The End of the Day

by Claire North

  “Sometimes, ma’am, I’m sent as a courtesy, and sometimes as—”

  “Spare me the talk, get to the point.”

  “Sometimes my employer comes not for people, but for ideas.”

  “Ha!” This time, the first sign of humour on her face. “Then you tell your boss he’ll have a long time waiting! The world here is not for turning, thanking you very much.”

  Charlie smiled again, picked up his bag, opened it, carefully handed her the folded package from within. She sniffed, peeled away the edge of the grey plastic wrapping that surrounded it, saw a peek of scarlet, a corner of midnight blue, pulled the wrapping back fast.

  “You were sent to bring me this, boy?” Her face, diamond hard, rugged, an unpolished eternal stone.

  “Yes.”

  “By your boss?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know why?”

  “No.”

  “You know what it means?”

  “No.”

  “You know anything much?”

  Charlie hesitated, drawing in his breath, head on one side. Then, “No.”

  A moment in which she didn’t know what to make of that reply. Then something moved in her face, a shift in her shoulders, and for the first time she smiled, a smile that might almost have been human. She held the package tight to her chest, said, “Follow me.”

  She began walking, and so they followed. “Who’s your friend?” she asked, jerking her head back at Robinson as they scampered to keep up with her.

  “I’m giving him a lift.”

  “Boy, you taking a lift off the Harbinger of Death?” she exclaimed, half turning now, feet still sure of their direction, to look properly at the tall, tanned man.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to fly?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “You got cancer or something?”

  “I don’t think so, ma’am.”

  A little half-nod with her chin; she knows about these things, she knows about cancer, it’s one of many things in life she has already decided won’t be laying a finger on her.

  Through a door to where the music played, then, to Charlie’s surprise, up a ladder, Mrs. Walker-Bell gesturing at them to go first, “Because I’m wearing a skirt, why do you think?”

  They climbed the ladder. On the top of the ladder was a platform, raised on steel scaffold poles, disguised beneath draperies of white and powder-pink fabrics. On the top of this platform, her head nearly grazing the ceiling, on whose surface plaster horses galloped, teeth bared, manes wild in the wind, stood a woman. She wore black—black long-sleeved top, black trousers, black shoes—and was standing next to a long-barrelled light whose bright white beam shone down into the ballroom below, illuminating an arch of white roses, through which now paraded proud dads and beautiful daughters, long silk gloves up their elegant arms, faces bursting with joy, the room clapping and waving as each new belle entered the ball, the music playing, petals beneath diamond shoes, black-clad waiters sweeping round the hall with silver trays, dancing, laughter, champagne—more champagne!

  Mrs. Walker-Bell arrived at the top of the scaffold tower, didn’t seem to even see the girl with the light, who looked befuddled at these interlopers to her world and wasn’t sure whether to throw them off or not, and exclaimed, “Have you ever been to a debutantes’ ball, Harbinger?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t do that sort of thing in Birmingham, England?”

  “No, not really.”

  “You?” One eyebrow shot into the attack position as she glowered at Robinson.

  “No. But I went to prom when I left school.”

  Her nose crinkled a little at that, but she restrained herself from further judgement. For a while they stood, three strangers and an awkward, confused technician, watching the hall turn.

  What did they see?

  Robinson: wealth, beauty, elegance, grace. Once upon a time he was young, and smoked pot, and dreamed of owning his own motorbike and a black leather jacket with studs in. Then he was older, and married, and she bought home these magazines with pictures of pastel houses with thick pale carpets that the kids didn’t ever seem to get mud on, and glass tables and marble bathrooms, and he indulged her fantasy, even though they could never afford it, because it made her happy, and one day she made friends with a lawyer (“Don’t call him an ambulance-chaser!” she snapped) who lived in a community gated off from the highway, where every garden was a golf course, and he had that life, he had that world, and as he showed Robinson round the garage (manly tools, never touched) and the living room (beautiful books, never read) and the kitchen (every convenience, stainless steel, never dirty), Robinson had felt a thing that was …

  … envy.

