Force Majeure

by Daniel O'Mahoney

  ‘Do you have any idea what century we’re in, where the only way I can contact my employers on urgent business is by writing with pen and ink and hope that some half-naked savage will pass it on to the right person eventually?’

  The-Lady inspected Kay’s blue, exposed limbs and pointedly said nothing.

  Most importantly, don’t let them make you angry.

  The tribunal resumed, informally. Flower-of-the-Lady had put away her papers and sat perched on the edge of the desk with the winglike folds of her dress spilling down her legs until it reached the naked points of her feet. Esteban returned to his seat, rubbing warmth from his palms into the backs of his hands. The third chair still held Luis’ formidable Sumo-bulk. He hadn’t moved in Kay’s absence.

  She and Esteban had returned through a side tunnel, giving her little impression of the house façade in close-up. As with her first journey here from Azure’s room, she had been taken through rough wood passages where the building’s electrical nerves and pipe arteries were fully exposed. There were few windows, which disorientated Kay so that occasionally she felt she was walking in circles inside an impossibly deep labyrinth. Esteban, like Azure before him, picked his way easily ahead of her with the confidence of a native-born.

  ‘It’s possible,’ Esteban ventured, after clearing his throat and receiving a nod from the-Lady, ‘that Prospero might still show up on the radar. I could make further enquiries.’

  ‘That would be helpful.’ Kay’s frustration subsided into calculation. It would be possible to leave Candida. No, it would not be possible. Retreat would be a sign of weakness and the disappointing capstone of her career. She’d never return, and Prospero would be taken from her.

  She had not been seated. She sank onto the chair, supplication, and looked to the-Lady.

  ‘What are your terms?’ she asked.

  ‘You have to work,’ was the simple reply.

  ‘Work.’ She hummed.

  ‘In the house. You would be paid in cash – enough for your material needs – and in trust. We also provide food and lodging, and I expect you might end up in the kitchen and the refectory from time to time.’

  ‘I could do with a permanent assistant,’ Luis rumbled, the first time she had heard him speak, and he sounded tempered and mellow, as Father Christmas would, as Santa Claus.

  ‘No, not permanent, though I can see her working here as-and-when. Kay, I think, should experience a spectrum of activities.’

  ‘What work do you have in mind? I’m good at Maths. Maths and Stats.’

  ‘Not useful.’

  ‘What’s your line of business?’

  Flower-of-the-Lady slipped off the desk and strode around Kay’s chair, a brusque inspection. She was shorter than Kay but seemed to loom.

  ‘You’re too old to be introduced to our Mystery, too old and not supple enough, not by half. You know your mind, Good-at-Maths-Girl, and you’d object.’

  She glided behind the chair. Kay expected a hand on her shoulder or the nape of her neck and flinched automatically, but Flower-of-the-Lady completed her pass without touching her and returned to her seat on the desk. ‘A house this size needs servants. We’ll try you at various tasks and maybe we’ll find something that suits you snugly.’

  ‘Menial work?’ she said. ‘Drudgery.’

  ‘You don’t like the idea?’

  ‘Obviously not.’ Kay found herself looking to Esteban, who squirmed out of his chair and paced to the nearest bookshelf, away from the intimidating women. Finding brief courage, he swung round, his jacket tails flapping dramatically, and Kay knew this was all she was going to get from him; a gesture, a dashing moment, nothing.

  ‘As an officer of the city,’ he wavered, ‘it’s my duty to find the right place for her.’ Bolder then, or at least less meek: ‘She’s my guest as much as yours.’

  ‘And can you think of a better place?’ the-Lady taunted. He couldn’t even be bothered to shake his head. ‘There we are then,’ she finished. ‘The simplest solution for us all.’

  The lowest common denominator.

  The-Lady took a cigarette from a case on the desk and lit it with the same deliberation she’d marked her paperwork. It was calculated, but also the closest thing to a foible she’d shown Kay. The smoke wafted across the library and tasted sweeter than tobacco, more like a cloud of drifting pollen.

  ‘Technically,’ Luis growled – his tone was genial and he didn’t move from his perch – ‘I shouldn’t let you do that in here.’

