‘Start again. He what?’ said Russia Meo.
‘He hugged me too hard,’ said Billie.
‘Start again. Where was Imaculada?’
‘In the kitchen with Baba. I went out to the shed where Daddy was and we saw the fox on the roof.’
‘You saw the fox through the skylight? Through the glass? And then?’
‘I couldn’t breathe. Daddy hugged me too hard.’
* * *
February 14 (12.25 p.m.): 101 Heavy
The man in 2A returned to his seat. The woman in 2B, Reynolds Traynor, said,
‘Why do you keep doing that? Don’t look so stricken. You’re making me nervous.’
‘It’s just a precaution.’
‘Relax. Have a drink. Flying’s safe. It’s safer than walking.’
‘Depends how you figure it. Per passenger-mile – right. But if you figure it per journey, it’s about the same as motorcycling.’
‘… When you grope your way up and down the cabin – why do you keep doing that?’
‘It’s so I can get to the emergency doors with my eyes shut. In case of smoke. Only I’d be doing it on my knees. More oxygen. Avoid the flashover. Twenty-two per cent of aviation fatalities are caused by fire.’
‘Really.’
‘Second only to blunt trauma.’
Flight Engineer Hal Ward: Ah, that’s better. I am a whole new hombre … If, as they say, you can judge the health of a carrier by the age of the flight attendants, then you’re in okay shape.
First Officer Nick Chopko: That’s because they’re all dead by the time they’re thirty-five. This is CigAir, pal.
Ward: Flew Air K last week and the broads could hardly walk … That one in Business, what is it, Conchita? Awesome bod. Oh, mercy, I could do her some harm.
Captain John Macmanaman: The hell with that kind of talk, Flight Engineer. Not in my cockpit, son.
Ward: Sorry, Cap.
Macmanaman: Forget it. Hey, Nick. Look at the power. Look at the speed. Oh sure. We’re going to stall at maximum up here … Nick? Hal? See what I see? Thrust-reversers are engaged.
Chopko: Jesus Christ. It’s fictitious, right?
Macmanaman: Damn right it’s fictitious. Or we’d be in cartwheel. If it’s fictitious – what else is fictitious?
In Pallet No. 3 the corpse of Royce Traynor minutely rearranged itself. Its chin now rested on one of the canisters marked HAZMAT. Extreme turbulence would be needed before Royce could make his next move.
His mahogany coffin was hard and heavy. Like the past, he was dead and gone. But Royce was still hard and heavy with it: hard and heavy with the past.
PART II
CHAPTER SIX
1. The Decembrist
Wearing a black tracksuit as refulgent as perfect shoeshine, he stepped out into the afternoon. His storefresh white trainers, his dark glasses, his bronzed countenance, his backswept silver hair: in the pharmacy, from which he was now absenting himself, they called him the Professor or the Englishman. But he was the Decembrist: well advanced into the final month of his year. It was a distinguished face, its lines apparently connected to something ancient or the study of something ancient – Etruscan Pottery, Linear B.
But here he was, in a modern setting: video rental, liquor locker, radio shack. The Decembrist was of medium height (and was heading, by now, towards less than medium); he was not conspicuous in a country – America – where old men dressed like children. Watch an aeroplane climbing a blue sky for long enough and a globule of sunshine will eventually kiss it and coat it and drip from it. So, too, with the glossy garb of the Decembrist, which blackly glittered. Above the suit, his handsome, martyred face. Below it, the white dots of his gyms. Out in the lot the cars were waiting, all in line but all dissimilar, like a conscript army of machines.
There was caution in his stride but nothing frail or halt, which was just as well: a recreational vehicle weighing several tons jerked backwards out of its trap, and the Decembrist’s hands flew from his pockets as he himself jerked clear, seeming to levitate, with an avian lightness. But the sound he made was equine – whinnying, rearing, longtoothed.
The driver drew level, a cellphone nestling in the cup of his jaw (and what beautiful golden hair he had, also busy in the light, with its bullion, its specie), and said, in answer to the Decembrist’s disbelieving stare:
‘Fuck you.’
Having manoeuvred itself into the clear, the great bus surged forward, and now the film rewound – with the Decembrist moving suddenly into its speed and the wheels yelping to a halt six inches from his knees. After some exasperated honking the driver reversed, swerved, and sped on his way, the word asshole included in the passing gulp of his rhythm and blues.
