Chapter Sixty-Three
Damien stood with his hands wrapped around the iron railings, feeling the ship rock beneath him as wave after wave crashed into its side, slamming it against the docks.
Mr Jane had managed to secure him a second-class ticket all the way to Boston – and somehow there was still enough money left in Damien’s pocketbook for a new start when he arrived.
‘How did you wangle it?’ Damien had asked that morning, his fraying fabric holdall sagging against the front step of the teahouse.
‘Oh, I’ve still got a few connections from my navy days,’ Mr Jane had said, giving Damien a wink. ‘And besides, people seem reluctant to disagree with me. I’ve no idea why.’
Damien imagined it might have something to do with the long, black overcoat Mr Jane had chosen to wear to the docks, or the fact that when Mr Jane smiled he flashed the gold-capped tooth that sat snugly beside his incisor.
Mr Jane did not look like the sort of man one readily disagreed with – unless one was prepared to suffer the consequences.
‘This is it then,’ said Damien, holding a hand between them.
Mr Jane had looked down at Damien’s hand, one eyebrow rising. ‘You sure I can’t convince you to stay?’
‘I’m sure,’ Damien said.
He watched the man’s lip twitch, as though he might say something else. And then he sighed, and pressed a small square of paper into Damien’s outstretched hand.
‘You might want this.’
Damien unfolded it carefully, for he hadn’t taken Mr Jane to be a sentimentalist – and felt something flicker in his chest as he saw Ava’s face staring back at him.
It was just a line drawing, but it still picked out the fine line of her cheekbone, the pale grey of her eyes.
Ava Adams returns to the Penny Farthing Theatre tonight – now reborn as The Storyteller.
He stared at it for a moment, and then two – his breath tight in his throat. And then he folded the paper back up, and tucked it into his pocket.
‘Goodbye, Mr Jane,’ Damien said.
‘Well, see, I don’t do goodbyes,’ Mr Jane had said, reaching to squeeze his shoulder instead. ‘I do “Until next time.”’
Damien had smiled. ‘Until next time then.’
‘And may it be sooner, rather than later,’ Mr Jane had said, returning Damien’s smile with a taut one of his own; before grabbing his battered holdall in one fist. ‘Come on. I’ll walk yer.’
Boston.
Damien knew enough to know that whenever he returned – if he ever returned – it would not be ‘soon’.
From Boston he’d no doubt try and hitch a ride back to New York, or perhaps he’d head north – into New Hampshire, or even Canada – and try and make a go of it there.
He didn’t know yet; all he knew was that this was it.
This was the reason he’d come to Liverpool: to leave.
And yet now he was here, standing upon the deck of the ship that’d take him to a new life, he found himself faltering.
The wind was fierce, and it stung his eyes to look back at Liverpool’s docks, to trace his walk between the butter-coloured buildings up towards Mr Jane’s teahouse, or east, towards the terraced house that Ava lived in, one thought circling him like the seagulls trying to flap against the bracing wind above:
You cannot make a fresh start in the shadow of your old life.
The ship bellowed then, its great horn piercing the air, making him tighten his grip upon the railings. For Mr Jane was wrong. Damien could start a new life. He’d done it a dozen times, moving to a new place, taking on a new name, a new story.
The difference would be that this time, it would be filled with the knowledge that he was there, and she was here.
It would be filled with a hundred little wonderings: what was she doing?
Was she looking up at the same moon as he?
Was she walking to the theatre, or sitting upon the settee in her father’s sitting room, her notebook spread across her lap?
It would be filled with a list of all the things he wanted to tell her, all the things he wished for her to know.
It would be filled with unspoken words, and a gap in his chest that spanned the full breadth of the Atlantic.
The ship’s horn sounded again, and he watched the men upon the dock begin to hurry, running now up and down the gangway as they raced to load the last of the boxes and cases.
But he could live with that, couldn’t he? He could live with the loss. The longing. For though he no longer blamed himself for the worst of it: his mother’s death – that dark, trailing shadow – he blamed himself for the rest. For lying to her. For betraying her.
Damien’s grip upon the railing loosened as the ship’s horn let out a last, thunderous groan, and the men below began to call to one another, fetching more hands from the docks to try and haul the last of the luggage up and down the slamming gangway.
Is that what this is? Ava’s voice threaded through his mind. Are you … are you trying to prove it to yourself? That what your father told you, all those years ago, was true?
The thought made something clench in his chest. Leaving Ava here for noble reasons: to save her having to run with him, to protect her from that kind of life, that all made sense in his mind.
Leaving to save himself made sense too, for it soothed the snarling sensation in his chest, the one that snapped its jagged teeth whenever he felt cornered and thrust his rules before him, as though they were his claws. As though they would protect him.
But then he thought of what Mr Jane had asked him. What he’d said.
What if you’re running from a ghost?
Mr Briggs was chasing him because of his mother.
And now he knew that the guilt that had stitched itself to his shadow all these years wasn’t his.
It’d been an accident.
His mother’s death had been an accident.
So then why was he running from it?
Damien bit down upon his lip, eyes flitting to the gangway that led back to shore as another whistle came, followed by three sharp blasts of the ship’s horn.
It was more frantic this time, and the rising waves suggested the captain was keen to depart, to stop smacking sickeningly back and forth against the jetty.
For running made it look as though he were guilty.
Running made it look like an admittance, a confession of fear.
And though he was still afraid: he could feel it in the trembling sensation buried deep beneath his breastbone, could feel it in the way his muscles were coiled and ready – it had been an accident.
All these years he’d spent believing he was a monster; wouldn’t running now be believing it, too?
Wouldn’t running now tell whomever was chasing him the very same?
I don’t believe it. Ava’s voice. Her face – the pinched line between her brows, the furtive look in her slate-grey eyes.
And his reply: Well, then you are the only one in this world who doesn’t.
Then believe it with me, and I won’t be alone.
He looked down in time to see two burly men upon the dock begin to untie the ropes holding the gangway in place, readying to pull it back into the belly of the ship, and something speared through his stomach like a red-hot knife.
‘Wait—’ he called, plucking up his hold-all. ‘Wait!’
Now he was running, fighting his way through the crowd crushed against the railings, so desperate to catch one last glimpse of their loved ones they could not hear him shouting, could not feel him trying to gouge a frantic path for himself towards the stairs.
‘Please!’ he called, hoisting his hold-all atop his head lest it get trapped between people’s legs. ‘You must let me past!’
‘Really.’ A woman tutted, pulling her daughter aside.
‘The rudeness,’ muttered another.
But Damien didn’t care. He pushed, and pushed, though it felt like carving stone with a butter knife: the press of people, the sheer mass of them was unyielding, but then the ship rocked once more, and the crowd staggered, and he seized his chance, trying not to trip as he pushed backwards, towards the spiralling staircase that would lead him down, back towards the doorway.
Beneath him came the metallic clank of something closing, the screeching roll of wheels.
‘Wait!’ Damien bellowed, at the same time the ship’s horn blasted again, long and low, and the crowd above let out a gleeful cheer.
‘Wait! I need to get off this ship!’