Transported

by Tim Jones

  Borges and I scarcely see each other nowadays. What with his work and the kid, Borges is too damned busy, and besides, all he wants to talk about is how little Pedro took two steps the other day, how Pedro looked at him and said 'Mama', how when Pedro wakes in the night Borges walks him round the house till the little fella settles back down. The bookcases have survived from his old flat, but now they're full of Your Baby and Child and Raising Boys.

  'So where are your old books?' I ask him after the grand tour. (Krystal is at yoga.)

  'Out the back, in suitcases. Want to borrow them?'

  'Choose me an armful.'

  They aren't easy going, those books, but I've learned (from passages underlined by Borges) that Goncalves compared eternity to a mirrored sphere, while Basilides was exiled from Mount Athos for teaching that the world would end when the souls of the elect called God to account for human suffering. It seems to me sometimes, as I wake on my couch to find the wisdom of ages in unsteady piles around me, that the world will end when there is no longer room for all the books in it; but when I suggested this to Borges, he said he had less than four hours' sleep last night and a meeting of the Library Board next morning, and could I call him later?

  I have moved into Borges' former apartment. It was renovated after Borges moved out, but with heavy drapes across the windows and the lighting turned down low I don't notice the difference. How I miss those days when we'd lounge around discussing the pre-Socratics and Cameron Diaz! Back then, I used to tease him that he should get out more. Well, he did, and it landed him two kids and a house in the suburbs.

  Having quit my job in computers, I am living on my savings. I have decided to become a writer. Borges, informed of this, sighs and tells me I should get a life.

  MEASURELESS TO MAN

  Exmoor, England, 1797

  In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

  a half-day holiday decree . . .

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge frowned. He was damned if he could get this poem right. In his latest laudanum-induced stupor, he had dreamed up some vague, fantastical picture of mythical kings and flowing rivers, but he could get no further than the opening couplet. Crumpled scraps of paper were strewn across the floor; he had even hurled one or two out the window. He scratched out this latest effort and set to work again.

  In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

  a block of council flats decree . . .

  No, that wasn't it either. Botheration and befogglement! The poet threw down his pen, stretched . . .

  And heard a knock at the door. Blast you, he thought, waiting to see if the intruder would go away. The knock was repeated. Coleridge cursed sulphurously; he hated being interrupted during one of his muse's unpredictable visits. A third knocking, louder this time; the wretch was determined. Block of council flats — what could that possibly mean? Still shaking his head, he set off for the door.

  Dawdling down the passage, thinking of ways to fob off the visitor, he realised who it must be: Joanna Siddeley, daughter of the local squire, whom he had been browbeaten into accepting for instruction in poesy.

  Coleridge regarded himself as a free thinker, but he was not convinced of the propriety of women writing. Joanna's father had made much the same point as he paced up and down before Coleridge's fireplace, soiling the poet's one good carpet with his mud-encrusted boots.

  'Not sure I approve of a filly writing, you know — damned dubious profession, writing, if you'll pardon my opinion, present company excepted of course, or perhaps not, from what they say in the village, eh?' The squire leered significantly at Coleridge. Coleridge, who had no idea what he was on about, nodded cautiously.

  'But the thing is, she's got her heart set on it. Wants to be another Shakespeare, she does, or that poet chappie — what's his name — friend of yours—'

  'Wordsworth,' interjected Coleridge glumly. That, it seemed, was to be his fate. Wordsworth's friend. A minor member of the Wordsworth school. Dear, sweet William. Well, Mr Philistine, let me tell you—

  'That's the cove. Well, I thought, what the deuce, it won't hurt her and you look like you could do with the money, what?'

  'About the money—'

  'But mark my words, young man,' said the squire, thrusting his choleric face close to Coleridge's melancholy one, 'no funny business, eh? She's a damned fine-looking filly, if I say so myself, and she ought to make a damned good match with Viscount Hawker's lad. I know you poet chappies — not above having your way with a blushing virgin, eh? Well, sir, save your attentions for the village girls, and leave my daughter alone, d'ye hear?'

