The villa into which I stepped was furnished with simple gifts from Parizade’s family: copper pots and great clay bowls, bright loose-woven rugs and a few items of polished wood. The rooms were plumbed and heated beneath their floors, although the nights rarely grew cold enough to require additional warmth. Bougainvillea smothered the ochre walls of the garden, forming a carpet of petals on the terracotta tiles, and an arched tunnel, open at one end, looked out across the sea.
Parizade lived with her mother in the next village, and told me that if I chose to spend the night with her, her family would be greatly honoured. She had been invited to the villa for the express purpose of delighting me. When I asked her if she minded, she looked upon me as if I was mad.
Beyond the arched tunnel, on a marble bench whose cushions were fastened with nails of emerald, we sat after supper, Parizade and I, watching the sun sink into the sea. It seemed that our names were intended to be linked, like a pair of lovers who had never been apart. When the light had gone we lit the oil-lamp in the courtyard and drank mint tea, and retired to the divan of soft green damask that Parizade’s mother had sewn for her, and there we made motions of love until the oil burned low in the glass.
I awoke just before dawn and lay with my arm beneath Parizade’s cool neck, looking up at the ceiling. I turned to study her face, the faint gloss of sweat on her brow, the sheen of pearl dust on her closed eyelids. It seemed almost impossible to imagine a life before this. I felt great peace and contentment.
But I felt no love for Parizade. She had been provided for my pleasure, and knew nothing but her duty. It was almost as though she was being used as a lure to keep me here. Besides, Rosamunde had stolen into my soul so deeply that thoughts of her strong body, her soft eyes, her open-mouthed smile became as familiar as breathing. It was more than simply wanting something I couldn’t have. She stood at the heart of the kingdom. I felt a compulsion to pursue her. It was as though, through her, I would discover my real purpose here.
The time I passed in Calabash was as idyllic as ever. It was easy to allow the questions that formed in my head to fade into half-memories, and to remain unanswered until answers became unwanted. But a sense of restlessness was at work within me.
I knew that I would risk everything to make Rosamunde mine.
Chapter 17
A Quest for Air
Pauline spent the morning seated on a stool in the kitchen with her hand absently at her lip, staring at the floor. Bob’s reaction was more straightforward. He simply refused to sign the forms. Sean grew frustrated and came fairly close to hitting me. Nothing affected my decision. One evening, Miss Ruth made me stay behind after class and told me that I was behaving like an idiot.
‘It may surprise you to know, Kay, that I believe you have a talent worth nurturing. Staying on at school may seem like a waste of time now, but you must set that thought against this: I have watched pupils with great potential pass through my classrooms, and the ones who choose to leave usually remain here in Cole Bay. You boys tease me about my eyesight, but I can spot the failures a mile away. Nothing can hide their anger, their bitterness.’
She was trying to use shock tactics on me, and very nearly succeeded. But sticking around in Cole Bay didn’t seem so bad, now that I could retreat to Calabash whenever I wanted. I stayed away from school so often over the next two months that eventually a curt letter arrived from the headmaster, summoning my parents. They disappeared for the evening and returned with faces like thunder. Further lectures followed, usually along the lines of ‘You’re letting no-one down but yourself,’ but I felt a new freedom. I had been formally requested to leave. Miss Ruth was so upset that she refused to speak to me.
‘You’re a funny lad,’ said Janine one afternoon, as she removed a stash of purloined Eccles cakes from her macramé shoulder bag and dumped them on our kitchen table. ‘You’re just like your brother.’
‘How do you mean, Janine?’ I had lately taken to speaking in rhyme with her, just to see if she’d notice.
‘You won’t listen to what’s good for you. You’re stubborn.’ She guiltily eyed the cakes, then broke off a small chunk and popped it into her mouth.
‘You’ll never be lean, Janine,’ I warned.
‘Are you being rude?’ she asked, dabbing the crumbs from her lip gloss.
‘I’m far from obscene, Janine.’
