Staring At The Light Read online

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  The swimming-cap made her look like a nun. A yellow rubber cap, beneath which Sarah’s red curls lay squashed against her head, uncomfortable and tight, until she began to swim and forgot everything other than movement. She hated the cap because it was a rule of this club, all rules were anathema, and she did not much like swimming either but she needed her health, something to complete the vicious circle of wine and cigarettes and all the rest, and this was one way to do it. The costume and the cap were all there was to carry; there was no timetable to maintain and the activity was mindless. Up and down, down and up, like a mechanically propelled toy, counting the lengths and often wanting it to end, enjoyable for the sensation of virtue afterwards and the water itself. A slab of blue for the carving, her body making the wave, the feeling of weightlessness, the rasp of her own breath and the sight of the far end coming closer. Turn, push off, turn; sound and reality distorted.

  Hockney’s blue pools; Californian blue water and a sun-filled sky; blocks of blue in those pictures that suggested languor and health. The theme for the picture collection could be the hypnotic effect of water: no-one quite immune to it; drawn like lemmings to the invitation and the threat. Sarah tried to think of the sea, floated on her back and tried to imagine the screech of gulls and the sound of waves. The water of the pool, conveniently close to the office, currently empty except for herself, lapped against the edge with the more prosaic sound of a domestic bath, and the view of the ceiling showed not sky but white plaster, peeling in places from the damp. It was a place beset by rules: caps, single-sex swimming sessions, a club run by a martinet, who ignored a falling membership in the interests of a regime. Sarah floated and wondered how long it would last. A man stood by the entrance to the changing rooms, his arms folded as he surveyed the scene. He tapped his watch and pointed at her. Five minutes, he mouthed. She nodded, understanding. Men only in five minutes. She lingered. wallowing in Saturday-morning privacy. On a weekday morning it was like a scene from the sinking of the Titanic.

  As long as she was weightless in the water, the burdens of the mind became weightless, too. As if, mid-length of the blue pool, they carried themselves alongside rather than within. Threats became mere imaginings, obligations mere bagatelles, time immaterial in the face of the current challenge. Five more lengths; just five and you’re finished. Go on, you can do it.

  Another man came out of the changing area. Saw her swimming towards him, the emerald green of her swimsuit and her disfiguring cap stark against the water. He stopped, changed direction, spat on the tiles and went back in the direction he had come from. Sarah hauled herself out of the water. Ah, John Smith, oh, for a better look at you. You are shy of the public eye.

  Cannon had told her that John Smith came here because of the rules. He did not like to swim in the same water as a female, in case, by chance, she touched him. As if the contact with a woman’s skin would bring out a rash. What ailed the man? And what ailed her, that she should want to get closer?

  Arrogance. Some dim dream that once John Smith was seen, smiled at, spoken to, he would assume some other, manageable personality, like other men, reveal his secrets, if not his desires, prove amenable to reasonable suggestions. Arrogant to assume any such thing, especially of a man who spat at the sight of a woman in his stretch of water. As if he owned it. She ran for the changing room before the martinet came out to shout. A gob of spittle lay shining on the tiles. The air outside the water was as cold as spite. Mens sana in corpore sano.

  Sticky damp skin refused to dry after the shower, no time left; the cloying warmth of the changing room, the whiff of chlorine in the hair. The pulling on of clothes that twisted and restricted after the cool freedom of the water; the sight of dead-looking skin on her hands. There were no easier ways of trimming bodily excess and driving those scars back under the skin.

  Dressed, warm but shivery, she went up to the gallery and watched him swim. Two of them: the fat minder, carving through the water with an easy breaststroke so fast and powerful the water purred in his wake; the man himself, slow and clumsy, waddling in the water with a slow, ungainly crawl of maximum effort and minimum result, rolling around like a loose barrel with kicking legs; a little laughable, maybe. The man Matthewson had described to his wife as a clown, and Mrs Matthewson had described to her, looked clownish in the water, with his trunks ballooning behind him. The little white whale no-one would want to preserve. Who could be afraid of a man like that?

