Stupidly, stupidly, he felt his voice choke. He shook his head. He knew if he answered he’d break down.
She moved fast. She said something to the friend, ushered Cal firmly up the steps and opened the door with a key. Then he was inside, the door closing behind him, with one last glimpse of the girl on the pavement clutching her magazine in astonished surprise.
The hall was huge, carpeted, mirrored. She led him into a big room at the back and sat him on the sofa. He felt weak, and useless.
“Shadow, I’m so sorry,” he whispered.
She crouched. “Not now, Cal. Look at the state of you! How long since you’ve eaten?”
He couldn’t remember.
She went out. In front of him the fire roared over fake coals, but the heat was real and he was glad of it. He took one quick look round. Chippendale furniture. Portraits, great gilt framed things. Real. A clock like something out of The Antiques Road Show. He felt small, shriveled up.
Shadow came back, and the woman was with her, carrying a tray, silver, with a teapot on it and small cakes. The woman stared at him with dislike.
“This is Marj,” Shadow said quickly. “She works for us. Put it down there, and go and run him a bath, will you? Are there any clothes that would fit him?”
Their low voices discussed him as if he wasn’t there. Maybe he wasn’t. He felt so light-headed and weak he wasn’t even sure.
Then Shadow was giving him tea and he was drinking it. The hot liquid shocked him into awareness; for a second it made him think of the time in Hawk’s van after the fight in the Dell; maybe Shadow thought of it too, because she said, “We’ve all been so worried about you!”
He smiled, trying to eat some cake. It tasted like ashes. He needed to explain but she wouldn’t let him talk and he was glad, because the words would have come out all jumbled and useless. While she fussed around upstairs he laid his head back on the plush sofa, and if he had closed his eyes he would have slept.
Then she was saying, “Cal. Come on.”
The bathroom was white and gold. He sat on a chair and looked at it. “Wow. Beats the van.”
Shadow grinned, preoccupied. “There are towels, and some old clothes of my father’s. They’ll be big but you’re as tall as him. Come down when you’re ready.”
As she went out he said, “I didn’t think you’d be speaking to me.”
She looked at him hard. “Why not? It seems we’re both liars.”
The hot water was such luxury he could not believe his own luck. Drowsing in it he felt the aches of his body gradually ease; there were cuts and stings and bruises he had no idea that he had, and he couldn’t remember where they had come from. The whole of the time in the Waste Land seemed far off, the green chapel like a dream. And yet Merlin’s ragged coat hung over the chair.
He soaped and rinsed and scraped himself till it hurt. Then he looked in the mirror. His face was strange to him, hollow-eyed, thin, stubbled. He had lost weight; he couldn’t understand how much. He dressed in the jeans, and shirt. They were so baggy at the waist he had to use his old belt to keep them up, but they felt crisp and clean, and expensive. Rather than pull his mucky boots on he went downstairs in just the socks.
Shadow was putting the phone down. She turned. “That’s better!”
“Who were you ringing?” His voice was tense, paranoid.
“Trevor.”
“Shadow, you . . .”
“Oh Cal, for heaven’s sake! He’s been worried sick about you! Last month he was here begging me to help him.”
“Last month?” He stared at her. At the primulas behind her, through the window. The swans, he thought. The warm weather. How long had he been in the Waste Land? He sat down unsteadily. “What date is it?”
“The third.”
“Of?”
She came over, concerned. “April, of course. Tomorrow is Good Friday.”
“APRIL! It can’t be!” Three nights. That was all. If you say so, Merlin had said.
“Well, it is. Trevor hasn’t heard from you since the beginning of January. He’s been scared witless. He thought you might have . . . done something stupid.”
Cal knew what that meant. Struggling to keep calm, he said, “What did you tell him?”
“That I’d seen you here, in Bath, that you were okay. I told him you’d be ringing him tonight. You’re going to do it, too.”
He was stunned into silence. “It was only a few days.”
She smiled, too brightly. “Maybe you lost track of time.”
He didn’t want to think about it. “We’ve changed places,” he said gravely.
