Voices in the Dark (31 page)

I went in. The building had a dingy stairwell with barred windows, and when no one lit the lamps, it was impossible to find your way up without stumbling. But I made out a square of light around the third door at last. I opened it and went inside. The room was crowded. People sat in front of the walls on benches and old crates and stood packed in the centre. There were rifles everywhere and blue flags hanging from the ceiling. At the front, under a guttering gaslight, a man was shouting from the stage. I saw all this before I realized that it wasn’t an auction. Then it was too late; they had shut the door behind me. ‘That’s right!’ shouted the man on the stage. ‘Come in, come in.’

Suddenly all the eyes in the room were on me. He regarded me for a moment, then resumed his shouting. ‘The Imperial Order are coming,’ he said. ‘And when they do, those with loyalty will be rewarded. There is a reason why our nation is poor. It is not because of Lucien’s government. It’s because of the king and his followers. The Alcyrian government knows this!’

I had frozen when the crowd was watching me, but now their eyes were fixed on the stage again. There were some hoarse shouts that might have been approval or disagreement. Under the harsh light, I could see the sweat rolling down the sides of the man’s face, like some picture of a martyr. ‘That’s right,’ he said, licking his lips and glancing around at us all. ‘That’s right – the Alcyrian government continue to demand reparations from the king, not because they want to steal our wealth but because they want to redistribute it.’

I did not understand this theory, but it seemed to grip the crowd like an infectious disease. After each sentence, the cheers grew stronger. They made the lamps shiver
in the ceiling and rattled the blacked-out windows. ‘Redistribution,’ shouted the man. ‘It has already begun, and I encourage you to further it. But when the Alcyrians come, they will help us. They want to take back what belongs to the true nation. They want to take it from the Unacceptables, the priests, the foreigners, the homosexuals, and when they come, they will give it to those who deserve it.’

There was an outbreak of cheering so loud it made me shiver. People glanced at me because I was not clapping. But that cheering had brought me back to my senses. I turned and pushed through the crowd, not slowing when people elbowed me, until I reached the door. ‘Leaving, are you?’ shouted the man from the stage. ‘Stay and hear the next speech at least.’

I went out and closed the door behind me. Leaving took all the courage left in me, but I had no choice. I knew that if I had stayed, I could never have spoken to Michael again.

Fear overtook me after that brief act of defiance, and I ran down the steps and out into the dark. As I turned down an alleyway, someone caught me by the shoulder. ‘Anselm,’ he hissed. ‘What were you doing at an Imperial Order rally?’

For a crazy moment – I don’t know why – I thought it was Leo. But I turned and saw Jared Wright there instead. ‘Jared?’ I said blankly. The cigarette smoke was different; I should have known.

‘I wasn’t at an Imperial Order rally,’ I said.

‘You just came out of one.’

‘No, I didn’t. It was a mistake.’

He raised one eyebrow.

‘I didn’t mean to go to it,’ I said. ‘I thought it was an
auction, so I went up. I came straight back down again when I saw.’

He looked at me for a moment, taking in the hat and the black scarf and the raised collar of my overcoat.

‘Honestly,’ I said. ‘I know it doesn’t look like it, but I went by mistake.’

He hesitated, then threw his head back and laughed so hard his gold teeth flashed. ‘My God, Anselm,’ he said when he had finished. ‘You really did think it was an auction.’

I waited while he continued laughing and stamped the snow off his shoes. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you home.’

‘I don’t need taking home, sir.’

‘Come on, I’m going that way anyway.’

We walked without speaking for several streets. The stars had come out overhead. I made out the one Leo had shown me – the orange star in the sign of the bull that was supposed to be Aldebaran. Or perhaps I had mistaken it. It was shining very brightly tonight, like a fire far off on a hill. Jared might have noticed it too, because he glanced up, then said, ‘I don’t suppose Maria has told you to avoid me?’

‘No,’ I said.

He grinned as though he did not believe it. But his face grew serious again. ‘So what did you think?’ he said.

‘Of what?’

‘The rally.’