The Decembrist paused, his lips working, and then pushed on to his German saloon.
He sat, days later, on an upright chair by the swimming-pool – the swimming-pool and its motion jigsaw. The pool moved, always and helplessly, but the man was still, his head thrown back as if in agonised exhaustion. Around him the acres of grass, the couch grass, the bent grass, the cheat grass; and the squirt of the ceaseless sprinklers, hissing like a monstrous cicada … In one movement he stirred and stood. Cruise-wear, now: the swing top, the blue pantaloons, the white canvas deck-shoes. He also sported a dude-ranch cowboy belt, which he now straightened. The cartridge sockets were empty, but the holsters had been modified to contain two slender spraycans. One spraycan specialised in mosquitoes and other insects of the air; the other spraycan specialised in ants.
First, an hour with his accountant. Then an hour with his gardener. He was served lunch on the canopied deck. He wiped his mouth and got to his feet. The wasp came weaving towards him the way they do, like a punchy old southpaw, with its halfremembered moves, its ponderous fakes and feints. He drew with his left and caught it full in the face. And the wasp rose up, bristling in grief and femininity and youth. They meandered towards you so middle-aged, but they too had youth, and delicacy and clarity of colour. He didn’t stay to watch its bouncings and wormings and coilings.
He moved on to the stables, and had words with a well-built young man called Rodney Vee.
‘Rodney.’ With a remind-me intonation and a lordly frown he asked, ‘How long …?’
‘Since Monday, sir.’
‘And where are we now?’
‘Friday, sir.’
He nodded and made a further indication with a sideways movement of his head.
They went past the back of the imported barn and down some steps and into the anteroom of the disused garage. He again wagged his head before Rodney opened the inner door.
At first it sounded like a large animal trying to breathe, and then it sounded like a small animal trying to cry.
‘That’ll be all, Rodney,’ he said.
He stepped forward. In the far corner a young man was strapped naked to a baronial dining-chair with a sack over his head. The young man’s chest was shaking, lamenting, and his breath was fierce and nasal – eddy upon eddy.
The Decembrist pulled up a footstool. Grumblingly he sorted through the tray of implements at his feet: skewers, chisels.
Half an hour passed.
He stood up. He lifted the cowl of sacking. After a flustered glance round the room his head dropped and he reached for his spraycans, one in the left, one in the right.
The young man’s golden hair was gone.
‘Open your eyes! Behold. Fuck … ME?’ said Joseph Andrews.
‘You can take this fucking little bumboy, and stuff him in a fucking mailbag, and go and … and go and …’ Andrews caught his breath. ‘And go and sling him over the fucking top at Quaker Quarry!’
‘It will be done, sir. It will be done,’ said Rodney Vee, who then closed the inner door and added, ‘Are you serious, Boss?’
‘Well … Give him a few hours to compose his thoughts. Nah. Where’s he live?’
‘Vermilion Hills, Boss.’
‘Yeah. You tell him it’s the Quarry. B
ut you take him to fucking Vermilion Hills and sling him out the fucking van. On the road. And not lightly. One … two … three. Boof. Eh up. Ruthie rings Queenie, right?’
Rodney nodded. They were coming up the steps and into the sun.
‘She says, “Mum? You won’t like it, but I’m marrying Ahmed.” And Queenie’s gone, “What? You marry that Ahmed and you never darken me door again.” “But I love him!” All this. Six months go by. The phone rings and it’s Ruthie. “Mum! Come and take me away! Aw, what he’s been doing to me!” “So,” says Queenie, “your sins’ve found you out.” “Come on, Mum, don’t fuck about.” “Now calm down, love. I’ll be over in a minicab. Where are you?”
‘It’s a fucking great mosque of a place on The Bishop’s Avenue. Queenie’s come through the gates and up the drive. She’ve rung the bell and the butler’s led her through five reception rooms. Picassos. Rembrandts. Cézannes. Ruthie’s on the couch, crying its little heart out. Queenie’s give her a hug and gone, “Ruthie, what is it? Tell your mother. I’m sure you and Ahmed can sort this out.”
‘Ruthie’s gone, “Mum? Aw, what he’s been doing to me! When I come here, me arsehole was the size of a five-pee piece.” “Yes, dear?” “Well now it’s the size of a fifty-pee piece. Take me home.” Queenie looks round the room and says, “Let’s get it straight. You’re giving up all this for forty-five pee?”
