The Hermeporta Beyond the Gates of Hermes Read online

  ‘She looks like she’s been electrocuted’ Gerald said aloud as he leered on. Camera bulbs flashed, which further illuminated the figures within. One guest noticed the Professor and beckoned to him, but the man shook his head and waved the invitation off, as more of the clan accumulated outside. ‘The world’s gone crazy: all they talk about now is a revolution and Vivienne Westwood, but who remembers Vivien Leigh? That’s what I call beauty.’ Gerald let go a gust of breath.

  He shook his head in dismay, and the memory of the actress seemed to strike at the man, and he paused to rest his outstretched arm against a wall as he turned into Limerston Street. His lips quivered, and his robust features collapsed into grief. His shoulders, still sturdy, wobbled as his chest heaved and it took all his command not to howl out with anguish. Gerald clamped his hand over his mouth and shut his eyes to staunch the flow of tears, which stung his eyes before they fell over his wrist. Children that had been out playing all day, yelling and skipping home as the night drew in, flew about the streets like sparrows, but tumbled into silence before they passed him: so shocked were they to see a man crying. One boy stood and stared at Gerald before he reached into his pocket to toss him his handkerchief, but then his friends yanked him away from the man as if he were the angel of death.

  Gerald nodded his thanks to the boy, a street sprite, who had paused to observe him again from a safer distance with his companions, and he returned the adult’s gesture with his own before he ran off with his friends for home. Gerald wiped at his nose and face with the fabric and thought how the boy’s mother might scold him for losing his hanky. Gerald then thought of his son for a while.

  ‘Pull yourself together, old boy. He’ll be here soon’ he whispered to himself, blew his nose, threw his shoulders back, and stood up as straight as he could manage to advance up the street. One thoughtful resident had flung one of their windows wide open to share their house-party and music with the rest of the road, at high volume, and the sound of ABBA’s hit S.O.S rang in Gerald’s ears, which he covered before he walked into the entrance of St Stephen’s Hospital. Winston strolled into the hospital ward of St Stephen’s, which reeked of bleach but still could not stifle the smell of sickness that slunk through the muggy air. Some windows were open, but they offered no relief for it seemed the wind - drugged to stillness by the humid summer - had given up. The Hospital baked and it seemed to him that the bricks of the hospital building were as keen to throw off their heat as the cracked paving slabs outside. Winston passed flush faced nurses in their starched pink and white uniforms, who longed to toss off their elaborate white hats that crowned their encircled heads like the sales of ships.

  Winston advanced, tall and slim - a strawberry blond - in his full flares, his height further accentuated with heels, and his wide collared shirt open to the third button with his sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He spied his father, slumped somewhat, sat on a bench and propped up by the walls. Gerald, sensing his son's advance turned his way, and Winston paused, his guts tugging when he saw the redness of his father’s eyes. His father managed a languid smile when he saw him, and he tried to ignore the waft of alcohol that curled out of his father’s breath when he crouched down to embrace the man. Gerald squeezed at his son's shoulders, as Winston sat down.

  ‘Why must you always look as if you've just come from a club?’ his father chided, before prodding at Winston's body and clothes, ‘skin tight' he tutted, 'and can’t you do something with that hair? You look homeless’ said Gerald, flouncing his hand through his son’s long locks. But Gerald did not have the energy to add to his reprimand, as Winston fixed himself, and yielded into a smile when he recognised his physique in the youth - recalling when he had been his son’s age. ‘You have my shoulders; remember I gave you those.' Gerald sighed. 'Oh, I envy you, boy. Not a drop of sweat on you, but look at this heap’ he said, before pointing to himself and his sweat patches that had expanded into arcs beneath his arms, ‘you seem to glide through Iceland while we suffer here in India.' Winston smiled somewhat,

  ‘The Empire’s over now, Daddy.'

  ‘Not for everyone’ added Gerald, with a raised finger. Winston rolled his eyes, but he did not turn away when his father’s gaze settled upon him and contemplated. ‘You got my call then?’ Gerald said, after some time, and his son nodded. Gerald gave out a protracted cough. ‘She’s in there’ he whispered and bit down on his lip to stop himself crying.