I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

‘They are not sane,’ he said. ‘The whole lot of them are not sane. It worries me, and I don’t mind telling you. I’ve pledged half a million crowns to the government. Not that I support the king, but his advisers are better than these maniacs.’

I stopped and looked at him. It was not his political
views that startled me, but the casual way in which he had disposed of half a million crowns. ‘Are you such a rich man, sir?’ I said.

He raised one eyebrow. It was a look I was coming to know well. We walked on past an inn that was closing up and through a square where the snow drifted over the ground. ‘How is your mother?’ said Jared.

‘Not well,’ I said. ‘Not at the moment.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ he said. ‘She is not in danger?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I haven’t seen your stepfather about either.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘He must be one of the famous Norths,’ Jared said. ‘I know it, whatever you say. I envy him, you know. People would pay for anything Aldebaran left, and I’ll bet good money there was a last prophecy. I would pay thousands for that, really I would – so would half the political men in this city. Was there one, do you know?’

I shook my head. ‘Ah!’ said Jared, delighted with his cunning. ‘So your stepfather is one of the Norths, then? You admit that much.’

‘His surname is North,’ I said. ‘That’s all. And, sir …’

‘Yes.’

‘Why do you call him my stepfather?’

‘Well, he is, isn’t he? What else do you want me to call him?’

I started to speak, and so did Jared, but neither of us finished. We were on the corner of Trader’s Row. I wanted to ask him how he knew that and what he knew of my real father. But I could not do it. I had promised my mother not to even see him again. I knew it was superstitious, but with her lying so sick inside the house, I could
not bring myself to disobey her. ‘I should go inside,’ I said.

‘Anselm?’ he said. ‘Come and see me again.’

There was something significant in the way he said it that made it into more than a careless invitation. ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I don’t think I can.’

‘Why not?’

‘I can’t tell you. I just don’t think I can.’

‘But that is absurd,’ he said.

‘Maybe. I’m sorry, but I can’t.’

I turned and walked away before I could lose my resolution.

As I drew close to our shop, someone shone a lamp into my face. ‘Where are you going?’ he said. There were two police officers in front of me, pistols in their hands. I had not even seen them approach, and for a second I had thought it was the Imperial Order.

‘Home,’ I said, stepping back against the window.

‘Where have you been?’

‘Nowhere. Just walking in the city.’

‘Please raise your hands.’

I did it. My heart thumped sickly in my throat. The officers proceeded to search me, taking everything out of my pockets. Scraps of paper from school; a broken dial from an oil lamp, which they studied for several seconds; two or three coins. ‘Can I go on?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ one of them said as though granting a great favour. ‘Yes, very well.’

I went round checking the bolts several times once I was inside the shop. The city outside seemed against us, and the few locks on the doors were no protection at all. I went up the stairs and closed the living-room door and locked that too. I was still breathing fast from the encounter with
the police. I could not help connecting them with Dr Keller or the Imperial Order. After I went to bed, my bones ached with cold. I lay staring up at the ceiling, and dismal thoughts came to me, and I could not stop them. My tooth was still throbbing. It had already become part of my life, as if it had always been broken. I could not stop thinking, so I got up and spread out those papers Leo had left, then lit the lamp. I did not believe they would solve anything, but it was something to draw my mind away from the real world. When I was a young boy and real life was hard to fathom, I always used to turn to England. I surrendered to it now.

Ashley fell asleep on the underground on the way home. He woke as the train shuddered, drawing up at a station, and met the eyes of an old man. He was very thin, with a face like a skull, sitting in the last seat at the end of the carriage. His grey eyes trapped the passing lights. Ashley did not know where he was going, and his head ached. He stood up and made out the name of the station; it was far beyond the one where he had meant to change. He would have to get out at the next stop and walk.

Two women in suits left the carriage, and as the train drew away, they vanished down a lighted tunnel. Ashley sat down and rested his sketchbook against his knees. The carriage was almost empty now.

‘It is quiet this evening,’ remarked the old man.

Ashley nodded. It was the first time anyone had spoken to him on the underground in the nine years of his life here.

