Turquoiselle Read online

  Andy did not wonder if his own view-point ever became tinted by any of Heavy’s. Andy did not stick a definition on what, years in the future, he recognised as Heavy’s joi de vivre.

  Andy never considered either if he loved Heavy, as it was possible to love someone asexually yet deeply – as one might love a wonderful father, or mother – as Heavy himself seemed to love his own mother, her death an utter irrelevance.

  Andy thought, but did not think. Which was surely how one survived.

  When Andy located Heavy, he was standing by the ‘lake’ in the park, watching the shining green ducks move over the dark green polished surface, and showing his habitual duck-approval.

  “If you could wish for something,” said Andy, “what would it be?”

  Heavy apparently pondered.

  “An oransh,” said Heavy, truthfully.

  Andy burst out laughing. All the strain and bewilderment, vague spurts of what might be excitement, or sheer misgiving, left clinging to him from the evening before, sprayed off and dissolved, for the moment harmless, in the air.

  “There was this guy called Sunderland,” said Andy eventually.

  “Underland,” said Heavy.

  “Sunderland.”

  “Sun under land,” said Heavy. The prophet had proclaimed a secret clue?

  But Andy went on, telling Heavy in a rush not common to him, about the interview. About the College.

  “It’s not in London. Some dump in the country. But I’ll be a – boarder. Only they give you your own room – it sounds... all right...”

  Heavy watched him, nodding once.

  “I don’t know if I want to go. I don’t know if it’s good – or fucking shit. Only I’d get away from her,” (he meant, of course, Sara), “it sounds – OK. Perhaps. I’ll piss off out if it isn’t.” Andy turned to the lake. He did not know what he thought. He did not want to go. Felt they might force him. Was too anxious to go – or to refuse –

  They stood there, he and Heavy, about three feet apart, watching the ducks whose heads, Heavy had formerly explained, were the colour of “Jait” or “Corianta leafs.”

  “He said, Sunderland, if I didn’t go I’d wish I had. He said what did I wish for?” said Andy. “And what did I? Not an orange. Make a proper wish,” demanded Andy. Conceivably he wanted Heavy to wish him good luck.

  Heavy did not speak.

  Andy said, “I wish it’s OK.”

  Heavy spoke then to the lake. His voice sounded old and strong and strangely fined. An actor’s voice, but not a modern one.

  “May all the good be happy,” said Heavy to the lake. “And all the bad be good.”

  They separated about two minutes later, without another direct look, without touching. Aside from unexpected dreams, or in sudden glints of memory, Andy had never seen Heavy again.

  Eleven

  From the darkness someone replied.

  “Hello, Car.”

  Carver: Where am I?

  Someone: Where do you think you are?

  Carver: (Pause) I don’t know.

  Someone: Perhaps I don’t, either.

  PAUSE

  Carver: Is there anyone there?

  Someone: I’m here.

  Carver: Who are you?

  Someone: Who are you?

  Carver: You – know who I am.

  Someone: Do I know?

  Carver: What’s my name?

  Someone: Can’t you remember?

  Carver: Can’t you remember?

  Someone: Ask another question.

  Carver: You – ask another question

  SILENCE

  Are you still there?

  SILENCE

  *****

  The Voice: You’re awake again, Car?

  Carver: (Pause) I think I am.

  The Voice: Shall we resume? Do you think that’s something we should do?

  Carver: Why am I here?

  PAUSE

  The Voice: Why shouldn’t you be here?

  PAUSE

  Carver: The last thing I remember was the shed. And then...

  The Voice: Yes?

  Carver: Was it gas, the drug?

  The Voice: Something like that.

  Carver: What happened to Johnston?

  The Voice: Who is Johnston?

  Carver: The man in the rubber diving suit.

  The Voice: How quaint. Something quaint in that.

  Carver: It was dark. He wore a mask.

  The Voice: If you say so.

  Carver: And then you drugged me.

  The Voice: I drugged you?