  ‘Are you coming in?’ said Winston, before he stood. His father shook his head,

  ‘I can’t’ he answered and stared down at the polished floors. Winston stroked his Dad’s face and Gerald, clinging to the caress as his breath chopped at itself, held onto his son’s hand that so reminded him of another’s. Gerald then let his son go before he entered the ward to find his mother.

  In a quiet voice, a nurse ushered Winston in the direction of where his mother lay, behind a curtain. Winston drew the curtain back and, for all his coolness, he could not stifle a gasp when he saw her. He struggled to recognise the woman on the bed as his mother, for her often-complemented figure, the pride of his father’s and then envy of her friends, had shrunken to tissue paper about her bones. Nails, once glossy and bright, had become lined, chaffed and brittle. Winston approached his mother’s bed as if a withered changeling were in her place. The sheets were rolled almost halfway down the bed to give the woman some relief from the heat, but she lay there as if sweat were beyond her. Winston hesitated but approached again when he saw her breathe. One side of her nightie had fallen open, and he observed the raw scar, and dents, that ran from under her armpit and across one-half of a barren chest stripped of the flesh that had once suckled him. Winston approached as if his mother were a car bonnet deformed by a crash.

  He drew up a chair to sit next to the phantom that masqueraded as his mother, and lifted her tepid arm and hand - always dainty - but since wasted to the lightness of a bird’s wing. He puzzled at the arms that had once cradled him, and, although always a slender woman, he seemed appalled to witness how much of her power she had lost. His Mother awoke at his touch, her eyes creeping open. Her head turned with an effort to look at her son.

  ‘You made it’ she whispered, the soft Irish lilt still sung somewhat in her voice if much diminished. ‘My boy, my boy’ she said turning her head more to look at him and leaving a clump of straw like hair upon her pillow. Winston grimaced. His mother's hair, once so vigorous, that once smelled of sweet peas, and French lavender had shone like copper silk in the wind when she would whirl him up into her arms, and rub her freckled nose upon his forehead.

  He looked at the half corpse speaking to him as the memory burst into his mind, and a tear rolled off his cheek to plop on the floor. ‘There, there’ Mora cooed, ‘don’t cry my boy, it’ll be over soon’, but her words only made her son shake, as he tried to steady himself by holding her hand. ‘Don’t be sad my boy’ she said, with some of the former warmth of her voice returning to comfort him, ‘I’m happy now because I’m looking at one of the best things that ever happened to me in my life…’

  Winston’s face shook, an involuntary mass of twitching, and he kissed his mother’s hand but shrank back when it seemed that the grip of death was already upon her. ‘The first was meeting your father’ Mora continued, and managed a rasping chuckle that made her cough, and Winston held on until she recovered. She smiled, ‘can you imagine my luck? A girl from Killarney, bagging herself an aristocrat - my mother did a cartwheel’. Winston smiled, and wiped away another tear in silence, and admired his mother’s spirit that still clung to her protesting body.

  His father often told him how his family had lost almost all its wealth after the crash of '29'; they had to abandon the country piles and sell up, but there had been enough put aside for Gerald to marry - and set up home with Mora.

  ‘Your grandfather was dead against us, at first’ Mora said, Winston nodded with recognition, as her eyes retraced the past, ‘he wanted your father to marry money, a wealthy debutante, b
ut your Pa preferred me - after all his running about.' Winston's mother seemed amused. '"Stiff as kippers"' said Mora, imitating her husband’s voice with the thrust of her hand. ‘"Marble Girls" that’s what he called them, but I guess it all worked out in the end.' Winston gave an anguished frown.

  ‘Mother, you must rest. Please, let's not talk about the past again. Save your energy’ said Winston, his voice choked. Mora shook her balding head and tried to wave her hand,

  ‘Argh, no point, they said I left it too late, my boy. “A lump like an apple,” the Dr told me, fancy that. I said “you should have made me a pie of it to go with my other breast” - but I don’t think he saw the joke in it.' Winston grimaced, but shook his head, sighed, smiled, and wiped more tears from his face.

  ‘Would you like some water?’ said the nurse to Mora, who had been hanging back to watch, but she refused the young woman, and said she had all she needed beside her.

