The Realities of Aldous U

by Michael Lawrence

  ‘Well, he died,’ Naia said. ‘But only five years ago. And as you see, he didn’t sell up.’ She was talking about the Rayner of her true reality, but this one’s had died then too, same date, following the same illness, so the distinction was minimal.

  ‘It was a similar story with Mum and Auntie Urse,’ Rod said. ‘That’s her older sister.’

  ‘Similar in what way?’

  ‘The last we heard of Ursula was about twenty-five years ago. A postcard from Johannesburg, sent on her behalf by a friend to inform Mum that she’d been thrown into jail for anti-apartheid activity. According to my dad – this was before the d-divorce – Mum washed her hands of Ursula then and there. She was always somewhere in the world stirring things up, Mum said. She doesn’t approve of things like that. Pretty strait-laced about some things, my mother.’

  Opening the photo album at last, Naia found a number of small black-and-white pictures of young Mimi in the garden at Withern Rise with her siblings and parents and a few others whose names were not recorded. Rod was transfixed. His mother had no such pictures, so this was a whole new world to him. A new old world. The only Underwood he’d known apart from his mother had been his grandmother, Marie, and she died when he was nine.

  ‘Who’s that?’ he asked, tapping a finger on a picture of a young boy holding a home-made shield and a wooden sword, trying to look fierce.

  ‘That’s Aldous.’

  ‘Oh, that’s Aldous. I don’t know much about him, only that he d-died in some nursing home up North, near my gran’s.’

  ‘Is that what your mum told you?’

  ‘In some sort of coma for years and years, she said. Didn’t think he could have lasted long after she left for New Zealand with Phil and me.’

  ‘So she didn’t know he’d died, just thought he must have, like Rayner? Does she think everyone’s passed away if she hasn’t seen them for a while?’

  Rod smiled. ‘I think she does tend to. Mum’s not too sentimental about family. Or the past. “The past’s another life,” she always says. Or said. Sure changed her tune lately.’

  ‘Well, Aldous didn’t die,’ Naia said.

  ‘He didn’t?’

  ‘No. Still about all these years later. Lives here with us now.’

  He was so astonished by this that, though he tried to respond, no words came.

  ‘Nai?’ Kate bellowed from the hall. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Kitchen!’

  Kate entered. ‘I was talking to my old mate Tilly up in… Oh, didn’t know you had…’ She broke off; peered at Rod. ‘Don’t I know you?’

  Naia said: ‘Our personal stalker.’

  Rod colored slightly; began to stammer again. Naia reached over and put a hand on his arm. He fell silent. When Kate heard that he was the son of one of the great aunts Naia had never met, she was delighted.

  ‘Well! You have a new cousin.’

  She hadn’t thought of that. ‘So I do.’

  ‘And I know someone else who might be interested to meet him.’

  Naia smiled. ‘So do I.’

  They escorted Roderick Bishop to the great willow at the edge of the south garden, found Aldous nearby, fishing from the landing stage. From the side, the way he sat, the sun flecking the water behind him, he looked like a young boy. Round his neck he wore the brass binoculars one of his aunts had given him for his last birthday, when he was eleven.

  52: 615/301/114

  Slight as it was, the dizziness helped Ric overcome his surprise at finding himself under a healthy willow a mere step away from a disintegrating forest. ‘Christ, I’m home.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ AU said, checking the number on the pouch. ‘We have to go again.’

  But Ric was already peering through the leaves in wonder. ‘You think I don’t know my own garden?’ He laughed – his first real laugh for some time – and began to pass through.

  ‘Stop, you fool!’

  He didn’t. AU went after him.

  As they emerged from the tree an overweight man in his forties, charcoal-gray suit, red bow tie, metallic-blue laptop – ‘What’s all this?’ – veered toward them from the path round the kitchen garden.

  Ric froze. ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘I’m guessing the owner.’

  ‘The owner? But I’ve only been gone a – ’

  ‘This is not an Underwood reality. Next time listen to me.’

  Too confused to argue, Ric allowed himself to be hauled back under the willow, where AU snatched another pouch at random. When he again gripped his arm, Ric protested.

