A Box of Birds

by Charles Fernyhough

  They were already big on the actions. Saturday mornings, down at the West Gate. Level Ten was Barney Rubble to my Fred Flintstone. It was a laugh. A real thrill, you know? When Level Ten joined, things really got going. He was smart, he had loads of ideas. How to keep the protest peaceful, mainly: we were never into people getting hurt. But then things started going too far. One minute we were going into shops and switching small bits of merchandise around, and the next it was the sound of ambulances. Looking back, I think maybe they were trying to test my loyalty. I went along with it because I owed David so much. And you get caught up in things. I’m the proof of that. Take your eye off the ball, and things get so much bigger than you. You can hardly find yourself amid all the shit you’ve made happen.

  That’s why David had to go away. It tore him apart. He loved this place, loved what he’d achieved here. But the pressure was too much. The constant scrutiny. Trying to keep it all quiet. For months we weren’t doing anything, just lying low. Pretending he was dead. We wanted to get the attention off him completely, and it seemed the best way. That was a real headache, trying to pretend that he’d died. We actually drove his car up to Holy Island and left it on the causeway, waited for the tide to come in. They found his clothes on the beach and they thought he’d walked out into the water. But the myth didn’t die that easily. People swore that they’d seen him. People wanted him to be alive. They couldn’t face the reality that there could ever be a world in which his presence wasn’t shining out.

  Finally we had the idea of sending him away, for his own safety. Seems hard to believe it now, but it was actually my idea. The plan was for him to go out and bring the message to the world, trying to keep himself safe as he did it. Hugging the shadows. You can imagine how that made me feel. He’d already saved my life, and I’d repaid him with this. The thing was, he just came at me with mercy and forgiveness. All he gave back to me was love. So when he came to see me just before he left, saying he needed me, there was something only I could help him with, I had no choice. I had to go along with it. I had the connections. I could pass as a student. I owed David everything. It was time I started repaying.

  I have to tell you the truth about that now. Me working for Sansom was all part of David’s plan. He arranged the whole thing. I’m sorry, but knowing all this would have put you in danger. Better that you got the wrong idea about it than get mixed up in something that could hurt you.

  You already know the bit about David doing a deal with Sansom. He would get them the mapping data so that they could develop their Alzheimer’s therapy. If they knew exactly where the circuits ran, they could use their implants to reverse the effects of the disease. In return, they would give him the money he needed to take the protest to a new level. Sansom wouldn’t know it, but their cash would bring the sordid business of science to its knees. All I had to do was go to Sansom and offer to spy on the Lycee. The thing is, it wasn’t any coincidence that Sansom security called me in and bought me a drink. I volunteered. I was doing it because David wanted me to.

  Well, that was the plan, anyway. Trouble is, we didn’t count on our little manic friend. Just as we’re rooting around, trying to find a way onto Ermintrude, we find out that Gaz has beaten us to it. He’d already got hold of your precious mapping data, posted it to an obscure server somewhere and probably buried it under some decent security. When Sansom got wind of this, suddenly I was in a whole different situation. Finding the data meant finding Gaz. I knew he trusted you. He’d talked to you about what he was planning to do. I knew that if anyone could find him, you could.

  I realise I had to keep a lot from you. That hurt me more than you can imagine. Sansom said I should stay with you, so I could pick up the information when it came out. I thought that simply meant waiting for you to remember in your own sweet time. I could not have imagined what they really had planned for you.

  You know the reason for the bomb now, anyway. David didn’t send it to you because you were a vivisectionist. He sent you the bomb because he wanted Sansom to get this implant into you. It wasn’t enough for them to wait until you remembered Gareth’s clue naturally. They had to bring their new technology into it. Apparently his idea was to send it to you at the squat, so you couldn’t possibly have thought it was him. Who the hell would bomb their own house? He knew we’d all be out on an action. I thought that bit was pretty smart.