  Carver: Somebody. I want some water.

  The Voice: Maybe later. Something can be arranged. Later.

  PAUSE

  Carver: Why am I secured?

  The Voice: Are you? Are you sure you are?

  Carver: Yes – I – yes. Christ – my ankles and wrists. Some kind of electronic lock – I need a lavatory.

  The Voice: I’m afraid you’ll have to see to all that where you are.

  Carver: Why?

  The Voice: It will save us all time. Go on. Help out.

  Carver: Where is Stuart?

  The Voice: Who is Stuart?

  Carver: Jack Stuart. Mantik Corp.

  The Voice: Something tells me you are feeling a little stronger, Car.

  Carver: You keep repeating that word. Something.

  The Voice: Something. Some things do get repeated.

  Carver: I need some water.

  SILENCE

  Silence. Next a sound of dripping, trickling, then a gush – a tap turned on, perhaps. But not close enough. (And anyway it is, from the reek, alcohol again, some sort of too-sweet gin.) Presently it stops, the sound if not the stink.

  Scar. Scarred. Scared. S car, Car, Carver.

  Andreas Cava.

  Darkness. Sleep returning, coming in even through the fear and the sullen ache in the bladder, and the dry burning of the throat and mouth. Somewhere on the edges of the new induced nothingness, stands Robby Johnston and his fixed black jellies of eyes. Is it Robby that has taken him prisoner here? The voice was not Robby’s voice. And it repeated one particular word. It is Mantik that have him, surely. And now he is to be tried. And found wanting.

  Twelve

  Bright sunlight seared a second window through the blind. Outside he could hear faintly the whirr of big wings as birds crossed over the house from the back garden to the woods and fields the far side of the lane. And downstairs, an occasionally chittering monotone, without doubt the TV in the kitchen above the breakfast bar, dispensing its obligatory sensation and inanity and horror. There was the scent of coffee.

  Something (something) seemed slightly odd to him as he got out of the spare bed. A dream maybe, now forgotten. A dream of Heavy, had it been? Or Johnston – or was it about Sara and the sandwich-size flat over the off-licence when he was a kid, and Mantik had first reached out for him, and sent him off to the unusual college in the country...?

  He had slept in pyjamas, as only rarely he did. He went to the window and let up the blind.

  The back garden of the house in the village was not there after all.

  The house had transported itself, presumably during the night, to the summit of a high rocky hill, or cliff, which now gazed directly outwards at a spangled blue plain of daylit sea, the sun standing, rather to the left, on its own searing tail of reflection.

  Another bird flew in and over. It was a gull.

  Carver remembered the black night-morning garden, the man in black rubber, the glare and then the nothingness, the spaces of other darkness swelling and fading, bound hands and feet, pissing himself, throat full of dry fire. And here he was at this window, in a room that was – or entirely resembled – the spare room of the house, its proportions and its furniture, everything but for the view from its window. He was showered and fresh, his bladder even not urgent. The taste of familiar toothpaste and mouthwash was in his fully-moisturised mouth.

  But he could hear the kitchen TV, whic
h Donna had switched on as she always did when she was the first down. He could smell coffee. A hint of bacon too. The pyjamas though, now he looked at them, were not exactly anything he had worn before.

  The sky was blue, bluer than the sea, as if to encourage it to extra effort. Was this summer? It had been early autumn. Had it? Yes.

  “Something...”

  The voice spoke again in Carver’s memory.

  Carver glanced about the room. His clothes lay on a chair, as he might have left them in either of the house bedrooms. They were clean. The boxers were clean. But they were, all of them, these things, the ones he had worn that night. The night before. Or days ago perhaps. Or weeks.

  Or a month or a year.

  He did not know what the drug was they had used. Or what other, if any, medleys of drugs had been employed to subdue, question, restrain, terrify, reassure him.

  Was he still under the influence of anything...?

  “Something.”

  He could not tell.

