The Five Gates of Hell Read Free Page B

paintbrush in her fists like sword and shield, her body concealed inside a pale-blue tent. She always worked with the windows open and, that evening, a wind had lifted off the ocean. Nothing in the room was still. Everything fluttered, flapped and rattled. The dried flowers, the drawings on the walls, her hair. The effect was less one of walking into a room than of suddenly finding oneself travelling at high speed in an open car. He had to shout to make himself heard.
    â€˜Yvonne?’
    She waved him over. When he was standing beside her, she jabbed at the easel. ‘What do you think?’
    He looked at the picture. Lots of white and blue balls, trapped between lines. At first he thought of noughts and crosses, and then he realised there weren’t any crosses. Then he didn’t know what he thought.
    â€˜What’s it supposed to be?’ he asked her.
    â€˜It’s whatever you want it to be.’
    â€˜Don’t you know?’
    She shook her head. ‘Have you got any ideas?’
    He looked at the picture for longer, then he looked at the others, stacked in piles against the wall. In some of the pictures there were lots of balls, in others there was only one: a white ball on a blue background, for instance; a red ball on grey. He thought he understood these better. He went back to the picture on the easel and suddenly he had it. ‘It’s moons,’ he said, and felt sure that he was right.
    â€˜Moons,’ she said. And folded her arms across her chest and tilted her head on one side. ‘Moons,’ she said again and, walking round to the back of the picture, she wrote MOONS on it, and the date. There was her grin and then there was his. Hers wide and delighted. His still uncertain, but slowly becoming less so.
    September came and still the weather held. Nights when even a single sheet seemed too heavy on his skin. Yvonne took to sitting on the kitchen floor with the fridge door open and a tall drink clinking in her fist. He could tell that time had passed by looking in the mirror; his blond hair had bleached almost white, his nose was powdered with freckles and he could see pale half-moons in the bays between his fingers. He felt his weeks with Yvonne had washed everything clean out of his head. It was almost as if he’d gone to the bottom of the ocean too, he could imagine what that was like now, he could almost imagine his mother there. His head felt like the gull’s skull he’dpacked so carefully in his case. It felt empty, picked clean, pure. Leave it outside and it would whistle in the wind. Drop it into the sea and the fish would swim through its eyes and ears like a game. He could hardly remember what he was returning to. On the drive back down to Moon Beach, Yvonne reminded him.
    â€˜Your father’s not very well, Nathan,’ she said. ‘He’s going to need help,’ and she peered at him over the rims of her dark glasses, ‘especially from you.’
    â€˜I know.’ He looked out of the window. The sun was so bright that day. Like a razorblade it cut round the roadside diners, the billboards, the trees. Such sharp edges to everything. But thinking of Dad, Dad’s sadness and Dad’s wounds, that thought was like shadows. He saw the place where he’d grown up. Somehow there was shadow even in the yellow of the sunlight on the lawn. As if all colour, even the brightest, held darkness. Nothing was safe. Everything could turn, give way. Fifty miles north of Moon Beach they drove into a gas station and he couldn’t see anything for a moment. It was just being in the shadow after being in the sun. But that was what it felt like to be going home.
    When they turned into the driveway, Dad was leaning against a pillar, almost shy. He ran into Dad’s arms. Smelt the wool of his cardigan, smelt the talcum powder he used. He remembered the skull and how it smelt of nothing, and he was happy then. Dad smelt of things. Dad was