  Coleridge heard. Not a problem, he thought, envisaging a braying daughter of the aristocracy, more horse than woman. 'Getting back to the money, Squire Siddeley . . .'

  When Coleridge opened the door, the first sight of Joanna Siddeley drove all thought of Xanadu from his mind. She was a beauty, tall and stately, with infinitely green eyes and an expression of cool amusement. There was a clearing of throats, and an older, plainer woman interposed herself between Coleridge and the fair Joanna.

  'I'm here to make sure that everything is . . . acceptable,' the chaperone proclaimed.

  'Acceptable?'

  'Above board,' said the woman firmly. 'My name is Parsons. I am Miss Siddeley's governess.'

  'Come in, come in, Miss Siddeley . . . Miss Parsons?'

  'Mrs Parsons. My husband attends to the squire's stables.'

  'Very malodorous of him, I'm sure. Sit down, Miss Siddeley, and you over here, Mrs Parsons.' He carefully placed Mrs Parsons behind him, so that he could fix his gaze on the perfection of Joanna's face. 'Now, my dear, do you have anything to show me?'

  One of Joanna's eyebrows lifted fractionally. Coleridge, realising what he had said, blushed. He coughed unconvincingly and covered his embarrassment with a handkerchief. 'That is, have you brought any samples of your writing?'

  'Certainly, Mr Coleridge. Perhaps you'd care to cast an eye over these.' She drew a sheaf of poems from her bag and handed them over.

  And they were good. Very good. Coleridge was astounded that the daughter of a country squire should be able to write so well and so convincingly about subjects normally thought the province of men of affairs. There were, perhaps, some rough edges, some small infelicities, but the overall standard was remarkable. He read them in silence, handed them back to her, and paused to collect his thoughts.

  'Well, Mr Coleridge, what do you think?'

  He looked at her to deliver his reply and found himself staring straight into those eyes. There was something hypnotic about them, something— He pulled himself together with an effort, his mind awaiting the return of its blood supply.

  'I . . . er . . . that is, that is, I'm impressed! Very impressed. These are wonderful poems, Miss Siddeley. You have a fine style, a strong imagination, what I might call a "numinous air" about your work. If I can dare a criticism, it is that there are, perhaps, some turns of phrase and expression which any potential audience might find a little . . . unseemly, coming from a woman?'

  Her face darkened. 'Mr Coleridge, if I wish to be patronised I have my father close at hand. It is your job to suggest improvements in my poetry, not to weaken it by appeals to the taste of an imagined audience. If any readership I may acquire is as easily shocked as you suggest, why then, I will publish under a male pseudonym until such attitudes are left behind. Now, shall we proceed?'

  'Very well, Miss Siddeley, very well.'

  They worked steadily for the next hour, Coleridge suggesting changes, Joanna accepting or rejecting them. They were interrupted by Mrs Parsons, who had been engaged in silent and unnoticed chaperonage somewhere in the recesses of the room. 'Time we were getting back, Miss Joanna.'

  Two heads, bowed over the paper to consider a particularly complex metaphor, straightened regretfully. Joanna smiled, and Samuel's heartstrings executed a pizzicato passage. 'Same time next week, Miss Siddeley?'

  'Same time next week, Mr Coleridge. But, before I go, I found this outside.' She produced a crumpled she
et of paper, straightened it, read it out.

  In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

  Consume an extra cup of tea

  'An early draft, my dear, nothing to take too seriously. Just a little thing I've been working on.'

  'I took it upon myself to pen a few alternative lines as we waited at your door. What do you think of these?'

  In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

  A stately pleasure dome decree

  Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

  Through caverns measureless to man

  Down to a sunless sea

  Coleridge stared at Joanna's lines in astonishment. They were perfect: just what he'd been groping dimly towards. How wonderful! How humiliating!

  'Hmmmm, yes, that's not a bad effort, not a bad effort at all. I'd done quite a bit more work on it by the time you arrived, of course, so I've got some ideas of my own, but I'll certainly bear this in mind. Thank you, my dear, and we'll meet again next week.'

  Coleridge escorted the pair to the door, then returned to ponder the poem. That was what he was after, no doubt about it — and the damned woman had beaten him to it! Of course, no one could say it was her idea. The whole concept was his; she had merely embellished it.

