and flesh hurtling towards us, and there’d been no contact, I realised he’d done this before. Everyone else would swerve at the last moment, at exactly the same time as the other car, but he kept on on the wrong side, letting the other car swerve, so we missed.
Stop, I said. I’m sorry. You’re right and I’m wrong. I repent. Could you stop the car? I meant it. I would have stood in the Stoker’s Lounge all the way across with my lips pressed to his ringpiece just to be out in the open and not moving. It was 10.59 by his clock, we were just coming down the hill to Queensferry, and I knew he’d try to clear the High Street narrows and all the rest in 59 seconds.
You’re not making any sense, Con, said Arnie. You know better than I do what incidental risk’s all about, the danger that comes with getting where you want to go when you can’t wait. When you were screwing Jenny it was the hell with the crash, maybe you will, maybe you won’t. What’s the difference? You know you crashed. You do know, don’t you? You couldn’t stop yourself. You knew you might, and you did. You knew a kid would only be trouble for her and she didn’t want one.
I’m not with you. Just stop, eh. Stop. Stop.
I’m not intending to stop. It’s hard to stop when you’re almostthere. You didn’t stop. And there are some accidents Pastor Samuel couldn’t help her with. He threw up his healing hands and said: If you don’t want his child, girl, cast it out.
STOP!
And she did cast it out. Six weeks gone. She really didn’t tell you, did she?
I pulled hard on the handbrake. We both went quiet for what seemed like a long time, watching the masts of the yachts fly past, it seems to me with our hands folded across our laps, but I suppose not. For a certain time, memory, the present and apocrypha became the same thing, a trinity, like the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. I remembered the car flying off the end of the pier before it actually happened, and I felt it skim three times across the waves like a stone as if it really did, though I knew I was feeling, with every bone and muscle, the apocryphal version of what truly took place, and the vague, imaginary sense of hitting the water once and going down was what was real.
Arnie had the sunroof open and was out of it before the top of the car sank below the water. He braced his legs on the roof and plunged his arms down for me through the flood that was beating me down into the seat and tied to pull me out, forgetting about the seatbelt. We went down into the black firth together, me struggling with the belt and gulping down a gallon of salt water before I shut my mouth, him clinging on to the edges of the sunroof with one hand and tugging on my jacket shoulder with the other. I got free just as a part of me I never knew I had started to try to rationalise the death experience into something negotiable but only making it worse. We were trying to kick off our shoes and jackets and our faces were in the air. We were treading water. The ferry was steaming out of harbour a few hundred yards away. It whistled. Arnold was swimming away from me towards the pier with strong breast strokes. Ipaddled my feet and coughed. I hate it when folk cry. It’s never good, and when it’s someone you thought you were fond of, like yourself, it’s a disaster. It was too late anyway. There was too much water all around. There was so much of it.
The Very Love There Was
Adam on the floor opened the parcel without tearing the paper, labouring at the tape with the bitten-down pithy remnants of his fingernails to pick it off the gloss of the wrapping. Cate watched him from the settee, lying on her front, feet treading air. Soon they would need to start filling another drawer with old wrapping paper that never got reused. How could they? It was old. But they couldn’t throw it away.
A book had marbled board covers and a leather spine, with a spangled sheen on the edge of the thick, rough pages. The
Stop, I said. I’m sorry. You’re right and I’m wrong. I repent. Could you stop the car? I meant it. I would have stood in the Stoker’s Lounge all the way across with my lips pressed to his ringpiece just to be out in the open and not moving. It was 10.59 by his clock, we were just coming down the hill to Queensferry, and I knew he’d try to clear the High Street narrows and all the rest in 59 seconds.
You’re not making any sense, Con, said Arnie. You know better than I do what incidental risk’s all about, the danger that comes with getting where you want to go when you can’t wait. When you were screwing Jenny it was the hell with the crash, maybe you will, maybe you won’t. What’s the difference? You know you crashed. You do know, don’t you? You couldn’t stop yourself. You knew you might, and you did. You knew a kid would only be trouble for her and she didn’t want one.
I’m not with you. Just stop, eh. Stop. Stop.
I’m not intending to stop. It’s hard to stop when you’re almostthere. You didn’t stop. And there are some accidents Pastor Samuel couldn’t help her with. He threw up his healing hands and said: If you don’t want his child, girl, cast it out.
STOP!
And she did cast it out. Six weeks gone. She really didn’t tell you, did she?
I pulled hard on the handbrake. We both went quiet for what seemed like a long time, watching the masts of the yachts fly past, it seems to me with our hands folded across our laps, but I suppose not. For a certain time, memory, the present and apocrypha became the same thing, a trinity, like the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. I remembered the car flying off the end of the pier before it actually happened, and I felt it skim three times across the waves like a stone as if it really did, though I knew I was feeling, with every bone and muscle, the apocryphal version of what truly took place, and the vague, imaginary sense of hitting the water once and going down was what was real.
Arnie had the sunroof open and was out of it before the top of the car sank below the water. He braced his legs on the roof and plunged his arms down for me through the flood that was beating me down into the seat and tied to pull me out, forgetting about the seatbelt. We went down into the black firth together, me struggling with the belt and gulping down a gallon of salt water before I shut my mouth, him clinging on to the edges of the sunroof with one hand and tugging on my jacket shoulder with the other. I got free just as a part of me I never knew I had started to try to rationalise the death experience into something negotiable but only making it worse. We were trying to kick off our shoes and jackets and our faces were in the air. We were treading water. The ferry was steaming out of harbour a few hundred yards away. It whistled. Arnold was swimming away from me towards the pier with strong breast strokes. Ipaddled my feet and coughed. I hate it when folk cry. It’s never good, and when it’s someone you thought you were fond of, like yourself, it’s a disaster. It was too late anyway. There was too much water all around. There was so much of it.
The Very Love There Was
Adam on the floor opened the parcel without tearing the paper, labouring at the tape with the bitten-down pithy remnants of his fingernails to pick it off the gloss of the wrapping. Cate watched him from the settee, lying on her front, feet treading air. Soon they would need to start filling another drawer with old wrapping paper that never got reused. How could they? It was old. But they couldn’t throw it away.
A book had marbled board covers and a leather spine, with a spangled sheen on the edge of the thick, rough pages. The
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