Fit to Die (6 page)

In a pig's eye.

“I'm twenty-one,” I said as if that were answer enough. “Do you miss your family?”

He shook his head, then shoved himself off the bed and disappeared into the bathroom. Touchy, I thought. Morose and touchy. Maybe this wasn't going to work out after all, despite the fancy car and the wallet full of cash.

•  •  •

But the next morning he jumped out of bed, grinning from ear to ear, and announced he was ready to hike a hundred miles. I was trying to cram my feet into my boots and accepted his hiking sandals without protest. Rockports. My blistered skin barely felt the leather.

The inn boasted what they called a traditional Welsh breakfast, which was the same as the Canadian breakfast my mother served before the Führer took command and instituted a regime of All Bran and brown toast.

“I've been studying my trail map,” Patrick said as our food arrived. “We could pick up a fabulous trail in the Brecon Beacons that goes up over the moors to some Roman ruins. Or there's this heritage trail that runs all along the southwest coast. We could drive down to the Marloes Peninsula—that's a wildlife sanctuary for wild ponies and migrant birds—and we could hike around the cliff tops.”

“Cliff tops?” I stopped with a forkful of scrambled egg halfway to my mouth. “How high?”

“It varies. Some of them are two hundred feet. The pictures look amazing. Sheer drops down to the foaming surf.”

I'm not keen on heights. Actually, I turn to jelly when I'm five feet off the ground, but I wasn't going to admit that to Patrick. Gentle mountain slopes were about all I was ready for. “Well, I really came to Wales for the mountains.”

“All right, the Beacons it is.”

The sun had been shining when we woke up, but halfway up into the mountains, a thick white fog rolled in, slicking the windshield and blocking the views I had come to see. Patrick slowed the Jag to a crawl.

“We're going to get soaked,” he muttered as we reached the trailhead. “I didn't bring rain gear.”

I reached into my backpack and pulled out a windbreaker. “You can wear this; I brought a poncho too.”

Patrick accepted it with a surly grunt, but once we'd stepped out onto the open moor, he pulled it around himself tightly. We scrabbled up the mossy slope, dodging sheep turds and bowing our heads against the damp. Beyond us, pale mist swallowed everything. I could see Patrick trudging up ahead, and occasionally a sheep appeared out of the fog, but mostly we were in a cocoon. Nothing, not even sound, penetrated. But despite the cold and wet, it felt magical.

Patrick stopped suddenly, gasping for breath. “O'Shea,” he said, “why are we doing this? We can't see a damn thing.”

“It might clear,” I said. “I read the weather changes every hour.”

“But there's not another human being for miles, and I'm freezing.”

I unzipped my backpack and pulled out a sweatshirt which Patrick took with a grudging smile.

“Do you have two of everything?” he asked.

“Training from my stepfather. Be prepared, the Führer always told us.”

He sat down on a rock to put the sweatshirt on. “You don't like him much, do you?”

“He had a way of making you feel you were always failing some test.”

“What about your real Dad?”

“Well, he did fail every test, including fatherhood,” I said. “Couldn't get his priorities straight, my mother said. I haven't seen him in ten years.”

Patrick unscrewed his water canteen and offered it to me. “It must feel pretty shitty to matter so little to someone.”

“I went through a stage of that,” I said, wondering why on this gray, empty moor, I was telling a perfect stranger about the part of me that still hurt when touched. “But Dads are highly overrated anyway.”

“Mine's dead.”

He said it so quietly I hardly heard him through the fog. I sat still a moment, wondering what to say. I didn't want to ask how he died, because I wasn't keen to stir up Patrick's gloom.

“Sorry,” was all I could come up with. “I guess your mother does double duty then.”

“She's dead too.”

I cringed inside. I thought of my own mother, whose favourite saying was “Patrick, don't make waves.” I'd always thought her worse than useless, even accused her of driving Dad away, but I'd never wanted her dead. The magic of the moor vanished, leaving only bleak, bone-chilling damp. I knew I had to say something helpful now. I couldn't make a joke or pretend it was no big deal. “That's rough. Was it an accident?”

