The Ice Child (33 page)

John was lying on his back.

He was past the trees, and up in the open, on the stretch of downland above the wood. The sun was hot, now, on his face, and he stared into the sky, arms folded over his chest, feet crossed at the ankle.

He liked to come up here. It was quiet. He would often come up alone, at night. He had got used to it, and even if he lay here for hours, he no longer felt the hardness of the ground. It was a better bed than the one he had had in Bodrum, at least. There he had slept in the back of a van for nine weeks.

It wasn’t far enough away, of course. Not here.

But then, nowhere was far enough away.

Still, the Bodrum work had suited him. The site had been off a jetty that had been constructed between two sheer cliff walls to accommodate the divers, the dive gear, the weights, and lifting apparatus. It had been an enormously complicated operation, the retrieval of four hundred amphorae from a vessel that had sunk in the twelfth century.

He worked up to the team of six, learning from scratch—the decompression stops, the regulators, the location of the backup sources of the breathing gases, the technical work of gridding the site, the airlifts to remove sediment. He had loved it, and most of all he had loved the utter silence of the dives. It could be desperately mind-numbing work, especially if the current got up and the visibility dropped, but that was exactly what he wanted from it: to be in the silence of the underwater dig, even almost invisible in the wreaths of silt, with only his own breath for company, the staccato intake of oxygen. He liked to go down when others were reluctant to. He liked his world compressed to these few obscure feet of sea floor. He liked, too, the cold of the water, welcoming the sensation when the coldness got to you—and it did, even in those seas. He relished the anesthetic of cold.

More than all the rest, however, was the realization that he didn’t have to think down there, and that he was reduced to the few square yards in front of him. More often than not he had to be reminded to stop work, because his dive time was expired.

He even enjoyed—if enjoyment was the true description of anything that went on in his head—the suspension of the decompression stops. The other divers complained of the occasional boredom of waiting. But he looked forward to it. He wanted the complete necessity of doing nothing, and thinking nothing. If he hated anything at all, it was actually returning to the surface—the explosion into light, the rushing inward of sound and color, the voices of the other divers.

Four hundred amphorae. He would have preferred to bring each one up himself, singly. He would like to be doing it now, floating in silence. Listening to his air thinning. Hanging at decompression level, eyes closed, tugged gently backward and forward by the sea.

But the job had only lasted six months. That was the nature of the work, and its great drawback. He could never lose himself for long.

“John,” said a voice.

He looked up, shading his eyes.

“Hello,” Alicia said.

He stared a second, then scrambled to his feet.

“Aren’t you going to give me a hug?” she asked.

He hung back at first, but then walked over to her and opened his arms. She returned his embrace, resting her head temporarily on his shoulder. “Oh, John,” she whispered.

He stepped back. She held him at arm’s length and stared at him. “Look at you,” she murmured.

“What’s the matter?” he said.

“Well, John …” She waved her hand to encompass him; then stopped.

He was filthy, as if he hadn’t washed in days. Alicia tried not to show her utter dismay. She tried to smile, biting the inside of her cheek to stop her eyes filling with tears.

Words were rushing into her mouth. She wanted to take his hand and pull him away, get him in the car, take him home immediately. She forced herself to stay calm. “Shall I sit down?” she said.

She perched on the grass. He sat down alongside her.

“What a lovely spot,” she said. Though, in truth, she saw nothing. Her eyes were ranging over his face. John didn’t return the glance: he picked at a piece of grass alongside him. “How are you?” she asked.

“Fine.”

“You don’t look fine at all.”

He shrugged.

She swallowed hard. “Are you glad to see me, John?” she asked.

He smiled a little.

“I had to come,” she said.

“Okay,” he murmured.

“Your letter,” she said. “I can’t …” She stopped. She took a handkerchief out of her bag and pointedly wiped her eyes. But looking up at him again, she was shocked to see that it had had no effect on him. He was gazing away from her, across the fields.

“You’ve broken my heart,” she whispered.

There was no response.

“John,” she said. “Two years. Two whole years … what did I do to deserve that?”

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

“If you knew how worried I was. Worried absolutely sick, John. How could you do that?”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated.

