The Five Gates of Hell (40 page)

‘I could contest the will. It might take six months to sort out.' She faced into the room again and smiled at him. ‘Maybe longer.'

‘I thought you said you were leaving after the funeral.'

‘I've decided not to.' She walked to the fireplace and tapped half an inch of ash into the grate. ‘I've got my daughter's interests to take care of. You see,' and she looked up at him, ‘I'm not sure I trust you.'

It was so absurd, he had to laugh. But his laughter sounded false in the hollow room. ‘What about Yvonne?' he said. ‘What's she going to think about all this?'

‘Oh, hasn't she told you? She's leaving today. She's driving back to Hosannah Beach. She said she had some things to do. You know,' and Harriet sneered, ‘paint.' She picked up her pack of cigarettes and her lighter from the mantelpiece, and moved towards the door. ‘In the meantime,' she said, ‘I'm sure your friend can find somewhere else to stay.' She gave him a mocking smile. ‘There are plenty of those men's hostels on the west side.'

Nathan stood in the middle of the room. A thin spiral of smoke rose from the grate. It was Harriet's cigarette. He went over and crushed it out under his heel.

From his table in the corner of the Ocean Café Jed watched Carol walk down a flight of steps, across the terrace, and through the glass doors. She was wearing a yellow shirt and black slacks. Her limp had
got worse. She clung to the strap of her shoulder-bag with both hands, as if for support.

She stood beside the table, smiling uncertainly.

‘I'm late,' she said, ‘aren't I?'

She sat down. She unhitched her bag from her shoulder and put it in her lap. Her mouth seemed even smaller than he remembered. As if they'd stitched her up some more. As if they were trying to stop her talking altogether.

‘I've just been to the doctor,' she said.

‘Is it your leg?'

‘Not my leg,' she said, and she was still smiling, ‘no.'

A waiter arrived to take their orders. She looked up at the waiter, then she moved her head back down, moved it so fast that the smile flew off.

‘A tea,' she said.

Jed ordered the same.

When the waiter had gone, Jed leaned forwards. ‘What's wrong with you?'

She turned away from him.

‘You're taking pills, aren't you?' He paused. ‘Aren't you?' He'd raised his voice. He didn't know why he suddenly felt so angry.

She was staring out to sea. His anger didn't touch her.

He was reminded of the old people who sat in rows behind the plateglass fronts of their hotels. Vasco used to call them pawns. They sat in rows all day, they watched the waves wrinkling in the distance like their own skin, and when they died it was as if death had come in from the ocean, come in on a surprising diagonal like a bishop, and suddenly there was a gap, someone had been taken, one of the pawns had gone.

‘What are you so scared of?' he asked her.

‘The sun's too bright. There are too many colours. Noises scrape at me.' She turned to him. ‘I'm scared of feeling like me. Really like me, with no layers of anything over it.'

He didn't want to hear this. This wasn't what he'd come to hear.

She saw the look on his face. ‘You asked,' she said.

He sipped his tea. It was cold already.

‘Aren't you scared?' she asked him.

‘What of?'

She shrugged. ‘They say people who aren't scared, either they're brave or they're very stupid.'

‘That's like saying nothing, isn't it?' he snapped. ‘That's like saying precisely fucking nothing.'

She looked down at her hands. ‘Why did you want to see me, Jed? What do you want?'

‘I need your help.'

‘I don't see how I can help you.'

‘I want to know what you meant that day.'

She frowned. ‘What day?'

‘The day of your father's funeral. You came up to me and you said, “This whole thing's a sham.” I want to know what you meant by that.'

She turned her cup on its saucer. Noises scrape at me.

‘Carol?'

She lifted the cup and sipped. ‘Why do you have to open all that up again?' she said. ‘It's over.'

‘Not for me it isn't.'

‘It was years ago.'

‘I want to know, Carol. I need to know. It might help.'

She brought her cup down so hard, the saucer fell into two neat pieces. ‘You're so selfish, Jed. You only want to listen now it suits you. You wouldn't listen back then. Back then you were having too good a time, weren't you?'

Too good a time. That was a joke. But he didn't say anything. He just drank some more cold tea.

