THE REALITIES OF ALDOUS U
Michael Lawrence
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Formerly:
A Crack in the Line
Small Eternities
The Underwood See
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Wordybug
He was young when he stumbled into his second reality. Middle-aged by the time he walked knowingly into his thousandth. Each one was different. Mostly the differences were slight, but sometimes... sometimes they were extreme. He recorded the differences. Kept a note of them in a ledger no one ever saw. That no one must see.
Sometimes he wished there was someone he could share his knowledge with. His vast awareness, the things he knew. But there wasn’t a soul. Never had been.
Until the girl. She was young, still in her teens, not noticeably out of the ordinary, but there was something about her that suggested she might be worth talking to. Telling everything to, eventually.
Maybe.
Wait and see.
Watch. Listen.
FEBRUARY
Part One
LEXIE’S FOLLY
Day Seven
Day Six
Part Two
THE PARALLEL GRAVE
Day Five
Day Four
Part Three
FAMILY TREES
Day Three
Day Two
Day One
Part One
LEXIE’S FOLLY
DAY SEVEN
Day Seven / 1
The week she switched realities for the first time, Naia was eight months shy of her seventeenth birthday. So was Alaric. These two. They were as alike as any two people of the opposite sex can be. They looked alike. They thought alike. They shared memories. Histories. They had lived all their lives in the same house, slept in the same room, done many of the same things at the same instant.
And yet.
And yet?
They had never met.
Hadn’t the faintest inkling of one another’s existence.
The day it started they were kneeling on their beds, at their windows – same bed, same window – gazing out at the same water, trees, lifeless February sky. The landing stage below the garden was opaque with frost; the river toiled beneath shifting plates of ice; the first soft splodges of snow thumped the glass and clung for uneasy seconds before slithering downward. But while watching the snow strike their identical windows, their circumstances could not have been more different. The central heating for one thing. The heating in both versions of the house had been installed the same hour eighteen years earlier, but while at Naia’s the system was regularly serviced, at Alaric’s it hadn’t been so much as looked at for almost three years, with the result that the boiler had packed up five days ago. In consequence, Naia’s room was snug and warm, while for Alaric, huddled fully dressed in the fat cloak of his duvet, it felt as cold indoors as it looked out.
Then, suddenly, another difference: a movement, across the river from his window but not hers: a man, stepping from the cover of the unruly bushes and trees on the bank. Thin man, elderly, rather seedy-looking in a black overcoat, he simply stood there, staring at the house. Probably harmless, Alaric thought; some nosey old bastard with nothing better to do. But you never knew. Might be casing the joint. There’d been a lot of break-ins round here lately.
‘Al, I’m off now!’
His father’s voice, downstairs, trying to sound light. They’d argued badly the night before. Things had gotten out of hand, ending with shouts, recriminations, slammed doors. The echo of the row filled the morning like bad air. Alaric waited for the call to be repeated before discarding the duvet and sidling out to glare down from the galleried landing. His father, in the hall below, smiled tautly up, keen not to part on bad terms.
‘Gotta go, son.’
He went down, face set in an unforgiving mask, no immediate plans to put their estrangement behind him. The house seemed to get colder the lower he went. His hostility also increased with every step. His father sensed this. ‘Al,’ he said when they stood together at the foot of the stairs, ‘look, try and see it from my point of view. I have a life too. And it won’t be easy for Kate either at first.’
He didn’t give a shit about Kate. ‘You know what day this is?’ he said.
‘Day?’
‘Yeah, that’s what I thought.’
Brief puzzlement, before: ‘Oh, I see. Yes. Course I know what day it is. But we’ve got to move on, Al.’
‘Well, you are, that’s for sure.’
His father glanced toward the front door along the hall, keen to be the other side of it. ‘Liney’ll be here soon,’ he said. ‘If you need anything, she’ll sort it.’
‘One thing I don’t need is her,’ Alaric said.
His father snatched up the overnight bag at his feet. ‘And we’ve been over that too. You’re a minor. I’m still responsible for you by law.’ He softened his tone, with effort. ‘It’s only for a couple of days.’ Attempted a smile. ‘Come and see me off?’
They walked to the front door, along the unlit hallway that ran through the centre of the house. Actually, they walked from the original front to the original back, the two main entranceways having been reversed in the nineteen thirties. In 1884, when the place was built, the river was a commercial and social highway and most visitors from beyond Eynesford and Stone came by boat. The river frontage was quietly impressive back then, the brickwork was brighter, there were painted shutters at the windows. The shutters were gone now, ivy scrambled haphazardly across the walls, a pair of somber yews guarded the porch.
Alaric’s father unbolted the front door. When he opened it, a gust of snow scurried in. ‘I could do without this,’ he said. ‘Just hope it’s only local, that’s all.’ He scooped the bottle of milk from the step, handed it over like a parting gift, and flipped up the collar of his old brown bomber jacket. Part of the collar stayed down. Alaric didn’t tell him. ‘I’ll give you a ring when I get there. This evening sometime.’
