Birdkill

by Alexander McNabb

  Down at the Sloop, she stayed on diet Coke and left straight after eating, pleading tiredness at the end of a trying week. Archer was charming company, as always, and she found herself more at ease with her colleagues. He offered to walk her home but she demurred, her hand on his arm. ‘I’m whacked. I’ll be fine. But thanks Simon.’

  She resisted the urge to add a low, ‘Next time, perhaps.’

  Now she was alone and feeling unsettled, regretting her curiosity and yet committed to trying to find out more about what the hell went on over in what she had come to think of as the forbidden quarter. The teaching staff were all still in the pub and the accommodation block was still. At around ten, she changed her clothes for her dark blue hoodie and jogging pants and slipped out of the window. She stole down the fire escape, taking care not to let it clang with her movement. There was a camera on each corner of the staff car park and so she went wide, striking out across the gardens to find the inky woodland bounding the open ground. The moon was full, bathing the silent gardens in soft grey and making the shadows’ contrast heavier. Nearing the boundary between the school and the institute, she saw the glittering domes through the trees. She heard footsteps, the shuffle and whisper of children moving. Dark figures moved towards the domes. Robin craned to catch a better view of the three glass buildings, the black glass skin glittering in the moonlight.

  ‘Hi, Robyn.’

  She thought she’d had a heart attack. She whirled around to face Simon Archer’s puzzled expression, her knuckles in her mouth to stifle her urge to cry out. Fear turned to fury.

  ‘What the hell are you doing out here?’ She hissed.

  ‘I could ask you the same thing. I was walking back from the pub and thought I saw something in the woods. Why are you here?’

  She tried to think. ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

  He took her arm and led her, unresisting, back towards the dormitory block. They passed under the cameras, but it no longer seemed to matter. She shook him off.

  Archer was solicitous. ‘I understand you’re curious, it all does have a charming air of mystique about it, but you should really just go and speak to Lawrence rather than creeping around in the woods at night.’

  ‘It’s not that. I couldn’t sleep and wanted to get some fresh air.’

  ‘Are the dreams bothering you still?’

  How the hell did Archer know about the dreams? She baulked the temptation to flee, simply run away from him. ‘Dreams?’

  ‘You were crying out last night. I rang your doorbell. I was concerned something had happened.’

  ‘No, I’m fine.

  They reached the accommodation block. Archer had a downstairs apartment. He swiped them in. He stood by the staircase. ‘If you’re sure you’re alright.’

  She felt a tremendous weariness. ‘I’m sure I’ll live Simon.’ She hadn’t meant to sound bitter but it came out that way and it was as if she had slapped him.

  ‘Goodnight Robyn.’

  She trudged up the stairs to her room. She stood at the door searching her pockets. She didn’t have her card key. She searched again, stupidly somehow expecting it to materialise from thin air. She turned her back to the door, her eyes squeezed shut and her fists balled. Shit. Shit. Shit.

  The front door of the block was card operated. She couldn’t even get out to get up the fire escape. She slid down the door and sat, her head in her hands and her hair forming ribbons down to the burgundy carpet tiles.

  She couldn’t stay there for the night. Apart from anything else, she was on camera. She felt like a prisoner. Her only possible course of action was humiliating. The tears came out of nowhere, her throat burned as she gulped and sniffed, turning away from the camera end of the corridor to wipe her eyes. She hauled herself to her feet and went down to Archer’s apartment. She rang the door.

  He was wearing a dressing gown. ‘Hullo! Come to see my etchings?’

  ‘I forgot my card. I need to get out of the front door.’

  ‘Sorry, old thing, I don’t get you. How will you come back in?’

  ‘I came out down the fire escape.’

  ‘Oh, did you? My but you are an intrepid old bird, aren’t you? Hang on a sec.’

  He went back into his apartment and returned wearing sandals. He had a hairier chest than she’d thought. She followed him as he padded down the corridor. ‘There. Open sesame. You’ll be okay clambering up the fire escape, will you?’