  And in time envy had whispered in his ear, this is ridiculous, this is obscene, no one needs …

  … and now he looked down into the ballroom and saw the beautiful women, so bright and talented and graceful and charming, and their wealthy dads, perfectly turned out in white shirts and black tails, and there it was again, no matter what he did, there it was and it was …

  … envy.

  He saw a beautiful life, and it was not for him.

  Mrs. Walker-Bell: beauty, elegance, grace, of course, absolutely. But these were not merely aesthetic attributes; in this moment she looked down and saw a moral value, a way of living that was, fundamentally, better. Because animals struggled, animals sweated and groaned and growled and fucked and pissed and suffered; but humans knew how to dance. Humans raised themselves to something higher—another good word, cultivated. The cultivated man, the old values, gentlemen and goodly ladies, the world was so much simpler then, the world now could learn so much from the meanings that lay underneath the concept of elegance. And tears glimmered in the corner of her eye to behold it, to look down and see, here at last, humanity, fulfilled.

  And Charlie?

  Charlie looked down and saw people, dancing, and felt too tired, too weary of looking, to see anything else. Then his eyes skimmed the hall again and he did see something else, and his fingers tightened hard against the scaffold railing of the tower, and he looked again, and the figure looked back, and raised one hand from where it had rested in the crook of its folded, champagne-nursing arm, to wave, just once.

  Charlie said, “I need to … There’s someone …” He made to move, but Mrs. Walker-Bell caught his arm as he did, held it tight.

  “Death won’t come, will he?” she whispered. “Not for my girls?” Tears were rolling down her face, suddenly old, a soft belly beneath her spines. “Tell him that we’ve been changing, making it more … modern. I know the world can’t … that things change and that you have to … but three of our girls this year are black!”

  Charlie pulled his arm slowly free from her grasp, and climbed down the ladder.

  Robinson stayed a while, to watch the dancers, and listen to the music.

  Chapter 84

  Charlie found the man he knew round the back of the hall, standing on the rear porch where it rolled down towards the marshy, tree-draped land. The sun was down, the candles burning in their dozens around the freshly lichen-scoured stonework. The heat of the day was fading to something drier, more bearable, a thing that softened muscles rather than made them shudder with sweat.

  Charlie approached, closing the double glass doors to the house quietly behind him, cutting off the sound of music. Now he wished he’d had his champagne, that he wasn’t wearing the same shirt he’d driven five hundred miles in, that his head didn’t ache and his eyes weren’t sticky and dry.

  “Patrick,” he said quietly, drawing level with the man with the glass.

  Patrick Fuller smiled, not looking round from his contemplation of the stars growing brighter in the stained night sky. “Charlie.”

  Patrick, wearing a frock coat and bow tie, the only other English accent in this corner of the Deep South, the champagne barely sipped from his glass.

  “We never did catch up
after Lagos, did we?” he mused, head tilted up to the turning sky.

  “No. I’m sorry, I was … Why are you here?”

  “I received an invitation.”

  “From Mrs. Walker-Bell?”

  Patrick glanced over at Charlie, mouth curling in wry reproof. Charlie looked away, nodded at his shoes.

  “Did it invite you to see the end of the world?” he sighed.

  “The end of a world, Charlie. The end of a world. I looked more closely, and that was definitely the phrasing. Even in Alabama, it seems, Death will come for the debutante balls; for the cat-string violins and the ol’ guitar. I imagine the tradition will continue for a while, but changing, always changing.”

  “In tarot,” mused Charlie, “Death usually means change, rather than destruction. I don’t buy into that thing, though, it’s not … So you were invited.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you came.”

  “Yes. When Death asks you to bear witness to the end of a world, I think it is impolitic to turn the invitation down. What did you give Mrs. Walker-Bell?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Of course. Very proper. Professional etiquette, I imagine.”

  “Something like that.”

  For a while the two of them stood together, staring at the sky. Then Charlie blurted, “Back in London, the Longview Estate, there was a woman you introduced me to, there was … Some things were said that were …”

  Patrick waited.

  “In Lagos I was … I had seen something and I wanted to make it right, do something right, but the police, you see, and it wasn’t as simple as … it wasn’t my story or my choice to …”

  Charlie fell silent.