  Just the way Wordsworth keeps taking my ideas, 'embellishing' them, and publishing the resulting poems as his own?

  Well, yes . . . but he gets away with it, doesn't he?

  And she's only a slip of a girl. Who'd believe she could have thought this up by herself? I'd be doing her a favour by publishing the thing under my name.

  All for the best, really.

  Rationalisation having triumphed over conscience, he set to work to complete the poem. He had penned another forty-nine lines by the time Joanna was due to arrive for her second lesson, and was wondering whether to show them to her. Being a forward sort of girl, she might demand attribution, and that wouldn't do at all. What if his wife found out?

  The clock ticked on past 2pm, but Joanna did not arrive. Coleridge tried to return to his literary endeavours, but felt unsettled. Where could she be? He wanted to see her — he needed to see her.

  The knock on the door came at quarter to three. Coleridge sprang up, flung the door open — and was met by the disapproving gaze of Mrs Parsons.

  'What's happened? Where's Joanna?'

  'Miss Siddeley to you, sir, and she won't be coming today, nor any other day for that matter.'

  'Why on earth not? She was so full of promise!'

  Mrs Parsons's mouth made a bow of disapproval. 'Well, sir, from now on her promise will be reserved exclusively for Viscount Hawker. When I advised the squire of some of the things that had passed between the two of you, sir, and in particular of Miss Joanna's remarks concerning himself, he waxed quite wroth, and ordered the young Viscount to propose to Miss Joanna at once. He arrived by carriage in the middle of the night and went to her on bended knee, and they're to be married in the spring.'

  'How much say did she have in the matter?'

  'Miss Joanna knows her duty, sir, and if she doesn't there are those of us obliged to point it out to her. The squire has instructed me to pay you for your time last week, and for this week as well — you'll find it's all there, sir — and to inform you that if he sees you sniffing round his daughter again he'll pin you to your front door by your organ of benevolence, sir.'

  'Vindictive cow,' muttered Coleridge.

  'That's as may be, sir, but I know my place when there's those as don't.' Mrs Parsons's face softened for a moment. 'She's a fine young woman, though, isn't she, sir? You'll not be the only one disappointed to see her go.'

  Gathering her skirts and her disapproving air around her once more, Mrs Parsons trudged back the way she had come.

  Coleridge was stunned, and had to prepare a double dose of laudanum to calm himself. Wild scenarios whirled through his head: a personal plea to the squire or to Viscount Hawker . . . a deputation of poets to rescue her . . . a kidnapping, by Jove, and romantic moonlit pursuit! Upon reflection, each plan seemed to combine a remote chance of success with a high degree of risk to his — Samuel Taylor Coleridge's — life, health, or reputation.

  By the next day, he had come to terms with the situation. It was the way of the world: women must weep . . . and men must work. He drew out his manuscript and began to consider what should follow the lines

  For he on honey-dew hath fed,

  And drunk the milk of Paradise.

  He stared at the page, he stared out the window; he folded the paper into squares, and unfolded it again. He turned it over and wrote a rude limerick about a young man from Torquay. But, whatever techniques of concentration or distraction he tried, he could not write another line.

  And, indeed, he never did find any way to move on. His poetic muse, previously a frequent visitor, came less often and more grudgingly from that day, and Coleridge eventually turned to criticism.

  He never saw Joanna Siddeley again, and heard news of her only twice more. Gossip in the village told of her marriage to Viscount Hawker, a scant two months later: the bride, they said, had been radiant. And, out walking less than a year after that, Coleridge came upon a funeral procession making its way to the local churchyard. Recognising the squire and other local dignitaries, he asked a bystander the identity of the person being interred.

  'Young Viscountess Hawker, sir. Died in childbirth, they say. Sad, isn't it, and her so young and full of life. But the babe is well, so some good has come of it all.' Coleridge said his thank-yous to the man, and ran for home, his purpose and his dignity forgotten. There was a triple dose of laudanum that night, and uneasy dreams for many nights thereafter.

