Significance Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part One NIGHT

  Runaway

  France

  Domestic Interior with Three Figures

  Creatures of Habit

  The House with the Yellow Shutters

  L’écriture Feminine

  Miroir Noir

  The Golden Boy

  The Golden Girl

  Underwater

  Innocence

  Changes

  The Running Man

  Liberty, Fraternity, Equality

  Finders Keepers

  Storytelling

  Like Alice

  Part Two MORNING

  Song to the Siren

  The Scholar

  Star Gazer

  Lexicon

  Dreamer

  Fallen Angel

  A Thousand Cuts

  Duty

  Lost Property

  Lucy Locket Lost her Pocket

  Gratitude

  Mise en Scène

  La Petite Mort

  Labyrinths

  Blood Ties

  The Interpretation of Dreams

  Love Hurts

  Long Memories

  Fishers of Men

  Education

  Bloodlines

  Nature Morte

  Written on the Body

  Sancta Camisia

  Part Three AFTERNOON

  A-tisket, a-tasket

  Evidence

  Punishment

  Written in the Contract

  La Barbe-Bleue

  Revenant

  Bodies

  Reasons to be Cheerful

  The Hanged Man

  Road Rage

  Pleasures Taken

  Consent

  Control

  Hunger

  Voyeur

  Sur la Table

  Mirrors

  He Hears a Different Drummer

  A Man of Constant Sorrows

  Close Quarters

  The Quickening

  Part Four TWILIGHT

  Out of the Corner of your Eye

  Killing me Softly

  Verso

  Second Thoughts

  The Damage Done

  The Huntress

  The Lamb

  On the Road to Calvary

  Field of Play

  A Jealous Ghost

  Into the Shadows

  Pastoral

  Part Five AFTER

  The Angel’s Share

  The Love Parade

  To See a Whale

  Hotel Rooms

  The World, as Learned from Pictures

  A Flower Closing

  Prayers

  House of Cards

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About Seren

  SIGNIFICANCE

  by

  Jo Mazelis

  For Mark with love

  Part One

  NIGHT

  What draws the reader to the novel is the hope of warming his shivering life with a death he reads about.

  Walter Benjamin

  Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance that he himself has spun.

  Clifford Geertz

  Runaway

  Summer 2007

  Then she is driving. The road a sleek raven’s wing beneath her wheels. Driving faster than ever before, and marvelling, as she presses her foot on the accelerator, at the reasons for her previous caution. Yes, it is night and it’s raining heavily, but there is nothing to be afraid of. Nothing in the world.

  She is watching the road, her senses sharply attuned to any danger. She pulls into the fast lane to pass an articulated lorry. Guides the car back into the middle lane. Easy. A warning sign inside a red triangle. The vaulting deer. Lucy senses fear in the black painted silhouette. Imagines the sudden clatter of hooves on tarmac. And the jarring screams of the brakes. The dull impact of a car’s fender catching the animal’s flank.

  She shakes her head as if disagreeing with an invisible interrogator. Imagine it all away. The motorways and dual carriageways, the airline coaches, the horse transporters, the Freelanders and Discoveries, the Picasso; the van parked in a field overlooking the road with an advert for laptops on its side.

  Lucy wants all of it gone. But instead there is rain, and more rain, pushed to one side of the windscreen by the wipers, then pushed back again by the wind. Rivulets of clear water.

  A man in a black Citroen catches her eye and passes her on the inside lane. His expression is leering, greedy, smug. She thinks of accelerating and swerving suddenly so that her car clips his. Her hands tighten on the wheel with intent – at these speeds, with this traffic and the punishing, relentless rain, everything could be altered in an instant.

  But no, not now, not that. She is escaping: a runaway again. Just like she was when she was twelve, then fifteen. Not to forget the time she did it when she was eighteen. Now she is far too old to be called a runaway and smiles to herself at the thought. She relaxes her fingers on the wheel, sees in the rear window of the black Citroen a yellow sign announcing there is a baby on board. She slows.

