The Dark Isle

by Clare Carson

  Anna flashed the envelope in front of her face; she clocked the stamp, Ceskoslovensko beside a red and gold hammer and sickle flag. Sam imprinted the name and address in her memory.

  ‘Please, Anna. Put it back.’

  Stealing mosaic tiles from an ancient monument was bad enough, taking other people’s letters was too much. Anna cradled the envelope in her hand for a moment, and then she ran back and stuck it through the letterbox, returned to Sam.

  ‘There. Happy?’

  Sam’s eyes were brimming. She didn’t want Anna to see her tears. She was so hot and confused. She marched straight ahead. Anna caught up with her. Sam turned and glared and saw the dirty tracks down Anna’s cheeks. She had been crying too.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes, let’s go home.’

  *

  THEY SAT ON the back seat of the upper deck. Sam wasn’t going to mention the woman again, but Anna said, ‘She was one of Pierce’s contacts. I’m sure.’

  ‘Contact?’

  ‘Yes. You know.’ She was whispering. ‘Somebody who gives him information. Maybe she knows somebody Pierce is watching.’

  Sam gave her a doubtful glance, uncertain whether this was a game or whether Anna really believed what she was saying.

  ‘She’s definitely one of his contacts,’ Anna said and nodded, as if she was confirming this observation to herself, and smiled, but not in her usual megawatt sort of way.

  CHAPTER 9

  London, September 1989

  SHE WAS NERVOUS about seeing Anna again after all these years. The poll tax meeting was in the Crypt, Brixton. The last time she had been here was with Becky as well; 1987 and she had come down from Oxford to spend the weekend with her mate in London. There had been an all women’s night, and somebody had been playing the guitar and massacring ‘Only Women Bleed’ with great sincerity. They had got the giggles and had to leave and retreat to the Prince Albert on Coldharbour Lane for a shot or two. Were any of London’s churches actually used for worship these days? It wasn’t that she believed in God but she didn’t believe in mammon either and they were all being converted into offices or cafés or expensive flats, as far as she could tell. The steps were slippery, carpeted with soggy leaves. There was no light. Becky was acting aloof, keeping two steps ahead, making it clear that she didn’t want to be associated with Sam, she was merely tolerating her presence at the meeting. Sam stumbled, a pain jolting her leg, and almost decided to go home. An evening with a twisted ankle and a bunch of old Trots calling people comrade and boring everybody to death with their talk of neo-imperialism; hardly an enticing prospect, she thought as Becky disappeared. Apart from the possibility of seeing Anna.

  *

  A BURLY BOUNCER in a puffy green bomber jacket guarded the door. Something about his penguin feet shrieked copper. He gave her a once over and handed her a clipboard.

  ‘Name and address.’ She glanced at the list; Becky had written her real details. Seriously. She couldn’t believe it, she thought Becky was more sussed; hardly surprising that the spooks had been able to work out a connection between Anna, Becky and herself. Sam grabbed the pen and wrote Minnie Mouse, Dick Street SE1, handed the clipboard back. He gave her a dirty look. They huddled in the back row of the darkened room that reeked of smoke and corpses and she wondered whether the whole meeting was run by the secret state, a lure to flush out the revolutionaries. She was edgy. She shouldn’t have come here, drawing attention to herself in this shadowy underground meeting.

  ‘Will you stop acting like a toddler who needs the toilet?’

  Becky wasn’t bothering to hide her irritation, narked with her for tagging along. She attempted to control her nervous fidgeting, distracted herself by surveying her fellow conspirators. A clutch of chain smokers in anoraks huddled near the front. Misfits. Social no-hopers. The spooks and Militant members, she decided. The rows at the back were filled with people who looked more normal – like herself. Women, young people. Old people. Black and white. Locals. No sign of Anna. Sam was almost relieved; she’d done what she could, she should go now before the meeting started, leave Pierce to sort out his own problems. She nudged Becky. ‘I think I might go home.’

  Becky brushed Sam’s arm away. ‘Suit yourself.’ She wasn’t paying any attention, eyes glued on the woman who had emerged from a side door. Sam gawped too. More attractive than she had been when she was younger because her face was sharper, squarer. Arresting. Sam suppressed the urge to stand and wave her hand in the air, shout hello to her old mate, her blood sister. Anna. Hilary. Miranda.

  She stood at the front, next to a dome-headed man with a dark rim of hair and a pointed Lenin goatee.