  She wanted to tell him to fuck off, but she just said thank you instead. He stood watching her as she walked around the side of the building. She climbed back into her apartment and closed the window. She stood in the dark hating herself. Archer was bound to tell Hamilton. Let alone the testimony of the camera footage.

  Hamilton would think she’d gone nuts. She’d blown it beyond all shadow of a doubt.

  Maybe she was going nuts. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d feared her mind was shutting down on her entirely. She undressed and went into the bathroom to wash her hands and clean her teeth. It was cold. Shivering, she slid into bed and lay in the darkness. She’d looked back as she rounded the corner and Simon had been there in the glass of the atrium, framed by the lights in his white dressing gown. Waving.

  Mariam’s call came just as Robyn, sitting on the wide windowsill overlooking the gardens and basking in the midday sun, had decided on a trip into town.

  She had woken that morning after a dreamless sleep, refreshed and feeling optimistic, despite the last night’s disasters. She ran into Simon Archer after breakfast when she went down to reception to pick up a printout of her planning for the next week. His only reference to the whole incident had been to ask if she’d got back okay and slept well.

  Yes to both, thanks Simon. I’m just going mad, but nothing for you to worry your handsome wee head about.

  He was going into town later; did she maybe want to meet up for a coffee?

  She had waved the planning at him and smiled. A busy girl, Simon.

  Mariam’s voice on the phone was urgent. ‘Robyn, I need to come and see you.’

  ‘Sure, my diary’s free, funnily enough.’

  ‘No, not a social. I need to meet up with Hamilton and his people are blocking me.’

  ‘Hamilton? What do you want with him?’

  ‘I’ll explain later. Is he there?’

  ‘Yes, I saw him earlier. He seems to work most weekends. He goes to church Sundays.’

  ‘Great. I’ll be there by four.’

  ‘Are you staying over?’

  ‘I guess. Is that okay?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Robyn let the phone drop and picked up her car keys. She skipped down the stairs. She flicked her card at the sensor, a tinge of regret at last night’s performance. It was a fresh, blue-sky spring day, the clouds of the past few days had lifted. Over at the far end of the accommodation block were the heated outdoor swimming pool and the small but well-equipped gym. Robyn had been promising to herself to use both all week. Now something small and brown fluttered on the ground by the pool. She stepped towards it, drawn despite an urge to turn her back and go for the car. It threshed manically, a sparrow trying to fly, but slamming back into the tiled poolside every time it achieved the air.

  The cerulean water reflected the sky and glittered sunshine. It was filled with a huge shoal of goldfish. She stared, fascinated by the shimmering bodies twisting and intertwining. Their scales were iridescent, a dance of thousands of golden-orange darts in the pale blue waters, great helical swirls breaking apart and coalescing in a ballet of shimmering colour that held her and drew her in.

  The now-still sparrow forgotten, she stepped to the pool’s edge and marvelled at the glorious synchronicity of the teeming fish. They were so beautiful, seemed to be calling to her and inviting her to join their dance as they gleamed and dashed. Folding, splitting and rolling in scintillating plaits of flashing forms, they pulled her in.

  ‘Robyn! Robyn!’ The spell broke as she felt rough hands on her arms. Archer
pulled her back from the pool’s edge. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  She flickered in and out of consciousness, blinking and pressing her hand to her temple. She glanced beyond Archer at the tranquil, empty pool and, standing in the gardens at the far side of the water, the small, still figure of Martin Oakley.

  Mariam was shocked at Robyn’s appearance when she came down the stairs to open the front door of the accommodation wing with her card key. She was pale and her eyes red-rimmed. Mariam had never seen her seeming so frail. It was a sharp contrast to the confident, hopeful – if hungover - Robyn she had last seen in London.

  ‘Babe. What’s wrong?’

  ‘Come in. Just come in.’

  They walked upstairs and into Robyn’s apartment. Mariam noted the air of neglect and disarray. Robyn followed her gaze. ‘Sorry, not a good end to the week.’

  ‘You feel like talking about it?’