  It was the second time she had spied on him here, the first with an impression endorsed by her own particular spy. She wished she had not done it. The sight, and the opinion, was making Cannon’s version of a bête noire difficult to believe. Sarah counted on her fingers. Cannon, Julie, herself: they could all be wrong. It could all be an innocent lie. Or a real lie. Maybe that was why Cannon had said, Don’t go near him.

  Saturday morning and the City was deserted. Sarah hurried in the cold, which stung the damp hair on the back of her neck, rammed the hat down harder. She passed the policeman at his outpost on the corner, standing in his little box and rubbing his gloved hands. They had stood there day and night since the last of the City bombs – the City’s ring of steel against the antics of terrorists. Cannon might have become one of these, but Cannon was cured of his amorality. She was the one who had graced him with total belief. She must continue in faith until the Christmas deadline. But somehow she was beginning to doubt. It was difficult to believe in a devil moulded out of hearsay. The lawyer in her rebelled at it.

  Cannon woke because of the cold. Blue patch of skylight, cold feet the death of sleep. Heater, socks, stumble back to bed, looking at the light. ‘That patch of blue the prisoner calls the sky,’ something forming in his mind. Supposing he looked up at the skylight and saw someone trying to get in? Not trying to get out, as he often envisaged, engineering in his mind a series of ropes and pulleys, Heath Robinson style, but trying to get in. There was a construction of a canvas forming in his mind: a figure reclining across the skylight, languid and naked in the cold. If there was anyone up there, all he would do was invite them down.

  It was the second week of December, light was precious; in a minute it would bloom and he could paint in it. He fell asleep instead, dreaming of the freedom of Christmas. Johnnyboy had promised.

  Woke to the rattling of the door, the skylight patch now a rectangle of grey, the heater burning his feet, disoriented, but not alarmed. He was not in this camp bed, he was in prison; half alive to the sound of shouts and the pounding of feet. Lying in a bunk with his life seeping away, from four o’clock in the morning when he had first started to cut his wrist with the sharpened prong of his belt, to the sound of the man in the bunk below, snoring. Two hours, three, before anyone would notice; easier because the pain in his teeth persisted until he caused a competing pain. He remembered looking at the anatomy of his wrist with mild curiosity in the dim light. There was always light outside the cell: they were never left in the dark. Such a treasure trove of veins and sinews beneath that pallid skin. Scratching at it with the buckle sharpened against the wall, he had felt like primitive man in search of an instrument, angry with the sheer effort of it, digging into his own disobedient flesh, but at least he bled. Knew enough to clench and unclench his fists to increase the flow, the man below still snoring and enough blood to drip, drip, drip. Cold feet, pain and shame, and still not enough to take away the toothache. He had raved about the toothache later; long after he dozed and listened to the drip, drip, drip, as if the toothache had been the reason – as if it ever could be: he had lived with toothache most of his life. One pain did not take away another. All he had done was damage.

  The rattle at the door was louder. Voices in memory. Let’s have you, you daft bastard. What you done? The sound before that of the suicide squad, running towards the cell in a clatter of boots, ready to drag him back into life for trying to outwit the system. Like an army, pushing everything out of the way, tramping towards him with practised panic, fear an
d fury echoing in their voices. What you done, old man, what you done?

  ‘My teeth hurt,’ he’d said; the last thing on his mind. Bonfire Night, it had been; a few weeks after he got there. Fireworks in the sky, visible from little windows, driving him mad.

  Most people talked such shit, Cannon concluded, relying not on contempt, which he did not feel, but on his own experience of doing exactly that under stress. He had blamed the toothache, which had nothing to do with it; it was feeling useless and desperate, and wondering what the hell his brother was doing on the outside, that had had everything to do with it … and wanting to make love to her and cherish her, all the time, and not wanting her to die, or to live without him either. If he himself was out of the way, she would be left alone.

  There were qualities of sound, he had decided in prison, that presented themselves in ways that only the subconscious could judge. He was alarmed by the rattling of the door now, not frightened. The sound of the suicide squad, boots on concrete, fireworks: they were frightening; this was not. Prison senses had refined him, or perhaps these were senses he had already had. The instinctive knowledge of the dangerous sound; the isolation of the opposite. No-one had rattled the door in quite such a fashion before, but he knew it was unthreatening. Cannon came into the full realization of his senses with a groan. He had missed the best of the light, and that was the worst start to a day.

