Light Errant Page 22

  Jamie took her from me, stilled her hand with a hesitant touch, did his own gaping now. I felt myself grin fatuously, hurting not at all; looked around for somewhere to sit as my treacherous legs began to fail and saw nothing like that, only Janice stepping to my side. So I hung on to her instead, felt the willowy strength of her stiffen against my weight and thought that would do, that was enough.

  o0o

  Enough for me and substantially better than sitting, actually, the living warmth of her and not too much stare in her eyes, she didn’t really understand. Maybe only Jamie really understood, maybe it was only he who was truly shaken to the roots. Or he and I both, because I thought my own roots might rip out now. At last.

  Enough for me, to stand and be held up; too much for Janice, too soon for me. She grunted after a minute or so, said, “Hey. You’re too heavy, I’m too light. Whatever. Can we find somewhere to sit?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, glancing up and down the road. Locked and shuttered storefronts, litter-bins, lampposts. No seats. “Can we?”

  “Come on.”

  o0o

  She nudged me into moving, though I wobbled like an old ’un and sighed softly at every step, every time my hollowed bones had to take the weight of flesh and weariness that comprised me.

  Over to the wall of the shooting-range, one of the shooting-ranges: electronic guns these days and electronic targets, and no doubt it was as fiddled electronically as it always used to be with simple mechanics. Tip-up metal targets they were when Jamie and I used to come often, and you had to be super-accurate to make them tip, there was just this one spot you had to hit to get them to go all the way over; and of course, of course the guns didn’t shoot straight. We never expected them to. That was the challenge, discovering any particular rifle’s bias and learning to compensate, aiming to miss.

  It sounded like a précis, I thought, an abstract of my life: low expectations, try to compensate, aim to miss. The trick, of course, was to get the compensation right, point fallible equipment in an appropriate direction so that luck or judgement can bring you back on course. Doesn’t matter which. Luck flips the target over, you still claim the plaudits as your due. And the prizes, of course, never forget the prizes.

  Me, I’d made a speciality it seemed of compensating wrong. All the way, one-eighty degrees wrong. Aim low and miss by a mile, every time. Call it stubbornness or stupidity, again it didn’t really matter. The result’s the same.

  Whatever. This electronic shoot-’em-up gallery was as solid, as unvirtual as its predecessor. We sat on the ground and set our backs against it, where the sun had warmed the painted breeze block gaudy wall. Janice kept her arm around my neck, so that my head felt flesh and bone instead of concrete when it toppled backwards. Nice.

  “What was that, then,” she murmured, “miracle healing?”

  “Something like.” Then, more honestly, feeling the weary residues of it all through me, “Not a miracle, no. Just the ol’ family magic.” Unless Jesus had been just a talented lad like me, good with sunshine? Maybe so. But he’d ended up crucified. I shivered in the warm there, into the warmth of her, and her arm tightened a little.

  “So why are they all so gobsmacked?” she demanded. “They’re family, they must have seen it all before.”

  “Well. Not quite like that. Even I didn’t know I could do that.” Nor did I want to talk about it, just then. I opened my eyes, looking for a change of subject, and found one easily. “Why’s this place so empty, do you know?” It should have been teeming; the sun said it was midday or close to, and the Island hardly closed in summer. There should have been crowds, like there had been—Christ, was it only two days ago? How time crawls, when you’re having a really, really bad time...

  She shrugged, against my side. “I suppose they closed it, aye?”

  “Suppose so. Someone should go see, though.”

  Not Jamie, he was being private with Laura, heads together, hands together. One of the women, then: they were standing in a group, doing nothing, only gazing at her, at him, at me...

  Not hard to catch someone’s eye, though it was harder to hold it. I had to raise my voice in the end, call her over. Even shouting was difficult, took more energy than I could spare.

  “Serena! Come here a sec.”

  She came, a little reluctantly, I thought. Right choice, though. Somewhere in her thirties, solid and sensible, a lot less feeble than my female relations tended to be after years, after generations of repression by the male line.