  His stomach growled, abruptly hungry, a starved beast scenting and responding to the aroma of coffee and food. Which now seemed to be evaporating. Had he imagined them? How long besides had he been without such things? But he sensed no weakness. His weight and stamina felt and seemed to him as usual.

  He checked his pulse. It was steady. Putting off the pyjamas he looked himself over, turning to the wall mirror for confirmation. He had no bruises, raw or fading, no signs of injury. His colour was normal. His eyes were neither inflamed nor over-bright, the pupils reacting correctly to light or shadow. There was no vertigo.

  Downstairs – if it was – it sounded as if it were – he heard a clear burst of laughter. A male voice, or two, and a female one. No words, but the tone and timbre – Donna did not laugh like that, that smooth contralto ripple. But one of the male laughters – could that be Herons?

  Carver snatched up and put on the clothing, his clothing. He went to the bedroom door and tried it. Without protest, it opened.

  Outside, again, utter unfamiliarity. The corridor was long, painted pale, and veered sharply from sight at two corners, one to the left and one the right. Three other doors, these closed, marked both the walls either side of his door. Facing him across the corridor there were no doors, only two windows, separated by some five featureless metres.

  He tried each of the doors, all were locked shut. Then he went to each of the windows.

  They looked inland, away from the sea, and up across a wild park or large overgrown garden. He barely took this in. There on a rise, whose summit ascended less than a quarter mile off, and reasonably visible through the big green trees, had been stationed a Russian train, ( circa 1900?), of many carriages.

  They were, unvaryingly, of a rich marmalade colour. Something... Chekovian, Tolstoyan... Every carriage was Carver’s shed from the house, and by day, their windows were blank of any glow, merely catching the sheen of the sun as it flew slowly upward over and across this unknown building, by this unknown summer sea.

  Neither man was Herons.

  He knew neither of them. Nor the woman.

  The men were both of fairly average appearance, shortish hair. The older had a long, rather gangly loose frame, like that of a teenager suddenly aged into his full-grown fifties. He raised one hand in a token of greeting and said he was Van Sedden Then the shorter man said, in a slightly amused way, “I’m Ball. Singular. Like Soccer. Or a dance.” The woman did not speak, although unlike the men she stared directly at Carver, seemingly taking in every atom that visually she could. She was black, light-skinned, with cropped brown-black fleecy curls. Her body was heavy but voluptuously curved, if fitted unbecomingly in a scarlet shell-suit and trainers. Her eyes were blue. That could happen, though he had never seen it before. She had no expression, her perfectly-shaped lips held still, as if they were for decoration only. The two men both wore suits, tieless shirts, everyday shoes. Ball wore a watch, a Rolex, and a silver wedding ring.

  Carver said, “Carver. Where is this place?”

  No one replied. Then Van Sedden murmured, almost reproachfully, “God, He knows. Not I.”

  “So you don’t know,” said Carver. He looked at Ball. “How about you?”

  “Nope. Haven’t a fucking clue, baby.”

  Carver looked at the woman. She continued to meet his eyes with her hot-sky blue ones, and she spoke after all: “Why don’t you have some coffee?” Her voice was ordinary. A London voice. Somehow he did not believe in her voice. It was some sort of disguise – but to think so was probably irrational.

  Why not, though, be irrational?

  Look where rationality had got him.

  He sat down at the long wooden kitchen table, and pulled the coffee pot towards him. Filter. It would do. Ball had passed him a plain shiny black mug. They all had those, and black plates with crumbs of toast, and Ball’s plate with a gleaming after-effect of bacon and butter. There was one unused plate.

  Carver poured himself coffee.

  Was this what he had scented upstairs? How? The scent had been pumped up into his room...?

  Perhaps the coffee had something in it.

  He did not try it.

  The woman drew the pot away from him, topped up her own mug, and drank. She had stopped looking at him, as if there was nothing more to see in him at all.