  Anna spoke first. ‘Hello, my name is Hilary.’

  Her accent was the same – Sam was relieved she wasn’t doing a fake Cockney – but her voice was sombre. She reeled off a potted history of the poll tax – Thatcher this, class that. Blah blah blah. Sam glanced around the room again. Anna was holding people’s attention; an enchantress, even in this earnest reincarnation. Anna sat. Goatee beard stood and rambled on about smashing the state. Sam stared at Anna; she must have felt her eyes boring into her face, but she didn’t look her way. Sam nudged Becky.

  ‘Is that the Hilary you fancy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m sure she’s the girl I used to know.’

  Becky tutted. The Lenin lookalike churned on.

  ‘Yada, yada, yada, yawn.’ Becky folded her arms.

  The man in the green bomber jacket was puffing a fag in a corner and watching her. The straightforward personal mission to find her childhood friend and reunite her with her father seemed more complex in this damp crypt filled with spooks and cops and informers. She needed to be careful.

  Lenin’s speech came to an end. Anna stood.

  ‘OK, any suggestions? Comments?’

  A show of hands. Sam’s brain clunked, searching for a suitable question; not because she wanted to join in the discussion but because she wanted to make her presence known to Anna. Becky was leaning forward, elbow on knee, chin resting on hand, ogling Anna. Sam raised her hand. Anna failed to meet her eye and nodded instead at a man in an anorak. He rattled on about leafleting rotas. Other hands shot up; awareness raising. Non-registration. Non-payment. Sam gave up, retracted her hand. God, she’d forgotten how much she hated this kind of meeting. The length of time people spoke inversely related to the interest of anything they had to say. The discussion petered out. Heads nodded, seats shuffled. Anna announced the date and venue of the next bash. Sam had to move quickly. She stood, ignored Becky’s hand on her arm, squeezed along the row, working out her greeting as she went. She didn’t want to use Anna’s real name, not in public anyway. She reached the front of the room, a cluster of the committed gathering, and stood behind like a schoolgirl trying to attract the attention of the teacher. Anna ignored her, conversed with her followers. The gaggle thinned.

  ‘Hi.’

  Anna directed her large blues eyes at Sam’s face, smiled politely.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Sam was thrown by the blank.

  ‘I wanted to say hello. We know each other.’

  ‘Do we? Oh, I’m sorry, I’m not very good at remembering faces.’

  Liar. Anna remembered everything she wanted to remember. Sam played along.

  ‘We met when we were kids. You came to stay with my family in the summer of 1976. My name’s Sam.’

  Anna raised her eyebrows. ‘I’m sorry. I think you must have the wrong person.’ Her eyes flicked away, focused over her shoulder, registered interest, smiled the warm and generous smile Sam remembered. Sam spun around. Becky was standing behind her.

  ‘Hi Becky, nice to see you.’ Her voice instantly lifting from monotone to flirty.

  ‘Hi Hilary, lovely to see you too. That was a great discussion. You’re really good at public speaking,’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Yeah, you’re great.’

  ‘Thanks.’
/>
  Sam had a feeling of creeping invisibility. Insignificance. She coughed loudly. Anna’s eyes flicked in her direction, back to Becky.

  ‘I’m sorry I have to run. Are you coming next week?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Maybe we could go for a drink afterwards.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘It’s a date.’

  Becky flushed. In all the years Sam had known Becky, she had never seen her redden before. Anna marched away through the side door.

  ‘Well?’ Becky’s brown eyes gleamed.

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘Well, she’s not your old mate Anna.’

  Sam raised her hands in exasperation. ‘It is her.’

  ‘She didn’t recognize you.’

  ‘She did. She was pretending she didn’t.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The man in the shiny bomber approached. ‘Time to be leaving, ladies.’

  Ladies. Giveaway. Sam had to stifle a cynical tut. Honestly, couldn’t Her Majesty’s finest do a little better than that? Standards really were slipping since her father’s day.