  ‘Will you stop that? We’re not on a date.’

  ‘If I didn’t hold onto you,’ AU said, ‘you might end up where you want to be, but you’d be on your own. I haven’t prepared you for that yet, so put up with it.’

  He guided him past the trunk, into the reality from which the contents of the latest pouch had come. For Ric, apart from a further momentary disorientation, there was no noticeable change in their surroundings. AU assured him that whatever it appeared to be, it was not the same tree.

  ‘Is it the one in my garden?’

  ‘No. Again, no time to be selective.’

  ‘But you do know where I’m from?’

  ‘I believe so, but there’s something I have to check before I can be certain. Wouldn’t want to strand you in the wrong one, would we?’

  ‘What do you have to check?’

  ‘I need to know what your father does for a living.’

  ‘He has a shop in the village,’ Ric said, baffled.

  ‘What sort of shop?’

  ‘A crap shop.’

  ‘What kind of crap?’

  ‘Rubbishy old furniture and stuff.’

  ‘In that case,’ AU said, opening the satchel once more, ‘it’s just as well I made a point of... where are you going?’

  Ric was walking away. Reaching the curtain of leaves that swept from on high right down to the ground, he peered out. There was no man in a suit this time, but about half-way between the tree and the hawthorn hedge he saw a sand pit, in the center of which stood a blue-and-red plastic castle about four feet high. ‘I had one like that when I was little,’ he recalled.

  ‘Whatever it is, it’s not yours and you’re a big boy now,’ AU said. ‘Here it is. Come back here.’

  Ric returned to the trunk. AU gripped his arm one last time as they stepped forward together. More alert to the process now, Ric noticed the almost imperceptible quiver that told him that something had happened even though the tree appeared unchanged.

  ‘Is this it?’

  AU flipped open the leather satchel and popped the pouch in. ‘If it’s not, there’s more than one missing Alaric.’ He took the bag Ric had been carrying for him since R43. He now had three bags about his person, as well as the large book under his arm. ‘A supermarket trolley would have been handy,’ he muttered.

  ‘Can I go out there?’ Ric asked, nervous where he hadn’t been the last two times.

  ‘Well you can,’ AU said, ‘but you can’t just walk in and expect your parents to throw their arms round you without asking questions.’

  ‘Well, no. Bound to be questions.’

  ‘Which means explanations. They last saw you in July. There were no clues as to where you’d gone, the police were called, there was a big search, your picture was in the papers, and in a few weeks you were just another missing person to everyone except your folks. But it’s late October now, and right out of the blue you stroll across the garden, a bit thinner, looking like you’ve been sleeping in a ditch. “Hey Mum, hey Dad, what’s for tea?” What do you think they’re going to do? Lay an extra place and say “Have a nice time, son”?’

  ‘I’ll just tell them what happened,’ Ric said.

  ‘What, that you’ve spent the past three months lording it with the flies and a bunch of lads in the forest of another reality? Yeah, that’ll cover it.’

  ‘I could say I lost my memory,’ at which Aldous U pulled a face. ‘Well what
else can I say?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know what to say myself in your position,’ AU said, rummaging in the satchel for the pouch to the reality he himself wanted to get to. ‘I just wanted to make you aware of the difficulties ahead.’

  ‘Consider me aware. I’ll just have to get through it.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  Ric shifted about uncomfortably, wanting to say something, finding it hard.

  ‘What is it?’ AU said, glancing up.

  ‘I’m… you know.’

  ‘No, I don’t know. Spit it out.’

  ‘I’m sorry about your house. What we did. And your cat.’

  ‘I thought you denied responsibility.’

  ‘Yeah, but like you said, I was there. I could have stopped some of it.’

  ‘Well, it’s done. Over.’ AU found the pouch he was looking for. ‘Go on now. I won’t wish you luck because it wouldn’t help. Shoo.’

  He waited while Ric pushed his way out of the willow. Then, putting the pouch in his pocket, he took the step to the reality that would be his home from now on, as it was in the beginning.

