‘Don’t.’
‘What’s going on?’ he said. ‘I’m starting to sweat.’ He dabbed his forehead with his sleeve.
‘I need your help, Tif. It’s really important.’
‘Of course,’ he said, straightening his face. ‘What is it?’
His stove was hot behind my calves. ‘I can’t go to the mansion myself—don’t ask me why, just trust me.’
‘All right.’ Some hesitation in his voice. ‘All right.’
‘I need you to go and get Mac for me. Tell her if she’s got anything to give me, then she’d better bring it now.’
‘You seem a bit panicked. Is everything OK?’
‘Please, Tif. Please just do what I ask.’
‘All right, but I’m—’ He stopped himself. ‘What about Q? Should I bring him, too?’
‘Yes. If he’s there.’
‘Where else would he be?’
‘Just get him, Tif.’
‘OK, OK, I’ll put my shoes on.’ And he rushed to retrieve them from under his bed and clumsily tied up the laces. With one hand on the door latch, he turned. ‘Do you need me to run? Because, honestly, I might not make it up there in this shape.’
‘I don’t care. Just go as quickly as you can.’
‘Well, anything above third gear might flatten me.’ He smiled. ‘Listen, I don’t need to know what’s going on exactly, or whatever that thing is you’ve got there—’ He gestured at the bagged-up canvas strapped to my back. ‘But please swear this isn’t going to land me in any bother.’
‘You’re going to be fine,’ I said. ‘It’s not you they have a problem with.’
A bouncing nod. ‘You’re like that pretty girl at school who made me steal things from the tuck shop.’
‘I don’t have time for memory lane now, Tif.’
‘Just an observation. Want this closed behind me?’
‘Yes. Go. Bring them.’
There was a rush of sunlight as the door opened and shut. Through the gap in the blind, I watched Pettifer head up the slope and trundle out of sight. He gave a cheery whistle of a tune I did not know. Then I was alone again, inside the partial darkness of his lodging. The place was dogged by small noises: the tick-tack-tick of the water pipes somewhere in the walls, the crackle of the coals in the stove, the restless yattering of the songbirds in the forest, the gulls and the crows on the roof. I could not relax. My fingers twitched. My spine was tensed like a cable. I needed to sit down but I did not want to have to take the canvas off my back, so I paced around in little circuits.
Up on the wall were masonry sketches and designs for quaint fenestrations. Tweed blazers hung on a rack near Tif’s bedside and his plan chest was dotted with trinkets. The model ship he had built was all painted and varnished, and stood now inside a glass dome on his plan chest—I thought that some huge insect had settled on it, but in fact there was a fracture in the glass that Tif had crossed with sticking plasters. I lifted off the cover to get a closer look. The model was so expertly built that it would probably have floated, but the one word was drab and sloppily applied. Wens of varnish cloyed to all its joints, drips had hardened on the stern. It looked like something a man had assembled and a child had been allowed to decorate. As I put it back, the wooden stand collapsed and a piece of it fell down, landing in the partly open drawer by my ankles. Bending to get it, I noticed the drawer was crammed with drafting paper, tattered at the edges, and could not help but pull the top sheet out, expecting to find an elevation or a floor plan, part of some visionary design for a cathedral. But no. It was more like an artist’s rendering. A carpeted room with a sweeping tiled shelf and ornamented pillars, skinny pencilled women lying frontwise on towels, bathing at a font. I recognised the room at once. The label said: CALDARIUM (PRELIMINARY). I rifled through the plan chest, searching all the drawings, but the same image repeated through them: varying drafts with tiny details changed, or inked in slightly different hues. Caldarium after caldarium after caldarium after—
I tore the last of them in half and balled it up inside my fist. And, rattled now, unthinking, I opened the grate of the stove and threw it on the flames. I was not satisfied with that. The drawers were full of them. I scrunched as many of the drawings as I could gather and fed them all into the fire, jamming them in, smoke thickening around me, glutting the room. The stove could not contain it all. My throat was dry and scorched. I had to run outside to get some air, feeling the closure of my lungs. And, stooping into the sunshine with great reefs of smoke draining out from the doorway, I saw Quickman, Mac, and Pettifer coming back along the slope. When they saw the fumes, they came jogging down and nearly skidded off the path. Mac rushed to me, saying, ‘Are you all right? What happened?’ But Pettifer went straight by me, calling: ‘Christ almighty, Knell, what have you done? You fucking lunatic.’ I turned to see the stove grate open and flecks of singed grey paper dancing in the room like dust motes. He was grabbing at his hair. ‘Is that—oh, for Christ’s sake, everything. She’s burned everything. That’s years—years of my life! You mad fucking woman! What did I ever do to you?’ His face was flushed so red I thought that he might choke.
