Calabash

by Christopher Fowler

  After posing for my X-ray (‘Shoulders against the machine, chin touching the top, don’t breathe in until I give the word’), I took some grapes to Miss Ruth in the Sir Humphry Davy Women’s Ward, and found her in a bed with no visitors at the far end of a green and white room that smelled of disinfectant. She had lost weight, and her wispy hair stuck out from her skull in an anaemic aureole. A saline drip hung from her skinny left arm. I had expected to find her surrounded by stacks of books, but there was only a dog-eared Woman’s Realm on her bedside table. She had, rather pathetically, pinned a cameo brooch to her bed jacket.

  ‘I told myself I wouldn’t scold you.’ Even her voice had shrunk. ‘But I do wish you hadn’t left school, Kay.’

  ‘Haven’t you had any visitors?’ I asked, noticing the lack of ‘Get Well’ cards.

  ‘Some dreadful woman from the social services dropped by, full of the joys of spring. She offered me a visit from the Unitarians. I feigned sleep. Virtually had to pass into a coma before she left. But you—look at you.’ She raised a feeble hand and prodded me. ‘Wasting your talents, it’s shameful. Working in a supermarket.’

  ‘How did you hear about that?’

  ‘Oh, the old lady network.’ She smiled up from her pillow. ‘Better than Russian spies. Tell me something, Kay, have you really so little faith in the world?’

  I could not bring myself to answer.

  She watched me. ‘You feel—disconnected—from other people, don’t you.’

  ‘Nobody else sees how horrible everything is here. They don’t seem to mind.’

  ‘Oh, you’d be surprised. Perhaps you need to change your point of view.’

  ‘School didn’t let me do anything.’

  ‘Nor does shelf-stacking.’

  ‘It was just a job,’ I said defensively. ‘I don’t want to end up like my mum and dad. They act like their lives are over. They just watch from the edges and complain all the time. Once they must have been free to do whatever they liked, but they didn’t do it. Now they can’t, or won’t. Our biology teacher said animals only grow old in captivity.’

  ‘Don’t be so hard on them. They love you.’

  ‘I’m already starting to think like them. My brother left while he still could.’

  ‘Oh, Kay. It’s not as simple as going or staying.’ She turned her head aside to the window. ‘My Lord, it looks so cold out there. Once when I was a child, I remember the sea froze solid. Frosty white peaks, like the icing on a cake, lapped by a cold green sea. I wanted to walk on it, but wasn’t allowed. Little girls weren’t allowed to do anything in those days. “Children should be seen and not heard”, my mother’s favourite motto. Sundays were the worst.’

  ‘Didn’t you ever want to leave?’

  ‘It wasn’t so easy in those days. It was hard for a girl to travel alone. One needed independent means, and a certain confidence that came from having money. My father died, my mother became bedridden. She needed to be cared for. I wanted to run round the house making such a noise, just to make up for all those years passed in silence, but I didn’t. I had to rely on my books to take me away. By the time she died, I no longer wanted to make a noise.’

  ‘Can I get you anything?’

  ‘Mm. A new heart. The one I have is worn out, apparently. What are we going to do about you? Help me up.’ I propped pillows behind her narrow back. ‘You have to be practical about this, Kay. People who don’t grow up get left behind. You don’t stand still in the world, you know, you go very gently backwards. Sometimes so gently that you don’t notice it happening until it’s too late. You must do something, use what you have. Imagination is both a gift and a curse. You say your head is filled with fantasies. Why not try to write a book about them? Publishers long to discover talent at an early age. How I’d love to take credit for discovering you.’

  I felt then that if I had let anyone down it was her, a sick old woman I barely knew. I wanted to tell her about the notebooks I filled, my one precious link between Cole Bay and Calabash. But I didn’t. Instead I allowed silence to grow between us. Embarrassed by my failure of nerve, I tore a grape from its stem and ate it. It had no taste at all. ‘Have they said when you can go home?’