  “Serena, do us a favour. Go down to the causeway, see if you can figure out why there’s no one here?”

  “Okay, yeah.” She nodded, then hesitated. “Is there anything else you want, Ben? You look wasted.”

  Wasted was how I felt, all my life a waste except perhaps for this moment, when I’d finally done something inarguably useful. I found a smile for her, and said, “I’d love a drink, if you can ask one of the girls to find one. Water, anything.”

  Another nod, “I’ll tell them,” and off she went. I closed my eyes again, let my head slide sideways into Janice’s supportive shoulder.

  “Sorry,” she said softly against my ear. “I should’ve thought. Didn’t they even give you water?”

  I shook my head, meaning no and also nothing for you to feel sorry for. Her hand turned my face a little, her lips touched mine gently, moist and generous. I breathed her air gratefully and felt the soft pressure of her tongue against my dryness, not intruding, just sharing what she had.

  o0o

  Might have been five minutes later, might have been ten or more; I was well past counting, but eventually a breathy voice said, “Ben?”

  I opened my eyes, lifted my head from where I was still nuzzling at Janice like a sleepy child, found my young cousin Christa standing in front of me, blocking out the sun. Her arms were hugging half a dozen cans against her chest.

  “We broke open a machine,” she said, almost on a giggle, how’s that for being bad girls? “We’ve got Coke, Fanta, Irn Bru...”

  “Coke,” I said. “Please.”

  She held a can down to me; I lifted one hand with an effort, gripped it tight. God, it felt cold, beaded with its own chill, it felt wonderfully good just to hold it.

  After a moment Christa offered one to Janice also, but she said no. “It’s okay, we’ll share. Give one to Jamie, though, he’ll need it.”

  Christa looked doubtful, scared almost at the thought of approaching so powerful a cousin who was—yes, still, a flick of my eyes confirmed—so engrossed with his girl. But a nod of my head and, “Go on, do it,” and she went.

  I didn’t watch her progress. I watched my own hands instead, the other rising to force a finger through the ring and crack the Coke open. Hiss fizz but no foam, no wastage. I lifted it slowly, took a sip, a swig, a long long guzzle; the icy bite of it filled my throat and belly.

  I glanced aside at Janice, said, “Call her back, if you want. There may not be much left to share.”

  “No, it’s all right. Take what you want, take it all. I’ve been drinking water all night. What I really want’s a fag...”

  So call her back, send her to bust another machine, she’ll thank you for it. I was going to say that, right after I’d had another drink; but suddenly everyone I could see was turning to stare down the road a way, and all their talk was failing, and in the silence I could hear someone running, coming closer.

  I sat up to see and it was Serena in a major hurry, she probably hadn’t run so fast in twenty years.

  Not me she ran to, but Jamie, who was standing can in one hand and Laura in the other. I could hear what she said, though, what she gasped and stammered.

  “The causeway’s closed off, there are gates locked and a notice, says it’s closed today. Same on the far side, on the shore, they’ve pulled a chain across the road; but there are cars and a van parked there, waiting. I don’t, I don’t think they’re punters, they were unlocking the chain. They can’t cross yet, the causeway’s u
nderwater, but I think the tide’s going out.”

  “Did they see you?”

  “I don’t know. They could have done. It’s a fair way but I wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t hiding, I’d gone right up to the gates to see what the notice said. I saw them, and I wasn’t looking for them...”

  “Right. Okay, we’ll assume they did. Any idea how long we’ve got, before the causeway’s clear?”

  “No, I couldn’t tell. I just remember the tide seems to rush out, it’s so flat all around here.”

  “Yeah. Thanks, Serena.” Jamie looked around, found me, came across with Laura in his wake. “You fit, bro?”

  No. “For what?”

  “Well,” he said judiciously, “I supppose we’ve got rifles, a couple,” from those guys the girls ruined. “But I don’t much fancy a shooting-match, we couldn’t win it in the long run; and anyway, it’s your call. You’re big chief in daylight, and the cavalry’s coming.” We’d always been the Injuns, the robbers, the pirates in childhood games. We felt it showed proper family feeling. The cavalry was always, by definition, the enemy.

