Weaveworld

3

He knew he needed some diversion from his grief, or he’d simply dwindle into a melancholy from which there would be no emerging, so he looked around for a new job, and in early July got one: baking bread. The pay was not good, and the hours were anti-social, but he enjoyed the work – which was the antithesis of his labours at the insurance firm. He didn’t have to talk much, or concern himself with office politics. There was no rising in the ranks here, just the plain business of dough and ovens. He was happy with the job. It gave him biceps like steel, and warm bread for his breakfast.

But the diversion was only temporary. His mind went back all too often to the source of his suffering, and suffered again. Such masochism was perhaps the nature of his species. Indeed that belief was supported by the reappearance of Geraldine in the middle of July. She turned up on the doorstep one day and stepped into the house as if nothing had ever happened between them. He was glad to see her.

This time, however, she didn’t move in. They agreed that returning to that domestic status quo could only be a retrograde step. Instead she came and went through the summer on an almost daily basis, sometimes staying over at Chariot Street, more often not.

For nigh on five weeks she didn’t ask him a single question about events the previous spring, and he in turn volunteered no information. When she eventually did raise the subject, however, it was in a manner and context he hadn’t expected.

‘Deke’s telling everyone you’ve been in trouble with the police …’ she said, ‘… but I told him: not my Cal.’

He was sitting in Brendan’s chair beside the window, watching the late summer sky. She was on the couch, amid a litter of magazines.

‘I told them, you’re no criminal. I know that. Whatever happened to you … it wasn’t that kind of trouble. It was deeper than that, wasn’t it?’ She glanced across at him. Did she want a reply? It seemed not, for before he could open his mouth she was saying:

‘I never understood what was going on. Cal, and maybe it’s better I don’t. But…’ She stared down at the magazine open on her lap, then back up at him. ‘You never used to talk in your sleep,’ she said.

‘And I do now?’

‘All the time. You talk to people. You shout sometimes. Sometimes you just smile.’ She was a little embarrassed confessing to this. She’d been watching him as he slept; and listening too. ‘You’ve been somewhere, haven’t you?’ she said. ‘You’ve seen something nobody else has.’

‘Is that what I talk about?’

‘In a sort of way. But that’s not what makes me think you’ve seen things. It’s the way you are. Cal. The way you look sometimes …’

That said, she seemed to reach an impasse, and returned her attention to the pages of the magazine, flipping the pages without really looking at them.

Cal sighed. She’d been so good with him, so protective: he owed her an explanation, however difficult it was.

‘You want me to tell you?’ he said.

‘Yes. Yes. I do.’

‘You won’t believe it,’ he warned.

‘Tell me anyway.’

He nodded, and took up the story that he’d come so near to spilling the previous year, after his first visit to Rue Street.

‘I saw Wonderland …’ he began.