Mercy Seat (6 page)

He was twelve months dead now, something Jenny had discovered only in the spring when Christine had broken a silence of ten years to write her a brief letter, and I wondered if her clumsy outburst had simply been her way of invoking him – conjuring him up somehow to be with
us – right from the start. I'd already learned from Jenny that she'd left the cult at eighteen to train as a primary school teacher, and in fact the group had fizzled away at about that time until all that were left were one or two of the more desperate and vulnerable hangers-on. But she'd stayed loyal to the man himself if not his beliefs, and had nursed him for a year through the series of heart attacks that weakened and finally killed him.

Christine looked up from studying her feet then and considered me instead for a moment, not meeting my eye but staring hard at my chest in that distant but curious way she had, then laughed freely, as if she'd been playing a game with me all the time. You're much younger than I expected, she announced.

I shrugged, nonplussed.

Let's go back down, she said lightly, and led the way.

Jenny was sitting upright on the edge of the sofa watching TV, a big black and white valve set that Clement had brought up to the room ‘to help you keep the little one occupied, see,' soon after we moved in. It had to be thumped into life most evenings, and whined faintly, like a creature, when we switched it off at night. Michael was floundering at Jenny's feet. As I hunted out three wine glasses I heard her explain to Christine that he was learning to crawl.

Where are the bottles? I called through.

In the fridge. Leave them a while to get cold. That wine's no good unless it's cold.

I laid the glasses on the coffee table in front of the TV, then sat on the arm of the sofa next to Jenny. I don't want to wait too long, I said. I'm getting quite tired. I'm not right yet.

I know. I can tell. We won't wait long. She rested her
head against my side.

I shifted my leg to balance the new weight of her leaning against me. I was feeling waves of heat roll over me and the waistband of my jeans was starting to irritate the sores. I put a hand through the buttons of my shirt and tried to ease the rash away from where the denim was pressing. The sores felt more prominent now – small, hard, fiery nubs.

Michael had wormed his way to the low coffee table and was trying to get at the glasses. I leaned forward and pulled him back, which started him grizzling. Leaning forward made me dizzy and I felt a rush of irritation with Jenny for being too absorbed with the TV to shift Michael herself.

What is this anyway? I asked.

It's an old film with Bob Hope. Him and his friend are out of work.

Oh, great.

Well
we're
enjoying it. She looked at her sister for confirmation.

I'm happy, Christine agreed. I like the old black and white films. I like them best.

I was starting to sweat quite freely now, which made the sores around my waist and back itch even more.

Michael was almost at the glasses again. For Christ's sake, Michael, I said and fetched him back more roughly, making him bawl. Keeping hold of his middle I lifted him to my shoulder and carried him through into the bedroom. I sat with him on the bed and talked nonsense and hummed tunes till he'd calmed back down, then gave him my watch to play with. Soon, Jenny brought through his bottle, kissed me on the forehead, and disappeared
back to the film while I fed him. He sucked greedily at the teat, staring at my face with grey, wide open eyes until the bottle was empty. It was long past his usual bedtime but he didn't seem sleepy at all.

It's always open season on princesses, Bob Hope told someone. The sun was low now and the weak beams were angled flat across the room. Jenny said something to Christine that I couldn't catch. Soon after I heard the door on the mini-fridge opening and a clink as one of them drew a bottle out. There was quiet for a while. In the movie, a woman with a soft English accent was speaking low and earnestly as if her life depended on what she was saying.

Come back through for some wine, Jenny called. Don't be such a hermit.

The wine, like all the wine Jenny's mother used to make and send us, was cloying even though it had cooled off. It was strong, too, and soon the phases of heat and chill blended into one long, numb sweat. The film ended without my noticing, and soon Jenny and Christine were occupied with Michael and steadily working their way through the last bottle, though it was Jenny doing most of the drinking. The itching around my middle seemed to have stopped, but I kept catching myself gouging at the sores anyway. I felt profoundly sad, but had no idea why.

