by Dan Vyleta
Then the real Charlie returns. There is no other phrase for it. It’s his kindness, his patience, rising up again through his features. They settle around the eyes, inflect the curve of his mouth. Within another second they are followed by shame. Charlie bends to the still-burning cigarette, pinches the tip then crumples it in his fist. Livia is watching him.
“That’s like throwing away pure gold.”
But Charlie’s mind is elsewhere.
“I didn’t smoke,” he says.
Even as he speaks a shiver goes through him. He reaches inside his shirt and his hand comes back stained. It isn’t Soot and it isn’t Smoke but something in between: a black, oily smear that oozes a fine stream. Then, the very next moment, it is as though it catches fire, and in the blink of an eye, Charlie’s hand emits a tar-black breath of Smoke. The Soot that forms is a fine white ash. It scatters by his feet like flakes of chalk.
“Like pure gold,” Thomas repeats. “These cigarettes are expensive?”
Livia nods. “So I am told.”
“Who makes them? The same people that make sweets?”
She shakes her head. “No. Sweets are a government monopoly. It used to be held jointly by three or four families, before the Spencers bought it up. These”—she stabs a finger in the direction of Charlie’s fist—“are illegal. Officially they don’t even exist. Nobody knows where they are made. Or how.”
“The Spencers own the sweets monopoly?”
Thomas would like to hear more about this, but Charlie talks over him, his voice bewildered, struggling to make sense of things.
“It was like London,” he says. “Like a fever. Only it didn’t come from the outside. It came from within.” He shudders, lays his palm on his throat, as though the infection were stuck there, poisoning his breath.
“But why?” he asks, still in the same panicked tone. “Why would anyone pay money to buy Smoke? It makes no sense.”
ф
Livia explains it to them. They are sitting on the settee again. She has poured Charlie a glass of water. No glass for Thomas. But then: Thomas isn’t convalescing.
“You went to London,” she starts. “We heard about it, of course. My whole school was talking about it. Your Trip. A daring experiment for a better future. Most of the girls were jealous.”
“That’s because they don’t know what it is like,” Charlie interjects. “It was horrible.”
“Was it?”
Livia says it with peculiar emphasis. Her eyes are on Thomas. He thinks about it.
“It was horrible,” Thomas repeats Charlie’s phrase. “But also: a liberation. You could not help but sin. So you are free to behave like a cad.”
Livia nods. “Mother says, when there are government contracts for work in the cities, the gentlemen line up to do it. Of course, the official line is that it is a sacrifice they are making, ‘for the commonweal.’ Sometimes, Mother says, ladies go on weekend jaunts to London. For ‘charity.’ ”
There is contempt in her voice. She seems to hate hypocrisy as much as Smoke.
“That’s crazy,” Charlie insists. “It turns you inside out, the city. You lose yourself, become someone else. It makes you evil.”
“Just so. Apparently one view has it that evil has its joys. But of course one cannot risk total dissipation. Nor undo all those years of schooling the senses.”
Livia’s anger is so palpable now, Thomas almost expects her to smoke.
Almost.
“Since going to London is inconvenient, many a gentleman has looked for a more controlled way of sampling vice.”
“A cigarette’s length of sin!” Thomas shakes his head, half amused, half disgusted. “So school really works, eh? They take you in at eleven, and for every wisp of Smoke you get a black mark against your name. By the time you finish, you’ve become so very disciplined, you are incapable of letting yourself go. Oh, sure you smoke on occasion, but it’s weak, a mere hiccup. Even when you long for it, you can no longer find it, your inner pig.”
He looks from Livia to Charlie. Charlie didn’t need much schooling to become good, Thomas thinks. He was born that way.
Thomas is less sure about Livia.
“So it’s sweets when you want to avoid infection and cigarettes for leisure,” he continues. “And just like that you have mastered the Smoke! So when do they do it then? These gentlemen you’re talking about? And gentlewomen. When do they decide it’s time to take a holiday from being good?”
He has Livia’s attention now. She is unflinching. “When they want to seduce their chambermaids. Or their husband’s valets.”
“Or rob,” Thomas adds. “Or kill.”