  But that was the end of it for me. I knew nothing about the bomb, I swear to you. He’d made it tiny, 25g of potassium chlorate mixed with aluminium powder, just to knock you out. That stuff you could smell was an anaesthetic gas. They only needed half an hour to get that electrode into you. It was all part of the deal. You’d blame Aslan’s Law, and you wouldn’t ask any questions. Your burns were supposed to be acceptable damage. I hated him for that. But he had so much power over me. I went to tell the others I’d had enough, that I couldn’t stand what they were doing. They denied everything. We had a screaming row. I just wanted out. I tried to get out, that night on the moors, and those thugs from Sansom nearly killed me. Now I’ve betrayed them all. Maybe I’ve just finished what I didn’t finish that night in the Underpass. Or maybe we can get through this. Maybe, if we stick together, we can find a way.

  We’ve got to find Gaz. For a while I didn’t want to; I’d had it with him. But it’s the only way. We’ve got to get the data back to the Lycee. Finish it, right now. So there’s no more race. So Sansom are out of it. David is coming after me, I’m sure of it. I know he’s already in the country. He’s got a bad temper, and I’ve fucked up his plan. I’ve blown my cover with Sansom, and he staked a lot on that. No one’s ever done this to him and got away with it. You’ve seen what he’s prepared to do. Human life is just a detail to him. That’s why we have to travel alone. I don’t want him on your back as well. And that’s why I’m handwriting this. No one writes letters any more. He’ll be checking the computers, looking for a message. He’s probably in your treehouse now, going through your stuff.

  I didn’t tell you this before because I didn’t want you to know how much danger I was in. But you know now. I’m afraid you had to know.

  I wish I knew how it came to this. When this started, you and me, I was full of dreams. I really thought we could find a way to be together. But too much has happened. Too much life. At first I thought I could deny its influence on me; I thought I could be bigger than it. But David taught me that you can’t deny it. You can’t be bigger than your own story. We can’t help the things that make us what we are. But we can try and face them. We can be brave enough to realise how they’re affecting us, the things we do, the decisions we make. Whatever David thinks of me now, nothing can change the reality he helped me to see. I am like I am because of what happened to me. Simple. That’s me. That’s my truth.

  I love you, Yvonne. I love you because of who I am. I love you in spite of who I am. Look at me, I’m shaking. I’m still afraid.

  Stay in Vienna. Don’t move until you’ve heard from Gaz. I’ve no idea how you know he’s there, and I can see you don’t really want to tell me. I’ll be at the hotel on Wednesday afternoon. Don’t phone anyone. Don’t go out. Don’t answer the door. Just wait, and keep your head down.

  Fucking huge amounts of love,

  James.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  At The Antica Porta Leone

  ◉

  I get in to Verona in the early morning. On the Corso Porta Nuova, businessmen are walking slowly to work through liquid sunshine. After a sleepless night in my seated accommodation, the night sky unreeling at high speed, the built-up world looks distorted, skewed by impossible depths, as though I’d put my contact lenses in the wrong eyes. I feel I could slip off the pavement at any moment, stretch out in the gutter in a thin hallucinating line. The municipal trolleybins are painted with scenes from civic life. The businessmen are talking into their palms. He’ll be headed for Vienna. I’m in Verona. Easy cities to get confused.

  I step into a café and order a cappuccin
o and a custard cornetto. The morning sunlight basks at the bar, plays jazz on the chroming of the Gaggia. I sit at a table on the pavement, smoking something that tastes petrochemical, and watch the girl clear away cups and plates. I wonder how life looks from where she guards it. I wonder how much I could change. Across the street is a convent, a jumble of dark medieval doorways from which six nuns are unspooling silkily. The girl watches the nuns. I witness her dreaming, feel every pang of life-envy. A sign inside the doorway gives opening hours.

  The Hotel Antica Porta Leone lies at the end of a cobbled alleyway. I’m shown upstairs by a pale-stockinged widow with a bitter smell. From the window I can see a telecoms booth, a square parking area and the corner of a department store. As the proprietress leaves, I ask whether there have been any messages. She shrugs, in that devastating Italian way. No one. No one knows I’m here.