  He knew who it was before he removed the chair; regarded her with a wariness and a feeling suspended between gratitude, mystification, irritation and a kind of awe tinged with affection. Quite simply, he wanted to be in a position to return favours he did not understand. Sarah looked like a drowned rat. He left her at the door and hurried across to the painting, standing face out against the wall, and turned it the other way round. He did not wish her to see herself naked with the scars he had given her. Or to let her know he had forgotten their appointment the way he sometimes forgot the promised daily phone call.

  Sarah had none of the timidity of a trespasser: she walked round every place as if it was her own, politely enough but still as if she might have command of it, like the captain of a ship, respectful of privacy while knowing all the time she could invade any part of it. She sat. ‘God help me, Cannon, you gave me a fright. Are you awake yet?’

  He knew she would try not to end his sentences for him as he felt around for the words; she would wait, half knowing what he wanted to say before he said it, dying to articulate it clearer and quicker than he could.

  ‘I owe a lot to the suicide squad, let me tell you,’ was all he said.

  ‘Why’s that, Cannon?’ She knew the answer – she had been part of the equation – but she was always trying to make him talk, about anything and everything. Practice for the outside, fear that the isolations of his life would make him even less confident, he guessed, and wondered, for the fourteenth time of asking, why she should care so much and how long she would go on believing everything he told her. It was a question he never dared ask.

  ‘Because they stopped me. I seem to have this instinct for self-destruction, don’t I? And if I hadn’t been a suicide risk, I wouldn’t have been allowed to get my teeth fixed. Prisoners only get stuff like that if they scare people. And if there’s someone on the outside like your William. He must have fudged the books. He’s nice, your William, isn’t he? Why don’t you love him?’

  ‘Well, he isn’t my William. And I do love him, for what it’s worth, but he doesn’t want to be loved. He wants to be approved of. Do you want to do more of the portrait? You said you did on the phone yesterday. That’s why I’m here. Then we’re going to the exhibition. Remember?’

  He shook his head, glanced towards the covered easel. It was an old stand for an archery target, broken when he had found it. ‘No, not the portrait, if you don’t mind. The light’s bad. Anyway, I want to think about it for a few days. Let it mellow, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘Let me mellow, you mean.’ She grinned at him. It was infectious: he found himself grinning back, despite his low spirits. She prowled round the room, not consciously checking for changes but noticing everything just the same. Flakes of wood had fallen from the beams and been swept to one side. It was tidier than before, as if he was packing to leave, precious few possessions since the only things Cannon seemed to cherish were his paints and his brushes even if they stopped him travelling light. Not that there were many paints: too many tubes were only confusing, he said. She stopped. ‘What have you done with it, Cannon?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know what. The Bonnard sketch.’

  There was a particular blank space on an otherwise blank wall, marked by a nail. The space had been wiped clear of dust, showing a cleaner surface and smear marks. Cannon shook his head slowly, like a donkey trying to distract flies around the eyes, sat down on his bed and motioned her towards the cherry armchair. ‘I’m allowed to make decisions, you know,’ he said resentfully.

  ‘Of course you are. Everything is your decision. But what have you done with it?’

  He stared at the ceiling, hands clasped behind his head, as if the sight of the ominous stains would give him inspiration. Sometimes it did. ‘I took it somewhere safer. It isn’t safe here. People have been round. I’m sure he sent them. I took it to William’s surgery.’

  ‘Does William know what it is?’

  ‘No, but he knows it’s beautiful. He’ll look after it.’

  ‘Cannon, people are in and out of there all the time.’

  ‘So? People don’t go to the dentist to examine the paintings on his walls, do they? They can scarcely think by the time they get there. They sit, frozen, with a magazine, pretending to read it, that’s what they do. And, when you come to think of it, it has to be the last place Johnnyboy would go. A dentist? Never in a million years. But he might come here. I feel it. He’ll sense where I am, in time. Johnny has his own satellite.’

