‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’d like to understand, but I don’t. I just don’t.’
‘You really don’t know?’
‘I really don’t know.’
She got up, wiping her eyes, and wandered around the room, picking things up, putting them down again. She went to the door and looked out at the child, sitting on Jamieson’s lap being patty-caked by Clarin. The mouse was on her shoulder once more, and the baby couldn’t decide what to look at, Clarin’s hands or the little animal.
‘When Lim was twelve,’ Vivian said, ‘he went to choir school.’
Tasmin nodded. All Tripsingers and would-be Tripsingers went to choir school.
‘There was this man, the assistant choir master. Lim told me his name was Jobson. Martin Jobson.’
‘The name doesn’t mean anything to me, Vivian.’
‘He was probably long gone by the time you … Well, he was one of those men – what do you call it?’ She paused, her face very pale. ‘A man who screws little boys?’
Tasmin ran his tongue around a suddenly dry mouth. ‘You mean a pedophile?’
‘He did it to Lim.’
‘Oh, Lord. How awful …’
‘He could have gotten over that I think. He really could. He said he could have gotten over that, and I believe him. But Lim went home and told his father, your father.’
Tasmin shut his eyes, visualizing that confrontation. She did not need to go oh. He knew what she would say.
‘Your father told him it must have been his fault, Lim’s. Your father said he must have asked for it. Invited it. Seduced the man, somehow. Your father told him he was ruined. Debauched. That’s the word Lim always said, debauched. He told Lim he was filthy. Perverted. That he couldn’t love him anymore.’
‘No,’ Tasmin murmured, knowing it was true. ‘Oh, no.’
‘Your father had this viggy he was going to give Lim, and he gave it to you instead. Because you were a good boy. Pure, he said.’
‘My viggy …’
‘Lim let it loose. If he couldn’t have it, he wouldn’t let you have it either. He went crazy, he said. He heard the viggy singing to him, words he could understand, like a dream. He had delusions. After that … after that it didn’t matter what he did. He was already ruined. That’s what he thought….’
‘So when he ran away….’
‘He was just getting even. A little.’
‘Ah.’ It was a grunt. As though he had been kicked in the stomach. He got up and went to the door, moved outside it onto the narrow porch, and bent over the railing. The blue-purple of the bay stretched away to the headlands on either side, and beyond the bay, the ocean. At the limit of his vision he could see the towering buoys of the Splash site. Star ships came down there. Ships whose thunder was cushioned from the planet by an enormous depth of ocean. Things came and went, but the foundations of the world remained unshaken.
Unlike men whose foundations trembled when new things came upon them. Unlike brothers, when they learned the loved and despised was not despised at all and had not been loved enough.
‘God,’ he said. It was a prayer.
‘Master?’ Jamieson stood beside him, his hand out, his face intent with concern.
‘I’m all right.’ He moved back into the shabby room. ‘Vivian. I’ll help. I’ll help you all I can. You and the baby.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know. Not just yet. But I will help. Would you go to Deepsoil Five? My mother would make you very welcome there … no! Don’t look like that. She didn’t know. I swear to you, she did not know. My father … he was a cruel man in many ways, Vivian, but neither she nor I knew anything about what you’ve told me. Lim never told us.’ He put his arms around her.
‘He still loved his father,’ she said, weeping. ‘And he was ashamed.’
Clarin came in with containers of hot tea, obtained from a vendor down in the bustle. Jamieson went out and returned with crisply fried chunks of fish, the chortling baby high on his shoulders, exclaiming, ‘Fiss, ’ot fiss.’ Both the acolytes inspected Tasmin as though for signs of illness or damage, and he made an attempt at a smile to reassure them. They were not reassured.
They sat without speaking for a time. Eventually, Vivian said something about the baby, her face softening as she said it.
Tasmin asked, ‘Do you know what Lim was doing, Vivian? Why he did it?’
‘He had to get to you,’ she replied. ‘That’s all I really know. He needed something by Don Furz, and you had it. And he told me if he could get that, we’d be wealthy. His family would be proud of him, and we’d be wealthy.’
‘Nothing else? Only that?’
‘That’s all. It was a secret, he said. A terrible secret.’
She knew nothing more. They left her there, promising to return. Tasmin gave her what money he had with him, enough to last a few days. ‘Don’t go back to the market,’ he told her. ‘You don’t need to do that.’
On the way to the car he fished in his pocket, bringing Celcy’s earclip out at last. He stood by the car, staring at it for a long moment. All he had left of her. All.
‘Jamieson.’
‘Sir?’
‘You’re a clever fellow, Reb. Somewhere in all this mess there will be someone who buys gems. I paid four hundred for a pair of these. Firestones are more valuable here than they are in the interior. You ought to be able to get at least a hundred for this one clip, just on the value of the stones. That’s enough to buy passage for a woman and a child, isn’t it?’
It was Clarin who replied. ‘Yes, Sir. More than enough.’ There was an ache in her voice, but Tasmin did not notice it. She was fighting herself not to put her arms around him, but he did not notice that either. His face was so tired and bleak, she would have done anything at all to comfort him. The best
