84k

by Claire North

  Lay on the ground as the sun turned towards afternoon.

  Walked crusted in salt shoes and socks and shrivelled-up feet. A USB stick inside his pocket. It wasn’t wet. That was a miracle, divine intervention, he thought he saw something in the flight of seagulls, thought there was meaning in the way they turned overhead.

  He came to a farm and dogs barked and a child shouted and a man came charging with a shotgun which probably didn’t work, but Theo ran anyway and fell in a ditch and hid there a while as the sun moved towards night.

  At sunset came to a village with a little church where all the people prayed and a little square outside the church where there were stalls to sell childhood teddy bears to raise money for the fight against cancer and a pub where the landlord knew everybody’s name.

  But the pub landlord took one look at Theo and absolutely did not have a room for the night, so he walked on until he came to a house on the edge of town which doubled up as the dentist’s, and the dentist came out and said, “You’re in trouble?” and led him inside and sat him down in front of the electric fire in the living room as the TV played far too loud, and gave him tea and bread and said, “You can sleep in my son’s room. He’s gone away now. He wouldn’t mind you sleeping there. I’ll phone him to make sure.”

  And the dentist went into the kitchen and tried phoning her son, and he didn’t answer, because he never did, and he didn’t reply to her texts, but that was okay, if he cared about someone sleeping in his former bed she was sure he would answer, absolutely he would.

  Theo sat on the floor in front of the fire as the dentist watched the weather, a channel broadcasting nothing but temperatures and wind speeds, ocean currents and storms brewing in the Carolinas, no mention made of Kent, and accidentally he fell asleep in that place, and woke in the morning to find that the dentist had put a pillow under his head and a blanket over his shoulders, and had washed and dried his socks and laid them out by his shoes, along with a cheese and pickle sandwich and a set of rosary beads.

  The rosary had belonged to her son too, but he’d forgotten to take it with him when he left home. One day, she knew he’d reclaim it.

  “I give kindness to strangers. The Lord teaches us to give kindly, that’s how we find grace.”

  The vicar came round to check in on Theo, and told him that Jesus was his salvation, and to give thanks. The dentist made tea and whispered, “I didn’t believe, but my son he believes, and I find that since he’s left home believing brings me closer to him. Believing makes me …”

  “You’re very kind,” mumbled Theo. “You’re very …”

  Time, when your face is all smashed up, is a little …

  the ice on the canal

  It creaks it cracks before the prow of the boat he hadn’t even noticed how deep the cold went into the marrow his fingers are blue the ice

  Even thin ice can puncture the hull, can sink a narrowboat. They drown as they sleep they wake the water rushing down their noses it is

  Even Neila dies, sometimes, in Theo’s dreams and time is …

  From the room next door, mystic words:

  “P2, P3, M1, M2 … M2 … P2 M2 …”

  The dentist pulled back the top lip of her patient and tutted at what she saw.

  “Mrs. Trott, I did tell you that this day would come.”

  The high whine of the electric drill, a whimper of pain.

  Neila turns over the cards.

  Four of coins, Temperance, ace of staves, Death (inverted), king of swords, the Emperor, ten of staves, eight of cups, the Hanged Man (inverted).

  The Hanged Man is a complicated card. Restriction, letting go, sacrifice. Trapped between heaven and hell, perhaps supporting the heavens, maybe plunging into hell. Only the Tower is a trickier card to handle when it’s drawn.

  Indecision. Martyrdom. Suspension of all things, a failure to act, the need to look at things from a new perspective, a willing victim a …

  Neila doesn’t like the word “victim.”

  If you’re “willing” then how are you a “victim”? Victim is the denial of choice, it is …

  From the banks of the canal, shrieks of laughter through the night. She looks up from the cards, Theo from the stove, and they listen.

  The laughter is the heady wildness of the poisoned mushroom, the crimson berry, the wild things who run naked through the dark.

  Neila turns out the lights, and for a while they sit in silence, peeking through the porthole.

