Jay flushed. ‘It’s just that I’ve seen it done before,’ she said, as she worried that she had humiliated him in front of strangers. ‘Try it.’
Annoyed he might have been, but he followed her advice and soon the little boat was skimming across the surface, with both Renata and Beltan applauding loudly from their cushion-covered seats. ‘Bravo, young man,’ they said. ‘Now could you manage to stop?’
Jay figured it out eventually, and they took up a position close by a sort of pontoon floating in the water. On it was a solitary man and a jumble of what were obviously musical instruments.
‘Just in time,’ someone from another boat called. ‘The music begins in a few moments.’
‘Who is singing?’
‘Aliena, the student of Rambert.’
Beltan gave a laugh of astonishment and delight. ‘Is that the truth, now? This is wonderful, wonderful!’ he cried. ‘We may just have time for some food as well. Tie up the boat, young man, and come and sit with us.’
He patted the seat beside him and then leant forward to open the hamper beside his legs. ‘Chicken! “Bread, wine, fruit and sweetmeats! Come one and all, and eat your fill!”’ he cackled.
‘Level 3, 47?’ Jay suggested.
‘Perhaps. A student, are you? I thought you had the look of one. Boating skills as well.’
Jay made a face. ‘And you, sir?’
‘My uncle, now long dead, was a student. He used to quote things at us all the time, and some stuck in my memory. He didn’t become a Storyteller, though. We’ve never had one in our family, as far as I know. Now you, beautiful Lady Rosalind, are you also a student?’
‘A sort of student,’ she said. ‘It’s complicated.’
Fortunately, she was pressed no further on the subject, although she was quite pleased with herself. By concentrating hard she had managed to make out enough of what the couple had said, and had ventured a reply, which had been understood. They seemed, she thought, to be talking a sort of English after all. It was very simple, though, almost the way an infant might speak.
The older couple settled back in their cushions with a look of contentment on their faces. Rosie noticed that the old man slyly took hold of his wife’s chubby hand and gave it a squeeze. With the other, she brought out rolls and chicken and strange-looking sausages.
Their boat was moored to a gaily coloured pole topped with a lantern that spread its light on the ripples of the lake. Beyond the shore, stretching into the distance, were rolling uplands, covered in fields and woodland, still just visible in the rapidly fading light. Twenty or thirty other boats were moored around them, each lit by lanterns, and the murmur of voices, subdued by the beauty of the scenery, echoed across the water. Although night was falling, the air was still warm and even the water, as Rosie pulled her hand through it, was pleasant to the touch.
She lay back and looked up at the stars, which were beginning to shine more brilliantly than she had ever seen them before. She recognised some. She didn’t know much about the stars, but she knew enough to realise that, wherever she was, the stars were the same. She listened carefully, but there was no sound, no background rumbling of traffic. Only the noise of the water against the side of the boat, the distant sound of crickets on the banks, the occasional screech from some passing bird.
‘Here they come,’ Jay said, disturbing her peace. ‘Here comes Aliena. Just look at her!’
A heavy boat was being driven purposefully through the water. In it were six people, four rowing, two sitting idly, one at each end. The man at the front leapt out onto the pontoon when the boat nudged alongside and tied it up. Then the rowers followed, and, last of all, the small figure in the back walked delicately forwards and was handed up onto the floating stage. Another boat, unlit, rowed by a single hunched figure followed, then rowed off to rest in isolation away from the audience.
She was dressed in a robe of deep red, which was all the more striking for being lit only by dim candlelight, and stood straight and still, facing the boats and ignoring the men behind her as they took their places, picked up their instruments and began to tune them.
‘Isn’t she lovely?’ Beltan said with a tone of awe.
‘Oh, she is,’ Jay said with too much appreciation in his voice for Rosie’s taste.
‘You wait till she sings,’ his wife added. ‘From all I’ve heard, at any rate.’
The sound of tuning died away, and, after a moment’s silence, Aliena held up one hand and began to sing.
It was the strangest singing Rosie had ever heard in her life, and it took some time to get used to it. It wasn’t a song, exactly, nor an opera; indeed, she couldn’t quite make out what it was, but it went on for a very long time. Sometimes it was recognisably tuneful, but this never lasted long. It wasn’t like the sort of song Rosie knew, where the tune would be repeated three or four times. Rather it was sung once and then the singer changed it, bit by bit, so it slowly disappeared or turned into another tune altogether. There were parts which were like chanting, others almost speaking, but always there was some brief fragment of a melody, so short Rosie’s mind could only just notice it before it was snatched away again. Sometimes the musicians would echo what she was singing, other times they would seem to be playing something entirely different.
Above all, there was the voice of the diminutive but commanding figure standing before them, gently responding with her body to the sounds she was making. It was like liquid gold, rich, amber, resonant. Rosie thought of the songs which Professor Lytten had played her, the sort of singing where the music isn’t so important, a voice which can make anything sound beautiful. This Aliena, although she must surely be very young, had a voice like that. When this was joined to the hypnotic music, Rosie – along with everyone else in the audience – soon fell into a sort of trance.
