They continue up the drive which is so deep with pebbles that walking is an effort, like a beach of shifting sands. When the house comes into view Fellows sees it is tall and made of cream-coloured stone; it has all its shutters closed but he notices smoke coming from the chimneys. The drive continues round the back of the building; the small discreet sign that points the way says Tradesmen and this is the route Leianna leads him. There is an equally spacious lawn and garden at the back of the house, lined with winter roses and tall conifers screening out the sounds from outside.
Leianna opens a black varnished wooden door at the back of the house and leads Fellows into a small, ill-lit corridor. She takes her coat off and shakes loose her hair; Fellows notices with surprise she is wearing her waitress uniform. In the dim light of the house it makes her look like a servant.
“It’s me!” she shouts into the gloom but there’s no response.
“Won’t the... won’t the owners hear?” Fellows says cautiously.
Leianna looks at him for a few seconds, then steps back across the threshold and into the drizzle outside. She beckons Fellows to do the same.
“They’re not around,” she says. “I thought you would have been told otherwise I’d have said already. The family who lived here, some posh buggers, they were on vacation when the quarantine was enforced. Just the two of them; couldn’t have children I guess. But anyway, they weren’t allowed back in. And with no one to pay their wages the servants soon stopped coming here too. And one of those servants joined us...”
“So they just gave you the keys? Isn’t that illegal?”
“You saw... The Guardia haven’t twigged. They thought you were a servant.” Leianna giggles slightly.
“But you’ve still got your job,” Fellows says. “Why do you need to join the protestors?”
“I have my reasons. I don’t want to have to explain it all to you if you can’t work it out.” Before Fellows can say anything else she quickly steps back across the threshold of the house.
“It’s me!” she shouts in exactly the same way as before. Again there is no reply. She looks at Fellows expectantly, the look of annoyance from her face gone. He steps inside.
Leianna leads him down the dark corridor, not speaking. In the silence he is aware of the bag he is carrying rustling as they walk. “Books,” he says apologetically, although she hadn’t asked. He is surprised when she gives a brief laugh at this.
She opens a door for him and leads him into a kitchen dominated by a large wooden table and two unlit stoves; it is a kitchen for people whose idea of entertaining is to feed upwards of twenty people. But it is quiet and spotless today, although Fellows sees there are two people present. One old man with sailors’ tattoos on his arms is sitting at the oak table reading a newspaper; Fellows sees it is an old one, from before the quarantine. The headline is about the threat of war in some far off place; Fellows had been passionately opposed to the war at the time, but now he finds he can barely remember the name of the country threatened. It’s probably all over now, he thinks, out there. His memories of the outside world are there but weakened, like atrophied muscles.
The other person in the room is a teenage girl who is methodically taking down canned goods from the shelves and reading the labels intently. Fellows looks to Leianna and is about to say something but she puts one finger to her lips to stop him.
She leads him from the kitchen and out into a large dining room lit by candles which drip wax onto the dark gleaming wooden sideboard, atop which a stuffed gull is frozen in a silent shriek. Each place at the central table is laid as if for a four-course meal. Every seat but one is occupied but no one is eating, there is no food. Each seated figure is reading something: books, magazines, catalogues. The one man who has risen from his seat is looking intently at framed maps on the walls; Fellows can’t quite comprehend their outlines in the flickering light but none of them seem to be of the quarantined city itself.
None of the people present even look up at Fellows and Leianna.
“Look, what is going on?” Fellows says, too loudly—the man perusing the maps on the walls looks up at them in disapproval. Fellows has spent too much of his life in libraries and quiet bookshops not to feel chastised. He drops his voice to a whisper. “Are they protestors? But what are they doing?” Despite the absurdity something about the room full of people reading makes him uneasy; he thinks of the pamphlet he took from the protestor in the heat and the quasi-mystical ways to end the quarantine it contained.