  The-Lady breathed out, a lungful of fine white smoke seething from her nostrils, curling from the edge of her mouth. The ridged skin on the back of her hands looked tougher than her smooth face and feet. She stubbed the cigarette out, casually. Her fingernails were curled points.

  ‘You don’t want to do this, do you Kay? I’ve been watching you. I see the way you move your eyes, like you’re looking for a concealed exit, a way out of this, but I’m afraid you are stuck. You can’t appeal to any greater power. This house is ancient. It’s the cornerstone of the city. Even Captain Esteban – and that reminds me, I have been hearing a great deal about damage to a bicycle, and we must have words about that – even the Captain is here only on sufferance.’

  You can take this. Think of it as a test. Think of it as a necessary sacrifice, spent in sweat.

  ‘Three months,’ Kay said.

  ‘I'm sorry?’

  ‘I’ll stay here three months, or until Prospero raises his head or some other alternative presents itself. If not, I’ll leave Candida for good.’

  Flower-of-the-Lady stared at her with lizard eyes for a good minute before nodding brusquely. Kay, hanging heavily with depression and defeat, made a reasonable face and nodded back. The-Lady swooped down laughing and kissed her dryly on the mouth.

  Deal done. She could cope. What’s Appeared can’t be Disappeared.

  The chatelaine pressed her mouth to Kay’s ear and whispered, in a language that was not English, not Spanish, not Portuguese, not any she’d heard before, but the meaning of which was still perfectly clear. ‘Welcome,’ she said, through the gift of the gab, ‘to the house of dragons.’

  ‘Why don’t you cry?’

  Azure had offered to make tea, and this time Kay had accepted, but she left it to sit on the table and grow cold. Watching the steam rise from the saucer-lip was a bleak comfort. It was the heat escaping from her life. If Azure was annoyed at seeing her effort go to waste, she wasn’t showing it.

  ‘Why don’t you scream? Why don’t you make some noise? You’re obviously pissed off. So bloody well show it.’

  Azure was also naked except for a pair of knee-length orange socks that padded furiously on the floor as she paced back and forth. The palpable sight and scent of her body was just another reason for Kay to keep up her numbed façade, just another assault on her senses.

  Don’t let anything through the defences.

  Azure had a pallid, skinny body, her ribcage visible below her stunted round breasts. There were, to Kay’s surprise, no tattoos, no piercings, no unnatural markings at all. She’d been in bed when Kay had returned from her meeting, but had risen in concern when her guest had sunk into a monkey squat at the table, looking, Azure had said untactfully, ghastly.

  She didn’t want it to show.

  ‘I’m not going to say hard work never did anyone any harm,’ Azure went on, ‘because that’s bollocks. You’re not happy. Throw a bloody tantrum. Spit and kick and scream and punch and let it out. I can take it. It’s not good bottling up your shit. It seeps into your blood. It’s a poison.’

  ‘I’m not bottling up anything. Not,’ she paused, ‘my shit. Not a thing.’

  The shutters were open, letting in warmer air as the sun crept into afternoon.

  Azure sat opposite her and took her hands. ‘You can stay here
if you like. You could do with a friend.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She tried to put feeling into that; she hadn’t forgotten.

  ‘I bring home strays from time to time; that won’t be a problem?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re a stray. You’re an Appeared, et moi aussi. We’re all strays, the lot of us. One day the whole world will wake up in Candida.’

  ‘There’ll be some nasty shocks that day.’ That sounded rude, and she couldn’t bring herself to let it go by, not to Azure, who was blameless in all this. ‘I mean, it’s not very big.’

  ‘There’s more to it than you might think.’

  ‘I have a servant back home. Don’t look at me like I’m a slave-owner; I don’t mean Upstairs Downstairs, I mean someone who comes into town twice a week to clean. Twice a week. Shit, I’m here three months.’

  ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself; it’s not attractive.’ Azure reached out to brush loose hairs from Kay’s face. Her fingertips were wet, bike-oily, leaving a tingling, odourless mark on Kay’s cheek. ‘Scream, don’t whinge. Yes? No? That tea’s gone off.’