Even the words were strange. No be my baby, let alone rocking around the clock. This instead was a most peculiar story about people coming to some place and making a fire and having a dinner. That was about it, really, but the singing put emphasis on certain parts – the taste of the first food produced a lovely (if brief) tune. When everyone went to sleep afterwards there was another, which Rosie was sure she had heard before.
Then it came to an end. The musicians faded out, leaving the girl to sing alone for the last couple of minutes, until her voice also disappeared into the sounds of the water and wind, leaving nothing behind her except what even Rosie was beginning to think of as the real world. There was no applause; the people in the boats showed their appreciation by beating their hands firmly against their breasts. Aliena responded by clasping her hands together and looking down for as long as the noise continued. One by one, the punts occupied by the audience were untied and they began to drift back towards the shore, trailing the yellow torchlight behind them. Jay noticed the single boatman also rowing off, in a different direction. He saw Aliena glance at him, then toss her head in anger.
*
‘Well, young students, have you ever heard the like before?’
It was Renata who spoke as Jay punted slowly back to the shore. Her husband was incapable of speech. The tears had run down his face for most of the performance, and he was still dabbing a handkerchief against his eyes and snuffling occasionally.
‘She was wonderful,’ Jay agreed enthusiastically. Too much so, in Rosie’s opinion.
‘You must tell her, then. I’m told she gets offended if people fail to compliment her. She does deserve all the compliments we might proffer.’
For this was the true applause. The singer had taken up her position at the very end of the jetty, and one by one the audience got out of the boats, approached her, bowed and spoke a few words. It was, Rosie realised, going to be another of those terribly formal moments where what was said was prescribed down to the last breath.
‘Jay,’ she whispered urgently. ‘What should I say?’
He looked panicked. ‘I don’t know. I know what a man must say to a female singer. I know what a wo
man must say to a male singer. When one or the other is older or younger. But I don’t know the words for a woman to a woman when they are the same age and both under the age of maturity. Renata?’
She also looked apologetic. ‘It is most unusual for a girl of your age to go to such performances. And even more unusual for a girl of her age to sing at them. I’d just say the usual, if I were you, my dear.’
That didn’t help, of course, and now it was too late. The punt was alongside and Beltan had recovered himself enough to get out and hand up his wife, then Rosie. Jay followed and they were then in the queue to give greetings to their singer.
Although hardly older than Rosie was herself, she looked terribly mature and grown up. Her stance was almost imperious, her expression frigid and cold; only her short stature diminished the effect. She received the enthusiastic thanks and congratulations like an empress, nodding only and scarcely looking at the person addressing her. Beltan and Renata got the same treatment, and so did Jay, who was evidently star struck, almost trembling with excitement.
That annoyed Rosie greatly, as did the realisation that all these silly rules were going to make her feel like a fool again. In her opinion, she was doing her best in very difficult circumstances. Indeed, when had anyone been in more difficult circumstances?
So when her turn came, the fearful mood had been replaced by one of defiance. ‘I’m a foreigner,’ she announced. ‘I don’t know the words, and I don’t know what I am meant to say, but that was beautiful. Utterly wonderful and I have never heard anything like it before. And your clothes are just amazing.’
Aliena flinched, then broke into a broad grin. ‘Do you like them?’ she said. ‘I was told they looked coarse.’
‘Heavens no! You look like a queen. It suits you perfectly. Velvet, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. It’s more expensive than … well. It was expensive.’
‘I can imagine. Who made it?’
‘I made it myself, but I couldn’t get the seam right.’ She lifted the sash around the waist and Rosie saw how the join of two bits of cloth was rumpled and untidy. Very amateurish.
She made a face. ‘You need to cut little darts right the way around,’ she said. ‘My mum showed me how to do that. I could fix it easily.’
‘Really? Could you really?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then you will. You must. Will you?’
‘It would be my pleasure. A practical gesture of thanks for the delight you have given me this evening.’
Aliena laughed. ‘That is a better way of putting it than many I have heard. Did you like my ending? I put it in just to annoy Rambert.’
‘Who?’
‘Rambert. My teacher. He was the one alone in the boat with a sour look on his face. We had a real fight this afternoon, so I thought I’d put in something unorthodox to annoy him. We’ll have another fight about it later, I suppose.’
‘I thought it was lovely.’ Then Rosie remembered where she had heard it. Just a snatch of a tune, scarcely recognisable. ‘Casablanca,’ she said. ‘That’s what it was. You know. Although I suppose you don’t,’ she added a little lamely.
Rosie started humming ‘As Time Goes By’, then began to sing.
‘You know this melody? What are those words?’
‘Of course I know it. I can’t sing well, though.’
‘No. You can’t. I am astonished you know this. Do you know any others?’
‘Lots.’
‘Sing me one.’
This was enough to make Rosie’s mind go blank. In desperation, she thought of what made people of her parents’ age look happy. ‘I know. There’s this one. You’ll like this.’ She sang a bit of ‘Fly Me to the Moon’. ‘Professor Lytten played me that. Peggy Lee. Good, isn’t it?’