‘Calm down,’ Q said. ‘There’s a few over here. They’re fine, look. All isn’t lost.’ He was lifting sheets of paper from the floor, from the chairs, from wherever they had landed.
‘Don’t tell me to calm down! She gets me to fetch you, I come back to this.’ Tif was pacing between the walls. ‘I will—I’ll bloody kill her.’
MacKinney grabbed my arm. ‘What the hell’s got into you?’
I did not answer. I flung off her arm and went back in.
‘Knell,’ she said. ‘Knell.’
I dragged the suitcase from the bed.
Quickman stared at me, talking very fast: ‘Don’t do it. Don’t leave like this. It’s not going to fix anything.’ He stepped forward with an arm out, trying to take my case. ‘Tif’ll be fine. Won’t you, Tif? We’ll be fine. If we all stick together, we’ll be fine.’ I let him get a little closer. ‘All right, now, come on. Sit down. We’ll clear up this mess now, OK? It’s going to be fine. I promise you.’
But I bolted.
‘Shit,’ Quickman said. ‘She’s not listening.’
Mac tried to block me as I came through the door, but she had no conviction—she backed against the cinderblocks as though afraid of being burned, and reached out for my shoulder, grabbing my canvas. The strap tightened on my throat for an instant, and then she lost her grip. ‘Knell—please! My letter!’ I stopped, turning on the slope, the ground giving under me, sliding. She came quickly to me, lifting up a square of paper in surrender. I held out my hand for it, splinters of sunlight in my eyes. ‘Whatever you do from this point on, keep going,’ she said, pressing it into my palm. No disappointment in her voice. Approval. Good wishes. I pushed it into my pocket. ‘Do not stop again, you hear me?’ she said. ‘If you’ve got to get out of here, then run and don’t look back.’ So I did.
I sprinted up the slope, the canvas roll smacking my legs, the suitcase light but awkward. Leaping over tree roots, I made it to the path, and did not turn, did not even wave goodbye to Mac or anyone, just ran as hard as I could go, the pebbles spitting out from under me. The blur of the boy’s lodging waned to my left, the mansion reared up to my right. I kept going, aiming for the woods beyond my studio, and then to the escarpment. But, coming round the east side of the mansion, I saw Ardak hastening towards me with a fire extinguisher. I looked back over my shoulder and the smoke was dark above the trees. When Ardak noticed me, he paused, nearly tripping. He was caught between two emergencies. I went flailing on, already out of breath. He swivelled like a weathervane as I sped by, and then I heard him shouting after me in Turkish. ‘Dur! Hey! Nereye gidiyorsun!’ And, glancing back, I saw him coming after me, the extinguisher toppling on the grass. I did not stop but I was slowing. ‘Hey! Dur!’ The case was dragging on the draught. Now Ender was hurtling across the lawn to my right and I could not see another way that I
would make it. So I let the case go. It went tumbling in my wake, and, suddenly, I had some impetus. ‘Dur! Hey! Dur!’ I went past my studio, past another and another, and through the fringe of the pines, Ender and Ardak still in pursuit. The scrub nicked my hands and ankles. The trees narrowed and spread, and I kept looking for the notches I had made in them, but I was too starved of breath to see straight and my strides were all so jarring. If I held to this course I was sure that I would end up by the mushroom patch, but that would be too far—I needed to bear east before I reached the clearing.
The old man was gaining ground. I could not separate my own noises from his. The woods rustled with footfalls, cracking branches, panting tongues. I could not feel my body. It was just a moving husk. And then somebody stepped in front of me from nowhere, and I clattered hard into his chest, skittling him backwards. I fell onto him, rolling, my knees in his ribs. He grabbed for my boot, but I slipped away.