  53: 39/47

  When a reality of some maturity passes, there’s often a ripple effect among those of its neighbors with which it has much in common. More notable phenomena generally include a flurry of movement – a kind of buffeting, as of strong winds in transit – around the edges of the earth’s tectonic plates, and, here and there, unseasonable weather and temperatures. Coincidentally – or not – there’s also, quite often, an increase in violent crime and terrorist activity, and the international suicide rate briefly soars. R43 was one of the rare realities that had no bank of twins, yet its demise was so dramatic that shock-waves triggered a series of unnatural events in a number of others. Torrential rain fell for twelve and a half minutes on the Saharas of Realities 18 and 64, an earthquake among the Aleutian islands of Reality 119 caused a Pacific-wide tsunami that claimed the lives of a hundred and eighty-three people, high winds out of nowhere in R97 whipped the roofs off eleven recently-renovated Outer Hebridean crofts, a vast tract of Tasmanian bush in R879 spontaneously combusted, and tornadoes carried off three trucks in two versions of Kazakhstan, five cars on Autobahn 5 in Realities 28, 29 and 315, and a busful of nuns returning from a trip to the Lourdes of Reality 672.

  Only in two realities, and a particular part of these two, did a violent storm tear apart a clear blue sky and rage for over an hour. In one, as the heavens howled and lightning flashed across the Long Room’s French doors, Naia said: ‘We can’t leave him out there in this!’

  ‘No, we can’t,’ Kate agreed, ‘and he’ll just have to lump it!’

  ‘You’re not going out there?’ Ivan said as they rushed from the room. They ignored him, snatched their coats from the rack and jumped into inappropriate shoes. Kate tucked Ivan’s raincoat under her arm. As they opened the front door, the garden was again illuminated by a flash. They both jumped back.

  ‘My foot!’

  ‘Sorry!’

  Then: outside, running through sheets of rain that lashed Naia’s hood and soaked Kate’s hair, and a furious wind that did its damnedest to drive them back. Reaching Aldous’s willow, they hurtled through its flailing green whips to where he sat bolt upright, cloaked in his sleeping bag, a terrified young boy crying for the mother he’d lost in his forty-third year while he slept. They pulled him to his feet and discarded the sleeping bag. Draping the raincoat about him, they rushed him, between them, into the wind and rain – and a shaft of light so brilliant and close that it brought a shriek from all three mouths.

  Within a few steps, a deafening overhead boom brought Aldous to a petrified halt. While fighting his reluctance to proceed, Naia caught a flare of white at the edge of her eye, something small, racing, and remembered her cat; but there was no time for distractions. Bawling assurances, they bundled the cowering Aldous across the lawn and round the corner of the house to the front porch. Thrusting him into the hall, they cast the coat to the floor and drew him into the Long Room, where Ivan’s ‘Bloody hell!’ was brushed aside, and he with it, to watch scowling from the wings while his unexpected house-guest was soothed and cosseted.

  The storm was no less vivid or strident in Alaric’s reality, but there was no one to rescue there. He and Kate, sharing a heady combination of exhilaration and alarm (to Ivan’s comfortable amusement), remained at the French doors of their Long Room.

  ‘Wouldn’t like to be out there now,’ Kate said.

  ‘Me neither.’

  What no one was in a position to see from either version of the house was the sliver of white light that struck a gravestone just beyond the wall that divided the garden from the old cemetery. The stone was not shattered, but its surface was blasted so effectively that henceforward it would be impossible for the untrained observer to guess how old it was, precisely who it commemorated, or when he or she had been lain to rest beneath it. There remained just one readable word on the stone: Underwood.

  54: 39/47

  Next morning, post storm, there was an uneasy feeling in the air. The sky wore its grays and blues awkwardly, as if they did not quite match its intentions. A jittery breeze caused leaves to fret. Birds perched silently. ‘Feels like war’s been declared,’ both Kates observed – in one reality to Ivan and Naia, in the other to Ivan and Alaric – as they approached the south garden to inspect a limb wrenched off the Family Tree. It looked odd, sprawling across the lawn in its shroud of shriveled leaves.

  ‘Well, now that we know bits can fall off it in the slightest draught,’ both Ivans said, ‘it’s got to come down, no question.’