  ‘I didn’t feel like it.’

  ‘Can I get you anything else? They’ll come for you when you’re ready, you know.’

  ‘Do you have pen and paper? I need to write letters.’

  Azure lounged on her bed, watched Kay write and made no move to dress. (‘I’m on strike,’ she said boldly, ‘till they bring me Esteban’s dick on a toasting fork. They agree it’s a fair demand.’) Kay in turn felt none of her usual anxiety at being watched at work. The first letter, written in a cramped, professional hand, was to her contact in Buenos Aires, apprising him of the situation. The second, looser, was to Her Better Half, promising to stay in touch as best she could. There were no envelopes, so she folded the finished sheets into oblongs and sealed them with dripped candle wax.

  ‘I’ll make sure they’re passed on to someone reliable,’ Azure promised, and placed them in folds of her carapace-coat, which hung on the back of her door. She clasped Kay’s hand. ‘Good luck,’ she said.

  Don’t trust to luck. Luck is the last resort. Luck teeters on the edge of the abyss.

  Presently Kay was led through grey corridors to a wardrobe where she exchanged her top and shorts for the house’s domestic uniform, a mauve tabard and belt worn over a black vest and leggings. Her supervisor, an elderly Buddha who spoke no English, pulled her hair back with a metal band that clamped like a vice onto her skull. She felt branded. In an anteroom beyond the wardrobe, other women of various ages sat and smoked and chattered and gambled, all dressed in the same plain, crumpled tabards like debauched page boys. No heads turned as Kay entered; her presence was accepted, unremarkable. The chatter was not English and she didn’t attempt to strike up conversation.

  Bells like distant angel chimes tinkled behind her; she turned and saw Quint beckoning from a doorway. It was the tug of an invisible leash, and Kay found herself trotting reluctantly into the corridors. Her new underclothes rubbed coarsely against the soft flesh on the back of her legs and around her shoulders. She wouldn’t scratch. She wouldn’t let it distract her.

  ‘What’s this place about?’ she called. ‘What’s the big mystery?’

  Quint span on her heels and blocked the narrow passageway. ‘Luna is an Appeared, like you, but I was born here. Do you know what you are? You’re a scene-shifter. You get to handle the props. You don’t perform. Lucky in some ways, unlucky in so many others.’ She farted, louder than she spoke, then waved a dismissive hand and plunged down the corridor, with Kay running curiously and obediently to heel.

  ‘It’s a theatre?’

  ‘Think of us as a school. Think of us as a body of students. Or nurses, nurses are good too, but we’re not a proper hospital. Sophia and Shekhina, we’re dealers in knowledge. Hence Mystery. Stop!’ She raised a warning palm and Kay slammed to a relieved halt. They’d come to the right door, and Quint reached easily for the correct key from her belt to unlock it. ‘Through here. Use your eyes. Take your time. I’ll see you on the other side.’

  Kay hesitated. Quint shoved. Kay fell through the door into darkness and as she caught her breath, the door thumped gently to behind her and the sound of a lock tightening followed. Her headband ached in sympathy. Stretched out before her, into the black, was a passage marked evenly with windows, each glowing with hard light from inner rooms. Kay set off carefully, picking her way through the darkness and stopping at each glass in turn to consider the view.

  The passage brought her out onto the mezzanine at the front of the old free house and, as she stepped blinking into the light, she knew that if she were to turn to the right and pull back her head sharply enough to break her neck, she might just see Azure’s balcony higher up the façade. She didn’t try. Quint had beaten her to the end, as promised, and slouched relaxed with her back to her, gazing down at the bridge carrying human traffic to and from the city. Quint had bare, muscular legs, visible through stretched layers of lace.

  Hearing Kay’s harsh, unnerved breaths, she turned. Her painted face showed a random constellation of stars, the brightest splashed in purple over her eye. Quint-the-Jester was gone for the present. She spoke with her full voice, at room-volume.

  ‘There are very few locked doors in the house of dragons, but many closed ones. They’re closed for a reason. You need to be careful of who you might disturb. Did you see the Mystery?’

  Through the glass I saw rutting human bodies in all conceivable combinations.