“And only to write twice, with no addresses …”

He turned toward her. “Look,” he said. “I am going, so if you’ve come here to stop me, it’s been a wasted journey.”

She gave an affronted little gasp. “Is that all you have to say?” she asked.

“What do you want?” he asked. “If you want to stop me—”

“Who am I to stop you?” she said. “As if I could. I’m only your mother. I’m only the person who cares most for you in the world.”

He plunged his face, momentarily, into his hands. “Oh, please, not that,” he muttered. “Don’t start all that.” He dropped his hands. “If you care that much, you’d be glad I was doing what I wanted,” he said. “Finally what I wanted, Mother. You stopped me before. But he’s made the offer again, and I’m going.” He threw the twisted stem of grass that he had been holding onto the ground. “I’m going to Canada to work with Richard Sibley,” he said. “He’s going to Gjoa Haven this summer, all right? I told you.”

“It’s ridiculous. Going off like this. Like some sort of hippie, John. That’s what you look like.”

“Fine,” he said, bitterly. “That’s fine with me.”

“As if you hadn’t a home, or a penny to your name.”

“I’m doing it,” he said. “I’m going.”

“And what are you doing for money?” she asked.

“I’ve got the airfare. I’ve saved it.”

“If you came back home, and went next year, next summer,” she told him, “I would pay the airfare then.”

He stared at her. “Why would I want to do that?” he said.

“Because I would like to see you, have you home for a while. Look after you,” she said.

“No, Mother.”

“Look at you,” she said. “You’re obviously wretched. Come home.”

“No,” he said.

“I don’t know why you went away,” she continued. “But whatever it was—”

“I had to,” he said. He rubbed his hands over his face, then wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “I kept thinking about it,” he mumbled, almost to himself. “If I weren’t there in Cambridge, I wouldn’t think about it.”

“Think about what?” she asked.

“The accident,” he said. He got to his feet. He looked for a moment as if he were going to walk away.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

He shook his head, half laughing, half grimacing. “No,” he muttered. “You don’t understand because you don’t listen, do you? I tried to tell you. You just wouldn’t listen to me.”

“But—”

“It was my fault.”

Alicia stared at him. “The accident?”

“Yes.”

“It was not!”

“You weren’t there,” he said. “He wouldn’t have been in the road at all if it weren’t for me.”

“And you wouldn’t have been there at all if it weren’t for her,” she said. “Jo Harper. Have you thought of that?”

He looked up. “Where is she?” he asked. “Do you know?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” she lied.

“Is she still in Cambridge? How is she?”

“Who?” Alicia asked, confused.

“Catherine.”

Alicia at last realized who he was talking about. “John,” she said, “it’s in the past. Everything.”

He turned his head away, stared out over the slope of the hill.

“Come home,” she said.

“How many more bloody times.”

“There’s no need to punish me.” Alicia wept. “I did nothing.”

“God,” John muttered, “I’m not punishing you.”

“What else would you call it?” she said.

“It’s not like that.”

“Have you any idea what it’s been like for me?” she asked.

“Mum—”

“You don’t, do you?” she said. “The suffering you’ve caused me …”

He started to walk.

“What are you doing?” she said, surprised.

“I’ve got to work,” he said. “This was my lunch break.”

“I haven’t finished,” she said.

She ran after him, almost tripping over the tussocky grass. “John,” she called. She grabbed his arm. He stopped, but didn’t look at her. “Listen …” she said.

He lifted his head. “You don’t understand,” he said. “You never will.” Slowly, his entire face flushed. She realized that he was shaking. “Always you,” he said. “This isn’t about me, or Dad. You don’t give a toss for either of us.”

“That’s not true! How can you say that!”

“All you think of is yourself. You don’t care about Catherine.”

“Catherine?” she echoed.

“I left her too,” he said. “Did you ever think about that? I loved her. I still love her.”

“Then”—Alicia wavered—“come home. I’m sure we could find her.”

“I can’t do that!” he shouted. “Don’t you understand? Can’t you see what I’m fucking well telling you? Can’t you?”

She stared at him open mouthed. Shocked by the desperation, the violence, in his voice.

