Limestone Man (24 page)

But no sales experience, Mina said.

They learn on the job. You know that.

Get a grip on yourself, man. You're besotted.

Nonsense.

But I don't know with which one.

Don't talk mad. Everything's under control, I promise you.

Parry was now beaming at the room. Cranc had slipped away into the mist.

Sherry? he asked Serene, who was wearing her violet blouse. Oh yes, we know all about you and sherry.

SIXTEEN

I

At the top of Nuestra Senhora del Carmen Street a pale sun, a sun greyly glittering. A sun of deadwhite coral. Around that sun a smoky aurora.

II

Above The Chasm was a drift of pebbles. All were white or grey as gull feathers. Each was unmoveable.

Round as owl eggs, thought Parry, pleased with himself, as he awoke from an Australian dream.

Above his bed he could see the moon, fat and silver. But for Lulu's catlike snores,
Hey Bulldog
was silent.

Outside, a bat had touched the window, a creature black as charcoal, a ghost sketched even darker than the night. A silhouette in charred paper.

The moon was so close it seemed all he needed to do was open his mouth to suck its pale pumice.

Bitter as quartz, he whispered. Stone milk from a stone breast. Acid leaking from a wound.
No man alive, no man alive will…

I'm still dreaming, he realised.

Still dreaming.

Or maybe he was singing.

Yes, here I am, he had murmured to no one. Child of the moon? Another song with Brian Jones, footling away. Poor Brian. Under his cap of silver wire. His aragonite hair. Sad and just as barren. As desperate.

Parry had thought then of his music collection. He would have scrabbled for a CD, any CD that might take away the silence.

He longed for a Kerala raga he had once heard, based on a drone, the endless syllable of ‘Om'. Music for the hour before dawn. When life seemed stunned. Yet all was possible.

But there had been nothing to hand. He could hear his own breathing. The whisper of his breath. The whimper of it. Which was all he had ever owned.

So Parry had lain in his moon
-
coloured sweat. Yes, a man woken in a strange country, he had thought then. On an alien continent. Even the birds are foreign for me in this place. It will always be the same.

And the dread stole up on him. Colder than his perspiration. At that moment the night sounds were terrifying, the inexplicable night with the Murray passing out of the dead heart. Flowing past the room where he lay.

Where a girl child moaned in her sleep, a bat
-
thing of a girl, a black spirit who had brushed against his window, begging to be allowed in. An urchin, a refugee, a wisp of burnt paper. Blown against the glass.

What had he expected to find? he had asked himself then.

Here?

In such a place?

Where the next country is an ice desert.

Parry lay upon the silver sheet. He thought of a woman he had seen rescued from the sea. Maybe she was part of the dream. It was Sev who had pointed to the group of people. Yes, Sev who noticed the drama.

The woman had been wrapped in aluminium foil to prevent hypothermia. She had glimmered like some medieval Madonna.

The rescuing hands upon her were black, brutal. Colder than seawater, thought Parry then. As they bore the silver woman to her bier, carrying her along the beach. Silent in procession.

But the dream was not about Sev or the woman. Parry's dream had been full of fog. Yes, that was it. And he remembered the dream again. The dream with the moonlight upon him, the moon's white sweat on his belly. That pouch of moonsilver had gilded his balls and sheathed his cock. Parry groaned beneath his silver erection.

But yes, he had heard something. The sound of the fog. The call of the foghorn.

Maybe he hadn't heard the foghorn for years. Or had he? As a boy, how he had thrilled in his bed in the darkness, when the fog's music had blown over The Caib.

Yes, he thought. The foghorn was louder than the sirens at The Works. More unexpected than May's fairground anthems, suddenly audible in the back garden.

Because whenever the foghorn had sounded in Amazon Street or the Cato Street slipway, his life had become different.

When the fog had come to brush itself against his own window, it had tasted of sand and salt. Acid and milk. And in the fog everything was changed.

Parry shivered, thinking about the dream. And he tried once again to remember it. Maybe in the dream the fog was made of white stones. White, hollow stones, light enough to float away.

Yes, the fog was stones. Limestones, pale as gas from The Works. Stones bitter as the sulphur his father hated.

Dad, Dad, he thought. Jack Parry rubbing against the grain. Jack getting it wrong, consistently wrong. His own father pissing into the wind. Dad who liked music that made his son cringe. Dad who chose unsuitable jobs. Jack Parry who planted potatoes upside down.

But they still grow, he could hear his father's voice once more, accusing Parry and his mother of ganging up on him.

Up or down, those potatoes are fine. You stick them in the ground and rose end up or rose end down they grow. So relax.

The fog was white stones. The fog was snow smeared with mercury.

The foghorn was located in a lighthouse to the east of The Caib. It was a monstrous white instrument that Parry and Gil had once thought could be used on a recording.

In fact, Gil had done something with a tape he had made. An impossible bass chord.

A holy throb, Gil had called the sound. Religious, even. Last stop on a church organ but far deeper yet.

Yes, stones, Parry thought. Those stones above The Chasm. Impossible to lift. Like snowballs children have rolled up huge. Yes, that's fog. Or a pillow over the face.

In the dream, wheels of thistledown floated past.

Yes, hollow stones. Hollow in Parry's head.
No man alive will… No man alive…

Someone had drowned. The woman had drowned. But they were keeping her warm. Upon a bed of thistledown.

