A Calculated Life

by Anne Charnock

  She refocused. “It wasn’t exactly what I expected.”

  “More surprises?”

  “What do you mean, more?”

  “Well, you were surprised by your afternoon at Benjamin’s.”

  “You’re right…I can say this much: I think I’ve learnt something this weekend, Harry. Information is not the same as knowledge.”

  “Care to elaborate?”

  “I thought I knew a great deal about the enclaves—when they were built, who lives there, demographics, how housing policies have changed, transport links, employment statistics—but it doesn’t amount to much. There’s a gap, you see. A shuttle timetable doesn’t tell you, for example, that the carriages are uncomfortable. You only gain that knowledge by taking a shuttle journey.”

  “Was that the main surprise?” asked Julie, making an effort to join in.

  “No.” She forced a smile. “It was the enclave itself. It was so basic, so drab, nothing remotely like the suburbs. And yet…bustling with life.”

  “More so than the suburbs?” said Harry.

  “I didn’t see anyone walking around in Benjamin’s area. I expect they were all indoors or in their gardens. But in the enclaves accommodation is cramped. They don’t have private gardens and there are no open spaces for recreation as far as I could see. Everyone seems to be in the street. And the streets are so dusty. Another thing…there are no shops as such. They buy everything at market stalls. I didn’t realize that. Do you see what I mean? I knew the breakdown of business types based on the traders’ licenses but I didn’t realize they operated from makeshift tables set out along the streets and—”

  “If yer want yer lemon tart,” shouted the canteen assistant from behind his counter, “yer’d better get up ’ere fast. It’s startin’ t’look a bit sad.” They looked at one another and pushed their chairs back. Jayna didn’t get up.

  Once they returned to the table Julie picked up the conversation again: “It all sounds chaotic in the enclaves.”

  “It’s full of life, that’s for sure. Children kick about in the streets enjoying themselves. But if their surroundings were a little more pleasant…” She wasn’t going to tell them about the fight.

  “We don’t believe at our department that—”

  “Yes, I know you think they have a fair deal, Harry. I came away feeling, apart from anything else, they didn’t have much opportunity to better themselves.”

  “Do they want to?” asked Lucas.

  She wasn’t getting the reaction she wanted at all. “Of course they do.” She leaned back. “They’re not morons.”

  Julie and Lucas looked alarmed. “They may not be,” Harry intervened, “but it doesn’t necessarily follow they want more. They get a good deal and they know it. You know it.”

  “It’s not really a question of getting more. Maybe the state should…back off a bit. Stop pigeonholing everyone. Just let them breathe a bit.”

  They gawped at her. She stood up and raised her palms towards them. “Look. I’ve had a very tiring day. I’m obviously not explaining myself very well. Let’s talk tomorrow when my head’s clear.”

  Jayna leaned back against her door and tapped her head backwards. “I’m the moron,” she murmured. Five days more…And, as if one anxiety naturally spawned another anxiety, she felt a shiver of concern for Sunjin. He hadn’t been to the enclaves. He was nowhere near as street-wise as he’d like to think.

  Tomorrow, she would download all the data she could find on Enclaves W3 and W8, GPS data, plus all the timetables, route-planners. “And what about you?” she said, peering at her stick insects, which hung from the top of the mesh cage. “Who’s going to look after you?” She sprayed a mist of water across the vegetation and she smiled. Breaking the rules was something they had in common.

  Dollo’s Law of Evolution: Complex structures cannot return to a condition seen in an ancestor; a law overturned by the humble stick insect. Even when stick insects lose their wings during their evolutionary history, they keep the genes for making them. They have lost and regained their wings several times over the millennia.

