Jay thought it wise to remain silent.
‘Ordinarily, such decisions and punishments I pass to a court of men and women chosen from the locality. Three men, three women. Is that how it works with you?’
‘Not really. In my village, the old men judge the women, the old women judge the men and any serious crime is passed to the Visitor. In Ossenfud each college deals with its own.’
‘Well, here all authority derives from me. The courts decide my justice and mercy. Only I can overrule their decision. Not that I do.’
Jay did not see what the point of this was, but he nodded. It was interesting, and he had never met anyone who could order the death of another. Nor had he expected that such a person would look like Lady Catherine.
‘Do you know where my power comes from?’
He shook his head. She was going to tell him so there wasn’t much point in guessing.
‘It comes from the people I judge. They give me all authority, I hand it to my courts. A heady thing, don’t you think? There is much more, of course. My authority determines the level of taxes, adjudicates inheritance, apportions vacant lands, looks after the domain’s relations with the outside world, decides which roads need to be repaired, which streams cleansed. I own the mills on behalf of all, and the granaries and the farming equipment. It would be easy to become drunk on so much power, no?’
‘I really do not know, my Lady. I have never had any power.’
‘Believe me, then. It would need only a brief moment of weakness for any man or woman to think this power is theirs by right and that they are better than the people they rule. That way lies tyranny, and we have seen it in the stories many times. You have studied them, no?’
‘A few.’
‘What year of studies are you in?’
‘My sixth.’
‘Then you haven’t studied them.’
‘Well, no.’
‘Never lie like that to me, Jay. I forgive ignorance but not vanity. If you do not know something, then admit it freely. Has Henary never told you that?’
Jay nodded. ‘Many times. He will tell you, if you ask. But I have read many of these stories on my own account, even if I have not yet formally studied them.’
‘And now?’
‘My Lady, I am a poor boy from a farm. A student who knows that he knows little. In the last day I have narrowly escaped slavery, met a fairy, been to a festivity of wonderment, heard music such as I have never heard before, lost a girl whose importance I do not understand, and now am walking in the sunshine with a woman reputedly the most powerful and beautiful in Anterwold. I am doing my best.’
Lady Catherine burst out in a peal of laughter. ‘Yes, you are. It may be that Henary is right about you. I have not been kind to you and I apologise. Shall we start again and be friends?’
Jay smiled bravely.
‘Then let me continue with my lengthy and tedious account,’ she went on, resuming her way down the alley of trees.
‘My predecessors here knew full well the folly of mankind, their infinite capacity for self-importance. So they constructed reminders to make the people of this land recall that they were not slaves, and the rulers that they were not masters. Did you know that the least of labourers on my estate can have me hurled from my office?’
He shook his head.
‘They can. In theory. They can lodge a complaint against me with my own court, and that court can summon me for a hearing. If my failing is serious enough they can call a meeting of every council in the domain and strip me of my power and authority. It has never happened. After all, they’d just have to replace the ruler with someone else. But every few years there is a ceremony of reminder that it is possible. It begins in an hour.’
‘What happens?’
‘It is best if you see for yourself. I am telling you this because I have a use for you. I need someone with me from noon to dusk, to dusk and to dusk. Two days and a half. To watch and report that I bear my humiliation with dignity, and that the humiliation is within the bounds of tradition. That person has to be independent of me and independent of the people. Often enough the task goes to a Storyteller, but Henary has rather too much to do today.’
Jay could almost feel the panic flowing over him.
‘So I want you to take up the task. Will you, Jay, witness the ceremony of Abasement?’
‘I wouldn’t have the faintest idea what to do.’
‘Oh, it’s nothing. You watch. Make sure everyone behaves themselves. Smile sweetly and look grave at the appropriate moments. Now I must go and dress.’
33
Over the next couple of days, Chang tried to summon the courage needed for another approach to Henry Lytten. Several times he walked down the road and gazed at the house. Once, heart pounding, he even rang the doorbell. No answer, though. On another occasion he thought he saw a curtain twitch but, if the windows fitted as badly as they did in his own house, then that meant nothing.
All the while he was getting used to his new situation and even began to feel tolerably optimistic. That was possibly because he was also starting to sleep properly, undisturbed by nightmares or worries generated by the sheer strangeness of it all. When he got out of bed, he would sit at the little table next to the sink while he waited for the kettle on the hob to boil. Then he would spoon some Nescafé into a mug, add the water, and listen to the sounds of life outside the window, trying to pin down each one and identify it.
It was early, no more than seven, but there were the noises from the room underneath, where the spotty young man who worked in the haberdasher’s was getting up. He heard the padding of feet as he went to the bathroom at the end of the corridor, wrapped in his dressing gown. The clopping of horses’ hooves from the milkman in the street; the tinkle of bicycle bells as the first people pedalled off to work in town.
Then came an unaccustomed noise. A doorbell; the front door opening and shutting; the sound of feet – heavy feet, clumping up the stairs; a pause outside his door; a hard, repeated knock, one which could not be ignored.
