Pureheart (13 page)

‘Sometimes, you know,' she said dreamily, ‘I feel like I'm not really here; or only half-here – I mean, in life. As if I only have one foot in this world. Or as if I don't have strong enough ropes to tie me to the earth, and I'm always in danger of floating away. And I'm not really sure if I should stay or go.'

‘Stay,' said Galahad, as if he knew exactly what she was talking about, and why she had said it at that moment. ‘You have to stay now. You have to stay for me. I need you.'

‘You need me?' Deirdre repeated, startled. ‘
You
need
me
?'

How strange that seemed. She had thought it was the other way around. She felt sorry for him, for needing her as much as she needed him.

‘I'll try,' she said. But as she said it she felt a cold little hand on her heart, and despite everything, despite his presence, despite his friendship, despite their love, the hand felt like defeat.

That night an extraordinary thing happened. When Deirdre undressed to get in the bath, she saw that she had been bleeding – that she had begun to menstruate for the first time. Her grandmother had never prepared her for such an eventuality but she had spent long enough in the first year of high school to have sat through some of what were called ‘personal development' lessons. It had also been mentioned here and there in books she had read –
The Diary of Anne Frank
, even the Bible – so she knew what was happening.

At first she was astonished. It had been so quiet, like the mist creeping up from the valley on a winter evening – silent but so transforming that the streetlights became diamonds because of it. She did not know how to feel. She went on undressing automatically and got in the bath. But then gradually, minute by minute, as the night wore on, and in the morning when she woke and it was still true (for she had half-wondered if it had been a dream), and as days passed, she grew happier and happier in the strangest, most tremulous way.

It was not a curse, as some people said. It was a blessing. She was meant to be here.

Life and death had been fighting over her. Life had won.

Life had claimed her for its own.

And so they met in the cave at three o'clock every afternoon, the hour of her grandmother's nap, almost every day for the next three years. Sometimes Gal would not be able to come (once because he had broken his arm – he came the next day with a cast on it). Sometimes, occasionally, Deirdre's grandmother was too busy to have a nap. Those days were days on which Deirdre's throat ached with a grief like homesickness, and on which the pain Gal lived with every day found no relief. But the next day they would see each other again.

And everything was bearable because of their friendship: the sadness of Deirdre's life with her grandmother and all her ghosts; Gal's constant, exhausting anger and his loneliness as he moved from relative to relative and endured a new school under the cloud of having been expelled. Gal was so independent, so remote, so much his own person, so penetrating in his judgements that people had difficulty dealing with him; he had developed a reputation as a troublemaker and was often blamed for things he had not done. Deirdre had only to remember the five-year-old Gal's arguments with her grandmother, and his solitariness and courage while she had been at the high school, to understand how things were for him. Only Deirdre knew how unjust that was.

Life was difficult for both of them – except when they were together.

They never had much time, for Deirdre had to be sure to get back to the flat before her grandmother was up and about again. And neither of them ever felt like talking about the minutiae of daily life. Gal did not talk about school, or even which relative he was living with at the moment. Deirdre did not talk about life at home with her grandmother, or what essays were due to the correspondence school in three weeks' time.

Instead they talked about thoughts, and feelings, and the strangeness of life. Sometimes they would talk about the past. And sometimes they would sit in happy silence. There were whole worlds, whole galaxies, in that.

They knew each other better than anyone else in the world. And every day, their knowledge of each other grew.

One day Deirdre seemed troubled. They were sitting, as usual, in the cave together, on a sheet of folded canvas; Gal was looking idly through Deirdre's sketchbook. When at last she spoke she said something odd. She looked at him earnestly and said, ‘I didn't deserve to be saved, Gal.'

Galahad had been looking at a drawing of one of Corbenic's leadlight windows. It had been years since he had been inside the building, but he remembered the window vividly from Deirdre's sketch of it. Now he looked up at her. At first he didn't know what she meant.

