by Dan Vyleta
Again Charlie tries to pull Julius off. Again he fails, Smoke and panic in his every breath. Then an idea comes to him. He does not hesitate, throws himself flat on his stomach, searches the floor for the unspoilt sweets that Thomas beat out of his opponent. He finds one, then a second the shade of light amber; scuttles over to Julius and reaches, through his Smoke, first for his throat then his chin, his mouth, attempting to force the sweets inside. Teeth cut his thumb, his index finger, the knuckle. Then an elbow to the head sends Charlie flying onto the parquet next to them, and when he gasps for air it is Smoke that rushes in his lungs and turns all thought to madness.
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It works, after a fashion. The fresh sweets absorb and bind the strongest Smoke. It grants a measure of lucidity to Julius’s hatred. He rolls off Thomas—to regroup? to fetch the stool from the corner of the ring and bash in their skulls?—staggers to his feet, yells something; then stops short, staring out into the hallway past the gym’s open door. The next moment he is running. Where to does not matter to Charlie. He barely hears the footsteps, his own blood is so loud in his ears. All that matters is that Julius is gone.
Charlie retches, watches Thomas’s Smoke die out. When his friend sits up, Thomas’s outline remains on the parquet. A wood-pale shadow, as though cut into a sheet of perfect black dust. Charlie, still on his knees, draws a finger through the Soot. It is warm, almost hot, and fine like coal dust. He feels he needs to say something, anything, just to return them to normality: a world where people communicate their feelings in words. But all he can find to say is a lie.
“I have never seen anyone smoke like that.”
The truth is that he has. Both of them have. When a murderess swung from a rope in London.
Thomas’s features are unreadable under the Soot.
“Do you mean him, or me?”
Charlie closes his eyes and again sees the smoking, blackened forms of the two prone bodies intertwined, like the charred remains of lovers discovered in a burnt-down barn.
“Him,” he whispers. But what he thinks is: Either. Both.
Compelled by some strange alchemy, Julius’s and Thomas’s Smoke have reacted to produce something Charlie has no words for. He was inside their Smoke for no more than a few seconds. What he breathed in—what entered his body, took control as surely as a puppeteer’s hand shoved into a Punch or Judy—stood all truth upon its head. Over there, inside the Smoke, pain was joy and anger peace. Violence was love.
As though hoping it will rid him of the memory, Charlie rises to his feet. The moment he is up, still dizzy, he sees what Julius saw.
Livia is there.
From the look in her eyes she has been there a good long while.
She is standing out in the hallway, half a step from the door, in a frock of perfect white. And looks as though she is going to a party. Her cheeks are powdered, hair pinned into a bun behind her head. It disturbs Charlie that in a moment like this he can notice such a detail. And approve. The hairstyle suits her, underlines the slimness of her neck. In her ears, two pearls swing on silver loops.
“Miss Naylor!” Charlie raises a hand in greeting then lets it drop. All social conventions are as though swept away. His naked, blackened chest shivers with sudden cold. One side of the hourglass is dusted with Soot as though it has been witness to a storm.
To Charlie’s surprise, Livia walks into the room rather than running away. She climbs in the ring, walks past him, and bends down low to where Thomas is still sitting on the ground, the hem of her dress soiling in Soot. Her voice betrays her disgust with what she has seen. But there is something else in it, too. Pity.
It softens her words.
“You must leave this house, Mr. Argyle. He will cripple you.”
Thomas shakes his head, croaks something only she can hear. She flushes, stiffens, shakes her head.
“I can’t. I won’t.”
Another croak. This time Livia straightens. All pity is gone from her voice. “I will not show you the laboratory, Mr. Argyle. And you will leave as soon as it can be arranged.”
Only then does she turn to Charlie.
“Clean him up, Mr. Cooper, and do it fast. It’s New Year’s Eve and Mother is planning a formal dinner. We eat at six.”
