Equivocator by Stevie Davies Read Free Book Online

seagulls. They were cruising past the windows with pizza in their beaks. He told Mary about predatory birds he’d seen – the Lammergeier, the bearded vulture, in the Turkish mountains. Like a flying hoover. An angelic vacuum cleaner. Cleans up after us – that substantial enough for you?
    Sure, Mary said. Keep with the vultures. And they laughed.
    â€˜Well, he’s off to his seaside retreat, Seb,’ she says. ‘He’ll be back at the end of the conference, to give the final address. Can’t wait. Take that as you wish.’

3
    Now, Isis was a wise woman. She was more cunning than millions of men; she was more clever than millions of gods; she was more shrewd than millions of akhu-spirits. There was nothing of which she was ignorant in heaven and earth … So-and-so born of so-and-so lives, the poison having died, through the speech of Isis the Great, mistress of the gods.
    Egyptian Spell, found at Deir el-Medina 3
    Here at the summit of ‘Colomendy’, the luxury rest home in Cardiff Bay, my mother’s powers are failing. And she knows it. Strange though it seems to seek out truth in the temple of forgetting, this is my one resource. We must speak. Here’s the last vestige of light before the dark. Salvatore’s mystical mumbo-jumbo tells me nothing. It turns my stomach, the prattle of an inveterate fabulist. One thing is sure: he has stalked me all my life.
    Is it too late to turn to Elise? Even before her current withdrawals from memory began, for decades we kept stumm, by mutual consent, about Dad. You might say that his name perished. Or that together we buried it before it was dead. Thus the name Jack Messenger unearthed itself by night, became monstrous and spoke into my dreams. And never left me in peace.
    As we greet one another face to face, an eagle observes me from a crag in Elise’s brain through pale eyes, to me the most arresting in the world. They communicate an intelligence both alarming and alarmed.
    â€˜How are you, darling?’
    â€˜I’m fine, Sebastian, why shouldn’t I be?’
    Colomendy’s privacy policy has offered Elise the chance of a self-contained, dignified life, with support. She had a horror of being herded into a television room to play skittles with the addled ancientry. I think she felt her mind crumbling. Flakes fell away in episodes of confusion; caves opened up that she sought to prop – and the props quaked. Intermittently, the light must have guttered. Fear enhanced confusion.
    For still the damage remains minor. The great brain keeps its wits about it. It knows how to compensate. Its defensive structure holds.
    â€˜Don’t you envy me my view?’ she asks. ‘I’m tempted to watch all day. Cormorants, look. Over there. I chronicle the birds crossing the water. I’m working on my autobiography but the birds will keep making their presence felt.’
    The whole outer wall of her suite is glass, giving on to a balcony where Elise can preside wrapped in a shawl, a red beret on her head. From here she keeps watch on the Marina, a plane of ruffled water with remnants of the old docks, the Norwegian Church, yachts and quays. As the weather changes, so does the light, so does mood, so does memory.
    Don’t put point-blank questions, I remind myself. She’ll clam up. As a diplomat Elise’s razor mind had been honed and she has lost neither her asperity, cloaked in felt, nor her capacity to close down a conversation. I brew coffee and we start on the chocolates. She shoots me a sharp look.
    â€˜No offence but a baby is a parasite,’ she says, out of nothing. ‘It will leech every particle of nourishment from a mother, even if it kills her. A baby is your enemy, in that limited sense. Isn’t that so?’
    â€˜Well, I suppose so – in a strictly scientific sense. But—.’
    â€˜Now, where were we? Yes, tell me, what are you doing in Wales, dear?’ Elise