The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps Page 9

  ‘That’s not possible, surely?’ Siân had said. But her conviction that she must be the eighth wonder of the world was gently undermined by medical statistics. The tendency of foreign objects to work their way out of people’s bodies had been recorded, the doctor assured her, as far back as the Renaissance; there was, historically speaking, a lot of it about.

  Siân stood at the top of the hundred and ninety-nine steps, fingering the morsel of rubble in her pocket, wondering if Magnus, running at the top speed that his suit and stiff black shoes allowed, had reached the railway station yet. She wondered how much older he might need to be, how much he might need to live through, before Time weathered him into the right man for her – counselling herself that he was sure to have found somebody else by then. The stone in her pocket was smooth as a pebble, as if her flesh had sucked it like a toffee for years, hoping to digest it. Over-active imagination again.

  How odd to think that Whitby’s sleepy harbour was twinkling here below her, obscured by a mushroom proliferation of typically English rooftops, while nestled inside her palm was a relic of a war-torn Balkan street thousands of miles away. She considered tossing it down the steps, just to see how long she could keep her eye on it before it became, irreclaimably, part of the British landscape. But, on balance, she preferred her original idea of getting a jeweller to fashion it into a pendant. A silver chain would be nice; Saint Hilda would have to forgive her.

  She reached the abbey just as the last of the day’s visitors were leaving. Homeward-bound American tourists looked at her in pity as she made her way towards the ruins; she wondered why, then realised they must think she’d just arrived on a late-running coach and was only going to get five minutes’ worth of antiquity before being evicted by the English Heritage folks.

  She walked to the sacristy and found the stone rectangle where Bobby and Jemima had shown off their superstitious spinning game. The vaguely human-shaped depression in the stone was, she had to admit, very inviting to lie in, even though its grey austerity had been tarnished by the words ‘I WAS HERE’ graffiti’d in yellow felt-tip. Tomorrow, with pious diligence, those words would no doubt be erased.

  Siân looked right and left, to confirm that the tourists were all gone, and then she balanced herself carefully on one foot and, after a deep breath, began to spin. Her intention was to spin thirty-four times, but physicalities got the better of ritual and she found herself deliriously dizzy after only ten. With the land and sky revolving before her eyes, she laid herself down in the stone hollow, settling her shoulders and head in the proper place. For what seemed like ages, the turrets and piers of the abbey moved to and fro on the turf of the East Cliff like giant sailing ships made of rock, then finally glided to a standstill. Up there on the buttresses, the ghostie woman not only failed to jump, but failed to appear.

  Siân gasped in surprise as her cheek was touched by something rough and wet and rather disgusting; Hadrian was licking her. She opened her mouth to scold him, but his preposterous name stuck in her throat.

  ‘I think I’ll call you Hush,’ she said, elbowing herself up a little.

  ‘Hush,’ he agreed, nudging her to get to her feet.

  Read on for a preview of Michel Faber's

  October 2014

  1

  Forty minutes later he was up in the sky

  ‘I was going to say something,’ he said.

  ‘So say it,’ she said.

  He was quiet, keeping his eyes on the road. In the darkness of the city’s outskirts, there was nothing to see except the tail-lights of other cars in the distance, the endless unfurling roll of tarmac, the giant utilitarian fixtures of the motorway.

  ‘God may be disappointed in me for even thinking it,’ he said.

  ‘Well,’ she sighed, ‘He knows already, so you may as well tell me.’

  He glanced at her face, to judge what mood she was in as she said this, but the top half of her head, including her eyes, was veiled in a shadow cast by the edge of the windscreen. The bottom half of her face was lunar bright. The sight of her cheek, lips and chin – so intimately familiar to him, so much a part of life as he had known it – made him feel a sharp grief at the thought of losing her.

  ‘The world looks nicer with man-made lights,’ he said.

  They drove on in silence. Neither of them could abide the chatter of radio or the intrusion of pre-recorded music. It was one of the many ways they were compatible.

