everything.”
She scratched at her stump, drawing blood. Not for the first time I wished I could write down everything she said, record it for future use. But somehow, I thought I’d remember it all the same.
“If there’s a problem there, with you and Jade, it’ll be there whether you confront it now or in a week’s time. Pass me another chicken leg.”
I passed her the plate. She laughed at my retained sense of etiquette. “Manners maketh fuck-all now, Gabe. Faith maketh man. Just you remember.”
IV
I open my eyes, the remnants of a daydream fading away. I wonder how Della could have known about Jade all that time ago. I wonder how she could have known about String. I realise that, in both cases, it was impossible.
Faith maketh man. I certainly have faith. Whether it’s fed from somewhere or I make it myself, I possess it. And it possesses me.
I move away from the bench as I see a uniformed man come down the gangplank from the ship. There is a noisy crowd on the mole, trying to get a glimpse of what is being unloaded from the hold. A few men in army uniforms lounge around, cradling some very unconventional fire-arms. I guess they could wipe out the town within an hour or two with the hardware they’re displaying.
I approach the man, hoping the uniform is not a lie. “Could you tell me where this ship has come from? Where it’s going?”
He spins sharply, hand touching the gun at his belt, but his expression changes when he sees me. Perhaps he thinks I may have some money because I’m a European. I prepare to run when I have to disappoint him.
“Came from Australia. Goes to Europe. Take you home, eh?” He rubs his fingers together and I back away, nodding.
“Hope so.”
Jade is sitting on a wall near a row of looted, burnt shops. She has some fruit, and is surreptitiously nibbling at a chunk of pink meat.
“How did you get that?”
She smiles. “Used my guiles and charm. Made promises I can’t keep. Just hope I never see him again.”
I frown. “Well, maybe it won’t matter.”
“What do you mean?” she says, but I think she knows.
“The ship’s going to Europe. Are you coming with me?” There, right out with it. No beating around the bush. No prevarication.
“No,” she says. I feel myself slumping with sadness. She hands me some meat, but I do not feel hungry. “Have you got someone there?”
I look at her, thinking, trying to decide whether or not I have. “Not as such,” I say. “Not really. I don’t think so.”
“And what does that mean?”
I shrug. “I’ve got faith in someone, but I don’t really think she exists.” If you know someone’s faith, you know their soul. I feel that Jade has always known my soul, and I think I may love her for that.
“I can’t come, Gabe,” she says. “It’s not too bad here. I know a few people. I’ll survive.” She nibbled at some fruit, but I could tell that she was less hungry than me. “You could stay?”
“You could come.”
We leave it at that.
V
As I board the ship, a roll of Jade’s bribe money sweating in my fist, I hear a sound like a swarm of angry bees. I glance up and see the flash of sunlight reflecting from one of the Lord Ships. It is at least two miles out to sea, drifting slowly across the horizon, but it provokes the reaction I expect.
The whole harbour side drops to its knees. Soldiers go down too, but they are soon on their feet again, kicking at the worshipping masses, firing their guns indiscriminately into huddled bodies. I search the crowd for Jade, then look for the alley she had pulled me into on that first day. I see the smudge of her face in the shadows, raise my hand and wave. I think she waves back.
The ship remains at anchor long enough for me to see the bodies piling up.
Hell
“ May you live in interesting times.”
When she was thirteen, religion found Laura. She didn’t go looking for it, of that I was sure, but just as an insidious cancer had taken my wife seven years before, so religion stalked my lovely daughter and eventually stole her away. At least, that’s what I thought at the time. God is always so easy to blame.
She left in the night without saying goodbye.
The day before, we’d taken a trip to the local park. Laura wanted to find a suitable location for a photo shoot — she had dreams of becoming an actress and was slowly composing a most impressive portfolio — and I had a day owed to me at work, so we agreed to make an afternoon of it. I carried the picnic hamper and Laura nattered every step of the way, her non-stop chat and nervous laughter inherited from the mother she had barely had time to know. The hamper was heavy and the day was hot, we had jam tarts and cheese and cucumber sandwiches and bottles of beer for me and orangeade for Laura. She spoke of her hopes for the future, while my thoughts drifted to the past. I’d often come to the park with Janine, my wife, Laura’s mother. I smiled inside, a sort of comfortable melancholy that had all but replaced the raging grief. Then Laura tripped me and stole a bottle of beer from the spilled hamper, I ran after her and tackled her onto the grass, and the afternoon turned into one of those times you never forget, taking on a hue of perfection that cannot be eroded by the tides of time. For those few hours everything was faultless. Bad news was something that happened to unknown people in far-away lands. On the way home Laura hugged me and kissed my sunburned cheek, and she told me she loved me. And I knew that I’d be fine because in her voice I heard Janine. In her smile I saw my wife.
She left in the night without saying goodbye.
There was a note in her room to tell me why she’d gone. She’d scribbled it in a hurry as if afraid the dawn would find her out. It spoke of God and fear and faith and perfection and guilt and envy, and I thought she meant that she felt bad living as she did. But in truth, that note only went to confuse me more.
If only I’d known then that she had not even written it.
I tried to cope, I did my best, but in the end I went the only way I could to survive. I turned to Hell.
It had been a terrible six weeks since Laura had gone. I hadn’t heard a word from her, and although the police stressed that they were hunting high and low, they drew a blank. The International Police Force had been notified and her details had gone onto their database… although in a way I hoped I’d never hear from them. If I did, it may mean that her genetic fingerprint had been matched with that of a body pulled from the Volga in Moscow, or
