The pan applauded as Arlo threw in more liver.
“Her? Don’t you always kill a billy?” Kate said.
“That is the usual,” Arlo said.
Kate breathed out heavily. Albert was chewing and now bobbing his head side to side, as though listening to a song he liked. The fire popped and the alignment of the wood changed.
“So who did you go for? Better not be Belona. You know she’s my favorite.”
Arlo stopped chopping and looked into the fire. Albert made appreciative food noises. Kate got up on her elbow. The smoke was drawn toward her.
“Arl?”
He didn’t move; he had a stained chopping board on his knees. Kate held her hand in front of her eyes.
She blinked. Her eyes were reddening—the smoke from the fire.
Albert had got a chunk of liver on the end of his fork. He was chewing. He stopped. He looked at his sister and—with blood on his teeth—he smiled.
She actually ran away. She ran, into the woods, rubbing her eyes as she went, trying not to think about Belona rotating, the line of people with paper plates, the disappointing, chewy meat, dry and overpowering, the pile of scraggy bones on the compost heap. She tried not to think about that. Just because she now ate meat did not mean that it stopped being murder; it just meant that she had become a murderer.
When she stopped running she found she had arrived, without consciously deciding to, at the place she always used to come when she was upset: where a chain-link fence dangled in the river, catching inexplicable bottles of Japanese bleach and blue rope. This was where the old version of herself would have come to wipe her eyes when someone had failed to live up to her high standards. Instead, she carried on into the woods, away from her special place, away from the sound of the cattle grid rattling in the distance as more people arrived for the party.
As she walked, she tried focusing on the letter A, and what it meant to her. She tapped into that part of her that was already in Cambridge, reading difficult fiction in a quadrangle.
She walked until she didn’t recognize the path anymore. After a while she saw, up ahead, smoke coming out from some tall grasses. Getting closer, she realized that it was, in fact, the roof of the roundhouse, its stovepipe breathing.
The last time she had seen the roundhouse was years ago and she was surprised how cozy it looked: a rack of pots and pans by the front door, pairs of boots lined up on either side of a welcome mat, and, looking through the porthole washing-machine window, Patrick, brewing industrial-strength chai, and Freya, unzipping a suitcase.
Don had reached a point, somewhere between two and three large cloudy ciders, where he wanted to be in front of a camera. Varghese filmed him, still in his basketball tee and joggers, but mercifully having given his cap away. He stood in the middle of the long field, called for the Frisbee, made a difficult catch, then threw it again, as hard as he could. It went off-camera, so it didn’t matter where it landed.
Varghese filmed Gower’s only magician, Herod the Significant, who was having trouble convincing anyone to lend him their valuables until Don took off his watch. Don preferred being in front of the lens; there was something transformative about it, in the same way that a miserable holiday, when viewed through its photographs, becomes a stream of joyful moments. He now had a glass of perry, which he sucked through a straw as Varghese followed him past a band who were practicing, sitting on stools outside the back door of their van, one playing a melodeon, one a mandolin, and a harpist who took away a hand to wave at Don; he blew a kiss back and tried ostentatiously counting them in (“Ah one, ah two, ah one two three four …”) and it actually worked: they played a silky two-step as he rumba’d up toward the kitchen garden, where he called hellos by name to the wwoofers whose names he knew and just hellos to those he didn’t. Don went through a polytunnel, joking that a hanging cucumber was a boom microphone, tapping it—“Is this thing on?”
• • •
Kate had reached a point, somewhere between two and three large mugs of chai, where she felt numb. This was a useful emotion because, since stepping inside the roundhouse, she had learned two things. First, she discovered the real reason her father had been in a hurry that morning. Second, and this was the big one, Freya had now decided, unilaterally, that Albert would start school in September. Not only that, but she had arranged with Patrick for her and Albert to stay at his house in Mumbles during term time, because it was close to the school.