He put on his dressing gown and walked to the door. He wasn’t expecting anything, as he didn’t know what to expect: he had no friends, no associates; no one knew where he lived, or cared; no one had cause to visit him at any hour, let alone at seven in the morning.
‘Yes?’
‘Would you come with us, please?’
Two men came into the room. One was large and burly, far larger than Chang; the other was slighter. He was the one who seemed to be in charge.
‘Who are you?’ he asked the quiet one.
‘Detective Sergeant Maltby. Special Branch.’
‘Does that mean you’re a policeman?’
‘No. I’m the window cleaner.’
‘That’s good. The windows are really dirty. I can hardly see out of …’
‘Very funny. Now if you’d come with us?’
‘But if you are window cleaners, then …’
Maltby held up his hand. ‘Just stop there, please. Don’t make my life more difficult. We don’t wish to make a fuss if this turns out to be a misunderstanding.’
Chang scanned his memory but there were no briefings which allowed him to interpret what was going on. He knew, of course, of accounts about knocks on doors but he had been told that was associated with an earlier period, or different countries. He knew about police forces, but they wore uniforms, he thought.
‘What is this about?’
‘We will explain later.’
They didn’t seem threatening. That is, they didn’t behave like people who were about to kill him or attack him or anything like that, but Chang had too little information to come to a reasoned conclusion. He was simply not yet prepared for any interaction as complex as this one. He began to feel anxious, and knew the policeman had noticed.
So he made an effort. ‘Super!’ he said as brightly as possible. ‘Will you give me some breakfast?’
‘Just get dressed, sir.’ They stood and watched as he did so
, then, one in front and one behind, they trooped down the stairs.
*
‘Your name?’
‘Alexander Chang.’
‘Date and place of birth?’
‘Ah … 28th June 1930, Uganda.’
‘Where did you go to school?’
He hesitated again; he had been prepared for casual conversation, but not for a detailed interrogation. If this Maltby man was going to take him through his entire life – his supposed life – it wasn’t going to be difficult to find huge gaping holes. His memory had quickly prepped him on his biography and briefed him on interrogations during the short trip to the police station and the result wasn’t encouraging.
‘A mission school run by my father.’
‘Where?’
‘It moved around with him.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘You don’t remember where you lived when you were fourteen? Fifteen?’
‘No.’
‘Did you go to university?’
‘No.’
‘When did you come to England?’
‘I arrived about a week ago.’ That was true, at any rate.
‘How?’
A pause. ‘By boat.’
‘Which one?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘What port did you arrive at?’
‘Ah … Liverpool.’
‘Which port did you leave from?’
‘The main port. You know …’
‘The main port of Uganda?’
‘Yes.’
‘I find that surprising.’
‘Why?’
‘Uganda has no coastline.’
‘Why are you asking me all this?’
They were sitting in a small, grey room in the police station. Chang had been led down the stairs and put into a car. Under normal circumstances, he would have been excited: he had never been in a car, and was fascinated by the experience.
‘A Rover, no?’ he said. There was no reply. ‘P80 straight-4 overhead valve engine. Designed by Gordon Bashford. African walnut dashboard. Not a great success, I believe. Twenty-three point five miles to the gallon, nought to sixty in twenty-two seconds. Fewer than six thousand produced before it was cancelled.’
‘They’ve only just been introduced.’
He lapsed into a chastened silence. So much for small talk. Never volunteer information, never take the initiative. His head was full of information that he could call on at will. He could, had it been needed, give the complete specifications of the car, compare it to other models, recite newspaper articles reviewing its performance.
All this he knew. What he didn’t know was much about his own history. There hadn’t been time. He knew quite well that what he said was riddled with contradictions and outright absurdity. Even a seven-year-old child would have been suspicious of a man who did not know precisely where he was born or where he went to school, was decidedly hazy about his work and could not name a single friend, acquaintance or family member who might vouch for him. How did he get into the country without a passport? A good – no, an excellent – question. Why had he been standing outside Lytten’s house the previous evening? Another good question.
The two policemen went to get him a cup of tea, which was nice of them, he thought. In their brief absence, he scanned through his briefing papers. ‘Lying,’ he said out loud, hoping no one would hear. ‘I need to lie. Teach me, quickly.’
I wouldn’t if I were you, came the response. For a start, it’s a variable concept here. You are in a culture where ambiguity has been raised to a high level. Let me give an example: depending on phrasing, circumstance, expression, body movement, intonation and context, the statement ‘I love you’ can mean I love you; I don’t love you; I hate you; I want to have sex with you; I do, in fact, love your sister; I don’t love you any more; leave me alone, I’m tired, or I’m sorry I forgot your birthday. The person being talked to would instantly understand the meaning but might choose to attribute an entirely different meaning to the statement. Lying is a social act and the nature and import of the lie depends in effect on an unspoken agreement between the parties concerned. Please note that this description does not even begin to explore the concept of deep lies, in which the speaker simultaneously says something he knows to be untrue and genuinely believes it nonetheless: politicians are particularly adept at this.
What I am trying to say is that lying is a linguistic exercise of extraordinary complexity. It is better at your stage to tell the truth, although this may also have unintended consequences.
