"What's the worst they can do? Slag me off to death?"
The three women laughed in unison, a horrible sound, jarring and jangling like a bad guitar chord.
"Gideon has spirit," said Urd.
"Gid does," said Verdande.
"A hero born," said Skuld.
"No, whoa, what?" I said. "Hero? Oh no. That's enough of that."
"Modest?"
"Or ignorant."
"Or in denial."
"Denial of his future path."
"Shall we show him, sisters?"
"Show him the course we have set for him?"
"The thread we have selected?"
"Ought we?"
"He has come. We ought."
"He wants truth."
"We shall give him truth."
They were talking so fast now, I was having trouble keeping up with which of them was saying what. The three-way rota of Urd then Verdande then Skuld had been abandoned. They were all speaking at once, or finishing one another's sentences, or doing alternate words, I wasn't sure which.
"It is the price."
"The price of truth."
"To be shown the truth of himself."
"A truth for a truth."
"Does he wish to see what is to be?"
"As if he has a choice."
"In our house."
"On our terms."
"He cannot refuse."
Then, like that, they were gone, whisking out of the room in a flourish of skirts. I looked at Odin.
"What the hell was all that — "
And suddenly they were back, wheeling a TV set. It was sitting on a rickety hostess trolley, with a VCR on the shelf beneath. The telly was vintage; fake wood veneer, bulbous screen, loads of knobs and buttons. Mid 'eighties at the latest. The VCR was much the same. A top-loader the size of a kitchen sink, with clunky lever switches you had to press hard.
"Once, we spun threads," said Urd. They were back to speaking in turn, thank God. That overlapping dialogue of theirs had been freaking me out.
"One for every mortal," said Verdande.
"But so effortful," said Skuld. "So laborious."
"A grey thread for the common man whose life is never to amount to much."
"Occasionally a colourful thread for the freeman or the farmer, he whose lot is to provide for others and set a good example."
"And rarely, very rarely, a golden thread, for the chieftain, the king, the hero…"
"The uncommon man."
"The exception."
"The great."
"But that was then, and this is now." Urd produced a videocassette. It gleamed brightly. It looked for all the world like an ordinary plastic-cased VHS tape that someone had spray-painted gold. I glimpsed my name scrawled on the stick-on strip on the side.
"This is yours, Gideon," she said. "This is you. Your past…" She handed the tape to Verdande.
"Your present," said Verdande, passing it on to Skuld.
"And your future," said Skuld, slotting it into the VCR.
The telly, like the fire, lacked a plug cable. Still it came on when Urd prodded the main button. Verdande manually selected a channel. Skuld pressed "Play" on the VCR. The machine's drive motor whined and churned.
"Sit back."
"Watch."
"It will be instructive."
Out of the corner of his mouth, Odin said, "I was afraid this might happen. Those who come to the Norns seeking knowledge must pay for it somehow. In your case, the cost is submission to a demonstration of their power. If you weren't a hero, or so unintimidated by them, they wouldn't feel the need to flaunt their superiority. The greater your destiny, the stronger your character, the more they must try to belittle you."
"With a video?" I muttered back. "A Blu-Ray disc, a forty-inch plasma display, now that would impress me. But this?"
"They have modernised."
"Hardly."
"Nonetheless, I urge you, don't watch. Or watch for as long as you can bear, but close your eyes and stop your ears when it becomes too much."
"It's pre-digital technology," I said. "There aren't even remote controls. I'm not worried."
The TV screen flickered into life. A wash of static. Then…
Twenty-five
There is a baby.
He gurgles.
He has a teddy. A woollen Rupert the Bear his nan knitted for him. It doesn't look much like the actual Rupert the Bear, but it had the yellow checked scarf and crude red jumper.
He loves that teddy. He sucks one ear so hard, it eventually comes off. Nan sews it back on, and the teddy is never quite the same from then on, but he still loves it.
There is a toddler.
He hates tinned rice pudding.
His mummy is feeding him some. He knows he is going to sick it up. He tries to tell her to stop spooning it into him because it's just going to come straight out again, all over her. He doesn't have the words. She doesn't stop. It does come out.
He never can stand rice pudding after that. Even the smell of it turns his stomach.
There is a little boy.
He has a bike.
It is a BMX, a Mongoose Supergoose with chrome frame and bright red everything else. He rides it over the pavements and through the underpasses and across the railway bridges. His father bought it for him second-hand and it's not in the best of nick, but still, it is the coolest bike ever. Then some neighbours kids steal it. He sees them riding it a few days later, popping wheelies and giving one another backsies. He goes up and challenges them. They punch him and tell him to f-word off. Then they set about smashing up the bike in front of him, in a slow, sadistically methodical manner.
He lies to his parents about his swollen lip, saying he tripped and fell over and did it on a kerb stone. Crying in bed that night, he vows to himself he will never be robbed from or bullied again.
There is a pre-teen at primary school.
He is tall for his age.
