Gravity's Chain Part 9

If you're willing, I'll be outside your hotel at 11 tomorrow morning.

I hope to see you, Jack.

NINE.

Dad was in the back garden digging the border at the bottom of the slope. It was cold and I pulled my jacket tight around my body. He was more stooped than I remembered and he appeared to have shrunk. Finally he turned, saw me, drove his spade into the soft earth and waved. How our roles had reversed since he stood where I now was to tell me that Mum was gone. That day I was the one in the garden responding with an innocent wave.

I sat at the kitchen table and watched him potter from cupboard to drawer as he went about the rudiments of making a cup of tea. How many times had I sat at this table and watched his ritual? The teabags, spoon, cup and sugar were all in their unchanged places, but then everything about the kitchen, about the house, was unchanged. It was like a caricature of itself, a sitcom set. 'My word, that kitchen was so well done, the eye for detail, the formica and browns-oh, and that table.' At the centre of the table was the wooden fruit bowl I'd made in woodwork the year before Mum left. As usual it contained a couple of spotted bananas and two or three mandarins wrinkled with age. Perhaps the fruit had been there since the day he told me Mum was gone. How he fought himself, trying so hard to keep face, but inside he crumbled. It was like watching an inner-city building being demolished. There's that moment when all its strength is suddenly gone and it starts its drop. For a fleeting moment it's still a building, but that's just an illusion and in seconds it's nothing more than dust.

I knew every inch of this house. Blindfold me, give me a list of ten items and I'd find them within five minutes. There was a time when this ability confused me, but I've worked it all out now: this is the only real home I've ever known. There hasn't been another to interfere with my memory of this one. Sure, I've lived in other places, but there's never been another home. I have a flat in London, but it's nothing more than a base: it doesn't even have a television or a sofa. Instead I've lived in a steady stream of hotel rooms. I never make a cup of tea and know instinctively where to find the b.l.o.o.d.y spoon. Sitting at my old kitchen table, where I'd sat all my childhood and youth eating chops, mashed potato and peas, I suddenly realised just how much I'd missed having a home. This was strange because the thought had never crossed my mind before and now in a heartbeat I wanted to change this nomadic life. I wanted a home. I wanted a table with old meal stains and I wanted a drawer with teaspoons.

'So when are you off?'

'Tomorrow afternoon.'

'Finally got round to your dad then?'

'Come on, Dad, no need for that.'

'I was beginning to wonder if you'd actually make a visit.'

Perhaps he was right. There was a chance I'd never have come here, but then the Jo debacle happened. All morning I'd battled myself about visiting her in hospital. I simply couldn't drive poor Jo from my thoughts. I just wanted to know how she was, if she had survived the night. This could have been good old self-preservation. After all, if she died my mess got a whole lot messier, but I think there was some genuine compa.s.sion in there as well. But if I went there Bebe would have the right to cut off my b.a.l.l.s, roast them and cast them into the sea. I owed Bebe too much to f.u.c.k him off again by going to visit Jo.

After Caroline's death I'd returned home in just the same way as I'd done now. I remember sitting at this same table, unshaven, hungry and thirsty, my head spinning from the germ of spiral maths and the suicide. Dad's concern extended to his making me a cup of tea with 'two sugars to keep you going'. After a five-minute silence he pulled out the whisky and we shared two stiff drinks.

'First Mum, now Caroline,' I'd said.

'Don't blame yourself, son, your mum did what she did for a reason.' I gave him credit for leaving out speculation about Caroline.

How nice of him to protect Mum, but he didn't need to. I know I should have blamed her, just as I blamed Caroline for abandoning me. After all, Mum had robbed me of her mothering, and she had robbed me of Dad's fathering. When she went, she took Dad from me as well. Before she'd left there had been all those shared trips together to the bach and fis.h.i.+ng, but that all evaporated. We never landed a snapper together again, never sat in the bach and watched the evening die over the sea. I missed my old dad, the one I'd loved and admired, the man with the swimming togs and the wispy hair at the back of his neck that never seemed to get shaved properly at the barber's. The one I had now was just a pretend dad. But I never did blame her: it was either my fault or his.

'I didn't get to your show, Jack, sorry.'

And so here we were again. Now it was Jo slipping away, but at least she was fighting to stay, unlike Caroline. I hadn't seen much sign of a fight from her.

'Probably too loud anyway.'

'Probably.'

