The Blasphemer: A Novel (39 page)

When Nancy pulled up outside her house she saw Tom’s car across the road. He was sitting in the driver’s seat. A smile. A wave. She marched over to him and rapped on his window. When it came down she said: ‘This has to stop. Enough.’ Tom’s wounded expression softened her. ‘Look. I led you on. I shouldn’t have. But you shouldn’t have …You knew how vulnerable I was … I know you’re a decent guy. Let’s not spoil this. I’ll ring you in a couple of weeks. I’ll ring you, please don’t try and ring me.’ She strode away in the direction of her house before the driver of the car had a chance to say anything.

The engine started. The car drove off. Ten minutes later, it reappeared on the other side of the square and parked in a space that had a restricted view of the house.

That evening, as Daniel was lying on his bed in a T-shirt and boxer shorts reading the
New Yorker
, he heard a swishing noise: paper being pushed under the door. An envelope. He loped off the bed and opened the door in time to see a young woman walking away.

‘Susie?’

‘Hi. Sorry. I didn’t want to disturb you.’

‘You didn’t.’ He opened the letter. It was a photograph of him and Nancy on the flight to the Galápagos Islands, the one Susie had taken.

‘I managed to keep hold of my camera during the crash. I thought you might like it.’

‘That’s sweet of you. Won’t you come in?’

Susie followed him into the room and, after closing the door behind her, ran her hand along the top of the flatscreen TV, languidly circled the bed, and played with the dimmer switch before opting for muted lighting that cast her scarred features into partial shadow. When she settled it was on the bed, with the side of her head resting on an upturned hand, as if offering it on a plate.

‘Just opened a bottle of Pinot Grigio, but I think it’s corked,’ Daniel said as he slipped his jeans on and buckled the belt. ‘Have something from the minibar. I’m on expenses.’

Susie smiled shyly. ‘I don’t drink actually,’ she said. ‘But I do smoke.’ She held up a small bag of grass. ‘Are you allowed to smoke in the rooms?’

Daniel shrugged.

‘Do you mind?’

Daniel shook his head. ‘Smoke it myself from time to time.’

Susie sat down on the bed and began rolling.

Daniel put some music on, a jazz compilation provided by the hotel. He tidied up some magazines and clothes and sat down at his desk. His bare feet felt cold and achy. He stared at the photograph. ‘Nancy and I are having – what was the expression she used? – “breathing space”.’

‘Oh.’ Susie licked the cigarette paper, rolled and twisted one end. Next she tore off a strip of card, curled it into a roach and inserted it in the other end. This she put into her mouth as she struck a match. A blue spiral of smoke circled her as she stood up and walked towards the window. ‘Nice view,’ she said as she exhaled. ‘All those pretty boats in the marina. And there’s the water shuttle. You ever used it?’

‘No. Well, once. Long time ago.’

A pungent, aromatic smell filled the room.

‘Don’t you hate hotels that have windows that don’t open?’ Susie said. ‘I feel like I’m trapped in a box.’The mournful bellow of a fire engine could be heard far below. Susie pressed her cheek against
the glass as she looked down. When she stood back, there was a cloud on the glass left by her breath. She squeakily drew a peace sign on it.

‘Doesn’t make much difference to me. I’m no good with heights anyway so I tend to avoid the windows.’ Daniel stared at his guest. ‘It’s my fault.’

‘What is?’

‘That Nancy and I have separated. I climbed over her to save myself.’

‘I know.’

‘You know?’

Susie took another drag. ‘Nancy told me when we were waiting to be rescued.’

Daniel looked at his toes. ‘We still haven’t discussed it. Not properly. Don’t suppose we ever will. I don’t think we can. As soon as it is out there, between us … I don’t know, I guess we couldn’t take it back.’

‘You know, you were a hero that day. You saved me. Don’t you remember? I was trying to open my lap belt like a car seat belt and you unclipped it for me. You saved Greg, too. He told me … I wish I could have saved him.’

‘You were next to him when … ?’

As she walked back across the room, Susie handed the joint to Daniel. He nipped it between his thumb and finger and took a deep drag, holding it down for a few seconds before exhaling, looking at the spliff and nodding. He felt instantly light-headed.

Susie sat back down on the bed. ‘I don’t know how long he’d been face down in the water. Someone shouted, “Hey, look!” and I looked and he was floating face down. The thing I find strange is that he was so … loud. He was always … It seems odd that he would have gone so quietly. The coroner said he died of hyponatraemia, brought on by the cold. It’s a type of kidney failure. It was an existing condition … He was so strong. I kept holding him until the helicopter came … I was pregnant.’

