Fog Heart (24 page)

‘A pint of plain.'

‘And for the young lady?'

‘Fuck off.'

The Saturday-evening crowd had claimed all the tables so he had to perch himself on a stool at the end of the bar, next to an ancient jar of pickled eggs and a hanging piece of cardboard that held brown strips of dead fish embalmed in Cellophane.

Charley puffed on a Connecticut Valley cigar that suited the lugubrious drift of his present mood. The trouble with drinking alone is that you end up thinking about what you want to forget. The worst part is, it begins to feel good.

Charley believed in Oona now.
What
he believed was far from clear, however. That she was one of those crazy women out of old folklore, women who could see and hear and know things that other human beings couldn't? Women possessed of a touch of madness and magic – at one time they were regarded as more or less the same. That much, yes; Charley would have to concede that. There was no other explanation for the fact that Oona had uttered a few things known only to himself. Such as the exchange with the shopkeeper, the warning he had consciously discounted later.

A little packet of woe you have to carry around with you for the rest of your foolish life.

Well, guilt was a fine thing in its own nasty way. There's nothing you can do about it, either. Once the little bugger moves into your house, it's there to stay.

But Fiona? Charley still resisted the notion that his dead child was somehow back in the everyday world. Oona might be able to read the deepest recesses of his mind, or she might see events that had happened long ago and far away – but that didn't mean a dead soul was on the loose and out for blood.

The idea somehow offended him. What was he supposed to make of it? That his daughter was a free-floating spirit currently in the vicinity, hovering over New Haven? Where was she at this very minute? How did she occupy herself when she wasn't speaking through Oona or appearing in Jan's dreams?

Charley resented the way that he had reacted. Oona had been in great distress, no doubt about it. Her act was real, and when he had finally grasped that, he had responded instinctively, reaching out and taking the poor girl into his arms, trying to comfort her until the terrible moment passed.

He didn't regret what he had done for her, but he did resent the way he had been manipulated into such an emotional state of mind. You silly eejit! If you ever read Dickens you'd probably break down and cry buckets when you got to the part where Little Nell died. Theatrics, is what it was.

Oddly enough, that he had come to accept Oona as a legitimate medium had had a kind of liberating effect on him. There was no longer any need to argue with himself about
that
point, so he could focus on the larger question: what did all of it mean? What did it say to him about his life? And Jan's.

But here, as before, Charley ran into a blank wall. He had not learned anything new. He saw no lesson. There was no dazzling revelation. The message from Fiona – if, indeed, you believed that Fiona had been there – amounted to nothing more than a suggestion of her presence. No doubt there were some people who would find spiritual comfort in that kind of message, but Charley wasn't one of them.

If there was an afterlife, a higher plane of being, then why would anyone who crossed over to it ever bother returning to this earthly realm and fretting about their past life?

Bugger the spiritual. Whether it was there or not, Charley couldn't deal with it. He found it easier and much more sensible to put his trust in science. Oona was genuine? Okay, fine. The human brain was a marvellous and mysterious organ, one that still defied anything like full understanding. So, let us say that the brain is capable of rare and remarkable feats, such as those Oona had apparently demonstrated. We don't understand how or why, but the answer must lie in the brain, still waiting to be discovered. It could have something to do with the electro-chemical nature of messages within the brain, low-frequency radio waves, or the way that matter and energy could be interchanged. Stuff like that. And it might have something to do with the nature of information itself: who was to say that the entire history of human life wasn't floating around permanently in the ether, tiny packets of data that could be accessed by human brains that had developed or been malformed in some peculiar way?

That made sense. The only trouble was, Charley couldn't be entirely sure about any one part of this business, and that was what so distressed him. He couldn't bear the thought that Fiona really might be in some state of unrest, in need of their help, or trying simply to communicate with them. If the spiritualists were right, what then? What could he do?

Play out the game with Oona, see where it led. But that was a depressing thought. Lonely, desperate people sitting around in a room in Westville, depending on every obscure word that emerged from the mouth of a bizarre prodigy. Deciphering whatever seemed to relate and discarding the rest.

