The Space Between the Stars

by Anne Corlett

  “How many?” Jamie said.

  “How many? Hmm, let me see. There’s myself, Miss Cavanagh, Mr. Carter.” The man made a show of counting on his fingers. “Mrs. Denby, Mrs. Lawrence, Mr. Greenwood. Oh, I think we’re a round dozen in number.”

  “That many?” Callan said.

  What had happened to those survival statistics? Maybe people were stronger, or more stubborn, than anyone had thought.

  “We took all possible precautions.” The man glanced away, and when he looked back, his smile was back in place. “Please. Come in. You’ll be needing to rest. Beds for the night, perhaps?”

  “Will there be room?” Jamie asked.

  The man nodded. “We have a number of rooms free on the top floor. You will come in?” He smiled at Finn. “Probably not the horse, but there’s plenty of grazing.”

  Callan didn’t move. “What are you doing here?”

  The man tilted his head. “I don’t understand.”

  Callan gestured toward the hall. “Seems an odd place for so many survivors to gather.”

  “Ah.” The man turned his monocle back and forth between his fingers. “A fortunate coincidence. We were here for an overnight event when the virus took hold. A historical reenactment.”

  “Did everyone make it?” Jamie couldn’t quite process that idea. Funny how swiftly your mind-set adjusted to a new state of things. It had become inconceivable that the natural state of the human race was more than ones and twos.

  “Not all, no.” The man gestured toward the door. “Please. Come in.”

  • • •

  Jamie went with Finn to let the horse loose on the green. Neat cottages ran along two sides, fronted by a wide gravel path. At the far end, the cottages curved around to meet a stable block, a coach house, and an archway, topped by a clock tower. It was all so achingly familiar that Jamie felt a rush of vertigo, as though she might fall back into another time, when she’d run along those paths with her young half sisters trailing behind her, crying, Jamie, wait for us.

  “Emily,” Finn said, pulling her back into the present moment.

  “What?”

  “The horse,” Finn said.

  “That’s a girl’s name.”

  Finn gave her a narrow-eyed look.

  “Okay.” She held a hand up. “Emily it is.”

  When Emily was settled, they walked back to the house and followed the sound of voices through to the central hall. It was a double-height space that had always reminded Jamie of the cloisters at a cathedral, with stone pillars marching around the edges and a gallery above. Painted panels hung between the pillars, and a frieze ran around the narrow stretch of wall between the lower and upper floors. Battle scenes. Banquet scenes. Hunting scenes. Remnants of an older world, now even more remote.

  The others were there, surrounded by a small crowd of elderly men and women. Like Mr. Hendry they were all dressed in old-fashioned clothing. Long dresses and shawls for the women, their creased faces powdered and painted to a long-lost version of beauty. For the men, it was morning suits or smoking jackets, accessorized with cravats and pocket watches.

  “Jamie.” Mr. Hendry spotted them. “Do come and meet the others.”

  He drew Jamie into a small group of his companions. Finn trailed behind, hanging back from the group. Mr. Hendry gave him a quick look, then turned away, making no attempt to include him.

  “Mrs. Denby, Mr. Graham, Miss Ingram, this is Jamie.” He turned to her. “I should really introduce you more formally, but I don’t know your other name.”

  “Allenby.” There was something about this whole setup that was making her feel snappish and out of sorts. She didn’t want to stand there discussing the fine points of an archaic etiquette when she had yet to figure out the rules of the now.

  “Miss Allenby,” Mr. Hendry said, bowing from the waist.

  “Bernard tells me you’re traveling to Lindisfarne,” said the woman who’d been introduced as Mrs. Denby. “Do you have family there?”

  Jamie must have misheard the question. She’d said, Did you have family there? Of course she had. It was an opening for them to share their losses. There’d be a new social code for this new world. You wouldn’t talk about the weather, or what you did for a living. You’d talk about who you’d lost.

  Then she looked at Mrs. Denby’s face, cool and polite, her eyebrows penciled into perfect arcs that gave her a permanently questioning look. She hadn’t misheard.