‘I give up with both of you,’ she snarfled through her cake, suddenly close to tears. ‘I try to be nice. I’m always pleasant. Why can’t you just be a little more—normal?’
‘I don’t know where you’ve been, Janine.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ She whooshed out of the room in search of a Kleenex. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.
There was nothing now to distract me from my new life in Calabash, and yet I found myself unable to make more than a few visits there. The weather was too fine, the sea was too still, or there were fishermen casting off from the upper platform of the pier. On those days I returned home in a foul mood and spoke to no-one. All I could think about was spending a night with the Princess. When I sent Parizade back to her village, Dr Trebunculus visited to ask me if she had displeased me in any way. No, I had truthfully replied, it had simply felt wrong. And my thoughts returned to Rosamunde, and how we would one day swim naked in the secluded bay near the harbour, while silver fish darted about our legs—
‘What’s the matter, lad? You look like you’ve lost half a crown and found sixpence.’ Dudley Salterton fell into step beside me. He had re-dyed his hair the colour of those orange trolls you used to stick on top of pencils, and it appeared to glow against the slate sky. The bright dry tufts that stuck out from the side of his head reminded me of his ventriloquist’s dummy. The two of them were starting to look like each other.
‘You young people don’t know when you’re well off. You should have my problems. I had an OAP up on stage on Thursday, popped him in my knife cabinet and as the first blade went through, he weed in the box. They don’t half take fright easy, those old ’uns. Then the head came off Barnacle Bill during “You Need Hands”. His lips have been going home for years—he’s knocking on—he was old hat in the Great War, Dolores used to say—well, the joins are painted leather and it cracks in the damp. The act’s not what it was. These new comics are coming along and it’s all just smut, but Mr Cottesloe thinks they’re funny so they’re topping the bill. It’s not right but what is? What’s the matter with you? You’ve a face like a wet weekend.’
I couldn’t tell Dudley that a few minutes earlier I had tried to get to Calabash and failed. Although for most of the day a storm had hung threateningly on the horizon, it had bypassed Cole Bay to attack a town further along the coast. The sea had condensed to green glass, and the air had settled into gelid stillness. Worse, some painters had moved their scaffolding equipment in front of the gate to the lower fishing platform, and I had not been able to climb down.
‘I hear you’ve left school.’
‘How did you know that?’
‘Your brother told me. He’s a big lad. Gave me a hand loading me props onto the van. Cottesloe’s trying to do away with shifters. A cost-cutting exercise he calls it. I know what I call it. He was looking for you, was your brother.’
‘When was this?’
‘Not an hour ago. You’d best go and find him.’
‘I will in a minute. Dudley, have you ever been abroad?’
‘Aye, lad, I was posted in the Middle East, and later in Malaya with ENSA.’
‘What was it like, the Middle East?’
Dudley thought for a moment. ‘Hot and flat. Full of flies. And there was a lot of rubbish everywhere. You could see for miles, though. My pal Dickie Parker—we used to call him “Nosy”—dehydrated on desert patrol after a night on the town, then drank too much cold water and died of it. Hardly any electricity about. You could get some right saucy postcards. The food wasn’t up to much but there was always eggs.’
I thanked him, none the wise
r. ‘I think I’d better go.’
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he called, ‘it were a dry heat, good for a boy like you. And they’re bound to have better plumbing by now.’
My departure from school had proven anticlimactic. I left with few goodbyes, earning disappointed scowls from the teachers, and instead of a sense of freedom found myself embarrassed to be one of the early leavers. Miss Ruth was off sick; I was glad that I did not have to confront her. Malcolm Slattery saw me go, and I felt sure that he knew I was not coming back. As I walked across the quadrangle towards the main gates, I could hear a class distantly reciting a physics theorem. Their voices were flat and disinterested, as if they had no sense at all of what they were saying.
