The Shadow and Night (70 page)

“So,” Merral asked, as gently as he could, “you think it's all over now?”

“Yes,” came the answer. “It was a temporary aberration. A bad voyage. It's over.”

I hope so,
thought Merral but stayed silent.

The silence that followed was broken by Daniel stifling a yawn. “Excuse me!” he said. “I was up early. But come, let me show you your cabin.”

He led Merral beyond the mess room to a cabin so wide that it seemed to extend across the width of the ship. There was a big wallscreen on one side and a variety of sporting and exercise gear.

“The recreation room,” Daniel commented. “You can hardly run around the deck in bad weather. Your room is through here.”

“Very nice,” observed Merral. Then his eye was suddenly caught by a notice board. On it was a large white sheet divided in two, with columns of marks underneath.
A score sheet,
he thought idly, then stopped, his eyes riveted by the twin words at the top:
Sunrise
and
Sunset.

Trying to make his voice sound unconcerned, Merral turned to the captain. “You divided the crew into two teams?”

“Have done for years.”

“And it's easy enough to divide the crew up? I mean on the basis of where they come from?”

“Yes, we've been split neatly into Rise Siders and Sunsetters for some years.”

“So ‘you're one or the other in Larrenport'?”

The captain smiled back in a tired manner. “That's what they say. I gather you've heard the phrase?”

“Yes.”

Daniel shrugged, walked over, and opened a door, revealing a small cabin with a single bed. “I hope it's all right?” he asked.

“Fine,” Merral answered, glimpsing the town's lights visible through the porthole. “Can I ask you another question, Captain?”

“Why not?”

“Yes, you see, I couldn't help wondering—really it's none of my business—why you sleep on the boat when you have a home not far away?”

A soft “hmm” was all the answer that Merral received.

“Is it,” he suggested as sensitively as he could, “that you feel safer with the gangway up and the hatches closed than in a house with open doors?”

“Yes,” came back the tentative answer. “That's it.”

Merral, staring at him, discerned a look of embarrassment in his eyes.

“But I think I'll go back tomorrow. My wife will be back then anyway.” Then, with a wish that Merral would enjoy a good night's sleep, he left.

By the time that Merral awoke, showered, and dressed the next morning, Daniel was already up and working in one of the cabins beyond the mess room. The captain joined him for coffee and breakfast and then led Merral up into the deck. Above the town the sun was shining between gaps in patchy gray clouds. The captain lowered the gangway and stood by it.

“Thanks, Merral,” he said, giving him a firm handshake. “Thanks so much. I guess I can now try to forget what happened on that voyage. I can put it behind me.”

Merral stared beyond him at the twin halves of the divided town before them, the left-hand side gleaming in the morning light.
Sunrise and Sunset,
he thought, remembering that he had one more question.

“Yes, Daniel, try to do that. Put it behind you. But something comes back to me. Yesterday you said about the crew problems on the voyage—what was it? ‘Each side blames the other.' Did you mean that this sports division, well, sort of spread into everyday matters?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Daniel answered, his voice charged with reluctance.

“But only really during the trip we've been talking about? Never before?”

“No—I guess not. All the bad weather seemed to make things worse. We were more cramped. And the colds—but it's over.” He hesitated. “Isn't it?”

Merral glanced at the captain and saw he was gazing with a troubled expression at the split town. In a flash of intuition, he realized that Daniel was worried that it wasn't over. Had he, perhaps, sensed something of the atmosphere of the
Miriama
's voyage in his own town?

“I don't know, Captain,” Merral said. “Let's pray that it's so.”

As he had expected, Merral found a bus stop at the gate of the harbor. A number of people who looked as if they had come off an overnight shift greeted Merral in an affable fashion and, when they learned he was a visitor from Ynysmant, offered him advice on how to get to the High Cliff Intensive Nursing Center where Great-Aunt Namia was.

“Easy enough to find,” said one woman. “Straight off the bridge. Turn right and it's at the top of Rise Side at the cliff edge. Looks down on us. Typical.” The tone of disapproval in her voice caught Merral's attention.

“Why, er, typical?”

She waved a hand dismissively to the west. “They don't have the docks and harbor, see. Risers pride themselves on being better because of it.”

Merral tried, with difficulty, to bury his alarm. “This feeling they have—or you think they have—of being superior. Has it always been like this?”

She looked at him warily. “Oh no. Only the last two months. Suddenly.”

“I see,” he said, and he was going to ask whether there was any reason, when a bus turned the corner.

“Here's your bus,” the woman said sharply. “Yes. Ever since Easter they have been getting so above themselves. Well, I really don't know where it will end.”

As the bus went up over the last of the hairpin bends, Merral looked back down to the ships, trying to see the orange dot of the
Miriama.

“It's over,” the captain had said. But Merral knew he hadn't believed it.

Now
he
didn't either.