  “I don’t know.” Jamie’s voice was too loud, and Mrs. Denby’s lips pursed in the faintest suggestion of disapproval. All around them, people were talking in low, measured tones, a civilized hum punctuated only by the occasional flutter of brittle laughter. “I don’t expect so. Given that everyone’s dead.”

  “Not everyone.” The man who’d been introduced as Mr. Graham smiled, his lips drawing back from his teeth. “Not by a long shot.”

  “Near enough.”

  What was the point of this charade?

  “Well,” Mr. Hendry put in soothingly. “We’re all here together now.” His face suddenly lit up, and he turned on the spot, clapping his hands until the room fell quiet. Callan was standing over on the other side of the room, arms folded, face closed. Gracie was standing a little way apart, making no attempt to join in the conversation. She couldn’t see Lowry and Rena. “Friends. Guests. This is a special occasion. I propose a night of celebration. Dinner in the great hall, and then a dance.”

  There was a twittering chorus of agreement, and a couple of women clapped their own hands in an incongruous girlish gesture. One very elderly man drummed his hand on a sideboard in what appeared to be enthusiasm.

  Hendry turned back to Jamie. “I’ll find rooms for your party.” He glanced around. “Will everyone require their own room, or are any of you . . . er . . .”

  Jamie cut across his exaggerated delicacy. “We’ll all need our own rooms.”

  “Very well,” he said. “I’ll show you up.” He looked around the room again. “What time shall we say for dinner?”

  “I’ll ask Lawson.” Mrs. Denby walked slowly and stiffly across to pull on a worn velvet cord. A bell rang with a peremptory clang, and after a moment or two a woman appeared from between two of the far pillars. She was dressed in the traditional black-and-white garb of an old-fashioned housekeeper.

  “Ah, Lawson,” Mrs. Denby said. “As you see, we have guests. We are intending to hold a formal dinner in celebration. What time could we all sit down to eat?”

  “Around eight thirty.” The woman’s face was expressionless.

  “Perfect,” Mrs. Denby said. “Thank you, Lawson.”

  The woman’s footsteps echoed as she disappeared again.

  “There.” Mrs. Denby pressed her palms together, a satisfied smile on her face. She turned to Jamie. “Lawson takes such good care of us. It’s so fortunate that she turned up when she did. With her own vehicle as well. Without her, we would have run out of provisions days ago. And she makes such lovely food.”

  “You have a servant?” Gracie appeared at Jamie’s side. “How does that work? Do you pay her?”

  “Pay?” Mrs. Denby wrinkled her nose. “She doesn’t expect payment. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

  “Let me show you to your rooms.” Mr. Hendry stepped forward. “I’m sure you’ll want to bathe before dinner.”

  Gracie hesitated, and then she shrugged and stood back to allow Mr. Hendry to walk past her toward the stairs.

  • • •

  Jamie was assigned what must have been a young girl’s bedroom, all pink flounces and bundles of lace. It wasn’t one she remembered seeing before. When she turned the handle on a door in the far wall, it opened onto a tiny bathroom, with an old-fashioned water closet and a claw-footed bath. The faucet clanked and sputtered when she turned the stiff metal wheel, but it eventually yielded a s
poradic flow of hot water.

  When the bath was full, she stripped off and climbed in, rubbing at her aching calves. There’d been no reason for them to push on so fast, but they all seemed to be feeling the same relentless need to get to where they were going.

  Jamie closed her eyes and tucked her knees up, letting her body lift off the curved bottom of the bath. If she kept her hands moving beneath her, she could just about float. She could be anywhere. She could be in the ocean, or in that rooftop pool back on Alegria. It could be any place, any time. She opened her eyes. There was a time when she’d imagined herself here. Now that she was, her mind seemed set on conjuring up ways to let her pretend she was somewhere else.

  She stood up, wreathed in steam, and climbed out of the bath. There were no towels, so she walked through to the bedroom naked and dripping. She dried herself on a spare blanket, then climbed up onto the high bed and slid in beneath the eiderdown.