  She made a plan for her little friends: stock up on greenery during the coming week, pick up a business card from the florist and leave it by the cage. Julie would see it. Yes, I expect you’ll end up with Julie…And all the data I’ve collected, it would be a waste. Perhaps I should send everything to Bangalore. But she dismissed the idea. There were too many other things to think about. She set out the new ground rules: no unnecessary conversation with anyone at C7 or at work, take the usual route to the office, feed the pigeons after work, no contact with Dave, absolutely none. And she meant it this time. She’d send a bland report to Benjamin and Olivia on her trip to the enclave making non-committal comments but giving the impression that further research might not be worthwhile. Then Olivia might step in and encourage her to drop the whole thing. And, reluctantly she would concur, but she would ask to keep the file open for future investigation. Then, everything calm on the surface, she and Sunjin could set out separately, on Saturday, as easily as she’d visited Dave.

  The lights faded. She dressed her wooden chair with her clothes. As she floated towards sleep, sometimes dipping under but then resurfacing, she saw a long ticker tape. It swirled in eddies. Words were handwritten along the entire length: leaves on a tree like sticks on a twig like clothes on a chair like leaves on a tree like sticks on…At last, she slipped below the surface and drowned into sleep, into a dream that served, as ever, to purge, shuffle, and juxtapose the day’s events, before spewing crazed stories that, surely, she could never have imagined in waking hours. She was in a field. From a tangle of vines that towered above her head, Jayna tore over-ripe, rotting, and distended fruits. She discarded them all. Her feet slid on the mush as she pulled, arching backwards, for hours it seemed. All night. In her dream she wanted vine leaves for her insects. She had to have them. Her arms were lacerated and she tried to shout: Where are the leaves? There are no leaves. But the words would not leave the back of her throat. They could not reach her straining mouth.

  CHAPTER 16

  A percussive sound—a door had hit its jamb, or a window had struck its frame. It broke her dream. She woke with her mouth still straining and she knew she had tried to shout out. Relieved to be awake, she pushed herself up on one elbow and for a few moments felt the lacerations on her arms. She raised herself to her feet and felt an urge to swill her face for she wanted to wake up fully—the dream might otherwise keep its grip. But before she reached the sink she registered (a) faint, untidy noises somewhere within the rest station and (b) the gritty sound of footsteps outside. Too early for the recycling gang; Monday wasn’t their day anyway. It was curiosity rather than concern that prompted Jayna to move towards the window.

  On the corner of the street, on the opposite pavement, stood a bald-headed man in neat, dark clothing. He looked along Granby Row, first in one direction, then the other. He turned 180 degrees and stared directly at the rest station’s side entrance, below and to the left of Jayna’s window. Why would he look over here, she wondered? He twisted back and waved, striding out into the junction. Waiting for a lift? It was an odd, in-between place to arrange a pick-up. She checked the time: 06:58 hours. Her jaw ached.

  The slight sound of a vehicle. It swung slowly round and pulled up by the side entrance. The man ran from the junction and opened the rear passenger door. She pushed her face against the window to see more. A familiar sound: the side entrance doors being unlocked and opened, but thirty minutes earlier than usual. A shuffle of people, two men and between them a smaller…“Julie!” Jayna raised her fists and banged against the window frame. They eased Julie into the back seat—she didn’t struggle—and the vehicle rolled quietly away. Jayna’s eyes burned down the empty street. Was her mind playing games? Did Julie really twist around? Did she? Did our eyes meet?

  Was it the singing? They didn’t like the singing? Or…the email to Sunjin? He didn’t delete it? Did he report her? J
ayna lifted her hands to cover her face, to hide from premonitions. Too late. I’ve said too much. Julie won’t think to keep quiet.

  But Jayna had already focused on the important fact: the side entrance was unlocked. She began to pull on her clothes. The streets and the Southern Terminus would be quieter now than in an hour’s time; too quiet maybe. And, Sunjin! What about Sunjin? Surely he hadn’t reported Julie? No…she couldn’t believe that. By the time she’d fastened her shirt she knew exactly what to do: leave the building, cross town, intercept Sunjin on his way to work. Then I’ll make a run for it, mix with the rush-hour workers. Then the alarm will go up. Damn it!…I’m never late for work.

