Divided Kingdom (31 page)

We scaled a fence, then struck out along one edge of a field. When we arrived at the stile in the corner, the land unfolded in front of me, sleepy and unspoiled. This was as far as she could go, Rhiannon said. In the knapsack I would find a detailed map of the area. For the first few miles, I should keep to footpaths and bridleways. She doubted the Customs and Excise people would be looking for me there.

I thanked her again. We embraced quickly. Stepping back, I saw that her face had altered, as if the bones had shifted a fraction.

‘Think of us sometimes,' she said.

With those words, I felt she had given something away – something she'd wanted me to see all along, perhaps, but hadn't wanted to spell out. I had thought of the Church of Heaven on Earth as a kind of cult, though it was actually more like a charity. Owen had created a place in which he could try and redress the damage wreaked by the division of the kingdom. Losses could be overcome there. Injuries could heal. Maybe that was what Rhiannon had meant when she said I would fit in. Maybe that explained the unfathomable smile. She had identified me as a casualty, not of the shipwreck, but of an earlier catastrophe – the
Rearrangement – and if times had been different, who knows, I might even have stayed on. How had she been wounded, though? What was the origin of the pain I thought I'd seen in her? I turned to speak to her, but it was too late. She was already halfway across the field.

Though it was almost December, the air had a sweet burnt smell, and the sky was tall and blue and empty. The recent storm had blown the clouds into a different part of the world altogether; all that bad weather had piled up somewhere else. I had the feeling that my life, too, had been swept clean, put in order. I walked northwards through open, undulating country. To the east I had a view of a ruined castle. Beyond it, a finger of water pointed inland. An estuary, I thought, or possibly the sea.

After a couple of hours I paused for a rest. In the knapsack Rhiannon had given me, I found some mineral water. I drank half of it, then consulted the map. Now that I had money, of course, I could afford a train. I decided to make for a town to the north-west, whose station was on the main line to the capital. Even if I kept to the footpaths and bridleways, as Rhiannon had advised, I should be able to get there in two days. I would be thirty miles from the coast by then, and breaking cover ought not to be a problem. Pleased with my strategy, I tucked the map and water-bottle back into the knapsack and hurried on.

Once, as I climbed down into a gully, I heard the helicopter again, though it was only a subdued grinding in the distance, little more than a vibration. I saw it too, above the treetops, heading busily in the wrong direction.

By the time I stopped for lunch I must have walked ten miles. A kind of heath spread out all round me, pine trees relishing the sandy soil. Gorse clung to the ground in strands like natural barbed wire, and every now and then my trouser-legs would snag on its sharp spines. Unpacking the knapsack, I discovered hard-boiled eggs, crusty rolls filled with slabs of cheese, several apples, a bar of chocolate, and a second bottle of water. As I ate and drank, I checked my position on the map. I was in a white space, between two rivers. Ahead of me lay an area of downland,
the hills topped with ancient forts and barrows, the valleys housing villages with quaint, humorous-sounding names. The going would be more arduous, but at least I ought to be able to find a place to stay. I finished the bread and cheese, then ate an apple. I kept the rest of the food and water for later on. My energy renewed, I set off again, determined to make full use of the daylight.

That afternoon I passed through several farms, every one of them abandoned. The houses had been boarded up, and the cattle sheds were empty, ghostly places, doors hanging off their hinges, hay strewn haphazardly about. Not long before the Rearrangement, disease had swept the countryside, and huge numbers of livestock had been slaughtered and then burned. The farmers had never recovered. A substantial percentage of the Blue Quarter's population had been vegetarian for years.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I saw a large flock of sheep about a mile to the west. As I watched them move across the wide green flank of a hillside, though, I realised they weren't sheep at all but people – White People. It was astute of them to favour the Blue Quarter. They would be treated kindly here; in some areas, in fact, they would be revered, or even worshipped. I had always felt a good deal of sympathy for them, a feeling that had only been enhanced by my encounter on the front steps of the Sheraton, but I had never really believed in their so-called powers, preferring to find rational explanations for their sometimes mystifying, almost supernatural behaviour, and I remembered a story Marie had told me, one from which we had drawn quite different conclusions.