  I leave my rucksack on the bed and stare at the walnut dressing table, the cheerful clock radio, the little brown bakelite telephone. I feel the agony of a soul that needs to be online. But I left my FireBook behind at Millennium Heights, with a freezer full of food for Effi. And my phone is still in the lost-and-found at the Marriott Waterside. I look out of the window at the telecoms booth, wondering whether to call his mobile. He’ll be in Vienna in a few hours, booking us in for dinner at the hotel restaurant, waiting for me to ring. I need to call him soon if he’s going to make it. What I want to do needs his company. Finding the truth about a person: it’s not a game you can play alone.

  But if I phone him now, I lay myself open. I go back to being Sansom’s experimental monkey, controlled by contingencies someone else is dreaming up. This way, I stay in control.

  I don’t call.

  The image of a church. The cam is mounted high, foreshortening the ancient façade. The refresh schedule is fast, maybe three seconds. Blink and the picture will have changed, a subtle reconfiguration of mottlings that tests the limits of what you can notice. The pavement is bleached by sunlight. There are people on the street, cars. The white minibus that was parked at one side has moved off in a succession of blurry snapshots. It’s a dull stretch of mid-morning, slowed by late spring heat, and this is my reward for remembering Gareth’s story. This shabby medieval building is where he will keep his side of the bargain. The church on the cam is somewhere in Verona. I just don’t yet know where.

  Someone is talking. I set the image printing and click back to the anonymity of the lilac welcome banner. There’s no sign of Gareth’s icon. When I first went online and changed my icon to two fat exclamation marks—my signal that I’d worked out what he’d been trying to tell me — I knew it would only be a matter of time before he made himself visible. His return to the public gaze was brief, but it lasted long enough for him to use the cam feed function to show me what I was looking for in Verona. The counter at the bottom of the screen tells me that sixteen million people are currently living the narrative of Des*re. He’s given me a time and a date—tomorrow—but no other information apart from this webcam. I still have work to do. An old bloke at the table behind me is working on a puzzle book with the aid of a large dictionary. A young man sits on a high stool behind the information desk, gazing at a screen. A colleague in a blue floral sundress is telling him the latest instalment of some ongoing saga, as loudly as only library workers know how. The young man seems to want to get back to his catalogue. He glances up and notices me watching him, then speaks impatiently to the young woman, who drifts aimlessly back to her own station.

  I go over and pick up my printout. The brains keep working.

  The home screen on my workstation is a search page. Every terminal in this row shouts back the same invitation: Cerca! It’s safe: I’m in a public library. No one can trace me here. I type in his name, with the same sick trepidation as if I were saying it out loud, somehow afraid of who might answer. But no one answers. The net comes back empty. Non sono stati trovati risultati per "james bonham".

  I google “david overstrand”. Nothing. I try it without the double quotes. Two hundred and thirty-six items are returned. Overstrand, Norfolk. Overstrand Cricket Club. It’s a place, not a person. Finding nothing proves nothing, except that I’m not looking hard enough. I go over to the information desk, my mouth set in a hyphen of determination. The young man looks alarmed.

  ‘Per favore. Corriere?’

  I write some dates on a piece of paper and hand it to him. He goes to a drawer behind him and turns back holding a stack of CDs. I take them over to my workstation and flick through them. I choose the year that James started getting involved with the protests, the year he turned fifteen. Two years before he met David in the traffic at Bankstown Underpass. I’ll start at the beginning, and see what unfolds.

  I choose the search option and enter david overstrand inghilterra. The arriving truth is measured off at the bottom of the screen, in the progress of a blue status bar. Pelton, Inghilterra, 17 Agosto. Animalista militante David Overstrand, 19, è stato lasciato ammazzato secco dall’incidente... I dredge up some holiday Italian and try to guess the rest. Animal rights militant David Overstrand, 19, was...But the last phrase beats me. There’s something about a shipment of livestock, an aeroplane. È stato lasciato ammazzato secco dall’incidente. The auto-translate function is returning gibberish. I set the article printing and take the discs back to the desk. I need a cappuccino. I need to think.