  ‘This is a knocking-shop,’ she said, flatly.

  ‘Do you have to go for the most sordid description? This is a school.’

  ‘I feel sick.’

  ‘Never been in a brothel before? For sure, I’m disappointed. Luna will be disappointed.’

  Don’t.

  ‘And I’m supposed to clean up after you?’

  ‘Oh all the spunk and shit and spent condoms, oh yes. Or you might end up on the perimeter, trying to stop the city boys breaking in before their time. They don’t get anywhere, but they’re persistent sods. Or in the kitchens, where we do food not sex, which is the next level down. Or in the library, where we do words not sex, which is the next level up. Whatever turns you on, you’ll be amazed what you can do with a vacuum cleaner.’

  ‘You’re a whore.’

  ‘And Luna. Sex-warriors. Look at my fingernails’ – she held them out, they were red and unmarked – ‘filthy because I went back-stage where I shouldn’t go. I have to wear masks. You don’t. Think on that.’

  ‘And Azure, is she a whore?’

  Quint cocked her head, trying to place the name. ‘No. She’s a voladora-to-be. She’s the biggest Mystery; no, I lie, the second biggest. She’s becoming a bird.’

  Kay had more questions. They waited unspoken, and instead she joined Quint in leaning over the parapet, gazing down at the people tracking back and forth across the bridge, the whores and the punters, the scholars and the supplicants, the tricksters and their tricks. Aiming her head away from the passers-by as best she could, she vomited violently into the moat.

  Quint let out a sigh and patted her gently on the back until she stopped retching.

  I am no longer in command of my life.

  The first three weeks weren’t the worst. She hoped fervently that they would be and that she would come to accept it, but Kay didn’t grow accustomed to the drudgery of putting on the tabard, never got any better at the tasks she was set, failed to conquer her distaste at the Mystery of the house. The walls whispered of heartless copulation. The baroque front-stage chambers and bedrooms were misted with a perfume that made her gag. She stumbled occasionally into compromising scenes; after a while, they became preferable to those she conjured up when she closed her eyes.

  ‘You’re a prude,’ Azure joked, pouring tea one evening.

  ‘I�
��m not a prude,’ Kay retorted. ‘It’s culture shock. It’s everywhere, and I don’t want to drown in it. It’s like living in the Internet.’ She realised she’d spoken for at least a second too long to sound plausible, and fell silent before Azure’s thin-lipped smile.

  Azure did indeed bring strays home, on her own time, and for those nights Kay decided to sleep in the bath tub and, on one occasion, the passageway.

  No, these weren’t her worst weeks in Candida. They were the simplest. Prospero remained a lingering possibility out of reach, and there was no reply to her letters. Even Esteban seemed to have forgotten her, though Azure’s bike remained unrepaired and its rider took out her frequent moments of frustration on the walls. Kay’s undetailed silhouette-portrait filled day-by-day with red chalk, coming slowly into focus. Nine times out of ten she got to bed in the evening exhausted and incapable of thought. Nine times out of ten she woke aching and unwilling to rise, and there was no sign of the gargoyle-dragon who’d watched over her on her first night. She found she understood more of the local languages and dialects as time passed, which surprised her. Most of the other servants were from outside the city, not Appeared but locals from the nomadic mountain tribes, and they held together in their own knots. They were mostly women. Kay had no quarrels with them but made no friends.

  At least once a week, she was sent up the long, winding stair to the roof to ring the house-bell, which spoke with the sacred authority of any monastery chant. In the rare altitude, her head ballooned, and too readily she imagined herself teetering on the brink. She imagined Candida spreading out in impossible directions from the base of the house to cover the whole world. Wild purple flowers grew on the inhospitable outcrop round the bell, and she decided to pick one each time, wearing it for the rest of the day as a symbol of good luck, of not falling, of clinging on.

  There was one other friend besides Azure. On her first afternoon cleaning the library, blind Father Christmas ambushed her, taking dustpan and brush from her hands. He was nowhere near as tall as her. He was squat. Unlike most people his height, he didn’t trouble to look her in the eye – why should he? – but directed his deep, jovial voice just below her throat.