by D. B. Thorne
‘Mr Mullan?’
‘Just leave it outside the door.’
‘Need you to sign.’
The delivery man passed an electronic device through the gap in the door and Solomon took the pen and signed, passed it back, then waited until the man was gone before opening the door. On the floor was a package about the size of a shoebox. He picked it up. It was light, felt almost empty. He took it inside and cut it open along the joins with a knife. Inside was inflatable plastic packaging, and in the middle an opaque white plastic bag. He took it out and cut it open, and took out a single black eye patch. A box that size, just for this? He’d forgotten he’d ordered it, or perhaps more accurately, had tried not to remember.
He walked to his bathroom and put it over his eye and looked at himself in the mirror. What was it Marija had said it made people look? Hench. A new word he hadn’t been familiar with, denoting machismo and substance. He examined his crumpled, shiny, ruined skin, his mouth, half lipless and pulled down in sour disapproval, curls thankfully spilling over his missing ear. Hench wasn’t the word he’d have chosen. Plus, and this was something he hadn’t considered, wearing an eye patch didn’t exactly render him inconspicuous. Still, though. He’d ordered it, and he needed to visit his sister. He looked at the pots of make-up that Marija had left him and decided that he might as well get to work.
*
Before he left his apartment, Solomon sent an invitation to the whole of the Brain Pool for a special, unscheduled meeting. Wasn’t that the point of the Brain Pool? If there were gaps in anyone’s knowledge, then there was always someone to fill it. And for Solomon, Shakespeare was less a gap, more a chasm. He got an immediate reply from Phil, confirming what Solomon had long suspected, which was that Phil had about as active a social life as he himself did.
The worst thing about putting on Marija’s make-up was that it involved him looking at himself in the mirror, something that ranked very near the bottom of things that Solomon relished doing. He applied the foundation as thickly as she had done, building up layers and smoothing it so that it looked almost normal. Nothing to be done about his mouth, but with the eye patch on he could just about pass, he figured, for a pockmarked pirate who had recently suffered a medium-size stroke. And that, he was prepared to accept, counted as a significant improvement.
No hood, no sunglasses. That was the deal. Go out and face the world. Why not? If Thomas Arnold could do it, so could he.
Solomon did it in stages, like a novice runner approaching a marathon. Milestones, knocking them off, one at a time. First, get to the bus stop. Don’t count the paving stones. Look up. Watch people, traffic, the sky, shopfronts, life. He felt his pulse race, the almost illicit thrill of parading himself, an exhibitionist rush. Exposing himself, baring himself to the world. Next, wait for the bus. Number 276. Step out, off the pavement, put up a hand, make it stop. Get on, card to the reader. Eye contact with the driver. Done. Stand, hold the strap, sway with the bus and check out who’s on board. Jostling kids at the back, pensioner up front with shopping trolley, across from grim-faced older lady, large, dressed for church even though it was a Thursday, looking around in disapproval for something to disapprove of. Passengers looking back at him, showing curiosity but no fear, no disgust. A victory, a triumph, and no small one.
Solomon stepped from the bus and walked up the sunlit street towards the hospital with a surge of hope in his chest, a memory to hold onto. Of a journey in which he was a participant, a fellow traveller, not a timid onlooker, hidden, ashamed. As he walked, he thanked Marija, and not even the combined spectres of his comatose sister, his wanted brother, Kay’s distance and Thomas Arnold’s menace were enough to smother this new discovery. This new and unexpected invitation to participate in Life.
Dr Mistry was in Tiffany’s room when Solomon arrived. He turned at the sound of the door opening and put his fingers to his lips and gestured Solomon back out of the room, back into the hospital corridor.
‘Is there anything wrong?’ said Solomon.
‘No, no, I just don’t want your sister disturbed,’ said Dr Mistry. ‘She’s awake.’
‘Awake?’
Dr Mistry wagged his head. ‘Kind of. Out of her coma. And I know you’ll want to speak to her. Which is fine. But she’s showing some memory loss, and I don’t want her upset, so, please. Don’t talk about what happened, don’t ask her about it.’
‘Okay.’
‘The official line, for the moment, is she had a fall. Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘A couple of minutes. No longer. All you need to do is reassure her, everything’s okay, that kind of thing. Manage that?’
