A Bright Moon for Fools (34 page)

“If I leave now,” he told Lola, kissing her, “I should be back by four – five at the latest.”

With Bridget’s wallet in his pocket, they took Gabriel’s high-speed boat and were in Guiria by ten o’clock. They crossed the peninsula on a Yamaha. Christmas’ mind raced
with scenarios. If Judith and Bridget still thought he was Harry Strong he veered towards elaborate lies, stories of misfortune – kidnap? – no – ridiculous – it was best to
confess everything, to unmask himself, ask for the passport and weather yet another of life’s ugly confrontations. He simply had to get through it, however furious they were.

Cacti raised their stumps in supplication. Boys cut bundles of grass for donkey feed. Perhaps he’d be lucky – perhaps they’d be out. He could break in, nip upstairs, grab his
passport from behind the wardrobe and disappear.

They zoomed through Rio Caribe. It was midday. Christmas’ arms ached from holding onto the rear grill. They arrived at the turning to Judith’s and, just in case he might witness
something that was difficult to explain, he told Gabriel to wait there on the side of the road. Christmas began to climb the winding drive.

As he reached the top, nervous and panting, Christmas saw Judith’s car. He hesitated. He ran his fingers over the chain around his neck.
Up on two legs, man
! he ordered himself.
In you go. Just got to take it on the chin
.

He advanced towards the house. There was something different about the garden. He moved further round. It was untended. The grass had been allowed to grow long. It was hot but the sprinklers
weren’t on. There were weeds in the flowerbeds.

Christmas went closer to the house and looked in through the window. The shelves were empty. There were packing boxes everywhere. He continued along the wall until he got to the kitchen. There
were black smoke stains around the window. He cupped his hands and peered in. There had been a fire.

“Hello?” he said. “Hello?” He walked right the way around the house, looking in, seeing more boxes, empty walls, furniture stacked up. “Judith? Bridget?”

He turned a corner and saw a black girl, nine or ten years old. She was barefoot, wearing an oversized jacket and covering her mouth with her hand.

“Judith? Bridget?” he asked her. “The English women? Where are they? Are they home? Are they moving out?” She didn’t say anything. He moved towards her but she ran
off into the trees.

Christmas had come right the way around the house. He knocked on the front door. Nothing. His heart leapt at the possibility of getting his passport before they appeared. He tried the door.
Locked. What about the kitchen door? He went back into the garden to check and there was Judith, wandering back from the ocean.

She saw him. She stopped. Then she bent down to inspect some pink orchids.

“Judith,” he called but she didn’t respond. He walked over to her, saying her name, but she didn’t move. When he was in front of her, she stood up and walked past him as
if he wasn’t there. She looked terrible, pale and aged, her hair unwashed.
I’ve broken her heart
, thought Christmas.

“I know I ran off,” he said, standing behind her now as she pulled down the blossom of a tree towards her, “and I’m not the person you thought I was but – and I
know you will find this very hard to believe – there is an explanation for all of it and, well, I really don’t know where to begin with this most profound of apologies—”

“I’m saying goodbye to my garden,” she said quietly, turning to face him. “Do you know what he said?”

“Who?”

“He said, ‘
So he’s a friend of yours
.’”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“‘
So he’s a friend of yours
.’ Those were his exact words.”

“Whose?”

“Before he raped her. That’s what he said. Right before he raped Bridget.”

Christmas took in the words, and as he began to comprehend them, his hands moved up to his face.

“He came here looking for you,” she continued. “He came to our house and he raped my daughter, there, in my kitchen, on my birthday, while I was upstairs crying about
you.” Judith looked him over as he reacted.

“She’s in London now,” she said after a long silence, “She’s only just started talking again. She’s in a place where they help people who have been through
... She’s got her own room.” Christmas tried to speak. He failed. “I have come back to shut the house. Who is he?” Christmas felt as if he were watching all this from afar,
as if it were being told to another him. “Who is he?” she said again. Her eyes were blank.

“William Slade, he’s – Judith, I—”

“No,” she said. “Don’t.”

They stood apart from each other for a few moments.