  The wind drops suddenly and the deluge eases, then stops. The night she is driving into is suddenly as dry as an old bone. And just as if the storm had been a source of energy for her, now it’s abated she’s suddenly tired. When she sees a sign for KATHS’ KARAVAN KAFE! TEAS, COFFEES, BURGERS, CHIPS she pulls into a lay-by. But the catering van is shut up for the night and there is only one other car: a battered white Mercedes that takes off the moment Lucy draws up. She stays behind the wheel, lets her hands fall limply into her lap, breathes deeply and closes her eyes.

  She is not ill like they say she is; she is fine. More than fine. Has never felt better.

  Dover. The sea is what you notice as the car crests a hill. The rain has stopped and the day has a rinsed feeling to it – a good day to begin things.

  Dover. White cliffs. No bluebirds. Blue sky. Gulls soaring. The air is still and fresh; on deck Lucy gazes at the sea. It’s a busy shipping channel, vessel after vessel ploughing the grey-blue glittering water.

  Staring down, feeling the throb of the ferry’s engine, its surging pulse, Lucy finds herself remembering another ferry crossing years ago. She’d been on the way back from a school trip to Europe. It had been night and she, with a few friends, had been standing on deck watching the molten sea under the blanket of night. One of them, Dougie, a sweet boy who was neither remarkably good-looking nor clever, had bought a Panama hat in Italy that he’d worn every moment of the holiday. They’d all been laughing and joking, when Dougie suddenly asked her if he should throw his hat into the sea. She barely stopped to think about it, but it had seemed right at the time, the gesture of letting go, not only of the holiday, but also of those different selves each of them had been in that unfamiliar place.

  So she’d said yes. Yes. The word itself sibilant, dancing from her lips with a smile. Perhaps he had needed permission, the encouragement of a handful of laughing girls.

  They all watched as he threw it over the rail like a Frisbee. It flew up, pale against the night sky. Then fell on the churning waves where it briefly swirled and danced before it was swept away into darkness.

  ‘My hat!’ he said surprised. Then, more sadly, he repeated the words. ‘My hat. Why did I do that?’

  She could not answer. She had not expected regret.

  She pushed aside the memory. That Lucy was so far away it almost hurt to remember her. And there had been, or so it seemed, other Lucys too, all of them fatally flawed, all of them vulnerable to defeat and pain and humiliation. Or capable, as with Dougie and his hat, of hurting others. Better to be alone. To remake oneself.

  Fr
ance

  At La Coquille Bleue, Lucy orders Pastis, milky and aniseed flavoured. Then steak, which comes with pommes frites. In the corner, tied with a long hefty rope, there’s a young dog, wolfish, with guarded blue eyes. After she has eaten, Madame Gallo, the hotel’s owner, allows her to smoke at the table despite the signs prohibiting it. There are framed portraits of Joan of Arc everywhere. The girl soldier the English burnt at the stake. Now they would give Joan anti-psychotic drugs; Clozaril, Zyprexa, Seroquel. In the 1950s her shorn hair and cross-dressing would have earned her electroconvulsive therapy; the voice of God would grow mute, scorched out of existence by science. Madame Gallo smiles conspiratorially at Lucy as she sits there smoking.

  Lucy orders a bottle of vin rouge. Madame Gallo watches her from behind the bar, she is middle-aged, but her face is still pretty, her hair dark and glossy. She dresses well. Looks exactly right for the part. As does Lucy, who is a runaway in the disguise of a confident young woman with money and credit cards and expensive new clothes.

  It is dark when she leaves the hotel. A boy is standing on the edge of the pavement across the road. Lucy has the curious sensation that she passed him earlier – hours earlier, when it was still light, although the shadows had been lengthening. He is standing very still, the tips of his shoes over the paving slab’s lip as if he were balanced on a high diving board. As she draws closer she sees that he is not as young as she had first thought. His frame is slight, his complexion pale and his posture is awkward, like that of a teenager who has grown too tall too fast. As she draws closer she expects him to look at her. But this boy-man, poised and seemingly ready to dive into the stream of traffic, does not show the merest sign of attention even though she is passing almost within reach.

