was something in the tone of his voice of one coaxing an hysteric from the brink of an attack, and Suzanna was glad of his intervention.
‘… it’s too public …’ he said, ‘… especially here …’
After a long, breathless moment the woman made the tiniest of nods, conceding the wit of this. She suddenly seemed to completely lose interest in Suzanna, and turned back towards the stairs. At the top of the flight, where Suzanna had once imagined terrors to be in wait for her, the gloom was not quite at rest. There were ragged forms moving up there, so insubstantial she could not be certain whether she saw them or merely sensed their presence. They were spilling down the stairs like poison smoke, losing what little solidity they might have owned as they approached the open door, until, by the time they reached the woman who awaited them at the bottom, their vapours were invisible.
She turned from the stairs and walked past Suzanna to the door, taking with her a cloud of cold and tainted air, as though the wraiths that had come to her were now wreathed about her neck, and clinging to the folds of her dress. Carried unseen into the sunlit human world, until they could congeal again.
The man was already out on the pavement, but before his companion stepped out to join him she turned back to Suzanna. She said nothing, either with her lips or without. Her eyes were quite expressive enough: their promises were all joyless.
Suzanna looked away. She heard the woman’s heel on the step. When she looked up again the pair had gone. Drawing a deep breath, she went to the door. Though the afternoon was growing old, the sun was still warm and bright.
Not surprisingly the woman and the bear had crossed over, so as to walk on the shadowed side of the street.
3
Twenty-four years was a third of a good span; time enough to form some opinions on how the world worked. Up until mere hours ago, Suzanna would have claimed she’d done just that.
Certainly there were sizeable gaps in her comprehension: mysteries, both inside her head and out, that remained un-illuminated. But that had only made her the more determined not to succumb to any sentiment or self-delusion that would give those mysteries power over her – a zeal that touched both her private and professional lives. In her love-affairs she had always tempered passion with practicality, avoiding the emotional extravagance she’d seen so often become cruelty and bitterness. In her friendships she’d pursued a similar balance: neither too cloying nor too detached. And no less in her craft. The very appeal of making bowls and pots was its pragmatism; the vagaries of art disciplined by the need to create a functional object.
The question she would ask, viewing the most exquisite jug on earth, would be: does it pour? And it was in a sense a quality she sought in every facet of her life.
But here was a problem which defied such simple distinctions; that threw her off-balance; left her sick and bewildered.
First the memories. Then Mimi, more dead than alive but passing dreams through the air.
And now this meeting, with a woman whose glance had death in it, and yet had left her feeling more alive than perhaps she’d ever felt.
It was that last paradox that made her leave the house without finishing her search, slamming the door on whatever dramas it had waiting for her. Instinctively, she made for the river. There, sitting awhile in the sun, she might make some sense of the problem.
There were no ships on the Mersey, but the air was so clear she could see cloud shadows moving over the hills of Clwyd. There was no such clarity within her, however. Only a chaos of feelings, all unsettlingly familiar, as though they’d been inside her for years, biding their time behind the screen of pragmatism she’d established to keep them from sight. Like echoes, waiting on a mountain-face for the shout they were born to answer.
She’d heard that shout today. Or rather, met it, face to face, on the very spot in the narrow hallway where as a six-year-old she’d stood and trembled in fear of the dark. The two confrontations were inextricably linked, though she didn’t know how. All she knew was that she was suddenly alive to a space inside herself where the haste and habit of her adult life had no dominion.
She sensed the passions that drifted in that space only vaguely, as her fingertips might sense fog. But she would come to know them better with time, those passions, and the acts that they’d engender: she was certain of that as she’d been certain of nothing in days. She’d know them – and, God help her – she’d love them as her own.
‘That’s right.’
‘Do you happen to have a son by the name of Calhoun?’
‘What business is it of yours?’ Brendan wanted to know. Then, before the other could answer, said: ‘Nothing’s happened to him?’
The stranger shook his head, taking hold of Brendan’s hand and pumping it vigorously.
‘You’re a very lucky man, Mr Mooney, if I may make so bold.’
That, Brendan knew, was a lie.
‘What do you want?’ he said. ‘Are you selling something?’ He withdrew his hand from the grip of the other man. ‘Whatever it is, I don’t want it.’
‘Selling?’ said Shadwell. ‘Perish the thought. I’m giving, Mr Mooney. Your son’s a wise boy. He volunteered your name – and lo and behold, you’ve been selected by computer as the recipient of –’
‘I told you I don’t want it,’ Brendan interrupted, and tried to close the door, but the man already had one foot over the threshold.
‘Please –’ Brendan sighed, ‘– will you just leave me alone? I don’t want your prizes. I don’t want anything.’
‘Well that makes you a very remarkable man,’ the Salesman said, pushing the door wide again. ‘Maybe even unique. There’s really nothing in all the world you want? That’s remarkable.’
Music drifted from the back of the house, a recording of Puccini’s Greatest Hits which Eileen had been given several years ago. She’d scarcely listened to it, but since her death Brendan – who had never stepped inside an opera-house in his life, and was proud of the fact – had become addicted to the Love Duet from Madam Butterfly. If he’d played it once he’d played it a hundred times, and the tears would always come. Now all he wanted to do was get back to the music before it finished. But the Salesman was still pressing his suit.
‘Brendan,’ he said. ‘I may call you Brendan –?’
‘Don’t call me anything.’
The Salesman unbuttoned