Aliena sang it herself, the same tune but very different words. ‘That’s one of the oldest lines of melody there is,’ she said. ‘So Rambert tells me. It is used only for the most beautiful and poignant of passages.’
Rosie felt confused. She was sure it wasn’t that old. ‘We don’t do songs like that,’ she said. ‘Any old words will do, normally. Doo-wop, be-bop. That sort of thing.’
‘That’s disgusting. For prancing peasants.’
‘I’m sorry if I have offended you.’
‘You are a foreigner, so I will overlook it. This time.’
‘Do you still want me to fix your dress?’
Aliena was torn between her dignity and her clothes sense. ‘Yes,’ she said finally.
Rosie waited expectantly.
‘Please.’
‘It will be a pleasure.’
Rosie left her there, and saw that Jay was still bewitched by the young singer. It would have been inaccurate to say that his mouth was actually hanging open but, in her opinion, he was not behaving in quite the way a companion of hers should behave.
She sniffed disdainfully and walked up the bank of the lake on her own and then saw, standing on the narrow pathway, the tall man she had accidentally insulted earlier in the evening. He had a look of contempt on his face, or what could be seen of it under the mask.
With an exaggerated gesture of ironic distaste, he bowed deeply to her once again.
Rosie flushed, glanced briefly at Jay, who was still staring goggle-eyed at Aliena, and, with an equally exaggerated movement, curtsied deeply back.
24
Jack More was travelling back into a world which was familiar, even comforting, after the sterile, dead and entirely regimented institute that sprawled over the Island of Mull. He talked to no one as he took the old ferry across to the mainland with the workers, then the link to the transport hub fifty miles inland. He sat as inconspicuously as possible, trying to lose himself in the mass of reeking humanity which was, like him, travelling south for work, into the sprawling metropolis which extended for some two hundred miles and contained so many people that no one was even sure how many there were. Most could not move, bound for life to their factories or jobs so that production would never cease. They got up, worked, went home and thought themselves happy. Some, though, like the people now surrounding him, were floating workers, assigned to one task or another as needed; others, he suspected, had run away, hoping to hide themselves and not be noticed. He realised he had become separated from them, even felt superior to them despite being born one of them, in a housing unit of twenty thousand attached to a food processing plant where his family had worked for generations. Jack had hated it, and volunteered for military service simply to escape. Then he had gone into security, to avoid being sent back. Was his time in an institute having an effect on him? Was he getting used to the small privileges that he now possessed? How hard would he try to hang on to them, if he ever had to choose?
It was, after all, most peculiar behaviour for someone like him – someone as he was now pretending to be – to use mass transport and to travel to the grubby, dingy suburbs of the south. He was also going alone, without the usual panoply of security detail and aides which someone of his supposed rank would have insisted upon to give protection from the envious and dangerous populace.
He studied the wan reflections of his travelling companions in the coach, the lined faces, the signs of hunger, the weariness and wariness of their expressions. All were insignificant, consumers not producers, there to be controlled and monitored and to work for the greater good, even if they never knew what it was. He did not examine them directly, but rather in the window of the compartment, half steamed up from the heavy rain lashing down outside. He studied his own face and knew why they looked at him cautiously, a little suspiciously. He was too healthy, too exercised and self-confident, not like those all around him.
Some people did look at him more closely, then glanced away. He did not think any of them were excessively interested, nor did anyone follow him when he arrived at his destination. But then why should they? Cameras were following his every move anyway. He was banking on no one bothering to look at them.
*
For
the next two days he went back to his old business, calling on former colleagues and friends who, unlike him, had remained in the front line of security and policing when he had left in disgust. He could no longer see the point of harassing and monitoring, of travelling into the heart of vast housing complexes to pick up people for trivial offences. The arrests, the interrogations, the forced re-education programmes had no purpose other than to remind people of the power of their guardians. People like him were meant to find and neutralise renegades, criminals and troublemakers, convert them into useful citizens serving the good of all. He had increasingly come to the view that it was a waste of time. Most were incorrigible, and increasingly he doubted that they were much of a threat in any case. They arrested a few to intimidate everyone else and to reassure the masses they were looked after and kept secure. Working for Hanslip was hardly exciting, in contrast, but until a couple of days ago it hadn’t required him to pretend he was doing something useful.
But his old life had at least provided the comradeship he no longer had, and he was almost nostalgic when he walked in through the doors to be greeted by the sense of purposeful activity. The building was just as run-down and decrepit as it had been the day he left, three years previously; the same mountains of files, paint peeling from the walls, overflowing rubbish bins, probably even the same dust over the stained floors. Many of the inhabitants were the same as well; he recognised several but it was strange – and annoying – to realise how easily he had been forgotten. One man, whom he had worked with on a complicated case of smuggling years back, walked past him in the corridor, stared at him with a puzzled expression, then said, ‘Hello, Jack. Been on nights?’
Others – young and new – simply had no idea who he was.