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| She is selfish, shallow, and entitled. She has been awarded a scholarship to study at the school of sceptical philosophy. She tells herself it is her merit, but her father is on the board of governors.
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| He is an artist. He once was a firebrand, challenging the orthodoxy, the corporate cliques that dominate the public funding of science - people like her father - for their spiritually bankrupt ways.
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| The establishment knocked him back, suppressed his views, and drove him towards ruin. At a low point on the high mountain, a girl rescued him. She was the daughter of a priest. Her family took him in and rehabilitated him. His price for redemption was compromise – he accepted that there was not a perfect world and his contribution to it should be practical and good works. He found her religion, and inner peace, but his edge was blunted. He opted out of the mainstream and lived in a comfortable pile at the edge of town.
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| Her boyfriend was Orton Hatch, the son of one of daddy’s partners. He wasn’t bright but he was pretty and he loved her to bits. She would often mock him fearfully in front of their friends at their regular table in the fashionable eaterie, between bouts of rudeness to the serving staff. He was so faithful to her that he took the blows and kept smiling. Even that she mocked.
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| Her set discussed the fashionable artists, couturiers and musicians. They talked about Him, the firebrand whose edge was dulled.
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| She said his mumbo jumbo was seditious. He was a danger to the forces of progression.
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| The others nodded.
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| Orton shrugged and said he rather liked the spikey style.
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| She scoffed and reamed poor Orton. “Oh, dear Orton. He’s is so captive of the prevailing fashion.”
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| Orton hated how she spoke about him in the third person when he was sitting there, her dialogue not to him, but at him, a performance for her friends.
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| “They say he attempted suicide.”
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| She snorted. “He should have had the courage of his convictions.”
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| “Harsh.”
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| “But just imagine his reputation now though. Jimmy Dean and not some doormat making pop art for the masses.”
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| But not seditious?
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| You can’t be seditious when you’re dead.
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| Orton took some air. He needed to, every now and then, when the beasting got too much. He pushed out through the kitchen, where they wouldn’t find him. He drew on a cigarette. He kicked the dumpster and told himself to compose.
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| “I don’t know how you take it.”
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| Orton looked around. He could see no one.
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| “I don’t know why you take it.”
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| Black eyes gleamed out of the half light. It was the waitress on her table.
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| “You’ve been coming here for nine months, and she treats you like shit on her heel.”
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| He said nothing. He looked at the ground. He lit another cigarette.
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| “I - ”
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| “You don’t understand,” he said.
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| She said, “I’m sorry. I should not have run my mouth. It is none of my business.”
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| The girl turned to go.
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| He grabbed her arm.
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| She turned and flinched.
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| His fingers felt the electrical jolt.
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| Her eyes flashed.
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| He gasped.
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| He said, “thank you,” and let her go. He returned to the table.
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| They were still bemoaning the seditious artist, whose later work he loved – it was spiritual and connected and grounded in profound respect for nature. We are but ants.
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| She knew this and she goaded him. She saw it coming before it arrived. He put on that supercilious face, the one she could not stand, the one by which he announced an Important Fact.
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| “His last work was great. “The Comet”. It’s an allegory.
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| “an allegory, no less.” Cilla gave a knowing look that said that’s a big word for a bear of little brain.
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| “It’s inspired by the Barber – Azinge, that’s due to cross our skies this year.”
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| “A crushing disappointment, ” said the girl. And after all the hype. I had such high hopes for the apocalypse.”
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| Orton’s face fell. “Best be careful what you wish for, Cilla.”
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| “No doubt,” she said. “Did Feuerbrandt did confect a self-righteous parable about our rationalist times?”
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| “He had some things to say”.
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| “Educate us, my handsome man, please do.”
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| A friend said, “Come on Cilla, leave him alone.”
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| “Gah. Feuerbrandt needs all the opprobrium he can get He’s a charlatan.”
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| “I meant Orton.”
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| Cilla screwed up her face. “Him?”
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| Orton shook his head and said, “I appreciate your concern, I do, but there’s no need for pity – I’m big enough, and ugly enough, to look out for myself.”
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| She laughed and her eyes sparkled with flinty glee at his foolish consent. “you may be big, but no one calls my boyfriend ugly.”
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| Orton blanched.
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| “So, come, my pretty lover, thrill us with your perspicacity. Tell us all about this Comet - an album that has passed us by.”
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| She took another slug. The others twittered, but a little less so.
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| “[little known astronomical Halley’s Comet is due,” he said –
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| “Oh!” she squealed. “astronomy! It’s little known that dear Orton’s a cosmologist.”
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| “I read the papers –”
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| “And he keeps abreast of the world’s affairs!”
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| Behind her head the waitress made a careful path back to the kitchen. She caught his eye and for moment he felt another flash of electricity.
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| Orton boxed on. He fixed a smile and kept his humour. “They say it is a portent. An omen of ill fortune. ”
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| “Oh, please.”
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| She scoffed. “You sap. How could an inanimate ball of rock and ice a few hundred yards, orbiting an entirely different celestial body, have a conceivable effect on the outcome of battle in mediaeval England?”
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| “Well,” he said, doubling down on the face. “That’s just what King Harold said when his courtier warned him of a portent in the sky. Caesar said the same. And the Aztecs.”
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| My friends, I think he’s finally lost it.”
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| She brayed and knocked his glass askew.
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| “You know, she’s right.”
