Cannonbridge

by Jonathan Barnes

  Neither of them know it but even as they discuss the Faircairn question, overhead and high above, a helicopter, black and of military design, keeps careful pace, shadowing their progress, its blades slicing savagely through the air.

  1853

  DEAN STREET SOHO

  AFTER KARL HAS fucked her that night—for there really is no other word to describe what they do in that hot, cramped little bedroom, an act seemingly devoid of tenderness or affection— he rolls over with an ursine snort of satisfaction and proceeds, rather clumsily in Jenny’s opinion, to feign sleep. She knows the sounds that he makes whilst unconscious too well to be fooled by the performance and, having let him snuffle and sigh for a few, embarrassing minutes, she jabs him once in the side of his sizable belly and says: “I know you’re awake.”

  The voice of her husband is hard and cold. “What of it?”

  “I wondered…”

  “Yes? I’m too tired to hold you, my dear.” Those last two words sound almost sardonic.

  “I wondered if you wished to talk awhile.”

  “Doubtful.”

  “To speak about what happened today… upon the heath.” For a while her husband says nothing at all and the silence is so protracted that she even begins to consider the possibility that he has truly fallen asleep. Then, two small words, oddly meek and puny. “I can’t.”

  There is also, she realises now, a strange, uncharacteristic moistness to his voice.

  “Karl?”

  No response.

  “Karl, my darling, are you… crying?”

  He rolls still further away from her, at the furthest reach of their not especially capacious marital couch, his great, blubbery body quivering as he tries, not wholly successfully, to stifle his sobs of furious despair.

  She does not persuade him to talk that night. Rather, he retreats into a childish truculence and she, growing at first frustrated and then melancholic, gives in to silence too and, eventually, a fitful sleep.

  When they wake in the morning, Karl is all false jollity and ersatz bonhomie as if the events of the previous day have been expunged. He busies himself with work and with children, deliberately creating no opportunity for significant conversation with his wife.

  In the evening, although Jenny implores him not to, he goes out alone, supposedly to meet three friends. He is evasive about his precise destination and the exact nature of the company that he intends to keep.

  Jenny waits for him, sitting upright in bed, a book before her open and unread. She falls asleep, however, before he returns and dreams of her childhood and of its golden promises.

  When she wakes she does so abruptly. There is a smell of whisky and sweat. Her husband is back, slumped beside her entirely naked, his fat white bulk seemingly propped up in the most ungainly fashion. He is breathing too heavily and Jenny’s first thought is that he has been injured in some way. It is dawn and the thin light makes the face of her lover look pouchy, pale and ill. He is staring ahead of him at nothing in particular, his jaw hanging slackly, a little incipient dribble gathering at the corners of his mouth.

  “Karl?”

  He does not turn to look at her nor even acknowledge her presence.

  “My darling?”

  His lips twitch drunkenly into something which is both sneer and smile. He sucks in a breath effortfully and asks, his voice ragged and tired: “Do you still want to know?”

  She does not doubt what it is to which he is referring. For a moment, she hesitates, so disquieting a vision has he become, and then, something shifting in her guts as she speaks, she says: “Of course…”

  She could scarcely simply have left it, of course, for it is not in her nature to ignore any difficulties in her marriage—rather they are to be faced down, discussed, dismantled piece by piece. And so, as usual, she has pressed the issue for as far as she can. On this occasion, it is a choice that she will come to regret—regret, in fact, for the whole of the rest of her life. If only it were possible, she will think over and over in the years to come, for sentences to be unspoken, for events rewritten, for the slate of memory to be wiped clean, then these words—the words of her husband, although he largely quotes another man—are the ones for whose erasure she longs more than any other.

  “He told me of the future,” Karl begins. “He spoke of what is to come. Of what is to come after humanity. And with such horrific detail that he is either a madman or a prophet or…”

  The big man’s speech tails away. Jenny does not encourage or cajole him to continue, knowing that by far the best thing now is to let him take his time, allow him to circle the truth before its unveiling.