I took to wandering the streets of Cole Bay in an aimless fashion, feeling unconnected to the people around me. They seemed less real somehow, drab grey counterparts to the residents of my dream city. They had once seemed funny, but now I just felt sorry for them. On rainy afternoons on the esplanade I witnessed random acts of stupidity, of sadness, of hatred and harm; a young man shaking a girl by her thin shoulders, shouting in her face until her cheeks were flecked with his spittle. Two boys stamping on cans of orange drink to make them explode. Another disconsolately cracking pieces of glass from the window of a telephone box with the end of a spoon. A gang of girls on the wet brown beach throwing stones at one of their number, who was screaming and stumbling away from them. A middle-aged woman in a plastic rain hood angrily crying in the green shelter by the sea, who told me to piss off when I touched her sleeve.
So many people looked alone: old men smoking thin roll-ups, sitting motionless in bright cafés, smoke eddying above their heads. Silent couples seated in cars along the seafront, staring out through their windscreens, slowly chewing sandwiches. A spindly boy in short trousers sulkily kicking out the toe of his sandal on a paving slab while his parents argued. A couple patiently watching an old man trying to park a three-wheeled invalid carriage, not offering to help as he repeatedly hit the vehicle behind. If there was some way that they could make their lives better, wouldn’t they have taken it? Was it this paralysis that made them so angry, so petty?
If the streets were grim that winter afternoon, the atmosphere at home was worse. Pauline was sitting at the kitchen table with Janine. It looked as though they had been on a major tea binge. Janine had eyes like red golf balls. Bob was in the lounge, seated in his usual armchair being furiously ineffectual, and Sean was slamming around upstairs. I stood in the kitchen dripping rainwater onto the lino. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.
‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ said Pauline darkly. ‘Ask your brother.’
Sean was standing on a chair in his old room trying to get an ancient brown suitcase off the top of the wardrobe. ‘I came looking for you,’ he grunted, freeing the case in a cloud of dust. ‘I wanted to tell you first.’
‘What? Has Uncle Harry died?’ It was the only thing I could think of. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I’m off.’ He thumped the case onto the bed and tried to pry its lock open. ‘Where are the keys for this?’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked stupidly. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Singapore.’
‘Singapore? But you don’t know anybody in Singapore.’
‘I know Mickey O’Donnelly.’ Mickey had been in Sean’s senior year. All of the remaining O’Donnellys—and there were a lot of them—still went to my old school.
‘He’s in the army, Sean. He’s off his head. He tried to kill someone.’
‘He’s in the right job, then.’
‘You can’t go, not to Singapore. It’s miles away.’
‘Mickey reckons he can get me a job doing the same thing I do now.’ He dug a penknife out of his pocket and began hammering at the lock. ‘Trust them to lose the bloody keys.’
‘What about Janine? Is she going with you?’
‘No, she’s bloody not.’
‘I thought you two were getting married.’
‘Yeah, that’s what she thought and all. I never said I wanted to. I’ve lost count of the number of hints she’s dropped, leaving magazines open at bridesmaids’ dresses, suggesting churches, picking out three-tiered cakes, do we want marzipan? Bloody marzipan!’ He turned and threw the penknife aside. ‘We haven’t even talked about whether we want to spend our lives together, what we want to do, what we expect from each other. She’s already picking out bungalows.’
‘They’re for old people who can’t get upstairs any more.’
‘Well, that’s how I feel.’ He softened. ‘I’m just not comfortable around her any more. I can’t relax. I’ve started going the long way round on my deliveries, just so I can drive my bike fast. I know how you feel when you need your inhaler. Look, I’m sorry and that, but I’ve got to get out. It’s driving me mad.’
‘You never said before.’ I studied the carpet. Brown with stale yellow swirls. ‘Take me with you.’
‘I can’t, Kay, you know that. You’ll change your mind about school. You’ll miss your mates.’
‘I’m not going back there, Sean.’
‘I can’t look after you. You’re big and ugly enough to do the job yourself. I’m sorry, Kay. Sod it.’ He sat on the bed and shoved the case onto the floor. ‘It won’t be forever. Just until I’ve made myself some money and she’s got over the shock.’
‘That could be years.’
