509

XII

FATE’S CONSTRUCTION IS LIKE PAPIER MÂCHÉ, says Rachel, her voice thoughtful. LAYERS OF MEMORY, EGO, IMAGINATION, ALL GLUED TOGETHER WITH MALICE AND FEAR. A GOOD DEAL OF FEAR.

I groan. It is morning; the night was very long.

LISTEN, THAT DOOR IS NOT A DOOR. I HAVE SAT IN IT WHILE YOU SLEPT AND IT IS CONSTRUCTED FROM THE SADNESS OF REJECTION. THAT IS WHY IT IS GREY IN COLOUR. AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-TWO, HE FELL IN LOVE WITH AN OBOIST. HE PROPOSED. SHE MADE A LIST OF PROS AND CONS, AND FOUND THAT THE CONS FAR OUT-NUMBERED THE PROS. SO, SHE REJECTED HIM.

‘Do you want to make him more angry?’ I whisper.

THAT KEYHOLE HOLDS HEARTBREAK. EVERY TIME THE KEY TURNS, IT IS A SCREAM OF RELIEF AND TORMENT, A TWISTING OF ANGUISH.

When the key turned this morning, my heart beat as though it might burst from my ribcage. Millhauser challenged me with his gaze, but my freaked-out state seemed to satisfy him. He set the bowl of food down on the floor. I ate it gratefully, but after I had finished, I only felt more tense, fretting that if now was a moment of calm, then a 510storm must be brewing in the stillness. Something is being plotted.

WHY NOT TRY TO WALK THROUGH IT?

I sigh. At least my head is cooler today, a weak energy in my gut. I rise and touch the door with my fingertips, trying to dispel my cynicism. There is a depth of trust in my heart for Rachel, born of years of coming to rely on her intuition, her wisdom, and what if, what if there is something in what she says? But all I feel is chill and scratched metal. I press a little harder and there is one heart-skipping moment when it feels as though the door has moved – but it is just my imagination. The door is some seven inches thick. This is a crazy plan.

‘Surely he must be getting bored of this too?’ I ask anxiously. ‘Surely he will want something more interesting to happen?’

WHEN WE GET BACK, WE MUST GO TO A CONCERT. BEETHOVEN! IMAGINE, SITTING THERE, SIDE BY SIDE, THAT SILENCE BEFORE THE NINTH BEGINS, THAT SILENCE LIKE A DAWN WAITING TO BREAK. AND WE’LL SINK INTO THE MUSIC AND AT THE END EVERYONE WILL STAND UP AND APPLAUD FROM THE DEPTHS OF THEIR HEARTS.

I cannot help being wooed by the idea; my heart is roused and then shadowed with pain upon remembering how unlikely that future is. I lie on my back, exhaustion swimming over me. My sleep is deep and I dream a dream of clear and vivid memory: of being back at my home in Brixton. I am sitting in the kitchen with my flatmate, the sapiosexual physicist, while Radio 4 plays in the background, critics being caustic. She is swiping through Tinder, 511answering tweets, eating a Pot Noodle and teasing me all at the same time.

When I wake up, home no longer seems like a childhood dream but vividly alive. I can taste the smell of bad cooking that permeated our kitchen, recall the junk mail in the hall, the cracks in my room that I concealed with framed prints.

‘Even if we never make it back, there was an awful lot wrong with the world,’ I muse.

TRUE. BUT IF WE ALL DO NOTHING, THEN WE GET NOTHING. IF WE DO SOME GOOD EACH DAY, EVEN A SMALL THING, THEN IT COUNTS. AND IF YOU ADD UP ALL THOSE GOOD ACTS, ACROSS A LIFETIME, THEN THE IMPACT IS HUGE.

‘Maybe …’

THAT’S HOW CYNICISM LEADS TO EVIL, RIGHT? WITHOUT ANY FAITH, THE WORLD GOES TO ROT. THERE’S GOT TO BE SOME SINCERITY, SOME SPIRITUALITY, SOME KIND OF …

‘You’re being surprisingly positive.’

THERE’S SO MANY GREAT THINGS YOU COULD DO. YOU COULD GO BACK AND SET UP A RECORD SHOP.

The idea purrs inside me, but I temper it with laughter. ‘Come on, as though I could afford the rent.’

YOU’RE TOO DEFEATIST. COME ON! FUCK LONDON. HEAD NORTH. I’M A NORTHERNER IN MY SOUL.

