The Pursuit of William Abbey

by Claire North

  “Married…?”

  “Peadar. Don’t look like that. He’s loved me as long as he’s known me, and if you spend enough time in the presence of someone who loves you so much, and if you are a woman, travelling – you make a choice, don’t you? He’s a good man. He is absolutely sincere in his intention to take a bullet for me, and understands that I have my own ideas about what marriage means. He’s very intelligent, in his way. He appreciates the game.”

  “Congratulations, I suppose.”

  “You suppose nothing of the sort. It’s an arrangement. I’ll probably leave him, in a few years, once I’ve saved enough. You can’t fund a revolution on blackmail alone; sooner or later I’ll want to retire and leave them to it, and I’m thinking sooner. I’ve worked it all out; with the railway lines between San Francisco, Chicago and New York I can reside at one address for almost three months before I need to run. Three houses and a train ticket – that’s what I need. That’s long enough to build something, to make something real.”

  “I… don’t know what to say to that. I don’t know what I’m meant to say.”

  “You’ve spent too much time on the road; you’ve forgotten how to say anything for yourself.”

  “You know the truth of my heart. I don’t know yours.”

  “You’ve seen it before.”

  “Only twice, and one of those I ended up bleeding.”

  “But you saw enough to betray your masters.”

  “Yes. I did. But that… that doesn’t mean I did it for you.”

  The words stuck as soon as they came from my mouth, and again, I looked away, suddenly ashamed. What would Langa say, if he could speak now? What would Sibongile make of the use to which I had put the ghost of her son?

  “And is all this…” I gestured limply round the room, low ceiling and wood panels, reflected firelight and smothering snow through the glass, “a test? Neither of us is good at trust. Not when we could simply know.”

  She half shrugged, practised, meaningless, watching me in reflected firelight. “I suppose you could call it a test, if you like. Peadar has been itching for me to sit down with you, pick at your soul when your shadow is too far away to pick at mine. He thinks you’re double-crossing us. He can’t work out how, though. He can’t see what your angle is, is still trying to find a reason to put a bomb in your carriage. Does that upset you? Bombings – that upsets you. I see. Why?”

  “I’m a doctor.”

  “You think that sounds more righteous than saying you are a victim? Of course it does. A man of science must defend the truth of his method, rather than admit to a life lived, and the man it made him. The boy who died in Italy when the nitroglycerin blew; he didn’t die for you. Neither did Langa. They would have died anyway. The world killed them; all you did was play your part.”

  “That’s all anyone ever does,” I snapped, harder than I meant. “That’s all the butchers say.”

  Firelight in her eyes, something more in the turn of her head. “Do you think it will change? Your masters, this system they’ve built for their own benefit; do you think they will ever stop playing their great games, and look to their own streets? They are fantastically skilled in keeping us from rising up in our own name, making every beggar grateful for a scrap of bread, every poor man angry to see a beggar eat. They set raja on raja, union on union, brother on brother, and like the white men who killed a black boy at the boab tree, the only thing they fear is the moment the persecuted stop persecuting each other, and see. See the truth of where this oppression was truly born. Truth-speakers should be honest with each other. Do you ever think it will change?” I felt sick, and her shadow was near. “You don’t. Do you think we can make them change with blackmail and pamphlets? Honestly? You don’t. Well then, when all else is gone…”

  I stood quickly. “This isn’t fair. This isn’t… I have interrogated plenty of men, and pulled their secrets from their souls without their permission. It was not… ethical, it was not kind or righteous. Tear me apart if you want to; I won’t run. I understand how hard trust can be. Just don’t think you get to wrap yourself in a mantle of decency while you do it.”

  For a moment, she stared up, watching, wondering, balancing choices on an edge. Then she raised her hands, placating, gestured back towards the chair. “You’re right. I apologise. It is easy to forget sometimes that I… that we are more than the things other people use us for. The Society – there is a list. Of names, great men who do terrible things. They think they’re untouchable, and maybe they are, but the Society has its little black book too, of the ones they think need to die before the revolution comes. Does that shock you?”