So Kate now found herself helping to pack up their stuff. While Freya folded the Japanese screen, Kate put clothes in a suitcase. It didn’t feel great to be taking an active role in dismantling her own family, but she couldn’t disagree that her brother needed help. Patrick, meanwhile, had gone to bring the car round so they could start loading up. Kate had noticed he seemed pleased. He had even offered to “nip up to the party” and “run it all past Don,” since Freya was unwilling.
“Okay, I can finish up,” Freya said. “You should get back to celebrating your genius.”
Kate carried on folding a collarless shirt.
“Hello?” Freya said. “Are you there, overachiever?”
“I’m not going back to the party.”
Her mother frowned and they listened for a moment to the distant noise of the sound system. “You’d rather pack suitcases with me. How sweet.”
“I’m just trying to steer clear of my brother.”
Freya frowned for a long time. “What did Albert tell you?”
“He told me that being a murderer is easy.”
“Ah,” Freya said. She leaned the Japanese screen against the wall and came to kneel beside her daughter. “Sorry to tell you this, Kate, but your brother couldn’t go through with it. He’s not the psychotic he’d like you to think he is, I’m relieved to say. He got very upset.”
“So who did it then?”
“You can probably guess who the real murderer was.”
Kate realized, then, she’d been folding the murderer’s cardigans.
Albert and Isaac were in the upstairs bathroom, pissing into the same bowl. Isaac had wanted to get his face painted but Albert said that they needed to stay focused.
“We’re lucky, Isaac.”
“Why’s that?”
“Most people in the world don’t even know it’s going to end.”
The sound of drunk people ignoring their inevitable fate drifted through the open window.
They double-teamed a dried-on streak on the bowl.
“Get it,” Alb said.
“I’m trying.”
“You and me together.”
The stain started to disintegrate and fall into the pan.
“Spraying hot acid, you and me.”
Albert got a single sheet of toilet paper and dropped it into the toilet. They watched the paper dissolve into tiny bits, churning in the water, a yellowy cloud, an open portal.
“I’m done,” Isaac said.
Albert zipped up, then Isaac did the same.
“Good,” Albert said, and he reached to the windowsill, pulled the toothbrushes out of their mug, and held it up for Isaac to smell the rank bacterial backwash. Isaac shook his head. Albert looked stern and brought the mug closer. Isaac sniffed, then gagged.
They climbed in the bath, shoes on, to further their plans. Sitting cross-legged, they faced each other, Albert with his back to the taps.
“Remind me, how will the world end?” Albert asked.
“Um.” Isaac looked around. “It’s gonna come up through the plug’oles?”
Albert reached into the plug and pulled out a slug of human hair.
“Like this?”
“Like that.”
“Smell it.”
“I don’t want to.”
“We both smell it.”
Albert held up the rag of greasy hair and they both sniffed, both gagged.
Just then, through the open window, Albert heard a voice he recognized. Immediately he climbed up onto the sink and stuck his head out, loo
king down at the patio.
“I thought I’d driven her away but now she’s back and putting on a disguise,” he said. “My sister is evil.”
“Is she?”
“Yeah, she is. She wants us all to die. We have to get rid of her or she will undermine our message.”
“Okay.”
“But we probably shouldn’t kill her though, before you say it.”
• • •
Varghese was showing Don some of the footage they’d shot. With each new scene Don’s on-screen face got a shade redder, so it looked like a continuity error. As he watched, however, Don did not notice this. In fact, through his cider-fug he imagined that off the back of this short film a series would get commissioned, and the money would be enough to put them in the clear, and they would attract new members: bright, forward-thinking, child-laden people—enough children to make Freya see that sending Albert to school wasn’t necessary and from that point on his son would return to being the bright, hopeful boy of old and Freya would try to kiss Don, having seen him represented in this way, natural on-screen and heading up a worldwide growth in secular but authentic communal living.
