Soot

by Dan Vyleta

  Again Eleanor breaks out in Smoke; again Miss Cooper sniffs her with displeasure.

  “Don’t bother swearing, I can smell it on you. God, how righteous you are! Your uncle’s little girl indeed. So what now, you will go on empty-handed? You know, if you ask nicely, you can still come with me—it’s not too late. We will cut you out of that ridiculous thing and find you a pretty new dress to wear. No?” For once Miss Cooper looks genuinely disgusted. “And here I was thinking I should leave you one little jar, so that at least you could live. But I can see it’s gone to your head. Being Jeanne d’Arc. You cannot wait for the fire and the stake.” Her gloved finger points up to the ship. “Do they know, Eleanor? Where you are leading them? Have you put it to their vote? Or are they just following because your Smoke makes a mighty stink.” She drops her hand, dismissing her guest. “And you think I am the villain here.”

   SUGAR

  [ 1 ]

  On Livingstone’s suggestion and with Livingstone’s help, the Angel of the North has shifted his throne to the hilltop. There he sits, the backrest turned into the wind, its decorations flapping against soft upholstery.

  Livingstone has given Timmy one of his guns, unloaded, and the Angel of the North spends much of the day taking a bead on things or simply sitting there, feet pulled up under his buttocks, admiring the revolver in his lap. Most of the children who make up his court have found it too exposed and windy up there, on the hillside, and so Timmy’s entourage has thinned out considerably. There is a tall, surly chap of twelve who kicks about the ancient, deflated remnants of a football; and a group of three girls that has found a flat patch of heath and is engaged in an endless game of rope skipping, with two of the girls swinging the rope and the third standing between them performing a complex series of one- and two-legged hops whenever it scythes towards her feet.

  Livingstone keeps a close eye on all of them; from habit, not because they represent any threat. In fact, he has insisted on moving up here for the sole purpose of watching. The view is magnificent. To the east he can see the whole of the lake: slate grey at dawn, the sliver of a fogged-up mirror; deep blue when the sun stands overhead at noon; purple-black in the fading light just before dark. Beyond the lake Livingstone can see a mile or two of the path that winds its way between the hilltops. It has been busy these past few days. More people keep arriving in the camp, both children and adults. Many climb the hillside upon first arrival, from curiosity or to beg blessing from the Angel. Livingstone’s presence quickly convinces them to descend again down to the lakeshore, where no doubt they are regaled with rumours about Charlie’s disappearance and dark mutterings against the smokeless monster living on the hill. There is unrest in the camp. Another day or two and there may be violence.

  [ 2 ]

  The monster and the Angel.

  Livingstone can see the adults puzzled by their fast alliance, and shocked by Timmy’s lack of worry over Charlie’s disappearance. The other children, too, did not seem particularly upset; Charlie has been known to wander. When the fat woman openly accused Livingstone of foul play, craning her neck around his frame to lock eyes with Timmy, the child simply looked displeased at all the shouting, stoppered his ears and turned away. In the past two days, he has breathed but a single little Gale. It appears that Livingstone has tamed him. It’s not just that the strange birds seem to like him as though they sense a kinship in his blood—though it is clear that Timmy is impressed by this and regards it as some sort of sign. There is something else. Livingstone has sugar. A whole box of it, large dark-brown lumps, spreading the smell of Caribbean cane. As it turns out, the Angel had never tasted sugar in his life. Not until Livingstone slipped him a nugget. Timmy took to it like a fish to water. Now he feeds out of old Livingstone’s hand.

  A shout goes up. Something has been found in the reeds at the far shore of the lake. Livingstone had expected it would be, sooner or later, though he’d hoped for more time. He raises the German-built binoculars that were hanging by a strap around his neck and studies the scene. The Negro is there and has waded into the water, as have some of the newcomers, and a crying child who stands submerged almost to her neck. Smoke is spreading, many-hued. It dances on the breeze. More people—children and adults, pilgrims—are racing towards the side of the lake.