  It was a long, infuriating speech for Cannon. ‘Does it work the other way round?’ she asked, trying to keep sarcasm out of her voice. ‘Can you picture where he is? Because it would be bloody useful if you could.’ He treated the question with the utmost seriousness.

  ‘In a vague kind of way, yes. But there’s nothing special about that. I know his regime and his habits, you see. I lived with him every day of my life until four years ago. He won’t alter, you see. He can’t. So I never know, if I close my eyes and see him in places where I expect to see him, that it’s because I already know where he’ll be. He was swimming this morning, wasn’t he? There’s nothing … what’s the word? … telepathic about that. He always does on a Saturday. Same place, where he can have the pool to himself.’

  ‘He looked ridiculous,’ Sarah said shortly. ‘About as frightening as a sick porpoise. Cannon, are you sure?’

  ‘Have I ever told you a lie?’

  She looked at him closely. He could look quite guilelessly stupid. The smile revealed the magnificent evenness of his crowned teeth. William’s work. William had altered Cannon’s life far more radically than she ever could. ‘No. I’m not sure you have the knack with lies.’

  ‘Doesn’t make me honest either. Julie says I’m a moral vacuum.’

  But not a liar or a thief. Sarah was prowling again. She picked up the Johnnyboy sketch, bold lines, hangdog features, black teeth. She scrutinized it. The teeth, which were like bars in the middle of the face, turned the expression into a snarl far removed from Cannon’s deliberately vacuous smile, and she frowned at the depiction. ‘This is what you think, you see,’ she said finally. ‘Your version, without him standing in front of you.’ She put the sketch down. ‘He swims like a sad bulldog. Cannon, why are we doing all this? All this running and hiding for this? He looks like a sad bulldog. He swims like a sad bulldog. My boss’s wife says he talks rubbish.’

  ‘That’s only a photo,’ Cannon said.

  ‘What do you mean, only a photo?’

  ‘Stupid!’ he shouted, advancing like an avenging angel, taking the sketch, tearing i
t in pieces with his big hands. The rapid movement was so violent and sudden in itself that she might have been afraid, but she had never been afraid of Cannon. The hands were large enough to encircle her throat and throttle her; they were ludicrously large hands and, like his head, capable of independent movement, as if not connected by the same driving force of a common brain – even his fingers seemed to waggle free from each other. But nothing of his bizarre flurries of movement came to anything until he painted, leaning his whole body into it, unselfconscious, like the conductor of an orchestra, sublimely concentrated. She waved him away. Patted the air with the palm of her hand, dismissing his extremes, inviting him to sit but feeling impertinent for all that. They were both trespassers in this house.

  ‘You don’t understand. A proper portrait of a man takes time. It has time in the fabric, time in the paint. Time to watch the changes. That’s a snapshot. Of one moment in time when I thought I could see him, did – do. I loved him, you see. I love him still. I couldn’t even sketch him without feeling for him. What have I got, poor bastard? EVERYTHING. Teeth. A wife who loves me. A talent. And what has he got? Nothing.’

  He sprang to his feet, lit with his own rage, precise with it, suddenly delicate in purposeful movement. He clipped a sheet of paper to the hardboard on the easel, flurried around for a pen, drew in a few strokes. Took it away and drew another on a fresh sheet, another, another. It was so frenetic she could scarcely look. Sheets of drawing paper scattered the floor with the ink drying. His brother; his brother; his brother, drawn without love in a series of cartoons that made him wink, grin all over his evil teeth, frown for a moment, distend his rubber lips, crease his brow, purse his mouth into a wavy line, look kindly, look like a savage, look like a photofit, a convict, a mad saint. It did not help. In the last he looked like a hungry ghost with nothing to feed his jowls. At the last there was love in the portrait. Her throat was sore and her mouth was dry. Cannon had begun to cough; the kind of polite cough that hurt but sounded as if it was designed to interrupt a conversation, with no other purpose, turning into a spasm of dry coughing, even as he worked. ‘See?’ he kept saying. ‘See? See?’