I was bruised and winded, scratched and muddied. I did not glance back. The trees started thinning. I could smell the sea. It loomed in my view. And I came to the edge of the ridge at some pace, just managing to halt, with dirt and shingle and pine cones spilling forwards and down.
It was not a sheer drop. The steep beginnings levelled out into a beach of rocks, washed by the Marmara. I had nowhere else to go. There was down or there was backwards. ‘Dur!’ Ardak was behind me. Ender, too. Their faces were glossed with so much sweat. Shirts torn and bloodied. The old man had no shoes on. He was holding one in each hand. ‘Where can you go?’ he said, gasping for air. ‘Why? Why run?’ He hacked up some mucus and spat. ‘Is OK. Is OK. You be still.’ And the two of them inched closer: dog-catchers in the park. Ardak clutched his ribs. ‘Where can you go?’ the old man said. Backwards would not help me. Only down.
I darted left.
‘Ugh. Sen delisin.’
They did not rush after me.
Evergreens lined the escarpment ahead: a twist of overhanging trunks that would help me get down. I kneeled, the roll of canvas bending, scuffing on the ground, and groped over the edge, grasping for a branch. The sea buffeted the rocks below. It hissed and it churned. I was not sure the branch would hold me. But Ardak and the old man were now strutting towards me. I let it take my weight, planting my feet on brittle stone and moss. I winched myself down, branch by root by branch, until there was nothing left to grip and I had to just release my hands and pray for a good foothold. Letting go, my boots pinched at the rock and then collapsed.
I skated down the escarpment, turning, twisting, and I felt a quick, hot pain in my shoulder. It was more like a very long scrape than a fall and it happened so fast. Settling at the bottom, shaken, beaten, wounded, I had an overwhelming sense that I had not survived, that my soul had left my body somewhere on the slope. Then came a rush of victory. The deepest relief. The searing, knifing realisation of the pain in my right shoulder. I wanted to pass out, but my heart would not let me. It was shuddering with adrenalin and shock. And somehow I knew that I needed to get up, because the old man and Ardak would be standing on the bluff, searching the rubble for my body. Soon they would be coming down the slope with the rowing boat on their shoulders. They would heave me into it. And what then? I would not let my injuries count for nothing. I forced myself back to my feet.
The canvas had snapped off me. I panicked, scanned the breaking waves, the rocks. I nearly buckled at the thought of losing it. My knees started to give. But then I saw it hanging by a string, a few yards up the shore. It had snagged in the jutting weeds upon the scree. One layer of plastic was shredded, the tape was scruffed at the edges—overall, a decent state. Better than mine.
I peered up: no Ender, no Ardak, no anything. Just the ghost-thin sunshine and trees against the sky. I could hear nothing but the wash of the sea behind me. Every movement of my head drove the pain in deeper. I had shattered my shoulder or dislocated it. My arm was limp and useless. I trudged in the direction I assumed was south, cleaving to the shoreline until the waves quietened, lapped, and I reached the chain-link fence and the warning posters: DIKKAT KÖPEK VAR. There was no other way across the bay. I had to swim for it.
The water took me, a step at a time. It was not as cold as I expected. The salt stung my wounds. I tried to swim with the canvas raised aloft in my good arm, but I did not have the power in my legs. The pain was so bracing, so endless. Coiling the string around my wrist, I let it trail behind me, not quite floating, not quite sinking. I knew I could not hold my head above the water for too long, so I kicked until the strength went out of me. Soon, I felt the current grasp me, flip me, seize me. It was not as sudden as I thought.
Then I blinked and I was face-down on the gravel in the dark. My mouth was parched, agape. There was so much brine inside my throat I had to sick it up. I gulped in air and it jolted me. The barbs of pain returned, but so much worse. I crawled forwards on one arm. The canvas roll was gone from my wrist: burning where the string had been. I could hardly see my own hand before me. The only light came from the moon, a row of houses in the distance, and a clutch of yellow spots across the sea. I was drenched and cold. It seemed that I had washed up in the bay. I was on a sort of beach—mostly rubble underneath me, broken shells and flotsam. It grazed my knees as I crawled through it. I was praying. For my canvas roll to rear up in the dark, to brush against me. But nothing did. I lay upon my side and hoped the pain would snuff me out.
