Breaking Light (27 page)

‘It's a beautiful story. It sort of hints at the heart of a mystery, doesn't it?'

‘Hmm,' he muttered, wondering if her delight was genuine or whether she was mocking him for telling that stupid anecdote. Was he flirting?

‘Would you like a cup of tea?' Mrs Sarobi said. ‘I brought a thermos flask.'

‘I'd love some.'

‘Here.' She picked up a couple of empty buckets and turned them upside down.

They sat down, side by side, in the early autumn sun. The plastic pail buckled dangerously under Mr Askew and he tried to reduce his weight by resting only on his right buttock. They sat in silence for a while, sipping their tea and squinting against the lowering rays of the sun. There was a smell of newly-dug earth and jasmine around them and a few waning leaves, although not too many, drifted through the polished air and settled at their feet. Mr Askew was about to speak, but saw Mrs Sarobi's boots, so little, nimble and delicate, on the ground next to his own shoes and remained silent, so that, in the end, it was Mrs Sarobi who had to break their delicious silence.

‘I wish,' she said, dreamily, ‘that we had a wall at our backs,
something to shelter us from the wind. Then this would be our bower of bliss. Just ours.'

‘Bower of bliss,' he repeated, blushing and snorting through his nose. But he could not hide a smile of delight.

He was just about to add something quite schmaltzy, the kind of thing he would never normally say but that seemed to be called for at that moment, when Mrs Sarobi exclaimed, ‘Oh, look. Isn't that Mrs Ludgate?' And it was, of course. ‘What is
she
doing here?'

What indeed. Mr Askew blinked in bafflement. His left leg was hurting where he was straining to keep his weight off the bucket. Mrs Ludgate was wearing three-quarter-length trousers that were straining a bit over her calves as she pushed up the slope, hands on her knees. She walked with her head down, an unspeakable leopard-print sun hat shading her face. The sheep on her fleece jacket seemed to be skipping more exuberantly than ever. Mr Askew swallowed and looked beseechingly at Mrs Sarobi. ‘Is it too late to hide amongst the rhubarbs?' he asked, realising that he was trapped.

‘Don't be foolish.' Mrs Sarobi laughed and lifted her hand in a greeting.

If Mrs Ludgate had seen the wave, she ignored it. When she reached them, she looked up, as if in surprise, and uttered, flatly, ‘Oh, it's you.' Her face was puffed up like a cow's udder before milking, Mr Askew noted.

Mrs Sarobi smiled nervously. She had not been prepared for this. ‘Um … Hello; how are you?'

‘Fine; just out for a bit of a stroll. I was about to post a card.' She removed the hat and squinted at the sun.

‘I see … To your daughter?'

‘Nah.'

Mrs Sarobi smiled again, not knowing quite what to say.

‘Thought I might save on the postage, delivering it myself.'

‘That's crafty of you, especially if it's for somebody local.'

‘Yeah, well … Here it is.'

‘What? For me?' Mrs Sarobi hesitated, not quite believing.

Mrs Ludgate's outstretched hand seemed to tremble for a moment. ‘To say thank you for the gift – of the jam. It was better than I thought.'

Mrs Sarobi smiled in relief and accepted the card. ‘I'm pleased to hear it.'

Mr Askew looked at the two women in disbelief. It was clear that something was going on between them, some new connection that he was not part of. Too taken aback to toughen, he stood up and offered his bucket to Mrs Ludgate. ‘Please,' he said, ‘sit down.'

She looked at him suspiciously. ‘Er, thanks …'

Mrs Sarobi was the first to gather herself. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?' she asked, refilling the mug she had just been drinking from. ‘I don't have any fresh mugs … Hope you don't mind.'

Mrs Ludgate accepted the mug with a nod, but hesitated before drinking from it. Then she put her lips cautiously to the rim, almost not touching.

The other two watched her drink, as if she was a child doing something for the first time, a child passing some kind of test – a
rite de passage
. At once, Mr Askew became horribly aware of himself, standing there, looking down at the bare head of the woman drinking. Her head bent over the mug so that he could see the whiteness at the nape of her neck where her hair would normally sit. He was conscious of the unbearable intimacy of
the scene, of the three of them, ageless in the isolation of the moment. He felt again the stickiness of his palms as he tried not to sweat in Michael's friendship chair. Nothing has changed, he thought to himself. Ageing is just the passing of time. There's nothing more to it. Nothing more. ‘Honest, Gabe.'