‘You said.’

‘I told you I miscarried. That was a lie. I had an abortion … I
couldn’t face … It was a legal one. The doctors said it was,’ she tapped her head, ‘ “psychologically justified”.’ A tear trickled down one of the lines on her cheek and settled in the dimple at the corner of her mouth. She sniffed. ‘Look at me. I was determined not to cry.’

‘Crying is good for you.’

Susie sniffed again and wiped her face with the heel of her hand. ‘Is it true the salinity of tears is the same as the salinity of the seawater?’

‘Think so. If it isn’t it ought to be.’

‘We both survived, you and me.’

Daniel noticed that Susie wasn’t wearing a bra, as she hadn’t been wearing one on the seaplane. ‘Sort of,’ he said distractedly. ‘I still don’t feel like I did before the crash. I feel off-centre. Sometimes I wake myself up with my own shouting. Sometimes I’m afraid to sleep. I’ll get all shivery like I have a fever but at the same time I’ll be feeling clear-headed. It’s hard to describe. It’s like everything is more vivid. Wet seems wetter. Blue seems bluer. I feel more energized and restless. People tell me I keep smiling. I sometimes feel that, since the crash, I have found my true self – that a glass wall that separated me from the rest of the world has come down. It was like, before it happened, I was underwater and everything was muffled. I was hearing sounds coming from a distance. Now I hear everything clearly. Does that make sense?’

‘I guess.’

‘At the Wildlife Foundation this morning, I got freaked by something I saw. It was a leatherback turtle. Something about his face. I had to get away. Ended up at the Museum of Fine Art, and I was looking at some paintings there and it was as if I was really seeing them. Like they were real. Like I could step into them. Like I had never seen a painting before. It was fascinating and horrible at the same time. I found myself wanting to run away from there, too. Running, running, running. Found myself standing on the Harvard Bridge looking down into the river. I’d taken my clothes off. I don’t think I was going to jump. The truth is, I don’t know what I was thinking. I found myself there, the wrong side of the railing,
hanging on, staring at the water, naked. A cyclist stopped and asked me what I was doing. I said I didn’t know. I was like this surprised spectator.’

‘So you climbed back over?’

‘Yeah. Put my clothes back on. The cyclist asked me if I was sure I was OK, then he went on his way. I hailed a cab and came back here.’

Susie placed the ashtray on the bed, took off her glasses. Thought. ‘I was a virgin when we married,’ she said. ‘All my girlfriends teased me about it but it was one of those pledge things. Greg had been with lots of girls … I haven’t been with anyone since. It hasn’t seemed right. Too soon.’

‘When it’s the right time, you’ll know.’

Susie patted a space on the bed next to her. Daniel hesitated then sat, bringing with him a mug he was using as an ashtray. He handed the joint back to her and she grinned and said: ‘Wanna blowback?’

Daniel let out a loose and unexpected peel of laughter. He hadn’t heard the expression ‘blowback’ for years, since he was a student, and it struck him as comic. ‘Your generation still calls it that?’

‘I thought we invented it.’ With the joint burned almost all the way through, Susie placed the lit end in her mouth, with her lips clenched tightly on the unburning end, and formed a tube with her hands. This she pressed to Daniel’s open mouth and exhaled, forcing the smoke through. Daniel felt the room slide. The smoke alarm went off. Susie mashed up the joint in the ashtray and wafted her hand over it. They both erupted into giggles. When the alarm stopped, the jazz seemed louder. Oscar Peterson. Daniel began miming to it, playing a piano with fingers alternately stiff and loose, wrists broken, shoulders hunched, nodding.

Susie copied him.

‘You haven’t heard music until you’ve heard it stoned,’ Daniel said. ‘You hear every note so clearly, almost three-dimensionally. You can shift your focus from instrument to instrument as if you are actually inside the music looking around.’

Susie placed the ashtray on the floor and laid her head in the
crook of his elbow. Soon the sound of her sleeping could be heard. Daniel turned the bedside light off and fell asleep, too. When he woke up it was still dark and he was alone. He turned the light back on and checked his watch. There was a note on the bedside table. ‘Nancy is a lucky woman. Call me when you’re next in town. Susie xx.’ Alongside this was the photograph of him and Nancy. He lay back on the bed and kissed it.