Only the wind was gusting stronger; it bullied at my ears till I sat up. I heaved myself onto my feet again, getting my bearings. The black outline of a jetty to my right. High banks of trees on both sides. The shore a perfect crescent in between. And, behind me—I swivelled to look. Behind me a pale dirt road. Level ground. I staggered to reach it. There were chunks of concrete to step over, driftwood. What I thought was a bare pine tree in the blackness was, in fact, a telephone pole—I followed the bellying wires above my head.
The far side of the road was skirted by a wall. I ran my hand along it, scraping through the dark. I kept on going, like MacKinney told me to. The agony in my shoulder was enough to bear; I could not grieve now for the mural. In the morning, I would search for it. The sea could not take everything.
I hustled on. The road curved right—north-east? It was hard to orient myself. Then, born from the darkness, I saw a low white building and a vacant lot with chain-link fencing. Getting closer, I saw decimated palm trees. I saw another jetty, ladders and stairways leading into solemn water. I saw a hundred or more deckchairs and sun-loungers stacked up into columns, parasols folded and propped in a huddle. I saw a payphone with a hooded cubicle outside the fence, a tiny light glinting above it.
My shoulder stung as I limped over. I leaned myself against the payphone hood. The receiver was intact. The wire was attached. The line was operational. I dialled 100 and waited. Clouds shuffled across the moon.
‘Hello. Operator. How can I assist you?’
‘I need Victor Yail. It’s 46 Harley Street, London.’
‘Do you have the number, madam?’
‘You’ll have to look it up.’
‘There’s no call to be rude.’
‘I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. Just connect me, please.’
‘Huh!’
Soon, the trilling noise. My arm was dead. I could not keep from shivering.
‘Hello. Dr Fleishmann’s office.’
‘Victor Yail, please. Hurry.’
‘I’m afraid it’s Dr Fleishmann’s clinic this evening. Can I ask what it’s concerning?’
A frantic bleating sound rose in my ear. I realised it was asking me for money. So I let the phone hang while I rummaged in my pocket for a coin. I found the boy’s jeton. It seemed to slot in perfectly, rattling in the guts of the machine. But it did not stop the bleating.
‘Hello? Miss?’
‘Please, just put me through to Victor. It’s about his son. I called yester—’
‘Hello? Are you still there?’
Three more blips and it cut off. I s
mashed down the receiver and the mouthpiece broke.
I was too cold, too tired, in too much pain. I had to get some shelter.
There was a faded sign upon the fence: HEYBELIADA PLAJI. The gate had no padlock; I slid out the bolt. The hinges wailed as I went in. But the main building was shut, the doors chained up. Metal shutters at the windows. It was all that I could do to crawl into the stacks of chairs and loungers. I knocked a column of them and they landed in the parasols, which toppled to the ground before me. I thought their canopies looked warm and shielding. Hobbling on my knees, I went to nestle under them. I lay beneath their musty awnings and their ribs and springs and poles. The stars were jewels in the small gaps above me, and I was nothing any more, and nobody.
Daylight tinted blue by parasols. The cosy dampness of a tent. I woke up feeling more exhausted than before I had passed out. Ceaseless pain around my collarbone, zipping through my legs. I rested on the concrete, eyes shut, counting down the seconds. Things almost went to black. I nearly let it happen. But then I heard the clopping of a horse near by and the jangle of its tack. Fear kept me awake. There was a noise of cart wheels on the road and a far-off voice called softly: ‘Woe, woe, ayy.’ And suddenly, another voice, much closer, right beside my head. I winced, holding my breath. His feet scratched the ground—so near to me. He carried on in Turkish: a dead-end conversation. I thought I could smell smoke again, but no. His feet scuttled up close to me and there were movements from above. Rustling and murmurs. The parasols were being lifted from me, one by one. There was nothing I could do. I lay there, waiting like a louse under a rock. The daylight greyed. I was exposed. He spread his shadow over me. His hands stayed on his hips. A cigarette fuming at his mouth. I got to my knees, squinting back at him. And I could see he wore a pale blue shirt with an embroidered crest: POLIS. He said something meaningless. He repeated it louder, flapping his arms. I took too long to react: he stepped to me, grabbing my hand, pulling me up by my elbow. He might as well have shot me. I screamed so loud the crows dashed from the palm trees. Everything went white.
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