“You could kill without Smoke,” Charlie whispers. “If it were righteous.”
It is hard to say what he is thinking about, but he looks stricken, more so than when Thomas explained to him that Smoke is a lie; that it came to them a quarter of a millennium ago; that the powers that be rewrote the past. Charlie does not want to live in a world where sin is a sport dabbled in by the rich.
“I am not sure you could, Charlie,” he says gently. “Even the executioner in London first worked up a Smoke. What do you think, Miss Naylor?”
But the girl does not seem interested in the question; turns away from them both, walks over to the lectern, and bends over her book. She reminds Thomas of her mother then: dismissing him at the end of one of their talks. If it was only Charlie there, perhaps she’d let him stay. But Charlie accepts her decision, walks over to the door. Thomas follows more slowly. He isn’t quite done yet.
“I’ve been calling you a nun,” he says, still looking at Livia. “But there is more to you than that. The nun has a brain. And teeth.”
His voice is respectful. He thinks of his words as a compliment.
Livia does not stir.
“Do you know where your mother’s laboratory is?” Thomas asks.
“Yes.” She speaks without looking up.
“Will you show it to me?”
“No.”
Thomas nods, studies her, hunched over a lectern, the ruler marking her place.
“Thank you for your help.”
Thomas closes the door behind them with more force than he had planned. He hopes it does not undo his words of thanks.
ф
One floor down, they walk into Julius’s valet. Mr. Price. The man enters the far end of the hallway just as they step off the stairs. Thirty steps separate them, muffled by carpet. They walk towards each other like two armies in the field.
Price is an imposing man, tall, broad-shouldered, not fat but massive, each limb a tree trunk, heavy with muscle and bone. A line running parallel with his hair marks the place where he habitually wears a cap: below, his face is wind- and sunburned, brown like a root. On top, it is pale, the skin strangely tender, like a mollusc’s, living in its shell.
There is such purpose to Price’s movement that Thomas begins to wonder whether Julius has found the broken cigarette yet. He is walking without haste but with a mechanical precision that eats up the yards. It takes Thomas an effort of will not to slow his own step, defer their meeting. Instead he mirrors the man’s movement, walks chest out, at the centre of the corridor. Charlie notices his change of gait and keeps step at his side.
The closer they come, the more they see of Price’s features: the stubble-framed mouth, the blunt, broken nose, the deep dimple that marks the chin as though someone pressed his thumb in it when it was being baked. It’s a handsome face, in its own way, strong-featured and not unintelligent. But the eyes are ringed with something. Resignation. Implacability. A lifetime of violence. A sliver of red is visible where the lower lid curves around the eyeball. Not bloodshot eyes, then, but blood-lined ones: as though for emphasis, with a razor-edged pen. The brows that frame these eyes slope downward, from temples to nose. A frown splits them. It is not for their benefit, has been written there by the facial habits of a lifetime, by anger, concentration, or by pain. Five steps apart his smell becomes notic
eable, of leather and sweat and an edge of old Smoke. In a moment they will push together chest to chest. Again Thomas thinks of the broken cigarette. If there is to be a fight, neither of them is the man’s match. He wonders whether he’ll be able to busy Price while Charlie runs for help.
And if anyone will be willing to help.
One step before their collision, Price veers aside. He never slows, walks past them, his heavy boots making remarkably little noise. At the end of the hallway, Charlie stops, looks after the man. His face is flushed. It has not been often that Thomas has heard his friend speak in anger.
“That man drowns kittens for sport,” Charlie says.
“Not for sport. Only when he’s told. But then he drowns them by the sackload.”
Thomas means to say it lightly, but his voice catches and a shiver runs the length of his damp back.
MR. PRICE
He calls me to his rooms late that night. Key-sar. That’s what they call him at school. Emperor-to-be. Julius Paul. Jules to his mother, after the manner of the French. To me he has always been Mr. Spencer, even when he was knee-high to a goose. I have known him half his life. I am father and mother to him, and also: his son. I see at once that he is angry. A riding crop is in his hand.
Go on, I say. Beat me if you must.
