got up and Jack unfastened her jeans and took them down. He touched her vagina with his lips and looked up at her. I’d like to fuck you with my tongue, he said.
Yeah, go ahead, said Adela.
When they were tired they lay overlapped on the sofa facing each other, boy-thigh girl-thigh boy-thigh girl-thigh, elbows propping them up at either end.
I’m in sails, said Jack. With an ‘i’.
What is it you sell? said Adela.
I sell as much as anyone can ever get.
And how much does that cost?
It doesn’t cost anything. It’s just Life.
I don’t get it.
Life. Guaranteed to last a lifetime. All you can eat, all you can drink and all you can wear before you die.
But you’d get that anyway.
Would you? You haven’t.
I haven’t got life? Do I not seem alive to you? You thought I was alive enough when you cried my name a minute ago.
Jack looked away. His body slackened and tensed and his face closed, as if he was preparing to reshoulder an intolerable load after a moment’s rest. He said: You are alive. You’ll die one day like all the rest but you never got what they call a life. That’s what they’ve got, life. But you’ll live till you die. It’s not the same. You’re alive.
Adela shook her head. D’you want something to eat?
Jack shook his head. You can’t spare it.
There’s soup. You’ll have to have some.
Only if you let me pay.
Don’t be stupid.
Here, said Jack. He reached into his jacket and took out a small box. He held it out to Adela. This survived. Take it. For the soup.
Adela looked at the box for a while. OK, she said. She got up, put on her jeans and sweater, took the box and walked towards the kitchen.
Adela, said Jack. What was that last ornament you got rid of when you left your old place?
A gull. A grey and white porcelain gull with a yellow beak.
Some time later Adela went to call Jack through for the soup. He was gone. She looked in the morning for his tracks in the snow, but they had been covered up by the freshly fallen.
She opened the box and took out a grey and white porcelain gull with a yellow beak. She went up behind the house to the tall rocks, laid the gull on a flat place, took a heavy stone and pounded it to powder. By evening the weather turned and rainclouds crossed the ridge. Rain fell and washed the powdered porcelain off the rock, where it mixed with the melting snow and was carried away to the river on the floor of the glen.
* Subject to availability
When I see Arnold I remember the woman who could walk. I think about Jenny too of course, not that she looked anything like her dad. I haven’t seen her for a long time now. That was why I stopped the woman who could walk, to find out when the healing would be over and Jenny would come out. I didn’t go inside. I had nothing that needed healing then. Nothing that you would stand up and say you believed in Jesus for, or that you’d know if you’d been healed of. Praise the Lord! I can love the ones I didn’t love before, and stop loving the ones that didn’t love me! Hallelulia! I walked up to the hall entrance slowly, early, and I was reading the curved red letters on freshpasted white paper about Pastor Samuel’s Ark of Salvation when the woman who could walk walked out. I knew she could walk because she told me. She was big and mobile in skirt and sweater and her hands stuck in the pockets of her open raincoat which was flying behind her in the warm wind over the car park, her face was white and her mouth slightly open and she was staring straight ahead. She had a crutch tucked under her right arm. I had to catch her by the elbow to stop her.
Excuse me, d’you know how much longer it’s going on? I said.
She stopped, one foot lifted, balanced by my hand resting on her elbow – it was a soft, round elbow – and looked at me long enough to say: I can walk! before she walked, then ran, to her car and drove away. It was a straight slip road to the M8, a busy enough evening with no roadworks, and as far as I could understand from the paper next morning it happened within a couple of minutes of her merging with the flow that the juggernaut swung easily through the barriers and hit her car head on, with a combined speed of 150 miles per hour. I suppose Pastor Samuel might have said Well, I healed her, so the least she could’ve done was to have stayed to the end of the meeting. Now she walks, nay drives, with the Lord.
I was concerned for myself. I kept her back for half a second and the juggernaut hit her. In half a second a truck moving at 70 miles an hour travels its own length twice – that’s what Arnold told me when I shared this with him, a free sample. From her side she could have avoided the truck by being more polite. We were both in the wrong. I suffered by not knowing I’d have to wait quarter of an hour for Jenny to come out. The woman who could walk suffered by being conscious for at least 30 seconds of the sensation of the destruction of her body by an oncoming lorry (spontaneous Arnoldism.) Usually when I think about the woman who walked the thought is: I didn’t summon up the juggernaut, did I. You don’t guess the instant when northbound and southbound collide, like a single bolt of lightning. Only when I see Arnold I think about how maybe everything is equalled out in the end, not in a good way, and how easy it is to summon up an irresistible opposing force, after all.
What Siobhan said this one time, and the tenner pointing at my empty tumbler was sharp and fresh as a new razor, was even more ominous than Arnold lurking round the pub as he was: Same one again? she said. Not Same again? but Same one again?
Ah, better not, last ferry and all. I looked down into the glass and dodgemed the sleek humps of ice around the bottom. The unnecessary One hung in the air.
Go on, said Siobhan. You sold a house today, didn’t you? Take a cab.
I sell a house most days. I sold one yesterday.
It was a big one, you said.
It was a big one. I felt like rewarding myself with a third g & t. But the taxis skin you for a ferry trip and it’s no better picking up a second one on the other side.
I can’t drive after three, I said.
Take a cab. Two gin and tonics please, she said. She’d seen the weakness in my face and got the order out the way so we could argue about it over a drink.
I don’t want to take a cab, I said, looking over at Arnold sitting by himself at the table by the cigarette machine. He was working, he had the yellow pad out in front of him. He turned and smiled at me. I looked at Siobhan.
It’s not the money, I said. I don’t like being screwed. I’ve got to take the car across. I’ve got a season ticket.
Well drive then, she said, holding the