  Livingstone tilts the binoculars, his gaze following this stream of people backwards, away from the lakeshore and back to the path, then farther back to where the path threads itself through the hills until it becomes hidden by their folds. There is a rumour, carried into camp by some of the newcomers, that Livia Naylor is headed for them; and another rumour that half of Minetowns is following hard at her heels. He considers this, imagines them spread out in a line, stretching from Cumbria back into the heart of their republic, like a trail of powder one can light.

  No, not one. Timmy.

  Livingstone’s Gale in a bottle.

  Livingstone swivels, finds the seashore to the north and west. The binoculars contract the miles of distance and spread beaches at his feet. He leaps into the water, starts scanning the horizon. And there it is. Dark and steaming, too large for a fishing boat, too far yet to make out the name. A cloud of birds surrounds it like a haze.

  Livingstone judges the distance and trajectory, follows it shoreward and finds the pier-bounded harbour that is its agreed-on destination. There have been no fresh instructions from the Keep. He did not expect any. Livingstone has sent the last of his pigeons, and Renfrew must have found a way to pass on his coordinates to the ship. Now that it is here, Livingstone knows exactly what to do.

  “Come,” he says to the child on the throne, holding out a lump of sugar to him. “Let’s go to the seaside. We will ride. I have tethered the horses down there.” He points to the west of the hill.

  Timmy hesitates. He does not like leaving his throne even for a moment; will get up only to relieve himself, then squat furtively, five steps away, his eyes fastened on his seat of rule.

  “Come,” says Livingstone again. “I am running out of sugar. But there’s a ship that’s bringing more.”

  Timmy rises, decided; stuffs the proffered lump into his mouth and swallows it whole in a few short seconds. Then he takes Livingstone’s hand with a natural trust that continues to startle the old servant. “Quick now!” he says, almost angrily, aware that there will be people coming up the hill very soon. Ten minutes later they are on horseback, Livingstone sitting behind Timmy, whose chunky frame was surprisingly heavy to lift into the saddle.

  By evening, they are on the coast and the ship is close enough to make out its cannons. Livingstone waves, then lifts Timmy out of the saddle; searches his saddlebags and pulls out what he needs.

  “Here,” he says, “you must put this on. That ship there brings the future. The Heart of the Smoke. And you must breathe on it when the time comes. Not here but in Minetowns. We will travel there and bring peace. Don’t be afraid now, it’s only a mask. Here, take another chunk of sugar; you can eat it while I strap it on.”

  Livingstone does up the last buckle, then steps back. The Angel of the North stands gagged, a leather Smoke mask strapped over face. He’s a weapon cocked and loaded, taking aim.

  Behind the goggles, his almond eyes look out in trust and boundless wonder.

  The first time they stage Charlie’s death, they do so as a simple monologue. In total darkness, an actor sits upon the stage. As the lights gently rise during the course of his speech, we find he is a ghost, white-sheeted, and staring out through eyeholes cut just large enough to frame his frightened, long-lashed stare. At the end of the monologue, he reaches down and finds a bucket stored under the chair; he raises it above his head and douses himself in blood.

  The audience grows angry and demands its money back.

  They try variations: a red-haired actor, wearing a white suit; a pig’s lung in the bucket, leaving vivid marks upon his shirt a
s he fishes it out and cradles it, then rips it into chunks of mottled meat that rain down between his fingers.

  They stage it wordless, as a pantomime; then have two actors do the motions while a third barks out Charlie’s monologue through a megaphone that changes his voice into that of a tin. They play it in wooden masks, like the Greeks are said to have done; then place an already murdered Charlie in the pond of reeds that served as his grave and have him tell his story quietly to the rotting carcass of a pike.

  In the end they change the script. They cut all the words and have Charlie beaten bloody with a claw hammer. His head bursts open like a pumpkin under Livingstone’s heavy swings, a fine effect, dependent on a prosthesis worn under the wig and careful lighting so as to hide the bulge.