Leianna stands on tiptoes to whisper into his ear, and despite his confusion he can’t help but notice the intimacy of that, of her hand touching his waist to steady herself.
“I can’t explain. I don’t fully understand it myself. Jaques will explain. C’mon.”
Outside the dining room is the front door and the grand front entrance of the house, rather than the servants’ door they had used. There are plush carpets, paintings on the wall, and an imposing staircase leading up to a set of balconies circling the first floor. On every step of the staircase, two abreast, people are sat reading. Somewhat needlessly, because he hadn’t been about to speak, Leianna looks at him and puts her finger to her lips again. Then she takes his hand and leads him up the staircase past the people who are reading, who ignore them completely. Their frozen postures remind Fellows of the cormorants drying their wings on the abandoned ships in the harbour. He can’t help but glance at the book titles as he passes—The Famished Market; A Drop Of Ink; The Circle Sea—but none are any he recognises. At the top of the staircase they turn left and Leianna lets go of his hand, and gestures for him to go through into one of the first-floor rooms.
The sudden sound of voices is confusing, especially as they are talking over each other and Fellows cannot immediately identify a source. In front of him a man with expansive white hair sits at a bureau; the large window behind him gives a clear view of the Enclave houses and mansions and gardens, and the blue sky and sea in the background. The man’s eyes are closed and he appears to be trying to concentrate on what the voices are saying.
A man stands on each side of the room, both reciting from what appears to be a script in their hands. Both have the stocky build and uneven features of professional fighters. Their eyes are closed, as if trying to show they have memorised their lines.
“Am I being lifted up?” the man on Fellows’s left says.
“They’ll never be a perfect fit,” the man opposite says; Fellows can’t tell if it is meant to be in reply or not.
Leianna quietly shuts the door behind her and walks up to the man at the desk, who doesn’t open his eyes.
“Jaques?” she says quietly, and then again when he doesn’t stir.
The man looks at her like someone awakening from a dream; a particularly pleasant one perhaps for he does not look happy at the interruption.
“Jaques, this is Fellows,” Leianna says quickly. The man raises a languid eyebrow; “Fellows?” he says as if doubting it.
“The expected deliveries hadn’t got through,” one of the men says.
“Five petals,” the other says. Fellows has the crazy notion that if he snatches the pieces of paper from their hands they would be blank.
“Okay Fellows,” Jaques says. “And what can we do for you?”
“I want to find Boursier.”
Jaques stares at him for a few seconds, then claps his hands once. The men stop mid-sentence. “We’re in danger of going off script here,” he mutters, glancing at Leianna as he does so, who looks away. The room seems very quiet with the cessation of the voices and Fellows tells himself not to buckle and speak first.
“So, is he here or not?” he says eventually.
“No. He isn’t. But I can tell you where he is,” Jaques says.
“Okay, where?”
“Why do you want to find him? Do you even know this person?” Jaques adds, looking at Leianna. “How do we know he isn’t a spy?”
“Oh for heaven’s sake...” Fellows says. “I w
ant him to write me a story, okay?” He’s pleased that Jaques looks confused at this, even if what he has said is just the truth. He reminds himself that all this craziness will be worth it to rid himself of the damned ghost.
“And you’ll read this story when he’s written it?” Jaques says, slowly as if thinking something through.
“What? Of course I will, that’s the whole point! To change...” Fellows stops himself from speaking; his idea seems nonsense if he were to speak it aloud. The idea that stories can change reality.
“To change something. Yes.” Jaques says.
“Wait, what? You know..?”
Jaques waves a hand towards the door, back out to the house full of people reading.
“What do you think we’re trying to do?” he says.
~
Fellows allows the two men to pull him away from the door, his energy spent. His fist aches from hammering on the door which he hadn’t realised Leianna had locked behind him. His throat is raw from shouting. You crazy bastards, stop, you crazy crazy bastards...