It was getting dusky in the room before Jenny checked the time. Look at the clock, she said. No wonder Michael's getting grumpy.

I started telling them about the cockroach and the students in the kitchen, but they were so disgusted about there being roaches around the place at all that I couldn't get the story finished. I gave up trying and watched them drink and fool around with Michael. I was remembering
my mother from a time when I was six or seven years old – not long after my father had cleared out and a few years before she fell terminally ill. With my father gone we'd moved into a damp, run-down terraced house a few doors down from my grandparents. It was night and I was watching her wipe out a whole colony of roaches – black pats she called them – that had nested behind the fireplace. She'd never have found them except she was having the old Victorian hearth ripped out and getting a gas fire put in. Her brother Roy was doing the heavy work, and he uncovered them. Iesu Grist, Liz, I remember him saying, have a look at this.

I thought she'd be upset because I knew she hated the things, but she was delighted – exhilarated, in fact – and I can still remember the strange, party-like atmosphere that took over our usual gloom. She got Roy to help her boil up the kettle and a few big saucepans of water and I kept watch on the nest, getting a good look at this wonder because I knew it wouldn't be there much longer for me.

It was a winter morning and the roaches were all dormant, plastered to the rotten mortar like a kind of glossy fungus. There were smaller young ones studded among the long slick humps of the adults. I remember longing to touch them, to run a finger over the sleeping smooth bumps, but not daring to wake them. When Roy swept the beam of the torch over their backs they glistened like some Samurai's breastplate of lacquered, black scale armour.

When the water was ready my mother came through, Uncle Roy in tow, and stood me back out of the way. She had thick oven-gloves on and held the heavy steaming kettle out in front of her with both padded hands.

I expected something frantic, but all they did when the water licked over them was drop neatly off and patter into what was left of the grate. It didn't even seem to damage them. It was as if they were being minted into long black coins. When the kettle was done she took a steaming saucepan from Roy and scoured out the last few of them that had found deeper niches in the mortar.

I remember what my mother said to me after Roy had gone. That's the benefit of having family to help you, she told me. You don't have to be ashamed about what you might find.

I don't want any more wine, Christine said at last, and she said it so soberly and definitely that it altered the whole atmosphere.

Jenny looked around and seemed shocked at how quickly the room had darkened. God, it's gloomy all of a sudden, she said.

I'm going to bed, I told them. It's this virus. I don't feel right.

Will you take the cot through? We'll have him in with us, she said to Christine. We normally keep the cot in here, but he'll only wake you.

I wouldn't mind.

No, no, said Jenny.

I dragged the cot after me into the bedroom and set it near the foot of the bed before closing the door behind me. I undressed quickly and got under the covers, desperate to lie down and settle my head. Lying still, I could hear the TV and snatches of their conversation through the wall. It occurred to me that the student teacher could probably hear just as much of our lives every night of the week.

After about half an hour Jenny came through with Michael sleeping in her arms. She put him to bed without a word then crept over to me.

Are you awake?

I grunted.

We're just talking, she slurred. I won't be long. She touched my shoulder with her fingertips. It was very dark in the room. How are you feeling? She bent closer and I could smell the flowery scent of the wine on her breath. She kissed me on the cheekbone. Where are you? she said, and found my lips.

I waited a minute or so after she'd gone back in to Christine, then got out of bed, pulled on my dressing gown and padded out to the corridor and up to the toilet. There was a smell of dope in the air around the bathroom, but it was faint and could have come from anywhere. Inside, standing in front of the mirror, I had a good look at the sores. Some of them were ugly where I'd scratched them, a map of angry red blotches banding my stomach. I splashed my face and some of the rash with cold water before going back down.

I don't know how long Jenny and Christine stayed up talking. I know Jenny would have been trying to fill in a lot of blank space. I don't know what Christine wanted. Jenny had explained to me the week before Christine arrived that now their father was dead things would go better between them. I thought I'd lost my only sister for life, I remember Jenny telling me in the days before Christine arrived. I thought I'd never know or care if she lived or died. Can you imagine that; your own sister? Your own family?

