‘No, what does that mean?’
– It means that I’m going to go soon. I’m fading away.
‘Oh, no! Not that, Emma! Not you as well. Don’t leave me, please.’
– Soon I’ll be gone. Just a few more minutes.
‘I’ll turn the heating down. I’ll turn it off completely.’
– No, Max, it’s too late. We have to say goodbye to each other.
‘But, Emma, I can’t do without you. You’ve been … everything to me, these last few days. Without you … Without you, I can’t go on.’
– It has to be this way.
‘No! You can’t go!I NEED YOU.’
– Don’t cry, Max. We’ve had some good times together. Now it’s run its course. Accept it, if you can. We have just a few more minutes together.
‘I can’t accept it. No.’
– Is there anything you want to tell me in that time?
‘What? What do you mean?’
– Is there perhaps something you want to tell me, before I go?
‘I don’t understand.’
– I think there’s something you ought to tell me. Your little secret. Something you never told Caroline. Something that involves Chris.
‘Chris?’
– Yes. Now you know what I’m talking about, don’t you?
‘You mean …’
– Yes?
‘You mean what happened in Ireland. The nettle pit?’
– That’s it. Come on, now, Max. You’ll feel better if you tell someone.
‘Oh God … Oh God … How did you know about that?’
– Just say it out loud. Just tell me what happened. Tell me what happened to poor little Joe. What you did to him.
‘Fuck … fuck … FUCK.’
– That’s all right. Cry if you want to. Let it all out.
‘You want the truth?’
– Of course I want the truth. The truth is always beautiful.
‘But the truth is, Emma … The truth is … Oh God. The truth is that I hated him. Isn’t that a terrible thing to say? Just a little boy. Just a happy, curious, lively little boy. I hated him for being so happy. I hated him for having Chris as a father. For having two sisters to play with. I hated him for everything he had … that I’d never had. All the things Dad had never given me …’
– Cry if you want to.
‘I never realized, you see. I never realized how much hate I had in me. I never realized that I could hate a child like that.’
– Let the tears come, Max. It’ll do you good. So what happened? What did you do?
‘I can’t say it.’
– Yes you can. You can say it, Max. He was playing on the rope, wasn’t he? He was swinging over the nettle pit.
‘Yes.’
– And then he swung over to the edge, and he tried to get off, and what did you do then?
‘I can’t say it.’
– Yes, you can say it. You can, Max. I know what happened. You pushed him.
‘I …’
– Is that what happened? You pushed him back in? Did you push him, Max?
‘Yes. Yes, I did. He knew, too. He knew it was me. He told his father. Chris couldn’t believe him, at first, but in the end I think he did. And that’s why they all left. That’s why Chris has never spoken to me since.’
– Cry if you want to. But it’s better if you tell someone.
‘I couldn’t help it. I wanted to hurt him. I so wanted to hurt him. I’d never have believed that I could have wanted to hurt someone so much. And he was just eight years old. Eight years. FUCK. I’m a bad man. I’m a horrible man. I shouldn’t have told you that, should I? Do you hate me now, Emma? Can you ever forgive me, or like me again?’
– I’m the only person you could have told, Max. Because I don’t judge – remember? I’m glad you told me. It was right that you told me. You had to tell somebody, in the end. But the battery’s almost finished now. I’m going to have to say goodbye. I’m going to have to leave you, Max.
‘Emma, don’t go.’
– I have to. I’m going to leave you at the mercy of the elements. The snow will fall on you. The darkness will cover you. The elements have reduced you to this. Now they control you.
‘Don’t you have anything else to say to me? Because I’ve got something I want to say to you. Something I’ve been meaning to say for ages.’
– All right, then. One more thing. You go first.
‘OK. Here it is. I love you, Emma. I really do. I’ve been meaning to say it for days, but I never dared. Never had the nerve. But now it’s out. I love you. Always have. Ever since I first heard your voice.’
– Goodbye then, Max.
‘But … what were you going to say to me?’
– In three hundred yards, make a U-turn.
‘Emma …
‘Please don’t go.
‘Don’t leave me alone. Don’t leave me alone here.
‘Please.
‘Emma? Emma?’
Fairlight Beach
21
When I saw the Chinese woman and her daughter playing cards together at their restaurant table, the water and the lights of Sydney harbour shimmering behind them, I knew that it would not be long now, not long at all, before I found what I’d been looking for.
It was 11 April 2009: the second Saturday of the month.
I arrived at the restaurant at seven o’clock, and they arrived three-quarters of an hour later. They did not seem to have changed since I’d last seen them, on Valentine’s Day. They were just the same. I think the little girl might even have been wearing the same dress. And everything they did together at their table was just the same, as well. First of all they ate a big meal together – a surprisingly big meal, four courses each in fact – and then the waiter cleared all their plates and dishes away and brought some hot chocolate for the little girl and some coffee for her mother and then the Chinese woman took out her pack of cards and they started to play. Once again, I couldn’t tell exactly what game they were playing. It wasn’t a proper grown-up card game, but then again it wasn’t a childish one like snap, either. Whatever it was, they found it entirely absorbing. Once the game had started, they seemed to exist in a little cocoon of intimacy, oblivious to the presence of the other diners. The restaurant terrace was not quite as busy as it had been last time: partly because last time had been Valentine’s Day, of course, but also because Sydney had a noticeably cooler and more autumnal feel to it, already, and a lot of people had chosen to eat inside. I was even getting a little chilly myself, but still, I was glad that the Chinese woman and her daughter had chosen to stay out on the terrace, because it meant I could see them again just how I remembered them, with the water and the lights of Sydney harbour shimmering in the background. I tried to watch them unobtrusively, just the occasional glance in their direction, not staring openly or anything like that. I didn’t want to make them feel uncomfortable.
At first I was simply glad to see them. I was happy to savour the overwhelming sense of rightness, and calm, that came over me when I first saw them walk on to the restaurant terrace. After all, even though the waiter had assured me, not so long ago, that they came to this restaurant regularly on the second Saturday of every month, I’d still not quite been able to bring myself to believe that they would be here tonight. So my first reaction had been one of relief, pure and simple. This was rapidly succeeded, all the same, by a growing sense of anxiety. The fact was that, even after thinking about it for hours, I’d still not been able to come up with an appropriate way of introducing myself to them. Coming out with a tired old line like, ‘Excuse me, but haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’ would get me nowhere. If I said that the prospect of meeting them had been one of my main incentives for flying all the way over from London, on the other hand, it would probably freak them out. Was there anything I could tell them that might steer a middle ground between these two approaches? Perhaps if I were to tell them the truth: that I had first seen them at this restaurant two months ago, and ever since then they had become, for me, a sort of totem, a symbol of everything that a real relationship between two human beings should be, at a time when people seemed to be losing the ability to connect with one another, even as technology created more and more ways in which it ought to be possible … Well, I was going to get bogged down if I pursued that line of argument too far, but still, I reckoned that – with a bit of luck, if the right words managed to come to me somehow – this might just about be a feasible way of tackling it. And I had better hurry up, if I wanted any chance of speaking to them this evening. It was getting late, and the little girl was beginning to look tired, and any minute now they would probably be leaving. Already their card game seemed to be over and they were talking and laughing together again, having a friendly little quarrel about something or other while the Chinese woman looked around to see where the waiter was, presumably to ask for the bill.