The two men fling him down onto a sofa to the side of the bureau, from which Jaques hasn’t moved despite the commotion. Something about Jaques annoys him; to the manor born, he thinks. Most of the protestors in this house no doubt feel as out of place as he does, but he gets the impression Jaques feels right at home. I bet the Guardia didn’t challenge you coming up the drive, he thinks sourly, and I bet you didn’t scuttle round the back to servants’ door.
With a glance at Jaques as if for approval, Leianna sits next to Fellows. He turns to smile at her, wincing at the pain where he had been dragged away from the doorway as he does so.
“It’s okay,” she says softly.
He shakes his head, unsure if it is. He remembers the sick feeling of panic at Jaques’s words, at the idea that everyone reading in this crazed house was trying to twist what was real as much as he had by reading Boursier’s stories. He’d felt like if that were true then he could just be swept away, everything he’d thought a solid foundation shifting. But maybe he had overreacted. After all, the implication is they have been following this crazy path for some time. Maybe the idiots are doing nothing more than giving themselves eyestrain.
“Why?” he says without looking at Jaques. “Why?”
“My theory,” Jaques says, “our theory, is that the quarantine is as much mental as physical or political; that those of us inside the city are as responsible as those on the outside.”
“What nonsense!” Fellows says laughing. “The reports in the paper said it was enforced by agencies outside of...”
“Have they ever said why the quarantine was imposed on us?”
“Well, no.”
“Is there any disease? Any plague?”
“Depends if you believe the conspiracy theories,” Fellows shrugs. “The bodies dumped at night out at sea.” He doesn’t believe it himself; no one he knows has got sick or mysteriously vanished. But then who does he see with anything like regularity? Just Gregor and Georgia, really.
“We don’t believe in conspiracy theories,” Jaques says solemnly.
Fellows can’t help but laugh again. “But what, you believe that reading stories will help lift the quarantine? That stories can change things?” Saying it out loud, he ceases to believe it himself. The city must always have driven on the left, he must have been confused about there having been a heat-wave...
“We believe that reading of life outside the quarantine, of life before and after the quarantine, will help break the mental bonds that form the quarantine.”
“What crap,” Fellows says. “And besides, what’s so bad about the quarantine anyway?”
Leianna breathes out an exasperated sigh next to him; he feels her body stiffen before it slowly loosens again, as if she were forcing herself to relax. It’s only now he realises how close she has sat next to him on the sofa.
“Think it crap all you want,” Jaques says smoothly, “but I’m not giving you one hint of Boursier’s location unless you read something for us. Here, now.”
“What?”
“After all, you’ve come prepared,” Jaques says, having lost all pretence of being friendly. His tone of voice is that of a member of the gentry asking someone to do something that he could just order them to do anyway. He takes one of Boursier’s stories from the bag Fellows had brought with him. Jaques looks at the title and gives a snorting laugh. “Of course...” he says. He hands it to Fellows.
Spot The Diff...
“I’m not reading this,” Fellows says, looking away. But then if the whole thing is nonsense, if he is mistaken and reading is just reading why should he care? But then, if that is the case he doesn’t need to find Boursier anyway...
He is so confused by what he believes, feeling both afraid and sheepish at his fear, that he doesn’t know what to do. And in his indecision, when Leianna leans into him, lets her leg press against his, and says “please?” into his ear, it’s a tipping point that, while small, is enough.
He begins to read.
Spot The Difference by Boursier
“But they look the same Daddy!” Alicia said in frustration.
Stefan gestured towards the two pictures.
“Look closer.”
He was sat with the younger (by three minutes) of his two daughters at the dining table; two of the four seats were empty. Alexia could be heard on the swings outside. Stefan was trying to get Alicia to look at two black and white drawings that did at first glance seem identical; they showed a clown getting out of a clown-car even as it was still moving; one of the clown’s large shoes was about to step on the tail of a startled looked cat.
“They’re the same,” Alicia said, squirming in her seat.