‘Ah, here she comes. Here come them famous lils.’
2. Cora Susan
Here she comes: Cora Susan.
She had a hundred yards of lawn to cross. Seen from that distance, she looked like the platonic ideal of a young mother. But where were the children? Peering through the prisms of the sprinkler spray, you expected to make them out, the children, circling her, tumbling at her feet. That must be why she walked so slowly, with an air of dreamy purpose (always one step behind, one step beyond)—to keep pace with the children. But there were no children … As usual, she wore a dress of white cotton, and a broad straw hat. The straps of a straw bag depended from her left shoulder (is that where she kept the wipes and diapers, the rolled-up sock with spit on it – for emergency cleansings of childish mouths? No: there were no children). A slight arrhythmia in the clack of her sandals: time delay, diminishing as she neared. Cora Susan’s hair was long and straight and fine, and a lucent grey, reminding you that grey was a colour – a colour like any other colour. She was thirty-six and five foot one.
‘Have a chair, dear. Paquita’s fetching you a nice glass of wine. I have unfortunate news.’
She took off her hat but remained standing on the lined deck. Unanswerably womanly, but not a mother. The spheres of her grey eyes were too shallow, and without the faults and nicks that they give you – that children give you. Her mouth contained something ungenerous, something resolutely unindulgent; it did not extend outwards into the world – it stayed within. And the secondary sexual characteristics, the breasts, the famous breasts. They were above all binocular: they were the eyes of a different creature, a different type of being, with qualities not necessarily shared by Cora Susan – candour, innocence, even purity. No child would maul them. There were reasons for all this.
Wine for Cora, one glass served by Paquita, and the bottle kept in an ice-bucket on the tray. For Joseph Andrews – Lucozade (couriered out from England by the gross). Every few seconds he slowly reached forward and touched her, rested a light palm on her, almost doctorly – on the elbow, the hand, the wrist.
‘It’s your father, dear. What can I say? He’s gone. He’s passed away … No great shock but he was your father, Cora. Now. You was – you was never told the truth, dear. Your gran’s version, dear. How’d it go?’
‘As it was handed down to me,’ she said in her accentless and warmly civilised voice, ‘Dad crippled himself falling off some mountain, and Mum converted and went to Israel. And I went to Canada with Old Ma Susan. That bit’s true.’
‘… Mick Meo did him, Cora. Your own grandfather did your dad.’
Audibly she breathed in, breathed out.
‘Relations between the Susans and the Meos was never of the smoothest. And I don’t just mean your mum and dad’s marriage. I know what Mick Meo done to Damon Susan. He drew a nine for it: attempted murder. How much do you uh …?’
‘Oh, Jo, please. Tell me everything.’
‘That’s the spirit, Cora. That’s my girl … Your mum and dad was chucking things at each other even before they was engaged. It was that kind of uh, relationship – a right old scrap. Then, as ill chance would have it, come the day when your mum calls Mick and tells him Damon’s took a liberty with her. A right liberty.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Not to put uh, too fine a point on it, dear, he give her one up the khyber.’
With no change in her tone and modulation Cora said, ‘He give me one up the khyber and all.’
‘I know he did, dear.’ Again, the hand on her wrist. ‘And if Mick had known that then there’s no chance Damon’d’ve lived. There’d have been none of this fucky nattempted. That I can assure you.
‘There was no mobile phones in them days. Leda’s left a message at the workshed. Mick’s out nicking high-voltage cables – dangerous work, skilled work – but he was a very good thief was Mick. He calls back: “He what?” But Mick’s out in Stoke and it’s the fucking miners’ strike and he … Anyway. He’s gone in there at dawn.’
‘Floral Grove. Stoke Newington.’