‘You were the one who always wanted to stay here, Rachel.’

WELL, THERE WAS FINN … 512

‘I know, I know. Our dear Finn. But he has grown up now. His story is his own to live out.’

I WILL ALWAYS MISS HIM.

‘So will I …’

A silence as we ache together.

‘Your hunger for life – it’s surprising. And wonderful.’

I KNOW, I KNOW … her voice acquires a blush. IT WAS DYING THAT DID IT. HAVING TO FIGHT TO LIVE. I WAS LYING IN BED, AND YOU WERE ASLEEP AND I COULD FEEL MYSELF SLIPPING AWAY. I WAS WATCHING YOU AND IT WAS THE MOST PAINFUL THING IN THE WORLD, KNOWING HOW YOU WOULD WAKE AND FIND ME GONE, JUST AS I WOKE ONE DAY TO FIND MY MOTHER GONE. IT MADE ME REALISE THAT … EVEN IF THE WORLD ISN’T WORTH LIVING FOR, THERE ARE PEOPLE TO LIVE FOR.

I want to tell her that I love her, but am conscious that I am Jaime and she is Rachel, our marriage a simulacrum. The words hover.

IT’S FUNNY, she continues, WHEN I WAS ALIVE, I WAS ALWAYS HALF IN LOVE WITH EASEFUL DEATH. BUT NOW I’M DEAD, I’M IN LOVE WITH LIFE: I WANT A BODY; I WANT TO BREATHE; I WANT TO HAVE SEX AND FEEL MYSELF CLIMAX; I WANT TO PICK UP A BRUSH AND PAINT. OH I WANT THAT SO MUCH. I WANT TO PAINT YOUR PORTRAIT. PROMISE ME THAT IT’S THE FIRST THING WE’LL DO.

‘But what if …?’

I AM ALIVE. I HAVE NEVER FELT SO ALIVE.

‘You’d better be, if we’re going to set up a gallery and a record shop together.’ 513

I LOVE YOU.

‘You’re a peevish old crone who has stolen my heart.’

We both get a fit of giggles so acute that it causes Rachel to get the hiccups. As I attempt to shock her better, our laughter becomes hysterical.

Then I hear footsteps and the laughter dies. Sitting up on the bed, I try to mould fear into courage. With the high-pitched screech of the key, I imagine the rust of heartbreak that Rachel described. Millhauser sets down my gruel at the bottom of my bed. I nod at him, he nods at me. Stalemate. As he turns to go, Rachel releases a hiccup. I explode into laughter. Millhauser freezes. Slowly, he turns to face me.

‘Find me funny, do you?’

Step by step, he approaches me and I bunch up my fists, knowing that my pathetic old body has no hope against the hard muscle of his youth. His fist flies out and pain screams across my face and my nose feels like a thrashing liquid; the bone shattered into fragment. His eyes are electric with a crazed hatred.

STOP IT, YOU BASTARD, STOP IT, Rachel screams.

He grabs my uniform in his fists and swings my head at the wall and time slows down. My head is going to hit that wall. My head is going to hit that wall and my fragile, liver-spotted skin will break. My head is going to hit that wall and blood will stain the brickwork. My head is going to hit that wall and my brains will be mashed into my skull. My head is going to hit that wall and all the neurons that contain my ability to laugh and love, dissect and judge, walk and talk, play and tease, are going to go out like a fused lightbulb. My head is going to hit that wall and Fate 514will win. Rachel’s voice is yelling that HE CAN’T KILL YOU – but my head is going to hit that wall. My head is going to hit that wall and there is relief in the horror, that the game is over, that Rachel and I will haunt him forever—

There is no pain, no pain,

and I assume that I am dead.

When I open my eyes I can see the structures of brick and cement like the colour blocks of a cartoon. I realise that my head is in the wall. His memories float through me. Fate as a boy, quivering in a cupboard by the school kitchens; Fate weeping and trying to calm himself by counting from sixty down to one, telling himself that he must stop, because if the boys see him crying he will be taunted all term—

Hands wrench my body back into the air and suddenly I am lying on the bed again and everything is solid. The pain in my nose is gone. I gaze up and there is terror in Millhauser’s eyes. It makes me laugh. He takes his leave in haste.