  • • •

  When she woke, the light was fading. She looked at the clock on the wall. Eight o’clock. They’d said dinner at eight thirty. She climbed out of bed, wrapping herself in the discarded blanket, and rummaged through her rucksack, looking for clean clothes.

  A knock at the door.

  “Who is it?”

  “Mrs. Lawson. I have clean clothes for you.”

  “Come in.”

  The door opened a crack, and Mrs. Lawson peered around it, looking away when she saw Jamie’s state of undress. “Shall I leave the clothes outside?”

  “No, it’s okay.” Jamie walked over and pulled the door open.

  Mrs. Lawson stepped reluctantly into the room. “I’ll put this over here.”

  Jamie turned to watch as she laid a moss-green dress on the bed. “What’s going on here?”

  Mrs. Lawson carefully smoothed the fabric out, not answering the question.

  “Why are you working for these people?” Jamie pressed.

  “Why not?” The other woman straightened up. “They need help.”

  “But what do you get out of it? All those old people, acting like something from a Merchant Ivory film, and you running around after them. They can’t pay you. They don’t have anything you need.”

  “They do.” When the woman looked up, Jamie saw a flash of something raw and haunted in her eyes. “Do you know what it’s like to think you’re completely alone? To think the whole world is dead but you?”

  Jamie felt a flicker of angry resentment. She did know how that felt. And she’d been light-years from anywhere she could call home. “Yes. It was three days before I found anyone else.”

  The woman gave a low mutter of laughter. “Three?” She wrapped her arms across her body. “I was alone for a week. I couldn’t get the comm to work. I drove to Alnwick, and to Rothbury, then down to Newcastle. I couldn’t find anyone. I was going mad. I climbed the monument in the city, meaning to jump. But it was all concrete and gray and I didn’t want to lie there for the rats and the birds. I wished I were dust like everyone else.” She drew a deep, heaving breath. “I thought, If I’m going to kill myself, I want to do it somewhere nicer than this. I broke a shop window and picked up as many pills as I could. Then I drove to Walton. I used to work here, back when the kids were at school. I used to dress like this . . .” She ran a hand over her uniform. “. . . and show visitors around. I thought I’d go down to the gardens, take the pills, and the leaves would bury me. But when I got here, I found Mr. Hendry and the others. I fell down on the steps and cried.”

  She looked down, rubbing at one sleeve as though she could brush the memories away.

  “And then what happened?”

  “It was pretty straightforward. They had a . . . vacancy.” There was a little twist at the corner of her smile. “That’s how they put it. It was all quite formal and businesslike, really.”

  “But it’s like being a slave,” Jamie said.

  “It’s not like that at all. I made a choice. Be alone, or be here like this. It’s not like I could have just lived here, like I was one of them.”

  “Why not?” Even as Jamie asked the question, she suddenly knew what the answer would be. She glanced at the woman’s left hand. Sure enough, her ID mark was wrapped around her forefinger. Lower echelon.

  The woman caught the glance and gave Jamie a faint, ironic smile.

  “That’s ridiculous.” Jamie felt a flush of anger, as much at Mrs. Lawson’s calm acceptance as at the old people’s exploitation of her loneliness. “None of that matters anymore.”

  “But you still looked at my hand.”

  “I . . .” Jamie tripped over her own tangled thoughts and emotions. “It’s not right. This whole thing, the dressing up, the way they talk. It’s insane.”

  “It’s just how they like things,” Mrs. Lawson said. “They used to do those historical events. Reenactments. Mrs. Denby said it was because they preferred an older time to how things are now. She said manners were better, and people showed respect.”

  “But everything’s changed,” Jamie said. “There is no how things are now. There’s only us, and what we do.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Mrs. Lawson gave the green dress another quick smooth with her palm. “I’ve always worked. It makes me feel like things are normal. Like what I do still means something.”

  “You don’t have to stay,” Jamie said. “You could come with us.”

  “And do what?”