She laughed. “Sort of.”
“I suppose your parents will have a fit when they come home. Like Trevor did when you came.” He smiled sadly. “Though you were better off than him all along.”
“My parents won’t be home.” She stood up and went to the door, so that he couldn’t see her face. “Mummy’s in London, as usual. Dad’s abroad.” She opened the hall door and yelled, “Anytime, Marj,” and then came back.
Cal looked up at her. “Anytime what?”
“Food.”
It came on a trolley, and they ate it at the big table in the window, looking out onto a green lawn and flowerbeds of wallflowers and bluebells. In the spring twilight a flock of blue tits pecked and fought over a full bird table.
The meal was Italian, soup and then pasta, and he was glad it wasn’t spaghetti because he couldn’t eat that properly, and then some sweet like a trifle he’d never had before. Shadow had wine and he had orange juice. He ate quickly, trying not to. The stiff white cloth and heavy knives and forks, the starched napkins and the table settings made it seem like a restaurant, with Marj as the waitress. He thought of Hawk’s microwave. “Have you seen Hawk?”
Shadow sighed. She licked her spoon. “I’d better tell you what happened. After Trevor took you off that night, we went back to the farmhouse and the police were there. My parents were with them. My mother threw her arms round me; she wept and sobbed. My father looked embarrassed. Arthur was grave. Kai laughed. I knew I’d have to go with her. She would have made trouble for them all, for Hawk especially. If she even found out I’d been traveling with him . . . So I came back. It was blackmail, pure and simple. Though I told Hawk I’d be back in the summer holidays. I won’t lose the Company, Cal. They mean too much.”
He looked down. “How can you be unhappy here, Shadow? If I lived in a house like this, I could never be unhappy. Bath, your parents, it’s . . . it’s a world away . . .”
He stopped, as always. But she said, “You don’t have to clam up anymore. I know all about your mother, Cal. Trevor told me. He and Thérèse came here, like I said.” She put the spoon down angrily. “Why didn’t you tell me they weren’t your parents? Why didn’t you tell me?” But she knew why.
He left the table and went over to the window. So she said to his back, “My mother’s not like yours, no. A world away. She’s rich, she’s ambitious, she’s on TV, a media queen. My father’s in computing. He has his own firm. They live for their work. I never see them. I had a different au pair every year till I was twelve. Really privileged!” She got up and came behind him. “I live by myself, in all this splendor. I could have a car if I wanted. I could party and stay in the London flat and get high on drugs and they wouldn’t know. I have an allowance for all the designer clothes I want. I have a trust fund and a gold credit card. They think this setup makes us a family but we’re not. Her PA sends me my birthday present, can you believe that?”
Cal turned. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t understand.”
“Not your fault. Your mother . . . she was a mess, she ruined things for you, but she was there. Mine never is. She wouldn’t have been much bothered where I’d gone, except that some journalist got hold of the story and she thought it would spoil her precious career.”
She was rigid, stepped away from him, turned her back. Suddenly he felt he had never known her, that the shadow was back betw
een them.
“You’ve always thought, haven’t you, that if you’d had money, it would have been different.”
He nodded, bleak.
“Well, it isn’t. Your life was worse than mine, I know that. But misery is misery, Cal. Loneliness is loneliness. And there’s one thing about your mother that I’d bet on, one thing I’ve never had.”
“What?” he whispered.
Shadow turned. Her eyes were wet; she smiled at him wanly. “I’ll bet she loved you.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Am I on the right road for the house of the Fisher King?
2nd Continuation
There were crystals hanging in the window. They swung softly in the drafts, and Cal watched the tiny brilliant rainbows they made on the walls, all moving together. He lay on the soft pillows, wonderfully comfortable.
Shadow’s spare room was twice the size of his old room in the flat, larger even than the bedroom at Trevor’s. The furniture was old and graceful, and the windows immensely tall, with white painted shutters that could close the night out. Now, late in the morning, he watched the sun, and thought of the Waste Land.