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| “Who?”
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| He ignored the question. “You’re not worth it. Not remotely.”
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| He pushed back his chair.
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| She swilled her glass and drained it. When her eyes swam back he was on his feet. He tossed down his napkin and a handful of bills.
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| “This is for the meal. I have to go. I have some things to do.”
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| “Like what? What could you possibly have to do that’s more important than this?”
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| “I’ll think of something.” He snatched his keys.
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| “You are drunk - you can’t drive – you-”
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| Her friend said, “I don’t think so. He hasn’t touched a drop.”
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| “He’ll be back. He needs me.
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| In the next twenty minutes she became more shrill and could not stop the conversation drifting back to him.”
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| Mean while the group drifted away. “I have to get on.”
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| She resolved to go to see him, to straighten him out. She polished off the Sangria and walked to her car.
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| The bellhop tried to stop her.
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| The car was small and elegant it hugged the road. Her path was not quite the economical racing line, but the car seemed to read the camber by itself and kept her safe
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| She would read the pretty ingrate the riot act. He was only where he was thanks to her father’s largesse. He needed to understand how things were.
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| She would present him an ultimatum.
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| The phone clicked in. It was Fiona.
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| “Is everything okay? He’s cleaned out his stuff. He left a grand on your bedspread.”
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| “I’ll be home in five minutes. I’ll sort it out.
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| She voice dialled the boy. It rang and rang.
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| The car swept through the bends. She remembered a blinding flash but she didn’t register that it was a speed camera. There was a low cloud which obscured the moon. It broke and then the she saw it : this rainbow array of light in flecks and sparkles and shooting stars. It was magnificent and bewitching and beautiful and peaceful and she began to see a truth about herself that she didn’t like.
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| The artist peered over the bonnet with a blank look. It, ah, it looks like an engine sweetheart. I don’t know why it isn’t going. I’ll call the garage but this late at night and this far out they might be some time.
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| His wife said, “I suppose I did not marry you for your mechanical skills”. Inside she railed at the abject impracticality. Where she came from, in the mountains, nature did not compromise, and her people were thin lipped pragmatists. They did not look kindly on those who could not solve their own problems. She had tuned her share of engines. She looked in and checked the obvious points. The plugs, the points, the carburettor, the fan belt.
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| He got behind the wheel and turned the key.
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| She pulled her hands out as the starter motor kicked. She said, “careful sweetheart,” and swore quietly to herself. “Let me know if you are going to do that okay?”
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| He tried again, but the engine wouldn't turn. He saw in this a bleak symbolism a less sensitive man would not. He worked his jaw.
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| He called the garage. They promised to send out a truck. He walked back to the car. the clouds opened and they were showered in the most glorious celestial light.
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| He watched the rainbow of sparks across a quadrant of the sky – he saw portents and beauty and hope and apocalypse. It validated his forthcoming metaphorical scheme. Comet 2 would be released soon. It doubled down on the first one. It is always darkest before dawn.
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| “It is a sign”, he said. “Even when the chips are down there is beauty and there is light.”
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| She worked under the bonnet. “hold on, I'm nearly done.”
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| “I called the garage.” He tensed his jaw.
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| Beneath the bonnet, she tensed hers.
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| “Come on,” he said, “come back inside and watch the show. ”
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| She insisted on trying one more thing.
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| The Corvette left the road as it crested Shooter's Hill. It prescribed a flat trajectory across the dip. It yawed gently forward and crumpled into the rear window of a stationary Toyota, parked up with hazards on and bonnet up, on the shoulder of the highway. Sparks burst in the night sky, and on the road, and from the sirens and rotating lights of the paramedics and rescue services and ambulance and police as they assembled at the scene.
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| They kept the three involved in artificial comas for weeks afterwards.
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| Flash forward
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| Even after she completed her sentence the pain still came. A dull ache across her shoulders and down her back. She threw herself into rehabilitation. She did all the exercises, took all the effort but the pain still came. It was insidious, it crept like a Web across every part of her body.
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| Orton came to visit once a month for ten years. She sat, stoney faced across the divide. He brought her news. They fell into a routine: he would speak, he would recount the goings on, and she would listen, mute, not once looking up from the table.
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| He knew she appreciated it. Notwithstanding that she never replied – she did not have to come, and hardly did so out of politeness – that was not her way – but she came, and was ready, waiting for him at ten past the hour, on the last Friday of the month.
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| He told her all kinds of news but never once mentioned the accident.
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| Orton was at the prison gates the day she walked out, stiffly, aided by a walking stick.
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| For the first time in a decade, she spoke to him.
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| “Why are you even here?”
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| “I care about you.”
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| She hobbled past him.
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| “it’s a long walk back into town, even if you don't have a stick.”
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| Wordlessly she accepted the ride.
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| “we have a spare room. You can stay for a couple of of days. After that, Marla would prefer it if you left.”
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| She didn't ask her Marla was. Orton figured it was easy enough to work out.
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| “We have a busy house. Your mother's place is ready. With permission from the executors we went and cleaned it up.”
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| She didn't ask. It explained why the visits ceased.
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| The pain didn't stop. The therapists eventually stopped visiting.
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| She kept the house immaculate and walked, in pain, a mile to the store each day. The pain was always there – not always in the forefront, but ready to wash over her if she made a particular motion.
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| The hospital kept him in a coma for six months while his body reknitted.
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