  As for Sunjin, she thought, he’d have to decide for himself—make a dash, or tie up those loose ends, leave later in the day. She pulled a casual top out of her wardrobe, a top she wore off-duty, and stuffed it into her bag. She took a piece of paper, wrote the name of her florist, scribbled a list of plants. Ridiculous, but she still added, Say Jayna sent you. And left it by the cage. She picked up her bag but returned to the list. With pen on paper, poised to offer a final few words to Harry and Lucas, she hesitated—one second, two seconds, three seconds, four seconds—and gave up. Her pen left a faint dot of ink, a mark of her indecision. She added two similar dots alongside and hoped her friends would recognize this failed attempt to explain.

  She opened the door by a crack and listened…A few sounds, distant clattery noises reduced by each intervening wall and floor to a less peaky sound but nevertheless telling her that preparations were underway for breakfast. Lights-up in twenty-five minutes, breakfast starting in forty-five. She could slip out now without meeting any residents. And so, with a few steps along her corridor and her descent of the side staircase, a short walk across the ground floor hallway and down the side-entrance steps, she put rest-station life behind her. How many times had she made this journey from her room to the pavement? Yet today, simply because she made the journey earlier than normal, because her teeth were unbrushed, she was not simply leaving but running away.

  The street seemed unfamiliar because of the hour. She welcomed the cool, fresh air that helped her to focus, kept her alert. She heard the gasping breaths of a jogger pounding the opposite pavement. A single piece of paper jumped and stumbled along the gutter in the early breeze. She conjured a mantra to keep her pulse steady—walking this street, breathing this air, walking this street, breathing this air, walking this street—which forced an easy pace that somehow shielded her as she crossed Oxford Street and descended the steps to the canal.

  Time to kill before Sunjin left his residence. She waited awhile under the canal bridge. No one was around as yet to see her loitering but the canal path would become busy over the next half an hour. Jayna looked up at the underside of the red and green painted steelwork. No wonder people wanted to build these things; they would sit in the world for ever. If she could start over…she’d spend more time along these lovely canals, feed the koi rather than pigeons.

  A speck of a person in the distance. She waited until the figure came closer and then she set off towards the intersections of canals and rail bridges on the western edge of the commercial district. With no one in sight she stepped into the deepest shadow and stood with her back against a colossal steel column, one of many carrying shuttle lines from the north and west deep into the city’s heart. The early shuttles thundered overhead. She made no conscious decision to break cover but impatience got the upper hand and she stepped out from behind the column and walked on. After several erratically timed stop-starts she arrived at the canal steps just two blocks from Sunjin’s residence.

  From the top of the steps, she walked one block closer and positioned herself by an office entrance as though waiting to meet someone before going into work. All she could do was wait. Sixteen minutes later, far longer than she had expected, Sunjin left his residence and walked along Jayna’s side of the street. She turned her back. As he passed she followed and, a half-stride behind him, she spoke: “Don’t turn round Sunjin, it’s me.” And she rattled out the story. She moved ahead of him and he spoke: “We’ve both got to run, not together though. I’ll give you a head start. Good luck.”

  Jayna peeled off at the next junction and set her route to the Southern Terminus. She realized she looked far too corporate. I need to look like an office cleaner returning home to the enclaves. So she took off her jacket and carried it over her arm. It wasn’t enough. I need to appear less symmetrical, more casual. She forced herself to slow down and let her head loll untidily from side-to-side. One hand in her pocket.

  Harry and Lucas, she thought, must have worried about Julie’s absence at breakfast, not about hers. They would assume she’d rushed out for a breakfast meeting at Mayhew’s.

  The main streets were busier though the pace was less than frenetic. These were the early risers, the early starters, who walked with longer and slower strides. She knew how Dave would describe them: sad bastards. And one of those sad bastards might be a Mayhew McCline employee so she had to be vigilant. How would she explain herself? Her legs felt weak. It’s no big deal. It’s simple: merge with the enclave night-workers heading back. Plenty of shuttles—check the concourse monitors and find the platform.