  *

  THE STREET LAMP hummed, her bedroom sulphurous in its light. A car alarm blared. In the back bedroom, Becky snored. She was irritated with Becky for refusing to believe that the woman she fancied was Anna, not Hilary. She was irritated with Becky for fancying Anna full stop. Becky was her best mate. She didn’t want her trolling off with bloody Anna. She didn’t want to be the fucking gooseberry in an Anna–Becky lovefest. And she was annoyed by Anna’s total lack of recognition. It was painful to think she might not have left any lasting impression on Anna or, worse, Anna did remember her and was not interested in renewing their friendship. The idea stung more than she would have expected. Whatever the explanation, she should drop it. Operation Fisher King was not going according to plan and now was a good time to abort the mission. Leave Prospero and Miranda to work it out for themselves. She didn’t owe Pierce anything. Apart from three hundred quid. The estrangement between father and daughter was not her fault. Even if she suspected it might be Jim’s. She tutted, kicked the quilt away, sat on the edge of the mattress, head in hands wondering what to do. Leave it? Follow it up? So much for blood sisters.

  *

  SHE STOOD, WENT to the window; the sky leaden, the dawn twittering of birds broken by the overhead rumble of the first plane trekking to Heathrow. A track-suited man leaning against the cherry tree on the opposite side of the street flicked his fag butt across the pavement, a cascade of red sparks falling before it landed in the gutter. He glanced up, saw her watching and jogged away. A jogger, smoking? No way. Pierce had told her MI5 had been keeping an eye on the poll tax campaigners. The smoking jogger was a spook. Why was he tailing her? Because she had spoken to Anna? Or tried to speak to her, at least. She felt uneasy. She couldn’t read Anna, couldn’t understand why she had been blanked. A scritch, scritch below her feet distracted her. Mouse. Rat. There it was again. She examined the floorboard crack. A woodlouse skimmed the edge and flipped into the void. She had played woodlice racing with Anna in the Great North Wood above Dulwich, the day Jim took them both to visit his mate Harry at his allotment. Harry; perhaps he could help. He knew about Pierce, perhaps he would have some idea whether Anna was playing tricky games. She crossed to her desk, grabbed the Colman’s Mustard tin hiding behind the rusty Anglepoise, emptied the contents: a Yale key, a black-and-white photo of Harry and the back of Jim’s head, a scrap of paper with a number on it. She stuffed the paper in her pocket. She would use the phone box by the Vauxhall Tavern, see if she could meet him. The woodlouse emerged from the floorboard crack, antennae wavering. She left it alone, didn’t want to traumatize it further.

  CHAPTER 10

  London, July 1976

  YET ANOTHER SWELTERING Saturday, a couple of days after her Lewisham escapade with Anna. Sam had crept downstairs in the early-morning light because she was hungry but had stopped in the front room when she heard her parents arguing in the kitchen. She curled up in one of the dilapidated armchairs, tried to block the acrimonious exchange. Liz asking why Intelligence couldn’t look after the families of its officers, Jim saying it wasn’t straightforward and anyway Pierce was a... Liz had lost it before Jim had a chance to say what Pierce was, shouted the Force was just as fucking bad, expected her to be a welfare support service for their stupid secret missions. She slammed the door and left. Sam sauntered into the kitchen. Helen and Jess must have heard the argument too, because they came downstairs without speaking, divided the last of the Special K, chomped in silence. After they had cleared away their bowls Helen announced they were going to the King’s Road and wouldn’t be back until the evening. Anna appeared. Sam stuck some toast under the grill and was distracted by a fox running along the bottom of the garden carrying a plastic bag. Jim shouted at her because she let the toast burn. She mooched around the house all morning with Anna. Valerie drifted downstairs, lolled on the sofa, read a book then dozed. She hadn’t bothered to eat any breakfast and her skin was waxy. Sam couldn’t help thinking she looked like a corpse. At noon Jim announced he was going to see Harry at his allotment. He glanced at Valerie’s clammy face and said he would take Sam and Anna with him, give Valerie a rest.

  *

  JIM WAS IN a good mood, on an upswing because he was seeing Harry. He raced them up the path to the top of the hill. It was humid under the oaks of the Great North Wood. The earth was cracked and scaly, the dry clay puffed underfoot and the thick air smelled of petrol, barbecued meat and dog shit. The bottles in Jim’s haversack clinked, but he reached the clearing first despite his heavy load. She came second. Beating Anna didn’t give her any sense of satisfaction. Anna walked the last stretch and they stood together on the summit; the land falling away beneath them, the suburbs covered with a cloud of grey pollution. Jim gazed over south London and said god but it’s a cess pit. Then he told them that during the Great Plague, when south London really was an open sewer, people had sought refuge from the epidemic in the woods, and had lived on nuts and berries, but when the trees were stripped, thousands had died of starvation under these very oaks. He was sweating as he spoke. He wiped his forehead. Everybody had to die somewhere, he added, and the Great North Wood was as good a place as any to meet your maker. Anna caught her eye and she flushed. What was wrong with her bloody father? Why did he always tell these stories that ended in death and disaster? Pronouncing doom like some sozzled nutter. He didn’t notice her embarrassment, or if he did, he didn’t care. He pointed down the south slope of the hill to the allotments and the sleeping giant lying flat on his back by a water butt, face covered with a newspaper. ‘Lazy bloody bugger,’ he said. ‘Let’s surprise him.’