He had been wandering there three months. At least, out here it had been that long. For him, he didn’t know how long it had been. He could only remember fragments, the burning tree, the chapel. You couldn’t forget a whole quarter of a year. Unless your mind was breaking up.
In the comfort after his deep sleep he was oddly unworried. And that wasn’t like him. Maybe he should see a doctor. He examined the idea idly, mulled it over, saw himself in waiting rooms, and then explaining, trying to explain, to a man behind a large wooden desk. “It’s as if time went differently there. But Merlin said . . .”
The doctor would lean forward, interested. “Merlin?” he would say.
“Yes. One of Arthur’s men.”
The doctor would make notes rapidly.
Despite himself, Cal grinned and stretched. If he was going crazy, at least this morning he didn’t care. Until he thought of his mother.
He got up instantly, dressed in his borrowed clothes, and went downstairs, looking through the tall, sunny rooms of the house. Finally he found Shadow sitting out in a sort of conservatory, reading, a fat white cat on her lap. She looked up. “God, you can sleep!”
“I was tired.”
She was wearing the other clothes this morning, the ones she’d worn in Chepstow, the filmy black, the boots. It made her look more familiar, despite her clean face. She pushed the cat off. “Let’s go out for something to eat.”
It was holiday time and Bath was busy. Down in the town they found a small café full of American tourists and squeezed into a table at the back. Shadow ordered pizza and chips and Cokes and Cal said bleakly, “I haven’t got any money.”
She put a credit card on the table. “Daddy can pay.”
“Shadow . . .”
“Forget it. What did Trevor have to say?”
Cal sighed. The conversation had not been pleasant. “He was furious. Where had I been? Didn’t I know Thérèse was worried stiff? Didn’t I know the police in three counties were out looking for me?”
She nodded. “Sounds familiar. And when he’d calmed down?”
Cal drank the Coke. “Said the job was still there if I wanted it.”
“Do you?”
He gazed out at the packed streets. Then he said, “I used to dream, at home. All I ever wanted was somewhere clean, quiet. Everywhere I went I’d look at the big houses and be sick with envy of the kids who came out of them. I still am. I can’t just turn that off. And that takes money.”
Shadow waited till the waitress had put the plates down and gone. Then she said, “So that’s a no, then.”
He looked up at her, a sudden grin. “I suppose it is.”
“Sophie?”
She looked up, alert. Then said, “Hi, Marcus. Cal, this is Marcus. I told you about him.”
He was big, blond, expensive. Public school, by the voice. His sunglasses would have cost a few days’ salary. Cal stood up, found he was taller and enjoyed that. “Hi,” he said quietly.
Marcus looked at him, then at Shadow. “Thought we might go out somewhere tonight, if you’re interested. But. . .” he shrugged, “no bother.”
She smiled sweetly. “Maybe another time.”
“Fine.” He went, looking back once. Cal sat back down and glanced at Shadow. She laughed softly. “Perfect,” she said.
Afterward they went shopping, Shadow buying a strange hand-painted T-shirt for herself, and a sweater for him, even though he told her not to. Such casual spending appalled and thrilled him. It was like another world.
In the Body Shop he lounged while she picked over various shampoos, leaning against the green-painted counter idly. Then his gaze froze.
Leo was looking in through the window. The big man was watching Cal; as soon as he saw Cal notice him he turned and was gone in the flood of pedestrians. Cal yelled, “Shadow!” and raced out.
People buffeted him. He pushed through them, turned right up Milsom Street and ran, jumping impatiently out into the road where cars hooted. Up ahead Leo’s huge back was clear. He crossed into an alley. Just behind, Cal sprinted between vans, dodged a stroller, threw himself around the corner. “Hey! WAIT!”
The man turned. He was a total stranger.
Cal’s breath almost choked him.
Behind him, Shadow turned the corner, breathing hard. “Cal! Who was it?”
He looked around at the totally ordinary town, then at her face, the hidden concern. He rubbed his hair with a shaky hand. “I think it’s me, isn’t it?” he whispered.