  If she heard my question, she chose to ignore it. ‘I miss my books. They’re the only things that really mean anything to me. Belongings become so necessary when you live alone. I have some volumes I know you’d especially appreciate, Kay. By an old pupil of mine.’ She gave a sharp little nod. ‘They shall be yours. They just sit on my shelves unread. Books should never go unread. I never shared my knowledge enough.’

  ‘Are you sure there isn’t anything I can get for you?’

  ‘You could be an angel. Go to my flat and bring me my big bag. There’s something in it I’ll be needing now. I don’t want the social services poking about. The front door key is in there somewhere.’ She pointed to her locker.

  —

  Miss Ruth lived on the first floor of a purpose-built Edwardian block, at what was considered to be the genteel end of Cole Bay. The streets here had less litter and were more residential. There were fewer doorbells, chip shops and poster sites. Her apartment was dark and very still. All the rooms were lined with books, even the toilet. The lounge smelled of lavender polish, and felt as if nothing had been disturbed in years. Its broad bay window overlooked the esplanade and the beach. I looked through the salt-rimed glass and wondered how she could live so close to the edge of the land. It was a constant reminder that across the sea were places she had never visited. The water heaved slowly against the distant pier, dense with cold. In the kitchen, I noticed that the immersion heater was turned off at the timer. Odd, I thought. I went to the fridge and saw that it had been emptied and scrubbed clean. Only tinned food remained in the cupboards. The pedal-bin beneath her sink had been drained and disinfected. I checked the other rooms. The bed was stripped of its linen, the blankets folded into neat stacks on the mattress. I realised then that Miss Ruth did not expect to come back.

  I found her bag waiting beside the front door, ready to be collected, and took it to her. She died four days later, of ‘complications’, a useful medical catch-all that meant nothing. I didn’t find out until I called by to see her the following Saturday, and discovered the bed occupied by someone else. The doctor said she had asked for me, but nobody knew where I lived.

  I was wondering what would happen to her beloved books when a terrible thought struck me, and I wished that I had checked the bag I took to her.

  ‘There’s something in it I’ll be needing now,’ she had said. ‘Be an angel.’ I didn’t like the sound of that.

  There are things in life you never find out.

  I became a Friend of Cole Bay General shortly afterwards, visiting patients without families once a week to read to them. I’d like to think it was purely an act of altruism on my part, but of course it was mainly born of guilt. I wanted to do something more for Miss Ruth. ‘Write about your fantasies,’ she had suggested. And that was what I decided to do.

  Chapter 26

  A Means of Communication

  ‘Absolutely not,’ bellowed the Sultan. So loud was his cry that the doves that his Master of Eunuchs had troubled to have painted in every imaginable hue burst into startled flight from their positions along the roof, like a rupturing rainbow. ‘It is out of the question. Can you imagine what would happen? We do not want people prying into our lives. There is a very good reason why we have no royal scribes at court.’

  ‘You had them all beheaded,’ said his mother, looking up from her tapestry.

  ‘Apart from that. We do not want information falling into the hands of our enemies.’

  ‘But I would be writing about your kingdom from an outsider’s point of view,’ I pleaded. ‘I could create a work that describes all the good things about your reign.’

  ‘For the benefit of whom? For the English, yes? No, I forbid the production of such a volume.’ He wagged a thick brown finger at me. ‘Do not attempt to appe
al to my vanity. Oh, you English. You chronicle, you calibrate, why must you do this? Your measurements steal away the power of dreams. Such awareness is unnecessary. My mind is set. We shall not speak again of the matter.’ He raised his palm in a gesture of cessation. ‘Why, even the idea is treasonous.’

  It seemed that my own imagination was rebelling against me. In order to write a book, I required access to the imperial palace, and as I considered Calabash a land of my own imagining, I assumed that such access would be automatically granted. But it appeared that this was not the case. The court had forbidden me to use the one tool that might eventually free me from Cole Bay. I was angry, but apparently powerless to argue against the royal decree.