26

H
igh on the western side of Larrenport, Merral bought some lilies from a flower shop and then, his mind preoccupied by events, strolled over to the High Cliff Intensive Nursing Center. The center and its grounds, embraced in a protective semicircle of beech trees and evergreens, lay tucked just below the plateau edge. Looking at it, Merral felt that this elevated setting on the edge of the cliff was almost symbolic, as if it were easier to pass from earth to heaven from up here.

Halfway along the gravel driveway he stopped, gazing beyond the rosebushes and down to the town and the bay far beyond. Far out to sea, beyond multitudes of turning gulls, a belt of cloud was broken at the horizon so that a line of brilliant silver etched out the boundary of the sea and the sky. With an effort, Merral pushed his concerns out of his mind; in this twilight of her long and profitable earthly life, his great-aunt deserved his full attention.

He walked on to the reception office.

“Good morning; I've come to see Mrs. Namia Mena D'Avanos,” he said to the fresh-complexioned nurse with a blonde ponytail who sat behind the desk.

She smiled up at him welcomingly with round, nut brown eyes. “Oh yes. Are you a near relative?” she asked, in the sort of smooth and soothing voice that Merral felt was entirely appropriate for dealing with the elderly.

“Fairly,” he answered, wondering how near you were when a hundred years separated you. “She's a great-aunt. I bring her family greetings. You know her?”

“Of course. We know them all.” She smiled again, but something at the edges of her mouth hinted at some difficulty. “But let me call the doctor to take you over to her,” she said and pressed a button.

“Do I need to talk to the doctor?”

Her smile was disarming. “I'll think she'll want to talk to you.” She nodded at the flowers Merral was carrying. “Nice bouquet. But you aren't local, are you?”

“No, visiting from Ynysmant. Came in yesterday.”

“Ah, up on the lake, eh? Stay anywhere nice last night?”

“On a ship in the docks, funnily enough.”

“A pity. You should have stayed over on Rise Side.”

There it was again.

“Rise Side. Is it better?” he asked, peering at the smooth face and the brown eyes.

“We think so. Quieter. Of course, they make all the fuss about East Side being the real heart of Larrenport. But West is best.”

Reluctant to answer, Merral replied with what he hoped was seen as an equivocal nod.

A paneled door opened and an elegant, auburn-haired lady in her forties, wearing a white jacket with a Diagnostic Medical Unit poking out of a pocket, came over and introduced herself. She and Merral exchanged greetings, and then she led him down a covered walkway to a cluster of rooms.

Outside a doorway decorated with hand-painted creeping red roses, she stopped and beckoned Merral close to her.

“It's an odd case,” she said, in a low, confiding tone.
“Odd.
”

“Is it?” he answered. “I thought she was just, well,
old.
One hundred and twenty-four. I presume all sorts of things start packing up at that age.”

“Hmm. Yes and no. Physically, she's remarkable; you'll be blessed if you have some of her genes. No, it's just that Mrs. D'Avanos is suffering from an odd set of psychological symptoms. Very strange . . .”

“What sort of things?” Merral felt a shadow of unease fall across him again.
But this,
he told himself
, must surely be something else. It has to be.

The doctor frowned and adjusted her jacket. “A sort of depression. Anxiety attacks. The pastor and I have a dossier. . . .” She hesitated. “No, I think it's better you talk to her. Then—if you want—you can talk to me. But I just thought I ought to warn you.”

“I see.”

She looked at him carefully. “When you last saw her . . . was she fine?”

“Yes. I saw her last autumn. I was here for a conference.”

She paused and he was aware of her green eyes scrutinizing him. “May I ask,” she said gently, “how did she view her death?”

Merral felt himself staring back at her. “Well, we barely discussed it. But she had a perfectly normal view of it.” He was tempted to add of course, but somehow
of course
didn't seem to apply as much as it used to.

“Great-Aunt Namia was,” he said, remembering what they had talked about, “looking forward to going Home, to going to be with Jesus. Which she expected to be in the spring. She was awaiting the Resurrection and the new heaven and the new earth. And a new body—she was particularly looking forward to that. She had been active well into her nineties, but that was a long time ago.”

She nodded sympathetically. “So we have heard. We had her in just after Easter and didn't expect her to stay. Most people come here for the last few days or weeks of life. She was slipping away, as they do, but then something happened. Now she's fighting it.” A look of troubled perplexity crossed her face.

“Look, I'll leave you with her. But, if you get any insights, see me on the way out? Please?”

Then she turned and walked up the corridor, looking deep in thought.

Merral knocked and, hearing no answer, slipped into the room. His aunt lay propped up in bed, facing away from the door and apparently staring at a painting of a mountain landscape on a wall. Hesitating to disturb her, Merral looked around the room, noting the pastel blue walls, the discreetly hidden medical equipment, the readout panels high above the bed, and the framed family images on the chests. The windows stretching from floor to ceiling at the end of the room looked seaward and were open a fraction, so that the white gauze curtains swayed gently in the breeze.