‘He’s gone in there at dawn. Your mum and dad’s fast asleep. In the same bed. So, I don’t know: must have patched it up. For the time being. Your granddad’s gone and drawn the curtains back. You know: rise and shine. Now unfortunately Mick’s still in his work clothes. Heavy boots with the shallow spikes. And the reinforced gauntlets – for them cables. Oh and his helmet. So he’s on Damon now, straddling him like, and nutting him and that, and the roundarms with the big gloves. Then Leda’s on Mick: seems she’s had a change of heart if you please. So Mick’s gone and locked her in the bathroom, and he give her a tap and all, unfortunately – but she was his own daughter, Cora …
‘Damon’s lying there weltering in his own blood. “Ah fuck. Ah Jesus.” All this. Mick’s gone, “How’s your nose?” “How’s me nose? I’m blind, mate!” Then he ‘ve started trying to uh, you know, “reason” with him. You know: “Uh, Mick mate. Look uh, no complaints. Fair’s fair. I stepped out of line. You taught me a lesson. That’s it. End of.” And Mick’s gone, “It’s a crime of passion we got here, boy.” Course he’s been puzzling for a means of doing Damon for years. “This is nothing, son. This is nothing.”
‘Mick’s dragged Damon on to the floor and got on the bed hisself. Then he’s broke both his legs. Jumping like. Then, when you could do what you liked with them, Damon’s pins is wedged sideways and your granddad’s taking running kicks at his cods and his chopper. With the workboots, more’s the pity. Damon’s not making much noise any more but now Leda’s come round and she’s yelling her head off next door. But Mick didn’t pay her no mind.
‘When he’s broke his arms and all his fingers, he picks him up by his hair and what’s left of his bollocks and slings him out the window, sad to say.’
‘And was the window open at the time?’
‘Unfortunately not.’
‘I’m trying to remember the house. They were on the second floor, weren’t they?’
‘Alas no. They was on the third.’
‘There was a lawn there. It was just lawn in the back.’
‘If only. That really was unfortunate. Just the previous week Damon’s had a rockery put in. So he come down on that. And it was that what done for him, landing on his bonce as he did. He was in Intensive Care for nearly a year. And of course Mick went away for his nine. Course, he could have pleaded uh, mitigating circumstances. “Your Honour, I did him because he’s give me daughter one up the khyber.” But he didn’t want to tar her with it, so he never. Then Old Ma Susan spirits you away to Vancouver. And you was lost to the Meos for e
ver.’
‘And Mum?’
‘You’re not touching your wine, dear. As for your mum, she done the rounds a bit and then settled down with Tony Odgers. Then he’s gone and got a seven for demanding with menaces. Teddy Ambrose come out at last and she’s took up with him. Then Teddy’s got cut to pieces in a ruck outside the World Upside Down. Your mum’s played the field a bit, then she’s pulled herself together and for a time she’s made a go of it with Ian Thorogood. Then he gets himself choked in a headlock whilst in police custody. Things was going not bad between your mum and Frank Purdom. Then Nick Odgers come out, for about a week, but long enough to do Frank Purdom, and your mum’s back to her old tricks. Keith Room was very good with her till he pulled a twelve, and then she’ve raised eyebrows by shacking up with Thelonius Curtly. And when he gets hisself topped she’s let herself down, many thought, by throwing in her lot with Lon Chang You. But she was on the drink and worse by then. To be perfectly frank with you, Cora, her reputation was beginning to suffer. They was calling her Khyber Kath by the end. Funny kind of name, that. I never did learn how she come by the “Kath” bit of it. How you feeling, dear?’
‘Oh, tolerably well.’
‘You’re a hard girl, Cora. You’ve had to be. You frighten even me sometimes – what I seen in you. Now okay, your dad weren’t the best of fathers, but he was your father. Your natural father, dear. Damon done what he done. Damon was Damon. He messed with you, and there ain’t no excuse for that. But you was still a family. And Mick Meo, by his overly hasty behaviour … Now if I know my Cora Susan she’s not going to bend over for that. She’s going to want to hurt somebody. And there’s only one of them left. Uncle Xan.’
‘Uncle Xan.’
‘I give him a smack meself the other day. About something nothing whatsoever to do with the Susans.’
‘Oh?’
‘He fucking grassed me up. Then he’s gone to the papers saying he never! And he called me a mad prick …’ Joseph Andrews shook his head and gave a smile of yokellish incredulity. On the table before them lay a green folder. He reached for it. ‘Here: “… whoever did me in October or had me done … they think I’ve been telling tales to the Old Bill. And that is something I would never do … They can stick red-hot pokers up my arse … whoever did me I tell him, you come down and …” Now that’s game, that is,’ he added with unqualified admiration. ‘No less than he should have said, of course. But these days that’s game. There’s Mick in him, Cora. And there’s Mick in you and all.’