  In Naia’s reality, Aldous kept to the Long Room – where he’d passed the night on the couch – until Ivan left for the shop. As he was going, Ivan, in the hall, said, rather too loudly: ‘I’ll be home for lunch, by which time I expect the house to be my own again.’

  When he slammed the door after him, Naia, in the kitchen with Kate, said: ‘Moody today.’

  ‘Territory invaded,’ Kate said.

  ‘Well, we can’t just chuck him out.’

  ‘Which of them are we talking about?’

  Aldous wandered in shortly afterwards.

  ‘How was it?’ Naia asked him.

  ‘How was what?’

  ‘Spending a night under an actual roof. Not so bad, I bet.’

  Admitting nothing, Aldous said: ‘I’d better go.’

  ‘You’ll have some breakfast first, my lad,’ Kate said.

  ‘No, I’ve still got some bread out there from yesterday.’

  ‘Ah, but here you can have it hot and crisp fresh out of the toaster.’

  ‘And we’ve got a new plum jam,’ Naia put in.

  He gulped. ‘Plum jam?’

  ‘Home made,’ said Kate. ‘Or so it says on the label.’

  Minutes later they were leaning against the sink watching him eat his toast with sly relish.

  ‘Like a big kid,’ Kate whispered.

  ‘Exactly like a big kid.’

  Aldous polished off four rounds before informing them that the jam wasn't like Maman used to make and popping into the adjoining bathroom, converted from the old utility room for his sole use, with a door to and from the garden. ‘Off now, then,’ he said when he looked in on them again.

  He started to retreat, but Naia said: ‘Come out the front.’

  ‘The front? No, this way’ll do me.’

  ‘You’ve been our guest. Today it’s the front door, like anyone else who’s stayed the night.’

  As with the toast and jam he gave in with his rendition of an elderly huff of reluctance, and the three of them went out to the hall. But when they opened the front door, he did not leave immediately. Last night was the first time since his return that he’d entered any part of the house other than the kitchen and his personal bathroom. Rushed in from the storm so unceremoniously, he’d been in no state to take anything in, but he was calm now, and nothing like as rattled as he usually was within walls.

/>   ‘So different,’ he murmured.

  ‘Different good or different bad?’ Naia asked.

  ‘Just different.’

  He left.

  ‘We’ll get him indoors yet,’ Kate said, closing the door and heading upstairs.

  ‘I know someone who won’t be celebrating if we do,’ said Naia.

  When the bell rang a few minutes later, and kept on ringing, it was she who opened the door. Aldous stood on the step, drained of color.

  ‘What is it?’

  He didn’t answer. Seemed unable to. He tugged at her sleeve. She slipped her shoes on and followed him round the corner and along the side of the house. He kept hold of her sleeve, leading the way. She asked more questions as they went, but he answered none of them. What was it that had got him so worked up?

  She found out as soon as they rounded the next corner, on the river side. In a little rockery that Kate had constructed a few days earlier, curled up in a tight white ball, was her cat.

  ‘Alaric!’

  She fell to her knees. Touched him. He was cold and stiff. She gathered him up tenderly. The white fur around his nose was tangled and dirty, suggesting that he’d tried to burrow into the earth. His eyes were half open, but there was no life in them. Naia looked up at her friend.

  ‘Oh, Aldous.’

  He stepped back, dithered as though unsure which way to go, then started running, in the same ungainly way she herself ran when agitated or in a hurry, not stopping until he reached his willow, into which he plunged sobbing uncontrollably.

  55: 47

  About an hour after Aldous rang the doorbell in Naia’s reality, the same bell rang in Alaric’s. ‘Yes?’ Kate said to the stranger on the step.

  ‘Good morning. I wonder if I might speak to Alaric?’

  ‘Alaric? Ye-es. And you are…?’

  But he’d turned away as if dismissing her. She half closed the door on him and hastened along the hall. Music in the distance, up above.

  ‘Alaric!’

  No answer. She ran upstairs and along the landing. Reaching the corner bedroom, she knocked. The music, much louder here, did not cease. She knocked harder.