  “Ah, it’s late and I’m old and I’m drunk.”

  She does not disagree with any of these assertions, but is only sagely patient.

  “Mad, then,” he murmurs. “Or a seer. Or, perhaps, my dear, just perhaps… Perhaps he has in some strange, impossible manner… been there.”

  Jenny touches his chin, the soft thicket of beard.

  “Tell me everything,” she says at last and Karl begins finally to unburden himself of what had truly been said to him upon the heath by the man with the glittering eyes, about the world which lies in wait for them, of what will be done in their name, of the failure of all their dreams and that for which they strive, of the triumph of money and power.

  “He must have seen it,” Jenny murmurs wretchedly when everything is said, when the dawn is come and they hear from close-by the querulous stirring of their children. “You’re right.” Her eyes are damp with tears. “Somehow, impossibly, he must have seen it all for himself.”

  NOW

  “ARE YOU SURE he’s coming?” Toby asks, resisting the urge to tap his fingers in irritation upon the tabletop and exerting a good deal of willpower to stop his right leg from moving restlessly to and fro in nervous excitation. He has a headache and a persistent sense of nausea. He also, to his surprise, feels an unfamiliar exhilaration.

  “I asked him to come,” says Gabriela, sitting opposite Dr Judd and toying idly with the straw in her cranberry juice, ice clinking as she does so. “And I asked him nicely. So he’ll be here.”

  Toby nods. His stomach growls. “It’s just that… if we stay in one place too long… I mean, won’t that make us easier to find? I don’t doubt that, despite everything, I’m still really recognisable.”

  “It’ll be fine,” she grins. “Promise.”

  Toby says nothing, quietened by her smile.

  It is dark now, and getting late. They have driven for hours, through the day and into the evening. The bar in which they are sitting, The Crofter, little more than a wooden shack, intended for holidaymakers and tricked out with stereotypical bric-a-brac and clichéd objets d’art, is already showing signs of winding down for the night.

  Besides Toby and Gabriela, there are only a handful of other customers, The Crofter’s usual clientele doubtless having being drawn at this time to the capital. There are one or two other couples, a family of four with two teenage children, resentful in their parents’ company, two weather-beaten women on some grim walking break and a man of some indeterminate age between, say, fifty and seventy, his face humourless and lined. Toby imagines that he must be the only local present. The sound system which has been playing the best of Paul McCartney for the past hour pauses for a moment, a lull between Live and Let Die and the Frog Song, and in the slightly eerie silence which follows, Toby is able to make out, for the first time, the sound of the sea, its ominous roar.

  “We could hardly be closer here,” the woman murmurs, as if in response to Toby’s unspoken thought.

  “Closer to what?” he asks.

  “To the edge of things.”

  At this remark, Toby believes that he sees something pass across the face of the local man—something like a flinch, of surprise, perhaps, or else of stifled triumph. Then the moment passes, the music returns (Listen To What The Man Said) and the fellow seems as stoical and unperturbed as before. There is a clang at the bar—
a handbell rung by a bored Ukrainian girl.

  “Last orders!” she shouts, with a hint of an accent.

  Toby is about to ask his companion if she’d like a refill of her cranberry juice whilst there’s still time when she says: “Ah. And here he is.”

  Toby looks and follows Gabriela’s gaze across the room.

  She seems, remarkably, almost to sigh. “Still looking good. He’s kept in shape.”

  A man, a stranger to Toby, though evidently not to his companion, has just walked into The Crofter.

  The man is in excess of six feet tall. His impressive musculature, developed beyond the capacity of all but the ardent gym-goer, is clearly visible through his thin t-shirt and tight trousers and he sports a square-tipped black beard of the type that is currently (and, in Toby’s opinion, inexplicably) fashionable. He is in his early thirties at most and carries himself with the unimpeachable confidence of the young, the fit and (Toby’s doleful speculation, this) the unusually well-endowed.

  “Nick!” Gabriela is on her feet, already in proximity to this man seeming quite different somehow, with a touch of colour in her cheeks and an odd, unfamiliar girlishness in her manner. “Over here!”

