Read an extract from The Ferryman by Justin Cronin

The Ferryman

Justin Cronin

Orion (UK); Ballantine Books (US)

PROLOGUE

Dawn is breaking when she creeps from the house. The air is cool and fresh; birds are singing in the trees. Everywhere, the sound of the sea, the world’s great metronome, beating beneath a velvety sky of diminishing stars. In her pale nightdress, she moves through the garden. Her pace is not hesitant, merely unhurried, almost fond. How like a ghost she must look, this solitary figure floating among the flower beds, the burbling fountains, the hedges trimmed with creases sharp enough to draw blood. Behind her, the house is dark as a monolith, though soon its seaward-facing windows will swell with light.

It is not an easy thing, to leave a life, a home. The details dig trenches within one — scents, sounds, associations, rhythms. The creaking floorboard in the upstairs hall. The smell that greets one in the entryway at the end of a day. The light switch that meets the hand without thought in a darkened room. She could have stepped safely among the furniture wearing a blindfold. Twenty years. She would have twenty more if she could.

It was after dinner that she’d told Malcolm the news. A fine meal, one he loved: broiled lamb chops, risotto with cheese, asparagus grilled in a film of oil; good wine. Coffee and small crème pastries for dessert. They had decided to eat outside; it was such a beautiful night. A riot of flowers on the table, the tick-tock of the sea, candlelight glazing their faces. You will not know when it happens, she told him. I will simply be gone. Powerless, she watched him as he absorbed the blow, his face in his hands. So soon? Does it have to be now? Come to bed with me, she commanded — her body would say to him the things that words could not — and after, she held him as he wept. The dark hours passed. At last the lassitude of grief engulfed him. Wrapped in her arms, he slept.

Farewell, gardens, she thinks, farewell, house. Farewell, birds and trees and long, unhurried days, and while I’m at it, farewell to all the lies I’ve had to tell.

She is growing older. All the things a woman can do, she has done. The creams and extracts. The hours of exercise and meticulously observed diet. The small, discreet surgeries that even Malcolm does not know about. She has applied every resource to the slowing of the years, but that is at its end. She had decided to wait until someone remarked on it, and then, out of the blue, it happened.

“Are you taking care of yourself, Cynthia?”

They had just played tennis, the usual Tuesday group, a dozen women, all good; afterward, glasses of iced tea and salads everybody just picked at, no matter how hungry they were. She hadn’t played well. She had played, in fact, quite badly. Her knees were sore and slow; the sun felt too strong, sapping her strength. It was time she felt in her limbs, its inexorable march, while all around her, in the bodies and faces of her friends, it moved at a genteel crawl.

But, the question. Her friend was waiting for an answer. Her name was Lauralai Swan. She was close to sixty but looked thirty: skin taut; limbs lean with yoga-sculpted muscle; glorious, bountiful hair. Even her hands looked good. Was the question an expression of genuine concern or something darker? Cynthia had known this day would come, and yet she’d been caught by surprise, no answer at the ready. Her mind was sorting rapidly; just in time, it came to her. What she needed was a joke.

— Believe me, she said, if you were married to Malcolm, you’d look tired, too. The man won’t take no for an answer.

She laughed, hoping Lauralai would laugh, too, and after a fraught moment, she did; everyone did; and soon they were all talking about their husbands, each woman raising the bet with every story that passed around the table, even comparing their men to former lovers and ex-husbands. Who was better, more considerate in bed. Who left his soggy jogging shorts on the bathroom floor. Who squeezed the toothpaste from the middle of the tube.

It was, in sum, a pleasant afternoon in the sunshine, all of them talking the way women liked to do. But inside herself, Cynthia felt something drop. Are you taking care of yourself? The thing that dropped: it was a blade.

Farewell to all of this and all of you, who gave me what passed for a life.

And yet: it is not the parties and concerts she will miss; not the good leather of her luggage and shoes; not the long dinners with beautiful food and good wine and sparkling talk until all hours — none of these. What she will miss is the boy. She thinks of two days, one a beginning, one an end. The first was the day he had come to her. She had expected to feel nothing; adopting a ward was simply one more thing a person in her position would do. The boy was, in that sense, a form of décor, like the couch in her living room or the art upon her walls. Oh, you’ve taken a ward! people would say. You must be so thrilled! They had seen a picture of him, of course. One did not choose blindly. Yet the moment Cynthia caught sight of him, standing at the rail of the ferry, something changed. He was taller than she had anticipated, at least six feet, his height amplified by his neutral, poorly fitting clothing, rather like pajamas or a doctor’s scrubs. Though the wards were staring over the rail with a kind of unfocused blankness, he alone was looking about, taking in the sight of the crowd and the buildings of the city and even the sky, tipping his head upward to feel the sun on his face. His haircut, she saw, was awful. It looked like a blind man had done it. That was something she’d have to see to right away, getting the boy a proper haircut.

“Do you think that’s him?” her husband said to her, and when she failed to answer, he addressed the adoption agent who had accompanied them to the ferry: “Is that our son?”

© Reprinted by permission of Orion Books. All rights reserved.

The Ferryman by Justin Cronin is published by Orion. It is the first pick for New Scientist’s new book club, for which you can sign up here