The Realities of Aldous U

by Michael Lawrence

  ‘Which way?’ Liney asked.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘A shop that sells paint and wallpaper.’

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘How would you know? Haven’t you lived here all your life?’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t go to shops like that.’

  ‘Or even notice them?’

  ‘I notice other things.’

  ‘Well, there must be one.’

  There was, of course, and she found it just a few doors down from Ivan’s shop. The fact that Underwood’s Antiques & Memorabilia was closed for the week did not stop her peering in the window and ‘ooohing’ at one or two items that took her fancy. The little DIY shop they came to next turned out to hold a fairly impressive stock for its size. Little of this interested Alaric, but, flipping indifferently through the fat sample books while Liney poked about elsewhere, he came across the very wallpaper he’d seen in Naia’s Long Room. So thrilled was he to have found the paper his mother would have chosen that he offered to pay for it himself, but Liney wouldn’t hear of it. She calculated the number of rolls they would need and rushed to the cash desk with a credit card before his enthusiasm had a chance to give way once again to the sullen disinterest he affected much of the time in her presence.

  Liney proved to be a better wallpaperer than she made out, though it helped that the chosen paper was self-adhesive. No need for a trestle table, big brushes, paste slopping everywhere; just peel off the backing paper and there you were. Simple as this was, Liney, slapdash by nature, would have cheerfully hung every strip out of pattern alignment with its neighbor. This Alaric would not allow, reminding her more than once that he would have to live with what they did here.

  To their surprise, Mr. Dukas arrived on the agreed dot. He had to virtually dismantle the boiler to service it and fit the valve, but he was thorough, and afterwards ‘bled’ all fourteen of the radiators. ‘You really need a bigger boiler for this many rads, house this size,’ he told them. ‘We’ll bear that in mind,’ Liney answered.

  They were about a quarter of the way through papering the Long Room when the ‘domestics’ arrived, four of them in all. Alaric wasn’t happy about giving a bunch of strangers unsupervised access to all parts of the house, but he could hardly follow them around. He went to his room before they reached it and put away anything remotely personal. They were as efficient and conscientious as Mr. Dukas had turned out to be in the end, and in three hours the house was cleaner and tidier than it had been for two years, with only the Long Room still in disarray because it was still being decorated.

  Day Three / 2

  Naia sprawled on the couch in the Long Room idly flipping the pages of a magazine while her mother drifted about straightening curtains, moving things, straightening curtains, dusting ornaments with a tissue from her sleeve, straightening curtains. She’d been like this ever since the encounter with the boy in the cemetery yesterday. She’d wanted to reach out, touch him, and this had worried her ever since. An attraction? To a teenage boy? Hopefully, she thought, it was the likeness to Naia that had drawn her to him. Christ, that had better be it.

  ‘Mother, you’re making me nervous. Will you sit down, or leave the room or something?’

  ‘It’s these curtains, they’re too long, they bunch at the bottom.’

  ‘They’re fine. Leave them alone.’

  Naia assumed that all the fiddling was her mother being her usual self, unable to settle without something specific to do. She’d brought the family album up to date and would be at a loose end until she hit on her next project. Naia rarely felt guilty sitting around; took after her father in that. But for once she wished she had something to distract her. The magazine wasn’t absorbing enough to keep her mind off the contents of the Message Hole envelope. Her head had been buzzing with questions ever since she read it. Questions like who was Aldous U? There weren’t too many surnames beginning with ‘U’ in the phone book – she’d checked – so Underwood seemed a likely candidate. But it wasn’t possible. There was no Aldous Underwood, not a living one anyway, and although the envelope looked far from new, and the contents were typewritten rather than word-processed, it wasn’t so ancient. The longest it could have been there was four years anyway, but surely even an envelope made of such material couldn’t have survived that long out of doors. Its age aside, the letter, or whatever it was meant to be, could be a hoax, intended to mystify whoever found it. But who else knew about the Message Hole? Only her parents. And Alaric perhaps. The only other person who could wander about the garden at will was Mr. Knight the occasional gardener, and he was such a serious, upright man; she couldn’t see him writing such things, sealing hand-made envelopes with wax, secreting them in trees. But if it wasn’t a hoax, what was it? Some sort of philosophical treatise? A piece of imaginative fiction? A –

  ‘Damn and blast.’

