Magda pours coffee in the breakfast room at the Gap, having given Jack a laminated menu of items she knows he will not want once he has heard what she has to say.
‘This is not so good maybe, but I have something to show you. I have not long come from the hill.’ The dish of fruit salad and the individual selection boxes of Rice Krispies, Frosties and Coco Pops remain untouched as she speaks quietly and calmly. ‘I was on patrol with the Guardians and I saw her.’
Jack shifts around in his chair, knocking the coffee.
‘She was in the lighthouse. I saw something in the tower and I took a picture on my phone, but I did not realize until just now. I think it is her. Look . . .’
She offers the black Samsung, already open at the image. Jack’s hands shake. What is this? What is he looking at? A blurred, grainy photo, barely lit. Some kind of weird canopy, spread out like wings. The guy . . . with Sarah. Is it Sarah, with her arms tied up above her head? As Magda coos, he curses and questions her and demands that she call the police and tell them he is right and Sarah has been kidnapped and she is in the lighthouse and he is going there and they should come with the dogs and helicopter and whatever they need to stop him because he is going to get his wife and kill that son of a bitch.
And he goes. Angry, way beyond anger. The chalk explodes under his feet. The shush of the sea is a loud shut up, get on with it, get there and find her; the tang of the ozone is tear gas to his mouth and nose. Streaming, weeping, oozing, he climbs the steep, stony steps at the bottom of the hill with his calves screaming and his chest on fire. The sun is up and in his eyes, the dawn is unexpectedly hot now. The world is against him. The gull stretching black-tipped wings on a wall and laughing. The morning chorus squealing and squalling. The buttercups and daisies, the purple clusters and those little studs of vivid orange set against the grass and the grass itself all jewelled with dew and burning green – all these are insults. The fat bee boozing on a bright yellow celandine, the butterflies doing their stupid little dance, the buzzing, whirring things he can hardly see. The whole of creation laughing in his face, teasing. So rich, so fucking fecund. All this was made or meant or just happened by accident – who cares how? – life bursting out from every pore of the planet but from him, the dead, lost, useless boy with the empty seed, lying to everybody the whole time. This is not just her problem, whatever he says. It is him as well, with his hopeless sperm, his lazy boys, his blanks, his squirt of nothing. Useless, pointless Jack, drumming on his thigh with his fingers as he climbs the hill, all clatter but no bang, all noise but no melody.
Behind him, the faces of the Seven Sisters are veiled in shadow, ashamed. The sea sound is harsher up here, nastier. Get on with it, you creep, the waves say. Get her. Ahead on the broad back of the hill the bright white tails of rabbits twitch and scatter. Rabbits everywhere: prolific little bunnies who drop more little bunnies as easily as breathing, a countless crowd parting before him, nearly under his feet. So hot already, breathing hurts. He climbs the hill, seeming to step upwards into the sky. Then there it is.
The tower, with the sun behind.
Jack stops, gasping for breath. Through the binoculars Magda gave him, squinting against the brilliant light, he sees the figure of a man in the lantern room, arms outstretched as if on a cross. Holding that pose. Sarah must be up there somewhere . . . A smoker’s cough rips his lungs, twists his ribs, and he hacks out phlegm on to the flinty chalk and grass.
For a moment, it all pauses. Up here where the scale is vast, where you can see for twenty miles or more, everything is still. The sea is utterly calm, a swathe of iris blue. Then a hare tears across the grass in front of him – a hare now, for Christ’s sake – the ears trailing, flying for the cover of the gorse. A fox appears from nowhere, caught between chasing the hare and glaring at Jack, and settles for the glare. What are you doing up here so early, loser?
This climb is taking longer than Jack bargained for, it is further than it seemed. Hands on his knees, he heaves in air to his lungs and feels his heart thump. Then he goes again, onwards and upwards towards the tower, like a flaming arrow to end a siege. Picking up time again. Sarah, a march in his head. One-two, one-two. Sarah, Sarah. Somebody has drawn in chalk all over the bench up ahead in a language and symbols he does not understand – what the hell is this? – and a crisp packet snagged in the gorse, a Coke can rammed down a rabbit hole. These filthy bastards, these human vermin spewing their junk-food guts all over the beautiful earth, and Jack is raging against them now as he strides up the hill and then runs full pelt towards the tower, where the strange figure still stands in the lantern room like a beast in a cage looking down on him. A beast in a cage – Sarah in a cage. He will find her, he will rescue her from the beast.
He throws himself against the wall, feels a sharp dig at his ribs, swings his leg over and he is in now, beyond the barricade and up to the wall, banging on the wall, useless, soundless slapping on the stone wall, banging on the window – loud resounding claps into the dark room – but where is the door, where is the door? He finds the door and pounds the frosted glass with his fists, shouting, ‘Let me in! I know you’ve got her. Let me in! Sarah, I love you. I am coming for you. I love you. Let me in . . .’