When Kate had cautiously approached the patio at the back of the house, which was now the designated fancy dress area, she had been intending to apply only a couple of tasteful tribal stripes, to give the impression she was getting into the party spirit without actually getting into the party spirit. Her mother had convinced her to find her brother and try, again, to connect. But as she approached, someone had called her name—it was Geraint or, as he was now, the Hulk, sitting on a school desk, his green legs hanging in the air, surrounded by pots, tins, and tubes of face paint, jam jars full of brushes, cubes of sponge, pallets, rags, torn clothes, and the oval mirror. Being the Hulk just meant being algae-green from head to toe and topless, with his newly acquired farmhand’s body and small cutoff jean shorts. He had called Kate over and demanded complete creative control, which he was exercising now, as she stood in front of him, letting him take aesthetic revenge. It seemed like the least she could do. With everyone painting one another’s faces, there was a kind of domino effect, each person avenging the botched job that they’d received at someone else’s hands.
Next to them was the wicker dressing-up box from the attic, its leather straps untied, vomiting woolens, leggings, BabyGros, a ball gown, a straw hat, and an old stripy shower curtain onto the grass. Around them, people were becoming blocks of color, breakfast foods, worms, skulls, X-Men, robots, suns, munchkins, devils, Oompa-Loompas, peacocks, lions, elephants, minstrels. All human life was there.
It was almost dark. Patrick squeezed the last of the cardboard boxes onto the passenger seat and locked the car. He had parked at the top end of the new cul-de-sac development—scene of his injury—because it was the nearest spot for vehicle access to the roundhouse. The homes were lived in now, with cars in some of the driveways and a basketball net screwed into the wall above a garage. He felt a twinge at the memory of his lying there in the turning circle incapacitated. Of all the sensory revelations of that evening—the pain, cold, mind-bending paranoia—he was disappointed to note that the most persistent memory was of how Janet’s body felt against his back. In particular, her nipples. He also found he could clearly recall Don showing off his knowledge of hypothermia, displaying his talent for hijacking someone else’s life-changing trauma. This thought might have made Patrick angry had he not just finished carrying Don’s wife and son’s belongings to his car.
Freya had gone back to the roundhouse, where she claimed she was going to try to sleep, in preparation for the big move tomorrow morning. Patrick said that he would go back to the party to have an “air-clearing” chat with Don. He strapped on his head torch.
In the long field, the upper area was now so busy with tents that he had to walk a zigzagged route to avoid getting tripped by guy ropes. He passed four full-size tepees, their spikes prickling the dim sky. In the distance he could hear the bass. It sounded gastric. He could see, at the bottom of the field, the hay pyramid and the main stage where alt-folk four-piece Endless End were creating the evening’s first proper dance: a ceilidh-cum-circle-pit. There were probably close to two hundred people standing and sitting on the grass, smoking, eating, and drinking.
As he strolled among them, he imagined what he would say when he came across Don. Hand in your badge, old man. Or, more realistically, but just as cruel in its mannered way: I know this must seem like I’m moving in on your patch but I want you to know that I’m motivated purely by what’s best for Frey and Albert.
Patrick peeked into the barn, where the big vat of blood soup, labeled Very Non-Veg, was on a long table. Nearby, a small dog had climbed into the tray containing a whole salmon, and was currently holding the head in its mouth.
Skirting the rave arena, Patrick watched the young and relatively reckless dance under tarpaulin, lit by the house’s outside lamps and lanterns stuck in the ground. Patrick noted, with some affection, the three boys he used to buy weed off smoking ice bongs in a flower bed. The party, as far as Patrick could see, had funneled into two camps: the young, up here, with the sound system and the unyoung at the live music stage, with cross-pollination at the fire, food, booze, and toilets. The only exception was Don, who was standing just beyond where the dancers’ limbs could reach him, dressed now as the sun, with a rubber Statue of Liberty souvenir crown painted yellow; his face, his drink, and the basketball bursting out of his T-shirt were all colored yellow too. He was having his ear chewed off by a girl who was entirely blue. To Patrick, she seemed to be the sky, though she was supposed to be Mystique from X-Men. Don spotted Patrick and immediately started waving him over.