  His eyes, she sees, are very pale blue. So pale and unfocussed she wonders if he is sightless. That might explain everything.

  Yes, she thinks, the boy is blind and perhaps a little strange too.

  The next night she goes back to La Coquille Bleue but only remembers the strange young man as she nears the place where he was standing. He is not there. Of course, he is not there.

  Lucy enters the restaurant and is given a table in the glassed-in area at the front. From here she cannot see the dog with its mournfully sad, sea-blue eyes.

  None of the staff seem to remember her from the previous night and there is a large family group from the Netherlands at a nearby table who talk loudly amongst themselves. They laugh and pass maps and guidebooks between them, debating the next item on their itinerary. For the first time since she left England Lucy feels lonely.

  She orders Moules Marinière but eats without pleasure. She has a single glass of white wine and even that seems devoid of taste, though she drinks it all the same. She asks for the bill, leaves a ten-euro note on the table and goes out into the fading twilight.

  And there he is again. The boy-man. This time on a different part of the pavement. He rests one hand on the pole of a road sign. His feet are once again over the lip of the kerb. She walks towards him. He does not look at her; his gaze is fixed in some mid-air spot that hovers above the road.

  Swifts dart about at rooftop level making high-pitched squeaks. Little arrows with white bellies that flash by. Little arrows that might pierce her heart, if her heart were not made of stone.

  When she is two, perhaps three yards away, she stops walking and stands still, watching him.

  He does not see her, nor even sense her presence so close by. He is not only blind, but also lacks the radar that most people possess. The sun is behind her, low in the sky and her shadow falls against his legs, his waist. He should sense the coolness of that shadow, but he does not move, just stares.

  She feels emboldened by curiosity, by the fact she is a stranger here. She takes a cigarette from the packet in her bag, positions it between two fingers, steps even closer to him.

  ‘Excuse me? Do you have a light?’

  She could have struggled to ask the question in French, but she wants to be certain he knows that she is English.

  Her words, like her shadow, do not register. He blinks, but maybe this has nothing to do with any of her assaults on his senses – he does not see, or hear, or feel, or smell her. Touch is all that is left. But touch is so intimate, so risky if he is mad. If he is a mad, crazed boy held in some dark soundless prison, then a sudden touch, a gentle hand on his forearm might scare him into pulling a knife from his waistband and plunging it blindly into her heart.

  ‘He won’t answer you.’

  A man is standing next to her. She turns quickly; tries to conceal how startled she feels, how guilty. He is tall and thin, with blue eyes not dissimilar to the staring boy-man. He speaks English, but with an accent, American perhaps.

  ‘He’s my brother,’ the man says. ‘He’s not…’ He hesitates here as if searching for a word, but gives up, doesn’t finish the sentence.

  ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What are you sorry for?’ he asks, bluntly. It is as if he is accusing her of something. ‘Here,’ he says and reaches into his trouser pocket, pulls out a book of matches, tosses them at her.

  She catches it, opens it, finds none of the matches yet used.

  ‘Oh,’ she says, retrieving the packet of Lucky Strikes. ‘Do you want a…’

  He pulls a face to show his distaste. She wonders why he has matches in his pocket if he doesn’t smoke. Something in her would rather not smoke now in front of him, it feels as dirty as rolling up her sleeve, finding a vein and inserting a thrice-used needle. But too late, she’s committed. She lights the cigarette, turns her head to blow the smoke away from his face.

  ‘Why does he stand there like that?’ she asks.

  ‘Because he can.’

  His answers are annoying, aggressive. They are brothers though, so maybe something runs in the family. Maybe this one, the older one, just seems more normal, but underneath is just as disturbed and strange as the other.

  ‘Where are you from?’ she asks, and he jerks his head to indicate a house behind him with lemon-yellow shutters.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘Your accent…’

  ‘Canada.’

