He quickly took three shots of it, trusting to the digital clean-up of underlit subjects.
The plane had RAF roundels on the wings, which otherwise were painted in drab green-brown camouflage. There was someone standing beyond the aircraft, leaning against the wing. Through the night-sight, Tarent could make out only a leather flying suit, thickly lined, crumpled brown.
He lowered the camera. The figure was a woman.
As he walked around the plane, the woman turned towards him. She was wearing a leather flying helmet, which she swept off and threw to one side.
‘Is that you, Tibor?’ she said. ‘What are you doing here?’
Her voice was familiar, completely recognizable, but it could not be –
‘Melanie?’
They were facing each other, unbelieving, almost afraid. Neither of them moved, preserving the shock.
‘I thought you were dead,’ she said.
‘I thought you had been killed.’
‘No – that’s not what happened. They said you had been blown up in a Mebsher.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘What?’
They were having to raise their voices. As he moved around the aircraft, yet another Lancaster was accelerating along the runway. It was so close the noise was deafening.
‘I can’t hear you!’
‘Come here.’
They stepped towards each other then, their arms outstretched. Gently, cautiously he reached out for her. He expected to feel the thick leather flying jacket under his hand, but he touched a bare arm, then the thin dress she was wearing. He could feel her back, her spine, through the fabric.
‘How did you get here?’ he said.
‘How did you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Neither do I. My god, I’ve missed you!’
‘Melanie!’
He held her close to him, feeling her arms around his back, squeezing hard. She was pressing the side of her face against his, that familiar touch, just as he remembered.
She said something, a soft word or two into his ear, but the second Lancaster went down the runway, drowning out all other sounds.
As it moved away, its tail lifting from the runway, she said, ‘Tibor, where are we?’
‘I’m not sure. I really don’t know.’
Somewhere behind them there was a loud bang, and another Very light was fired into the sky. He had become so used to the sound that he barely glanced up, but Melanie arched her head back to see. Then he did too. At the top of its flight, the red flare was burning brightly.
Again, it was directly above him. It was falling towards them, spitting bright sparks.
Then it turned white. It brightened. It became a point of light so brilliant it was not possible to look directly at it.
It was casting a shaft of brilliance across a large area of the ground. Tibor and Melanie were at the centre of it.
Tarent turned, sensing a movement, somewhere towards the perimeter, away from where they were. A tall young man went by on a bicycle, head down, pedalling hard, watching where he was steering. He was unaware of them, did not react to the intense light coming down around them. He passed on into the darkness, freewheeling.
The light above brightened. It descended towards them. On the ground the patch of light grew smaller, and was cohering into the shape of a triangle.
Incredibly it intensified yet again, blinding, searing them, annihilating them.
Then it went out, leaving only blackness.
Tarent was holding his wife in his arms. It was so strange to do, yet so right, so unquestionably right. She was folding herself against him as she used to, as she always had, right at the start when they were young, and even later on, whenever they found the time to be alone together, and still loving.
Daylight had broken around them. It was early morning, cool and sharp. They were standing on tussocks of grass, long and damp with dew, wetting their ankles. The sun was low in the east, already clear of the horizon and too bright to be looked at. In the near distance was a line of trees, but their trunks were masked with a light mist, so that their green foliage spread above, making it look as if the trees were floating above the ground. There were cows in the field – some were sitting on the grass, chewing slowly, while others were already up and grazing. One was close to them – it regarded them with wide eyes, while it continued to chew.
‘Where are the planes?’ Tarent said. ‘It was night. I was on some kind of airbase. It was in the year 1944 . . . I saw a newspaper.’ He clutched at the camera hanging on its lanyard around his neck. ‘I took a photo of the front page, let me show you.’
He fumbled with the switch, to turn on the Canon, something he had done a thousand times in the past but today, this time, his fingers felt clumsy and incapable. Melanie reached down and gripped his wrist.
‘Not now. Show me later, Tibor.’
She turned, keeping her arm around his back, and they began to walk slowly across the field, feeling the damp grass, blinking their eyes away from the brightness of the morning sunlight. The meadow signalled an innocent past, a summoning of a collective wish, a simple shared experience. But Tarent could still hear, as if hearing a memory, the Lancasters taking off, the sights and smells of the airfield at war. A dark, real and deadly war. He knew he had been there, but in what way, by what means, and for why?
‘Do you know where we are?’ he said. ‘This is not where I was. I came back from Turkey, I was taken to a government place—’
‘I came here because I was told that this was where I would find you.’
‘But how did you travel? I thought all travel had been—’
‘I came by car. Someone lent it to me. It’s parked down at the farm.’
‘The farm?’
‘I thought you knew. This is a farm in Lincolnshire, in the Wolds, not far from Hull. I had no idea why you would be here, but they were right.’
‘Who is they?’
‘At the hospital. The admin staff told me you were back in England, so I came here to find you.’
‘On this farm in Lincolnshire?’
‘Yes.’
‘Warne’s Farm?’
‘Yes, of course.’
They walked on, came to a gate, which Tarent opened and then closed again, making sure the beasts in the field could not escape. Beyond was a road, a narrow country lane. The grasses here on the verges were long, the hedges above thickening as the leaves broke out for the spring. He could smell soil, dampness, grass, mud. The air was so still.
‘What date is it?’
‘Some time in March, I think,’ Melanie said.
‘You think?’
‘I’m not sure of that any more.’
‘Do you happen to know what year we are in?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Tibor, I don’t know. I’m not certain of anything. Just this. Isn’t this enough? Why do you need to ask about dates, years?’
‘I keep losing days and dates.’
Ahead of them the farm buildings were coming into sight, nestling against the side of a hilly ridge. Prominent among them stood a tall, brick-built tower, church-like. He took up his Canon again, switched it on, waited while it booted, then zoomed the quantum lens to its maximum focal length and focused on the tower. It looked dilapidated, unstable, a dark and unsafe relic from an earlier age. He clicked the shutter release. Melanie moved forward so that she was standing between him and the farm buildings. She was an unfocused blur in the viewfinder, so he let the automatic lens readjust and she came into sharp focus. He had never stopped loving her but he had forgotten how beautiful she was, forgotten how much he liked to look at her, liked to photograph her. He clicked the shutter release, then, because she was smiling, twice more again.
Also by Christopher Priest from Gollancz:
Fugue for a Darkening Island
Inverted World
The Affirmation
The Glamour
T
he Prestige
The Extremes
The Separation
The Dream Archipelago
The Islanders
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Christopher Priest 2013
All rights reserved.
The right of Christopher Priest to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2013 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 10539 3
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.christopher-priest.co.uk
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Table of Contents
Title page
Dedication
Contents
Part 1 – IRGB
Part 2 – La rue des bêtes
Part 3 – Warne’s Farm
Part 4 – East Sussex
Part 5 – Tealby Moor
Part 6 – The Cold Room
Part 7 – Prachous
Part 8 – The Airfield
Also by Christopher Priest
Copyright
The Adjacent Page 45