  I stick to the back streets. The tourist areas feel too exposed. I won’t see the Arena on this trip, or meet my lover at the fountain in the Piazza dell’Erbe. My wanderings are centrifugal. I’m interested in the outskirts, the life that clings to the periphery, the short cuts out of town. Deserted piazzas, balcony-crowded alleyways. Places where people live, where cars are parked impossibly on corners, as though fork-lift-trucked into place. Churches I notice more than anything. I’m churching. I’m a churcher. But all of them let me down: they’re too tall, too white, too new. None of them matches this printout I’m holding. Gareth is keeping me guessing. And while I’m guessing, I can’t call James.

  I stop at a café on a tiny piazza, in the shadow of the wrong church. I order a whole half-litre of red and watch the waiter’s expression. There’s a phone booth nearby. I could call James now, ask him what è stato lasciato ammazzato secco means. But I’m not sure I’m ready for any more of James’ truth. Lunchtime slides slowly into siesta, and the wine seeps into my blood. At a table opposite me, a man and a woman are breaking up in Italian. Love can’t survive even these perfect afternoons. I’m killing time, killing my one chance to gain control. The facts are still out of whack. Whatever I want to say, I could just as easily say the opposite. He loves me. He loves me not.

  I know the convent re-opens at four. I wait.

  ‘Per favore. Questa chiesa. Dove?’

  The nun takes the printout from me and peers at it. The band of her wimple is like a weather stripe on a cosmic TV, interference from another universe. She bends closer, trying to focus, and I wonder if she can smell the booze on my breath. The cam printout is pale and bubble-jet pointilliste, not much better than an old newspaper. My heart sinks. I’m asking too much.

  She shakes her head and disappears through a door into the back. I’m left alone in this dark ante-room to salvation. A plaque on the wall gives the history of the convent in English. I sit in a black wooden chair with my pale legs and wonky eyes and think about taking the veil. I wonder how desperate you have to get before you give it all up for the peace of a clear conscience. I have no job. Everything I’ve worked for is in tatters. But even as the thought goes through me, some fleeting heart’s protest tells me that I still belong to the world of colour. The nuns must have had lives before this. I’m not yet ready to give up on mine.

  The nun returns with a map and spreads it out on the counter. She points to a spot on the north-western outskirts, across the Adige. She writes the name down in careful lettering. S. Maria della Concezione.

  ‘Finita,’ she says. ‘Sconsacrata.’

&n
bsp; ‘Non chiesa allora?’

  ‘Si. Si. Non chiesa.’

  ‘Per favore. Questa?’

  I hand her the clipping from the Corriere della Sera. She reads it with little devotional lip-gestures.

  ‘Animals rights,’ she says, in strikingly clear English. ‘They are flying cows, for food. Veal. The militanti try to stop the aeroplane...’

  ‘This bit,’ I say, pointing to the phrase about David Overstrand. ‘Lasciato ammazzato secco. Che volere dire?’

  She looks up at the history plaque, trying to convert my Italian into hers.

  ‘Killed instantly.’

  The wound on my scalp begins to burn. I feel the jolt of understanding. So David Overstrand didn’t save James’ life at Bankstown Underpass. By the time of James’ suicide attempt, the animal rights campaigner had already been dead for two years. He died at nineteen, no terrorist mastermind, just an ordinary sleek-skinned teenager who thought he could change the world. He never kidnapped unsuspecting vivisectionists, or firebombed remote biotech units, or went roaming the earth in self-imposed exile. Whoever sent me twenty-five grammes of home-made explosive, it wasn’t him. James’ myth of David Overstrand, his own reason for existing, is just a fairy tale. And if the truth about James is a fiction, what’s left? Only he can tell me that.

  If I call him now, he can be on the train from Vienna tonight. I could meet him at the station in the morning. But I know what James will be like in the morning. He’ll be tetchy, hurt that his own inner struggle has not stopped me wanting breakfast. I could call him now, to ask whether he’s changed. I wonder how his voice would sound. He’ll be in the hotel in Vienna, mobile in one hand and dick in the other, watching strangers fuck on cable TV. Sweetly, endearingly offhand with himself, even when he’s most convinced that he rules the world. Checking his belly in the mirror, bowing to the glass in search of grey hairs. Dimly aware that he’s alone, invincible, and staying that way.