Sacrament

CHAPTER I

i

Home to England, and the summer almost gone. August's stars had fallen, and the leaves would follow very soon. Riot and rot in speedy succession.

You'll find the years pass more quickly as you get older, Marcello the resident wise old queen from Buddies in Boston - had told him an age ago. Will hadn't believed it, of course. It wasn't until he was thirtyone, maybe thirty-two, that he'd realized there was truth in the observation. Time wasn't on his side after all; it was gathering speed, season upon season, year upon year. Thirty-five was upon him in a heartbeat, and forty on its heels, the marathon he'd thought he was running in his youth mysteriously became a hundred yard sprint. Determined to achieve something of significance before the race was over he'd turned every minute of his life over to the making of pictures, but they were of small comfort. The books were published, the reviews were clipped and filed, and the animals he had witnessed in their final days went into the hands of taxidermists. Life was not a reversible commodity. Things passed away, never to return: species, hopes, years.

And yet he could still blithely wish hours of his life away when he was bored. Sitting in first class on the eleven-hour flight, he wished a hundred times it was over. He'd brought a bagful of books including the volume of poems Lewis had been distributing at Patrick's party, but nothing held his attention for more than a page or two. One of Lewis's short lyrics intrigued him mainly because he wondered who the hell it was about:

Now, with our fierce brotherhood annulled, I see as if by lightning, all the perfect pains we might have made, had our love's fiction lived another day.

It certainly had the authentic ring of Lewis's voice about it. All his favourite subjects - pain, brotherhood and the impossibility of love - in four lines.

It was noon when he arrived: a muggy, breathless day, its oppressiveness doing nothing for his stupefied state. He claimed his baggage and picked up a hire car without any problem, but once he got onto the motorway, he regretted not also hiring a driver. After two nights of less than satisfactory sleep, he was aching and shorttempered; within the first hour of the four-hour trek north, he was several times perilously close to a collision, the fault always his. He stopped to pick up some coffee, some aspirin and to walk the stiffness out of his joints. The weight and heat of the day were beginning to lift; there was rain beyond Birmingham, he heard somebody say, and worse to come. It was fine by him: a good heavy downpour, to cool the day still further.

He got back into the car in an altogether brighter mood, and the next leg of the journey was uneventful. The traffic thinned, the rain came and went, and though the view from the motorway was seldom inspiring, on occasion it achieved a particularly English grace. Placid hills thumbed out of the clay, all velvety with grass, or patched with straggling woods; harvesters raising ochre dust as they cut and threshed in the fields. And here and there, grander sights: a ridge of naked, sun-struck rock against the grimy sky; a rainbow, leaping from a water-meadow. He felt a remote reminder of those hours on Spruce Street, wandering two revelatory blocks to Bethlynn's house. There wasn't anything like the same level of distraction here, thank God, but he had the same sense that his gaze was cleansed; that he was seeing these sights, none of which were unfamiliar, more clearly than he had ever before. Would it be the same when he got to Burnt Yarley, he wondered. He certainly hoped so. He wanted to see the place made new, if that were possible; to which end he didn't let himself stew in expectation of what lay ahead, but kept his thoughts in the moment: the road, the sky, the passing landscape.

It became harder to do, however, once he came off the motorway, and headed into the hills. The clouds broke, and the sunlight moved on the slopes as if commanded, the light beautiful enough to bring him close to tears. It amazed him that having put so many journeys between his heart and the spirit of this place, labouring for more than two decades to discipline his sentiments, its beauty could still steal upon him. And still the clouds divided, and the sun joined up its quilt piece by gilded piece. He was passing through villages he now knew, at least by name. Herricksthwaite, Raddlesmoor, Kemp's Hill. He knew the twists and turns in the road, and where it would bring him to a vantage point from which to admire a stand of sycamores, a stream, the folded hills.

Dusk was imminent, the last of the day's light still warming the hilltops but leaving to the blues and greys of dusk the valleys through which he wound his way. This was the landscape of memory; and this the hour. Nothing was quite certain. Forms blurred, defying definition. Was that a sheep or a boulder? Was that a deserted cottage or a clot of trees?