He turned his face away. “Car accident. I might've been killed too, if I hadn't decided to stay on campus a day longer to pack up my things.”

“How'd you manage?”

He slitted his eyes against the mist. “After the affairs were settled, I packed all the things I wanted, bought a plane ticket and took off.”

“Wow.” I fell silent, thinking about what it would be like to have no one. No one telling you it's time to grow up, no one
whining that you should finish university. Or get a job.

Freedom. Complete, utter freedom.

“I guess your parents left you pretty well off, eh?”

“That doesn't make up for it.”

“I didn't mean that, but you can do pretty much anything you want.”

“I could.” He hunched down into his shoulders. “It just takes time to figure out what that is.”

“Still, I'm sure you've got friends to visit.”

“I don't have friends, Patrick. I have drinking buddies and good-time boys who haven't shown their faces since the funeral.”

I was failing miserably at yet another test, that of cheering the guy up, so in time-honoured, male-bonding tradition, I reached into my backpack to pull out a couple of beers. Hardly Adolf's idea of hiking equipment, but they came through in a pinch.

“Well, my friend,” I said, tapping my beer against his. “Here's to a new start for both of us.”

Patrick's hatchet face worked a moment, then a slow smile transformed it. “Agreed. And tomorrow we're going to the Pembrokeshire coast to hike along the cliffs. In the sun.”

Back inside the B&B, we peeled off our soggy clothes and hit the shower. Since my only pants and sweatshirts were soaked, Patrick offered some of his. I marvelled at the rich materials and expensive labels. Adolf shopped only at Discount Dan's. Anywhere else, he said, and you're just putting money in the pockets of the rich. I picked a pair of black Cartier jeans and a Hugo Boss sweatshirt with leather elbow patches. It felt good to be rich. By contrast, Patrick put on his most tattered jeans.

Again I marvelled at the effect money has. When we
returned to the Trewern Arms for dinner, the pub owner was all over me and the waitress who cleared tables was almost slipping in her own drool. With my string-bean physique and gawky lack of class, girls rarely gave me a second glance. This was a change I could get used to. Patrick grinned at my open delight but said it would wear off.

“I've had money all my life. After a while, you think people only like you because of it. No girl's ever wanted the real me, and my frat buddies liked me only when I was picking up the tab. It leaves you feeling empty.”

“Well, no girl's ever wanted the real me either,” I replied, ordering a new round of drafts with a flick of my finger. “At least this gets you something. And when you were growing up, I bet you had a swimming pool, the latest toys and vacations in Hawaii.”

“All under the watchful eye of nanny. Or rather nannies, because Dad kept trying to screw them and Mom kept firing them.”

“Better a gorgeous Swedish nanny than the beady eye of an ex-army sergeant with a fetish for All Bran. ‘A cleansed body's a cleansed mind', my stepfather always said.”

“At least he didn't raise you by proxy, like mine,” Patrick countered. “Kind of like a wholly-owned subsidiary.” He stopped himself just as a scowl was beginning to spread over his face and drained his beer with a quick toss.

“Okay, so Dads are shits the world over. We're out from under them now, right?”

But the scowl was still spreading. I tried again. “And at least you've got the money.” Curiosity gripped me, for I was getting used to the feel of Boss leather against my skin. “Or is that still all tied up?”

With an effort, Patrick shook his head. “Dad had accounts
all over the world, which I can access if I need to.” He paused, then patted his daypack beside him. “But I've got the entire life insurance policy in diamonds right here at my side.”

I plunked my beer down with a jolt. “You've got to be kidding!”

He held his hands out, palms up, like a beggar. “I wanted the feel of it in my own hands. Not a little piece of plastic or a signature at the bank. I wanted something to hold on to, something to give me a good time. Two million dollars, right here in my hands—that's got to give me a good time.” His eyes grew glassy. “Right?”

The exercise, the rich pub food and the four pints of Murphy's stout were taking their toll, and I figured I should get Patrick home before he started tossing hundred pound notes around. Later, I lay awake listening to his snoring and to the pounding of my heart. Two million dollars in diamonds lay in a bag only a metre from my feet. I could pack my stuff, steal half of them—I wouldn't leave him with nothing—and be back in London before he even woke up. Then I could deck myself in Boss leather and surround myself with drooling girls to my heart's content.