The instant he was off the step, Alaric shut the door, but he remained just this side of it, listening for the creak of the garage doors, the forty-year-old Daimler growling to life, slow tires on gravel as it reversed out, and finally the deep-throated toot as the car plunged into the avenue of trees that swept all the way to the gate.
And then he was alone, in a house as cold and still as an empty church. He went through to the kitchen and put the bottle of milk in the fridge, cursing his life, his luck, his world. Before the morning was out his hyperactive aunt would be there, filling the place with her inane racket, and in a couple of days his father would return with his lousy fancy woman and nothing would ever be the same again.
He was right about that. After today nothing would be the same. But not because of anything his aunt or his father or Kate Faraday did.
Day Seven / 2
Alex handed Ivan his overcoat. He protested.
‘I can’t drive all that way in this bloody great thing.’
‘It’s cold out,’ she said.
‘I’ll be in the car. Which has a heater.’
‘It does, but you’ll freeze to death before it makes a difference. You can stop and take it off when you’re warm enough.’
‘Christ,’ he said, ‘this is like living with Mother.’
‘Your mother wouldn’t have put up with all this argument. Put it on.’
He put the coat on. She was buttoning him up before he’d gotten the second arm in. He shook her off.
‘Will you leave me alone, woman?’
‘You look a mess,’ she said.
‘I’m comfortable as a mess,’ he said. ‘I swear, if I dropped dead on the carpet right this minute you’d tidy me up before
the undertakers got here.’
‘Goes without saying,’ Alex said. She leaned up the stairs. ‘Naia, break open the champagne, he’s off now!’
They waited for her to come down, then all three headed for the front door, side by side, Ivan in the middle as if being escorted off the premises. ‘Now what’s the procedure while I’m away?’ he asked.
‘Procedure?’ Alex said.
‘With strangers at the door.’
‘Er... don’t open it to them?’
‘Correct.’
‘How will we know if they’re strangers unless we open the door?’
‘Well, if you have to open it and they’re strangers,’ he said, ‘don’t let them in.’
‘Why would we, if they’re strangers?’
‘They might want to read the meters.’
‘So if these strangers are meter readers, we’re not to let them read them?’
‘What you do,’ he said, ‘is ask for their IDs, and if they don’t look genuine you shut the door on them.’
‘How will we know their IDs are genuine or not?’
He sighed. ‘Our nearest neighbor is not only too far away to hear your screams but stone deaf, and this is serious, all right?’
He unbolted and opened the door. A fistful of snow whirled in.
‘I could do without this. Just hope it’s only local, that’s all.’
‘According to last night’s Weather it’ll be bad everywhere today,’ Naia said brightly.
Ivan flipped his coat collar up. Part of it stayed down. Alex moved to straighten it. He warned her off with a raised eyebrow. ‘I’ll give you a ring tonight. Mid evening sometime.’
‘You’ll be there before that,’ Alex said.
‘I have to settle in.’
‘Go out on the town with your bit of stuff, you mean.’
‘I’ll tell her that’s what you call her.’
‘She knows.’
Ivan laughed, picked up the canvas holdall he’d dropped there earlier, kissed them both on the forehead, and walked to the garage, shoulders hunched against the whirling snow. Alex and Naia waited dutifully on the step, arms folded, as he released the padlock, pulled the big doors back, went inside. In a minute they heard the engine turn over. Gravel crunched as the silver Saab reversed in a tight semicircle.
‘Drive carefully!’
‘Don’t knock anyone innocent down!’
Wheels churned. The stripped trees and bushes that lined the drive provided silver flashes of the car’s departure all the way to the gate.
Alex plucked the two bottles of milk from the step. ‘I don’t like the look of this,’ she said, straightening up.
‘Look of what?’
‘The snow.’
‘Oh, I do,’ Naia said.
‘You don’t have to drive all that way in it.’ Her mother shivered. ‘Remind me to go and shut the garage later.’
‘It could be half full by then.’
‘Nothing stopping you doing it.’
‘Forget I spoke.’
Alex kneed the door shut. ‘Any plans for the day? Such as... dare I ask... revision?’
‘Revision?’ Naia said. ‘Come on. The exams are way off.’
‘So they might be, but it’s half-term, why not make the most of it?’
‘I intend to – by not doing any revision.’
‘That’s not the attitude, Nai. You want to do well, don’t you?’
‘I will do well.’
‘Such confidence. But seeing as you’re unoccupied you can give me a hand.’
‘Oh yes, doing what?’
‘The house.’
‘Oh, God,’ Naia said, trooping after her to the kitchen.
Alex put the milk in the fridge. ‘I’ll start upstairs, you get going down here. You can use the new Dyson.’ She left the kitchen.
‘Sodding Dyson,’ Naia muttered.
‘Heard that,’ a voice came back from the hall.
‘Bloody Big Ears,’ Naia said.
‘And that.’
She sighed, envisaging a mind-numbing morning cleaning the house when she could be doing nothing much. She’d been looking forward to doing nothing much.