The incident occurred during Victor and Marie's walking tour of the Red Quarter. They had been in the far north at the time. Instead of slavishly following the border, they decided to scale a ridge that ran parallel to it. The ground had been marshy at first. After a while, though, it turned into high pasture, punctuated by pale-grey boulders. The ridge was further away than it had looked, but they had started now, and both father and daughter agreed that nothing tried the patience more than the
process of having to retrace your steps. They would reach the ridge, they said, even if it killed them. And it almost had.

They toiled onwards, upwards. The grass became a steeply sloping field of stones. No sooner had they arrived at what they had imagined to be the summit than another summit would appear, one which, until that point, had been concealed by the angle of their ascent. To make matters worse, a mist had drifted in behind them, obscuring the route they had taken. They peered at the ridge. It had transformed itself into a crest of ominous black rock. They glanced at each other. On they went.

In another hour they had reached the top. They couldn't see for more than a few feet in any direction, and their clothes were soaking wet. Still, they celebrated by sharing a cup of coffee from their flask.

What happened next was something Marie hadn't been able to explain. The mist seemed to give in front of her, and in this opening she saw a footpath curve off through a kind of meadow. She took a few steps towards the opening, so as to have a clearer view of the path, some clue as to where it went. When she glanced over her shoulder, Victor had disappeared. She couldn't believe it. Assuming he must be behind her, she whirled one way, then the other. There was no one there. The mist closed in around her. She called his name softly, almost experimentally, but there was no reply. She shouted as loud as she could. Her voice refused to carry. Her sense of isolation was so acute that, paradoxically, she felt haunted.

She returned to the patch of ground where she'd been standing when she last saw him. The rocks looked different. She thought about crying, but managed to resist it. She had no idea what to do. The mist thinned. A bronze light fell. Looking up, she saw a group of figures dressed in white. One of them detached himself from the others and approached. His face was blurred with a growth of beard, and his black hair hung down to his shoulders, its knotted strands festooned with burrs and leaves and bits of bark. He stood sideways on to her and gestured with one hand. He wanted her to follow him. She realised she wasn't frightened, and this surprised her.

The figures moved effortlessly across the rough terrain. She tried to draw level with them, hoping to get a look at their faces, hoping to talk to them, but no matter how quickly she walked they contrived to keep the same distance ahead of her. And then she forgot all about them because she saw Victor sitting on the ground beneath a stony ledge. She hurried over, knelt beside him. He had fallen, he said, but he didn't think he'd hurt himself. His eyes were bright and pale.
Did you see them?

She nodded.

White People.
He had been about to launch into a discourse on their behaviour when he noticed one of them standing near by.
Come on. He wants to take us down.

They followed the white figure until the border appeared below them. When they looked round to offer thanks, they found that they were, once again, alone.

To Marie, the story was a confirmation of the White People's uncanny psychic skills, but my scepticism remained intact. They had been able to lead Victor and Marie down from the ridge because they were acquainted with out-of-the-way places. It was in places like these that they had been forced to live their lives. Also, they didn't want other people intruding, perhaps. Victor and Marie had strayed on to their territory, and the two of them had been gently but firmly escorted away from it.

I watched the cloaked figures vanish into the shelter of a wood. Though I didn't think I would need rescuing that day, the knowledge that I had set eyes on them gave me the feeling that nothing bad could happen, or if it did, then it wouldn't be anything that couldn't be remedied, and maybe, in the end, that was all people meant when they talked about unusual powers.

I stayed in a village pub that night. My only anxiety was that the authorities would have alerted rural communities for miles around, and that people would be on the look-out for strangers, but nobody even gave me a second glance. The next day I set out early and made good progress, arriving at the station towards four in the afternoon, just as the rain came down. I bought a one-way ticket to the capital.