‘Yes.’
‘All right. Good.’ Dr Mistry tilted his head. ‘Marija?’
‘I gave her a call.’
‘It looks better. A lot better. The eye patch is a nice touch.’
‘Thanks. And, well.’ Solomon wasn’t used to expressing gratitude, or any kind of emotion. ‘Thank you. For giving me her number.’
‘No problem,’ said Dr Mistry. ‘All part of the service.’ He smiled, then said, ‘Two minutes. Yes?’
‘Yes,’ said Solomon. ‘Two minutes.’
Dr Mistry nodded, then turned and walked away down the corridor. Solomon pushed open the door to his sister’s room, walked to her bed and sat down. Tiffany was still lying on her back and her arm was still in a cast, but the tube that had been forced down her throat was out and she looked close to normal. Peaceful.
‘Solly?’ Her lips barely moved, her eyes stayed shut, but it seemed to Solomon a minor miracle to hear her voice, as gloriously unlikely as a weeping statue of the Virgin Mary.
‘Hey, Tiff,’ he said. ‘Welcome back.’
‘I’m in hospital.’
‘You are.’
‘Why?’
‘You had a fall,’ Solomon said. ‘A bang on the head.’
Tiff sighed and moved her lips but didn’t say anything.
‘Don’t talk,’ said Solomon. ‘You need to rest.’
Tiff sighed again and Solomon watched as tears formed at the corners of her eyes and fell down her face into her hair.
‘No,’ said Solomon. ‘There’s no need to cry. Tiff, it’s okay. You’re back with us now. You’re going to be okay.’
‘I can’t remember what happened.’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ said Solomon. ‘What matters is that you’re back with us.’
‘Where’s Luke?’
‘He’s around. You know Luke. He’s been in every day.’
‘Solly?’
‘Yes?’
‘Can you hold my hand? I keep thinking that you’re a dream.’
Solomon reached out and put his hand over his sister’s. ‘I’m not a dream,’ he said. ‘I’m real.’ He squeezed Tiffany’s hand and said, ‘More real than ever.’
Solomon got the Circle Line home, taking the escalator down into the depths of the Underground, stewing in its Victorian pre-air-conditioning heat. There were signal problems somewhere on the line and he had to wait for a train, feeling a part of the tutting, head-shaking crowd massing on the platform, no longer watching from the wings. Eventually a train arrived and Solomon got on and stood near the doors. It was even warmer inside the carriage, the base temperature of the Tube raised by too many warm bodies in an enclosed space. The train left the platform but didn’t make it far into the tunnel before it stopped in a series of belligerent shudders. Solomon felt sweat in the small of his back, just above his waistband, more sweat prickling his hair. He wondered, too late, whether the make-up Marija had given him was waterproof. He didn’t know. He closed his eyes and willed the train to start moving. He only had two stops to go. Not far. Shouldn’t be long.
It wasn’t yet rush hour, and even though the train had been delayed, it wasn’t crowded. There was a group of teenagers who should have been at school talking loudly and laughing, keeping up a steady level of bad language, fuck bitch shit punctuating every sentence. The tallest o
f them, wearing a cap with a large gold sticker on it, was looking at Solomon, a half-smile on his face. He elbowed a kid next to him, whispered something, and they both cracked up, exaggerated laughs, shaking their heads and fist-bumping each other. Solomon turned away from them and looked up the carriage. The train began moving, then stopped again, the air brakes hissing. Behind him the kids were still laughing and Solomon heard one of them, he didn’t know which, say, ‘Think it is, fancy dress? Shit,’ followed by more laughter. The carriage didn’t move and Solomon touched his face and looked at his fingers, a smear of peach-coloured foundation on them. He could feel his heart beating faster and he willed the train to start, to just go. He’d get off at the next stop, hike it home. Just move.
‘Yo, bruv.’ A voice behind him, closer than before. ‘Yo.’
Solomon turned and immediately faced the tall kid, who had come towards him. ‘Are you talking to me?’
‘What’s with the patch, man?’ The kid was sixteen, seventeen, but bigger than Solomon.