  ‘I could have done without the chemo’ she announced, ‘if I’d known it was pointless I’d not have bothered. Look at me, laying here like a Barn Owl’s chick, not worth the bother, not worth the bother…’ Her voice, still weak, nonetheless managed some of its spirited defiance. ‘Is he out there?’ said Mora, and Winston nodded. Mora read her son's expression, and pouted her dry lips, ‘don’t blame him’ she said, ‘I don't - look at me. I told him once that I thought he loved my hair more than I did. When it started to fall out, he wept over it. I've never seen him like that; I didn't mention it again.' Mora yawned for some time, her every breath an effort, 'I don’t blame him, or the others.' Mora looked off into the distance before she turned back. 'They took some of my ribs you know?' She announced as if burgled. 'No one knows what to say to you when you get like this’ she said, gesturing to herself as if she were a scrap-heap.

  With that Mora coughed hard, and the force shook her fragile body to the extent that Winston wanted to cradle his mother in his arms, as she had done when he had been a baby, and protect her from the cancer that gnawed, pitiless, at her body. Mora's coughing stopped, and so it seemed had her breathing, and Winston bolted upright to shout for the nurse, but his mother opened her eyes again, though with more effort than before.

  ‘Not long now, my boy. Not long now’ she said considering his face. ‘I’ve only one regret in my whole life...’ she said, but Winston shook his head and interrupted,

  'No, you mustn't, I know what you're going to say, mother, please.'

  'Your sister... There, I said it, it's true’ she added. Winston sat down, before he lost control of his lips, as they quaked and trembled. Memories of Neave, her face the image of her mother’s, rushed back into his mind along with the guilt to have been free from thoughts of her, for the first time in years, when so in the depths of his studies. ‘We couldn’t find her’ she continued, ‘and I didn’t protect her - I failed.’

  Winston shook his head with violence, but his mother gazed beyond the walls in memory of her daughter. With effort Mora crossed herself, ‘God only knows where she is - what happened to her?' Mora looked back and pointed to her stitches, 'that’s why I got this you know?’ She said, tapping at the red scars of her mastectomy. Winston shook his head again, but she nodded: ‘it's true, my darling, it’s true’. Winston’s nose ran, and he had to brush it against his shirt sleeve to dry it. ‘Listen to me, my bright boy’ his mother said, increasing her intensity, ‘soon you’ll have your certificate from Oxford, and know that you’ve taught me more about the heavens than any old nun could do for a Catholic girl in Ireland… Find her for me’ she said, fixing him with her gaze, ‘and seek out if you can, what’s the point of all of this?’ Her eyes looked around the hospital as if to question the purpose of life itself. The nurse, once close, left off to keep her distance. Winston nodded,

  ‘I will. I promise’. The youth trembled all over.

  ‘My boy’ she smiled, ‘my bright boy…’ said Mora, with half closed eyes before she raised her emaciated hand to wipe away the tears on her son’s face, and died. For a moment, Winston held his mother’s hand in place, sat rigid as if welded to his chair, as he looked into the once dazzling hazel-green eyes that grew dry and cold, and at the last of her beauty that escaped her withered body and flew off in peace. Mora's frame seemed to flatten into the bed, as her ribcage ceased to rise. Winston let go, unable to speak, and the hand of a corpse fell from his face: she had gone. His mother had left him, and a young man who almost never cried as a boy, could not stop crying for six weeks.

  The following weekend he collected his first in Physics from Oxford, without pleasure, and dedicated his degree to his mother: she had passed at 44 years old.

  Chapter 2

  The Dwelling Place

  Turkey, August 1992

  Iona flapped her colourful silk scarf above her head to wave goodbye to the Blue Mosque, and the Hagia Sophia, as the ship cut through the waters of the Bosphorus to embark upon the Marmara Sea. A tall man grabbed her from behind,

  ‘Come here’ he said, squeezing her before the woman gave out a girlish squeal, which turned some heads on the boat.

  ‘You’re a beast, Winston’ came her reply, before she smacked the large tanned hands that had encircled her waist, and slipped beneath her dungarees. ‘H’hey, naughty boy, not here’ she said, in her Bostonian lilt, before she leant her head back against his shoulder and yanked his hands away from their wanderings.