  The bearded man nods coolly and saunters over to their little table. He moves with the supple grace of one who is preternaturally confident of his physicality and who considers himself impervious. When he reaches them, Gabriela kisses him on both cheeks. “It’s good to see you,” she says.

  The man grins through his beard, something crackling between them. “Sarge,” he says, in mysterious greeting.

  Now she winks in reply. “Corporal.” Then, her tone more careful and diplomatic, she says: “Nick. This is my friend, Dr Judd. Toby, this is Nick. Formerly Corporal Nick Gillingham.”

  “Good to meet you.” The bearded man stretches out a hand, which Toby accepts. Expecting a real bone-cruncher of a handshake, he is surprised to find it warm and wholly without machismo.

  “Likewise,” says Toby in a voice which, nonetheless, comes out at a higher pitch than that which he had intended.

  The younger man’s gaze slides back to the lady, a transference of attention for which Judd can hardly blame him. Nick and Gabriela look at one another without speaking, doubtless remembering whatever history exists between them. Is it wrong, wonders Toby, to feel just a little jealousy at the sight of them? Probably, he concludes. He is, after all, a married man long since passed, where attractive women are concerned, into the realms of the invisible.

  At length, their silent communion done, all three take a seat and Gabriela, smiling now in Toby’s direction, says in explanation: “Nick and me were in the army together.”

  Both beam at him.

  The army, Toby thinks… The army?

  Various events start now to make more sense. As Toby remembers the security guard, laid out cold on the floor of the reception, Nick winks at the scholar in a way that may or may not be friendly.

  “Yeah,” Gillingham shrugs. “I was surprised to get your call. Pleased, yeah, but surprised too.”

  He’s trying to play it cool, Toby thinks, recognising, perhaps, some of the symptoms, but this man—this Corporal Gillingham— is excited, he’s thrilled, he’s happy as a sandboy.

  Caught up in the origin and usage of the phrase (from the earliest decades of the nineteenth century, referring to those male traders who sold sand to strew about the floors of inns and hostelries), Toby almost misses what Nick says next.

  “You mentioned a favour…”

  Gabriela corrects him. “A big favour.” It is impossible now to judge her tone as being anything other than transparently flirtatious.

  “Yep.”

  “Tell us, Nick,” Gabriela says, smiling, leaning forward. “What do you know about an island called Faircairn?”

  Gillingham takes an ostentatious breath. His beard quivers. “Private island,” he says. “People stay away.”

  “Yeah?” Gabriela says. “That’s its reputation?”

  The well-built man nods. “And there are a lot of strange rumours about that place. It was used for something during the war, I think. I’ve heard there are good reasons why no-one wants to go there now.”

  “Oh really? Well, here’s the thing, darling…”

  “Yes?”

  “I’d like you to get us onto that island.”

  Toby can hardly believe the sight of it so oddly does the expression sit upon the ex-soldier’s face but it seems clear to him that, at the speaking of these words, Corporal Nick Gillingham looks, all at once, and quite unmistakebly, afraid.

  1869

  33 BOLSOVER STREET MARYLEBONE

  MR WILKIE COLLINS is woken from dreams of dark water at the touch, by no means unwelcome, of his lover’s hand upon his shoulder and by the word, issued softly but with that stern insistence which betokens a matter of some severity: “Darling”.

  Wilkie stirs, groans, blinks and snuffles, the dream (or, perhaps, some conscious part of him considers, what might more properly be considered a nightmare) proving too stubborn a resident in his imagination.

  “Martha,” he murmurs. “What is it, my angel? For that matter, what time is it?”

  Unthinkingly, he allows a touch of querulousness to colour those last few syllables, an intonation that he at once regrets.

  “Shortly after six,” says Martha, who is dressed in a long grey night-gown which does nothing to disguise the large and pendulous swell of her pregnant belly. She leans forward, the motion causing her ripe flesh to press most fetchingly against the fabric and at the sight of it Wilkie feels a pang of affectionate, mildly transgressive desire.