“I killed him!” he shouted. “Do you understand
that!
Jo was right. I killed him. I saw it in Catherine’s face when we went to that chapel.”

“No,” Alicia whispered, “no, you’re wrong.”

“I’m not wrong,” he said. He was ashen, gasping for breath.

“John, darling—”

He tore himself out of her grasp. “Look”—he stumbled over his words—“I’ve tried to escape it for two years. Get away, and not think about it. Go to some of the places
he
went to. But he wasn’t there. There’s only one place on earth that he can be.”

Alicia was aghast. Faced with the true and living breakdown of her son, instead of her own dramas of embittered grief, she was helpless. She saw the depth of his pain for the first time, and it frightened her as nothing had ever frightened her before.

“You’re ill,” she told him, realizing that it was true. “You need to be with people who love you,” she said. “Who can help you. If you like, you can see Catherine, and—”

He wheeled around. “Do you think I can look her in the face before I’ve sorted this out?” he cried.

“Oh, John … darling—”

“Don’t
darling
me!” he shouted. He clenched his fists and pressed them to either side of his head. “I can’t go back. I can’t walk where he used to walk. I can’t go into that college. I can’t see the people he taught. I can’t see people like Peter, or Catherine, or anybody. I don’t want to see it in their faces.”

“But you won’t,” she objected. “They don’t think that you killed anyone, John.”

He stared at her. “They do,” he said. “And even if, by some bloody miracle, they didn’t,
I
would know.
I
would have it in here
,” he said. Tears came to his eyes: they began to fall. With terrible poignancy Alicia saw the first few drops make tracks in the dirt of his face. She tried to wipe them away, but her son pushed her off.

“I’ve got it inside,” he told her, weeping. Distraught, he covered his face with his arm.

“John,” Alicia murmured, “please, we’ll see someone. We’ll see a counselor. A grief counselor. They’re awfully good. They would help, I know they would.” She was wringing her hands. “He was your father, it’s right to feel terrible, you wouldn’t be human if you didn’t …”

He laughed suddenly. Dropped his hand. A crooked, mirthless grin was on his face. “Human?” he said. “Christ! I’m not human.”

She gazed at him, horrified. “What do you mean?” she said.

He waved her away. “I left the human race,” he told her. “I’m out in the cold.”

She felt, then, an awful wrench in her chest. The pain was so sudden and so crushing that she was forced to take shallow, rapid breaths. It ground on for half a minute. Flecks danced in front of her eyes. Then it eased. Never in her life had she felt an emotion like it.

“John, dear,” she said, “that’s not true. You’re my son, my only son. Please come home with me. Please.”

He turned, finally, and looked at her.

Somewhere below them, disconnected sounds floated up. Far beyond the farm a dog was barking. She heard the rusty-gate call of pheasant; a car was passing along the lane that she had driven up that morning: she saw the sunlight flash on its windshield and roof, heard the note of the engine die away as it disappeared through the trees. Soon, all she could see was its color as it turned a corner by a house half a mile away in the valley. Then, even the color was lost.

She met John’s eyes and saw that she had lost him too.

“I have something to do,” he said. “Something to finish.”

He started to walk quickly down the slope.

“Go home, Mother,” he told her. “Go home.”

Twenty-seven

Jo dreamed the same thing, over and over again.

She was in a car on a roller-coaster ride. The metal shoulder harness was down: the breeze, as the car made its slow ascent, was cool on her face. She could hear the noise as the chain below turned over its tracks—a regular, heavyweight sound that shook through the car and set her teeth on edge. Gradually, as the car rose up the steep incline, she could see the tops of trees. Water reflecting on the lake below. Crowds passing by, their faces occasionally turned up to look. Distant music.

The seat below her was hard. There was no one else in the car, no one else on the ride. All the other cars were empty, and as the car stopped on the very peak of the rise, there was a moment of absolute silence and stillness, the breeze stronger now, bearing ice-cold scents of water, salt, decay.

The decay would always surprise her. Its fierce, pungent, and unexpected assault on the senses. She would turn her head to avoid it, and then she would see Sam, her Sam, passing on a parallel track, helplessly ascending another ride, the cars of that ride slipping past her, just out of her reach.