Sir Walter Scott, for Chrissake.

It was hopeless, all hopeless.

*   *   *

Charley walked home, navigating Chapel, the Old Campus and the Green. He hadn't noticed how humid it was that night until he arrived back at the apartment and started to peel off his outer clothing. It was wet. He was drenched with sweat. It was far worse inside. They didn't own an air-conditioner and the windows were all closed so the sticky heat and humidity had simply accumulated, hour by hour, within the walls.

Couldn't count on Jan for anything any more. Charley opened all the windows. The night air was getting cooler, and it would clear out the apartment by morning.

He leaned close to Jan in the bedroom – she was asleep, and a low-grade snore emanated from her. Typical. She'd wake up in the morning with a headache and clogged sinuses if he didn't let in the air, and you couldn't tell her it was her own fault.

Charley padded around in his bare feet and underwear, going into the kitchen to grab a cold beer for a nightcap and then into his study to drink it within the protective shield of literature. His sacred womb-tomb of books.
Yes, and so what?
There are some people who can't even get to sleep unless they have a gun handy. Books were infinitely superior, the best refuge, and you couldn't accidentally blow your wife's head off with, say, the poetry of Derek Mahon. Though it might be interesting to try.

The beer was sufficient to ease him over the edge. Charley felt his body begin to swim as he finished it. He would find his way to sleep in no time, if he could find his way to bed – or even if he couldn't. Intoxication was too glorified a term. The grog had merely hammered his fraying consciousness into submission for a few hours. That was the point.

When he awoke, Charley realized a couple of things before he opened his eyes. He was in his own bed, with his body nestled in well-worn pockets and moulded around landmark bulges. At least he hadn't passed out on the narrow couch in his study or the sofa in the living room. And it was light outside, for light penetrated his eyelids – which felt as if they were bonded shut.

He knew it was still early because there were no sounds of traffic outside. So it was much too early to wake up on a Sunday morning. He didn't move, hoping to drift off again. But then he became aware of a small, persistent noise.

Human. Sobbing. Nearby. It was so muted that it was worse than wrong – it sounded like somebody half paralysed, or being strangled to death. It had to be Jan, he realized at last. She must be having a nightmare. Bloody nuisance. Charley pushed his hip against hers – or where hers would normally be but wasn't. He muttered something vaguely comforting, still trying not to let himself awaken completely. But the noise continued, accompanied now by a fretful rustling of the sheets.

Fuck me. He was waking up now, there seemed to be no way to avoid it. Charley pushed himself up on one elbow and forced open his sticky eyes. Jan was huddled against the headboard, her body as tight as a baseball. Tears were streaming from her eyes, and her fists were pressed so hard to her mouth that she looked as if she were trying to eat them.

Jaysus, now what? Charley was about to sit up and snap her out of it when he heard another rustle from below. He turned his face and saw a crow perched on the footboard of the bed – a huge crow, feathers greasy and iridescent, like gasoline on asphalt, a pair of amber eyes, stark and baleful.

‘What the—'

There was another one on Jan's dressing table, one on his bureau, a pair on top of the television set – there must have been a dozen in the room. In some useless corner of his brain Charley realized that he had not only opened most of the windows last night but the outer screens as well, enabling these hideous crows or ravens –
corbies
– to enter the apartment. But it did him no good to know that now. He began to scream at them.

He grabbed his pillow and swung at the nearest bird, yelling in fear and anger. That kicked a prop loose within Jan, and she began to wail loudly as her fingers fanned across her face. The crow spread its wings, rose from the footboard and the others began to stir.

‘Get out! Get out of here!'

Charley continued to scream as he swung the pillow at them. He reached down beside the bed, got hold of a shoe and flung it at one. He hit a small lamp and knocked it off the dressing table. That set all of the birds in motion. Suddenly the room was full of crows, hovering almost lazily. Their wings seemed enormous, unfolding, flapping, filling the air with black slashes, and the movements created a terrible leathery clamour of increasing noise. They cawed and squawked as they circled about like sadistic harpies.