Day Seven / 3
It was known as the River Room because its French doors opened onto the lawn that descended to the landing stage and the water’s edge. This room was as far from the kitchen as it was possible to get without going upstairs, but it was a light room, light-filled on good days, so pleasant in summer that they used to take most of their evening meals here from April to late October, reserving the actual dining room, with its serving hatch from the kitchen, for the darker months. But that was then. These days the room wasn’t used in any season, on any occasion, and with the door always closed it smelt stale and musty. It was also colder than any other room in the house, or so it seemed to Alaric when he wandered in after his father’s departure.
He’d had no real intention of going in there; had simply veered toward the door in passing, and opened it: an impulse, perhaps born of the even greater silence of the house now that he was alone in it, or perhaps because his thoughts had turned to his mother, who’d spent so much time in there on fine spring evenings and summer afternoons. She had loved the smell of the river, the croaks and scuffles of the moorhens, the rustle and sway of the reeds and rushes below the lawn. He recalled her sitting at the open doors, drawing. Drawing was one of her quiet passions. Several of her pictures were on the walls in thin black frames, alongside posters from unvisited exhibitions and international art shows.
The furniture in the River Room was something of a hotchpotch: a plain 1920s dining suite, an Edwardian chaise longue covered in faded blue velvet, a rosewood sideboard on which stood an assortment of family photographs: Alaric at various stages of childhood; grandparents; Aunt Liney; a few other relatives, some of whom he hadn’t seen for years, if ever. One of the photos, taken about ten years ago, was of his mother on a beach in Pembrokeshire. She wore a black swimsuit and was nicely tanned. The ends of her short sandy hair were spiky with salt from a dip in the sea. She was trying to be serious for the camera, but her dancing eyes gave her away. It said so much about her, that picture. Outgoing, lively, quick to laugh. He picked the photo up, and everything came back in a rush; the good stuff first, then the rest, like a fist in the guts. He’d been trying not to put too much significance on the date, but he was making a poor job of it. His father had forgotten without trying, but not him, not him.
Two years. Two years ago today. His mother had gone to see an Edvard Munch retrospective at the Tate Modern. It was early evening, just starting to snow, when she phoned from the train to say that it should reach the station in about twenty minutes. Ten minutes after her call Dad had set off to meet her. Alaric had been waiting for him to go so he could watch some of the video material borrowed from (and co-starring) Garth Noy. He ran up to his room, snatched it from his school bag, jumped down the stairs three at a time, shoved the tape in the player. He was already well into the action as his father, having parked in the station forecourt, walked onto the platform to wait for the train along with others who’d come to meet relatives or friends. They were still waiting fifteen minutes later, with growing irritation, when the announcement came over the speakers that the train from King’s Cross had come off the tracks a couple of miles down the line. Later they were to learn that a single rail had been responsible for this. Already weakened by a ‘rolling contact fatigue crack’, the freezing conditions of recent weeks had made the rail so brittle that when the wheels of this particular train on this particular night reached it, the section had shattered like glass into more than three hundred pieces. In spite of its enormous bulk and weight, the engine had leapt into the air with a grinding roar, taking two of the carriages with it. Alaric’s mother was in one of the carriages. When his father called from the station, he’d just freeze-framed a particularly explicit scene on Noy’s home-made video. He snatched the phone distractedly, but when he heard the news his
thumb twitched on the remote and the tape unfroze.
‘What’s that?’ Dad said. ‘Is there someone there?’
He ejected the video. ‘It’s the TV. What do you mean, accident?’
‘The train your mum’s on. I’m going down the line. Can’t just hang around here.’
‘I want to go too!’
His father came back for him, then drove to the scene at reckless speed, where the snow, though light, was falling steadily. The derailed train resembled the corpse of a gigantic snake, slewing up into the night. A billowing pall of smoke and dust hung over everything as rescue teams smashed carriage windows or tried to comfort those already released, who stood about in small shaken groups or sat alone, wrapped in blankets, watching. Relatives and other observers were told to keep back while firemen sawed and hacked at the twisted carriages. Arc lamps illuminated the scene, picking out every slow speck of falling dust and snow while TV cameras recorded and reporters interviewed survivors for the viewers at home. The night was laden with voices bellowing orders and shouting for assistance, the cries of young children and babies still inside the train, the snarl of electric saws, the thuds and crashes of massive hammers. Alaric had seen plenty of disasters and tragedies on television: motorway pileups, plane crashes, gutters running with the blood of murder victims, the carnage created by suicide bombers, earthquakes that left ragged orphans howling through rubble for dead parents. He’d grown up with such images, contained within the boundaries of screens – someone else’s world, someone else’s horror, entertainment of a kind – but this… this was personal. Every now and then another passenger was freed or helped out. Some walked away, with or without assistance. A number were carried off on stretchers. The faces of a few on the stretchers were covered.
‘Dad, that might be Mum under there!’
‘We’ll find out soon enough. Have to wait, it’s all we can do.’
The Realities of Aldous U Page 1