‘Saved from what?' he said.

‘From being burned at the stake. From being persecuted at school. It was kind of you to do it. The kindest thing that ever happened to me. But I didn't deserve it.'

Gal was stunned.

‘How could you say that?' he said.

But Deirdre wasn't listening.

‘They weren't lying,' she said, shaking her head softly to herself. ‘What they said was true. I am a witch. I know it. I don't know how I know it, but I do. That was why I killed the rabbit.'

That was why I killed the rabbit.
She had said it with such calm, matter-of-fact conviction. Gal stared at her, horrified. He hardly knew where to begin.

‘But Deedee,' he said at last. ‘You didn't kill the rabbit.'

Deirdre looked surprised, and then, as if she thought he was just being kind.

‘Oh, Gal,' she said. ‘I did. I did.'

‘
You didn't.
Deedee, don't you understand? I can't believe you don't understand!'

‘Understand what?'

Gal looked at her frustratedly. He felt doomed to failure; he was sure she wouldn't believe him. But he had to try.

‘It was your grandmother,' he said, as earnestly as he could.

Deirdre opened her mouth to say something, then shut it. She frowned and looked up at him slowly.

‘My grandmother?'

‘Of course! Deirdre, listen to me. She did it, then she persuaded you that you did it. I was there. I saw it. And I remember thinking how easy it was to persuade you. So easy, it was frightening. You didn't kill it. You wouldn't have been capable of it – you were only five and it was so neatly done. I'll never forget it. Whoever did it would have had to be really good with a knife. A sharp knife. Anyway, why would you have killed it? You loved it.'

Deirdre gazed at him uncertainly. It was as he had feared. She didn't believe him. He had a terrible feeling that, no matter how close they were, no matter how much she trusted him, she would always choose her grandmother's account of things, no matter how bizarre.

‘You can't remember killing it,' he said hopelessly. ‘Can you? You have no memory of it. And yet you believe you did it. It doesn't make sense, Deirdre.'

‘Nothing makes sense!' she said. ‘It's true that I loved it. And it's true I don't remember killing it. But somebody did. If it wasn't me, why would it be Grandmother? And why would Grandmother tell me it was me?'

Gal paused. There were a lot of answers he could have given to that question. But only one covered everything. ‘Oh, Deirdre,' he said at last. ‘Don't you see? It's your grandmother who's the witch.'

He didn't believe in witches, and he couldn't have explained what he meant – it wasn't bats and spells and cauldrons. It was not until later that he realised just how truly he had spoken.

Deirdre gazed at him. Her face was so sad, he wanted to hold her, to comfort her. It had been easy when he was five. But now – now he didn't know how to start. And he didn't dare try.

Finally Deirdre dropped her eyes.

‘But Gal –' she whispered, staring at the ground. Then stopped. Then began again. ‘If it's my grandmother who's the witch, why do I feel this guilt?'

One night, when she was sixteen, Deirdre dreamed a strange, sad dream.

She dreamt that she had been wandering through Corbenic, exploring, as she used to do with Gal, except she was alone. And she dreamt that she had come upon a stone stairway with a door at the top of it. She had climbed the stairway; she had opened the door.

She was hoping that it would lead to escape, to freedom; she was hoping it would lead to an answer.

Instead it led nowhere. When she opened the door there was nothing but blackness, silence on the other side. And she woke with an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness. But it wasn't until she told Gal that afternoon that she began to cry.

Deirdre never cried. She knew nothing that happened to her was either bad enough or important enough to justify tears.

It seemed to Deirdre that her grandmother had had the worst childhood – the worst life – ever. She had told Deirdre so much about it, and Deirdre had listened so intently, that sometimes Deirdre could hardly tell her own memories from her grandmother's. When Deirdre pictured them, the great and dreadful scenes of her grandmother's life – about which she had heard so often – the colours were all jewel-like and lurid, like pictures of the Passion of Christ in church windows, or the Stations of the Cross. That was why the things that made Deirdre sad didn't matter very much.