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At dinner, Julius is composed, charming, and attentive to his mother. The bruise on his cheek is barely visible. As course after intricate course is served, his mood only continues to improve. He declines to partake in the wine. As he reminds Lady Naylor, he is, after all, still only a schoolboy; his Smoke and Ethics teacher would not approve. Julius beams at Thomas as he says it. The two are sitting directly across from one another.
Thomas’s face is red and lumpy, one eye lost behind his swollen brow and cheek. The other eye is smeared by a ring of sickly yellow that is already darkening into hues of purple, brown, and black. He will look worse on the morrow. But Charlie is more worried about the damage to Thomas’s body. The way Thomas sits, slumped to one side like a listing ship, it is clear he is in considerable pain. Charlie himself winces whenever he takes too deep a breath. His rib is so tender, he eats with one elbow sticking out far to the side, to avoid brushing his own chest.
The afternoon was spent on their trying to make themselves look respectable. Getting the Soot off took several hours of scrubbing: Thomas so sore that every contact of brush with skin brought tears to his eyes. He struggled with getting into his trousers and shirt and yet refused Charlie’s offers of help; sat for minutes over each of his socks, unable to bend down to his feet. In the end, already dressed, his cravat splayed against his chest like a broken butterfly, Thomas had crawled onto his bed and lain there unmoving while Charlie paced the room, looking for something to say.
“Next year, how about we spend New Year’s with my parents? It’s quieter there.”
Thomas did not smile at this. He may not believe he has another year.
When, at the appointed time, they head over to the dining room, they—crumpled, limping, their shoes unpolished—make a marked contrast to the splendour of Lady Naylor’s dress and the elegance of Julius’s frock coat. Livia wears a ruby pendant over a high-cut dress. It is startlingly becoming. Neither she nor her mother comment on Thomas’s appearance. When a cut on his lip opens during dinner, the baroness leans over and offers her handkerchief.
Half an hour before midnight Lady Naylor and Livia excuse themselves. They wish to be with the baron when the clock strikes: it is a family tradition. This leaves the three boys sitting there alone, at the big table. The first thing Julius does is to help himself to another slice of cake. He lifts his feet onto the chair next to his, makes himself comfortable. A moment later Mr. Price enters the room. He walks in in silence and takes up position near the wall, directly behind Thomas’s and Charlie’s backs. Charlie has the impression he is holding something but does not want to turn. Not one of them speaks. Julius’s fork scrapes across the china plate every time he scoops up another bite of cake.
The minutes creep by, midnight approaching. Charlie’s back is crawling with the sensation that any second now Mr. Price will come at them from behind. He might be holding a whip, a cudgel, a gun. Surely Julius is not as crazy as that. The very moment he thinks the thought, the memory of the boxing ring rises up in Charlie. His hand inspecting the floor after the fight. Soot fine as coal dust.
Who is to say just how crazy Julius may be?
Another minute passes. Julius discards the plate but holds on to the fork, taps his teeth with its prongs. Behind them, Mr. Price starts humming “Rule Britannia.”
At three minutes to midnight, Thorpe joins them. He walks in briskly and starts fussing over the champagne bottle that’s been cooling in a silver bucket. A tidy, closed little man, slight and fragile-looking next to the bulk of Mr. Price. But immediately all the tension goes out of the room. When Charlie lifts his glass to Mr. Thorpe’s proffered bottle, he cannot keep it from shaking with anxiety and relief. At midnight the clock in the corner gives
a low chime. Into the awkward silence, Mr. Price injects a hearty, Scots-inflected “Auld Lang Syne.”
Nobody else thinks to sing along.
No sooner has Mr. Price worked his way through the last chorus than Charlie quickly rises.
“I’m going to bed.”
Mr. Thorpe puts down the bottle.
“Very well. I will light the way for you and Mr. Argyle.”
It seems to Charlie that he is under instruction to see them safely to their room.
Just as Thomas begins to push himself laboriously up from the table, Julius leans his body across its width and grabs Thomas’s wrist. His voice is quiet, untouched by anger.
“Look here, Argyle. Mother’s right. I didn’t like it when she said it, but there’s no denying it. We are kindred souls. We should make friends.”
