Chapter Forty Eight

The Ladies Strand

Kay stood in the small parking area above the beach and made a slow and detailed visual sweep of the view. Immediately to her left, at the top of the path that descended to beach level, was a derelict house, some of the windows broken and boarded; others revealing age-shredded curtains allowing glimpses of cheap furniture. Beyond this the rolling grass surface led to a piece of land which separated the beaches at mid to high tide. The fragment of castle, just the flat front wall of a once imposing edifice glowed pink in the evening sun. Far beyond lay Kerry Head and farther again she could just perceive the mountains, violet shadows in the still air.

It was mid-August, so the beach was still busy with families enjoying the last weeks before the new school term would return most of them to West Limerick or even Dublin. Bright blue, red and yellow wind-breakers created many small compounds, like social cells; a tent the nucleus, sun chairs the mitochondria, parents and children, sometimes a dog, entering and leaving incessantly. Kay realised that she was trying to understand the biology of the beach. She certainly needed to grasp it if she were to survive.

A wide artery took water from the bath house in a winding delta to the sea. The cliffs to her right were a rigid, open exoskeleton. She felt the heart of the beach under her feet, the organ of soil which pumped the water down to that artery and eventually to the clouds. She scanned right to left now; searching for the brain, the centre of organisation and the key to understanding the sensations of the strand. She closed her eyes and let the after images form. Her memory vision had saved her life before, and she trusted it now, but the scintillation of people and waves, constant movement, constant visual noise, frustrated still analysis. She must wait.

To avoid unwanted attention Kay moved. She followed the thread of holiday makers down to the beach and walked over to the cliffs, genuinely impressed with the record of geological time revealed in the curves of strata and equally impressed by the delight of the small children playing in the pools. She saw fathers pucking balls to their children, mothers chatting as toddlers splashed and laughed together. The emptiness throbbed within. She had never known this, and knew that she could never provide such love for her own. She was not angry about it: her father was suffering beyond her comprehension for his part and her mother was gone. Frank had to die, but that was not because of her rage; there was no rage. Frank had to die because if he did not, then he would surely kill her.

A sign warned that the caves at the head of the beach were tidal and should not be entered. Life guards patrolled and made sure that once the tide had turned, which it now had, this rule was obeyed. Kay moved back up the beach and entered a cave mouth that did not join the system. Hidden here she waited for the tide to reach her. By the time the water lapped around her feet it was twilight. She moved to the entrance and looked out. The beach was almost empty, the lifeguards gathered in their cabin under electric light. The water rose. When it was at her waist the light in the cabin went out.

She stripped, tucking her clothes into a groove in the rock and swam out and along the line of cliff face. She soon arrived at the cave which did lead to the sea and felt the boom of the water swirling within. She had to dive to get through the entrance and then found herself in the system. The apparent pitch darkness soon yielded its secrets to her sensitive vision. She felt the danger; it was immense, and she rapidly explored the cave system, the waves sending the water level all the way into the arched roof-space more and more frequently. She was hurled against sharp granite, felt the blood seeping into the sea and the salt into her veins. The exchange numbed her. She was not going to let drowning do Frank’s work for him, so she kicked hard against the wall and fought her way to the cave mouth. This was now completely submerged, but somewhere in front of her. The force of the waves was greater than anything she had experienced. She dived again and again, but the relentless power pushed her further from the cave entrance.

She dug her fingers into the ceiling of the rock and pressed her cheek to it, gasping for the last air. The only possible route was now to go with the flow of water, but that only led to the solid core of the cliffs. She knew that she was about to die, and rather than her whole life, just one moment came back to her; so vividly that rather than the cold water and colder rock, she felt the warm hard space behind her father’s hi-fi system. His voice and Frank’s formed from the distant crashing of the sea in the cavern, and as they bled their victim her consciousness failed with his.

There was no sound, no light and no motion as the water crushed her into the final, unyielding geological crease. She became, temporarily, akin to the fossils that studded the strata.