  ‘Ah.’

  He looks at his watch, then at his brother. Avoids her gaze.

  ‘I’m from the UK,’ she says, though he hasn’t asked.

  There is a silence then. The sort of silence that hovers between strangers. Human strangers in particular perhaps. If they were apes she might have crept forward and begun to companionably pick parasites out of his hair. Or maybe he’d have screamed, pulled back his lips to reveal sharp teeth, then charged at her with wild eyes and flared nostrils.

  She does not know why she is thinking this. Nor why she is lingering there at all.

  ‘Why are you angry?’ he asks her suddenly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You look angry. Is it my brother? Does he offend you?’

  ‘No, no. Of course not. Why should he? I just…’

  ‘Okay, fine,’ he says. The words are clean and clipped, as if he is snapping sounds out of the air and leaving mysterious and meaningful shapes behind. Like the chalk marks describing where the victim of sudden death had fallen.

  He turns to his brother. ‘Aaron! OK. It’s time to come in now!’ He is unnecessarily gruff, she thinks. She expected more pleading, a gentle coaxing, not these sharp orders. And he asked why she was angry! ‘Aaron,’ he barks.

  His brother turns his head slowly at the sound, then blinks at the speaker. She reads sorrow in his expression, the cowed look of a dog that’s been beaten once too often.

  ‘Don’t talk to him like that,’ she says, knowing she shouldn’t. Something in her wants to provoke him.

  ‘Now!’ the man says, ignoring her.

  Aaron seems at last to come to life, he lifts his hand from the road sign as if he were ungluing it. His eyes move vaguely over the two people looking at him; the female stranger and his brother. His brother. You could see the recognition suddenly reg
ister in the sharpening of his eyes.

  He began to move forward, trudging his feet not so much reluctantly as wearily, as if they were heavy, as if gravity was increasing its hold just in the places where his shoes met the earth’s surface.

  Lucy saw now that she had been wrong to speak out. That it was none of her business.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For you. For your brother. It must be hard…’

  The younger man had drawn level with them. His face was slack, the eyes dull, and yet you couldn’t fail to notice how perfect his bone structure was, how achingly attractive he would be if he were wholly alive. She was surprised to find herself mourning the loss of what should have been a potentially vivid and fully functional human being.

  ‘I’m sorry for you too,’ he said.

  His words had their intended effect. She could not answer.

  She watched them go. The two brothers, the younger one shuffling like an old man, the other stiff – almost bristling with anger. She wanted to know more. Wanted to understand the barely suppressed rage that was directed towards her. To know also where she had gone so wrong.

  Domestic Interior with Three Figures

  Marilyn’s brother-in-law was standing facing the closed door. ‘Brother-in-law’ was not a term that suited him. When she thought about a brother-in-law what came to mind was a man very like her husband: self-assured, intelligent, good looking and passionate about life.

  Instead there was Aaron.

  Poor Aaron.

  Standing there staring at the blank face of the door, stepping slowly from one foot to the other and, judging from the insistent movement of his jutting-out elbows, doing something strange with his hands.

  Scott was sitting near the window reading a book, oblivious.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Marilyn said.

  Scott glanced quickly at his brother, then shrugged and shook his head as if to say did she really think he would have any better idea of what went on in Aaron’s head?

  ‘I think he’s got something.’

  Scott lifted his head to study the figure by the door more carefully.

  They always had to look out for stuff like this; Aaron had a habit of picking up small objects and worrying away at them until they broke. Or if the object didn’t break then after a time he lost interest and dropped the thing wherever he happened to be, so that jewellery, coins, keys and so on had to be closely watched or kept locked up. Four years ago Marilyn had left her engagement ring on the shelf above the bathroom sink in Scott and Aaron’s parents’ house and, after searching all over, they’d finally found it in the toilet bowl in the outhouse. At the time she thought that Aaron had done it deliberately. That he was sending her a clear message about what he thought of her.