‘What was that?' Mrs Sarobi asked with a special kind of tenderness, leaning closer from her bucket. The moment was gone.

‘What?'

‘You said something.'

‘Did I? Oh, I'm sure it was nothing. Nothing at all.'

‘That's professors for you,' Mrs Ludgate confirmed to Mrs Sarobi, pleased to understand them so well. ‘They've got so much stuff in their heads that it sometimes has to come out in little puffs, like steam from a kettle. He does it all the time, you know – talks to himself. Although …' she said, pausing for a moment, cradling the mug in both hands. ‘Although, quite often, it's as if he's talking to somebody else. In the beginning, when I first started coming to Oakstone, I used to think there was somebody else in the room with him, but there never was, was there?'

‘So, you live on your own up at that farm, then?' Mr Askew interrupted quickly, with feigned innocence, hoping, for a moment, that the change of subject might act as a kind of screen, densely erected between them, to protect him from the onslaught of truth. ‘Must be lonely at times.'

‘Gabriel, please …' Mrs Sarobi warned, but was ignored.

‘As a matter of fact …' Mrs Ludgate started bravely, but seemed to falter. Her hands shook in a sudden spasm, spilling some tea on her white trainers. ‘As a matter of fact, I prefer being on my own.' She fell quiet and looked down at her stained shoes, frowning. The yellow tea-stain on the white leather reminded
her of piss – as if she had wet herself. You disgusting pig. Wait until Daddy gets home! Sometimes, when ‘waiting for Daddy to get home' in that room by the sea, everything would go quiet, into a silence dense with sadness and fear, and all she heard was the sea. All she smelt was the sea, as if it was rising up to greet her – or to swallow her up.

‘Ah, one can always rely on one's own company, can't one? Less trouble that way,' Mr Askew mused, mildly, and looked at her, his head tilted to one side.

Mrs Ludgate seemed to have turned into a standing stone.

‘I heard …' he continued softly, carefully testing the waters. ‘A while ago, I heard Mrs Edwards at the post office telling some other ladies that Mr Ludgate had been losing some of his property, lately. Had to clear some debts – with some court costs thrown in on top … It all went for a song, she said.'

‘Yes?' Mrs Ludgate stirred again, but dry as leaf. ‘And you believed her, of course … Everyone in Mortford knows that Mrs Edwards is a gossip and a liar. Everyone. Anyway, I know things …'

‘What
things
?'

‘Well, you'll just have to try and find out. But it's relating to your family and that place, that
Edencombe
, and whatever it is you're hiding away up there.'

‘Break it up, you two, will you?' Mrs Sarobi interrupted at last. ‘You're like a couple of children in the sand pit.'

Yes, Mr Askew thought to himself – children. And yet I went through so much in order to come of age.

‘There's still some tea in the flask,' Mrs Sarobi announced, remembering how tea seemed to work like opium on the minds of the British. The sun, too, was trying to comfort these three
outcasts who appeared to be so intent on destroying themselves, but it was no good. Everything was wrong.

Mrs Ludgate trembled once. The silence around them was bulging like a blister. Ready to burst. She cleared her throat. ‘I must go …' she suggested, and, for once, no one contradicted her.

*

Gabriel woke to distant piping music. Rey's bunk was empty and he wondered why he hadn't woken earlier. Picking sleep from the corners of his eyes, he stepped out to see the lights from a nearby village on the horizon; they seemed to sit in the sky like a crown of stars. Turning round, he saw the fairground, lit up now by thousands of fairy lights. He laughed out loud. The magic had returned. What different worlds inhabited the day and the night. Suddenly, he heard the piping calliope music quite clearly again, carried on a quickening breeze.

As he approached the site, he could feel a feverish energy rising inside him. The solid night had melted away and in its place was this world of bright wonder. There were people, for example, where, early the same morning, there had been none. They were milling around, young and old, alight with excitement. A band of rackety boys ran past him carrying sods of candyfloss and, as he watched their departing backs, one of them fell over and dropped his pink cloud into the dust. Gabriel moved on into the crowds.