After tea I slipped away to my old room. In the twelve years since I'd left home for Cambridge I'd spent only a handful of nights back here. I sat on the bed. The sheets had probably been unchanged for a year and smelt vaguely damp and musty; I s.h.i.+vered at the thought of sleeping in their clammy hold.

In the wardrobe hung clothes left from my teenage years, a pair of cords and an old green s.h.i.+rt that I always ended up wearing when I went out. On the top shelf was a cardboard box. This was the reason for my return. I placed the box on the bed. It was full of letters, cards and various pieces of paper, all sent by Mary to me in my first year at Cambridge. I pulled the first one from the front, took the pages from the envelope and laid them flat on my knee. The paper was well creased and crinkled when I ironed it flat with the palm of my hand. On the other knee I laid the envelope of the letter sent to me in the hotel. There was no doubt the handwriting was different.

I should have finished there. I should have slipped the pages back and put the box in the wardrobe to wait for another G.o.d knows how many years before I returned to look at them again. It wouldn't have been hard. Clumsily I withdrew one of the letters, all fingers and thumbs as though picking an index card from a filing drawer.

When I was away, Mary wrote frantically as though it was her job and failure to send a regular letter was a disciplinary offence leading to dismissal. How I treasured them, reading every line over and over as I sat in the freezing front room of Mrs Grey's home. In the summer I'd read them as I sat in the evening sun listening to blackbirds singing in the garden. The future seemed so simple back then, mapped out and manageable, all boxed up and ready to go. An academic career, a settled, ordered life and my first girlfriend who I thought would be a wife. I was at ease with my talents. However, that was before Caroline. She saw what was inside me and picked it out like the most skilful oystercatcher prizing open a sh.e.l.l. Mary thought the sh.e.l.l beautiful and was happy to look at the outside; Caroline wanted the pearl.

I pulled the pages from the envelope. The paper, creamy and thick, was different from all the others. This letter was from a different era. I read the painfully familiar lines, not even realising I was crying until the first tear dropped from the end of my nose.

Jack,

So finally I'm able to write. The last time I wrote to you was a week before you were due to return from Cambridge at the end of last year. It was an exciting time; I don't think I'd ever looked forward to something quite as much as the thought of you arriving at the airport. I went to sleep thinking of that moment and awoke with the very same thought. Whenever I look back at what has happened I find it so ironic that, having survived all those months apart, everything should go wrong within just two weeks of your return. Perhaps there's something meaningful or symbolic about that, but I'll leave that to you, because I'm probably too stupid to recognise whatever it is.

I have written this letter a hundred times in my head and started almost as many times on paper. Always I've tried to avoid cliches, but I'm sorry, I can't so you'll just have to put up with the obvious. I think you might owe me that at least. There's no other way to say you've broken my heart, because that's what you've done, Jack-you've broken my heart. It goes without saying that I'll never forgive you or Caroline. I just wish I knew why you did this to me. Did you think we could still all be friends? Did she think sisterly love (yeah, some joke, I know) would see us all through these 'difficult times'?

Well it won't.

Nothing you say, or do, can ever heal my pain. Oh yes, I can just see the two of you, sitting in Cambridge (yes, I do know that much), in your sophisticated love nest, laughing at me as you read this. Mocking me as you have some high-level 'intellectual' discussion about silly old Mary. After all, the two of you are soooo mature and worldly. It must be lonely on that mountaintop. What was it Caroline said? 'You must realise, Mary, Jack lives on another level, and he needs someone to nurture him.' She didn't say that I was unable to do that for you, but then she didn't need to-did she? The two of you had made that b.l.o.o.d.y obvious.

The mature thing to do would be to wish you well, but I don't wish you well-so I'm NOT going to say it. In fact, I'm not sure what it is I wish you. My thoughts swing from the evil to the weird, from some strange kindness because of what we once had, to hate, but in the end it will do me no good to wish you ill, so I leave it in some kind of neutral.

I wish so much that none of this had happened. It's probably my fault for mapping out such a detailed future for us so early on. Perhaps our foundations weren't strong enough. But all the time we were together it all felt so good and so right. Whatever else happens in life I do know that some-how this first love will have been the best.

This is the last letter I shall write to you. I'd like to think it would be the last time we'll ever be in contact, but somehow I know that's not going to be the case. Our paths will cross, Jack. Our paths will cross again.

The question is: who will be the sadder that day?

Mary

TEN.

Caroline, you should have a look at this...oh G.o.d, she's really hurting.'

'Who?'