  Then quieter, staring flat at the horizon now, seeing nothing much at all, “Do you think you’ll miss this world, when it’s gone? The ballroom dancing, the gold slippers, all of that?”

  Patrick sucked in his breath slowly, exhaled in a cautious puff. “No, I suppose not. There will always be an elite, and there will always be events which celebrate the aspirations and the possessions of the elite. Celebration … perhaps also demonstration. A well-turned-out daughter used to be the demonstration of a possession you were willing to barter with, a child you were prepared to sell into the market, and these sorts of occasions were an opportunity to put up the shop window. The dance has changed, but now you’re illuminating different attributes. Yes, that your daughter is highly educated and beautiful, but also that you can afford these things, that you have embedded value in … in a certain way of doing things. A proper way, a way that is respectful of the past, proud of the present. If Death is coming to Mrs. Walker-Bell’s ball, he won’t come with fire and thunder, but with trouser suits and coding courses, with MBAs and an attitude towards wealth and the display of it that values … other modalities. The ball will go on. But it will also change.”

  Silence a while.

  Then Charlie said: “She told me that there were three black girls dancing this year.”

  Silence.

  At last Patrick murmured, “When I came to the ball, I thought I’d see you here. I hoped I would. Do you know why I have been invited to be a witness to all this? It’s been a long time since we met on the ice, I’ve been thinking about it a lot—do you know?”

  Charlie shook his head.

  “I believe it is because I am part of it. It is immodest to say so, of course. No one man shapes the world, we are all part of systems, wheels within … but that’s a lie, a fallacy we create to justify our own meagre lives, or lack of vision, or failure to take control. I do shape the world. I shape it with money, and ambition, and my use of both these tools is determined, yes, by my skills and my learning, but even they are refined through the prism of who I am. The world would be different if I were different. I am … I am invited to witness, I think, not the death of a world, not the old falling off, but the new being born. We two, we are … we are essential, I think, to this process, both you and I. One of us comes to mourn, the other to rejoice. I think that’s what this business is. I think that is why I came.”

  Silence.

  Patrick sipped his champagne.

  Charlie stared at the darkness.

  “Charlie?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “You have the harder task, I think. In Greenland, the old man died, and it was sad, but I do not mourn what he represents. In Nigeria, the world changes and the old passes by and I am proud—truly, I am—to say that I am part of its future. Here, the girls grow old and the old rules change and I for one celebrate it. Three African-Americans at the debutantes’ ball—you strike me, Charlie, as a man who could rejoice in this new thing, marginal as it is. And yet it would appear that you are sent to honour the past, not the future. To … to listen to the stories of dead men. To carry their memories, and find something human in them that others might not perceive. I think it must be … a difficult job. Not one I’d take. Charlie? Charlie?”

  No reply.

  Patrick sighed, another gulp, deeper now, draining the pale liquid down. Then, “I’d better go inside. Mrs. Walker-Bell is a very generous host.”

  He started to walk away, hesitated, looked back.

  “I would be your friend, if you’d let me. I do genuinely believe … we are called to much the same business, in our ways.”

  No answer.

  He sighed, faintly, and turned towards the house.

  Charlie looked up. “I don’t mourn,” he said, sharp. Then, louder, “I don’t mourn. That’s not what I do. You’re wrong. I … am sent for something else.”

  “Do you know what?”

  “I think so.”

  A half-chuckle, waiting. “Are you going to say?”

  “No.”

  A shrug. “Fair enough. If you’re sticking around, you should try the whiskey. She only gets the best stuff.”

  “I’m not sticking around.”

  “Then I’ll see you at the end of the road.”

  Patrick walked back inside, to where the music played.

  Chapter 85

  Driving through the darkness, looking for a hotel.

  Charlie drove, Robinson pressing his head against the glass of the window. The air conditioning was up too high, but Charlie didn’t mind, and Robinson didn’t complain. Headlights, headlights, white towards, red behind, the sodium lights at the crossings, no sidewalks for pedestrians, is it legal to turn right at a red in this state? Charlie doesn’t know and Robinson isn’t certain. The signal on Charlie’s phone is very bad.