  ‘Is that it?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘What I mean is . . . Unspoiled nature is supposed to be the ultimate in perfection, isn’t it, and all the man-made stuff is supposed to be a shame, just cluttering it up. But we wouldn’t enjoy the world half as much if we – man . . . that is, human beings . . . ’

  (She gave him one of her get-on-with-it grunts.)

  ‘ . . . if we hadn’t put electric lights all over it. Electric lights are actually attractive. They make a night drive like this bearable. Beautiful, even. I mean, just imagine if we had to do this drive in total darkness. Because that’s what the natural state of the world is, at night, isn’t it? Total darkness. Just imagine. You’d have the stress of not having a clue where you were going, not being able to see more than a few metres in front of you. And if you were heading for a city – well, in a non-technological world there wouldn’t be cities, I suppose – but if you were heading for a place where other people lived, living there naturally, maybe with a few campfires . . . You wouldn’t see them until you actually arrived. There wouldn’t be that magical vista when you’re a few miles away from a city, and all the lights are twinkling, like stars on the hillside.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘And even inside this car, assuming you could have a car, or some sort of vehicle, in this natural world, pulled by horses I suppose . . . It would be pitch black. And very cold, too, on a winter’s night. But instead, look what we’ve got here.’ He took one hand off the steering wheel (he always drove with both hands laid symmetrically on the wheel) and indicated the dashboard. The usual little lights glowed back at them. Temperature. Time. Water level. Oil. Speed. Fuel consumption.

  ‘Peter . . . ’

  ‘Oh, look!’ Several hundred metres up ahead, a tiny over-burdened figure, standing in a puddle of lamplight. ‘A hitchhiker. I’ll stop, shall I?’

  ‘No, don’t.’

  The tone of her voice made him think better of challenging her, even though they seldom missed an opportunity to show kindness to strangers.

  The hitchhiker raised his head in hope. As the headlights enveloped him, his body was – just for an instant – transformed from a vaguely humanoid shape into a recognisably individual person. He was holding a sign that said HETHROW.

  ‘How strange,’ said Peter, as they zoomed past. ‘You’d think he’d just take the Tube.’

  ‘Last day in the UK,’ said Beatrice. ‘Last chance to have a good time. He probably used up his British money in a pub, thinking he’d keep just enough for the train. Six drinks later he’s out in the fresh air, sobering up, and all he’s got left is his plane ticket and £1.70.’

  It sounded plausible. But if it was true, then why leave this lost sheep in the lurch? It wasn’t like Bea to leave anybody stranded.

  He turned towards her darkened face again, and was alarmed to see teardrops twinkling on her jaw and in the corners of her mouth.

  ‘Peter . . . ’ she said.

  He took one hand off the steering wheel again, this time to squeeze her shoulder. Suspended over the highway up ahead was a sign with a symbol of an aeroplane on it.

  ‘Peter, this is our last chance.’

  ‘Last chance?’

  ‘To make love.’

  The indicator lights flashed gently and went tick, tick, tick, as he eased the car into the airport lane. The words ‘make love’ bumbled against his brain, trying to get in, even though there was no room in there. He almost said, ‘You’re joking.’ But, even though she had a fine sense of humour and loved to laugh, she ne
ver joked about things that mattered.

  As he drove on, the sense that they were not on the same page – that they needed different things at this crucial time – entered the car like a discomfiting presence. He’d thought – he’d felt – that yesterday morning had been their proper leavetaking, and that this trip to the airport was just . . . a postscript, almost. Yesterday morning had been so right. They’d finally worked their way to the bottom of their ‘To Do’ list. His bag was already packed. Bea had the day off work, they’d slept like logs, they’d woken up to brilliant sunshine warming the yellow duvet of their bed. Joshua the cat had been lying in a comical pose at their feet; they’d nudged him off and made love, without speaking, slowly and with great tenderness. Afterwards, Joshua had jumped back on the bed and tentatively laid one forepaw on Peter’s naked shin, as if to say, Don’t go; I will hold you here. It was a poignant moment, expressing the situation better than language could have, or perhaps it was just that the exotic cuteness of the cat put a protective furry layer over the raw human pain, making it endurable. Whatever. It was perfection. They’d lain there listening to Joshua’s throaty purr, enfolded in each other’s arms, their sweat evaporating in the sun, their heart-rates gradually reverting to normal.