  ‘I have overlooked your act of trespass in the tomb of my lamented wife. I have even granted a pardon to Dr Trebunculus for his part in the desecration of sacred ground.’ Although the Sultan could never afford to be seen as a weak leader, he had a soft spot for the doctor, and the news of what had transpired in his burial vaults had not been made public, so he felt able to act with leniency. He was anxious to be seen as an educated man by outsiders, and the Semanticor had explained to him that moderation was considered a sign of cultivated behaviour.

  ‘For this kindly act—this civilised act—you should be grovelling at the worms beneath my feet.’ The Sultan caught his mother’s disapproving eye, and softened. He beckoned to me and placed an avuncular arm around my shoulders. ‘But I remember you are young, Kay, and the young are the same in every land. The General is a rigid man, as befits his station. He believes that superfluity breeds slavery. In time you will come to understand the principles of our state.’ He gestured to his concubine. ‘Carmelia, take our young friend to the ostrich races. See that he enjoys himself and forgets his foolish ideas.’

  I realised I had not chosen my time well, making my request so soon after our pardoning. I could tell that the Sultan was missing his beloved daughter. He wasn’t the only one. Rosamunde had been taken away by Maximus, her new husband, and was not expected to return until General Bassa released his officers from their duties at the northern border. In addition, the Sultan’s council was sitting today, nervously awaiting the arrival of Bayezit the Grim, an elderly uncle of the Valide Sultan Fathmir of Cordoba, who, it was said, only communicated in Ixarette, the forgotten sign language of the seraglio. A political matter, the doctor had explained vaguely, something to do with the building of a bridge. He had tapped the side of his nose and added mysteriously, ‘The dog barks, the caravan moves on.’ None the wiser, I was dismissed with an impatient rattle of bracelets. Despite my privileged status I was still an ajnabee, and it was clear that my presence was not desired at court today.

  Usually they all seemed so anxious for me to remain in Calabash. More than once, the doctor had suggested that I should give up all ideas of going home, and live here forever. ‘What has your world to offer you that we cannot provide?’ he asked petulantly, and although I could not furnish him with a satisfactory answer, I was reluctant to close the door to my other life completely.

  Carmelia appeared at my side. ‘Come to the races, Kay, there are not only ostriches but ichneumons and sables, and a dancing bear.’ She slipped her hand in mine, but I pulled free.

  ‘I’m going to take a walk,’ I told her.

  ‘But you will miss the start of the gala.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure there’ll be others. There always are.’

  I stalked away rudely and left them staring after me. Soon the palace was far behind. Ahead, my village lay entranced in brilliant sunlight. To the left was the harbour, where the red and blue sails of the fishing boats clicked back and forth at the dock. On my right were the fields and the hillside, goats bleating over clanking bells, the village where Dr Trebunculus lived.

  As I watched, a cloud lifted free of the sun and light raced across the woodland beyond, illuminating something angular and grey that squatted brokenly between the pines and cypresses. It looked like the remains of a temple. Yet why had I never seen it before? I realised that although I had looked down on it from the Tower of Trezibaba, it had remained hidden beneath the cover of the foliage. Intrigued, I set off in the direction of the wood. There, beyond the cultivated trees of cherry, walnut, olive, lemon and apricot, the wild black-pines grew within a misty bed of succulent ferns.

  As I reached the shaded edge of the wood, I spotted the fallen shaft of a Corinthian column protruding from the undergrowth. I stepped from the sunlight of the meadow into the cool, loamy air, and found myself standing between the ruined peristyles of a temple. A chunk of its dentil, seven or eight feet in length, lay half-buried at my feet, carved stone acanthus leaves blending with the pinnate blades of the ground foliage.

  I saw now that I was within the ruins of not one temple but a dozen or more. Their fractured columns had fallen like shafts of solid sunlight between the verticals of trees. An air of great melancholy saturated the place, as if something terrible had happened there, and even nature was determined to cover it.