‘You’re right there.’
‘To be honest, I always thought she was wrong for you.’
He gave me what my mother used to call an old-fashioned look. ‘Did you now? You might have said earlier.’
‘I thought you could tell. She likes Coronation Street and you like motorbikes. The only thing you both like is chocolate. You can’t build a relationship around a mutual respect for confectionery. She’s going to eat herself sick if you go, and get a really big arse.’
Sean laughed. ‘You’re a cheeky bugger. You’ve got to be nice to her, all right? It’s not her fault we’re different. Bloody hell, Kay, I wish I could take you with me but I’ll barely have enough cash and energy to sort myself out.’
‘I could find work.’
‘And what if something happened to you? How do you think that would make me feel? No, Kay. This is one I’ve got to figure out for myself. I’ve already bought my boat ticket.’
‘You can’t get anywhere on a boat. It takes ages. You’ll get scurvy. You have to fly there these days.’
‘You don’t if you’re broke.’
‘Let’s see the ticket.’
‘There.’ He pulled a folded carbon copy from his back pocket and smoothed it out on his knee. ‘Eight-twenty Friday morning from Dover.’
‘That’s the day after tomorrow!’
‘I’ll write to you every week.’
‘You say you will, people always say they will, but they never get around to it. It’s like thank-you letters.’ We stared at each other for a minute. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Hang on then.’ I went to my room, dug about in the drawer beside my bed and came back. ‘Hold out your hand.’ I held my fist over his palm and opened it.
Later, I wished I had never given him that damned key.
Chapter 18
The Importance of Balance
‘He will want to know more about us soon,’ wheezed the Semanticor, slapping chalk-dust from his ermine robes with a liver-spotted hand as he seated himself. The old teacher wore his ratty fur cloak even in the fiercest of heatwaves, and, although he never seemed to sweat, exuded a most extraordinary odour, something between unharvested cauliflowers and monkeys on heat. He was very old and greatly venerated, if generally avoided. Even camels stayed away. ‘The boy has an enquiring mind. It will not be enough to simply provide him with a safe harbour. What will you tell him when he asks more awkward questions, eh? How will you explain the absence of the muezzin call, the empty mosques? He is Church of England, yes? He will ask if
we are Muslims. He will want to understand us.’
‘I don’t foresee a problem in the granting of such a desire,’ replied Dr Trebunculus. ‘There are ways of answering the most difficult questions.’
‘There is the truth and there are lies, if that’s what you mean.’
They were taking mint tea together on a sleepy afternoon in the Garden of the Osman Janissaries. The square was silent but for the insistent piddle of a star-shaped fountain and the occasional snores emanating from a trio of stupefied weavers and their slumbering dromedary. ‘He is a good boy, and quite in thrall to us, surely you must see that.’
‘I cannot imagine why,’ moaned the Semanticor, looking around at the somnolent inhabitants of the garden. ‘His own home must be exceeding dire, worse than that of the boy before. I don’t understand how you may be so sure that he will return.’
‘Then you have forgotten much about the curiosity of the young. You’ve been teaching too long in the palace. A spell back in the village classroom might do you some good.’
‘This is easy for you to say. You received all the accolades for bringing him here, but what if you’re wrong, eh? What if he does not return? They’re getting harder to find with each passing term, you must be able to see that. Soon there may be none left at all. Do you need reminding of the fate that befell the Valide Sultan Kosem?’
‘There is no past, there is no hereafter, all is in a process of becoming,’ replied Trebunculus, looking into the middle distance and blowing on his tea. It was a quote from the poet Bedreddin, but its point was not lost on the Semanticor.
‘I just think we should be on our guard. The boy sent Parizade away. Sent her back to her village. Said it wasn’t right that she should be provided solely for his pleasure. The poor girl was devastated; she has lost standing with her family. He has a mind of his own, this one. The Lord Chancellor is anxious that we should keep him away from the Princess Rosamunde. He has seen the way they look at each other. There must be no disruption, only continuity.’
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