What right had Deirdre to cry over a rabbit when her grandmother's mother had died when she was a tiny baby?

How could Deirdre imagine that her loss of Galahad as a friend was important, when her grandmother had lost a two-year-old son?

How could Deirdre's love for Gal – so easy, trite and superficial, without sacrifice or suffering – compare to Deirdre's grandmother's love for her?

Only Deirdre's grandmother's suffering counted. Deirdre's certainly didn't.

In Deirdre's dream, as she told it to Gal, the fact that the room at the top of the stairs led nowhere seemed like a terrible portent: an intimation that there was, ultimately, no escape. And when she began to cry –

When she began to cry, Gal took her hand.

Deirdre's heart seemed to stop. She was so surprised at his touch she stopped crying immediately. And yet, at the same time, she recognised this as something that had been approaching steadily from the moment they had first met. She was surprised, and yet, on a deeper level, not surprised at all.

All at once the deepest possible thrill ran through her: a stab of warmth and light. It was like being struck by lightning, if lightning was nothing but purest love; love expressed in electricity. She stood trembling, staring at this miracle that was their two clasped hands. His hand was bigger than hers, and browner. She hardly ever saw the sun.

Then she realised he was trembling too.

‘Is this all right?' he said; and he did not quite have control of his voice.

‘My grandmother –'

‘But is this all right with you?' he said.

She could not raise her eyes to his face; she was too overwhelmed. In answer she took his other hand. For a moment she stood facing him, holding both his warm hands in her cold ones and looking down at them. Then she brought both his hands up to her lips. She kissed his palms and then turned them over and rubbed her cheek against his fists. She looked up at him and, still clinging to one hand, reached the other up and cupped her palm around the side of his face. He shut his eyes and leant his face towards her hand, rubbing his cheek and his nose and his lips against it. Then, hesitantly, he bent his head towards her. He kissed her forehead first, then her cheek, then the tip of her nose, then her chin, and finally her lips.

Then he kissed them again.

He could not count the number of times he had imagined doing that; it seemed he had been longing to do it all his life. He had always been afraid she would not want him to; that it would destroy her trust in him; that it would frighten her and end their friendship. He had been waiting for her to do something first. But finally –

He had never kissed anyone before. But it was not awkward; he felt as if he had been born knowing how to do it, knowing how to kiss Deirdre. It was just like the movies; he had always known the movies were telling the truth; he had always known Deirdre's grandmother was lying.

No, the movies, that impossibly beautiful black-and-white world of simple truths, intense emotions, heroism, elation – were true after all. Only – real life was better.

He felt, in some strange way, that he had come home.

And Deirdre? For the first time in her life she felt warm, truly warm, all the way through, as if she had spent all her life till this moment huddling in the cold, on the threshold of a safe, soft shelter, open to all, but to which she had been permitted no access.

‘It was just a dream, Deirdre,' he said to her, as they stood swaying gently from side to side in each other's arms. His voice was still shaking. He could hardly believe how perfect it felt to be in her arms, how natural, as if he belonged there, as if they were born holding one another. ‘It's not true, that there's no escape. You're not alone. You've got me. I love you. I've always loved you. One day, we'll escape together.'

After that their meetings were all tenderness and tentativeness. It had always been love, that private intensity, that intimacy, that comfort between them, from the very beginning. Now it was bliss; but the bliss made the building stir unhappily on its foundations and a strange, rhythmic, thumping sound begin. Or begin again.

‘You're so lovely,' she would say to him happily. ‘Every part of you is lovely. You're nothing but loveliness, through and through. You're
made
of loveliness. I never knew there was such loveliness in the world . . .'

‘
You're
lovely,' Gal would say. ‘You are. And you don't know it. You'll never know how lovely you are. You can't see yourself.'

‘
You
can't see
your
self
!'