Chapter Forty Seven

White Curve

Sixteen large jars were accommodated upon the black granite surface of his balcony; their backs to the white wall and the shimmering green of Central Park. Frank hated the closed anonymity of the laboratory; his original place of work remained the cavern, and he could only work in nature, not removed from it. This much he shared with his father. However, where Oskar had concerned himself with minerals and carbon chain fuels, Frank’s chemistry was all about the mechanisms of life, and more recently, of death.

The sixteen jars contained 15 month old cultures of his cells. Developed in the nutriment they now resembled ivory babies, and for a moment Frank considered the possibility of finding a cerebral activator for each, and of somehow apportioning his current essence amongst them, so that Frank V would be a multiple. Sixteen was in fact a power of two, and so, if repeated, the growth of the number of Franks would be exponential. He would attain a million entities in only five generations. He smiled at the absurd thought. Frank had only one point of reference, and that was himself; it would be anathema to have to share, even with himself.

These sixteen potential Frank babies were all doomed to die. It was the entire point of the experiment that they should die. The virus that Frank had added to the nutriment was designed to disable the organism’s biological defence mechanisms. The virus would not kill the host; it would instead enable nature’s own products to destroy the subjects. There were of course millions of bacteria available to act as pathogens, but Frank wanted to maximise the efficacy of his virus, so it was his aim to employ the most common agents to bring about Spong’s miserable end. In fact Frank had named his virus after its primary target, and was now ready to infect them with sixteen everyday inconveniences. He retired to the kitchen and some excellent Jamaican coffee where he intended to finalise his choice of common communicable diseases. He had the first scalding sip in his mouth and the American Dictionary of Infectious Diseases in his hands when the intercom announced a visitor.

Helen entered the apartment the way a rainbow enters the space between the clouds and the sodden earth. She materialised, and it was almost impossible to tell where she touched the ground, but her presence brought joy even to Frank’s Nordic soul. The bottle of Bushmills was firmly grounded on the table and followed by a packet of Chesterfield cigarettes and a sheaf of papers.

“Look at this Frank; just take one look at this! We have really made it big now!”

Frank gently prised the cigarettes from beneath the papers and lit up. “We?”

“We, yes we: Jack and Ellsworth and Robert; even that Stella guy. Everything Robert says about the future of art; that it’s real and in four dimensions. MOMA are going to put us right out there: Sixteen Americans. Just read it Frank.”

Helen collected two heavy glasses and filled them generously while Frank took his mind from microbiology and focussed on the words before him. It was a press release for a forthcoming exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Helen was not to be shown, but many of her circle were, including Jack, Robert and Ellsworth. Frank thought of Jack and then, of course, of Spong. The pages were snatched from his hands.

“Just listen to this: an unusually fresh, richly varied, vigorous and youthful character. They love us Frank. Nous sommes arrivés, as they say back where you come from.”

“That’s not Norwegian, but I get the idea. So how does Ellsworth feel about this?”

“You can ask him yourself, there’s a big press party going on right now: everyone is there, you can....can...” Helen’s speech was cut off by a sneeze which exploded into a paper towel “ask him yourself”. Helen looked around for the garbage can, but Frank offered his thin fingers.

“I’ll look after that. Give me a minute and we’ll go down there, it should be entertaining”. He left her with the whiskey and went out to the balcony. It was neither scientific nor rational, but Frank had sixteen samples, it didn’t matter if one were to be compromised. The virus was in a sealed dish and he extracted 10 ml in a syringe. He opened the stopper of the fifteenth jar and pushed the tissue down into the nutriment and injected the virus.

“What the Fuck is that?” Helen was standing by the glass door, staring at the line of jars.

“It’s an experiment.... with forms. They are just models”

Helen, shaken by the ivory babies, clutched to the offered idea. “Sculpture, that’s so fucking European. I suppose it’s to do with the war, or the cold. Let’s get out of here and have some fun!”

Frank was rather dreading meeting Jack again. He had only one heart to break, and Jack had broken it. Spong would definitely be there however, and that would give him something to focus his hopes and his hate upon. He took Helen’s hand in his and their shared rainbow descended in the elevator towards the pot of gold, the cauldron of his mighty vengeance about to be realised.