Arcadia (16 page)

“We're all going over to Briar to say good-bye to Oliver. Remember? And there's something else we have to have a little chat about. Come on then, get yourself going. I'll start some eggs. We can have them with a bit of milk.”

“Nice,” he says, though he's hardly listening. It's gradually coming back to him just how far from normal everything else is. He almost can't believe his mother doesn't know. Talking about breakfast, as if it's just another day.

She goes downstairs, which allows him to bring his hands out and inspect them. They're pretty bad, but if there's water in the sink that's OK, he can clean off before she sees anything. The rain's that kind of wind-driven spitting drizzle that plays intermittent bursts of percussion on the glass.
Tappitytaptap,
it goes, answering a gust.
Taptaptaptaptap
. He turns to the window idly.

There's a face outside.

Tap tap tap
. It's Oochellino. He's pressed up against the smeared glass, tapping. The rest of him is sort of folded up underneath, sideways. He's balancing on the window ledge, high off the ground.

This is insane. His mother's right downstairs. How can she not notice a man clinging to the side of the house? How can Oochellino even be clinging there at all? The ledge isn't much wider than Rory's arm.

Oochellino jiggles the window and points upwards.
Open it
.

Eggs crack downstairs.

Stunned into obedience, Rory pushes the catch and slides the bottom half of the window up. His room fills with the sounds and smell of a wet, blowy morning. Some incomprehensible arrangement of cramped limbs is keeping Oochellino upright and attached to the ledge. His feet are bare, and the toes are curling over the slate almost like fingers. A hand appears and passes something through the window.

It's the night-light.

“What's going on up there?”

“Nothing!”

“Did you just open the window?”

“Yeah.”

“It's pouring out there!”

The hand waggles the night-light. Rory takes it.

“Good boy,” Oochellino whispers. “Verrrry good.”

“What on earth are you . . .” Her footsteps come to the bottom of the staircase. “Shut it, for goodness's sake!”

“Sorry!” He's gone to block the door, panicking that she's going to come up and see. When he turns back Oochellino is gone.

There was no sound at all. No thump of someone dropping to the ground, no rustle of clothes. (He's got a different coat and trousers from somewhere. He was wearing something dark and waterproof, not Ol's stuff.)

After another moment of paralyzed astonishment, Rory closes the window.

“What did you do that for?”

“Sorry. It felt a bit smelly in here.”

“Go on, get yourself dressed. Hurry up.”

“OK. Sorry.”

He hears her go back to the kitchen. He wipes spits of rain off his hands.

A moment later he hears her say to herself, “Where's that night-light gone?”

  *  *  *  

He checks the kitchen surreptitiously while he eats. He's put the night-light back (he took it to go out for a pee in the night, he says). Everything else is where it's supposed to be, the clothes, the shoes. His hands are scrubbed and he's splashed the dried sweat out of his hair. The only thing he won't be able to replace as if nothing happened is the bicycle, but he can't see why that's a problem; they already know someone stole a bicycle, it doesn't have to be back where it used to be. So when Kate arrives he's calm, he's safe, he carries on with breakfast while she shakes out her umbrella and unwraps her scarf. He's eating scrambled eggs with a fork, separating them into tiny lumps and chewing them morsel by morsel.

Kate's come to tell his mother what happened in the night. He keeps his eyes down and concentrates on chewing, the way he's supposed to.

“Is there any damage?” his mother asks.

“We've locked everything we can think of. Fi thinks there's some stuff missing from the Stash. As far as I can see nothing else has been touched.”

“Why would they do this?”

“Who?”

“Isn't it . . .” His mother sounds peculiarly halfhearted, as though she doesn't care as much as she feels she ought to care. “I thought it's those people from Mary's?”

“I don't think it is,” Kate says as Rory concentrates on spearing another lump. “It didn't feel like that. It felt like it was one person. Very frightened. Fi thinks the same. I think it must be something to do with that fishing boat.”