'Mary, she's written a letter.' I held out the three pages like Neville Chamberlain with his Munich peace papers. 'It's her farewell statement to us.' Caroline sat next to me, indifferent. 'You should read this, it's really awful.'

'What did you expect?' She sat with one foot curled under her bottom as though nurturing it for hatching.

'Read it.'

'I don't want to.' She uncurled her leg and stretched the stiffness from her knee and ankle. She fetched a cigarette packet and ashtray from the table then, hips swaying, returned to the old sofa. She had slimmed down since we'd first met: a student diet and English winter had taken their toll. Our sofa sank in the middle where its springs were broken and the brown velvet covering was worn bare. When Caroline sat next to me we rolled together. I enjoyed the sudden contact.

'Aren't you curious about what she says?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'I got my own letter.'

'When?'

'Today. I just didn't want to share it with you.' She registered my astonishment, took the letter, read it and replaced it in my unmoved hand. When she sat back, the movement released an old musty smell from deep within the bowels of the sofa and her nostrils flared. A look of momentary disgust darkened her face. This was a familiar look brought on by our bed-sit. But when she saw my frown, she smiled and touched my cheek with the palm of her hand. 'Does it worry you what she says? Are you hurt?'

'No, I'm not worried, not hurt.'

'You shouldn't be. She didn't understand you and so the two of you were doomed. It was just a matter of time. Now she's just being petty and pathetic. Worse than pathetic actually.'

'Do you feel any guilt, Caroline?'

'No. What happened was meant to be, Jack. There was no hope for the two of you. It was just a matter of time.'

'But she's your sister. Don't you feel anything, don't you feel any pain?'

'She's not my sister any more. I've disowned her and it's mutual.'

'How can you say that?'

'It's in my letter. Yours is mild in comparison to mine, she saved the best for me. Well, that's fine, I want nothing more to do with her and she wants nothing more to do with me. It's all right, Jack, there's no need to look so worried. We've all made our choices and now we move on. What's gone is gone-Mary's gone. All that remains is for me to now tell her how I feel.'

I nuzzled into her shoulder. The sofa smell was replaced with the sweeter scent of her perfume. In the eight months since the afternoon in her t.i.tirangi house I'd been with her almost every day, yet my feelings for Caroline were as fresh as if we'd just met.

That day in t.i.tirangi. When I left, dazed and tired, my senses worn to bursting, I knew things were different. Something very large had s.h.i.+fted inside as though someone had entered my head and rearranged the furniture. The walls were the same, but everything else was different. I knew immediately what had to happen: I needed to go straight to Mary, confess, end it with her and accept the consequences. There was pain to experience, anger to negotiate and all the s.h.i.+t you get when you hurt someone as deeply as they can be hurt. I should have been exposed to all that. I should have witnessed all I was responsible for. But halfway there I lost my nerve and returned home instead. Through a torrid rainstorm, with the old wipers of my father's car failing to clear the deluge, I convinced myself it was best that I went home and saw Mary another day. I ran away and no amount of tinsel could alter that fact.

Once home I took to my sick bed and feigned illness. I lay awake all night practising what I should say. And as always happens when things are put off, it became more and more difficult to see how I could broach the subject with her. The next day I avoided seeing her by saying I was unwell. Mary rang constantly to check on my progress and said she counted the hours before seeing me. Then suddenly the calls stopped.

I was sitting at the kitchen table, pondering whether to eat one of Dad's shrivelled oranges, when Caroline appeared at the door. Dad was in the garden and I could hear his tuneless whistle through the open back door. Caroline could barely contain her excitement and neither could I: it was the first time we'd met since that afternoon. If there were any doubts about what I'd done, they dissipated in that electric moment when I saw her and remembered in one charged pulse all we had done. It was an overload to the emotion circuit and for a brief second I felt light-headed. Caroline had just come from Mary. She had told her what had happened, she had told her about the reconfigured future. I thought Caroline would be angry for having had to take matters in hand, but she wasn't. Far from it, I think she saw the delivery of such news as her responsibility.

How did I feel? Relief. I should have felt guilty about what we'd done to Mary, but I actually experienced a more mundane guilt about not having been the one to tell her. My thoughts curled in a curious and unexpected way. Not telling her was a lesser crime than being unfaithful. I was left insulated from the effects of what had happened, insulated from the pain I had caused. If I avoided the effects of my actions I avoided unpleasant consequences. What a heady lesson.