  ‘One more time,’ she said to him now, above the engine noise on a dark motorway on the way to the plane that would take him to America and beyond.

  He consulted the digital clock on the dashboard. He was supposed to be at the check-in counter in two hours; they were about fifteen minutes from the airport.

  ‘You’re wonderful,’ he said. Perhaps if he pronounced the words in exactly the right way, she might get the message that they shouldn’t try to improve on yesterday, that they should just leave it at that.

  ‘I don’t want to be wonderful,’ she said. ‘I want you inside me.’

  He drove for a few seconds in silence, adjusting quickly to the circumstances. Prompt adjustment to changed circumstances was another thing they had in common.

  ‘There are lots of those horrible corporate hotels right near the airport,’ he said. ‘We could rent a room just for an hour.’ He regretted the ‘horrible’ bit; it sounded as though he was trying to dissuade her while pretending not to. He only meant that the hotels were the sort they both avoided if they possibly could.

  ‘Just find a quiet lay-by,’ she said. ‘We can do it in the car.’

  ‘Crisis!’ he said, and they both laughed. ‘Crisis’ was the word he’d trained himself to say instead of ‘Christ’, when he’d first become a Christian. The two words were close enough in sound for him to able to defuse a blasphemy when it was already half out of his mouth.

  ‘I mean it,’ she said. ‘Anywhere will do. Just don’t park in a place where another car’s likely to run into the back of us.’

  The highway looked different to him now, as they drove on. In theory it was the same stretch of tarmac, bounded by the same traffic paraphernalia and flimsy metal fences, but it had been transformed by their own intent. It was no longer a straight line to an airport, it was a mysterious hinterland of shadowy detours and hidey-holes. Proof, once again, that reality was not objective, but always waiting to be reshaped and redefined by one’s attitude.

  Of course, everybody on earth had the power to reshape reality. It was one of the things Peter and Beatrice talked about a lot. The challenge of getting people to grasp that life was only as grim and confining as you perceived it to be. The challenge of getting people to see that the immutable facts of existence were not so immutable after all. The challenge of finding a simpler word for ‘immutable’ than ‘immutable’.

  ‘How about here?’

  Beatrice didn’t answer, only put her hand on his thigh. He steered the car smoothly into a truckstop. They would have to trust that getting squashed flat by a 44-ton lorry was not in God’s plan.

  ‘I’ve never done this before,’ he said, when he’d switched the ignition off.

  ‘You think I have?’ she said. ‘We’ll manage. Let’s get in the back.’

  They swung out of their respective doors and were reunited several seconds later on the back seat. They sat like passengers, shoulder to shoulder. The upholstery smelled of other people – friends, neighbours, members of their church, hitchhikers. It made Peter doubt all the more whether he could or should make love here, now. Although . . . there was something exciting about it, too. They reached for each other, aiming for a smooth embrace, but their hands were clumsy in the dark.

  ‘How fast would the cabin light drain the car’s battery?’ she said.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘Best not to risk it. Besides, it would make us a sideshow for all the passing traffic.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ she said, turning her face towards the headlights whizzing by. ‘I read an article once about a little girl who was being abducted. She managed to jump out of the car when it slowed down on the motorway. The kidnapper grabbed her, she put up a good fight, she was screaming for help. A stream of cars went past. Nobody stopped. They interviewed one of those drivers later. He said, “I was travelling so fast, I didn’t believe what I was seeing.”’