  But she still looked too tidy so she slipped into the foyer of the university’s mathematics building, took her crumpled jumper out of her bag and replaced it with her jacket. She slung the jumper untidily around her shoulders. Off she went again. Into a slow stride, she passed the university park, under the whitebeam, across the cobbles, over the paving slabs, into the terminus piazza. She weaved through the rivulets of workers arriving from the suburbs and enclaves, and cast glances to each side. All fine. A normal day. Everyone looked past her. Again, she glanced left and right. And the closer she came to the concourse the less conspicuous she felt—she was just one figure in a mass of people funneling through the station’s entrance.

  She strode across the concourse.

  It was then, as she stopped to check the overhead monitors—she registered a stuttering in her peripheral vision. A surge inside—adrenalin? She looked left and right but couldn’t be sure. She lifted her heavy face to the monitors: Departures, Arrivals. Her legs weakened. She didn’t look around but waited for a further sign. It came. Two figures both took a step towards her from left and right. She looked again at the monitors. Two shuttles to Enclave W8, both Delayed. If Jayna had pointed her hands at the two men she would have formed an angle of 160 degrees. Next shuttle departure—to anywhere—seven minutes.

  They won’t shout out, she thought. They’re not police. They probably won’t chase.

  Arrivals: Platform 11, Shuttle Approaching.

  The man to her right, just seven meters away, stepped forward. “Jayna!”

  She looked at the monitor. Shuttle Approaching.

  She ran, bisecting an imaginary arc between the two men. She deviated, sharply, towards platform eleven, a hundred or so meters away. And through the crowds she saw the distant twinkling of shuttle headlights approaching the far end of the station. Too far?

  The men didn’t shout. She tried to glance backwards but the world shook; she’d never run before. She deviated again, turned onto the platform, and sprinted. And the calculations began: the length of the platform, the current speed of the shuttle, its rate of deceleration, her own terminal speed, their combined speed at impact.

  The shuttle headlights blazed down the track. She could not run any faster. And just three words in her mind: end it here. The men shouted. Her head back, she lengthened her stride. The shuttle still charged down. She anticipated the thud, the end. But her left foot snagged and the pain in her ribs abated too soon. Her brief flight ended as she crashed, arms out, to the paved edge of the platform. The shuttle belted past.

  The men reached her before the shuttle came to a halt. The passengers alighted, unaware of the near miss; unaware that for the first time in many years, someone had attempted to end their life in such an arcane manner.
Maybe one or two commuters did register, momentarily, the three figures who stood in a huddle: one woman, her head dropped forward, supported by two men. But the working day lay ahead. The workers pressed on and just one person within the herd tripped on a marginally raised manhole cover.

  Indeed, the incident caused no ripple of disruption in the routine of the Southern Terminus. No one incurred any delay and sixteen minutes after Jayna’s fall, when Dave crossed the concourse, everything appeared as normal.

  EPILOGUE 1

  The early sun floods the gentle slopes facing east and shifts the true colors of the ripening fruit towards a false warmth. When the dew has dried, they will check the fruit and pick the largest specimens. This is part of the plan: to increase revenue from their small farm by picking fruit only when it reaches full maturity. It seems an obvious strategy but plenty smallholders have not figured this out. They opt for smaller profits today rather than larger profits deferred.

  It shouldn’t take a genius.

  There’s no need to be up so early but Dave rises at this hour most days for two simple pleasures: the pleasure of wearing a heavy jacket when the sun is bright but the air still cool, and the greater pleasure of pacing the orchards alone—no one hears what he hears or sees what he sees. He’s the only witness; the world is his.

  A narrow road winds high along the sheltered valley. On Wednesday, he will travel along this road on his scooter-cart taking twenty-four boxes of assorted citrus to the farm cooperative. On Thursday, the fruit will be displayed in the better suburban delicatessens. Maybe next season, he thinks, he will find another way to sell. But for now, it’s best to stick with the normal channel. As Sunjin says, they don’t want to look too smart. Yeah, that makes sense.

  He sits on the wooden seat he knocked together from scrap soon after they arrived at the farm. From here, he looks down the valley across the top of his citrus trees; smatterings of orange and yellow against deep green.