  “Six?” he echoes. “My sweet, whatever is the matter?”

  “You’ve got a visitor.”

  Collins only gazes at her, moving groggily now towards full waking. “Well, who?” he asks after the silence has come to seem intolerable.

  “He is waiting for you,” Martha explains. “Waiting in the parlour.”

  “But who is it?” Wilkie asks, the querulousness having returned—forgivably he thinks given the earliness of the hour and the infuriating mystery of the woman’s manner.

  By the time that she has finished speaking the name of their uninvited guest, however, Wilkie is out of bed, dressing hurriedly and, all at once, horribly awake.

  HE IS A queer looking man, our Mr Collins—friends might have called him unconventional, the unenchanted simply grotesque. He is very short, little more than five feet, with a head that seems too large for his shoulders and a curious bulbous outcrop on his right temple. His arms seem too far stubby for his form and hang rather inadequately high up his sides.

  See too how he moves, bearded and bespectacled, clad now in a fawn-coloured dressing gown that is several sizes too large for him, stepping with clumsy-footed purpose out of the bedroom (Martha has been left waiting anxiously within), down the little stub of corridor and into the usually cosy front parlour, now made somehow sinister, peopled by shadows, in the pale, unfriendly light of early morning. His visitor stands in the centre of the room—a tall, dark-haired man, his back turned away, gazing, presumably, into the darkness at the edges of the chamber.

  Wilkie stops and, realising that he is perspiring, wipes his forehead with the back of his hand.

  “Charles?” he says.

  The visitor turns, to reveal that famous face.

  How white he looks, thinks Wilkie. How drawn and unrested and ill at ease.

  “Charles, whatever is it?”

  Mr Dickens, the Great Inimitable, sighs.

  “Forgive me,” he says, “my dear fellow, for this too early and unwarranted intrusion.”

  “Not at all. Not at all.”

  “Yet I fear that there was no-one else to whom I was at all able to turn.”

  “What has happened?” asks the little man. “You hardly seem yourself.”

  “It is necessary that we talk.”

  “About what, pray?”

  The older writer swallows hard a
nd Wilkie notices that he is sweating also, harder than he.

  “No,” says Dickens. “Not about what, my dear Wilkie. But rather—about whom?”

  A LITTLE LATER, over a pot of steaming Earl Grey, fortified more noticeably with brandy than might perhaps be considered proper in some less rackety household, as the light of new day creeps determinedly into the room, the two men are enacting the essentials of their, it has often been remarked, somewhat curious relationship. Mr Wilkie Collins is listening, with patient attentiveness, whilst the Great Inimitable holds forth.

  “Wilkie,” he says, and despite the familiarity of the scene and the comfort offered by the liquor, he still seems profoundly troubled and disquieted, pale, bloodshot, skin slick with sweat. “You are, I have always said so, amongst the very first rank of my friends and acquaintances.”

  Mr Collins, without making so much as a sound nonetheless contrives to convey the unmistakable impression that he is nothing less than immensely proud of this honour.

  “More than that. We are, after a fashion, relations. We are bound by ties of blood and marriage. I know that we’ve not seen a great deal of one another lately, not perhaps as once we did, but I have never sought to neglect you in even the slightest way. There is much that we have shared together. There lies a glorious history between us.” He allows himself a sad smile of theatrical collusion. “Much, eh, that our womenfolk should not care to know?”

  A nod, a crooked smile, a surreptitious glance towards the door to ensure that his mistress is not listening there.

  “Yet there are certain parts of my life of which I have never told you. Matters, in fact, which I have never discussed with any living soul.”

  A graver expression now, a resort to the teapot, a measured, pensive swig. “When… back now, oh some forty, forty-five, years ago. In the time of my childhood. When I spent that unhappy sojourn in the Blacking Factory…”

  Mr Dickens’ speech tails off after this and at last Wilkie speaks up, shifting rather awkwardly in his armchair as he does so. “You need not speak of it, you know. I understand that it forms for you something of a territory of pain.”