Rachel begins to cry. YOU SEE, she sobs, I SAID IT AND YOU DIDN’T BELIEVE IT. I ALWAYS KNEW IT. DON’T YOU SEE? WE’RE THE STORYTELLERS.

TRY AGAIN, Rachel urges me.

My nose is seared by the brick; I cry out.

It is no good: I cannot seem to do it again.

‘I think it was a fluke, a one-off,’ I say.

NO, YOUR EGO’S GOT TOO BIG, THAT’S ALL, she accuses me. ALL THAT YOU NEED TO REALISE IS 515THAT WHAT YOU DID WAS NORMAL. YOU SIMPLY SAW THINGS AS THEY TRULY ARE, AND NOT AS FATE WANTS YOU TO SEE THEM.

My heart shrinks with my failure. I make another attempt, but the wall seems to sneer: it squashes my nose and scrapes the tip. At the sound of more footsteps, despair comes over me.

It was a one-off miracle, I cannot repeat it. This time I will die.

When the door opens, a man announces himself as my new gaoler. There are shades of Augustus Fate in his beard and his bushy eyebrows, but his expression is benign. A procession of young men enter. One sets a small square table down in front of me; another flurries out a white cloth and sets down cutlery. A plate is placed before me, a silver tureen lifted. The smell of food gushes through my nostrils and somersaults in my stomach: potatoes, greens, chicken, gravy –

IT IS SURELY POISONED.

‘Is this my last supper?’ I ask. ‘Before I am hanged?’

‘Your case was reassessed this afternoon.’ The gaoler’s voice is merry and light. ‘And the judge felt that your five-year sentence was rather unfair. It is likely that you will be released tomorrow morning – should your good behaviour last the night.’

The young men depart; the gaoler winks. The reverberations of the door slamming shut. The cutlery is tight in my fists; the food before me emits scent-clouds of bliss; saliva is syrupy in my mouth. I cannot hold on any longer; I spear a potato and sink my teeth into its crispness. I taste and 516hear the crunch and the song of salt and grease melting on my tongue.

I THINK YOU ARE SAFE. Rachel’s voice is full of wonder. I THINK WE’VE WON.

HE IS PANICKING.

HE KNOWS THAT WE HAVE THE POWER TO GO. SO HE’S TRYING TO SEDUCE US INTO STAYING. GOOD BEHAVIOUR – HE IS PLEADING NOW. BEGGING!

‘I could bloody well do with a break,’ I murmur, for I can hardly think of anything but the feast.

NO, STOP EATING. DON’T GET SUCKED IN, Rachel cries. DON’T START IDENTIFYING WITH THIS BODY AGAIN. YOU ARE TWENTY-SIX, REMEMBER?

I set down my fork. She is right; dissociation was easier with austerity: I risk becoming all flesh and pleasure again. Another half-hearted attempt at the door, and as the night inks in I give up, sleepy and heavy. A relief as I lie there, a sense of being dignified by the food, made human; shadowed by a sick anger that this is Stockholm-syndrome gratitude.

But anger is no good: I have tried to feed off it all day, to meld it and shape it in the hope it might power me through the walls of this cage. I close my eyes and replay the fight with Millhauser, slowing down memory, pausing on each frame. The sensation I felt was one of lightness, serenity. I fall asleep and I dream of my flat in Brixton and my old life.

In the early hours, I am suddenly awake. The light has that pearly grey-blue quality of pre-dawn twilight. I think I can 517hear birdsong, some exquisite new species outside my cell, until I realise that it is Rachel singing quietly, and a tune emerges, the ‘Ode to Joy’. A siren song.

I grab the sound of her voice like a rope, pull myself up, and let it guide me to the wall. I hold out my palms, resting them lightly on the wall, and see that the wrinkles are vanishing; my skin is growing taut and fresh with youth once more. Brick upon brick, perhaps a hundred of them in this wall: they all begin to shimmer, to hum, and I realise that they are not made of brick but thought and memory, and at the root of that memory, there is sound, and Rachel’s ‘Ode’ is now a trembling in the centre of my heart where she is coiled, waiting for me to carry her out. Fate’s anguish as a lonely boy is being drowned out by a blissful soprano. I slowly walk through the wall, all that is solid melting into air, each particle a song in a choir that sings of freedom and joy, and there is light streaming everywhere, a hot white core that pulsates and becomes a wall, a ceiling and a bed in a room in a cottage.

‘Rachel?’ 518