  Robyn stood in the middle of the living room. Her shoulders sagged as her face crumpled. ‘I think I’m going mad,’ she whispered.

  Mariam held her friend in her arms, tight, and hugged the tears out of her, rubbing her back and whispering ‘It’s okay,’ until the heaving sobs subsided. She had never known Robyn like this. When they’d first met at the trauma counselling group in London, Robyn had been withdrawn, perplexed and looking for some rock in the torrent of events her life had become since that black veil had been drawn over her memories in Zahlé. She had seemed weak and uncertain and yet Mariam had seen the strength in her, particularly when she was in a car. For some reason cars made Robyn come alive.

  Even Robyn’s family had turned their backs on her. When Mariam had met her in a café after the counselling session, the pale woman who had forgotten Lebanon was totally alone.

  Robyn had become estranged from her mother after she had returned. Pauline Shaw was herself grieving for the husband she’d lost to a sudden heart attack and didn’t have time for Robyn’s hurt. The blood pressure pills he was meant to have been taking turned up in a box under the spare bed when they had been cleaning up and consigning the remnants of his memory to black plastic bin bags. Robyn’s mum had gone into a decline, convinced if only she’d been a better wife, cleaned more thoroughly, she’d have found them earlier. Her search for absolution had come precisely when Robyn needed someone to be strong for her.

  Mariam had stepped in gladly. Project Robyn had helped her deal with her own demons and she had found joy in her quirky, terribly British friend. Robyn in turn thought of Mariam as exotic and complicated. ‘It’s not complicated,’ Mariam would tell her. ‘I’m just Lebanese.’

  She pulled back and ran her thumbs under Robyn’s eyes, wiping away the tears. ‘Let’s talk. Come and sit down here by the fireplace and start from the beginning.’

  Mariam listened as Robyn talked, at first hesitantly and then with increasing passion, to the point where she had to lean forward and touch Robyn’s knee, just to slow her down. She recounted the dreams, Martin and the visions and compulsions he was triggering, Hamilton’s crusty contempt and the way she was always being caught by the suave Archer doing things that would get her sectioned. She shared her fear at her tenuous and waning grip on reality.

  Robyn talked herself out, sat silently gazing at her clenched hands. Mariam leaned forwards and let her palms warm the reddened knuckles. ‘Robyn. Listen to me. You’re not going mad. You’re vulnerable and there are some strange things going on around you, but every one of them has a rational explanation and you mustn’t think it’s you that’s unhinged.’

  Robyn laughed bitterly. ‘Right. It’s all the other buggers is wrong.’

  ‘No, but there are a lot of lies being told around here and none of them by you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ The hazel brown eyes raised to meet Mariam’s gaze.

  ‘Lawrence Hamilton has been involved in experiments on children, adults, soldiers that aim to augment human potential. He’s running a sort of human GMO project, trying to make better humans. Only in the search for funding for his work he took on projects to make worse humans, too. That’s why I’m so keen to talk to him. He’s turned up in this whistleblower archive of mine, he’s the man at the core of it all. The whole failed military enhancement programme.’

  ‘Failed?’

  ‘Yes. It’s pretty perverse. They were too good at being bad. He created monsters out of men. Monsters so appalling our governments washed their hands of them. They did things so terrible under the influence of the drugs they were pumped with that when they straightened out a load of them killed themselves.’

  Robyn’s phone rang. Mariam jumped up and grabbed the handset, tossed it over to her. She answered, frowning. ‘But—’ she raised her hand, palm up in exasperation. ‘Fine. Certainly.’ She threw the handset down on the cushion.’

  ‘Spill.’

  ‘It’s Hamilton. He wants to see me immediately.’

  ‘Mind if I tag along?’

  Robyn shrugged. ‘Fuck it, why not?’

  ‘Attagirl. We’d best get you cleaned up and properly war painted.’

  NINE

  A Lesson in Keeping Secrets

  Robyn knocked on Hamilton’s study door, earning what she had dubbed his Muffled Exhortation to Orgasm. ‘Come.’

  She pushed the panelled door open, leaving it for Mariam to follow her. Hamilton was standing at his bookshelf, his back to them.

