She helped swaddle Jane’s and Thomas’s bodies in linen and bind them over the back of the sturdiest horse, to be taken down to Ault.
The men buried the children in the earth floor of the apple cellar, along with the knife that took their lives. Angela could not be inside the house for this so she stood in the orchard in the light mizzle and turned her face up to the rain. Storytime bowed his head at the hitching post, blinking at the cold drops. He was angry with her, she knew, and would blow out his stomach in revenge when she put the saddle back on.
Abel came out of the house, dusting earth from his hands. ‘It was Indians,’ he said, confident. ‘No doubt about it. They never rounded up all the Ute. Some still live wild up here. No one will do anything about it, despite my letters …’ Angela saw that he had already begun to believe this, and for a moment she was so envious of his conviction that it took the breath right out of her chest.
Angela knows that if she works hard enough, if she trains her mind to the thought, she can cleanse the memory of that day at Nowhere from her mind – the sight of the red and white pile of flesh and small faces, the crisp linen of the nightgowns, the purple-white skin, the small, outflung leg, the tiny foot, all that old, dark blood.
Sometimes on long nights when the wind comes hard down over the mountain, and sleep eludes her, memory breaks the surface and Angela wonders, for the length of a gasp or a heartbeat, whether she did the right thing. Her friend Jane’s kind eyes and those five small lives are gone and the truth is hidden forever. There will be no reckoning and no justice.
They must have all been born at Nowhere, those children. It seems they never left in all their short lives. They had never known anything but Nowhere and never would.
Angela puts these thoughts away and closes the door on them with the firmness of long practice. She knows all too well that some recollections are best left behind in the dark. Angela hardly retains any memories at all of her daddy or [those things] that happened back then and she lives a truly happy life, so she knows that this is the best way.
Angela thinks, with another of those surges of envy which are so familiar to her, that at least those children never had to grow up to carry [those things] with them. They will not spend years with [those things] sitting on their shoulders like a demon, weighing them downuntil they are bent double with the pain and the questions, growing older and wrestling with the fact that no one seemed to see, at the time, or perhaps no one cared. The Nowhere children are beyond such questions; they do not carry the pain of [those things]. They are free.
19Adam
Adam pounds up the track. He has run seven miles this morning. The pool is shaded by lemon trees. There are fluffy towels and a robe already laid out on the sun lounger. Everyone here knows Adam’s routine by now. He wonders, uneasy if it’s what Leaf encourages all his guests to do. The exercise, and the other thing with the breath.
Adam kicks his sneakers off and dives. The water closes over him. It’s so quiet down here. Nothing but cool blue. He’s getting better – he can hold his breath for almost five and a half minutes now. He’ll be ready for Leaf when he reaches six.
They’re in the master bedroom; the moon lights up the treetops through the vast window. Adam brushes the hair out of Leaf’s eyes. He worries he’s crowding Leaf but he can’t stop. It’s strange being close to someone so beautiful. Adam feels the constant need to check, with glances and small touches and adjustments of Leaf’s collar, that he’s real.
Leaf asks in a neutral tone, ‘How are you doing with holding your breath? Are you ready?’
Adam says, ‘I’m ready.’
If he had any doubts they vanish at the sight of Leaf’s expression. He is almost shaking with excitement.
Adam goes to prepare.
The bathroom is flagged in Italian marble. Adam turns off all the heating and opens the windows. The fall night cools the room quickly. There’s a solid marble table along one wall big enough to lie on.
The bath is filled with cold water. Some ice cubes still float in it. Adam gets in. The cold is like an assault; he gasps at its ferocity. As he lies there he breathes quickly and deeply, trying to oxygenate his blood as fully as possible. He has even brought a white sheet to cover himself. This was not specified but Adam thinks it will add realistic detail.
Once he is fully chilled, he gets out, quickly dries himself and gets up on the table. To his cold skin, the marble feels almost warm. Then he goes utterly still. He even tries to slow his heart rate. Thanks to months of practice, he can hold his breath like this for up to five minutes. It has to be perfect. He has to be cold, unmoving. The rubber balls make uncomfortable lumps in his armpit. He squeezes them tightly to his body. This is to block the brachial artery, to weaken the pulse in his wrists to almost nothing.
He pulls the white sheet over himself, so he is just a shape on a slab. Adam takes one last deep breath, closes his eyes and calls to Leaf.
Every sound is vivid as he lies in the cold dark. The door handle’s wheezing turn, the quiet hush of feet on marble. He feels rather than hears him approach. The living coming to see the dead.
Leaf’s hands tremble as he pulls back the sheet. His inhale is long and wondering. Adam feels warm lips on his cold ones. Leaf begins to cry, Adam hears the wet sound of his breath. Warm hands strokehis chilled chest. Leaf holds Adam’s pulseless wrist. Adam hadn’t known what to expect, but it wasn’t this. Leaf lies down gently beside him. He strokes Adam’s cold flesh, nestles his head into the crook of Adam’s shoulder, kisses his still throat.
Adam holds his breath for almost six minutes as Leaf continues to cry.
They lie together in the warm bedroom, radiators on full, Adam wrapped up in an electric blanket. Leaf is solicitous, worried, so caring. Adam feels like he’s bathed in light, the focus of Leaf’s whole attention.
Adam’s fingers grip the soft whorls of chestnut hair at the back of Leaf’s neck. ‘I felt like my soul left my body. Does it feel like that for you?’
‘Maybe it would,’ Leaf says, ‘if I had one.’
Adam unwinds his fingers from where they have been clenched in Leaf’s hair.
‘Time for you to go,’ Leaf says.
Adam should be used to it by now but it still feels like being struck across the face, at the end, when Leaf tells him to go.
In his room Adam trembles. He does not sleep until pink touches the sky.