Suddenly, Rey was by his side, gesturing for Gabriel to follow. They stopped by the big-top tent.

‘Perhaps we will catch the end of the show,' Rey whispered, and lifted a sheet of canvas so that Gabriel could sneak in without
being seen. The big top was not particularly large and the sideshow that it housed was more vaudeville than circus. The interior looked so different from what Gabriel remembered from his childhood; the anteroom with many doors and the corridors of mirrors were gone, as were the dripping chandeliers and crimson velvet. In their place was a grandstand facing a circular stage, lit by coloured strobes that ricocheted off a number of large glass prisms suspended from the tent roof. The light that sieved on to the stage at that moment was incredibly lovely: the rosy tint of a desert sunset or the heart-coloured dawn over a snowy plain. The smell did not match the freshness of the light; it was dense with the sharp, not altogether unpleasant, whiff of sawdust and the odour of a mass of bodies, gathered at the end of the working week. But there was something else, too: a scent which he remembered from all those years ago. He breathed in through his nose. Face powder, perhaps, and carnations.

He did not have time to register the act, which went off stage just then, but, as he sat down next to Rey in a seat on the back row, a roar went up from the audience. Rey laughed out loud and clapped his hands like a child. A jaunty overture was played on a piano or an organ. Gabriel struggled to see through the crowd what was happening on stage; the people in front were standing up in their seats, cheering and clapping. Suddenly, they hushed and sat down and the stage was visible again. ‘Ah,' Rey said, with a sigh. ‘They are here.'

Gabriel gasped and rose up in his seat like a meerkat. This, he felt with some certainty, was a world within a world, where all his ages merged and tumbled so that he was twelve years old again and yet a grown man. The tones of the organ sounded as if they were emerging from under water and the audience around
seemed suspended, almost fictional, as if it was part of the silent set. He was aware only of the warm, living presence of Rey's body next to his. Recovering from his initial surprise, he realised that his hand was clasping Rey's wrist tightly; he was suddenly acutely aware of the warm, chicken-heart pulse of his new friend against his fingers. With an embarrassed mumble, he let go of the arm, blushing, and shifted slightly away on the wooden seat. But his heart had flared and ached again for that other warmth he had reached out for – the other hand – a comfort long gone. For a split second, he saw an image of two boys seated together, eager, vulnerable and dear.

The two girls who had appeared on the stage were older now, of course, and their sequined mermaid costumes had been replaced by silk evening gowns, but there was no mistaking them. Their golden blonde hair and starry eyes were the same and their bodies were still joined just below their bosoms. Mary and Anne, the Siamese twins from Kentucky. Rey chuckled and studied him sideways. ‘They are the only real freaks left in the show, apart from a few midgets and a pinhead. All the others are fake, you know – gaffed freaks,' he said in a tone which Gabriel could not quite interpret.

‘I've seen them before – when I was a child,' Gabriel whispered, excitedly.

‘Oh, yes; haven't we all?'

‘No, I mean it!'

‘I believe you, my friend. They are what we – every man – have always been looking for. Don't you know the story of Castor and Pollux?'

Gabriel shook his head and worried, not for the first time, that his new friend would find him dim.

‘You see,' Rey began, ‘growing up, we reluctantly give up the idea that we may live forever – that childish illusion of immortality.'

Gabriel glanced to see if Rey was talking about him, specifically, but the older boy seemed lost in reverie.

‘Castor and Pollux, the most famous twins of all, were born of the same mother, but Castor was fathered by a king and Pollux by a god. When mortal Castor was killed, Pollux went to his father, Zeus, and asked to share his own immortality with his brother, so that they could be together again.' Rey stopped abruptly and shook his head for a moment before continuing. ‘You know, Gabe, this story amuses me; how futile to try to extend your own life through another, when being human is such a single act.'

Gabriel remembered to smile politely. But, at this moment, he was more interested in finding out about the freaks. ‘There used to be a guy on the organ, dressed as a woman,' he said.

‘Vanessa? He's long gone.'

‘And the chap with no arms?'

‘Him, too. He got involved in a sharp-shooting competition, holding the guns with his feet, and one of them backfired into his face.