  There are shrieks when they try this, and vomiting; abuse from the critics; complaints in the papers; threats and condemnation. But the next day the auditorium is full again, as it is the day after that and the day after that, until one begins to suspect that half the crowd just comes to watch poor Charlie’s head explode.

  Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a “beetle.” No one can look into anyone else’s box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle.

  If a lion could speak, we couldn’t understand him.

  —LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN, PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS

  Human beings fear nothing so much as being touched by something unknown.

  —ELIAS CANETTI, CROWDS AND POWER

   THE VIEW FROM ABOVE

  (Tableau)

  [ 1 ]

  Onstage, drawn in thick white chalk, the foreshortened outline of England. Distributed on this map are five actors, three of them moving very slowly towards the fourth and fifth, their steps slowed down, tiny and in rhythm, choreographed to coincide.

  To the southwest, her feet just outside the boundary line marking solid ground, stands Eleanor, recognisable by her harness, a pirate’s hat upon her brow. On a bright red string she pulls behind her a procession of toy boats made from wood and tin, gaily painted and strung out in a line, more rat’s tail than retinue. At least one of the boats has turned over and is being dragged upside down.

  East of her—which is to say stage right—an enormous crate strapped to his shoulders, walks a brown-skinned youth, Mowgli. He inches north wearing a leather cap and goggles; clutches the polished wooden wheel of a motorcar in one hand and, in the other, a large toddler’s rattle whose droning buzz is the only sound that frames the scene.

  North of him, there where the map narrows towards the neck that connects England to Scotland, halfway between east and west, walks Livia and, incarnate in her, Minetowns: a blond woman, petite, in rustic boots and aristocratic finery, holding a bucket of coal between her hands. She walks bent forward, as though into a wind, and her heavy boots leave clods of dirt in her wake.

  And west of her, high on the coast, at the precise point where the trajectory of the three others must converge, stands a child in a leather Smoke mask. The Lakes are visible in chalky outline just to the right of his feet. Cardboard wings are attached to his back, snow white and ludicrous. One of the child’s hands is raised, quite high, clutching the hand of someone much taller, though the figure itself is invisible to us.

  And close to him, as yet beyond the line that demarks solid land and kingdom—which is to say still drifting upon coastal waters—stands a rock, jet black and sculpted, more like a curled turd than a menhir, an ugly, towering thing. A soldier guards it, turbaned, a rifle in his hands, his regiment already written off in the accounting books of its owners. He, too, does not move from his spot. His only action is to lift his rifle, very slowly, and to take aim, first at Minetowns, then at Eleanor and retinue, then, briefly and disturbingly, at the masked head of the boy, which is close enough to him that barrel touches leather-covered skull.

  All this is quite unintelligible sitting close up in the stalls. Only up high, in the gods, where paupers stand pressed against a flimsy railing, does the map below unfold itself and geometry and geography become apparent. Thus, gods and paupers alone bear witness to the mincing plod of history: both hoot a little and are rowdy, impatient for what is soon to come.

  [ 2 ]

  It’s nonsense, that—a fantasy, a lie. If it were true, the rich would buy up the theatre and close it down.

   AT EYE-LEVEL

  (Sisters)

  [ 1 ]

  Polly sees them first. She is hanging up the washing. Cotton knickers are flapping at her in the breeze. Her shout alerts her sister, Margaret, and sees her running from the kitchen. Together they clamber up the shoulder of the hill to its steepest point, where it drops away to the sea. It is neither high nor steep enough to be called a cliff, but its view is nonetheless commanding and the wind fierce. It makes banners of their skirts.

  “More ships,” says Polly, though her sister can see that for herself. Then, brow furrowed, she adds: “These don’t carry soldiers.”

  “Fishing trawlers.”

  “Not that one. It looks more like a river barge. And those two are being rowed—they must be local.” Polly lets her eyes travel back to the ship at the front. “The only reason they are keeping up with the convoy is because the steamer up front is going so slow.”

  “What’s the flag they are flying?” asks her sister with screwed-up eyes. She has always been short-sighted. “Company again? Or the South?”

  “Neither. It looks handmade. A white figure on a red field.”