“You're probably right.”

Rory chews. No one's looking at him. To stop himself going red he concentrates on the taste in his mouth.

“I think it must have been an outsider. Why wouldn't she show herself otherwise? No one's got anything to hide, and it's not like Fi and me are so fearsome. But if she's maybe come from the Continent, something like that . . .”

“Mm,” his mother agrees, vaguely. “Well. Whoever she is, she'll have to show her face eventually.”

“Connie,” Kate says, and Rory knows at once that this is what she's actually come to say. She's put on her calm voice, the one that makes other people stop and do what she tells them. “I'm asking you to reconsider.”

Rory looks up, surprised. His mother's being told off.

“Not now,” she says.

“Until we're sure of the situation. Surely it would be better to wait until spring anyway. Rory's not eleven for a while, he can't possibly—”

“I haven't talked to him about it yet.”

Rory's looking back and forth between them. His mother looks ashamed. Kate looks surprised, and disappointed. “Oh,” she says.

Now they're both looking at him.

“What,” he says.

Kate stands up slowly. “I'm sorry,” she says. She doesn't sound sorry at all. “I'd have thought you would have by now.”

“Well,” his mother says, sounding bizarrely like Pink when she's being told off, “I haven't. We were going to talk this morning.”

“Perhaps I'd better leave you two alone then.” Kate picks up her umbrella. “But please, Connie. Think about waiting for a few months. It's winter soon, and you're such a help, both of you.”

“Do you think I haven't thought about it?”

Rory's never heard anyone snap at Kate like that. Shocked, he waits to see what the punishment will be. Kate just opens the door.

“Sorry,” his mother says.

“Just give it some time,” she says. “Come along to the Abbey whenever you're ready.”

“Of course.”

And out she goes, leaving Rory and his mother staring at each other across the table.

“There's something I have to tell you,” she says.

He can't say anything. Before Kate came in the only thing he was worrying about was keeping his secret stuffed so far down inside himself it wouldn't show. Now he's not thinking about that at all.

“Put your fork down, please,” she says.

He puts his fork down.

“We. Um.” She pushes her hair back and takes a deep breath.

“What,” he says.

She reaches across the table and takes one of his hands in hers. She feels cold.

“We can't stay here, Rory,” she says.

“In Parson's?”

“I'm not talking about Parson's. We can't stay here. On this island, these islands. We're going to go away.”

He stares, waiting for her to say something that makes sense. The whole room, himself included, seems to have turned to stone. He feels numb. Time isn't passing. The air's gone solid.

“I know,” his mother says, in an attempt at a gentle voice. “It's a big change for you.”

He doesn't say anything. This isn't a conversation anymore. It's an execution.

“We'll find a better place.” She squeezes his hand. “I know we will. I promise. All right?” She smiles, weakly, nervously.

His hand doesn't feel like it belongs to him.

“What do you think?”

What he's thinking is
No
.

“No,” he says.

The smile vanishes. “Rory.”

“I'm not going.”

She's making an effort not to lose her temper. “It's all decided, Rory.”

“You can't.”

She looks down. “We have to.”

“No we don't. Why? Why do we have to?”

“Because They'll kill you.” The gentleness has gone the way of the smile. She's getting louder. “They will. Is that what you want, to wait till that happens? Because I don't. I'm not going to.”

“Yeah? Well I'm not going.”

“Rory—”

“I don't want to!” He tears his hand away and pushes back his chair so hard it falls over. The noise makes the air ring. It unlocks the room. Time starts beating again, painfully fast. He can feel it in his chest.

“Sit down. I said sit down! And pick up your chair!” She shouts the last bit so loudly he flinches. He crumples onto the floor and holds his head in his hands.

After a little bit she crouches next to him.

“It's not far to the Mainland,” she says. “We'll wait for a clear day and we can get all the way there in just one day. And when we get there—”

“You can't get there! No one can! We'll die!”