  I walked through the weed-cracked naos of a temple floor, studying the mosaics beneath my feet. The style of architecture was distinctly different to that of Calabash; the remnants of the buildings were undoubtedly Greek. What, I asked myself, were they doing here? The slow curling cry of a peewit caused me to look up. I glimpsed the sky in the tops of the trees. The sole of my sandal came down on a smooth surface. I stepped back and searched the floor, and a shiny blue object caught my eye. I bent down to dig around its edges, wiping aside the dirt and dead leaves, and found myself looking at some scraps of paper from an old school exercise book. Only the inner parts were intact. The edges furthest from the staples had been burned away. I tipped the shadows from it and read from one piece.

  Lee Hill Grammar School for Boys South Do

  On the back, on what would have been the inside cover, was half of a carefully pencilled oblong.

  This homework book is the property of Simon Jonathan Saun

  An English name. It made no sense. How could an English boy have been here before me? How could I have shared my dream kingdom with someone else? I pushed the leaves aside with my shoe, and found one other trace of the schoolboy’s presence, a chewed stub of pencil.

  The ferns nearby exploded in an animal scuffle. Unnerved, I jumped back, my heart pounding. I threw down the remaining pieces of the book, but stuffed the part I had read into my pocket with the pencil, then ran hopping over the ferns and nettles, out of the wood, back into sunlight.

  I walked on until I reached the harbour. My discovery had unsettled me. This land was mine. To share it with a stranger from my own world would be to spoil it. I wondered what the doctor would make of my find, but decided not to risk telling anyone else, for fear of sparking something harmful, something unstoppable. But even now the gentle torpor of Calabash worked its wonders once more, and calmness returned as I reached a halt beside the jetty.

  A fisherman with a face like a bag of nuts cheerfully broke from net-mending to offer me a bottle of wine. Here, among the lopsided baskets of fish, I seated myself on a ledge of warm stone and dangled my feet over the water. I pulled the stopper from the bottle and drank, gazing out into the sparkling azure ocean. I would find a way to solve the mystery later.

  When the wine bottle was empty, I took the pieces of exercise book that concerned its owner’s identity from my pocket and turned them over, scribbling my own name and address on the back with the stub of pencil. I twined the paper into a tube and poked it into the bottle, which I resealed with the stopper. Rising unsteadily to my feet, I threw the bottle as far as I could. If another schoolboy had managed to find his way here from England, what were the chances that a message in a bottle could make it home across the sea?

  Chapter 27

  The Desire to Believe

  But of course there was no sign of it in the churning grey seas at the base of the pier. This time, I told myself, I would be rational about Calabash. I was back on the fishing platform, standing prec
ariously near the edge, when I realised that the proof was in my pocket. I felt inside my jacket and my fingers closed around the remaining scrap of the exercise book. My excitement was short-lived, however, when I turned it between my fingers and saw that it provided no proof. It looked like a piece of litter torn from an item you could find in any stationer’s. What else could I bring back from Calabash to prove its existence? A piece of fruit, a rock, the jewel that Rosamunde had given me? There would always be reasons for not believing. The gemstone was safer in my villa. I had not brought it back for fear that it might turn into a pebble.

  I knew then that I could not go on without some kind of an answer. I could not return to Calabash until I was prepared to take some action on the part of its inhabitants, and I was heading for a similar situation in Cole Bay. Somehow, I was screwing up in two different worlds at once. It was time to do something, to take a bigger step. I would have to involve someone else. Tell someone the truth, perhaps try to take them there from here. But who? Sean was still away. Danny was visiting friends in London. Dudley Salterton was a walking safety hazard and would never make it. Who else was there?

  I decided that it would have to be Julia. This, I saw, had an advantage. She was so pragmatic, so grounded, I felt that if I could just get her to believe in me, it must be true. Perhaps we would be able to travel to Calabash together. I hadn’t seen enough of Julia lately. She had recently embarked upon a punitive diet that was making her tense and bad-tempered, and had cancelled our last planned trip to the cinema. I called her as soon as I left the pier.