‘All right,' he said, ‘suppose I tell you what I think you meant.'

She shrugged.

‘I think Creed was responsible for your father's death,' he said. ‘I don't know what he did exactly. But he played a part in it, didn't he, him and his people?'

‘You were one of his people.'

‘I was his driver. They never told me what was going on.' He leaned forwards on the table. ‘I think maybe,' and he paused, and lowered his voice, ‘I think maybe he was even murdered.'

Her face hardened. The bones showed white in the bridge of her nose.

‘You can think what you like,' she said. ‘It doesn't make any difference now.'

‘It might make a difference,' he said. ‘It could.'

She shook her head.

‘You're not listening to me, Carol. You used to listen to me.'

‘You used to be funny. You're not funny any more.'

He sat back.

‘I think I'd better go now,' she said. ‘I only get an hour for lunch.'

‘Yeah,' he said, ‘you'd better go. You'd better go because it takes you longer than most people.'

She took her bag and put it over her shoulder, then she rose to her feet. She stood beside the table, looking at the ground. ‘It's not good for me to see you,' she said. ‘Don't call me again.' She moved away across the terrace. He wasn't the only person who watched her go. It was the limp. It had definitely got worse.

He pushed back from the table suddenly, his chair shrieking on the tile floor, and she was standing in front of him, naked, her arms weighed down with fish. There were fish lying at her feet, some still twitching, some already dead. She looked different, her face seemed rounder and calmer, but he could tell it was her: her right leg was strapped into a metal contraption. He turned away, he looked at the ocean for a while, and when he turned back again, she had gone.

He returned to his car. He was just opening the door when the phone began to ring. He picked up the receiver. ‘Yes?'

‘Jed, it's Nathan.'

‘What's up?'

‘We've got a problem.'

‘What is it?'

‘Can I meet you somewhere?'

‘At the house?'

‘No.' Nathan was silent, thinking. ‘Where are you?'

‘Outside the aquarium.'

‘I'll meet you there. Say in about ten minutes.'

‘Meet me inside.'

‘Where?'

‘In front of the sharks.' Jed switched his phone off and put it back on its cradle.

In front of the sharks.

His mouth widened an inch. That was a nice touch, that was.

Nathan saw Jed first.

Jed was staring up into the Deep Reef tank, his face close to the glass. It was a vast tank. A pillar of seaweed and kelp grew in the centre, twenty feet high and encircled, near the top, by fish of such untarnished silver that they might have been made of aluminium.
Sunlight spilled from somewhere above, turning blond then green as it filtered down through the water.

Nathan moved closer. A shark approached. Swayed past. It moved the way some women moved. Almost as if it had hips.

Jed turned. ‘Leopard shark,' he said. Then he read from the information panel at the base of the tank. ‘Electro-receptors in their snouts help them to home in on buried prey.' His teeth glistened. He seemed to relish this notion of homing in.

The shark passed again, its skin a camouflage of beige and grey, its eye slit, bevelled, like the head of a screw. It was strange how the body seemed to move around the eye: the eye seemed fixed, the body seemed to swivel and rotate.

Nathan suddenly felt as if his throat was swelling. It was dark in the aquarium; the only light was the light shed by the tanks. There were so many people, there was nothing to breathe. His hearing began to swirl.

‘Not much air in here,' Jed said, ‘is there?'

Nathan took a few steps back. He went and stood in front of another, smaller tank. It contained something called Moon Jelly. He heard a woman's voice. ‘Make a pretty lampshade, wouldn't it?' He heard somebody laugh. He was finding air now, close to the glass, a down-draught. He was breathing slowly, cautiously. Soon he felt well enough to return to where Jed was standing. He couldn't watch the sharks, though; the way they moved was a trigger for nausea.

‘What's wrong?' Jed said. ‘Don't you like sharks?'

‘Tell me something,' Nathan said. ‘If they'd asked you to do the shark run, would you have done it?' He paused. ‘Or would you have chickened out?'

Jed smiled that even, unnerving smile of his. ‘I can't swim,' he said. ‘Now you tell me something. This problem we've got, what is it?'

‘It's my stepmother. Harriet.'

‘What about her?'

