The Hope (16 page)

“What now?”

“I want a drink of water, OK?”

She ran the tap and filled a mug. On her way back, she stopped and knelt down on Eddy’s side of the bed. His breathing was heavy and slow. She picked up his flick-knife, walked around to her side and sat on the edge with her back to him. Wedging the mug between her legs, she pressed the stud on the knife and the blade arced out in a sudden flash of silver. She laid her left arm out on her lap, exposing the pale flesh of the underside of her forearm.

“What you doing?” asked Eddy, his voice muffled by the pillow.

“Nothing. Just sitting.”

She tensed herself and drew the blade across her skin. Eddy kept it so sharp. She hissed in a breath through her teeth. Her skin parted and a dark rivulet flowed out, dripping on to her thigh. She held her arm over the mug and let the blood trickle into it. It made a tiny plopping sound.

After a couple of minutes, she held the gash up to her mouth and sucked at it until the blood congealed. All the time she was wincing with the pain but she did not let out a cry even though it was worse than the bite on her shoulder.

She wrapped a cloth around her forearm, clasped the knife shut, and stirred the contents of the mug with her finger. Then she drank about half.

“Eddy?”

“Mmph?” This time, he could not conceal his irritation.

“Would you drink this?”

“What is it?”

“Water.”

“No. I don’t want any.”

“Please, for me. If you love me.”

He propped himself up on his elbow and leaned towards her.

“I’m not thirsty, OK? What’s got into you? Stop hassling me and let me sleep.”

“Please. If you love me.”

Eddy deliberated. Perhaps this would be a good time to chuck her. No, he liked the girl, even if she did have some funny ways.

“All right. Give me.”

She handed the mug to him, making sure he had it tight in case it spilled. All she could see of him was the line of his cheek picked out in the light.

“I love you, Eddy.”

“I love you too, Diane. Cheers.”

Morning:

“Where the fuck’s my blade? What you done with my fucking blade?”

“Nothing, Eddy. I haven’t got it, honest. What would I want with it?”

“I don’t know, all kinds of crazy shit. I know you’ve fucking got it! Give it to me!”

“Don’t hit me, Eddy. It won’t bring your knife back if you hit me.”

“Yeah, it will. Because you’ve got it, bitch. Nobody else could have got it.”

“Someone might have come in during the night, what about that?”

“Bullshit!”

Eddy thwacked his arm across the side of her head and she was flung to the bed shrieking. He hit her again as she lay there sobbing, a couple of pounding blows to the small of her back.

“Where am I going to get another, huh? Where? I’m going to magic one up, huh? Bart ain’t got none, Push’s on the critical, who am I going to ask? Tell me that.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know.” Racked with tears, pleading.

“Well,” said Eddy, straightening up and making it look like it was the greatest of efforts for him not to thump her again. “Well. You find my blade before I get back, or I’ll beat the living shit out of you. Got that?”

“Yes.”

The cabin door thundered shut. Diane lay crying for a long time.

He came back. Eventually. It was in the small hours, and she had been lying awake all evening, every trembling minute spent framing an abject apology and listening out for his footsteps. He flung the door open and before she could open her eyes he said: “You still here?”

“Eddy, I found your knife. Why didn’t you just look for it this morning? I found it under the bed. Why didn’t you look for it?”

“Where is it?”

“I’m sorry. I should have looked for it. I’m sorry. Please don’t be angry, Eddy.”

“I’m not angry, darling. Where’s my blade?”

The way he filled that doorway, it was so … impressive. She knew why she loved him so badly. “Here, Eddy. I love you.”

She held out the knife towards him, the blade open, then brought her left hand up. Calmly, without ceremony, her eyes not leaving his, she hacked off the tips of three fingers.

“Jesus Christ!” breathed Eddy. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…”

Diane stared at her abbreviated fingers as if they no longer belonged to her – three stumps of bone cradled in purple meat, leaking blood. Her eyebrows were drawn down, shadowing her eyes. She turned her hand this way and that to examine it. Blood pattered down on to the blanket.

“Jesus, Diane…”

She spoke dreamily, revolted and fascinated at the same time.

“It’s for you, Eddy. For you.”