Parry lay in his silver bed. He raised his mouth to the moon's breast.

No man alive…
he whispered again.

No man…

Then perhaps he slept.

III

Quietly the Arvo Part music came to an end. Ominous and eerie, it was a mistake. But it had been played so softly neither Glan nor Serene had commented. And Parry had been talking but not listening.

Through the streetlight the fret hung in pearls. 3.09am. he noted. In the dark flat a nightlight like a red star cast a glow. Serene had taken it from the Christmas decorations in the shop.

It warms your freezing room, she had insisted. This way, people on the street can see it. And you get the benefit. We all do.

Yes, said Parry. He saw it was 3.12 and felt exhausted.

Good idea of yours. It can be seen from as far off as Cato Street. Almost the only light, Christmas or not. A red star like Arcturus.

Like what?

I knew somebody once, murmured Parry, who understood stars.

You see, smiled the girl, my star shows there's someone alive. In this house.

She was wearing one of Parry's purple shirts and two of his thickest jerseys. On the couch behind, Glan was covered by a duvet.

Shows there's somebody who wants to be alive, Serene added. Someone who's celebrating being alive.

Quietest Christmas I can remember, said Parry.

But next year will be great, insisted the girl. I can feel it. Things can't stay like this. It's…

What?

Impossible. It's just …
impossible.

You weren't around in the seventies.

My dad's told me about Thatcher, the girl hissed. But yes it can get better.

I admire your optimism. But life will be tougher before that. No one knows how tough. Get ready for it.

Serene hugged her purple knees.

You know there's been another one? she asked.

No, I hadn't heard. But I'm not surprised. This weather can't be helping. We're living inside a cloud. Bloody fog. Feels like we're all suffocating.

Glan says…

Yes?

Oh. Nothing.

Glan shouldn't smoke that stuff if it's going to do things to him, said Parry,

Well, who gave it to him?

I just happened to share what Dai had offered me. Bit like the old days in the Paradise Club. Not that we were regular users. Course not. Hasn't harmed you, has it?

Glan always sparks out, said the girl, kissing her right kneecap through her tights. I knew he would.

Predictable, is he?

She considered this.

Maybe. But men are…

Boring?

Glan's not boring, Serene smiled grimly. I wouldn't stay with him if he was boring.

Parry hugged his own knees. A car passed in the street. The headlights shone through the curtains. He ground out the butt in a saucer.

I don't do this often, he said. Smoke, that is. But thanks.

For?

For checking up on me. Seeing if I was alive.

Well, we are living together, said Serene. And thank you for the wine. Yes, quite a night. Red wine and more red wine. Then a little drop of whisky and the last of the peppermint schnapps and Dai's draw and cheese on toast with that mad paprika stuff. And more toast. And all were most … the girl paused. Most
welcome.

My pleasure, said Parry. But it wasn't the cheese on toast that knocked out Glan.

Did we drink so much?

Er … yes. But don't tell me that's all he's had.

S'all I know about, breathed Serene. Honestly. Glan and me can't afford to drink. You know that. But Mina's good. Passes on what she calls discontinued lines.

Yeah, bless those redundant Riojas, smiled Parry. So Mina's more than useful to know. But I saw Glan's eyes. He must have taken something else. He was tranked up like a first timer. Now the kid's out cold.

All right, she said. I do know about something else. These ones are white.

What are white?

Serene again kissed her kneecap through the purple tights.

The pills Glan takes. He had one this morning. I said not to. I said don't. Not today. Because of how they make you behave, I told him. But he only laughed.

And then I said we used to share everything. Once. But not these. Not these white ones. I can't do the white ones. I can't share the white ones. Tried a white one once. Never again.

Parry thought about his own tablets. They were white ones. Big ones white, little ones white. Big pills, little pills. The rest of his life on pills.

He looked at his wrist in the red light. 3.23.

What was it now? Six months since he had last taken his medicines? No, maybe ten. Perhaps a year. He hadn't ordered any for ages. No one had checked.

Parry considered how he felt. Every morning at the time to take his tablets he conducted an investigation. Surely, there was no change. At least, nothing to speak of. Nothing important. But then he had not felt unwell in the first place. At the beginning of all his trouble. But now, it was hard to care.

How do the pills make Glan feel?

Serene coughed. He says they make him come alive.

Parry waited. The girl continued.

Not so…

Parry still waited. Both he and Serene were bathed in the star's red glow.

Not so … anxious, I suppose, she said at last. Not so … scared.

She stretched out her purple legs towards him then.

3.27.

I'm cold, she whispered.

Time for sleep, said Parry.

You know, breathed Serene, I knew one of those boys. Those boys who did it. I remember him from school. And you'd never think. You'd never think he was that type. But the last time we met, he talked to me. Honest to God, he talked to me.

Parry took her hand in the electric starlight.

You are cold, he said.

He talked about dreams. The fact that he never dreamed. But why did he tell me that? We weren't friends. Don't you think that's a strange thing to tell anyone? The fact that you never dream?

Yeah, you're cold. Cold as the fog.

And I thought, that was the reason. For what he did. The reason why he … ended up like that.

You know, said Parry, I think I like you in my clothes.

Serene shifted on the rug. I never dream, the boy told me. He just came out with it. Said it like that. As if he was confessing to something. As if he was apologising. I never dream, he said. I never dream.