‘She doesn't want any strangers in the house.'

Jed opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. ‘She doesn't want any strangers in the house.' The way he said it, it sounded like a riddle.

‘That's it.'

‘You want me to leave. Is that what you're trying to say?'

‘There's nothing I can do. I'm sorry.'

‘What about tonight?'

‘I'm sorry.'

Jed turned round. For a while he just looked at Nathan. Then he reached into his pocket and took out a piece of candy and put it in his mouth. Nathan heard the candy shatter between his teeth.

‘Like one?' Jed said.

Nathan shook his head.

Jed seemed to lose interest in him. He stood close to the glass, his pale eyes tracking fish.

‘Where will you go?' Nathan asked him.

‘I don't know,' Jed said. ‘Worst comes to the worst, I can always sleep in the car.' Nathan nodded.

‘Can you lend me some money?' Jed said.

‘How much?'

A shrug. ‘Ten dollars?'

Nathan felt in his pocket, pulled out a few squashed bills. He flattened them out, and counted them. ‘I've only got eight,' he said. ‘Here.'

Jed took the bills and slid them into his back pocket. They walked to the exit. Jed got into his car and rolled the window down. He leaned his elbow on the window. One hand picked at the side of his neck, the other fitted a key into the ignition. A slow drumroll from the engine. ‘See you around,' he said.

‘See you, Jed.'

Nathan sat on the pale-blue railings that ran along the promenade and watched the Chrysler pull out into the traffic. Though he felt guilty about throwing Jed out, he also felt a sense of relief. It was pretty ironic to think that he had Harriet to thank for this.

As he shifted his position on the railings he saw a man walking across the grass towards him. The man was wearing a dark suit and a white shirt. A tie that had loosened slightly. Dark glasses. He was late thirties, early forties. Maybe it was his faintness earlier on, but Nathan seemed to be breathing pure oxygen now. He couldn't account for this sudden alertness of his; it seemed to have no origin.

He expected the man to take the steps down to the aquarium, but the man stopped by the railings instead, a few feet away, and stared at the ocean. The man was wearing gloves on his hands. Fawn leather gloves with holes for his hands to breathe through. They must be for driving, Nathan thought. Driving gloves.

The man took a deep breath and then let the air out slowly. ‘You know, when my father died, he asked for the words AND SPRING CAME FOR EVER on his gravestone.' He smiled faintly, sadly. ‘Maybe
I'm sentimental, but I've always liked the words. They seem to be saying that death's just a beginning. That there's something fresh and new about it.' He breathed in again, filled his lungs. ‘Days like today, with spring on the way, I can't help thinking of him.'

A plane slid through the bright air, a finger tracing skin. The same care, the same slow pleasure.

‘Do I know you?' Nathan said.

‘No.' The man took off his dark glasses. He was smiling. There were traces of amusement, faint embarrassment. ‘I saw you from my window.'

‘What window?'

‘I live up there.' The man pointed at the two towers of baroque grey stone that rose above the palm trees at the end of the promenade.

‘The Palace Hotel?' Nathan said.

The man nodded. ‘You know it?'

Nathan had to smile. Everybody knew it. It was the most exclusive apartment hotel in the city. ‘Do you live there?'

The man glanced at his shoes. ‘I saw you from my balcony. I thought I'd come down and speak to you. If you were still here, that is.' He looked up again. ‘I thought we could drink a cup of coffee together.'

It was Nathan's turn to look away. ‘I don't know.'

‘I know what you're thinking,' the man said. ‘A complete stranger asking you for coffee. But I meant what I said. A cup of coffee. No strings attached.'

‘No strings attached?' Nathan said.

‘No strings attached,' the man said, and lifted his gloved hands away from his sides, as if he might've been concealing the strings about his person. ‘What's your name?'

‘Nathan.'

‘My name's Reid.'

Nathan looked at him. ‘Strange name. Sounds kind of made up.'

‘Does it?' Reid laughed.

They walked to the Ocean Café. They both ordered black coffee and sat facing the marina. Reid leaned back in his chair, right ankle on his left knee, hands folded in his lap. He seemed very calm and sure. The masts of yachts clicked in the wind.