Eddy finally pulled himself together. He hurried over, tore a strip off the bedsheet and wound it around her hand. The three tips were lying on the bed, the skin grey and blotchy. The nails shone with varnish.

“Baby, it’s going to be fine. Be calm.”

“Oh, I’m fine, Eddy,” Diane said in a scary, dreamy voice. “Love doesn’t hurt.”

The makeshift bandage was soaked through already.

“Jesus, Diane, what am I meant to do?”

“We should eat the pieces, Eddy.”

“Don’t talk like that. That’s crazy talk. We should go and see the doctor, that’s what we should do. Jesus.”

He had forgotten she still had the knife until he felt the edge of the blade stinging his neck.

“We should eat them, Eddy,” she said and pressed the knife gently so that it nicked his skin.

“Put it away, darling. This is crazy talk. Put it away.”

“Do you love me, Eddy?”

“This is crazy talk, darling.”

The knife pressed deeper. There was a look in her eyes, wild, subtle, fearful. Eddy swallowed hard.

“Do you love me?”

“Of course I do. You know that. I tell you every night.”

“Boys lie, Eddy. I need proof. I need proof that you love me.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I’ve already told you.”

“No, but that’s crazy bullshit, darling.”

He supposed he might be able to grab the knife off her, twist it out of her hands, but he would have to move quickly. The bitch was deadly.

With the thumb and forefinger of her bandaged hand, she took one of the fingertips and held it up to his mouth.

“You drank me last night, Eddy. I’ve got the scar to prove it.” She showed him the scabby line down her forearm. “Now eat me.”

Eddy remembered drinking that water and he thought it tasted funny, but you couldn’t tell with the water on the
Hope
. It always tasted slightly salty. He feared he knew what she had put in it.

“No,” he said.

She pushed the morsel against his lips, which he was compressing shut. He felt a warm trickle down from the knife to the neckline of his T-shirt. Sweat prickled in his hair. “I’ll cut your neck open all the way.”

“I’ll have that blade off you in a second flat.” He was mumbling in order to keep his mouth closed.

“Try it.”

Why did he always get the nutcases? She’d seemed OK when they met, normal, bit nervy, but he’d put that down to her being cherry.

“Eat. If you love me.”

The back of his throat felt woollen and as he inhaled through his nose he could smell the nail varnish.

“Stop this, darling. I love you. I love you. OK?”

Diane jabbed the knife hard. Eddy let out a yelp and she slipped the fingertip in.

Eddy retched and gagged, trying to reach out for Diane. On his tongue the cold pad of the fingertip was smooth and dry, ragged at one end, the nail hard like a beetle’s carapace, the blood sickly. It seemed enormous, filling his entire mouth, touching the roof, his teeth, the insides of his cheeks.

Keeping the knife at his neck, she held her palm over his mouth and pinched his nostrils with her finger and thumb. His inhalations became panicky, urgent. A whine came from the back of his throat. Tears were crushed out from under his eyelids.

Still holding his nose, Diane raised her hand and kissed Eddy on the lips.

“I love you, Eddy. Now swallow.”

He spat hard. The fingertip flew out and smacked into her forehead. Her eyes swelled with shock.

“BITCH! FUCKING BITCH!”

He slammed her arm away, wrenching her wrist so that the knife tumbled away. Snatching it up, he pointed it at her and spat and spat and spat.

“YOU CRAZY FUCKING BITCH!” he roared.

“Eddy, don’t talk like that. It’s only because I love you so much –”

“Shut your face! You’re deviant, that’s what you are.” He put his hand to his neck and found blood. “De-fucking-viant.”

“Eddy –”

“I’m going to kill you. You’ve got five seconds to get out or I’m going to kill you.”

“Eddy –”

“Four. Three.”

She scrambled off the bed and pulled open the door.

“Two. And take all this fucking shit with you!”

He flung a handful of her clothing after her. Most of it fell over the edge of the walkway.

“But I love you!”

“Don’t want to see you again. Ever.”

Everyone has tiffs, thought Diane miserably as she wandered along the walkway and nursed her wounded hand. And then they talk it over and they get back together again and it’s like it was before, only better, because they need to know what it’s like to hate each other so that they can love each other more. That’s what Eddy doesn’t understand. At the moment he can only hate me, but when he’s calmed down he’ll love me again. Better, even.