  “No.”

  “Good. I think it’s ridiculous, but one day, they say – one day violence may be all that is left, watering the tree of liberty and all that nonsense. One day. Perhaps one day they’ll be right. Who knows who we will become? Please stay. I’ll say no more. I’m sorry. I… would like you to stay.”

  Slowly I sank back down into my seat, pressed hard to the back, legs crossed, arms folded, chin down, contemplating my own lap. Finally: “You know everything about me, and I know little about you. It is pure hypocrisy to ask you not to say it out loud. Much of what we are is hypocrisy, I understand that. The incredible contradictions that we must, need to hold in our hearts to be who we are, without going mad. It is a necessary game. Thank you for… for saying nothing more. For now.”

  She shrugged, drifted back into her seat, shuffled her furs a little tighter around her shoulders, watched me for a while. Then: “Who do you love, William Abbey?”

  I closed my eyes. “I have no idea.”

  “Then why do you run from Langa?”

  “I… care for people. Is that enough? Is that true?” Her lips thinned, and she didn’t answer, and I didn’t know. “Albert spends so much of his time researching, researching, today another legend, tomorrow a new sample, it’s a miracle he hasn’t cut open my skull to test the grey matter of my brain. And I ask him, ‘What if there is no one left who I love?’ and neither he nor I has an answer. Who will Langa kill if I no longer care? But there are people… Mrs Parr, the baron, even Albert, I suppose… a woman in India, there are… but I suppose at the end of the day I run because I cannot imagine a life without some sort of human connection, and if I ever stopped running it would be because there’s nothing worth living for any more. Does that answer your question?”

  “Yes. It does.”

  Something in the way she answered, an age in her voice I had not heard before, made me open my eyes, to find her leaning forward now, elbows on her knees, chin down and gaze up, on the edge of her seat. I licked my lips, mumbled, “Why do you run?”

  “I love Peadar,” she replied simply, and then in the same breath: “Actually, I don’t think I do. But he loves me and Doireann is near so often, and there are habits, always habits you see, you get into… but like you, it seems that standing still would be admitting something I’m not ready for. Not yet. Peadar doesn’t listen to me. Not really. All the blackmail, the truths, the knowing – of course that, yes. But that doesn’t matter, not really. The People’s Society don’t listen to a woman with an opinion. And then I tell him that I love him and he knows that’s a lie, but if he knows then I must know, and he doesn’t understand how I could possibly say it, not something so important. So I must love him after all. Otherwise I’d never be able to say it. He doesn’t understand why some lies come easy to some people and hard to others. He doesn’t know how to think any way other than the way he thinks. When I tell him that you won’t betray us, he doesn’t believe it. You’re going to be followed until the day you die, William Abbey.”

  “That’s hardly news.”

  “He means well. It’s useful for me to have a man to say the things I want said to other men. Makes things easier.”

  “I think Mrs Parr would agree with you there.”

  “The legendary Mrs Parr! How I would love to spend an hour sitting in her shadow.”

&nb
sp; “You would find her precisely as she seems to be.”

  “No one is ever that.”

  “I think perhaps she is. I think she has shaped herself to be exactly what she appears to be, even if once she was something else.”

  “A good trick, if you can do it.”

  “If you can.”

  We sat for a while in silence, as the logs spat and the snow fell. Then at last she said, “Your shadow is far away now, but you’ve spent time in my company while he was near. What did you see?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m curious. The people I am surrounded by shroud me in a near-mystical devotion. Cursed with ancient magic, coming good for the working man, as if the very nice clothes and very pretty jewels I buy for myself are just a necessary tithe, or I don’t enjoy ripping apart bombast. The men I rob see me as either a woman or a wallet; the Society see me as a frightening tool. Peadar is very brave, to try and make me love him. But you are the only other one of my kind I’ve met. What did you see?”