  Polly does not say that the figure looks like she is wearing a dress; nor that her chest is sheathed in something black, suggesting both armour and breasts.

  “Is it all right if I run down to the village, Maggie? Someone might know what is going on.”

  “We were going to fix the barn roof this afternoon.”

  “I can skip lunch and be back in an hour. Please, Maggie. I’m done with the washing and all.”

  “Run then. One hour. And don’t tell Mother. She does not like it when you go to the village alone.”

  [ 2 ]

  But it is more like three hours before Polly returns. By then, Mother is home, having inspected fields and livestock; her tall, sturdy figure is wedged into the narrow armchair, a cup of hot water warming her hands. Father has been gone for more than ten years now. He left during the Second Smoke; beguiled, says Mother, swept away by a Gale. Maggie says he ran off with another woman. Some of the villagers say he ran off with a man. It is their agreement to treat him as dead.

  By long tradition it is Margaret’s role to scold Polly. Mother conducts her, with looks and tilts of the head and twists of Smoke. Today, though, the accusations of tardiness and moral dissolution are perfunctory and overhasty. Maggie, too, wants to know. It bursts out of Polly soon enough: what Mrs. O’Shea said (“The Irish,” scoffs Mother. “Always full of tales”) and old Danny Jones; how the Stoney brothers, all three of them, have nicked their pa’s boat and have set off after, while the Barrow twins are following overland; and how Mrs. Prescott has declared it all the devil’s work and been dictating a sermon on the matter to their moonfaced vicar, twenty-two-year-old babe that he is.

  “So what is it then?” interrupts Margaret. “A revolt, a pilgrimage, a war?”

  Polly shrugs, flushes, cannot help smiling. “They say a girl is leading it. Your age, Maggie, imagine! She’s Renfrew’s secret daughter. They say he cut her heart out and replaced it with springs and cogs, so she does not need to sleep.”

  “Cut out her heart—will you listen to this nonsense? And where is she heading? Whose side is she on?”

  Polly shrugs once more. “Nobody knows.” Then, quietly, avoiding the gaze of Mother. “I want to go.”

  [ 3 ]

  She won’t be talked out of it. Polly can see that Margaret knows it; knew it from the moment she spelled out the thought
. Even so they stay up half the night, arguing. Mother is silent through all of it as though indifferent, holding her mug of now-cold water. All she says, late that night, as she rises to go to bed, is “Run off then. Just like your father did.”

  At dawn, Polly is packed to leave. She has a knapsack full of food and blankets, a change of underwear, and a pair of shearing scissors that she thinks of as a weapon. Margaret watches her stuff them topmost, where she can reach them quickly if she must, and returns to the cottage. A moment later she re-emerges with Father’s old rifle. In the early years, after the Second Smoke, it was all they had for protection against the violent gangs that then plagued the land.

  “Here. It’s loaded. And here are the shells we have left.”

  Margaret hands her four more cartridges and helps her strap the rifle to her back. This being accomplished, she lingers close, tugs at Polly’s knapsack straps, straightening them.

  “I, too, would go,” she says suddenly, speaking hurriedly. Then: “Someone has to stay with Mother.”

  “I know.”

  “Be careful, Polly.”

  Polly smiles. “I won’t be alone. There’ll be people. Lots of people.”

  “Where there are people, there is Smoke.”

  Margaret says it as a warning, but her own skin carries envy not fear. It stains Polly’s cheek when they kiss good-bye.

   AT EYE-LEVEL

  (Motorist)

  [ 1 ]

  It’s a stroke of luck in the end that nobody’s around. It’s a market day, you see, and there is a travelling fair that’s come to town. The only reason Loon’s not there himself is because he’s in disgrace and consequently barred from all outings. And after all, someone’s got to look after the farm. It’s Luke, actually; or Arseface, or Donkey, or “That daft naughty boy.” Not that he is crazy, or ugly, or stupid. Naughty, yes; stubborn, too. Freckled and short. There is not a prank in the world Loon has not considered, or played.