  ‘You wanted to see me.’

  ‘Ah, Ms Shaw. Heather tells me you have requested a friend, a journalist, stay with you tonight.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s quite out of the question.’ He turned, his half-rim glasses perched on the end of his nose, bowed over his book. He glanced up over them. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘I’m the journalist.’ Mariam grinned.

  Hamilton froze.

  ‘I wanted to ask you a few questions, actually. Your office in London has been less than helpful and nobody here wanted to put me through to you, either.’

  ‘I have nothing whatever to say to you.’

  ‘Is the programme here at the Hamilton Institute funded by the Department of Defence?’

  Hamilton closed his book with a snap and tore the glasses off. ‘I don’t care who you are, you can get out now.’ He dropped the book to his desk and waved the folded glasses at Mariam. ‘I won’t be bloody doorstepped, least of all by my own staff.’

  ‘I’m not on your staff. Do you regret the deaths of Ellen Wilson and Mavis Dillon?’

  ‘Get out. You hear me? Get out. You have no right here and your friend here is most certainly not legitimising your presence on this campus.’ Hamilton grabbed at his telephone. ‘Call security. There’s an intruder threatening me.’

  ‘I’m not threatening you, I’m asking you perfectly valid questions in the public interest.’

  ‘Fuck off. Just fuck off.’

  ‘That’s hardly a constructive response.’

  Robyn stepped forward. ‘You can’t do that to people.’

  ‘I can do what the fuck I like, young lady. And if you don’t like it, you can join her.’

  The study door burst open and two black-uniformed guards cannoned into the room. Mariam raised her hands. ‘You really want this on the record as your response?’

  ‘Escort this lady from the premises. She is intruding.’

  Robyn was furious. ‘If she goes, I go.’

  Mariam turned to Robyn, mouthed ‘No.’ at her as the security guards pinioned her arms and marched her out of the room. Robyn followed them into the reception, dragging at a guard’s arm. ‘Let her go. There’s no call for this, this is brutality.’

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ Archer was out of breath, framed gripping the reception doorway.

  ‘Hamilton just threw my friend off the campus and called these goons.’

  He took in the scene. ‘Oh shit.’ He waved the guards back. ‘Leave her go.’

  Archer darted into the study. The security guards stood off, unsure of how to
proceed.

  ‘Robyn!’ Mariam leaned into Robyn and hissed, ‘Listen to me, don’t walk out on my account, stay. I need someone here, on the inside. For Christ’s sake, just say sorry to him or whatever it takes. Do you hear me? Stick with it, at least for now.’

  Archer reappeared. ‘Okay, okay. Can we calm things down a little around here?’

  Mariam raised a cool eyebrow. ‘I’ve just been manhandled by your security and as you can see, I am perfectly calm. But I’m interested in the idea of an academic institution that roughs up journalists, let alone bars them from making social visits to members of staff. That’ll play nicely in the headline.’

  Archer paddled the air with his hands. ‘I can only apologise for Mr Hamilton’s error in judgement, Ms?’

  ‘Shadid. Mariam Shadid.’

  ‘Simon Archer.’ His smile was accompanied by the offer of his hand, palm up. Robyn admired the use of submissive body language. Mariam took his hand. ‘And I’m genuinely sorry for this.’ Archer turned to the guards, ‘Guys, thanks but you can stand down. I’ll take things from here.’

  The two men nodded and turned to leave. One halted at the door, looked back as if to say something but his colleague pulled at his shoulder and the door rattled to close behind them.

  ‘Right. First things first, I think I’d best come clean. We’ve had a security alert and brought in a new security provider. They’re clearly a little zealous, which is good generally but has obviously sent the wrong signal today. There’s been a threat made against the children by a left wing group opposed to what they call elitist education. Lawrence would clearly like to keep that out of the media and regrettably, he over-reacted when he heard you were a journalist. Of course you’re welcome to stay with Robyn, Ms Shadid. And I’d appreciate if you could keep our situation as a confidence for now.’