Force Majeure (7 page)

‘Oh shit,’ he said finally. ‘This is about the bike.’

Kay tried not to move her head to look round the square, tried not to look like a tourist or an Appeared. She failed. The burgeoning twilight seemed to be drawing the crowd, and the square around them was filling with light and warmth and living noise. It shouldn’t have felt much different from the average weekend evening in London or New York – public chatter in any language became babble at a distance. But no, it wasn’t the same.

It was alien.

‘I
will
get it sorted,’ Esteban protested, showing her honest clean palms. The gesture seemed to embarrass him, and he placed his hands tight down on the table-top by the pen. ‘I’ve spoken to Flower-of-the-Lady. I know it’s important. I appreciate Azure’s problem. The rider needs something to ride, or she’s not a rider any more.’

‘It isn’t about the bike,’ Kay told him. ‘Azure can look after herself.’

‘And then some.’ He looked at her more closely. Awkward: ‘You’re … Kay?’

She nodded. ‘How’s your afternoon been?’

‘You know I’ve been to the old free house. Of course, you work there …’ He trailed off, mid-whisper. Kay felt slighted at being recalled so unclearly. Now she came to sit here in front of him, she was at a loss what to say or do. Esteban was a link, of a kind, to the world beyond the city. She wanted to know more about the Displaced Club, but right now she felt mentioning it would be a tactical mistake. The way to deal with Esteban, with all the Estebans, was to keep them in the dark.

‘Trust me,’ he said, after his pause, ‘it wasn’t for the good of my soul.’

He sounded proud. She nodded. ‘What’s the deal with the house? Off-limits for police?’

‘I’m not police. No, the house likes to think it’s older than the city. It’s suspicious of us. Could be true, you know. There were probably settlements here before Doctor Arkadin arrived. He wouldn’t have set up shop here on a whim.’

‘Indian settlements? Before the Europeans?’

‘Before the Indians, if you believe Flower-of-the-Lady. Before the humans, if you believe her.’ He laughed. He sagged back into the squeaking protest of his chair. His jacket was unbuttoned and the open folds swung limply at his side. He stretched out, sharply, self-consciously, to take his pen and paper. Kay’s hand reached the pad first, flat, and blocked him.

She decided on a bigger question: ‘What’s the Bureau of Appearances doing about me?’

‘Doing?’

‘Don’t you want to review my placement at the house? Has there been any word about me from outside the city? What’s my legal status? Am I still being classified as an Appeared, or do I have full temporary residency? I was promised some things.’

‘Not,’ he replied, leaning forward and licking sandwich flecks from his lips, ‘by me. Candida is like another country; we do things differently here.’

‘Can I visit the Bureau? Can I review my records there?’

‘Sure. Why not? Swing by when I’m free.’

‘Can I leave the city yet?’

‘You’re welcome to try.’

‘Why does no-one take me seriously? Talking to you right now is not helpful.’

‘Okay, I could show you the Bureau now if you want. I can show you everything.’

‘I bet.’ She imagined he thought she was flirting, and she was happy to leave him that impression.

The wind made a low pass across the square, set flames rippling and touched her legs. She’d dressed in a white blouse and skirt that she’d bought from one of the stalls in the market run. A purple flower lodged in her hair and refused to be shifted by the air. She distracted herself from the cold by unclipping the purse she wore round her neck and opening its contents onto the table. Brittle brown note-flakes rained down on the top. Some were so crumbled they fell as sand.

‘My money keeps doing this,’ she complained.

‘Quick then, you’d better spend it,’ Esteban advised. He picked up the remains of his sandwich and took a mouthful, chewing it contentedly as the wind picked at the worthless money-specks and cast them from the table.