  He shifted uncomfortably. ‘What an awful story. And maybe not the best of times to tell it.’

  ‘I know, I know, I’m sorry. I’m a bit . . . out of my mind just now.’ She laughed nervously. ‘It’s just so hard . . . losing you.’

  ‘You’re not losing me. I’m just going away for a while. I’ll be . . . ’

  ‘Peter, please. Not now. We’ve done that part. We’ve done what we can with that part.’

  She leaned forward, and he thought she was going to start sobbing. But she was fishing something out from the gap between the two front seats. A small battery-operated torch. She switched it on and balanced it on the headrest of the front passenger seat; it fell off. Then she wedged it in the narrow space between the seat and the door, angled it so that its beam shone on the floor.

  ‘Nice and subdued,’ she said, her voice steady again. ‘Just enough light so we can make each other out.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can do this,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s just see what happens,’ she said, and began to unbutton her shirt, exposing her white bra and the swell of her bosom. She allowed the shirt to fall down her arms, wiggled her shoulders and elbows to shake the silky material off her wrists. She removed her skirt, panties and pantyhose all together, hooked in her strong thumbs, and made the motion look graceful and easy.

  ‘Now you.’

  He unclasped his trousers and she helped him remove them. Then she slid onto her back, contorting her arms to remove her bra, and he tried to reposition himself without squashing her with his knees. His head bumped against the ceiling.

  ‘We’re like a couple of clueless teenagers here,’ he complained. ‘This is . . . ’

  She laid her hand on his face, covering his mouth.

  ‘We’re you and me,’ she said. ‘You and me. Man and wife. Everything’s fine.’

  She was naked now except for the wristwatch on her thin wrist and the pearl necklace around her throat. In the torchlight, the necklace was no longer an elegant wedding anniversary gift but became a primitive erotic adornment. Her breasts shook with the force of her heartbeat.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Do it.’

  And so they began. Pressed close together, they could no longer see each other; the torchlight’s purpose was over. Their mouths were joined, their eyes clasped shut, their bodies could have been anyone’s bodies since the world was created.

  ‘Harder,’ Beatrice gasped after a while. Her voice had a harsh edge to it, a brute tenacity he’d never heard in her before. Their lovemaking had always been decorous, friendly, impeccably considerate. Sometimes serene, sometimes energetic, sometimes athletic, even – but never desperate. ‘Harder!’

  Confined and uncomfortable, with his toes knocking against the window and his knees chafing on the furry viscose of the car seat, he did his best, but the rhythm and angle weren’t rig
ht and he misjudged how much longer she needed and how long he could last.

  ‘Don’t stop! Go on! Go on!’

  But it was over.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she finally said, and wriggled from under him, clammy with sweat. ‘It’s OK’.

  They were at Heathrow in plenty of time. The check-in lady gave Peter’s passport the once-over. ‘Travelling one-way to Orlando, Florida, yes?’ she said. ‘Yes,’ he said. She asked him if he had any suitcases to check in. He swung a sports bag and a rucksack onto the belt. It came across as dodgy somehow. But the logistics of his journey were too complicated and uncertain for a return booking. He wished Beatrice weren’t standing next to him, listening to these confirmations of his imminent departure into thin air; wished she’d been spared hearing the word ‘one-way’.

  And then, of course, once he was handed his boarding pass, there was more time to fill before he would actually be allowed on the plane. Side by side, he and Beatrice meandered away from the check-in desks, a little dazzled by the excessive light and monstrous scale of the terminal. Was it the fluorescent glare that made Beatrice’s face look drawn and anxious? Peter put his arm around the small of her back. She smiled up at him reassuringly, but he was not reassured. WHY NOT START YOUR HOLIDAY UPSTAIRS? the billboards leered. WITH OUR EVER-EXPANDING SHOPPING OPPORTUNITIES, YOU MAY NOT WANT TO LEAVE!