Oh, the temptation.

•  •  •

By some miracle, the next day dawned sunny and Patrick awoke in fine spirits again. It was the darkness that seemed to haunt him, and he emerged from the shower singing. He opened his suitcase and handed me a shirt. Raw silk with an Armani label.

“Here, I know you love this stuff. I'll trade it for your Our Lady Peace shirt.”

I took the Armani without protest. I suspected he'd never even heard of the Canadian rock band and just wanted to slum it for a while, but I was quite happy to play king for another day.

To complete the image, I wore his Rockports again, and, with a chuckle, he donned my discount equivalent. Patrick had calculated that the hike along the coast would take us all day, so he sent me down to ask the landlady for a picnic lunch.

When I returned, Patrick had our daypacks ready and he dangled the Jag's keys in front of me. “Want to try it?”

I gaped. “On these roads? On the wrong side?”

“Where we're going, the roads are only one lane wide. Come on, I know you're dying to.”

The car engine caught on the first try. My heart raced. I gave a jaunty wave to the landlady pruning her roses and accelerated down the highway. Beneath my hands, the car throbbed like a sexy woman. It was magic, as tempting as the diamonds sitting in the little bag by my side. Patrick didn't understand the seductive lure of his life.

He spread the map out and directed me through a maze of little roads, and when we finally broke through the hedgerows, we found ourselves in a field of parked cars. Ahead of us stretched a rugged expanse of red rock, heather and coarse scrub, cropped close by wandering sheep and ponies. In a jagged inlet, I could just glimpse the plunging drop and the jets of white foam below. My stomach lurched.

Patrick jumped out and pulled our daypacks from the car. The wind in his hair and the scent of roiling surf seemed to give him energy. Tossing his bag over his shoulder, he set off towards the cliff top, where I could just make out a narrow path meandering along the edge.

I gave the car one last pat, pocketed the keys, and went
after him. Once I'd found my feet on the rocky soil and learned to look ahead into the distance rather than over the edge, I relaxed enough to enjoy the hike. Gulls wheeled overhead, and Patrick enthusiastically pointed out the puffins and other shore birds perched on ledges in the cliff face. I could never tell one bird from another but accepted Patrick's word that we were witnessing a rare sight.

By noon, we had reached the tip of the peninsula, where we could see out over the water to a large island off the shore. The cliff top was rounded and fell away to outcroppings of rock further down. Patrick turned off the main path and called up to me.

“Come on, there's a natural ledge down here. We can eat our lunch and watch the birds.”

I hesitated before beginning to pick my way down the slope. The grass was thick and held my sandals well, but even so, my heart was pounding by the time I reached the ledge. Patrick cracked open a beer and peered out over the ocean, which churned and seethed like something alive.

“Between here and the island, that's Jack Sound, one of the most treacherous stretches of water along the coast. The tides funnel into the narrows at great speed and suck everything in with them. Boats trying to get through are dashed against the rocks. God, look at the power of that water!”

His word was good enough for me. I wasn't anxious to look over the edge. But after lunch, Patrick studied the cliff below and began very slowly to pick his way down. Far below him, the black ocean threw itself against the rocks, shooting plumes of foam high into the air.

“Awesome!” Patrick shouted over the roar. “Come on! It gives you such a rush!”

“No thanks.” I felt foolish, a prisoner of my fear. When I
was twelve, I'd stood on a high diving board, trembling and crying while Adolf taunted me from below. I'd backed down, but his word “pissypants” had rung in my ears for years. I studied the slope. Patrick stood on another ledge, safe and without fear. He was beckoning. Not taunting me, but eager to share his joy. Which was rare, I knew.

I left our packs on the ledge and began to inch my way down the slope. My hands clutched at passing sedge as stones slipped beneath my feet. My legs quivered from the strain, but gradually I drew nearer till I stood at his side. His eyes danced as he pointed along the cliff to our left.