  Her fidgety mother had skimmed three tangerines off the fruit bowl with her sleeve. Naia tossed her magazine aside and jumped up.

  ‘That’s it, I’m out of here.’

  Alex stooped to round up the oranges. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Out.’

  ‘At this time of night?’

  ‘The garden. I might stand a chance of being allowed to relax out there.’

  She put on her coat and boots and had just closed the door behind her when the phone rang. It was Ivan, who told Alex that the trade fair was over and that even though the roads hadn’t improved he was thinking of chancing it.

  ‘Don’t be silly, it’s not worth it,’ Alex said to him.

  ‘But it’s so boring, sitting round here,’ Ivan said. ‘And don’t bother to recommend one of your lousy thrillers again. The one you leant me is about as thrilling as a wet sock.’

  ‘You have a TV, don’t you?’

  ‘There’s nothing on except maybe the porn channels.’

  ‘So watch one of those.’

  ‘I did, last night. Made me miss the real thing. I’m coming home.’

  ‘Ivan you’re doing nothing of the sort until the roads are safe.’

  ‘But that could take weeks,’ he protested.

  ‘We’ll do our best to recognize you when you eventually return. Isn’t there someone there you can talk to? What about Kate?’

  ‘Kate was only here one night. Cleared off before the roads got really bad. Keen to get back to the new fella.’

  ‘New fella? She didn’t mention a new fella in her last letter.’

  ‘This one’s just off the production line. A Tony or Tom or something. I must say, I’m crushed. I thought she only had eyes for me.’

  ‘You should be so lucky.’

  ‘I seem to remember you saying something of the sort yourself at one time.’

  ‘I was trying to boost your fragile male ego,’ Alex said.

  Day Three / 3

  It was getting on for nine when he told Liney that he was going out for some air. ‘What, too warm for you now?’ she said. ‘No, it’s just being cooped up indoors all day.’ What this really meant was that he needed a break from her after ten or eleven hours in her company. She gave him a lopsided smile as if to say that she knew this and understood. He left the hall light on so he’d be able to see his way back in by the window beside the porch, and set off around the grounds, no specific route in mind, walking this way and that, round, across, through, over. Snow was still falling and there were no stars, no moon, but the garden glowed as though lit from within, lighting his way. It was all so still, so wonderfully silent after Liney’s incessant chatter and racket. Free of her and all other distractions his mind turned to his visit to the sleeping Naia’s, and that visit’s aftermath, when he’d found himself not to his own reality as he’d expected but in one just like it, home to another Alaric, another who, going by the sorry state of his room, had also been deprived of his mother. He imagined coming face to face with that Alaric. The differences between himself and Naia were obvious and marked, but a motherless Alaric would surely be like
him in every way. What could they say to one another if they met? Could two identical minds operate in the same room? Could a person bear to look into his own eyes outside of a mirror? So many imponderables. Too many to risk another visit to Naia’s in case the Folly sent him to the other Alaric’s instead.

  The snow crunched agreeably as he passed between the house and the garage, past the corner that enclosed the River Room, down the slope to the landing stage. A more sensible descent in such conditions would be via the steps, but he felt no inclination to be sensible. He dug his heels in and half trod, half slithered down the bank until his feet struck wood, which protested but gave hardly at all. The landing stage was an unfussy construction of planks supported by sturdy pillars. In the non-Underwood years an impressive motor cruiser had been moored here, but the grandest craft Alaric’s family – like Naia’s – had ever owned was a punt of polished mahogany which Grandpa Rayner had commissioned from the boat yard along the river. A beautiful thing, host to many a picnic on the water, the punt – both punts – had been set alight and adrift one night by hooligans. The punts had never been replaced, but both Ivans had eventually bought a small rowing boat which would have been no great loss were the sabotage repeated. In each reality this boat had been taken out a few times but there’d never been much enthusiasm for it, and for more than two years it had lain over-ended on the bank. At present it was a large white hump in the surrounding snow,