  The convoy rolls past, trucks blazing with light, a hundred, a thousand bulbs flashing and blazing, rattling along the nearby road, turning the gently falling snow into a bubble of white. The revellers are dancing, writhing, kissing, falling, sleeping, shrieking, laughing, they crawl across the tops of the over-heavy vehicles and over each other, stepping in eyes and on bellies, glass bottles smashing on the tarmac below, they laugh and laugh and laugh

  and keep on driving, no one entirely knows where, a wild hunt through the night.

  Sometimes, secretly, Neila hears the people scream at the side of the canal and wants to raise her voice in chorus with theirs, to join the singing, the singing of the ones who have lost. But she knows that if she does, she will be an animal. Only animals howl at the moon.

  In a dentist’s house in a village with no name, no walls and a church in a little square, Theo sat at the computer and slipped Dani’s memory stick into the slot.

  There, laid out in neat little boxes, was the mother lode.

  Flicking through files.

  Video, taken from a strange angle: two men in a high-ceilinged room, or maybe it just seemed that way because of the plant pot the camera was hidden in. They drink port from little crystal glasses and behind them is a painting of a man with one hand resting on the turning globe, and they are Philip Arnslade and Simon Fardell, and Simon says:

  “The problem with the excess is that …”

  “I entirely understand.”

  “Under these circumstances, for the sake of the business.”

  “It’s a relief, really.”

  “If they don’t pull their weight.”

  “I’ve always said …”

  “We can’t always guarantee …”

  “The site at Wootton …”

  “Entirely in hand. You’re doing the right thing, Phil. You’re doing the right thing.”

  A door opened, someone came in, the two men switched immediately, golf and the weather, the camera stopped filming.

  From the dentist’s studio next door:

  “You can’t gargle what do you mean you can’t gargle look it’s NO THAT’S CHOKING NOT GARGLING IT’S LIKE THIS YOU …”

  Photos on a screen.

  A factory behind, a pit in front.

  The bulldozer has nearly finished filling in. The sheer horsepower of the machinery makes the bodies seem like fabric things, easily bent, easily pushed, no sense that this was once human flesh.

  On the canal:

  “Neila? Have I said thank you? Have I said … did I ever say anything which was … is there anything I can say which is …”

  Neila turned over the final card and sighed, and looked up into the face of the man called Theo and smiled. “No,” she replied. “No.”

  On the computer screen:

  Finances. Data, numbers, they run down the screen projected profits margins of opportunity the number of …

  A list of names.

  Wootton.

  King’s Badby.

  New Roade.

  St. Cecile on the Neve.

  Lower Ayot.

  Little Fife.

  Twinmarsh.

  He looks them up on the computer, and sees only the factory buildings and high walls of the patty lines.

  Looks again and sees the long, dug fields of earth behind the factories, where fresh grass is beginning to grow.

  The dead weren’t given names, but the last four digits of their National Insurance numbers were visible, along with the crimes for which they were indicted
and the value of the indemnity they had failed to pay.

  Theo washed his face in the bathroom sink, put the memory stick in his pocket, and let himself out of the back door of the house as the dentist berated a crying child.

  Chapter 49

  Following country lanes for a while, until he turned north and found the River Stour.

  Long reeds tipped with black ends and sharp spines, slow-running waters through boggy marsh, midges, an apple orchard, a town where they sold hog roast and methane.

  An empty village where the pub sign swung gently in the breeze.

  Not tracking the river as much as he’d thought, the wetness of the land pushed him through little villages and around enclaves where sometimes the screamers screamed and the rich locked up their cars.

  A tiny town, no name, no gate, where two people sat in their front garden, naked, and watched Theo go by. Another woman, naked, stood behind a living-room window, hands on hips, and in the full resplendence of an autumn sun shimmering cold across her bare, goosebumped flesh, glared at the walking man as he passed by.