  Headlights, headlights.

  Very few street lights in the USA, Charlie is beginning to learn. Even on the major highways, it’s all headlights. Even in the cities, the towns, fewer than he expected.

  They find a hotel. It’s overpriced, for what it is, but has two single rooms, breakfast thrown in. Robinson says they should stick around for the breakfast—sausage gravy, proper andouille too, a taste of real food.

  Charlie sets an alarm on his phone, lies down to sleep to the roaring of the hotel air conditioning, and wonders if this is what spaceships sound like, as the fans rattle and blare into the night.

  Breakfast. Sausage gravy; andouille.

  It is the best meal he’s had so far. Charlie wonders if it would be rude to lick the plate.

  Heading east, towards Atlanta, Charlie drives, then Robinson drives, and after two hundred miles, it seems like Robinson is going to keep on driving and doesn’t want to stop.

  And just before midday, without any warning, Robinson starts to talk.

  “I never got on with my brother as a kid, but in New York he runs a tool hire company, you know, power tools, and I was always handy and that’s a business model that’s not gonna fail, not ever, ’cos people always need tools, but they’re so good these days that they gotta be expensive, I mean, if it was just a stick with a nail in, anyone could make that, but some of the tools they make these days, like diamond tips, you try buying a diamond-tipped drill bit, and carbon fibr
e and titanium and all these different kind of steels, it’s incredible, material sciences, you never really think about material science, do you, but if I was sent back in time, I’d be like you can build machines and cogs and gears and change the world, but unless you got the basic knowledge of how to make steel which don’t crack, iron which don’t rust—even getting aluminium, that’s electrolysis, do you know how much of the world is aluminium these days? Maybe I shoulda done geology at college.”

  And as abruptly as he’d started talking, he stopped, and they drove in silence for another thirty miles.

  Then: “Are those girls gonna die? The ones at the debutante ball?”

  “I don’t know. I mean … everyone dies.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  “I’m just the messenger.”

  “Shit, man. Shit. I been waiting for you to say that so I could tell you to your face that that’s shit. Surprised it took you so long to say that crap, not that I ain’t grateful for the lift, but shit.”

  Silence, another ten miles.

  Then Charlie said: “I don’t think the girls are going to die.”

  “You gotta feeling? That something you do? I mean, if every time you visited everyone, like, kids—you visit kids?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Like every time you visited a kid, if you knew they were gonna die, die young, I mean, die before they’d ever lived, you’d be … I mean, I couldn’t imagine it, you wouldn’t be able to, you’d have to be … and you don’t strike me as being that kind of man. I don’t think you’d be the kind of man could look a woman in the eye and know that tomorrow she’d be dead, not all the time, not every day.”

  “You’re wrong.” Charlie stared out of the window, watching the trees run past. “Sometimes that’s exactly what I do.”

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes … sometimes knowing is a curse. And sometimes it’s a blessing. Sometimes if you know, you have a chance to do the right thing.”

  “So those girls, that place … am I gonna turn on the news and see that it’s been flattened?”

  “I doubt it. The … the situation wasn’t … I was sent to see Mrs. Walker-Bell, I wasn’t sent to talk to all of them, it didn’t feel like … I gave her the Confederate flag.” Robinson raised his eyebrows, but didn’t look away from the road. “I’m not meant to tell you that, please be … There is etiquette, you see. But as you ask. That’s what I gave her. And based on my experience of these things, I don’t think that’s something you give a dying woman. It’s an idea. Death comes for ideas too, you see. Flags change meaning, the idea, the thought that pops into your head … Where I’m from, the cross of St. George was once a symbol of the pride of England. Plucky defiance and noble character, stiff upper lip and brave defiance against the odds, fight them on the beaches—that sort of thing. We kinda gloss over how it was a flag of colonialism too, I guess. Now it’s become a symbol of the political right wing, who wave it as a weapon against anyone whose skin colour they dislike. It’s a flag of … of us. Of us who are English, of us who are not Scottish or Irish or Welsh or European or … It’s become a flag that makes those who wave it …”