His mother doesn't answer. She takes a few slow breaths and goes on as if he hasn't said anything. “You probably don't remember, but the Mainland's big. Really big. You can't even guess. There'll be all sorts of things there we don't have. They've probably got telly and computers. That'd be good, wouldn't it? You'll like that. We might even find Dad and—”

“They're dead!” The sea is death. He's always been terrified of sailing. Hundreds of times he's imagined his father and brother and sister drowning, flailing around in freezing heaving grey, nothing to see, nothing to hold on to, then sinking, nothing to breathe.

“We don't know—”

“They are! They're all dead!”

“Rory.” She hugs his shoulders. He's too riven with horror even to twist away. “All right. I don't know what we'll find. But we can't stay. I've made up my mind. I'm getting you away from these islands, no matter what.”

“But there isn't anywhere—”

“No. Matter. What.”

She wants to take him off the edge of the world. She wants to tear him out of existence, away from everything there is, gathering and foraging and reaping and baking and fetching and carrying and eating and sleeping. And from the wonderful things too, the comics, the Italians, Her. The whole of his life. The sea is its boundary. The sea is where life runs out. She's going to kill them both.

“We'll have a few days,” his mother's saying. “We'll get everything we need ready and wait for a nice calm bright day. I know it's a bit of a shock but you'll get used to it. And Rory. Look at me, please.”

He can't. He won't.

She sighs. “All right, then. But listen very carefully. We're going to do this. I'm not letting Kate or anyone say otherwise. It's very important you understand that. I'm sure Kate's going to have all sorts of terribly good reasons why we shouldn't, but I don't want you listening to her. They're all just thinking of themselves. They don't—”

He's lurching to his feet before he knows what he's doing. He springs up so fast he tips her over; she drops to the floor in a tangle, with a little gasp. He's bellowing, running for the door. “If it wasn't for Kate we'd all be dead!” He kicks his shoes on and pulls his coat off the hook. The other coats all fall down with it. His eyes are stinging. “I won't go anywhere with you! I won't go anywhere!” He flings the door open.

“Rory, stop right there.”

“I won't!” He's out, sprinting up the Lane. He has no idea where he's going. He's driven by rage and grief and they're equally blind.

“Come back here at once!” She's yelling from the door. “Rory!” He won't stop. He won't let her take him away. He'd rather stay here until She takes his hand and leads him down under the waves to show him all her treasures. He runs out of his mother's sight as fast as he can. He never wants to see her ever again.

  *  *  *  

There aren't many places to run to. It's a small island.

He ends up in the Castle ruins, squatting out of the wind with his back against a wall. Fast clouds race low overhead, taunting him with freedom. He's out of breath and his chest hurts. He couldn't run much farther anyway, there isn't much island left beyond. He'd love to go down to the cove and wait for Her but he can't, his mother's bound to be following him. He heard her calling furiously as he ran.
Rory! Rory!

Anyway his legs are tired and he's hot and shaky and his heart's broken. He just wants to sit on wet earth and stone.

He knows his mother's lying about finding somewhere with telly and computer games. That's just trying to make him want to go. He knows it's a lie because the women used to talk about it all the time, that first summer. No one actually knows What Happened but everyone knows it was terrible on the Mainland.
We're the lucky ones,
Kate used to tell them, even in the winter when they were all desperately hungry and getting sick. And however bad it is on the Mainland, the sea is worse.

He squeezes his head between his knees and folds his arms over them to make everything go away.

After a while he hears his mother coming. There are steps coming up the path, scratching against the stiff heather. He wraps himself tighter into his ball and stares balefully at mud.

The steps come around the roofless walls into the ruin. They stop. She doesn't say anything. He doesn't care what she says or does, he's not going to look up or talk to her.

They stop for a surprisingly long time. Then she comes and stands right in front of him. He grips his sleeves and presses his knees harder against his head.