Her hand throbbed mercilessly, and she supposed she should take it to the doctor. She doubted Eddy cleaned his knife much so there would be all sorts of germs on it and she might get an infection if she wasn’t careful.

The deck was darkened, service lights providing fitful interruptions that didn’t seem to improve things much.

Diane wandered a bit more, then, feeling drowsy, she squatted down in the drifting warm air from a heating vent and tried to sleep.

Poor Eddy, she thought. Poor, poor Eddy. He was hers, heart and mind, body and soul. He just didn’t know it yet.

She woke the next morning, hungry and nauseated. Her hand was stinging badly now, and the bandage was wet through. The tide-marks of the bloodstains reminded her of rose petals.

She would wait until midday before heading back to the cabin. She might leave him a note. Sometimes it was easier to write things down. You couldn’t be misunderstood, and what you wrote could be examined and re-examined until it sank in properly. She decided that her and Eddy’s problem was lack of communication, and that it was her job to improve matters. A note would be a start.

She came across a stopper and got talking to him, as was her habit. He told her a story about the Rain Man, which she didn’t believe, but something about his own life she found really interesting, the bit about gutting and slicing the fish that had killed all those people! Stoppers had big imaginations, she knew from experience, but this one was unusual. She found herself wanting to believe him, even if she couldn’t. She wanted to believe about the gutted fish.

Finally she said goodbye and went to the cabin. She still had the key, and so she let herself in. It was a mess, and she set about tidying up right away. She was hampered a bit by her hand but she did a good job of washing the sheets, folding Eddy’s clothes and putting her own clothes back in the drawers, wiping up the bloodstains.

Sitting on the bed with her knees hugged up to her chest, she predicted how surprised and pleased Eddy would be to come back and see her. He’d say he was glad she’d come back, he thought he’d lost her for good, please forgive him, he loved her. She thrilled with the idea. He would go up to the greenhouses and buy her flowers, even though they were hideously expensive. He’d say money was no object and there were some things more important than money. Red roses. For her. I’m sorry, darling.

Diane found the tobacco tin and consoled herself with a couple of Eddy’s toenails. She then recovered the other tin, the one with his hair inside, from the pocket of a pair of her jeans folded at the bottom of a drawer. The hairs were dark and stiff like wire. She had preserved them carefully, rescuing them from the pillow and the sheets and the plughole, separating them from her own, which she couldn’t see any reason to keep. There were straight ones from his head, and the slightly curly ones from his chest and armpits, and the very curly ones… She giggled to think where
they
had come from. She stroked a finger through the collection, stirred them round in a circle to reveal the dented metal underneath, held them up to the light one by one to see them glisten. If her mother and father could see her now, they would surely approve. When it came down to it, all they wanted was for her to be happy and here she was, deliriously so.

She gave the hairs names and invented little lives for them until Eddy returned.

Eddy was lying on the bed, stretched fully out and stripped naked. He was calm and, Diane thought, reconciled.

There were red roses all over the cabin, everywhere. She’d never suspected he loved her that much and he couldn’t possibly afford them, but the sight and the sentiment were breathtaking.

When he’d returned, there had been frenzied moments of passion. Diane’s love and pity had been powerful things, lending strength to her embrace and ecstatic fury to her caress. He had melted in her arms. He had fainted in the light of her love.

And then there was the stopper’s story…

Looking at him now, Diane, exhausted, satisfied, content, could only tell him again and again how much she loved him, and his reply did not need to be spoken, she trusted him that much.

Of course, it could never be the same again for her and Eddy. She’d been silly to think that. You only had to read his body language: the fingers of his ribcage thrusting up through the hole in his chest as if in prayer, the sagginess at the top of his scalp where the hair was dark and matted and folds of skin were torn back and points of bone gleamed through, the missing organs…

Diane wiped her mouth. He was hers now, body and soul, heart and mind.

DR MACAULAY’S CASEBOOK

Dr Chamberlain has read the last of Dr Macaulay’s casebooks twenty-eight times in almost as many months, and each time he closes the book he draws a deep breath and exhales slowly. There really does seem to be no cure.