  Soon they’d have a party, soon there’d be another night for flesh and seeing what new flavours could be best licked off another man’s skin and it would be …

  … but for now the sun was still up, so they waited for the evening and Theo walked.

  He wasn’t sure if he would find the place he was looking for.

  Doubted very much if the man he needed was still there, but still, sometimes you had to put everything on a wager.

  He turned off the path where it met a slightly larger country lane, followed it down to the river’s edge, paused to wash his face again, dribble icy water down the back of his neck, listen to the swaying of the red-leafed trees, smell the mould behind the church.

  Crossed a fat, belching A road, a railway line where the trains had stopped.

  Walked up a hill to the valley’s edge, to a village of two houses and a corrugated-iron farm. There were gates on either end of the road, in and out of town. The gates were built in two parts, the outers heavy black metal, the inners swirling iron, reclaimed from a manor house, the date of construction still visible amid the roses blooming and songbirds soaring in metal, lovingly restored.

  He knocked on an outer gate, and a panel swung back instantly, a man glaring through the peephole.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m looking for Mr. Pritchard.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “But he lives here.”

  “No.”

  A little sigh, a shifting of bruised, aching bones, flat, blistered feet. “I’m looking for Mr. Pritchard, it’s very important.”

  The peephole slammed shut.

  Theo knocked again.

  The peephole didn’t open.

  He called out, voice bouncing back at him from the high metal gate, “Tell Mr. Pritchard that I’m Mike’s boy. My name is Theo. Tell him I’m going to destroy the country, the government and the Company.”

  No answer.

  He slunk down, back against the concrete blast wall that encircled the little cluster of thatch-roofed houses, and waited.

  Slept a while.

  Woke hungry.

  Slept a little bit more.

  Stirred with the crunching of boots, the play of light against his eyelids, bright against the thick dark of cold autumn night bitten with the taste of winter.

  A man in a green waxed coat, dark blue rubber boots and a pair of tatty blue jeans stood over him, face half-lost behind the glow of torchlight cutting into Theo’s face. A long-tongued mongrel dog sat patiently beside him, waiting for orders, tail beating slow and rhythmic against the ground, breath steaming a little in the air. Behind the pair, two more men stood, arms buried in black woollen coats, faces hard, ready to kick out against any who dared their disfavour.

  “It is you,” mused the man with the torch. “You look like shit.”

  Theo, shielding his eyes against the glare, squinted up. “Hello, Mr. Pritchard.”

  “You’d better have a cuppa.”

  The gate was opened at a nod, and Theo followed the older man inside.

  “You take tea, right?”

  “Please.”

  “Milly! One cup of proper tea for our guest here, and I’ll have that herbal shit—it’s past my bedtime you see, if I have even a sniff of caffeine after 3 p.m. I can’t get to sleep and it’s my bowels too—you wouldn’t understand but when you’re my age you’ll see. Sit down, sit down.”

  “Thank you I’m …”

  “Someone do you over?”

  “In Shawford.”

  “Ragers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Town went to piss. After Budgetfood pulled out, place with such a fine tradition of smuggling too but they couldn’t hold it together, it’s all gone downhill, it’s nice to have a place to call your own though isn’t it, this place—biscuit?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Digestive?”

  “I’ll eat anything.”

  “Hungry? Milly! Our guest is hungry! Knock something up, will you?”

  “You knock something up!” came the reply from the kitchen, down the end of a low-ceilinged, wood-timbered hall.

  Jacob Pritchard chuckled, eased back into his padded chair with a creak of spine and sinew, smiled brightly at Theo.

  Flames in an old iron fireplace; soot in the chimney. Various prizes for darts on the mantelpiece, getting old now, a few newer trophies for bowls. The stuffed head of a gorilla above a rocking chair, its face wrinkled in disapproval. The face seemed old, wise; it was not angry that it had been killed, severed from its body, stuffed, pickled and suspended on a living-room wall in Kent. It was merely exasperated that there was a species out there that thought this was the acceptable way of things.