He does, works me over wordlessly, hitting my shoulders, back, and thighs, while I shield my face and eyes. We smoke together, he from anger, I from pain; breathe each other in. Far from estranging us, it affirms our bond. It’s what family is: the sharing of one another’s Smoke. Everything else is like a handshake: cold, formal, keeping a step apart. Isolation. Man is not born for such a thing.
Afterwards, still breathing heavily with the exertion, he explains it to me. That they sneaked into his room that afternoon and stole his cigarettes; that they broke one and lay it topmost, in order to let him know. He is pale with his anger. A handsome boy, always was. I run a bath for him, so he can scrub off the Soot. While he sits and soaks, I tidy the room. The cigarette case stands open. I close it and lock it away.
He does not share his cigarettes with me. Each of these, he often says to me (he likes to handle them, point with them, stab one at your face: a scarecrow’s finger, stuffed and bent, bleeding tobacco from its tip), each of these is worth two years of your salary. For five your own mother would sell you to the hangman.
I object.
I have no mother, I say.
It never fails to make us laugh.
What will you do? I ask him when I tuck him into bed. How will you punish the thieves?
Discipline, he says. A gentleman does not punish.
I wait until he falls asleep. After some time his features smooth and you can see the boy in him, one hand tucked under his cheek.
Late that night, I burn the clothes. There’s a disused kiln behind the house that’s perfect for the purpose. Mr. Spencer never wears soiled clothing. The lye, he says, makes the fabric coarse. The fire attracts birds. Rooks. My kinsmen. Cawing, they walk the perimeter of light, warming their feathers. I fall into step. They scatter when I approach, then reclaim the space as soon as I turn. It’s almost like a dance.
On the morrow, after a late breakfast, Mr. Spencer sends me to find the butler. Thorpe. Thorpe has his eyes everywhere, Mr. Spencer says. The house is his kingdom and he rules it with spies. Thorpe will know where those boys are spending their time.
Thorpe does. He tells me the boys are taking their exercise in the gym. Main house, ground floor, east wing. He is speaking for Mr. Spencer’s benefit, not mine: his eyes see through me, as through a window, to the man I represent.
I do not like Thorpe. Here’s a man who has never smoked in the company of others. A man without family or tribe.
A lonely man.
The stable hands have it different. They say he’s a man that’s buried children.
It’s an odd thing but they never say: his own.
LABORATORY
Julius enters the gym while they are still warming up. He is wearing knickerbockers and a blue jersey, and soft boots that are laced above the ankle. A little towel is thrown over one shoulder.
Before they even have time to respond to his entrance, he disappears again and runs across to the billiard room. A minute later he is back, an hourglass in his hand, beaming.
“I knew it was somewhere. It’ll help us keep time.”
Wordlessly, both Charlie and Thomas turn away from him and start climbing out of the ring.
“Mr. Price was right, then. He said you were too much of a pair of sissies to step in the ring with me.”
Charlie watches Thomas’s back stiffen at this and speaks at once. “I’ll give you a few rounds.”
Julius smiles. “Mr. Cooper! Excellent. Queensberry rules, I suppose. Though I do wonder at times what it was like in the bare-knuckle days.”
He turns his back without waiting for a response, opens the wardrobe, searches it for a pair of gloves. The pair he settles on are worn across the knuckles. A mosaic of cracks marks the old leather. He punches the gloves together and watches a cloud of dust disperse.
“Shall we say one round, for starters? Just to warm up.” Julius lifts one stool over the ropes into the ring and places the hourglass on top. “There we go. Ready?”
He turns the hourglass, watches the first few grains of sand slide through its waist, then climbs in the ring and starts circling its empty centre with rhythmic, light-footed steps. Ignoring Thomas’s warning look, Charlie nods and climbs in after the head boy.
They spar in silence. The sand shifts slowly in its glass. It is clear from the start that Julius has had training and is, in fact, a very accomplished boxer. Thankfully he seems content to prance around, blocking or dodging Charlie’s punches and landing a few soft jabs on Charlie’s forehead and shoulders. As time runs down, Charlie finds himself enjoying the exercise. It is not so very different from yesterday’s bout with Thomas.