He’d tried to get Alexia interested in the book too, but she’d just asked why they couldn’t have a cat, and he’d had to explain yet again that they didn’t actually own the bungalow in which they lived. That the Mackenzies had built on the grounds, hidden from the main house by a row of conifers that Stefan had had to plant himself. Of course when they’d built the new servants’ quarters (as Stefan couldn’t help but think of the bungalow) the Mackenzies hadn’t known what would happen to Alana. They’d been very good letting him and the girls stay on, despite the reduced hours Stefan could do in the garden. Very good; everyone said so. Stefan gritted his teeth.
“Look at the flower on his jacket...” he said.
“It’s squirting water!”
“Yes, but look how many petals it has. One, two, three, four, five, six. But over here...” He pointed to the left-hand picture.
“There’s... “ Alicia counted. “Five petals!”
“That’s right, so draw a ring around them on each side. That’s one difference we’ve found. There are nine others, can you see any?”
“No.”
The book was called Spot The Difference! Fifty Fun Puzzles! although already Stefan was doubting it had been a wise purchase. Alexia hadn’t even entertained the notion of looking at a book (he could hear a rusty squeak outside, every time she reached the height of a swing) and Alicia didn’t seem to be giving it her full attention.
“Just try darling, have another look.”
“Maybe Echo will be able to see some,” Alicia said.
“Maybe. Ask him.”
Before the accident, he and Alana had quarrelled over how harmful to her development Alicia’s imaginary friend might be. Stefan had thought ‘Echo’ nothing more than a half-conscious way for Alicia to distinguish herself from her twin sister now they were growing up, but Alana had not liked the idea of her daughter believing the products of her imagination to be real. Stefan had been an aspiring writer when he’d met Alana, but partly due to her indifferent attitude to anything fictional he’d let it slip.
“Echo says the cat’s collar,” Alicia said, breaking into his thoughts. She didn’t have any special way of talking to Echo, no waggling Redrum finger or rolled back eyes. She just paused for a few seconds, as if she real
ly were listening to someone. “He says it’s got different letters.”
Stefan blinked; quite right he saw—on the left picture the collar was marked GF and on the right MW. That had been the one difference he’d not yet spotted himself.
“Well done, Alicia,” he said.
“Well done, Echo,” Alicia said primly. “Also, Echo says in this one you can see the car’s back wheel but in this one you can’t. Look, Daddy.”
“That’s right,” he said, “seven more to go...”
He didn’t have to help Alicia as much as he’d thought he might; once she’d grasped the concept she (via Echo) quickly spotted the remaining differences. On the next page, as a reward for completing the puzzle, was a story about the clown: the driverless car crashed into the jelly factory so everyone got to eat jelly, including the cat whose tail remained mercifully untrodden on.
“Stories are good, aren’t they Daddy?” Alicia said.
“Yes,” he told her, “stories are very special, don’t forget that.”
“Stories are rubbish,” Alexia said from behind them, making him jump. “They don’t do anything.” He could only tell her apart from Alicia by the leaf in her hair and the scabs on her knees.
The next day it poured, which was good because it meant the Mackenzies were less likely to come across to ‘see how he was’, but bad because it meant Alexia was trapped inside the bungalow. She would have gone tramping out in the rain and mud if Stefan hadn’t forbidden it; a few weeks ago she’d disobeyed him and he’d had to call her name from the door like she was a cat he wanted to come home, just as the Mackenzies had walked by. They had given him a look, half sympathetic half condescending; a look of pity from one end of the social spectrum to the other. He’d been sterner than normal when Alexia had finally tramped in out of the drizzle.
The twins didn’t ever seem to play together, meaning Stefan had to direct his attention to two parts of the lounge simultaneously. At least it kept his mind from the disturbing news reports on TV that morning. But his heart sank when he looked away from Alexia to see Alicia, sat in front of a window framing a grey sky falling in on itself, playing with a toy carousel. Alexia’s favourite toy.
The Quarantined City Page 8