Thomas freezes, looks him hard in the face, and suddenly spits a jet of Smoke. A foul smell accompanies it, along with a retching that imparts distress rather than anger. Julius recoils, then laughs and makes a sign to his valet to open the windows.
He is still laughing when Charlie and Thomas follow Thorpe out of the room.
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They do not turn off the light. Neither of them has mentioned it, but both are very conscious that their door has no lock. Thomas is lying on top of the bedding, still wearing his shoes. He might be finding it difficult to take them off.
“What if we wrote to Renfrew?” Charlie asks into the silence. “About all this. Julius. The cigarettes. And what Lady Naylor told you. He, too, is fighting Smoke.”
Thomas thinks, disagrees. “Renfrew is fighting sin. And we don’t know enough to go and pick sides.” He furrows his brow, then winces. The movement hurts his bruises. “Julius has changed, don’t you think? I mean, he was always a prick. But now…Now he’s out of control.”
“Too many cigarettes?”
“Maybe. Who knows how many a day he smokes, a sweet in each cheek. In any case: no letters, Charlie. Not for now.”
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Charlie must have fallen asleep. He did not hear her knock, if knock she did, nor enter the room. It stings him for a second that she should have woken Thomas first. The two are in negotiations.
“You must leave as soon as possible.”
“You are very keen to get rid of us, Miss Naylor.”
“I tried to convince Mother to send you away. But she won’t believe me. She says it’s just two boys, having an argument. The law of the playground. She didn’t see what I saw.
“You must leave,” she says again. “Or there will be further incidents. The whole house already reeks of your darkness.”
Thomas’s voice is hard when he answers. “You know what I want.”
“If I show it to you, do you promise you will go?”
“We will,” Charlie intervenes, causing Livia to turn. “Just as quickly as we can.”
Livia nods. “Do I have your word on that, Mr. Cooper?”
“You do.”
“And yours, Mr. Argyle?”
“Yes.”
“Then follow me.”
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She leads them to the third floor. Charlie had some idea that the laboratory must be in a secret basement, hidden away beneath a trapdoor in some distant room, but here they are, high up within the main structure of the house, within an easy walk from all its main rooms. The door Livia stops before looks like any other. It is not even locked. Behind it, though, is a second, heavier door, upholstered in black leather.
“Only Mother has the key. I am sworn never to touch it.”
Even as she says it, Livia produces the key from out her left fist. She’s been clutching it so hard, its profile is cut into her palm. It occurs to Charlie that this is the first time Livia has ever broken a promise. If so, it does not show in her movements as she deftly unlocks the door.
The laboratory is not one room but a whole suite of rooms, lined up one after the other, like railway carriages. When Livia has closed and locked the door behind them, she lights a lamp and hands it over to Charlie.
“You may look, but don’t shift anything. You have a quarter of an hour. This is my mother’s life’s work. It may be wrongheaded. But we should respect it.” As she speaks, her lips flicker red in the gaslight. Not for the first time Charlie wonders what she would do if he kissed them.
The two boys drift into the room. There are so many tables, bureaus, and shelves that it is hard to know where to start. Livia alone remains near the door, as referee and timekeeper.
A large desk draws them. It stands off in one corner, but the pile of books and papers covering it mark it as the centre of the room’s activities. The room’s most comfortable chair has been drawn up to it, its upholstery dark with use. Topmost on the desk, perched precariously on a whole stack of volumes, lies a large, leather-bound journal stamped with the baron’s crest. Inside, the pages are covered with tiny, dense handwriting. Charlie bends to it, but is unable to make sense of the letters. The journal, if that is what it is, is kept entirely in ancient Greek.
As he picks up the volume, two pictures shift within it, each marking a place. One is the portrait of a teenage girl, a little younger than themselves. At first glance it is easy to miss the iron rings around her wrists and throat. She is in chains; her neck attached to the wall behind. Even so she has found enough space to twist her head away from the camera. It smudges her features and leaves her with two heads, one superimposed upon the other. The first faces the viewer, the second avoids him, shows her chin and eye in profile. The girl’s mouth connects the two faces, unnaturally elongated by her movement and stretched into a bitter smile. A strand of dark hair has come loose from the knot at her back and cuts across her pallor like a crack. Her features are foreign, hard to place. It is a face, Charlie thinks, that would be hard to forget.