Solomon shook his head, said, ‘Leave it,’ and turned away again.
‘Yo, just axing, bruv,’ the kid said. ‘Hey.’
Solomon didn’t turn, knew kids well enough, kids in groups. Never give them the oxygen. Never react. But he also knew that it wasn’t a foolproof technique.
From behind he heard somebody laugh, another voice say, ‘Do it,’ and he felt fingers pull at the elastic of his eye patch and flick it over his head, the patch flying off. He looked around and said, as firmly as he could, ‘You need to leave me alone,’ but was stopped from finishing his sentence by the look on the tall kid’s face, something between shock and delight.
‘Shit, bruv, the fuck happened to your face?’ he said, then turned and said to his group, ‘You believe this?’ He turned back to Solomon and now he really was laughing, shaking his head in fascinated revulsion. ‘Man, that is fucked up,’ he said, and Solomon returned his stare but inside was thinking, No, no, this is not happening, this cannot be happening.
‘Hey,’ said a voice behind him, and he turned to see a man, a clocked-off builder in a high-vis jacket, holding his eye patch. ‘Leave the man alone, hear me? Go on, piss off.’ The man held Solomon’s eye patch out and Solomon took it, and he tried to say thank you but was stopped from getting the words out by the look on the man’s face, which he could only describe as pity, pure pity.
The train started to move and Solomon got out at the next station and walked home with his eyes focused on the paving stones beneath his feet, automatically counting them in his head. When he got to his apartment he threw the eye patch away and lay on his bed without taking his clothes off and put a pillow over his head, and as the day grew dark around him all he could think in his head was stupid, stupid, stupid stupid stupid.
twenty-one
‘FOR SOMEBODY WHO DOESN’T KNOW SHAKESPEARE,’ SAID FRAN, ‘that’s a mightily impressive connection to make. You didn’t have a lot to go on.’
‘Cleopatra as the Gypsy Queen, and Octavius Caesar as a key player,’ said Solomon. ‘That should have been enough, on its own.’
‘I would never have made that connection,’ said Masoud. ‘Not in an aeon, and I love Shakespeare.’
‘Farewell, kind Charmian; Iras, long farewell. Have I the aspic in my lips? Dost fall?’ said Fran, quoting from memory. ‘If thou and nature can so gently part, the stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch.’
‘So who wrote it?’ said Phil, interrupting her. He seemed in an especially abrasive mood tonight, Solomon couldn’t help noticing.
‘Shakespeare,’ said Kay. ‘Even I know that much.’
‘Ah,’ said Phil enigmatically, before going back to his drink.
‘Ah?’ said Fran. ‘What does Ah mean, Phil?’
‘Please,’ said Masoud. ‘Do not tell me that you are one of them.’
‘One of who?’ said Kay. Phil picked up his glass and scrutinized the underside without answering.
‘One of those people who believes that it wasn’t Shakespeare. Who wrote the plays,’ said Masoud.
‘No evidence to suggest he did write them,’ said Phil.
‘But of course, there is a lot,’ said Masoud. ‘There is plenty.’
‘And plenty to suggest he didn’t,’ said Phil.
‘Perhaps we could get back to—’ said Fran, but Phil cut her off.
‘Jointly written, if you ask me,’ he said. ‘A collaborative effort. Shakespeare being a cipher. A totem.’
‘This would be your Marxist reading of the plays,’ said Fran.
Phil tipped his drink towards her. ‘An anarchist reading,’ he corrected her. ‘But yes. If you like. The collected works of the Southwark Players.’
‘The who?’ said Masoud.
‘A writing collective,’ said Phil. ‘Subversive.’
‘Bullshit,’ said Fran, a rare epithet.
‘The evidence,’ said Phil, now waving his glass around in an elliptical pattern at nobody specific, ‘is mounting.’
‘No it most certainly is not,’ said Fran tartly. ‘And please, nobody offer to buy Phil anything else to drink.’
Phil put down his drink, glowered, then sat back and belched. Definitely had a few before the meeting, Solomon thought, though Phil, having got his theory off his chest, seemed somewhat happier.
‘So, Solomon,’ said Fran, looking into the camera, straight at him. ‘It is a strange message, but it seems quite obvious what the theme is.’
