The Way to Babylon

An Extract

It was dark, and he was stumbling through knee-deep mud that marked the end of the descent. The mountains were vast dark shapes against a slightly lighter sky. The wind had battered away most of the cloud, and the rain had lessened. Soon it would be moonrise. He splashed on through the rushes that carpeted this part of the valley floor, the pain in his legs becoming a bright light in his head.

Hard part over, me old son. Now just a plod across the bay.

The rain finally ceased, but a fine spray whipped off the water to sting his face and salt his lips. The beach was awash with foam and moonlight, the breakers shining in long lines out to sea.

He was past the mud and crunching on shingle, his feet sliding on the larger pebbles and the staff slipping off smooth stones. It kicked up the odd shell to reveal sudden mother-of-pearl palenesses.

He stopped, breathing hard. The bothy could be seen clearly. It was dark, with the bulk of the mountains behind it and the bright marriage of sea and sky beside it.

No lights. No fire.

A stab of grief went through him and then drained away, leaving him as cold as the shingle.

Fuck it.

He jabbed the staff at the ground and hauled himself forward, the sea-spray making him squint. There was a storm of wind rushing down the glen. He could imaging it beating at the windows and howling down the chimney. Making the door bang.

This door. This threshold.

He fumbled with the keys, chill in an outer pocket, as the wind battered him relentlessly.

Numb, useless.

And the door opened.

He stood swaying with the storm a black and silver roar behind him and his legs a painful abyss away. The door banged against the wall and the wind rushed in past him, sending up a flock of ashes from the dead fireplace, ruffling the pale pages of a book left half-read. Flapping the sleeve of a jumper flung on a chair. Flung, where she had left it.

'I don't need it- it's too nice a day, and it would make me boil. Come on, Michael, you old woman, let's get out while the sun lasts. It's beginning to darken earlier these days.' And the sound of the gulls outside, screaming.

He closed the door behind him, thrusting it shut against the wind's insistence; and the room became dead again, dark save where the moonlight came in the windows.

He dropped his rucksack and staff with a clatter and sank to his knees on the flagged floor, his clothes dripping and his hair lank across his forehead. Their picture peered at him from the shadowed mantlepiece, and the two brass candlesticks glinted coldly in chorus. There, on his desk, his typewriter and a thick file of paper weighed down by a rounded rock from the beach. A coffee mug sitting there.

'-But I haven't finished this-'

'Oh leave it. Your head needs some mountain air in it.'

Here, by the door, wellington boots. His hiking boots also, along with a smaller pair. He touched a lace idly, then turned away and lurched to his feet.

Tired. God, I'm tired.

He navigated across the room and stared into the black hearth, thinking of past fires. Of carrying in peat through lashing rain, feeling the warmth of the first flames lap his face. Sudden anger flushed him.

'I don't need this. By Christ, I don't need it!' He thumped the mantlepiece so that it quivered, then flinched away from the photograph there. The door to the bedroom was open. Mouthing curses, he plunged towards it.

Into the bedroom, to see the bed unmade, pillows awry. One with the dent of a head in it still. And her nightshirt lying across it.

A warm tangle of hair and flesh, smelling of lavender and curled up in his arms, frowning slightly in sleep; the cold toes seeking his legs to warm themselves, the face nuzzling his shoulder.

Something between a snarl and a sob escaped his chest. He felt the old black wings beating perilously close to his head, but knelt on the bed and took up the nightshirt in his fists. It smelt musty, damp, but he buried his face in it, and sank down on the cold mattress. Then, still dripping, he curled up there and hid his head; blind and deaf to the storm, the battery of the sea, the howling mountains.