Separated from the girl by some thirty pages rests the picture of a familiar pairing. Master Renfrew and Baron Naylor stand shoulder to shoulder on an open plain of such pancake flatness that the horizon forms a straight, smooth line. As in the picture in the gym, they are both much younger: Renfrew a university student, the baron a man of forty in a thick worsted suit. The light is so bright that the sky above the two figures appears the purest white. It is as though they are standing with their heads dunked into the void. Beneath their heavy boots, the ground is made of coarse, wild grass. There is no landscape in the whole of England as big, as flat as this. It is so barren, they might be standing on the moon.
But it is another detail that has caught Thomas’s eye. Haltingly, his fingers clumsy and swollen, each movement painful to him, he reaches over and takes the picture out of Charlie’s hand; holds it up to the lamp at a flat angle, then rubs one corner between his fingers as though testing a piece of cloth.
“Feel it, Charlie. This is not a daguerreotype. And look—when you hold the lamp close, it glows like it’s shot through with silver.”
Charlie understands him at once. “Some new technology; from the Continent. Despite the embargo.”
“New for us. But this print must be fifteen years old.” Thomas replaces the picture between the pages of the journal. “This alone is enough to land Lady Naylor in jail.”
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They continue looking. After a few minutes Thomas, trusting to moonlight, shifts away from the desk of papers, and limps onwards, into the next room. Charlie, meanwhile, has become immersed in what appears to be a ledger, lying open to its latest entry. He is unfamiliar with the high art of bookkeeping, but expenses and income are recorded in different-coloured ink—red and black—and as such are immediately identifiable. The sums listed for expenses are enormous. One particular item draws the eye. The figure indicated is so large, that initially Charlie thinks he must have misread it. The item is identified only as a “delivery”; a date has been added in pencil: “12 January.” Less than two weeks from now. The baroness has paid for her order in advance. A letter is attached to the page by a pin, taciturn to the point of obscurity. It, too, makes refer
ence to a delivery and identifies the same date. “Tobacco Dock. The Haarlem (La Rochelle). Midnight. Pls collect in person & arrange for transport.” A Captain van Huysmans is undersigned.
As for the ledger’s income column, each figure in it is replicated in a separate column marked with a capital D. Charlie cannot make sense of this odd doubling until he chances on the notion that D must stand for “debt.” A name follows each sum in this column, always the same, always written out in full with such a show of fastidiousness that it takes on the flavour of obsession.
Spencer.
Spencer.
Spencer.
Spencer.
Spencer.
It is as though Lady Naylor does not want to allow herself to forget to whom she owes her money. The figure that is carried over from previous pages is already so large that the implication is clear. The Naylors must be bankrupt. For all intents and purposes the Spencers own them. Which is to say Julius owns them, the moment his grandfather dies. The man is said to be very old, and bedridden with gout.
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Charlie moves away from the ledger, continues drifting through the room. There are other mysteries. There is a desk, for instance, almost entirely covered with technical drawings. Many of them are rendered on dark blue paper of a peculiar texture. The drawings themselves are white. As Charlie tries to spread them out, a few tumble to the ground. He sees Livia wince at the noise; retrieves them, and immediately realises that he cannot reproduce their former order. The topmost shows a warren of long, intersecting alleyways: a system so complex and angular that it is difficult to picture a city built according to its principles. But perhaps the chart is showing a railway system, or an archaeological site. The only clue as to what Charlie is looking at is provided by a single word, printed in ornamental capitals along the drawing’s lower edge. A·S·C·H·E·N·S·T·E·D·T. Charlie has never heard of a place by that name. But he knows that Asche is German for ash, and Stedt very nearly the German word for city. A City of Ashes. The phrase conjures images of a thousand furnaces burning in the dark.