  And he was right, it was my call; and I don’t want any more killing was once more the loudest call in my head, despite the body that was still lying in the dust not so far away. Or maybe because of the body. Bodies, plural, it ought to be, they’d said there’d been another man on watch; I wondered briefly where he lay and how he’d got there, never doubted he was dead but who had made him so? Serena perhaps, best guess, she’d be up for that. No mercy in her, I thought, no hesitation after seeing or hearing or knowing her cousins dead, taken away one by one and killed, no mercy, no hesitation...

  Me, I might not be merciful exactly, you couldn’t call it mercy; but I was deeply hesitant. It wasn’t only that I didn’t want to kill again, I really, really didn’t want anyone else dead, whosever hands their blood might lie on.

  So hesitant I was, I nearly cried off altogether. I can’t, I nearly said, I’m too exhausted, look, I can’t even stand without help, I haven’t got the strength to light a candle. He might even have believed me. Ordinary use of talent didn’t leave you in this state, but what I’d done to Laura was very far from ordinary.

  Except that without me, if I bottled it, they had no one. All they could do else was hide. No other way off the Island. Plenty of hiding places, to be sure, but patient search would find them all. And I who wanted no more killing would die knowing how much, how very much more there was to come, all my cousins by daylight and my enemies—or perhaps my other enemies, my cousins were also cavalry—by night, Pelion heaped upon Ossa where Ossa is a mountain of bones.

  “Give us a hand up, Jan?” I said. After a second she nodded—working it out, I thought, pretty much as I had, that this was best of a bad range of choices—and lithely stood, reached down to grip my wrists and hauled me smoothly, almost casually to my feet.

  Jamie whistled appreciatively. “You’ve done that before.”

  “Ah, it’s just balance. Let your weight do the work. Pick ’em up, knock ’em down—I like to play with the big boys.”

  Laura twitched an eyebrow at her, across Jamie’s shoulder; I deliberately didn’t look to see what face Janice made in response, but it had Laura’s mouth twitching also, fighting a smile down.

  Anything that could make Laura smile just then was fine by me. Ritual humiliation? Sure, no sweat.

  I even took Janice’s arm when she offered it, and genuinely leaned on it too, needing more than the gesture of support.

  Jamie was frowning as we headed off at the best pace I could manage, which was not fast.

  “What’s wrong with you, Ben? Okay, you’re knackered, but we both are; and okay, you just did something amazing, but talent doesn’t take it out of you like that...”

  “Did, though.” Sunlight was putting it back in again, but slowly, so slowly, a trickle of honey down the empty pipework of my bones. “I don’t know, Jamie, this is all new to me too,” and we didn’t have an expert in the family any more since Laura and I between us had put Uncle Allan out of the picture. No wisdom to draw on, we had to work this out for ourselves.

  “Unh.” He looked at me with something more than gratitude, something uncomfortably close to respect. “You want to tell me how you did that, with Laura’s hand?”

  It was the hand he was holding, I noticed, though he held it loosely, not trusting his strength against her fresh-healed bones.

  “Later,” I said. “One thing at a time. Oh, and Jamie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Leave the rifles.”

  o0o

  The pace of any march is militated by the pace of the slowest; which made this no march at all, if a march has any briskness to it. It was an effort to me just to walk. Before we reached the point where the Island’s only road ran down between rocky promontories to become the causeway, Jamie had taken my other arm against the urgency of the moment and he and Janice were all but carrying me along.

  We came there at last, and found the high steel-mesh gates closed against us, as Serena had said. When we were kids in winter, we used to climb them, quite unfazed. No chance of that today, not for me at least, but no need either. The sun was doing its stuff, dosing me, drowning me in power. I couldn’t use it for physical things like walking or climbing, but that mattered not at all. The gates were fastened with a chain, and the padlock was on the other side, but again, no matter. I reclaimed my hands, wrapped them around the chain and channelled light through my prickling skin and into the warm steel links.