  They followed Jim as he zig-zagged downhill, dashing between the thirsty dahlias and wilting runner beans. He sprinted the last few yards and whipped the newspaper from Harry’s face before he had a chance to work out what was going on. Sam reached the allotment as Harry was sitting up and spluttering. Jim stood legs planted apart, arms folded, looking down at Harry, pleased with himself.

  ‘Caught you napping, you old lardy-arse,’ Jim said. ‘Thought they taught you to sleep with one eye open in Intelligence.’

  Harry had recently moved from the Force to some part of Intelligence, according to Liz, who had mentioned it with a shake of her head and a wave of her hand because she couldn’t be bothered, she said, to keep track of what was a state secret and what wasn’t.

  Harry said, ‘There’s nothing here worth keeping an eye on. It’s all dead already.’ His Welsh lilt added an extra note of melancholy to his doleful assessment. ‘Water restrictions.’

  ‘Can’t you use a watering can?’

  ‘They’ve turned the bloody stand pipe off.’

  He rose grumpily to his feet. He was huge, shovel hands and boxer’s nose. He looked like somebody you wouldn’t mess with but Sam had always liked him; he’d always been nice to her. He retrie
ved his newspaper from Jim with a quick swipe, rolled it, whacked Jim over the head. ‘To what do I owe this honour anyway?’

  Jim nodded at Anna. ‘This is Pierce’s daughter. Anna.’

  She smiled shyly, which annoyed Sam because if there was one thing Anna wasn’t, it was shy.

  ‘I can see the likeness.’ He paused. ‘Pierce.’ He gave Jim a meaningful look, harrumphed. Jim inclined his head, the slightest gesture. They had known each other so long they could communicate with these odd nods and grunts. Jim lifted the haversack off his back, fished inside, produced a black bottle. Guinness. He handed it to Harry then turned to Sam and Anna. ‘Why don’t you two go and play in the woods for a bit?’ He rummaged in his haversack again, produced two red and silver cans of Coca-Cola – the proper stuff, not a Tesco’s imitation. A bribe.

  They trudged through the allotments, retraced their path up the hill. Sam tugged the ring-pull, swigged, the tepid bubbles fizzed in her mouth. She didn’t mind being sent away, she was happy to hang out with Anna. Anna was more indignant. ‘They’re talking about my dad. I should know what they are saying.’

  Sam thought sometimes it was better not to know. She decided not to say what she thought. Instead she told Anna about Margaret Finch, the queen of the gypsies, who lived in the wood and died at the age of a hundred and nine, and had to be buried upright because she always sat in one position and they couldn’t straighten her corpse. Anna seemed to be interested in the story, which pleased Sam.

  ‘Who told you about her anyway?’

  ‘Jim.’

  ‘He’s always full of funny stories.’ Anna gave her a quizzical look. ‘Does it ever bother you that your dad tells so many stories?’

  ‘I like the story about the gypsy queen. And the Fisher King.’

  Anna dribbled a stone along the path, scuffed a dusty trail. Sam knew what Anna was getting at; she was asking about the secrecy, the fact that half the time they never knew where Jim was and they weren’t supposed to ask and even if they did he would reply with some sort of riddle. She had been told she wasn’t supposed to say anything about Jim’s work to anybody because it could be dangerous. Although she was never entirely sure what the danger was – the threat was vague, a dark cloud hanging. She hadn’t really thought before about whether she minded or not; it was the way it had always been with Jim. She only really thought about it when Liz got upset because Jim didn’t come home and she had nobody to call, or he did come home and he was edgy – looking over his shoulder, peering into crowds, drinking too much. Shouting. Aggressive. Now she was thinking about it, had somebody she could talk to, she realized it did bother her. She gulped another mouthful of warm Coke and swallowed the wrong way. The bubbles exploded, she spluttered, sprayed droplets on the ground, where they sat for a moment like diamonds in the dirt before they evaporated. ‘Doesn’t your dad tell stories too?’