  “I saw your daughter. Doireann.”

  She nodded, slow and stiff. “That makes sense. What else?”

  “I saw how much you love the game. How much you love being adored, and important; tearing down great men is your greatest pleasure.”

  “I’d say that was fair. What else?”

  “I saw the men who wronged you; how easy it is to have everything taken away.”

  “You only have to have eyes to see that, not a shadow. What about the ones I love?”

  “What of them?”

  “Did you see them?”

  “No.”

  “Strange.”

  “Is it?”

  “Saira is strong in your heart.”

  “I… she is… please let’s not talk of her.”

  “But you saw no one in me?”

  “No.”

  She nodded again, leant back into her chair as if the strings that held her had been cut. “Would you sleep with me, William Abbey?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I know you find me attractive.”

  “That… is an unfair use of… that is hardly kind.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous; sometimes eyes are enough. Peadar knows. I pick up men here or there, just… because I can. Peadar knows. He has convinced himself that I do it so that we can never love each other fully. That way he might not die, when Doireann catches me. Therefore I love him more than if I hadn’t tried to hurt him. His truths are very complicated.”

  “Are yours?”

  A puff of air, a half-closing of her eyes, and suddenly she seemed tired. “I don’t know. Doireann never lets me see myself. I met a woman once who loved her husband with every fibre of her being, who blazed with pleasure at the sight of his face, the brush of his skin against hers. I thought I loved her for a while, behaved a little erratically in her presence, I will admit, but it was just her love I loved. The rare power of it. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and I nearly let Doireann catch me just to be close to it. But it wasn’t for me, not loving me. I kept on moving, and there have been some boys who have lusted after me, and I enjoy that, but they assume a connection, assume it’s something more, and I have to stop myself from saying, no, sweet thing. It’s just the situation we’re in. It’s not love. Perhaps Peadar would drop dead, and be very gratified at his dying, if Doireann caught me. The curse always finds a connection. I would have liked to know if anyone stood out to you.”

  “Only Doireann; only the dead.”

  She nodded into the fire, irises dark in reflected light, then puffed out a breath like a weary whale and grinned, false and brittle as cut glass. “Well. Hasn’t this been a delight?”

  I met her eyes, and wanted to look away, and found I couldn’t.

  Her head drifted to one side, contemplating.

  “Shall we be honest with each other, William Abbey?”

  “I don’t see that we have much of a choice.”

  “Nonsense. Everyone knows the truth, always. They know it with a great and fiery intensity, and keep on knowing it even when they have been proven wrong. To choose to be honest, really honest… that is a rare privilege. One of a few rare privileges we might share.”

  “I have no shadow, I don’t know if…”

  “You know precisely; please don’t be a fool. People know all the time, without being cursed.”

  “I do not consider this wise.”

  “And yet you have not left. Have you?”

  I managed to break her gaze, stare down at the floor. A sighing and a shifting of furs pulled my eyes back up, as, like a bear shaking itself free of a deep slumber, she sloughed off her layers of blanket, pushing them to the floor, and half rising to her feet, half leaning forward, put one hand on my knee, and the other on my chin.

  “Just one honest thing,” she whispered, as our lips met.

  That night we became lovers, and never spoke on the subject again.

  Chapter 44

  “You love her,” sighed Dr Abbey, and it took me a moment to realise that he was not addressing a memory or telling a story, but speaking to me. “You hated yourself for loving her. Your mother would be ashamed of you. You are disgusting, there is something wrong with you. That’s why you never talked to anyone about Matilda’s love, because you already knew what they would say, that you were broken on the inside. You hate that you are too weak to fix yourself – but it’s a lie. How can it possibly be weak to love someone? So here you are, Sister Ellis, stuck between love and death, unable to believe Matilda when she tells you that you are beautiful, because you know inside that you are hideous. They put that inside you. The whole world put that inside you, and now you can’t get it out of your head, you can’t—”

  “Stop,” I barked, louder than I’d meant. Then, quieter, fearful of the sleeping house: “Please. Stop now.”