  Pulled lightly, no pressure; the links stretched and snapped like soft warm toffee. I dropped the chain, put my hands against the gates and pushed them open.

  Twenty metres ahead, the sea was still lapping across the road but only gently, visibly retreating. At the far side, on the mainland I could see vehicles queueing up, impatient to get at us. The first was a four-by-four, and that was already edging down into the water, high on its tyres and confident of crossing. We’d done the same in Jamie’s jeep, I remembered. Take it slow, and the bow-wave you made would keep the engine from flooding.

  Slow was crucial; we had time, I had time, then, but not much of it. A couple of minutes, no more. After that we were back into killing-mode again.

  Well, hell. Stopping them was all I was after, just now. Never mind the long view, react to the immediate. Do the thing that’s nearest. Nearest to me was our end of the causeway, like a broad black ribbon dropping down into the water, glistening wet; and I’d seen Jamie rip a road up in his rage...

  This needed to be bigger, though, this had to stop them back at their end, where they couldn’t wade and scramble on to our rocky shore. Even at low tide, no one would be fool enough to try to cross other than by the road. There was quicksand either side of the causeway, and innocent-seeming stretches of still water that might look like they wouldn’t wet your wheel-nuts but actually hid pools deep enough to swallow your car with you inside it.

  So. First things first: get them off the road. Stop that car.

  Half a dozen ways I could have done it, probably, but I suddenly found in myself an instinct for showmanship, a taste for the dramatic moment. A lust for power, a critic might have called it.

  Certainly I felt powerful, more so than I was used to. Drained of my normal workaday human strength and then flooded with sunlight, it seemed as though I had been overfilled with talent. Not only my skin but all my body was fizzing with it; I could feel the pulse of every artery and vein as they wrapped around the resonance of bone.

  And I stood on the causeway’s sandy wet descent and looked at the water, the last of the tide that lapped it and the deeper surge of wave and current that was drawing back on either side; and I played King Canute in reverse. No throne to sit on, but I thrust my hands into my pockets to look as casual for my friends as maybe he’d tried to look for his court, and I stopped the tide; I held it; I impelled it forward, against the moon’s suck and all its habits and inclinations.

  Well, actually I didn
’t. If the sun itself can’t do that, can’t out-pull the moon, what chance for me? All I did, I set my will and talent against the water I could see, and pushed at it. Just as a child might use his hand to scoop the retreating sea into a scraped trench, I used my mind to net as much as I could and to shove it as hard as I could along the slow-revealing line of the causeway’s road.

  Or put it another way, I made a tidal wave. Not such a big one, in all truth, not a tsunami, Hokusai would never have bothered with making a print of it; but it looked pretty good to me all the same, the way the sea sank down and reared up and rushed away, leaving the road and the stony way it stood on and the sands beside looking oddly exposed, almost bereft for a few seconds until fresh waters broke in behind that rushing wave.

  The wave rolled on, sweet breaker, the kind of wave our local surfing lads would kill for but almost never saw. On this coast they surfed in drysuits against the cold, wore masks and hung banners on their cars against the sewage and chemical pollution. Then they headed south and west as soon as they could manage.

  Actually I’d never meant to make such a wave, would never have imagined I could drive such a weight of water. Didn’t know my own strength, obviously; or the sun’s strength, rather, I’d never felt more transparent. All I’d wanted was a wavelet like a last freak of the tide, a sudden rise of water to break through that driver’s bow-wave and swamp his engine, stop him dead.

  Suddenly I was afraid that I might stop him truly dead, I who wanted no more killing. But the water was running and I had no time to change my mind, even if I could have thought of a way to break that wave apart and disperse all the water in it.

  Wave met car and broke apart seemingly of its own volition, at that jarring consummation. It broke against the windscreen, not quite roof-high on such a high vehicle; but that was only the curling frothy top of it. The great mass of water thrust underneath and lifted, carried the car like a bottle, like a message, finally threw it back and dropped it on its side some twenty metres behind the chain-posts that marked a point higher than the highest flood tide had ever reached on this shore.