His flight was leaving in three and a half hours. No point trying to get back to sleep. Time to have a shower and pack. He could get breakfast at the airport.

For the first half of the flight he rehearsed what he wanted to say to Nancy. That he knew how she was feeling. That he felt it too. That he was deeply sorry about what happened on that flight to the Galápagos Islands, but that he was only human. Another time he might have acted differently, might have put her life first, but in those confusing, adrenalin-charged seconds the fight or flight mechanism had proved too strong. That wasn’t him. He hadn’t been the one to desert her. Biology was to blame. Two million years of evolution. He would tell her that the crash had left them both traumatized, but that they could overcome whatever problems they were having by talking, by listening. He would tell her how, in Boston, he had lost his equilibrium. He would tell her about the cathedral, the turtle, and the paintings in the museum that came to life. He might even tell her about what happened on the bridge. She would understand. Nancy always understood.

He decided not to take any diazepam for the flight – he would need a clear head when he landed – but he regretted it the moment the seat belt signs came on and the plane was buffeted by mild turbulence. He drained his glass of red wine so that it wouldn’t spill, and watched the first twenty minutes of a film, a disappointing thriller starring Robert De Niro. He managed to doze, only to wake in panic – the wide-awake, teeth-gritting panic of realizing that you are twelve miles above the earth in a hundred tons of metal – a hundred tons of metal that is carrying a further hundred tons of cargo. He clung on to his armrests for the remainder of the flight. At Heathrow, as soon as he had collected his luggage, he sent
Nancy a text. ‘Just landed. Can I come round? Some things I need to collect. Martha there?’

‘Martha at school. Don’t be long. Am going to gym.’

As the black cab pulled into the Clapham Old Town square, Daniel’s heart began palpitating. He breathed deeply, marched up the steps and knocked on the door.

IN A DOUBLE-FRONTED GEORGIAN TOWNHOUSE IN KEW, AN OLD
man was looking out over the rank of framed photographs on his desk: his son in a Scout uniform; his muddy-faced grandfather in a trench with another soldier who has his arm around him. There was his second wife on the beach, but no photograph of his first. It seemed tactless.

Philip picked up a photograph of himself as a ten-year-old posing with his mother and his sister Hillary, the three of them standing by his father’s grave at the Bayeux War Cemetery, the twin spires of the cathedral in the background. He was wearing his Sunday best that day: shorts, snake belt, kneesocks, checked shirt, clip-on bowtie. His chin was tilted up. Arms pressed flat against his sides. Standing to attention.

A noise. The clink of silver against china. Amanda was placing a cup of tea on the table beside him. She must think him asleep. He half opened his eyes to see her leaving the room and looked again at the framed photograph in his parchment-dry hands. It was taken on 6 June 1954, the tenth anniversary of D-Day. His first visit to the cemetery.

As Philip looked into his own eyes – the eyes of the ten-year-old boy – time slowed, stopped and, like the propellers on an ocean liner changing course, spun in reverse. Spin. A shift of tense from past to present …

Philip can hear the screech of seagulls as they cross on the ferry;
taste again the salty air; feel the warmth of his mother’s hand as he steadies himself against the sways and dips.

The streets of Bayeux are criss-crossed with bunting: Stars and Stripes, Union Jacks and Maple Leaves. There are no Australian or New Zealand flags that he can see. Must have been too far for them to come. His mother has said that the Queen may be coming over to Normandy for the anniversary. He hadn’t seen her coronation the previous year. They had no television. But he had seen her picture in
The Times
. She looked nice. She looked a little like his mother.

When the coach stops, Philip is the first off it and, when he runs to the entrance of the cemetery, he gasps at the sight. More than 4,000 white headstones, row upon row, gleaming in the sunshine and aligned perfectly in every direction, horizontally and diagonally. Not a single blade of grass is out of place. He can hear his mother’s voice calling after him to wait.

Other coaches arrive and the pathways become busy. Widows, uncles, parents, sisters, grandmothers. The headstones all look the same, apart from the occasional one in the shape of a Star of David, or carved with a half-moon and facing a different way. Philip likes that the glorious dead are buried as they paraded, in ranks.Yet they must all have been different, he thinks: some short, some tall, some fat, some thin, some brave, some cowardly. The most common age on the white headstones, he soon realizes, is nineteen. This means they would still have been in their twenties if they had survived D-Day. As he stands among them he feels as if he is in the middle of an army.