Kate was an endangered mega-fauna, with big white eyes and black earmuff ears, smoking Benson & Hedges on the pyramid of hay. Everyone on the flammable pyramid was smoking. It felt huge in her hand, almost like a wand, and she sucked on it and sprayed the smoke, turning her head back and forth while looking for her brother in the crowd. She couldn’t see him. People were watching the band in threes and fours, all drinking perry then slipping away to piss in the nettles. So far, the bands had been sharing their gear with good humor, except for some inevitable queenyness over snare drums.
“Hello? Delivery for Kate.”
She looked round and saw Isaac beside her, holding a tray, a tea towel over his arm.
“From your brother,” he said. “He’s sorry. He sent this tomato soup and salad that he made himself with a little help from Arlo, which I walked all the way down from the big house without spilling any.”
He handed the tray to Kate.
“Okay. Where is my brother?”
“He drew a letter K in coriander, which is the first letter of your name.”
“Great. Tell him he’s forgiven, and to come and see me. Where is he?”
Isaac bowed then turned and climbed down the pyramid and went away. She held the bowl up and took a big sniff and felt better. Geraint, who had been clambering up and down the pyramid like a temple monkey, asking for filters, leaving scuffs of green paint on the hay, returned. He smiled at the sky, which was dark now, then tried to pick something out of the small, impractical pockets at the front of his jean shorts.
“I saved you two greenies,” Geraint said. “They’re amazing.”
His bin-lid eyes stared at the pills in his hand the way children stare at emergency stop buttons they’re not supposed to press. He put one on the end of his tongue and stuck it out toward her. She’d never taken one before, though everyone assumed she was an old hand. She thought of Kit Lintel, and mushrooms, and the evening she had spent pretending to have a life-changing experience. Growing up in a community she had always found drugs a bit embarrassing, something that old people did, the way most teenagers think about opera.
His eyes narrowed as his tongue started to burn from the chemicals. She looked at her soup and was glad to think her brother might have mellowed. It was beginning to seem like she might be able to enjoy
herself this evening. Geraint put his hands on her knees and wagged his tongue like a dog. She sucked it off in a quick hard slurp that tasted of smoke and ketchup, and washed it down with soup.
Patrick and Don kept walking through the market garden, away from the noise, until the geodesic dome emerged into view, Patrick’s old home, looking like a testicle veined with fairy lights. It had been made available to the revelers—a banner read THE THUNDER DOME!—but it was empty, which, for Patrick, said everything about its eternal position in the community. They went inside, shutting the door and the windows, which just left the sound of the kick drum pushing through, a feeling in their chests of perpetual resuscitation.
“Phew,” Don said, and he sat down on the low futon-sofa.
“I think that girl liked you,” Patrick said.
“She liked everything.”
It shouldn’t have surprised Patrick that they hadn’t kept the dome as he had left it but, nevertheless, he stood, looking around at the bare, triangulate walls. The only decoration was a photo of whoever was sleeping here of late, a giant brown man and his miniature girlfriend, holding hands in a park. In anticipation of the difficult conversation ahead, Patrick instinctively checked the cupboard where he used to keep his stash. Inside were rows of labeled tapes and a pile of cue cards, each of which had handwriting on it. He read one:
Day Sixteen. Tape 3/5. 00.00–00.41 audio only—Marina interview** (thoughts on D, F, A and “The Future.”) 00.42–00.58 audio only—covert recording of communal meeting. 00.59–01.20 long of D in garden, lecturing wwoofers on power usage (audio not usable but good video)
“She thought we were a cult, Pat. She asked me how many wives I have.”
Patrick shut the cupboard and turned round. Don had scuffs of blue on both cheeks where the girl had said goodbye in the French manner. He was filling two wooden cups with Merlot from a box by his feet. He passed one up to Patrick.
“And how many wives did you tell her?”
Don didn’t find that funny.
“Have you seen Freya?” he asked.