  Carver took a slow mouthful from his own mug. The fluid was hot. The taste filled his mouth and flowed down his already moist and comfortable throat. (Somewhere in the recesses of the drugged dark, they had roused him and bathed him, or he had bathed himself and cleaned his teeth, and drunk water, and seen to any other bodily functions outstanding. Only he could recall nothing of it.) Carver thought about the first time he had drunk coffee. He had made it for himself in a house Sara had gone to clean, lugging him with her because he was too young to be left, while the people whose house it was were on holiday and would not know. He had been five, he thought. Something like that. Sara had slapped him when she saw what he had done. But her slaps were nothing after the beatings of his father. And he had liked the coffee, even if it was instant and had burnt his tongue. Forbidden fruit always had a sting in the tail.

  This kitchen was very small. The table and four chairs crowded most of any space. To the sides were squeezed in a pair of little sinks, a microwave and doll’s house oven, shelves of things in packets and cans and boxes, a tall fridge-freezer narrow as a giant pencil.

  Abruptly a door, partly wedged behind the freezer, came open, and a brisk young woman jigged in with a tray of bacon sandwiches and another smoking coffee pot. She put these on the table without a word, and without a word the people in the kitchen received them.

  When she had gone, the narrow door shambled awkwardly shut again behind the pencil. The two men helped themselves to the food. Carver took a sandwich. He bit into it carefully, as if afraid of breaking a tooth. But it seemed only to be bacon, butter, bread, exactly what it had pretended to be.

  Outside, beyond the large window closed over by a thick matt-blond blind, unseen seagulls were screeching along the edges of the rocky height.

  Chew the bacon, taste, swallow. Swallow the coffee.

  Maybe a drug had been wiped into the mug, or on to the spare plate. Too late now.

  He felt nothing like that. Yet the inevitable tension, the adrenalin-readiness that should be in him, and now building, was not really there at all, or – it was far off, about one quarter of a mile away, like the line of carriage-sheds on the rise. Just near enough to see and understand without effort. Not close enough to touch, or feel.

  Carver, instead, felt a strange depression. It was very likely the residue of the drug leaving him – both the removal of feeling and now this subterranean dragging lethargy, like some of the symptoms he had heard described with insipient ME. What could he do? Nothing, as yet. Or ever? Nothing.

  He left the remainder of the sandwich. Finished the single coffee, and pushed the mug a little away.

  The black woman had produced a smal
l notebook and pen from her shell-suit pocket. (No laptop then?) She was writing something down, tiny twitters of biro ink, unreadable. Was she making notes on him?

  Carver spoke.

  “Do any of you know why you are here?”

  The man called Van Sedden laughed. It was certainly one of the laughters Carver had detected from upstairs. Sound must have been electronically passed into his room, if not smell.

  “None of us know. Like life. None of us know, beyond the physical act, why we’re alive, and none of us know why we are here. So we invent possible reasons. God caused us to be born. So then, did God decide we should be brought here?”

  Friendly, Ball said, “Shut up, Seddy.”

  Carver said, “What happens here?”

  “Apart from breakfast, you mean?” asked Ball.

  Carver waited.

  Ball shrugged. “Nothing much.”

  The woman said, “People come and go, Carver.”

  Carver said, “You didn’t tell me your name.”

  Her head turned again to him, slowly, reminding him of a snake. Her face appropriately had still no expression. And rather than speaking, she tore out of the notebook one page, and wrote carefully on it, then passing the paper to him. Carver read the name: ANJEELA MERVILLE. (Anjeela seemed to him more Asian than Caribbean or African. Or was it a fanciful take on Angela? And Mervi1le – did the blue eyes come from that side?) “Thank you.”

  But she had gone back to her tiny notations.

  The choked door behind the fridge was abruptly opened once more. A tall portly man in a suit eased an awkward if practiced entrance around the fridge-freezer, and stood smiling affably. “Morning, all. Ah, Mr Carver. Can you be ready in about twenty minutes? Mr Croft would like to see you in his section. Somebody will come down to show you the way.”

  Carver said, “All right.”

  What else was there to say?