“You have come back for your passport,” she said. “I just found it. It’s inside, on the kitchen table. There’s a pad and pen there, on the windowsill. Write down
his name and everything for the police and then just get out, whatever you are, just go away.” Judith turned back towards the ocean. He watched her go. He watched her until she disappeared,
then he went into the house. His hands were in his hair. His hands were on his face.

Inside he saw his passport on the kitchen table. He put it in his pocket and, finding Bridget’s wallet there, he took it out and put it down on the windowsill. It fell open. There was the
photograph of Judith and Bridget, their arms round each other, creased, behind plastic. He scribbled down Slade’s name and Diana’s name and her telephone number and he left the house,
heading down the drive until the hacienda was no longer visible and his knees gave way and he sat down in the dirt. He ground his fists together against his forehead and made a tight, low sound.
Bridget
…

How had Slade found Judith’s? Easy. Of course it was easy! He’d just asked someone, anyone in Rio Caribe where the fat gringo was staying. How could he not have foreseen that? Why
hadn’t he come back here and protected them? Why hadn’t he just let himself get caught – his mind rolled: if Slade could track him to Judith’s, he could track him to San
Cristóbal.

Lola.

G
abriel had no phone. They borrowed one from a man selling bananas on the roadside.

“What’s her number?”

“I don’t know,” shrugged Gabriel. “Don’t you?”

“No! Give me someone else’s number then – anyone’s!”

“I told you, brother. I don’t have a phone. I don’t know no numbers.”

When they arrived at the jetty in Guiria, Christmas leapt from the bike before it had stopped and he ran amongst the men there, asking them if they had seen a gringo get on any of the boats to
San Cristóbal? They said they had. What did he look like? One man hunched his shoulders and blew out his cheeks.

They jumped into Gabriel’s boat and zoomed out across the sea. Christmas, unable to sit still, looked out over the waves, fidgeting with the chain as the boat hurdled the spume and birds
flew overhead. Gabriel asked him many times what was wrong but Christmas could hardly speak, only able to repeat that Lola was in danger. He bit his knuckles, swearing continuously. The journey was
endless.

When, at last, the boat thudded around the headland and San Cristóbal came into view, Christmas got to his feet, clambering to the front.

He vaulted the gap onto the concrete steps before the line had been thrown and ran into the festival, Gabriel close beside him.

Something terrible had happened.

People, their eyes wide in shock, were running up to him, gabbling, throwing their arms towards the house.

He was down the street. Over the stream. Through the
cambur
.

Christmas broke out into the clearing.

A crowd in front of the house.

He pushed through into the doorway. Pictures lay broken, furniture pushed into awkward angles. Smashed pots littered the kitchen floor, plates and pans scattered everywhere.

Emily’s book, torn to pieces, and by the door to Lola’s room – a hatchet covered in blood.

“Lola—” he cried, dashing out into the yard where he could see more people: the policeman, the old lady, and more neighbours standing around something on the floor.

Christmas pulled away the shoulders and looked down.

Once Slade had put his rucksack down he began to wander around the room, sizing it up as if he were to buy it. Lola knew right away that his intentions were bad.

“Christmas!” he called out. He saw Christmas’ jacket hanging on the nail. “This is his,” he said, searching it. “Stole my mother’s money.” He
found the Montejo book. “Where is he?”

She didn’t answer. Slade was grinning. He ripped the book in half, then tore out fistfuls of pages and threw them into the air. Slade took out the knife. He pointed it at her, watching the
fear widen her face.

He came closer. He stopped.

He looked down and said something to the floor.

Just by looking at his face, those mirrored sunglasses, Lola knew he was insane. She saw this moment as something she had seen many times before: sudden, unpredictable – a moment of
violence. It would end as quickly as it started, with only the outcome undecided. But she, Lola Rosa, had decided.

No one came into her house and threatened her with a knife. Not the biggest gangster in Caracas. Not God himself.

As this man talked to whatever evil spirit was by his feet, Lola took a step backwards into the kitchen and wrapped her hand around a heavy carving knife sticking out of its wooden stand.

