapable, presumably, of such an extravagant gesture). The birthday dance was to be held on the rear deck. There was one problem, though. Since the freighter had been unloaded, it had risen in the water, and it could only now be reached by means of a vertical ladder on the starboard bow. This would be too hazardous for the ladies — for certain of the gentlemen as well. In the event, Captain Legrand had proposed an ingenious, if unorthodox, alternative. They would attach an armchair to a system of ropes and pulleys, and hoist the guests aboard. He had used the technique before, he said, in Chile, almost entirely without incident.

‘I could donate a chair,’ Jean-Baptiste Castagnet said.

But Monsieur de Romblay was frowning, one forefinger set diagonally across his mouth. ‘Almost, Captain?’ he said. ‘What do you mean, almost?’

Captain Legrand was a vast, droll man. To see the Captain and the Director together, in conversation, was to be reminded of two majestic planets orbiting slowly, one around the other.

‘It was the Mayor of Valparaiso’s wife,’ he said. ‘She drank too much gin. One the way back down, the chair began to spin. She vomited on the heads of her citizens from a height of thirty feet.’ He paused. ‘They lost the election the following year.’

That evening, on the stroke of seven, the French gathered on the north quay. They were dressed in all their finery, as such an event demanded, though nobody could outshine the doctor. He had received a birthday surprise from his wife: a new waistcoat. Cream silk brocade, it was, overlaid with a tracery of ferns in palest green and gold. Three months in the making.

The doctor clapped his hands for silence. ‘My colleagues,’ he cried, ‘my friends. Let us begin!’

They had agreed beforehand that they should choose straws to determine the order of their ascent. One by one they stepped forwards, dipped their hands into the doctor’s opera hat. It was Florestine, his wife, who drew the shortest. Her eyes scaled the steep sides of the freighter, mollusc-encrusted, pocked with rust. Then dropped down, round and watering, to the yellow damask armchair that had been donated, as promised, by Monsieur Castagnet. Florestine, it now transpired, had vertigo.

There was some delay, but after a few drops of valerian and a soothing lecture from her husband on the psychological advantages of going first, the yellow armchair lifted into the night sky with Florestine securely strapped in place. She had a rosary plaited through the fingers of her right hand. Her husband’s velvet cummerbund shielded her eyes. The French watched from below. Nobody spoke. The chair spun slowly on its rope, but Florestine did not so much as murmur. Soon only the soles of her shoes were visible.

When at last she appeared at the guard-rail, supported on her husband’s arm, eyes glittering in a face that had drained of blood, the French rewarded her with an outburst of spontaneous applause. The yellow chair descended, empty now. High on the deck above, the doctor borrowed the Captain’s megaphone and aimed it at the quay.

‘Next!’

There was a moment’s silence, some nervous laughter, then Suzanne stepped forwards. Théo helped to strap her in.

‘I would have thought you’d prefer the ladder,’ he murmured in her ear.

She smiled up at him, but did not answer.

He was paying her small attentions tonight, which could have been the result of the dress she was wearing, since it was a favourite of his, an evening gown of peach silk-satin, with bare arms, a looped neck held by ribbons at the shoulders and skirts that were patterned with chrysanthemum petals.

As she rose off the ground and the faces below her shrank, the chair began to turn clockwise. First she was facing the sea, then she was looking inland, towards the mountains. Then she faced the sea again. She tried not to think about the Mayor of Valparaiso’s wife. Instead, she summoned the image of her friend, Lucille, who at that moment was probably attending some dreary opera in Paris. How Lucille would have relished this.

She was swinging sideways now, over the guard-rail, and she could look down. The entire rear deck of the SS Providencia had been transformed into a ballroom. Chinese lanterns hung round the edges of the dance-floor, shedding exotic coloured light — cider, damson, lime. French flags had been draped across the forecastle and the bridge. On a rostrum at the stern, an orchestra was playing a polonaise by Ambroise Thomas. The armchair gently touched the deck and she was helped out of the harness by Florestine Bardou, who was almost ragged with exhilaration.

‘It’s a miracle, isn’t it?’ Florestine said.

Champagne had reached the town at exactly the right time; a ballroom had been created out of nothing; Florestine had survived her ordeal in the armchair — they were all miracles. It was hard to know which of the miracles she was referring to.