You had to pay for deckchairs in the park. It was like you had to pay for everything in the world. Devastated, he sat there and knew he had imagined it all. Unless he could find Corbenic again. Unless he could find the Grail.
They both sat silent in the sun until she said, “Look, Cal . . .”
He sat up, interrupting. “I’m going to Glastonbury. Will you come with me?”
“Why there?”
“Merlin said in all the stories the Grail is there.”
“Merlin’s mad. I mean,” she said hastily, “he may be right about that, but this place you found . . . this hotel, was up north. Right?”
Suspicious, he looked at her. The truth came to him, blinding and brilliant as the flashing rainbows in the bedroom. “You don’t believe any of it. The bleeding spear, the Grail . . .”
“I think you stayed the night at some hotel. That you saw some . . . people carrying things. It must have been a bit odd.”
“A bit odd!” Aghast, he stood up and stared down at her. “I thought you at least would understand.”
Shadow bit a nail. “It’s like Hawk. He thought he was someone from the past. They all had this game, that they were immortals. I never knew if they were winding me up. Then I thought, they believe this. So I believed it. If you believe something hard enough, it comes true. In a way. What he said to you about the Grail is just another old story.”
He came and sat down. “You think I’m going the way my mother did.”
“I think you’re looking for something that’s not here. Maybe you’re looking for her. You won’t find her in Glastonbury.” It was cruel, he thought bitterly, and maybe Shadow thought so too, because she said quietly, “I never knew her, remember.”
Out of his anger he shrugged. “I often thought I’d like to tell you. Have someone to moan about it to.”
“Tell me now,” she said gently.
He didn’t know where to start. There was too much. The dirt, the drink, the time she’d come at him with the broken bottle. So he said, “Once, she cut herself.”
“What?”
“I’d come home late, and she’d cut herself. With the kitchen knife. Long, red slashes, on her arms. Blood everywhere, on her sleeves, the sofa, everywhere.”
Shadow was rigid. “What did you do?”
“Freaked out. Panicked. Mopped up. Got her to Casualt
y—God, we lived in that place. Locked up the knives. Lived with it, the terror of it happening again, rocked myself to sleep. Never told anyone.” He looked up, stricken. “There’s all that in me, Shadow, and I can’t get it out. And I swore to her I’d be back for Christmas, I swore I would and I didn’t go, and I knew, I knew what she might do! Don’t you see, I can’t live with that! I can’t!”
He was shaking. His voice was broken up. “I’ve coped, always coped. Made rules. Never admitted . . . But now I’m lost, Shadow. I’m in pieces. There’s nothing left.” He was sobbing at last.
Shadow put her arms around him and held him tight and they sat together in the sunlight for a long time till he was calm, kids on skateboards going up and down the path in front of them, wheeling, their voices high in the bright air. Finally, confused, he rubbed his face and pulled away and said, “You didn’t answer my question about Glastonbury.”
“I can’t come, Cal. I have to stay here now, and that’s your fault. I promised I’d finish my exams and I will. I don’t think you should go either, not on your own.”
“I’m not . . .”
She turned to him. “Look. Stay a few days. Think about it. You’ll feel better.” She sounded choked. Then she lay back in the striped deckchair and closed her eyes against the ripple from the river. “There are two sorts of life, aren’t there? The one that seems ordinary, like this, and then the reflection from it. Curved, shiny. All mixed up.”
He should have known. Leaning over the mahogany banister that night he heard her voice, low and urgent. “He’s not right. He’s been sleeping rough for three months and can’t remember any of it. And now this nonsense about Glastonbury. Yes, but he needs to be home!”
Maybe Hawk said something; she laughed, low, but she wasn’t amused. Then she said, “Tomorrow. First thing. I don’t know what to do, Hawk. Just get here.”
Back upstairs, he waited, watching his own gaunt face in the mirror. When she had gone to bed he sat there still, hearing the clock chime in the hall below, the slow cars in the street, the laughter of late-night drinkers. When he finally moved he was stiff; but he picked up the rucksack and went downstairs silently, and let himself out and walked down the long broad street without looking back.
Corbenic Page 17