  The long platform that comprised the landing stage was bounded left and right by mature willows, stark and tangled now, though in summer and full leaf they reached and trailed lazily across the water. Within these bounds, tonight, nothing moved or made a sound. Standing at the edge of the whitened, unmoving river, Alaric felt like the last person on earth.

  I’m the only one left.

  The old man in the black coat was suddenly in his mind. It seemed likely that in both realities he was just some poor old boy with a wandering mind; but there’d been something in the eyes that met his in the lane at Naia’s. The slightly puzzled look of someone who’d just woken up and found that something wasn’t quite right with the world; something he couldn’t put his finger on. Alaric could identify with that. Many times, even before his mother died, he’d had a feeling that the world was less real than it pretended, less solid, that the people he saw every day were part of a performance or charade put on for his benefit. And sometimes, when walking or sitting on his own, he seemed to feel a presence, or catch a movement at the utmost edge of his eye. There was never anyone there, but in the light of all that he’d learnt recently it seemed reasonable to suppose, as Naia had suggested, that such sensations were glimpses into realities no physical distance away at all. Maybe, at such times, he almost saw or heard another version of himself – Naia perhaps, or that other, even more precise version of himself. As he thought this, the landing stage creaked some way alone as though someone had stepped down onto it, as he had done. He jerked his head, spine prickling. There was no one there, as ever, but the feeling came, once again, that he wasn’t totally alone.

  Day Three / 4

  The landing stage creaked as Naia stepped onto it. She stuck her fists in her pockets and looked at the icy river and wondered what Alaric was doing right now. For all she knew he was standing on this very spot. Being the same person in every important respect, they must have done the same thing at the same moment countless times; thought the same thought even. If she seemed quicker than he, more imaginative, it was almost certainly because of the great tragedy that had befallen him. An individual whose life had been thrown off course by such a cataclysmic event was less likely to be inspired or intrigued than he might have been previously; be quite a bit more introspective, sorry for himself.

  From Alaric her mind drifted to family: her family, his. The missing aunt remained a mystery – why didn’t she have an aunt if he did? – but she imagined that most other relatives had turned up in both realities. She’d never given much thought to family history until Alaric appeared, literally out of thin air, but in the past few days she’d fallen to speculating about those of earlier generations who, simply by existing, had conspired to bring her into the world, to this point in time. They too had been young once, and probably not so very different from people today, in ways that mattered. She wondered if she had the looks, attitudes, mannerisms of any of her forebears; similar skills, tastes, ambitions. Maybe one or two earlier Underwoods had come out here on a night like this and reflected on those who’d stood here before them. They were gone now, all of them, as she would be gone someday, but there was an odd comfort in the thought that she was merely the latest of her line to stand on this spot, musing on her part in things, her position, her role.

  Day Three / 5

  Cold as it was, Alaric didn’t want to go inside yet, and, after leaving the landing stage, he took another turn around the grounds. He was in the south garden when a wind sprang up, a very sharp wind that chilled him to the bone. He took cover behind the Family Tree, from where he watched the wind ripple the snow’s powdery surface, listened to it whistle through the boughs and branches above. When he felt a quivering where his shoulder leant against the trunk, he placed the flat of his hands upon it, sure at first that he was imagining it. But the tree was indeed quivering. Was such a thing possible? Could a wind, even such a spirited one, buffet so deep-rooted a tree, an oak of such girth? He was wondering this when a terrible sorrow swept through him, a sorrow so vast and devastating that it drove him to his knees. So stricken was he with grief for a tragedy that he knew nothing of that he barely noticed the tree jump beneath his hands; but then he fell away from it and the sorrow ended, and at once he jumped up and scurried to the house, suddenly keen to be inside.