Charley felt like a madman, screaming, swinging the pillow, grabbing the clock, a book, slippers – whatever he could get his hands on – and flinging them at the ugly beasts. He had a definite sense of losing his mind and not caring.

He felt incredibly vulnerable, naked but for a pair of boxer shorts. But the crows stayed away from him, and they found their way out of the window at a sneeringly indifferent pace. He tried to smash the last one with the pillow, thinking wildly that he would tear it apart with his bare hands. But the evil bird slipped out of reach and disappeared, braying loudly as it wheeled off towards Orange Street.

There were splotches of crow shit everywhere, he discovered, as he moved through the apartment, slamming down the screens. He was stepping in it in his bare feet, but he didn't care. As soon as the windows were secure, Charley went straight to the study to get a drink. His hands shook as he poured a large Powers, downed it in two gulps and splashed another measure into the glass. It hit his stomach like liquid fire and he nearly heaved. His whole body trembled and his breath came in ripping gasps.

‘What do you want? What do you want?'

19

Oliver seemed to be in a good mood on Sunday afternoon when they drove up to New Haven. He smiled a lot at her, although it was that quick and easy business smile of his. He hummed to the music he put on the CD player (Thin Lizzy) and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. Perhaps he really was in a better state of mind, but Carrie had her doubts. The day had turned black and rainy and traffic was slow on the Interstate, which usually made him fume with impatience.

‘I told you about the others,' she said.

‘What others?'

‘Oh. Sorry, I thought I did. Oona has asked another couple to sit in with us today. I don't know who they are.'

‘Why are they going to be there?'

‘She thinks it might help,' Carrie told him. ‘They've been going through something similar, I guess.'

She thought Oliver would be annoyed, but he merely gave it a few moments' consideration, and then chuckled.

‘Maybe she wants increased psychic vibrations,' he said, with a sidelong glance at her. ‘The more the merrier.'

‘Oona hopes that our presence might help make a breakthrough on their side, and vice versa.'

‘What exactly is a breakthrough?'

‘I – well, I'm not sure.'

‘I suppose we'll know it if it happens.'

Carrie felt grateful – Oliver was being so reasonable, not at all negative. The traffic began to improve once they got east of Bridgeport, but the leaden sky turned blacker and the rainfall rapidly increased.

‘It's a tremendous strain on her.'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘It must be.'

*   *   *

Another couple. It was a new wrinkle, but why should Oliver care? Safety in numbers. Maybe it was Oona's way of multiplying the ambiguities, thereby making it easier for the punters to find associations in the outpouring of her words and images.

Play along. Oliver had already convinced Carrie that he was sceptical of the whole thing. It seemed necessary, if he were to preserve his freedom of action. If Carrie knew that he believed in Oona's powers as much as she did, he would inevitably be drawn into the process to a much greater degree. Now he could act like a concerned husband, but an agnostic. He maintained a slight but significant distance. Carrie knew that he would be there for her but that ultimately it was her problem, not his.

And later, whatever might happen, she would be less inclined to think that it could involve him.

Besides, he believed in Oona's powers – but not in Oona. At least not the way Carrie did. Whatever the explanation, Oona knew something about him, and that created a sense of threat that Oliver could not tolerate. He wasn't afraid of being hauled back to India to face trial – that was absurd, impossible.

But where would Oona stop? He could not let the process go on indefinitely, if it meant that, among other things, he was going to be peeled like an onion in front of Carrie. Fortunately, Oona didn't seem to have much control over what she was doing. Oliver had convinced himself – and he knew he might be wrong – that he could monitor the situation and somehow intervene in time to head off any new problems before they arose. Before Oona or Roz fully understood. Before Carrie began to wonder about him. Before he started to feel the pressure and had to take more serious action. It was a dodgy game. That was the only good thing about it.