‘It is.’ Sheppard reached out and took it back. He needed the security of the piece, it reminded him of the luminous world from which this young woman had disturbed him. Perhaps she would join him there? He looked up at her strong forehead and high-bridged nose, a cut-prow that could outstare the time-winds, and at her broad shoulders, strong enough to bear a gilded plumage. He felt a sudden urge to examine her, star her in a new video film, explore the planes of her body like a pilot touching the ailerons and fuselage of an unfamiliar aircraft.
He stood up and stepped to the wardrobe. Without thinking, he began to compare the naked figure of his wife with the anatomy of the young woman sitting on his bed, the contours of her breasts and thighs, the triangles of her neck and pubis.
‘Look, do you mind?’ She stood between Sheppard and the photographs. ‘I’m not going to be annexed into this experiment of yours. Anyway, the police are coming to search for that aircraft. Now, what is all this?’
‘I’m sorry.’ Sheppard caught himself. Modestly, he pointed to the elements of his ‘kit’, the film strips, chronograms and pornographic photos, the Magritte reproduction. ‘It’s a machine, of a kind. A timemachine. It’s powered by that empty swimming pool outside. I’m trying to construct a metaphor to bring my wife back to life.’
‘Your wife — when did she die?’
‘Three months ago. But she’s here, in the forest, somewhere near the Space Centre. That was her doctor you saw the other evening, he’s trying to turn into a bird.’ Before Anne Godwin could protest Sheppard took her arm and beckoned her to the door of the cabin. ‘Come on, I’ll show you how the pool works. Don’t worry, you’ll be outside for only ten minutes — we’ve all been too frightened of the sun.’
She held his elbow when they reached the edge of the empty pool, her face beginning to fret in the harsh light. The floor of the pool was strewn with leaves and discarded sunglasses, in which the diagram of a bird was clearly visible.
Sheppard breathed freely in the gold-lit air. There were no kites in the sky, but to the north of Cocoa Beach he could see the man-powered aircraft circling the forest, its flimsy wings floating on the thermals. He climbed down the chromium ladder into the shallow end of the pool, then helped the nervous young woman after him.
‘This is the key to it all,’ he explained, as she watched him intently, eyes shielded from the terrifying glare. He felt almost light-headed as he gestured proudly at the angular geometry of white tile and shadow. ‘It’s an engine, Anne, of a unique type. It’s no coincidence that the Space Centre is surrounded by empty swimming pools.’ Aware of a sudden intimacy with this young psychologist, and certain that she would not report him to the police, he decided to take her into his confidence. As they walked down the inclined floor to the deep end he held her shoulders. Below their feet cracked the black lenses of dozens of discarded sunglasses, some of the thousands thrown into the drained swimming pools of Cocoa Beach like coins into a Roman fountain.
‘Anne, there’s a door out of this pool, I’m trying to find it, a side-door for all of us to escape through. This space sickness — it’s really about time, not space, like all the Apollo flights. We think of it as a kind of madness, but in fact it may be part of a contingency plan laid down millions of years ago, a real space programme, a chance to escape into a world beyond time. Thirty years ago we opened a door in the universe…’
He was sitting on the floor of the drained pool among the broken sunglasses, his back to the high wall of the deep end, talking rapidly to himself as Anne Godwin ran up the sloping floor for the medical valise in her jeep. In his white hands he held the glass paperweight, his blood and the sun charging the flower into a red blaze.
Later, as he rested with her in his bedroom at the motel, and during their days together in the coming week, Sheppard explained to her his attempt to rescue his wife, to find a key to everything going on around them.
‘Anne, throw away your watch. Fling back the blinds. Think of the universe as a simultaneous structure. Everything that’s ever happened, all the events that will ever happen, are taking place together. We can die, and yet still live, at the same time. Our sense of our own identity, the stream of things going on around us, are a kind of optical illusion. Our eyes are too close together. Those strange temples in the forest, the marvellous birds and animals you’ve seen them too. We’ve all got to embrace the sun, I want your children to live here, and Elaine…
