‘I don’t know.’ Georgia was looking at the bracelet the same way she used to look at the hill when she was five, she was in awe of it, it might be too strong for her. ‘Maybe it’s too special.’
‘Some things there comes a time when they have to go to someone else.’ It sounded exactly like something that India-May might have said. She must be rubbing off on him.
‘You wrote something on it, didn’t you?’
He nodded.
She read the words, then looked at him. ‘Why forty?’
‘It was the most I could imagine.’ He fastened the bracelet on for her. She sat back, looking down at it. Then, suddenly, she leaned forwards again and asked the driver to stop. ‘I’ve just got to get something,’ she told him. ‘I won’t be long.’
Nathan watched her run into a supermarket. Moments later she was out again. She didn’t seem to be carrying anything. She slid into the car and slammed the door. ‘OK, go,’ she said to the driver. ‘Go.’
When they’d turned the corner, she pulled out a bottle of champagne from under her coat. ‘I stole it,’ she said. She took off the wire that held the cork in position and put the bottle beside her, then she set to work. In five minutes she’d fashioned a ring out of the wire. She slipped it over his finger. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Now we’re brothers.’ She glanced at the bottle thoughtfully. ‘I only stole it for the wire,’ she said, ‘but now we’ve got it I suppose we might as well drink it.’
They’d almost reached the place where the party was, but she told the driver to keep going. ‘Just drive around,’ she said. ‘Take us back in twenty minutes.’
They didn’t arrive at the party until they’d finished the bottle. They were both drunker than they’d been for years. She had a bracelet and he had a ring. They’d missed each other so much. The cab fare was thirty-three dollars.
The next morning Dad woke him at eight. ‘You were naughty last night,’ he said. ‘You woke me up.’
‘Did I?’ Nathan said. ‘I didn’t mean to.’
‘It was your door. It made a noise.’
‘Sorry, Dad.’
‘You were very late.’
‘I know. I went to a party with Georgia.’
Dad sighed. He couldn’t understand why anyone went to parties. He even hated the word ‘party’. It was almost as bad as the word ‘hospital’. In his head you probably went straight from one to the other.
‘Don’t worry,’ Nathan said. ‘I’m staying in tonight.’
That evening Dad opened a bottle of wine. As a rule he only drank one glass, but that night he drank three, and when he noticed the full moon in the window he became excited, almost too much white in his eyes and a bulb of spit shining on his front teeth. He watched the moon rise through his binoculars. After a while he offered them to Nathan. ‘Do you want a look?’
Nathan shook his head. ‘Maybe later. When it’s higher.’
‘It’s so clear. You can even see the holes.’
The holes. It was the kind of thing a child might say. Rona, for instance. Yes, Rona might easily have said something like that. He looked at Dad, but Dad was unaware. Under the moon’s influence his mind had flown giddily on, like a witch straddling a broomstick. Here. He was turning again. With something else.
‘Did I ever tell you about Harriet and the spaceship? No? It was the strangest thing.’
Nathan could only stare. He hadn’t expected to hear her name mentioned at all. It had to be the wine. The wine and the excitement of having someone in the house to talk to.
‘I was down here one night, it was about nine, and there was a knock at the door. It was Harriet. She was wearing a dressing-gown, but it was hanging open, and underneath she only had a négligé on, one of those flimsy things, I could see everything. She said she was frightened. I asked her why. She said she’d seen a spaceship and it had frightened her.’
‘A spaceship?’ Nathan said.
‘That’s what I said. “A spaceship?” I said. “Where?” She said she’d seen it in her window. Her curtains were open and it went across her window in the sky. “Did it go fast or slow?” I said. “Slow,” she said. I asked her to show me where she’d seen it. She went to the window, that window,’ and he pointed to the french windows that led out on to the terrace. ‘We stood over there and looked for it. Of course there was nothing. We were standing very close, and I got the feeling that if I opened my arms she’d come inside. I didn’t know what she wanted. Me to kiss her or what. Anyway I put my arm round her. After a while I asked her whether she was all right and she said yes. Then she went back to bed.’ He sipped at his wine again, then put it down on the arm of his chair and, keeping a finger and thumb on the stem, twisted it one way, then the other. ‘At the time I thought it was so, I don’t know, romantic. Now, well. It seems so obvious.’ His excitement had gone. Now there was only bitterness. His binoculars lay abandoned on the floor.
Two nights later, on the train, Nathan remembered the last fragments of that conversation. His vain attempt to win Dad’s mood back.
‘It sounds romantic to me.’
Dad shook his head so violently, he might almost have been in pain. ‘I should never have trusted her.’
Like the hospital, Harriet had cut something out of him. He’d been exploited, hoodwinked, lied to. The whole thing had been an elaborate deception. He’d trusted for the last time. There’d be nobody else now. Nobody. He’d gathered his life around him like a cloak in which there was only room enough for one.
On Nathan’s last morning they’d driven down to the supermarket together. When they returned, there was the usual ritual of putting the shopping away. Dad squatted on the pantry floor and Nathan stood behind him, handing him the groceries.
‘You won’t be able to help me again,’ Dad said. ‘Not till the next time you come, anyway, and that might not be for ages.’
Nathan felt the guilt rise into his throat, bitter as some half-digested thing.
‘Hold on,’ came Dad’s voice from inside the pantry, ‘I’ve just got to clear a space.’ The shifting of packets and tins, and then a silence. Then a soft sound, like a gasp or a sigh.
‘What is it, Dad?’
Still squatting, Dad turned round. There was a block of raw jelly lying in the palm of his hand. The packet had been ripped open and a small bite was missing from one corner. You could see the teethmarks.
‘Rona,’ Nathan said, and Dad nodded.
She must’ve sneaked into the pantry one day when nobody was looking and taken a bite out of that jelly. Orange flavour had always been her favourite. Nathan looked from the jelly on Dad’s hand to Dad’s face, and saw the tears in his eyes.
Now, as the train swayed up the coast, there were tears in his own eyes too. He didn’t want anyone to see so he cupped his hand to the window and looked out. The tracks ran alongside the ocean here. He saw a pale strip of sand. The ocean heaving, unlit. No moon tonight. Tight in his hand he held the silver coin that Dad had given him at the front door. It was the same coin that Dad always gave him, every time he went away. It was just a small coin, worth practically nothing.
Worth everything.
You, Me, and the Chairman
It had been a normal day. In the morning Creed had a meeting with a city bank. He lunched with the police commissioner at a fish restaurant in Torch Bay. After lunch he spent half an hour with McGowan in an outdoor café by the river. Then, during the afternoon he put in a personal appearance at three of the funeral parlours that he’d recently acquired for the company as part of his new expansion programme. By late afternoon the sky was grey and the air seemed hard to breathe. As they left the northern suburbs, the car began to tremble in Jed’s hands. He touched his foot to the brake and slowed to about thirty.