There we are, it concluded after its recitation was done. Does that help?
No, he thought.
As Chang sat trying to find something useful in the torrent of information, Maltby returned with the tea, handed it to him and sat down opposite him. They were interrupted by a man who brought in a large envelope. ‘That’s all,’ he said, and left.
He pulled out the contents and Chang saw that they were bits of paper from his room, mainly his efforts at handwriting, which he still found difficult. He had spent many a long hour clutching a pen tightly in his hand, scrawling on the paper, trying to acquire the sort of ease, fluency and legibility that most people around him could manage as second nature. He had tried English, and Cyrillic and Arabic. He found the Cyrillic easiest and had begun to take notes to fix his still erratic memory. That, he thought, might not be good.
‘There are several words of Russian here,’ the man observed. ‘Why is that?’
‘Just notes,’ he replied.
‘You speak Russian?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Really? Now how did the son of an African missionary learn to speak Russian?’
‘I taught myself.’
‘Why were you watching the house of Henry Lytten?’
Chang began to sweat. ‘I wasn’t.’
‘Then would you care to explain this, sir?’
Maltby held up a piece of paper that had been collected from Chang’s little desk. On it were written three names. Henry Lytten. Angela Meerson. Rosalind.
‘Lytten. You have been watching his house. Meerson? Who is she? Then there is Rosalind. A young girl called Rosalind briefly disappeared two days ago. Her parents are convinced she’s been seduced by an older man. She’s only fifteen. A serious crime, that would be.’
Chang’s mind went into panic.
‘Anyway,’ Maltby continued. ‘We’re done with you here.’
‘Really? Thank heavens for that!’
Maltby smiled in a cold sort of way. An hour later, Chang was put back into the car and driven to Henry Lytten’s house.
34
Henry was out when I arrived at his house, but I had a key and let myself in. I put on the kettle and then went downstairs to visit my machine. It was reassuringly quiet, looking gratifyingly like a rusty old pergola covered in bits of tinfoil, and I had a brief burst of hope that, suddenly and miraculously, my little problem had resolved itself. I carefully went through the routines required to activate it and watched as the electricity began to flow through it, crossing my fingers in a perfectly unscientific fashion as I waited.
No luck. Slowly the scene resolved itself; the grim view of the bare grey wall beyond faded and was replaced by the rather more beautiful sight of a coastline from the top of a hill, stretching down to the sea. Birds flew overhead and the waves were breaking on the shore of enticingly clean white sand.
Why wouldn’t the damned thing just go away? I had had an idea during the night; a recommendation had arrived in my mind when the calculations were nearly complete. Why don’t you set it back to before the girl first stepped through? Reset to before she met the boy for the first time and that might unblock it.
Worth a try. So I closed it, recalibrated for about six months before the moment I thought Rosie had first gone in, and went through the start-up procedure once more. Please, I thought to myself. Please don’t work …
Another view t
ook shape and solidified, a river landscape this time. With ducks. For some reason the ducks really annoyed me. They were unnecessary, almost a gratuitous insult.
Then the phone rang. I left the machine running, in the vain hope it would correct itself, and ran upstairs to answer. An earnest voice with a Midlands accent asking for Henry. Detective Sergeant Maltby, he said his name was. I announced myself as his associate and said he could speak freely. ‘I have full authorisation and clearance in all matters,’ I reassured him in my grandest manner.
‘It’s about the man watching his house,’ Maltby said. ‘We’ve arrested him.’
‘Really?’ I replied. ‘That was good work. What do you think?’ Nothing like vague questions to find out what on earth someone is talking about.
‘He’s a queer one, no doubt about it. One of the worst liars I’ve ever come across. Foreign, obviously, and speaks Russian. I think he may be … you know.’
‘Describe him.’
‘Looks early thirties. Brown eyes. Average height. Healthylooking, pale complexion. A bit Chinese-looking, but he says he isn’t. His name is Alexander Chang, so he says.’
‘Is that so?’ I said in what I hoped was a distant, uninterested tone.
‘The thing is, we found papers saying he wanted to get something from Professor Lytten, and needing to find someone called Angela Meerson. There is also a possible reference to a girl who briefly went missing. We don’t know what it means, but it doesn’t sound good. Does the name Angela Meerson mean anything to you?’
‘Nothing,’ I replied.
‘What should I do with him?’
‘I’d just shoot him, if I were you.’
‘Ah … no. Not one for the police, that.’
‘Tell you what,’ I said. ‘Could you bring him here at, say, eleven o’clock? We can ask him questions and get to the bottom of it. We’re good at that sort of thing.’
I put down the phone. Alexander Chang? The man who tracked down the cleaner in my experiment? After all this time? Talk about inconvenient. Perhaps a coincidence. I made myself a cup of tea and went back downstairs again until Lytten arrived in a taxi with a man whom I assumed must be his visitor. They were soon followed by a taller one I had not seen for nearly fifteen years. ‘Sam Wind!’ I said, giving him a warm embrace. ‘How simply lovely to see you again!’ I’d never liked him.