But not as tall as Mick McCulloch. Mick McCulloch is bigger than anyone, and knows it, and uses it. Mick picks on everybody in his year, and the year below, and even the year above. One day Mick makes the mistake of picking on the boy. He tries to trip him up in the school dining hall so that he'll drop his tray and people will laugh. He succeeds.
The boy stands straight up and starts whacking Mick in the face with the empty tray. And when the tray breaks, he uses his fists. And he won't stop, no matter how much Mick whimpers and begs. In the end a member of the catering staff pulls him off, and Mick is left sobbing in pain, bleeding, humiliated. But it's the boy who gets the bad reputation there after. No one dares hassle him. Everyone is a little scared of him. Even the teachers.
There is a teenager at secondary school.
He isn't doing well.
His parents are in the throes of getting divorced. It's ugly. The atmosphere at home is sour, like curdled milk. He is failing in his exams. He is having to go and see the headmistress in her office far too often and getting put on report and threatened with exclusion far too often. His teachers are at their wits' end. He is obviously not stupid. He just isn't bothering. And his behaviour is disruptive. The class comedian, he always has a smart answer ready, just not the right kind of smart.
He crashes and burns academically. Further education is not an option. Then the careers advisor suggests the armed forces.
There is a cadet.
He likes being a cadet.
He takes to basic training as though it were made for him. He doesn't mind officers yelling order at him all day long. He doesn't mind having to get out of bed at ridiculous hours, being made to go on full-kit runs for mile after slogging mile, the endless drilling, the live fire exercises, the sleep-depriving night manoeuvres, the petty breaches of conduct or dress code that earn absurdly disproportionate punishments, any of it.
He is away from home. He is being treated like an adult, like a person with value. He feels for the first time that he belongs somewhere.
There is a
private.
He experiences his first taste of real combat.
He is in former Yugoslavia, peacekeeping after the NATO bombardments, helping implement the Dayton Accord. His squad comes under fire from a band of Croat guerrillas in Turanj, a suburb of Karlovac. The contact doesn't last more than two minutes — a ferocious storm of being shot at, shooting back, everyone scurrying about yelling their heads off. Two minutes of pure, hellish chaos.
And yet, when it's over, he can't be more exhilarated. His heart is pounding. His entire body tingles as though electrified. He is alive. More than that, he feels alive.
There is a young man.
He is on leave.
He is jogging around the perimeter of Clapham Common. A girl comes jogging the other way. She is short, brunette, cocky-cute, with a marvellous bum which he stares at over his shoulder while he runs on, until he collides with a park bench, nearly unmanning himself. He continues on his way — sore, limping — hoping to encounter the girl again on the far side of the common, but she isn't there.
So he plans it like a military operation. He goes jogging at the exact same time the next day, and the day after that, following the same anticlockwise circuit the girl took. At last the strategy pays off. There she is. He pulls up alongside her. He says hi. Several hundred yards and some precision-targeted flirting later, he's acquired two objectives. One: her name, which is fancy and French-sounding, although she was born in Basildon. Two: her telephone number.
There is a man.
He is getting married.
He stands beside his bride at the civil ceremony in hired rooms above a pub. His head is still spinning and his tongue sandpaper-rough from the stag night to end all stag nights. The celebrant asks him to take this woman, Genevieve Amber d'Aulaire, as his lawful wedded wife and to pledge to share his life openly with her, promise to cherish and care for her, honour and support her, et cetera.
It isn't the hangover that makes him feel as though his legs are going to give way. It's nerves. He thought he knew what fear was, but not until this day, not truly, as he makes his vows before friends and family. Gen's smile keeps him going. She looks hopeful, honoured, happy as can be, and that is his anchor.
There is an expectant father.
He is by his wife's bedside in the maternity ward.
He is saying stuff as she screams, trying to comfort her, insisting that everything is going to be okay. The bones in his hand ache from the crushing grip she is exerting. Her birth agonies make his soul cringe. Why is the miracle of bringing new life into the world such prolonged bloody torment?
Then the baby is placed in his arms, swaddled in a soft white cotton blanket patterned with rabbits. A son. He has huge, watchful, impossibly careworn eyes. He is studying his father's face, scrutinising it, as if to ask, Are you going to look after me? All the new dad can do is promise that he will, even as his vision swims with joy and relief.
There is a corporal.
He is being discharged.
He has acquitted himself well, his superiors say. He has been an exemplary soldier, a credit to his regiment. His record is unblemished. He has given impeccable service to queen and country.
Well, if I'm so fucking big-balls wonderful, he wants to say, why are you kicking me out? But of course he knows why. Half deaf, with several ounces of his brain gone and a tin plate stapled to his skull, he is no use to them any more. He is a rifle no one makes ammunition for, an outmoded tank, an Operational Ration Pack, General Purpose that has passed its use-by date. He is excess to requirements. He is military surplus.
There is a prisoner.
He is serving out his sentence as meekly-mousily as he can.
He gets on with his cellmates, a fraudster and a rapist. The two of them don't much like each other but he plays the middle man and repeatedly defuses the tension between them. He is a dab hand at this, and they all have to remain on good terms, don't they? Cooped up together for hours on end, smelling one anothers' farts and BO, hearing the creak of one another's bedsprings as they wank themselves to sleep at night — they're in a confined space, under pressure, and the last thing anyone needs is a blazing row.