  The front porch was in darkness now, but the snow illuminated the area well enough for him to get by without the hall light. He gripped the door handle. It felt odd, less firm than it should be, but he barely notice this when he found that the door wouldn’t open. He cursed Liney. He’d been out no time at all and the batty old dame had not only turned the light off but locked the door. Then he noticed that the window beside the door was open – just a little, but enough for anyone to use it as an access point of they had a mind to do so. Why would she lock the door and open the window? The paint smell from the kitchen wasn’t so overpowering that it was necessary to leave windows open on such a cold night. That woman’s mind. It defied human understanding. Still, rather than ring the bell and bring her running he opened the window further and climbed in, intending to go straight up to his room and leave her wondering where he’d got to – if she wondered at all.

  Inside, he closed the window quietly and took his boots off. The door to his left, one of the two doors to the Long Room, was closed, but he could hear the TV, so he imagined she’d taken time out from clearing away the mess they’d made – or maybe she was waiting for him to give her a hand. Well, she could wait, especially after locking him out. Keeping his coat on in his haste to get upstairs, he headed along the hall. Sufficient light came from the landing above for him to notice various discrepancies on the way up, but he missed them because creeping about like a spy took all his concentration. When he reached the half-way platform he saw a light other than the one on the landing, around the bathroom’s partially open door. So Liney wasn’t in the Long Room. He was estimating the odds of making it past the bathroom undetected when he heard a voice from the master bedroom.

  ‘Wally, where the fuck are you?’

  He started. Dad’s voice? But he was in Bristol. He can’t have come back without calling to say he was on his way. And who was he talking to?

  ‘I’m ’aving a slash, mate.’

  The second voice was not one he recognized.

  ‘Well get a move on! The rest of ’em could be back any time.’

  It wasn’t his father’s voice. It was very like it, but coarser, harder. Alaric pressed himself into the broad shadow that fell like a cloak from the landing – just in time, for a small man in a bl
ack leather jacket left the bathroom zipping his fly. Who were these men? What were they doing here? And where was Liney?

  ‘It’s mostly shit,’ the voice reminiscent of his dad’s said as the small man joined him in the master bedroom.

  ‘You said they was loaded,’ said the other.

  ‘They are. Have to be. Have you seen their car?’

  ‘There might be a safe somewhere…’

  ‘Yeah. Go take a look.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, you, why, got something better to do?’

  ‘Where do I look?’

  ‘How would I know? Anywhere, use your fucking head.’

  ‘I’m not goin’ back in that room.’

  ‘Why? Think they’ll leap up and wrestle you to the ground or something?’

  ‘You didn’t have to do that, Ive.’

  ‘They saw our faces. They could’ve identified us. Now stop whining and move it.’

  Pressing himself deeper into the shadow from above, Alaric noticed the decor for the first time. The unfamiliar pictures, the fussy wallpaper, floral stair carpet, painted banister rail. This wasn’t his Withern Rise. Or Naia’s. It was another entirely. And those men up there were turning it over in the absence of the people who lived here. Which made them dangerous. He backed slowly down the stairs, avoiding the creakers.

  Day Three / 6

  Naia could have climbed the steps from the landing stage, but the temptation to clamber the bank was hard to resist. She lost her footing before she made it to the top, however, and came down on her hands and knees. Then her legs slid out from under her and for a moment she feared she would slither back to the landing stage and from there topple into the river – or onto it if the ice was as thick as it looked. She made desperate hooks of her hands, dug deep into the snow, and pulled herself up. Reaching the flatter ground above, she got to her feet and walked toward the house brushing snow off her front, feeling foolish even though she doubted that she’d been observed. She passed between the pair of grim black yews to the back porch and tried the door. It was locked and bolted, as it should be, so she trudged round to the front.