In my remaining weeks in New Zealand I moved the meagre possessions I had with me to Caroline's home and stayed with her. After just three days she told me she was coming to Cambridge with me and had spent her last thousand dollars on the ticket. There was no hope of us staying at Mrs Grey's-she was fierce at keeping women from her bastion-so I packed my bags and we rented the cheapest bed-sit we could find in Trumpington, on the outskirts of the city. I had my old Escort and its temperamental starter motor as transport. Caroline found a part-time job as a waitress and I settled into my second year of university. I seldom thought of Mary in those first few months, seldom wondered what she thought of me or how she was. It wasn't until summer that she wrote.

For the last two days a strong summer heat had blasted the city and a summer malaise settled over its inhabitants. The holidays had started and Cambridge entered its yearly metamorphosis from university town to tourist Mecca. Only a few of the international students like me remained. The s.h.a.ggy, bearded, head-down and shoulder-hunched young had given way to tourists who shuffled their way round the sights, clicking their cameras for photographs that most would see only once, then consign to a bottom drawer. Little else moved in the heat. It was a typical English summer, I was told: weeks of threatening wind and clouds suddenly turned hot as if a switch had been thrown. The concrete and asphalt absorbed the heat and spat it out like a giant reflector.

Caroline and I retreated to our room. The bed-sit was hardly big enough for a pygmy, let alone two adults. The velvet sofa and the heavy wooden table under a bay window took most of the available s.p.a.ce. A tiny kitchen alcove occupied one side of the room, complete with an old enamel sink and a gas water heater that burst to life when water was run with the ferocity of an Apollo rocket. I doubted it had pa.s.sed any safety test and scorch marks around the hole where the flame could be spied spoke of years of neglect. On the other side of the room a j.a.panese painted screen hid the bed from view.

In New Zealand, heat like this felt clean and fierce. In Cambridge it felt dirty as though it carried the vestiges of muck and dirt collected on a journey through many cities. In New Zealand the sea purifies the heat but the North Sea is no match for the Pacific. We had talked about returning home in the two-month summer break but we didn't have the money and, anyway, what was there to return to? We weren't exactly going to be welcomed into the bosom of Caroline's loving family. As for Dad, I'm not sure he even realised I'd returned to England. So we camped inside, stripped to our underwear, sweated and sat lifelessly. Occasionally we shared a cold bath in the communal bathroom. The bath had a tidemark so dark it looked as though a marker pen had been used. Hair of many heads and body parts were smeared on most surfaces.

It was during these days that we took serious drugs for the first time. We'd smoked dope every week, but on the first night of the heatwave Caroline brought home tablets, a lot of tablets. We broke into our supply of booze to help them on their way. With the hot weather forecast for the week we hunkered down and got serious. Just how many drugs would it take for us to depart the mother s.h.i.+p? Days and nights lost their division and became almost one, distinguishable only by the degree of heat. Boundaries melted and every time elements of normality returned we popped some tablets and drank more tequila.

On the third day Caroline drew as though her very life depended on producing a great picture every hour. She scattered paper on the tiny floor s.p.a.ce, across the bed and over the table and sweated so heavily with her effort her hair looked as though she'd just showered. In the middle of her frenzy she pushed everything she'd acc.u.mulated on the table to the floor and insisted I sit and work, but before I could start she gave me tablets and challenged me to abandon all a.s.sumptions. For hours I sat at the great wooden table and played with equations over and over until I felt a loss of control, until the maths seemed to take on a life of its own, spilling out of me and refusing to stop, even when it became so weird I got quite scared. Only the next day, during a period of near lucidity when I read what I'd done, did I realise just how far I'd pushed myself and how crazy some of the ideas were. But I saw something among the tangle of equations-words and sayings that immediately caught my breath. But almost as suddenly they were gone. My mind was so tired I just couldn't hold the revelation. However, I knew the insight was unnervingly different and that something fundamentally new could be born. I had no idea it would take years of frustration to find it again.

The day after our creative burst was a day of rest, and that was when Mary's letters arrived.

Caroline stirred on the sofa. 'We have to write back.'

'Why?'

'Don't you see? It's just us now, Jack, us against the world. We don't need anyone and they don't need us, so let's tell them.'

'There's no need. Mary knows what she thinks. Why bother to say any more?'

'It's not for her, Jack.'

'So who is it for then?'

'Us, of course, it's for us. As long as we remain silent there's always the base for a bridge to be built, but I don't want there to be the chance of any bridges, so let's destroy the base, let's f.u.c.king rip it apart.'