I thought I could imagine it, but didn't say so.

Now, while they talked, I drifted in and out of sleep,
escaping in a sweat from nightmares, then falling back into them. All I remember now about the dreams is the figure of Jenny's father. He was dead, I understood in the dream, though there was nothing to show it. He was trying to tell me something, calling to me from a small round window high up in a blank wall. One moment it was his face, the next moment he was using Christine's, at the same window, white and expressionless. When her lips moved I was suddenly awake and listening to the murmurings through the wall, the blood knocking in my head.

At some point during the long night Jenny came to bed. Even in the state I was in I could sense her happiness and excitement. She lay close and trapped my feet with her own, then she moved a foot up and down my shin. The soles of her feet were deathly cold.

Don't Jen, you're freezing, I murmured. Her feet must be white, it occurred to me, like Christine's face in the dream. I'm asleep, I said.

She chuckled. No you're not. Let me talk.

I gasped as she slid an icy palm between my legs. I eased an arm free and hooked it behind her head on the pillow.

I'm so happy she's here, she whispered. It's like a miracle. We get on just like old friends. She paused for a while and I could hear her breathing. I thought he'd robbed me for life. I never told you, but it used to make me so lonely. I hated him. I hated him for it.

Just before I fell back into sleep I remember her lifting her head from the pillow and insisting, I want you to like Chris. I want you both to get on. We're all family now. I've forgiven her everything.

I nodded.

Now he's gone, I've got so much hope for her.

I could sense her staring hard at the side of my face and was suddenly afraid to turn and make eye contact. I could smell the wine on her breath again.

Do you like her? I know you haven't had much time, but do you think you'll like her? Do you think you could love her like a sister? She nudged me and clasped her frozen feet around mine. Luke? she said.

I'm sure I'll like her, I said, drugged with sleep, wanting nothing more than to fall away into the dark, away from this strange interrogation.

I hope so. That's what I really hope.

Me too, then, I mumbled. That's what I hope too.

*

Over the next few days the virus got worse and I spent most of the time in the flat, either exhausted in bed or looking after Michael while Jenny took Christine around the town. To begin with I tried to keep working my shifts at the warehouse – I had no chance of sick-pay – but as it took hold of me harder I could barely get up the stairs to the bathroom without resting, so I called Anzani and told him I wouldn't be in for what was left of the week. Jenny was pleased, despite the lost money: it meant she could use up the last of her holiday leave spending time with Christine, who still had a full month before term started again. She was teaching then in a small prep school outside Cardiff, and sometimes spent a few hours after breakfast preparing, with child-like concentration, meticulous, colourful lesson plans and projects for her classes – The
World Inside a Rock Pool, An Octopus's Garden, Selkies and Mermaids – though as it turned out she would never get the chance to use them.

The weather stayed fine, the usual cool summer wind blowing in from the sea most days until evening, then everything growing calm again and the rooms of the guesthouse glowing in the rays of the setting sun. Sometimes Jenny would take Christine out on a bus trip and they'd go inland to little market towns or along the coast to better beaches. At the end of Christine's first week they went all the way to Swansea, leaving on the early bus and getting back after dark.

At 6 every morning Christine slipped out quietly, made her way to the far end of the beach in the shadow of Constitution Hill and swam, on calm days, for at least thirty minutes around the headland and back. The first time, Jenny – incredulous, and convinced the currents would sweep her away – insisted on us taking Michael and watching her from the rocks, ready to run for a telephone at any sign of trouble. Christine laughed at her sister's concern but said she didn't mind if we really wanted to trail along and be bored. She swam a slow, smooth breaststroke that looked steady enough to carry her all the way to America if she'd wanted. At the furthest point from land she trod water for a time, the dark speck of her head motionless and barely visible against the gunmetal grey of the water. Why isn't she moving? Jenny asked. What's she doing out there? Maybe she's got cramp and can't swim any more. But after a minute or so the tiny paleness of her face began dipping and reappearing again, and we knew she was coming back to us.