‘I am going to the end of the line,’ said the old man. ‘Can you tell me, please, how much longer it will take?’

‘About half an hour.’

‘Thank you,’ said the old man, and gave a gruff nod.

Ashley lowered his eyes and studied the man’s face, pretending all the time to read the cover of his sketchbook. The old man reminded him of the Rolls-Royce Anna had sold, and their old life in the country, and an age that was already gone. The silence drew out. A cold voice announced another station. ‘Are you an artist?’ said the old man, nodding towards the sketchbook.

‘Not really.’

‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘may I possibly see that book?’

Ashley grinned suddenly; he could not help it. It was the way the man had asked. ‘Here,’ he said, and handed the book to him. The man turned over the pages carefully.

‘This one is very good,’ he said, pausing on a portrait of Anna.

‘I got the light wrong,’ said Ashley. ‘It looks like she’s in the dark, and you can’t see her face.’

‘It’s a problem of tone,’ said the old man. ‘Not enough contrast in the work.’

Ashley did not know what to say. A wild thought drifted through his head that perhaps this man was a great artist and would take him away from everything and teach him to draw like a master. It was a childhood wish that he had tried to forget. But the old man only closed the book. ‘I know nothing about these things,’ he said. ‘But I have a good friend who draws. Tell me, do you ever sell your work?’

‘I draw portraits for tourists sometimes, in Covent Garden.’ The man’s accent made him add, ‘If you know it?’

‘Oh yes,’ said the old man. ‘Yes, I know Covent Garden. Such strange names your places have.’

‘I think so too,’ said Ashley. ‘I mean, I’ve always thought so.’

But there had been nothing significant about the remark.
The old man was already thinking of something else. He laid the sketchbook down on the seat beside Ashley. ‘Do you make much money from it?’ he said. ‘Drawing tourists’ portraits?’

‘I make some.’

‘And what do you do with it?’

‘I’m saving it.’

‘For what?’

Ashley hesitated, then gave him the truthful answer. ‘To go to Australia. To see my father.’

‘Your father is Australian?’ said the old man. ‘You must miss him, if he is so far away.’

‘No, he’s a bastard. I’m going to Australia to tell him so.’

The train gained speed with a low metallic whine. And Ashley, for no reason he could explain, began to feel frightened. The old man was watching him as if he was reading his soul. Ashley hoped he would say something else, but he didn’t. He held out for two stations, then got up and stepped down onto the platform.

‘Wait,’ said the old man. But the doors were already closing. Through the glass, the old man was mouthing something, like a fish in a jar, but the train was moving now. Then, when Ashley looked back, the man was no longer there.

He was at a different station to the one he expected, and the clock stood at a different time. Ashley did not know what had happened. Fear gripped him, and he turned and walked faster and faster, along the lighted tunnels, up through the hot draughts of the escalator, and out into the night. The train was far gone now, and Ashley listened for the next one to tremble under the paving stones. But no more
came. It was late, and that had probably been the last.

Ashley ran his hands over his face and tried to come back to the real world. A light rain had fallen, and the pavement glistened blackly. He was stranded in some high-class area he did not recognize. The white houses stood in a stupor around fenced gardens. He climbed over one of the fences and crossed the immaculate grass, for no reason at all, then swung around a lamppost and decided he was going in the wrong direction. That strange dream had set his heart out of joint, and he wished he was back home. He thought that he would ask someone where he was at the next shop he came to. But there were no shops here.

For a while, he pretended to navigate by the stars. It was a kind of game he played. He stopped on each street corner and looked upwards for a moment, then turned left or right. Eventually he decided he was lost. He sat down on the steps of a white house and considered the situation.

A silvery clock somewhere chimed eleven. Ashley stared around at the unfamiliar square. It was while he was looking round that he remembered the old maps he used to draw. Somewhere in his memory, this square must exist. He frowned and tried to fix his mind on it, and after a while, the lines of the streets became clear. He knew the accuracy of his memory was not natural, and sometimes it still startled him. He could recall anything, once he remembered that he knew it. The plan of the streets came into his mind now. Right, and then left. He got up and went on.