“Don’t say her name round me. It’s a curse, it is.”
His wife said, “Eddie…,” in a conciliatory tone, and she put her hand on Ben’s arm as if afraid he would bolt.
But the sight of his father had abruptly changed things for Ben. So old, he thought. So terribly old. Broken as well. He wondered how he had failed to understand till now that life had long ago defeated his father. He’d beaten his fists against it-had Eddie Kerne-and refused to submit to its demands. These demands were for compromise and change: to take life on life’s terms, which required the ability to switch courses when necessary, to modify behaviours, and to alter dreams so that they could meet the realities that they came up against. But he’d never been able to do any of that, so he’d been crushed, and life had rolled over his shattered body.
The kettle clicked off as the water came to a boil. When Eddie turned to fetch it to the table, Ben went to him. He heard his mother murmur shush and shush another time. But he found that comfort unnecessary now. He approached his father, one man to another. He said, “I wish things could have been different for all of us. I love you, Dad.”
Eddie’s shoulders bowed further. “Why couldn’t you shake her off?” His voice sounded as broken as his spirit.
“I don’t know,” Ben said. “I just couldn’t. But that’s down to me, not to Dellen. She can’t bear the blame for my weakness.”
“You wouldn’t see-”
“You’re right.”
“And now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Still?”
“Yes. That’s my personal hell. Do you understand? In all these years, never once did you have to make it yours.”
Eddie’s shoulders shook. He tried and failed to lift the kettle. Ben lifted it for him and carried it to the table where he poured the water into their mugs. He didn’t want the coffee; it would keep him awake that night when all he wanted was indefinite sleep. But he would drink it if that was what was required of him, if that was the communion his father wanted.
All of them sat. Eddie sat last. His head looked too heavy for his neck to bear, and it fell forward, his chin nearing his chest.
“What is it, then, Eddie?” Ann Kerne asked her husband.
“I told the cop,” he said. “I could’ve tossed him from the property, but I didn’t do that. I wanted…I don’t know what I wanted. Benesek, I told him everything I knew.”
The restless night that followed thus had a twofold source: the coffee he’d drunk and the knowledge he’d gained. For if his conversation with Eddie Kerne had at least gone some way towards burying some of the excruciating past between them, that same conversation had resurrected another part of it. For the remainder of the day and into the night, he’d had to look at that part squarely. He’d had to wonder about it. Neither was an activity in which he particularly wished to engage.
Set against the rest of his life, one night should have been insignificant. A party with his mates, and that was all. A gathering he wouldn’t even have gone to had he not just two days earlier had the courage to break off with Dellen Nankervis yet another time. He was thus morose, his life a thing that he believed was in tatters. “You want cheering up,” was his mates’ recommendation. “That wanker Parsons is having a party. Everyone’s invited, so come with us. Get your mind off the bloody cow for once.”
That had proved impossible, for Dellen had been there: in a crimson sundress and spiky sandals, smooth of leg and tan of shoulder, blonde hair soft and long and thick, eyes like bluebells. Seventeen years old and with the heart of a siren, she’d come alone but she hadn’t remained so. For she was dressed like a flame, and like a flame she drew them. His mates were not among them, for they knew the trap Dellen Nankervis presented: how she baited it, how she sprang it, and, in the end, what she did with her prey. So they kept their distance, but the others didn’t. Ben watched until he could bear no more.
Palm curved round a glass and he drank it. Pill pressed into his hand and he took it. Spliff placed between his fingers and he smoked it. The miracle was that he hadn’t died from everything he’d ingested that night. What he had done was welcome the ministrations of any girl willing to vanish into a darkened corner with him. He knew there had been three; there may have been more. It hadn’t mattered. What counted was only that Dellen see.
Take your fucking hands off my sister had brought a sudden end to the game. Jamie Parsons was the hot-voiced speaker, acting the part of outraged brother-not to mention gap-year brother, wealthy brother, traveling-the-earth-to-the-hot-spots-of-surfing-and-making-sure-everyone-knew-about-it brother-discovering a lowlife nonce with his fingers in his sister’s knickers and his sister shoved up against the wall with one leg lifted and loving it, loving it, which Ben had foolishly, loudly, and in the presence of everyone in hearing distance declared to be his real crime once Jamie Parsons had separated them.
He’d been summarily and with no delicacy tossed out, and his mates had followed, and as far as he had ever known or dared to ask, Dellen had remained behind.
“Christ, that bloody wanker needs sorting,” they all agreed, up to their eyeballs with drink, with drugs, and with resentment towards Jamie Parsons.
And after that? Ben simply didn’t know.
He ran the story through his head all night, after returning to Casvelyn from Eco-House and Pengelly Cove. He’d got back round ten, and he’d not done more than pace the hotel, pausing at windows to look out at the restless bay. The hotel was quiet, Kerra not there, Alan gone for the day, and Dellen…She was not in the sitting room or the kitchen of the family quarters and he looked no further. For he needed time to sift through what he remembered and to differentiate it from what he imagined.
He finally entered their bedroom at midmorning. Dellen lay diagonally across the bed. She breathed a heavy, drug-induced sleep, and the bottle of pills that had sent her there was uncapped on the bedside table, where the light still burned, as it had likely done all night, Dellen too incapacitated to turn it off.
He sat on the edge of the bed. She did not awaken. She hadn’t changed out of her clothing on the previous night, and her red scarf formed a pool beneath her head, its fringe fanning out like petals with Dellen its centre, the heart of the flower.
His curse was that he still could love her. His curse was that he could look at her now and, despite everything and especially despite Santo’s murder, he could still want to claim her because she possessed and, he feared, would forever possess the ability to wipe from his heart and his mind everything else that was not Dellen. And he did not understand how this could be or what terrible twist of his psyche made it so.
Her eyes opened. In them and just for an instant, before awareness came to her completely, he saw the truth in the dullness of her expression: that what he needed from his wife she could not give him, though he would continue to try to take it from her again and again.
She turned her head away.
“Leave me,” she said. “Or kill me. Because I can’t-”
“I saw his body,” Ben told her. “Or rather, his face. They’d dissected him-that’s what they do except they use a different word for it-so they kept him covered up to his chin. I could have seen the rest but I didn’t want to. It was enough to see his face.”
“Oh God.”
“It was just a formality. They knew it was Santo. They have his car. They have his driving licence. So they didn’t need me to look at him. I expect I could have closed my eyes at the last moment and just said yes, that’s Santo, and not have looked at all.”
She raised her arm and pressed her fist against her mouth. He didn’t want to evaluate all the reasons why he was compelled to speak at this point. All he accepted about himself was that he felt it necessary to do more than relay antiseptic information to his wife. He felt it necessary to move her out of herself and into the core of her motherhood, even if that meant she would blame him as he deserved to be blamed. It would be better, he thought, than watching her go elsewhere.