‘Yes,’ said Solomon. ‘But the question is why? Why write a coded message into a …’ He almost said suicide note, and stopped himself. The Brain Pool didn’t need to know everything. ‘A note to your parents?’
The Brain Pool had no answer for that. Solomon hadn’t expected them to. But he figured that it was worth putting it out there. These were, after all, the smartest people he’d ever met, Phil included.
‘Shakespeare obsessive?’ said Kay.
‘Perhaps it was Phil,’ said Fran, making Masoud bark with laughter, an outburst Solomon had never seen from him before. Masoud laughing, Fran swearing. This was turning out to be quite the night for the Brain Pool.
‘So anyway,’ said Fran. ‘You said you had another.’
‘I’ll put it on screen,’ said Solomon. He brought up the message exchange between Tiffany and the man who called himself Tobes.
Drink?
When?
Can u do Saturday?
Day off! Where shall we go?
To a convent.
???
Convent. A bar. Dwkd. I mean awkward. Have you been?
To Convent? No.
You should!
OK …
What hour now?
??? Hour?
Time. What time.
Oh. 9?
C u then.
‘So what are we looking at?’ said Fran.
‘A message exchange that might be connected,’ said Solomon. ‘Maybe.’
‘And you cannot tell us what this is about?’ said Masoud.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Solomon. ‘I can’t.’
‘That first message,’ said Fran, ‘sounds like a suicide note. Which it isn’t, is it? Because if it was, the police would need to be involved.’
‘The police are probably aware,’ said Kay. ‘But they’re not as bright as we are.’
‘That is certainly true,’ said Phil.
Solomon should have expected the Brain Pool to be shrewd enough to see through his obfuscation. He took a deep breath. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m asking you to help me, but I have no right to, and I apologize. And I can’t tell you anything about this. So, I, well.’ He stopped, ran out of things to say, not used to public speaking. Even if it was from behind a computer screen.
‘No, Solomon, no, we weren’t asking …’ said Fran.
‘It is fine,’ said Masoud. ‘It is intriguing. Please.’
‘Solomon,’ said Phil, sitting back upright with difficulty. ‘If it helps you, then we consider it a pri
vilege.’ He nodded to himself and added, ‘Yes we do.’
Fran turned to Phil in what looked like astonishment, then turned back and said, ‘Yes. Yes, of course. So. Solomon. What should we be looking for?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Solomon. ‘A link. Some kind of connection.’
‘A convent,’ said Fran. ‘Sounds possible.’
‘Possible?’ said Solomon.
‘Shakespearean,’ said Fran. ‘There was Isabella.’
‘Measure for Measure,’ said Masoud.
‘She wanted to join a convent, yes,’ said Fran. ‘Who else?’
‘Romeo and Juliet,’ said Phil. He waved his head slowly at the table, then intoned in a voice deeper than his normal delivery, ‘Come, I’ll dispose of thee amongst a sisterhood of holy nuns.’
Fran watched him in bafflement, then said, ‘And Hamlet. Get thee to a nunnery.’ She looked at the laptop screen on the bar table, at the message Solomon had shared on it. ‘Where shall we go? To a convent.’ She frowned. ‘It’s not quite there. But it’s like …’
She stopped, and Kay watched her, then said, ‘Fran?’
‘I don’t know. It’s like, maybe, I’m not sure. Is it like the conversation is being manipulated? As if it’s being shaped, directed?’
‘How do you mean?’ said Solomon.
Fran sat up straighter and looked at the screen closely. ‘Twice the phrasing has been off, and the man, or whoever this is, has pretended it was a mistake. He writes a convent, but he means Convent, a bar. Phil,’ she said, ‘can you find Hamlet? The full play? It doesn’t matter who wrote it, for now.’
‘I can,’ Phil said, tapping at a tablet.
‘Search within it. Hour, that should do.’
‘A second,’ said Phil, then, to himself as he searched, ‘Upon your hour … At this dead hour … Thy fair hour … What hour now? Gotcha.’
‘What hour now?’ said Fran. ‘Hamlet. And the famous exchange, Hamlet and Ophelia, where he tells her, Get thee to a nunnery. And in the message, To a convent.’