When the train pulled in fifteen minutes later, I chose a seat by the window, facing forwards. My carriage was nearly empty. It was a Friday, I realised, and most people would be travelling in the opposite direction, going to the country for the weekend. Opening my wallet to check on the state of my finances, I noticed a piece of plain paper hidden in among the banknotes.
Come and see us in the summer
, it said.
I'll take you swimming.
Under the two lines of looping handwriting was the imprint of a girl's lips, the colour of crushed raspberries. She hadn't signed her name. She hadn't needed to. As we walked back to the house, her hair had flown into my face, half blinding me. She had laughed and then apologised, plucking the long, sweet-smelling strands out of the dark and twisting them into a knot. We had parted in the stable-yard, outside my door. The summer … Words like that had no significance for me. I couldn't imagine where I'd be in six days, let alone six months.

I looked at her mouth again, the pattern of white lines as distinctive as a fingerprint. So intimate, that mouth – and the waxy fragrance of her lipstick lifting off the paper … Although she had brought me tea less than forty-eight hours ago, I felt I was thinking back to an event that had taken place in the long-distant past; it seemed exaggerated, almost apocryphal, even though nothing had happened. I imagined trying to tell the story to somebody – Vishram, for instance.
There was a storm that night. A gale. I was in my room, reading a book. At first I thought the wind had blown the door open, but it was a girl…
And Vishram would smile in that patient, knowing way of his, and he would say,
You slept with her.
And I would say,
No, I didn't. That's the whole point.
Vishram would shake his head at what he would undoubtedly see as slowness on my part, a wasted opportunity.

I settled back in my seat. The rain was still falling, each drop wriggling diagonally across the outside of the window. The telegraph poles slid by, their wires sinking, rising, sinking. When I thought of Vishram, he seemed too vivid a concoction, somehow. His suits shimmered. His nails were as dark as dried rose petals. He didn't walk, he floated. He was extravagant, improbable, a character enlisted from a dream. It occurred to me
that I had forgotten to let Sonya know about his offer of a job – and he'd been so insistent. Ah well. Tired after the day's exertions, I leaned my head against the head-rest and surrendered to the rhythm of the train.

On waking, I saw that I was no longer alone. A girl was sitting on the other side of the carriage, reading a newspaper. She must have boarded the train while I was sleeping. She was smartly dressed, in a tailored black jacket and wide black trousers, and on her feet she wore a pair of men's brogues, also black. She had hair the colour of copper wire, or bracken, and curious heavy-lidded eyes, and her face was covered with freckles to such a degree that she gave the impression of having been camouflaged. I was still studying her when she looked up from her paper and met my gaze.

She took a fast, shallow breath. ‘Don't I know you?'

‘I'm sorry?' I said. ‘Do you mean me?'

‘Yes.' She smiled quickly. ‘Sorry. It's just that I thought I'd seen you somewhere before.'

‘I don't think so.'

‘You'd remember my face, I suppose,' she said lightly.

‘Yes.'

‘It's striking.'

‘Yes, it is.'

‘People often say that about me.' Her voice was still light, objective. ‘I'm “striking”, apparently. I always have the feeling it's just another word for odd.'

I laughed. ‘Where do you think you might have seen me?'

She turned in her seat and looked directly at me. Seen straight on, her face had even more power to unnerve. The way her eyelids lowered over her eyes, the distance between her cheekbones, the strong line of her jaw. Above all, her mouth, which was incongruously voluptuous, the top lip carved with delicate precision, the bottom lip succulent and drowsy. And then the freckles – as if she'd hidden herself behind a kind of veil or screen and was watching me through it. Taken all at once, these features gave her a look that was poised somewhere between
the sensual and the menacing. I had never seen a face quite like it.

‘I'm not sure,' she said after a while. ‘In Aquaville, I think.'

‘I've only been there once, and that was for a conference.'

‘Was it about two weeks ago?'

‘Yes. The Cross-Border Conference. It was held at the Sheraton.'