So her purse was emptied and she lined up her bottles – both clear and coloured – along the windowsill of Esteban’s flat. She was already halfway drunk, as the storeholders had insisted she sample shots for free, but she kept it concealed from her host by pacing her movements and speech deliberately slow. It always paid to appear in control. They’d bought enough for a modest two-handed party, and Esteban had delightedly led her back to his dingy home on the top floor of a tenement on the edge of town. This was an official residence, apparently. It was comfortable and intimate, just as Azure’s room was comfortable and intimate, but this was a thoroughly male space with a stale masculine odour.

‘Studenty,’ she pronounced.

But it was open. She could
breathe
here in a way she couldn’t in the old free house.

Esteban kept his furniture and effects comparatively neat, but there was dust everywhere, dust and pin-ups, though he spent a first twitchy minute leaping around the room unpicking the worst examples from the wall. A mannequin – bald and female – was posted vigilant at the window, dressed in a heavy bearskin coat. Kay sat on a chair beside her, close to female company. Esteban plumped for the chair at the desk and studied Kay as she unlaced and shed her boots. The bed, close by, was tucked and made neater than the cots in Azure’s rooms ever seemed to be. She wondered how recently it had been used, in any capacity.

‘Welcome to the Bureau of Appearances,’ Esteban said, throwing his arms wide, and it was impossible to tell if this was enthusiasm or irony.

‘Don’t be daft.’

‘Daft?
This
is daft.’ He patted the top of his desk. ‘
This
is the Bureau of Appearances. Not what you were expecting?’

She shook her head, humouring him.

‘There is,’ he admitted, ‘an office in one of the Follies, but we meet there only in emergencies. We do it our own way, mostly.’

‘Yours,’ she noted, ‘is very informal.’

‘Maybe. The other three in the Bureau aren’t much better. There’s been no census in Candida since Doctor Arkadin’s heyday, and even he admitted defeat. He left his
domesday book
unfinished. Some things you just don’t count.’

‘Candida,’ Kay said, smiling (though not too much) at her own joke, ‘makes no census.’

‘There you go. You’re looking good, by the by. Your clothes, as is. You’re settling.’

I hope not.
Still, she decided she must like him. She wouldn’t have come all this way, with all these bottles, if he hadn’t some charm or glamour or prestige. ‘How do you become an officer?’

Esteban rose and slipped off his jacket, which he draped over the outstretched arm of the mannequin. ‘There are the usual rites of passage. You have to memorise certain scriptures word-for-word. You must be able to run through the woods without breaking a single twig beneath your feet. You must throw a spear into the ground and hide behind it so that no part of you can be seen from any angle. There’s a special rock that looks like an old misery-face you must make laugh. The usual six impossible things. The bollocks.’

‘What about for real?’

‘For real, you present yourself at the academy, and if no-one has a serious objection – and
no-one
includes the boss of you, the-Lady – and if
challanco
says so and you’re no trouble-maker or fire-raiser or lizard-in-a-human skin, then you get in with a wage and a pension of trust.’

‘Challanco?’

‘Boojum.’ (As though that explained it all.) ‘And you must be able to sign your name and forswear the use of swords and pistols in your duty. And you must be a poet, because that’s an official function, and once a year we subject each other to the dreadful doggerel that we’ve churned out in our spare time.’

Kay pushed herself forward and asked: ‘Is it an essential requirement of the job that you have a penis?’

He laughed. She was glad he laughed. ‘No. Do you fancy joining up?’

‘I might do.’

Suddenly serious, he dropped his body onto the bed beside her. ‘There’s no
might
. The Office of the White Horse is a calling. It’s not the stuff of whims. It’s something that seizes you, so you know for certain that this is what you want to be, no matter how stupid or ridiculous the job seems.’

‘Like priesthood?’

‘Like sainthood,’ he insisted. His whole face spoke of it, his mellow eyes sunk in the smooth ovals above his cheekbones, his lips pressed tight as if slowly crushing a flower down into flatness. ‘Without the celibacy,’ he added.

They emptied the first bottle.