  Coleridge lived until 1834, as sharp as ever of mind but somehow broken and diminished in spirit. He eventually gave up his attempts to complete 'Kubla Khan', and published the fifty-four lines under his own name. He disguised their real inspiration with a cock-andbull story that he had composed them in a dream and been interrupted in writing them down by the arrival of some man from Porlock on business. The story seemed desperately flimsy to Coleridge, but it was never doubted in his lifetime.

  The boy whose birth was Joanna Siddeley's death lived to become a prosperous landowner and leading Tory; he resembled his mother in neither form nor temperament, save for brilliant green eyes that made him quite the beau of London. Of his views on poetry, or on the rights of women, no record survives.

  THE SEEING

  'HALT!' boomed an amplified voice, and soldiers sprang at them from the rocks. Rosie applied the brakes. Borren slipped his dark glasses on just as torchlight shone into the car.

  A soldier came to the driver's side and demanded to know where they were going. 'Home,' said Rosie. 'Our house is on top of that mountain.'

  'That house has been requisitioned as an observation post.'

  'On whose order?' Borren demanded.

  'And who might you be?'

  'David Borren. My wife and I own the house.'

  'My husband's blind,' Rosie added, as if that explained everything. 'Please let us go home.'

  'Come with me,' said the soldier. 'I'll take you to Captain Lenihan.'

  Leaving their car at the roadside, Rosie and David clambered into the soldier's jeep, with Rosie making a great play of assisting Borren across the uneven ground and inside. Ten minutes later, bounced and bruised, they were home.

  'Thank you, Private,' said Captain Lenihan. 'That will be all.'

  Lenihan was young and thin, with a burn mark on one cheek. He twisted his cap in his hands as he spoke.

  'Under General Order 7184-A, civilian property may be requisitioned for war purposes. Every reasonable attempt is made to contact the property owner and arrange compensation or alternative accommodation. Unfortunately, we were unable to locate you.'

  'We were in Santa Fe. I was scheduled for restorative surgery at the eye clinic, but the UCM got there first,' said Borren. 'Rosie's been driving non-stop since we got out. Why our house?'

  'It's perfect for a forward observation po
st and firecontrol base. You must have known what you were doing when you built this place — it's got the best view for miles around.' Lenihan stopped, glanced at Borren in confusion, and made an effort to regather his thoughts. 'Well, ah, we think the UCM will pass this way soon, and we need as much warning as possible.'

  'Isn't that what your satellites are for?'

  'Were for,' said Rosie. 'Remember?'

  Borren recalled the brilliant flashes in the sky. At least he had been indoors, and looking away from the windows, at the time. 'How much time will you give us?'

  'I can give you one hour to pack,' said Lenihan, 'then Sergeant Paterson will return you to your car. You've already been assigned a shelter in the city.'

  Seventy minutes later, Rosie was still packing. Borren wished he could help, but Sergeant Paterson was hovering over them and pointing to her watch. 'Why don't you help her, then?' Borren demanded, and to his surprise Sergeant Paterson did.

  Back at the checkpoint, the sergeant farewelled them with a volley of instructions for reaching the shelter.

  It was nearly dawn when they reached the city. The sun was rolling up to the horizon, turning the eastern quarter of the sky a painful viridian, but it was still dark enough for Borren to read the map Captain Lenihan had sketched for them. They crawled their way through a crush of military vehicles and anxious civilians, refugees like themselves. Refugees, in America! They were almost out of gas by the time they found the right address.

  There was nothing there but a door in the wall. They punched in the code, opened the door, and found stairs that led down to a warren of tunnels, some long-disused relic of the Cold War now pressed back into service. They followed the arrows to a dormitory with walls of steel. Lines of camp beds, most still unoccupied, stretched away into the distance.

  Two weeks later, all the beds were filled.

  Their life settled to a numbing monotony. They woke early, when the clamour of children and the threats of parents passed a critical threshold. One of them went to the shower line and the other to the food line, and with luck they would finish about the same time and be able to eat together. Then there was a briefing from Major Davis or Major Jimenez, who would tell them whether it was safe to go into the city today. It usually was, although twice Major Davis had been wrong, and they'd had to dive for cover as enemy planes roared overhead.