'Are you sure?'

She scrambled from the sofa and stood in front of me wearing just bra and pants. Her body was so taut it looked magnificent and her eyes bulged so wide I thought they might pop out of her head. A fresh sweat formed on her brow and nose, or was that a tear-yes, I think a tear. 'It's just us, Jack, and let me tell you, together we're going to do great things.' She held out her hands as if showing the length of a recently caught fish, then extended them as wide as they could go. 'Great things, and we don't need anyone to help us. So let's cut ourselves free, let's tell Mary what we think.' She went to the table and started writing so fast and furiously that the felt-tip pen began squeaking.

I poured a tequila and reread Mary's letter. The sour taste of the drink turned my stomach and sent a s.h.i.+ver through my body. I almost pined for the chance to vomit and rid my body of the acc.u.mulated poisons of the past days. Such vomit would carry an awful taste of old alcohol and maybe a taste never to be forgotten. For long seconds I teetered on the edge of a future abstinence. The room felt more oppressive than at any time during the heat wave and I felt sweat trickle down my trunk and between my thighs. I squirmed as the threadbare patch of the sofa chafed the undersides of my legs. What mischief had this sofa seen over the years of student tenants? The mere thought of what might have lived here before added to my discomfort, but I lacked the energy to move. I continued to sit and suffer. Caroline's breathing sounded raucous in the quiet of the room, so raucous I almost begrudged her the air she breathed. It was too hot even for the birds to sing. My stomach continued to rebel at the thought of the drink I still held in my hand. I raised it to my lips. The smell was almost enough to make me retch, but I forced the gla.s.s up and drained the liquid. The revulsion in my stomach calmed and I poured another drink, swallowing it more greedily than the first.

'There.' Caroline's voice contained a heady note of triumph. 'You read this, Jack. I'm going to get dressed and then I'm going straight out to post it.'

After reading her letter I let out a long heavy sigh. I don't think I could have written such words to my most hated enemy. Everything Caroline had said to me was there, plus much, much more. Sister told sister that she'd never loved her and that she'd vowed to take what was most precious to her. That, of course, had proved to be me. Was that all I was to Caroline-a prize with which to wound her sister, or were they just words to ensure there was no chance of reconciliation between them? I didn't know how much of this was true. I imagined poor Mary reading the words. What had she ever done to deserve this?

I heard the closing of a drawer and swearing from the s.p.a.ce behind the screen where Caroline had gone to get changed. Quickly I grabbed a pen from the table and wrote at the bottom of the page: I'm sorry, Mary. Keep strong. Before Caroline returned I put the pages in the envelope she'd already addressed and sealed the flap.

'Thanks,' she said without suspicion. She took the envelope and left the flat. I poured another drink and returned to the sofa. I'd committed my crime against Caroline-I'd broken ranks, I'd left a crack. I don't think I could really have done anything worse. How strange, I'd never thought how Mary might have felt for what I'd done to her, but I felt the pain from what her sister was saying. Was I in some way immune to my own wrongs, but not others'?

Four years later Dear Jack, How are you? Well, I hope. Thank you for your last letter. I don't suppose I'm surprised that you and Caroline are married. When I told Mum and Dad they rolled their eyes in mock wonder but it couldn't hide their pain. They're still so confused about the whole thing; they just don't understand how it has happened. They see no reason for Caroline's hostility and why she won't speak to them. For Dad it's become a principle and I think he would reject her if she ever tried to contact him. But Mum's different; she thinks about it every day and now she's missed her daughter's wedding. I don't think anything will make up for that loss. Mum deflects the whole thing by blaming you. There will never be much of a welcome for you in the Roberts family I'm afraid, but then I'm sure you wouldn't ever expect one.

I have started my first teaching job. It is all a bit scary-28 seven-year-olds and me. Still, I think it's going OK. The kids are great and there are no complaints so far. I think I made the right choice going into teaching. I feel I have something to offer.

I saw Mike last week; he avoided talking about you until I raised the subject. He's still such a politician. Anyway, he said to say h.e.l.lo if I wrote. He is still with Helen and in fact they live together now. Jo is going to spend some time in Sydney on some exchange with her job. She came for a quick drink when I caught up with Mike (he is very good at keeping in contact with everyone). She seemed quite triumphant about hearing you'd married Caroline.

So you're in London now. You never said why you left Cambridge. I thought you were on a good thing as a research fellow there-what happened?

Anyway, I must be off. Write soon. Love, Mary