His only concession to prophecy had been to prepare himself for a shock when he got into Burnt Yarley, but he needn't have concernedhimself. The changes wrought upon the village were relatively small. The post office had been remodelled; a few cottages had been tamed up; where the grocer's had once stood there was now a small garage. Otherwise, everything looked quite familiar in the lamplight. He drove on until he reached the bridge, where he halted for a moment or two. The river was high; higher, in fact, then he ever remembered it running. He was sorely tempted to get out of the car and sit for a few minutes before covering the final mile. Maybe even double back three hundred yards and fortify himself with a pint of Guinness before he faced the house itself. But he resisted his own cowardice (for that was what it was) and after a minute or two loitering beside the river, he drove home.

ii

Home? No, never that. Never home. And yet what other word was there for this place he'd fled from? Perhaps that was the very definition of home, at least for men of his inclination: the solid, certain spot from which all roads led.

Adele was opening the door even as he got out of the car. She'd heard him coming, she said, and thank goodness he was here, her prayers were answered. The way she said this (and repeated it) made him think she meant this literally; that she'd been praying for his safe and swift arrival. Now he was here and she had good news. Hugo was no longer on the danger list. He was mending quite nicely, the doctors said, though he'd have to stay in hospital for at least a month.

'He's a tough old bird,' Adele said fondly, as she puttered around the kitchen preparing Will a ham sandwich and tea.

'And how are you bearing up?' Will asked her.

'Oh, I've had a few sleepless nights,' she admitted almost guiltily, as though she had no right to sleeplessness. She certainly looked exhausted. She was no longer the formidable no-nonsense Yorkshirewoman of twenty-five years before. Though he guessed her to be still shy of seventy, she looked older, her movements about the kitchen hesitant, her words often halting. She hadn't told Hugo that Will was coming ('Just in case you changed your mind at the last minute,' she explained), but she had told his doctor, who had agreed that they could go to the hospital to see him tonight, though it would be well past visiting hours.

'He's been difficult,' she said heavily. 'Even though he's not fully with us. But he knows how to rub people up the wrong way whether he's sick or well. He takes pleasure in it.'

'I'm sorry you've had to deal with this on your own. I know how difficult he can be.'

'Well, if he wasn't difficult,' she said, with gentle indulgence, 'he wouldn't be who he is, and I wouldn't care for him. So, I get on with it. That's all we can really do, isn't it?'

It was simple enough wisdom. There were flaws in any arrangement. But if you cared, you just got on with it.

Adele insisted she drive to the hospital. She knew the way, she said, so it would be quicker. Of course she drove at a snail's pace, and by the time they got there it was almost half past nine. Relatively early by the standards of the outside world of course, but hospitals were discrete kingdoms, with their own time-zones, and it might as well have been two in the morning: the corridors were hushed and deserted, the wards in darkness.

The nurse who escorted Will and Adele to Hugo's room was chatty, however, her voice a little too loud for the subdued surroundings.

'He was awake last time I popped my head in, but he may have gone back to sleep. The pain-killers are making him a little groggy. Are you his son, then?'

'I am.'

'Ah,' she said, with an almost coy little smile. 'He's been talking about you, on and off. Well, rambling really. But he's obviously been wanting to see you. It's Nathaniel, right?' She didn't wait for confirmation, but wittered on blithely: something about how they moved him to a shared room, and now the man he'd been put in with had been discharged, so he had the room to himself, which was lucky, wasn't it? Will murmured that yes, it was lucky.

'Here we are.' The door was ajar. 'You want to just go in and surprise him?' the nurse said.

'Not particularly,' Will said.

The nurse looked confounded, then decided she'd misheard, and with an asinine smile, breezed off down the corridor.

'I'll wait out here,' Adele said. 'You should have this moment alone, just the two of you.'

Will nodded, and after twenty-one years stepped back into his father's presence.