“
Mama guevo
!” she cried, lunging at him, swinging the knife down in a great arc. Slade had only time to raise his right forearm in defence, the blade slicing into it, chipping
bone.

He screamed. His right hand dropped the knife. He drove his left fist into Lola’s face. She fell backwards, letting go of her weapon while Slade glanced at his arm – blood –
but Lola was coming at him again, with her whole body this time, charging him against the chairs and the television.

They hit the wall.

Slade kneed her in the stomach. She grabbed his face, screaming, gripping his eye and cheek, digging in her long nails.

He punched her again in the head but the blow didn’t shift her and she hung onto him as they swung and crashed forward, bouncing and rolling off the walls, dislodging pictures and
ornaments, staggering back into the kitchen, Lola squeezing him close so he couldn’t hit her. They slammed against kitchen shelves, glasses and pans clattering and smashing on the floor as
she sank her teeth into his neck and bit down like a wolf. Slade let out the howl.

He grabbed her hair, wrenching her off him, and he elbowed her in the face. Her grip loosened.

He pinned her to the wall by her throat, breathing heavily.

He ripped at her T-shirt, exposing her breasts. She was concussed. He spun her round, bent her over the sideboard, and ripped down the velour tracksuit bottoms she was wearing. He looked down at
her backside. She was moaning, semi-conscious. His blood was dripping on her buttocks.

The little boy that had shown Slade to the house was sitting under a tree, unwrapping a sweet. It was a present from the old man for delivering a message: they had a new guest
and Lola wanted him to come home. The old man patted him on the head, bidding goodbye to his friends and shuffled off down the path.

Moving carefully down the bank, muttering to himself, the old man thought about crack. His friend El Mono owed him a rock and he intended to go round there later and reclaim the debt. It was
easier to smoke there. No Lola swearing in his face and interrupting his high with her bullshit.

He shuffled along the stream, through the
cambur
and out into the clearing. There was his fighting cock. As ever, he smiled at the animal with pride. He bent down, undid the tethering and
held the bird to his chest, whispering messages of love and encouragement. Then he heard a loud noise from inside. Then another. Then he heard his daughter scream.

Still with the bird under his arm, the old man picked up a hatchet sticking out of a lump of wood. He hobbled quickly up the steps. When he got to the doorway he saw his house turned over and a
white man about to rape his daughter.

Slade, taking out his penis, heard something behind him. He turned. A cockerel was flung into his face. He was batting away this squawking mass of feathers when he felt the
deep bite of a hatchet as it split open the top of his arm.

The old man had swung it into him with all his strength, sinking the blade into the muscles of Slade’s left shoulder. Slade cried out and punched the old man in the face. He flew back with
such force he hit his head against the wall and crumpled to the floor. But Lola was recovered. Finding herself prostrate over her kitchen sideboard, she gripped a heavy cast iron frying pan and
with a mighty cry stood up and spun round, swinging its edge in front of her, axing Slade full in the face.

The sound was like two stones hitting each other.

His knees went.

He staggered forward. His smashed sunglasses fell off.

Lola looked down at her father. She raised the pan again and hit Slade in the shoulder, propelling him into the main room. He turned round. His face was burst apart.

Slade saw Lola had the head of a cat. He fled.

She went after him, but her tracksuit bottoms were around her knees. She pulled them up, got to the doorway and saw him disappear into the forest. She looked back at her father, a puddle of
blood expanding over the floor by his head.

Everyone turned as Christmas burst into the centre of the circle. “Lola!” he cried out. “Oh God, what’s happened? What’s happened?” Her
T-shirt was half torn off. The left side of her face was swollen with bruising. She was breathing with short, stabbing breaths, her father’s face in her lap, his body limp, his eyes closed.
He was moaning. His nose was a bloody mess. She looked into Christmas’ eyes.

“He said you stole money! Why has this man come here? What have you done,
mama guevo
?” Christmas could not answer but she saw the guilt. He stepped towards her.

“Get him away from me!” she screamed out, then began to sob, cradling and kissing her father’s head.