  “I don’t know. I just . . . We just need to get there. Then we’ll figure it out.” God, she sounded like Rena. Like there was an answer there, waiting for them, written in the sand maybe, or washed up in a bottle. “It’s somewhere,” she went on, a little defensively. “It’s something. It’s not just sitting around, wondering what’s the point of it all.”

  Mrs. Lawson picked up her armful of clothes. “And so is this.”

  “Come with us,” Jamie said.

  “I can’t leave them.” Mrs. Lawson shook her head. “They wouldn’t last a fortnight.” She walked over and fumbled at the door handle. Jamie followed and opened it for her. “And besides, they’re nice enough, most of them. I know it seems odd, but it works. And it’s my choice.”

  “But . . .”

  The woman cut her off with a sharp gesture. “My choice.” Her tone was harder this time. “I don’t even know you, and you’re telling me to come away with you. I’m needed here, and that’s something I never thought I’d say again. And you want me to just walk away, throw it all in for a promise of, what? How do I know what you’re offering would be better than this?”

  Jamie couldn’t find an immediate answer, and Mrs. Lawson gave her a quick nod, as though she’d expected none, and walked out of the room.

  Jamie stood still in the middle of the floor. It felt as though there’d been some trailing end she’d missed, something that would have let her tug at Mrs. Lawson’s argument and unravel the whole thing.

  She rubbed her face. There was something she was missing. All these people, all with different ideas about what the world should be. They couldn’t all be right.

  She picked up the dress and walked over to the mirror to hold it up against her. It was ankle-length and simply cut, with an empire bodice and gold trim around the neckline and hem. She stared at herself in the mirror. Could she really go downstairs and pretend this was all right and normal?

  My choice.

  Jamie shook her head against the echo of Mrs. Lawson’s words, as though she could carry on the argument, even without the other woman here. What if some choices were wrong, or dangerous? What if you could clearly see a better one?

  She turned away from the mirror. She was tired. The day had been long and eventful. The crash. The walk. Elsie. The old people. No point tying herself in knots, trying to figure it all out. She’d dress for dinner and play along with the charade. Tomorrow she’d speak to Mrs. Lawson again. Maybe get Lowry t
o help her. Together they’d persuade her to come with them.

  The dress fitted like it had been made for her. Before her illness it would probably have been too tight, but now it clung to her like a second skin, molding itself to the contours of her breasts and skimming the curve of her stomach. She wound her hair up on top of her head and walked over to look at the accessories Mrs. Lawson had left on the bed: a green-and-gold stole and a pair of elbow gloves in faded gold satin. She hesitated, but the whole situation was so bizarre that it seemed perfectly reasonable to roll the gloves up her arms and drape the stole across her shoulders.

  She looked at the clock again. Eight fifteen. Where were the others? Where was Finn? She went out into the corridor and rapped gently with her knuckles on the next door along.

  Silence.

  She was about to tap again when the door jerked open and Gracie looked out. She was wrapped in a towel, her hair damp and clinging to her skull. It made her look smaller, and softer around the edges.

  “What?”

  “Sorry,” Jamie said. “I was looking for Finn.”

  “That one.” Gracie pointed to the door at the end.

  “Are you coming down?” Jamie asked.

  Gracie paused in the act of closing the door. “Yes. I’m hungry.”

  “Are you . . .” Jamie hesitated, not wanting to expose herself to Gracie’s scorn. “. . . dressing for dinner?”

  “Well, I’m not coming down naked, if that’s what you mean.” The engineer gave the faintest suggestion of a smile. “I’m dressing, but probably not as they hoped.”

  Then she closed the door.

  Jamie walked along the corridor and knocked on the door Gracie had indicated. There was a long pause, and when Finn finally answered, it sounded as though he was standing right on the other side of the door.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Jamie.”

  There was the sound of a key turning in a lock, and then the door creaked open. Finn had clearly done his best with the unfamiliar clothes, but the wing collar had defeated him. It hung open, the cravat looped into a lopsided knot over the top. He’d managed the row of fiddly shirt buttons, but one of the long tails was bunched up at his waist.