‘Are you working tomorrow?’ Esteban asked; he was on his hands and knees scrabbling through his cupboards. The detritus of his life was building up into a shanty around his legs. Kay, now certainly drunk and no longer hiding it, watched with an amused eye and didn’t laugh, out of fear she would never stop.

‘Tomorrow, yes, but not too early. I can hang around.’

‘I know I have a board somewhere, I have all the pieces.’ He looked up from his cupboard door eagerly, and the light cast from his bulb revealed every trim, bristling hair on his crown. ‘War in Heaven goes on for years.’

‘I’m very bad; I play short games.’

‘Cards!’ he yelled, brandishing a pack at her.

‘You don’t use normal ones here. I know, Luis showed me.’

‘Did he teach you?’

‘No. I didn’t get it. If I don’t get it, it can’t be got.’

‘You are not,’ he told her, ‘a stupid woman.’

‘In spite of appearances.’ She believed she was enjoying herself. That was true. Even through the drunken fizz and tremble, she knew she was having a good time being friendly, being foolish, being nothing. She could put away Prospero and her anxieties. After a month, she was finally picking at the scab of Candida, exposing the bloody lump beneath, the humour.

Esteban lay flat now, his cheek pressed up against a rough exposed floorboard. ‘Tomorrow,’ he crooned, ‘the very first thing tomorrow, I will fix your friend’s bicycle and she can become a bird. Better than an officer, that is.’

‘Why?’

‘No sodding poetry.’ He sighed. ‘Just birdsong. Birdsong and wings.’

More bottles. She relaxed. She felt herself unravelling. She undid the flower from her hair and tucked it into a crack in the mannequin’s scalp. Esteban taught her to understand Candida-cards, but she failed to grasp the detail; the cards were printed on a material that didn’t absorb the warmth from her skin. They chatted. She lowered her guard and, in a moment of holy hush, unfastened two of the lower buttons of her blouse and revealed her most secret, most embarrassing feature: her shallow belly-button, a faintly-impressed pucker that might have been made with the gentle point of a compass. Good-natured, Esteban laughed. Hazily, they watched the dwindling line of the final bottle, until there was nothing left.

‘I. Don’t. Believe. He. Was. Real.’

‘Why would you say such a thing?’ Esteban asked.

‘Because it’s true. I don’t think he was ever here. I know, I know, he lived less than 200 years ago, but even that far back he could be made up. All the details. He’s just a name. Arkadin.’

‘
Doctor
Arkadin.’

‘I’ll grant you that there was an expedition. We know he lived, but we don’t really know if he founded Candida. You said yourself, parts of it are older than him.’

‘Maybe.’

‘
Yes
, maybe. You know, I asked Luis if he’s got a copy of Arkadin’s journal, and he wasn’t sure. He’s read
something
; heaven knows what.
A
journal. By Anonymous.’

‘By powers unknown and invisible.’

‘You’re making fun of me.’

‘By the secret masters that created the world and control our every move. By Plato’s shadowcasters, riding our dreams. By the professors of Punch and Judy with their hands in our knickers. By powers so creepily occult that they stopped existing just to spite us. By God-the-Dragon herself.’

‘Stop it, you git!’ she protested.

They moved into a drunken twilight, into the age after the alcohol had run out but before they fell asleep, when sobriety could creep up on them. Kay was still dizzy in her mouth, in her stomach and in the muscles of her head. Their argument was conducted in whispers and darkness from opposite sides of the room. Esteban had given her the bed, his dreamspace, and settled down in his armchair for the night. She lay still and made a little cavity of warmth around herself.

‘Yes, I’m making fun of you.’

‘You really can’t be trusted with a responsible position.’

‘I’m not.’

‘You’re a kid. You’re a child in a man’s body.’

‘This is my second childhood.’

‘I knew so. I knew so as soon as I saw you.’

‘Yes, and I know something you don’t.’

‘And what would that be?’

‘
That
would be Doctor Arkadin. He is real.’