That skanky, red-eyed crackhead, though, he's a different story. The prize arsehole of B Wing. He keeps getting into everyone's faces. Aggression pulses off him. If you don't move out of his way, if you look at him funny, he can flare up, lash out. He doesn't care about himself. He just hates. It doesn't matter who you are, he hates you, although he has a penchant for the weak. Hates the weak most of all. He noses them out and goes for them, viciously. Somebody has to sort him. Somebody eventually does, and forfeits the chance of early parole because of it.
There is an ex-con.
He is an ex-husband.
He is on his way to becoming an ex-father too. He's barely allowed to see his son these days, only on very occasional, heavily supervised visits. His wife has taken up with another woman, and they are providing the stability and nurture the boy needs. Cody is happy living with Gen and Roz. It's far more secure and normal than before, when he was living with a father who drank too much, smoked too much weed, and came home time and again with a bruised face and bloodied knuckles and a sorry tale to tell.
For his own sake the ex-everything stays in touch with Cody, phoning, emailing, keeping tabs on his progress at school, remembering birthdays and such. For Cody's sake, however, he remains as hands-off as possible. The boy will do better if distanced from him. The less he sees of his train wreck of a dad, the less compromised his chances in life will be. Failure is contagious, although hopefully not genetic.
There is a man named Gid Coxall.
He is travelling in a car with a friend named Abortion.
They are heading north through the worst whiteout conditions the UK has ever known. Gid has nodded off in the passenger seat. Abortion steals a sideways glance at him, then produces his battered old rolling tin, the one he bought in Belize City, with the oh-so-subtle cannabis leaf design on it. He thumbs open the lid and starts to -
"Stop!"
Twenty-Six
Verdande paused the tape.
On the TV, the image froze in that flickery VHS way, wavering between consecutive frames. Abortion's hand fluttered up and down, placing a pinch of weed into one of his Bible page skins, then removing it, over and over. Just as he'd told me, he was steering the car with his knees. Stupid arse wasn't even looking at the road, concentrating on his rolling instead.
I stared at the screen, feeling shock. Anger. Incomprehension. All these things at once, and a kind of nausea too.
My life. I'd been watching my life on videotape, as though it were a rented movie. Me from the age of nought, through childhood and adulthood, right up to nearly now. All of the significant scenes, the meaningful moments, the narrative jumping from one to the next with a brief stutter of static in between. As if a film crew had been following me, making a biopic of Gid Coxall, and these were the highlights, the best bits cut together for the trailer. Every shot tidily composed. The lighting always right, the angle appropriate, the camera positioned to capture mood and feel. Some director had been toiling for thirty-odd years on this. Some Spielberg, some Cameron — no, I was flattering myself; some journeyman hack — had made it his life's goal to create Gid: The Movie. Without the star of the show even realising.
At the beginning I'd not understood what I was seeing. Then, as the truth dawned, I'd gone through denial, fuck-me-rigid astonishment, outrage, before finally settling on acute distress. I'd had enough. I couldn't bear to watch any more. Did I want to relive the car crash? See Abortion getting torn to pieces by those wolves again? No I damn well did not.
Verdande was smiling. All the Norns were smiling. Not nicely.
"Why stop here? We were just getting to the interesting part," Verdande said. "Urd has had her turn, with your past. We've reached my realm, the fulcrum, the present. Skuld comes next, and I'm sure she has many things to reveal to you. Many extraordinary things."
; "Why would I want to know my future?" I said numbly. "Bad enough to have to go through all the old stuff again."
"Why would any man want to know his future?" replied Skuld. "Because he is curious. Because he wishes to find out where he is going and be assured that it's the right direction."
"Mortals perceive their lives moment by moment," Verdande said. "They do not realise the course they are on as they travel it. They do not see how each decision they make is a crossroads on a long, winding journey."
"Except perhaps in hindsight," said Urd. "But even then, looking back, they may be aware only of a maelstrom of circumstance. It appears as if there is no design, just coincidence, random events, whims and missteps that have brought them to where they are today."
"To know your future," said Skuld, "is to appreciate how fixed and unavoidable your destiny is."
"Is and has always been," said Urd. "You will gain a greater acceptance of your life so far. You will know that what strike you as mistakes have all, in fact, been integral to your becoming…"
"…who you are," said Verdande.
"And who you are meant to be," said Skuld.
"But, look," I said, "I'm really not interested in what's going to happen next. That's assuming you can even show me."
"Oh, we can," Verdande said.
"If we can show you everything we already have…" said Urd.
"Then we can show you everything to come," said Skuld. "How can you doubt that, given what you have just seen?"
And of course, I didn't doubt it. Not for a second. These three weren't messing around. They weren't bluffing. That tape wasn't over. There was more on it. A lot more. Or maybe not a lot more. Which was one of the reasons I didn't want to take it any further. Who would want to know how many years they'd got left? When they were going to die, and how? Nobody. Nobody in their right mind.
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