When the sand is all but gone and Thomas is about to announce the end of the round, Julius steps into Charlie. It isn’t a very complicated movement: he simply moves his leg inside Charlie’s, drops a few inches at the knees, then pushes off from the toes and pours the weight of his body into an uppercut to the short of Charlie’s rib. Three quick body hooks follow, all hitting the same spot. As Julius dances away, Charlie crumples to the ground. It is not that he cannot get air. But each breath is agony, a sharp and stabbing pain as though bone has rent the tissue of his lung.
When he collects himself, he finds Thomas by his side, quietly raging. Julius is sitting on the stool inside the ring. He is cool and composed, not showing a thread of Smoke.
“How about three rounds, Mr. Argyle? You look like you need to blow off steam. Just give me a second to catch my breath.”
Julius grins, takes off his gloves for a moment, reaches into his pocket, and withdraws a cigarette and matches.
“Some say they are bad for your health. But I find they help me focus.”
He lights it with a flourish. The smell is unmistakable. Charlie waits for some sign of the cigarette’s effect but Julius’s face remains a picture of calm, his skin clean. It seems impossible.
There must be some sort of trick.
The motion of his jaw gives it away, the way he turns his tongue inside his cheek. A sweet. No, many sweets, tucked away at the side of his gums. Charlie wants to warn Thomas but it’s obvious from Thomas’s face that his friend has already seen it. More than that. It confirms a theory long adopted.
“It binds the cigarette Smoke the very moment it is produced,” Thomas says, quietly, but not so quietly Julius cannot hear. “He likes it there, on the knife edge of control. Vicious, but not quite barking mad. And, of course, clean as a whistle.”
Julius smiles at that, steps to the centre, raising his fists and bouncing on his toes.
“Ready whenever you are, Mr. Argyle. When you are done talking, that is.”
In his mouth his tongue is turning, redistributing sweets.
> ф
Julius boxes with cool viciousness. He hits Thomas almost at will, largely with jabs, at distance. When his opponent swings at him, he slips the punch and counters, all with the same aloof air of control. Thomas, by contrast, is distracted by his own rage. He charges widely, stands flat-footed, off-balance, always a beat behind the dance. Already his breath is showing dark in front of his mouth and an inch-long line has formed between his shoulder blades like the swollen body of a leech.
At the end of the round Julius bends over the ropes that frame the ring and spits out a black rotten sweet. For a split second Charlie is transported back to school, to that initial fight between Thomas and the head boy. There, too, a blackened lump was spat across a floor. It bounced on bathroom tiles.
Back then they took it for a tooth.
They start the second round. Thomas does not stand a chance. Julius continues to box scientifically, inflicting maximum punishment. He works Thomas’s body as much as the face, the side of the ribs, and the soft of the belly, Thomas looking as though he is drowning. He smokes from pain and helplessness, staggers, rolls, slumps. It does not even occur to Charlie that he is baiting his opponent, making him careless. But when Julius shoves his reeling figure, pushing him into the ropes, Thomas suddenly straightens and out of nowhere lands a hook with such force it sends four or five sweets flying from Julius’s mouth, some dark, some still clear as crystal. They are followed by a gob of blood.
Still Julius keeps coming and still he does not smoke. He is more careful now, boxes at distance. Punch after punch hits Thomas: the flat, dry drumbeat of air being forced out of the glove. It isn’t until the sand in the hourglass has almost run clear that Charlie understands that Thomas, too, has adjusted his strategy. He is leaning into Julius; is grinning, taunting him; allowing himself to be hit.
Feeding Julius’s frenzy.
Exhausting his remaining sweets.
And then, without any warning, with only seconds left in the round, the last of the sweets is spent. Julius erupts. Smoke paints him black. It envelops Thomas who screams a viscous cloud of welcome. They go down, one on top of the other, and Julius keeps pounding Thomas, never tiring, inhuman in his strength, while Thomas keeps on screaming in pain and hatred, his chin dripping with wet Smoke and blood. The round is long over, and Charlie is in the ring, trying to pull Julius off. In vain. Julius does not even budge, kicks and elbows behind himself, all the while sending fists into Thomas’s black and bloodied face.