  Iona turned to Winston with a frown, obscured by her sandy blond hair that blew into her eyes, and wrinkled her nose before her faced opened with a smile that was pure Hollywood. She giggled and planted a kiss on the attractive face in front of hers, and gazed deep into the grey eyes that studied her. Iona stretched up to throw her arms around Winston’s neck, and he lifted her to himself and clasped his hands to her buttocks: she wriggled and squealed again as the ship rocked from side to side. Some people on the vessel shook their heads and whispered; others smiled, but a squat woman wearing a head scarf prodded her chubby grandson towards some benches further along the deck. The boy then resisted, his neck craned, as she pulled him away from the couple.

  ‘Now, remember what I told you about my friend?’ said Iona, as she and Winston crossed the deck to lean over the balustrade of the boat, and look at the rushing blue water. A smile died on Winston’s face.

  ‘He’s a creep’ he said. Iona frowned.

  ‘Don’t say that, he’s a great guy really’ Winston pulled a face, ‘no, honestly he is’ she protested while fussing at his collar, ‘he just never got over us breaking up after college.' Winston's shoulder's tensed as air hissed between his teeth,

  ‘Harvard was a while ago now, Iona: he needs to grow a pair.'

  Iona tutted and stroked strands of hair from her face.

  ‘Don’t be like that, honey. We’re archaeologists: we like to hold onto things’ she said, before clenching at his muscular bicep.

  ‘I think five years is long enough, don’t you?’ Snapped Winston, shrugging her off, and shaking his head, before running a hand through his gold-red hair. Iona stared down at the deck, before she pondered the tall Thirty-nine-year-old, as he looked out to sea. She thought that for a man on the cusp of forty he still looked as if he were in his late twenties. Iona remembered her shock at learning his age on their first date.

  Although the morning sun glowed overhead Iona’s bare legs recoiled from the breeze that blew colder as the boat went further out to sea, and, like a kitten, she padded forward to seek shelter from the wind next to Winston’s honed physique. His face looked stiff, but she nuzzled at his shoulder as he turned to look down, and he threw his arm around her before he planted a kiss on her head. Iona's hair still smelled fresh from the shampoo she had used in Istanbul. ‘This was supposed to be our trip’ said Winston, rubbing at Iona’s slim shoulders to revive her from the chill.

  ‘It still is’ she said, ‘when we get to Phocaea we’ll rent a car, drive down to see Duggie, at Kyme, and then we’ll drive back and enjoy the coast as planned.' Winston clapp
ed a free hand to his forehead,

  ‘Of all the places, Douglas has to put himself there?’

  ‘Kyme is part of his research’ she said, toying with Winston’s collar, ‘and he’s leading a great team there: I wrote part of my thesis on Kyme, remember? If I can finish maybe…’

  ‘But there’s nothing there…’ Winston interrupted, ‘it’s just a scrape in the ground, just a bunch of old blocks and bushes’ he huffed, ‘gosh, even the locations he chooses are boring.'

  ‘Don’t say that’ said Iona biting her lip.

  ‘Oh c’mon, the place is a shit-hole’ replied Winston. Iona's face fell,

  ‘We can’t all be “great” Professors’ she said. Iona then untangled herself from his arm, paced across the deck, and turned to rush downstairs. Winston slapped his thigh, cursed, and then gripped at the balustrade. He turned to the sea and then turned back again to look towards the stairs that Iona had taken down below deck.

  The chubby boy watched him from where he sat next to his grandmother, licking at his ice-cream, as he saw Winston shake his hand again through his hair, sigh, and slope towards the stairs.

  …

  After disembarking the ship, the couple walked about Phocaea, the lovely seaside town, with its boats, red-faced Germans, and white houses topped with terracotta roofs. Iona tied her coloured scarf about her head to protect it from the fierce sunshine. The couple rented a Renault car from a moustached man, which seemed to be the newest of the haggard bangers that Phocaea had to offer, dumped their luggage in the boot, and drove it back to the shore. The pair enjoyed a meal - at a waterfront restaurant - of rice, and red mullet, just pulled from the sea, grilled with garlic and lemons. Winston smacked his lips and sucked and picked at his teeth, with the aid of a cocktail stick, before the pair washed their food down with a local wine so good that Winston had to have another glass. He breathed in, with satisfaction, to swill the liquid in his mouth, and enjoyed its crisp flavour as it mingled with the salty air.