  He stopped, and it was hard, a grunting, a half-turning-away. He pinched the soft flesh of his palm hard enough for the skin to turn red, then white, and closed his eyes around the pain, and managed to let out a shuddering breath before saying, “I’m sorry. He’s close now. That was… he’s getting close.”

  In the bed between us, drugged and broken, the half-man slept, nostrils flaring, a damp grumbling at the back of his throat sometimes rumbling up, then falling silent for so long I wondered if Richard Charlwood had stopped breathing. If he had, I would not move. There was nothing to be done.

  For a moment, glancing at the window, I thought the dawn was coming, but it was only the light of the battlefield. The wind had turned, carrying the sound of the cannon away from us, but if I closed my eyes and listened for the place between Charlwood’s breathing, there it was. Perhaps I would hear its echo until the day I died.

  “I’m going back to her,” I announced, and was surprised to hear myself saying it. “If she’ll have me. I’m going to go back to her.”

  “Yes. I believe you will.”

  “Are you going to run?”

  “No. Albert will be here soon. And if he doesn’t come, I’ll put the shadow on his son. They always loved each other. Either way, Albert dies.”

  “And everyone Charlwood has ever loved?”

  “Yes.”

  “I won’t let you.”

  “I know you’ll try to stop me. Though you are less resolved on what you’ll do should the father arrive. Interesting. Perhaps we are beginning to see the limits of your contradictions too, Sister Ellis; the lies you tell to be who you need to be.”

  I reached into my apron, and withdrew needle and bottle. As Abbey watched, I loaded the syringe to the brim, and perched, needle across my lap. “Enough morphine to kill a horse,” I snapped. “I’ll use it on you, and if I can’t get to you, I’ll use it on Charlwood. He can’t run; he can’t just… get on the next train. I will kill him before I let you curse him.”

  “All right.”

  “You believe me?”

  “I’d be a poor truth-speaker if I didn’t.”

  The r
elief of it hit me in a hot flood, along with a strange adulation. I was willing to kill to save a life; I hadn’t known if I could, but Dr Abbey believed me; perhaps I was a murderer after all.

  He shifted a little on his perch by the window, the light of battle flickering at his back. Was it a bit brighter, nearer? Was that the clunk of an engine on the road outside, the sound of voices raised in pain? I was so tired; just tired.

  Then he asked, “Since we appear to be at a stalemate, what shall we do now?”

  “How did you learn how to curse another poor bastard? The way you tell it, you didn’t know shit. How’d you learn how to spread your poison?”

  “Bitter experience.”

  “Seems right, for a bitter man.”

  “You have no idea what I’ve lost,” he snapped, a sudden fury rising to his face, a lurch in his spine. “Margot is…” Slammed his hands over his mouth before he could finish the sentence, swallowed it down, turned away, as though to digest his own vomit, keep down the truth before saying it out loud.

  “Dead? You might know the truth of people’s hearts, Dr Abbey, but you surely don’t know how to respect it. ‘I really enjoy Wagner. I never betrayed my friends.’ You tell lies to see if you can still lie, to test how far away your shadow is. I’ve listened to your… self-pitying confession. Sat here while you tried to work out what you actually think. Christ, you know what everyone else is thinking except yourself. ‘Shall we be honest’, Margot said – honestly dishonest, she meant. Lovers cos you both knew it was meaningless, lovers cos you both were incapable of love, easy sex, easy lies, knowing it was a lie made it so much easier, didn’t it? What did you do?”

  For a moment, he rolled between rage and shame like a coracle in the ocean. Shame won; it was obviously going to win. Didn’t need a shadow to see that. He slumped back, curled over like a crow, suddenly an old man.

  “I learnt a few hard lessons,” he replied. “Then I killed them.”

  Chapter 45