Page 46 of The Bedlam Stacks

‘Calenture.’

‘Fever. No, I know. You’re right.’

‘Hold on,’ he said, and went inside. He came out again straightaway with his coat. I thought he would put it on, but he took mine from me and gave me his instead. It was lined with a fine pelt which might have been sealskin or something more foresty, but it was twice as warm as mine. He had broad shoulders and I didn’t particularly, so it fitted well even though I was taller. It smelled of beeswax. I had to look behind me again. The trees were talking now that the sun had been out for a while – the green cluck of settling wood – but there was nobody there.

‘Mine was all right—’

He had hung it over the woodpile, where it dripped, although I hadn’t been aware of its being wet. It was too cold. ‘There’s mercury in the pockets.’

‘There’s what in the pockets?’ I said, still slow anyway and not improved by the bang on the head.

‘M— doesn’t matter.’ He steered me towards the cliff, but away from the bridge. ‘It isn’t far. Straight down there.’ He pointed to a place just along from us where the surface caved in, into a narrow blowhole, although it couldn’t have been, there being no tide. He took me to the edge, where there was a little winch, much smaller than the main one on the last stack and perched on the cliff like a gallows. Far down below was a little loop of the river sheltered by a cave, the water turquoise and steaming. It was just shy of one of the glass shadows of the stacks; the current must have moved it just enough to cool it down.

The winch lowered us to the rocks just by the pool. Raphael had brought a bag of laundry as well as his rifle and as soon as we were down he left me to it and went to the main river to scrub the crumpled clothes out. None of them were his. It was as much privacy as I would get. Further on from us, around the base of the second stack, there were fishermen. They threw the nets out like Scandinavians do, standing thigh deep in the water. Behind them, on the beach, the river boiled where it touched the hottest parts of the glass.

The water was as hot as a bath. I eased down on some rocks that had been polished smooth and made into steps. It was a pool, with walls. I couldn’t tell if they were natural or not. On one side was a fine mesh to keep fish out, or perhaps something worse. The water, though, seemed mostly dead, and I wasn’t surprised. It was so salty I could feel the buoyance, and it stung, sharp and clean, in all the grazes I hadn’t known were there along my ribs.

Quartz crystals sparkled on the rocks just next to me. They had formed in perfect cubes, slightly stuck to the rocks, but one of them came off when I pulled. It wasn’t quartz; a corner ground off easily. Salt. I’d heard of it forming that way on the banks of the Dead Sea, but not anywhere else. I took a cube back to my things to show Clem later.

‘What happened there?’ Raphael said suddenly. It made me jump.

‘Where?’ I looked around, expecting to see him pointing somewhere, but he was watching me. He spun his hand in the air to tell me to turn around again. He meant my back. I couldn’t feel the lash-scars. ‘Oh. Clem happened. We were in the Navy together.’ Looking how I did now, I heard how like a lie it sounded. I turned my arm around so that he could see the anchor tattoo over the veins between my elbow and my wrist. It had been done much better than I’d paid for and it hadn’t faded or blurred yet.

‘What did you do?’

‘Insubordination.’

I couldn’t remember why. It was one of those lighthouse memories around which everything else was dark. All I could remember was that it had been drizzling on the day. Clem had been new on board and I’d shouted at him about something even though he had outranked me, something that must have mattered immensely at the time – there had been a child, one of the cabin boys – but I couldn’t reach it.

‘And now you’re . . . best friends,’ Raphael said.

‘Is that strange? People who clash at first often get on later. He was always interested in Peru. Then he found out my father had come here a lot . . .’

He watched me for what felt like a long time. ‘Places like this amplify all the things that have ever gone wrong for you. There’s no insulation, no trains or doctors or space to get away from someone. It’s bad enough with people who once fell out over late rent, but it would be dangerous to go into the woods with someone who once had you publicly flogged.’

‘We didn’t know each other then; it wasn’t falling out. We don’t fall out. He gets cross and then he forgets about it. He’s got a quick temper, but it’s quick in both directions. He forgives people within fifteen minutes of shouting at them. If you were to take an average he’d work out as straight as a spirit level.’

‘So would these mountains,’ Raphael said, with a little razor blade in the lining of his voice. I had to concentrate not to shy away from him. Having to argue had sharpened things and the memory came back. The cabin boy had stolen bread. He was meant to be whipped for it. That was the row.

‘If he so much as shakes his finger at you, you’re both going back to Azangaro.’

‘That’s not . . . he will shake his finger. He will lose his temper. That doesn’t make him bad. He’s just a bit of a Cleopatra.’ I didn’t feel too indignant. I was enjoying how much he disapproved.

‘It’s hard to trust a man in his thirties who still loses his temper.’

‘As opposed to one in his forties who lives in a permanent state of having already lost it,’ I said, waving at him. ‘Come on, he deserves the benefit of the doubt. You’ve only known him ten seconds and nine of those have been while he was mountain sick.’

I thought he would be angry, but he smiled. ‘If you say so.’

‘I do. What are you worried about, anyway? That we’ll start bickering at the wrong moment and be eaten by jaguars?’

‘No. That there will be a moment, another one, when one of you has to help the other, and you hesitate, and I’m eaten by jaguars.’

I laughed, because I couldn’t remember the last time I’d disagreed with someone and not offended them. ‘He’s all right. You’ll see.’

He made a doubting sound and turned back to the washing. I dropped my head against my arms. The salt took my weight and the current tugged me gently to one side, but not enough to move me. The heat had reached my bones. I could feel all the vertebrae down my spine and they were bending more than they had for months. Like a warm pressure on the back of my neck, I could feel too that he was watching me. It snuffed out the lingering suspicion that there might be someone behind me, or at least, any sense that it would be important if there were. He would have shot anyone who was. I must have fallen asleep there, because it made me jump when he tapped my shoulder with the back of his hand. He was just in front of me on the rocks, smelling of laundry soap. He would have to take it all back up to the top to rinse it out in fresh water if he wanted to get rid of the brine, which confused me, because it would have been easier to do it in the church to begin with, until I realised he had only brought it so that he could look busy while he kept an eye on me.

‘I’m going back up. I’ll send the winch back down for you,’ he said.