  A single fat-bodied fly crawled weakly at the edge of a windowpane, too exhausted from days of endeavour to find its way to the open crack at the top.

  Jacob Pritchard, king of diesel, prince of cheap booze, sitting in a padded brown armchair, had grown old. His once-dark hair was tied in a thin ponytail, the peeling-back strands revealing the bright pink scalp underneath. His great hands shrank into his chicken-skin arms; most of his teeth were fake, and he kept them in a clear green jar by his bed at night.

  His mind would be the last to go, and he knew it. Always assumed he’d go mad like his old mum had, but no, he’d be awake until the end, as his body failed one bone at a time, so it went, so it goes, you can’t beat time, not even him, not even Jacob Pritchard.

  “So,” he mused, studying the bruised figure in the chair opposite his. “Little Mike’s boy, all grown up.”

  Theo shrugged, and it hurt.

  “All strapping man, all bringing down the Company, yes? All heroic causes and towns full of ragers and knocking on my door in the middle of the night. Yes indeed grown up, but maybe not the way your old man would’ve wanted. So how’d it work out for you, being Theo Miller? Did he have a good life?”

  “Mostly.”

  “Mostly—mostly—a joker—mostly he says and I say to you mostly is not what brings you to my door, sonny, it’s not the truth of matters as they now stand. It’s not why we’re here so why are we here, Theo Miller? Why would you come knocking, and what trouble do you bring?”

  “I have proof.”

  “What kind of proof?”

  “All of it. Everything. Company Police shooting runaways, gunning down screamers and ragers, clearing whole enclaves out to send in the patties to remove the scrap metal, the bricks, the pipes—everything. I’ve got the maps of the mass graves behind the prisons, the records of how many people died cos the hospital wouldn’t let them in, the starvation figures for Wales, the murder rates for Newcastle, the …”

  Jacob Pritchard rolled his lower lip in, puckered his cheeks, stared up at the ceiling, then shrugged. Where’s his tea? Pritchard called for tea and tea hasn’t come. In his more tempestuous days this would have been cause for some remark.

  �
�If you can’t work on the patty line, you’re a burden on the state,” Theo mused. “You have to be fed, be given clothes, you have to be … but there are jobs, dangerous jobs, sometimes it’s easier, cheaper … at New Roade they process radioactive waste. The oldest patties, the ones who aren’t any use, are sent into the rooms with the spent fuel rods. They’re given these overalls, but real kit costs, so they just let them work until … then they break the bodies down and put them in these heaps and wait a few years and …

  At King’s Badby they process jet fuel. There’s these conditions you get, these tumours, but the Company contracts don’t say they have to provide medical help. It got left out of the deal. The government deliberately left it out of the deal, Philip Arnslade and Simon Fardell, they were at university together. They’re best friends. One for the Company, one for the government, but the Company pays for them both.

  And when they run out of labour, they send Company Police into the enclaves, and they grab anyone who looks at them funny. Where’d you think the beggars went from the city? Where’d you think the drunks, the kids who throw eggs are? Why’d you think there aren’t more people in the ghost towns that the Company left behind? Where’d you think they all went?”

  On the canal, Neila said, “Tea? We’re down to camomile, which I don’t even like, but it’s all that is …”

  In the prison, in the past, the man who was Theo’s father reached down into the bowels of the machine and realised, too late, that something was still moving, felt the cog, felt the lock, the first brush of metal and then the squeeze it burst through his hand like a bullet through a melon and he screamed and screamed and knew that he could pull his arm free and didn’t dare because if he did he would have to look at the place where his hand had been and he …

  In Dorchester the woman who was Theo Miller’s mother helped pull up Mrs. King’s trousers, sweeping thin faeces off the inside of her thigh with a Wet Wipe and popping the fouled tissue into the bin, and said, “Mushy banana for supper lovely mushy banana you like banana don’t you you like it?”

  But Mrs. King didn’t answer. She never did talk, really, except for when she wasn’t allowed her cigarettes.