Divided Kingdom (16 page)

I passed through the revolving doors and down the front steps. Dwarf palms lined the footpath, and lurking in among the shrubs were urns on pedestals. The flags of the four countries stirred above me like huge birds stealthily rearranging their wings.

I emerged from the garden to find a taxi moored against the side of the canal, its engine muttering. It was one of the older boats, the cabin made of weathered blond wood, the bench-seats covered with imitation leather. I climbed on board and gave the driver the address of the club. He nodded lazily, then revved the engine. According to the licence displayed beside the meter, his name was Curthdale Trelawney. Dozens of charms and trinkets dangled from the narrow shelf above the helm. There were anchors, portholes and lifebelts, all predictable enough, but he had crowns too, and top hats, spanners and bibles and coins, the whole array glinting and swaying with the gentle motion of the boat. A superstitious man, Mr Trelawney.

I stared through the window as the taxi glided away from the hotel. Bunting had gone up on many of the big canals. Blue pennants seemed to be popular, or sometimes I saw a lantern in the shape of a sea horse floating high above the water. All the decorations had a faded, slightly weather-beaten look, which led me to suspect that they were brought out year after year. Trelawney drove slowly, absent-mindedly, but I found I was in no hurry. We were travelling through a city that was entirely unfamiliar to me. Well, not
entirely.
Since I dealt with people from the other countries most days of the week – on my computer, usually, or by phone – and since phlegmatics were generally believed to be harmless, I had assumed, despite what Jasmine had told me, that I would adapt to the Blue Quarter without too much trouble. I couldn't have been more wrong. During that short walk to the hotel, I had been overwhelmed by the strangeness of the place. It wasn't just the architecture or the dialect; it was something much larger and more abstract, like the look on people's faces, or the atmosphere itself. The citizens of
Aquaville seemed to equate existence with peril. They spent most of their time and energy trying to protect themselves – against the present certainly, against the future too, and even, perhaps, against the past. Thoughts of this kind had never entered my head before, but now, as a result of having to negotiate the streets and breathe the air, I was absorbing a little of the local people's trepidation, much as I had once absorbed well-being from Mr Page. I was even seeing figures move in paintings. Though, to some extent, it appeared to threaten or at least unsettle me, it was also proof of the theory I was going to expound in my talk on Wednesday, namely that the divided kingdom was self-perpetuating, and that the need for transfer and relocation would eventually die away. Each of the four quarters had already developed its own unique character and identity. In other words, although the idea of four types of people was fundamentally simplistic, there was a certain amount of self-fulfilling prophecy involved. Place someone in an environment for long enough and he starts to take on the attributes of that environment.

The taxi bumped against a row of car tyres, the engine noise subsided. We had stopped outside a tall stucco-fronted building that was set back from the canal. Wide steps led up to glass doors with vertical brass handles, and the words that featured on my flyer – THE BATHYSPHERE – were spelled out in black block capitals on the white neon strip above the entrance. If I hadn't known the place was a club, I would have assumed it was a cinema,
The Bathysphere
being the title of the film that was showing. But there were no queues outside. I couldn't see any doormen either. There was no one around at all, in fact.

‘Not much happening, is there?' I said.

My driver surveyed the building. ‘What's it supposed to be?'

I told him.

‘Maybe you're early,' he said.

Though I had my doubts about the club, I thought I should give it a try. After all, I had gone to the trouble of finding it.

‘Could you come back later on and pick me up?' I said.

‘How long are you going to be?'

I looked at my watch. ‘Let's say an hour.'

‘Fine by me.'

Once on the quay, I glanced behind me. In the boat's cabin, Curthdale Trelawney was lighting a cigarette. When he exhaled, the smoke unfolded against the dark glass of the windshield like a flower that only blooms at night.

The air roared and trembled as a plane went over, its wheels already lowered for landing. I adjusted my coat collar and looked around. Most of the buildings that lined the canal had once been business premises – factories, offices, warehouses – but they had long since been vacated. Bleak sodium lights stooped over a deserted towpath. The whole area had a forlorn, abandoned feel to it. I checked the address again – a nervous reaction, obviously, since the club's name was there above me in foot-high letters – then I climbed the steps and opened one of the glass doors.

The foyer was semicircular in shape. Its walls were red, with a gold picture-rail. The centre-light, housed in a black metal shade, cast a bright, unsteady circle on the carpet. In front of me stood an archway, sealed off by a velvet curtain. To my right, and built into the curve of the wall, was what appeared to be a ticket booth. A girl sat behind the perspex, reading a magazine. She had plucked her eyebrows into two perfect arcs, and her blonde hair shone. She glanced up as I walked over.

I took the card out of my pocket and showed it to her. ‘Have I come to the right place?'

‘Yes, you have. And that card means you get in free.'

‘And it's a club?'

‘That's right.'

‘I'm not too early?'

She smiled. ‘You haven't missed a thing.'

‘Wonderful.' I hesitated. ‘How long does it stay open?'

‘You can leave any time you want.'

I tilted my head at a slight angle. ‘I can't hear anything.'

‘I'm sorry?'

‘I can't hear any music,' I said.

She smiled again, more winningly. ‘It's not that kind of club.'

Her answers seemed precise and clear, and yet she consistently told me less than I wanted to know. It was vagueness in a most sophisticated form. Though it did occur to me that I might have been asking the wrong questions.

‘Which way do I go?' I said.

‘Through the curtain, then round to the right.'

As I was turning away, one of the glass doors swung open, and I glanced over my shoulder, half hoping to see Walter Ming walk in. After all, there was a sense in which I needed him to justify my presence in this place. I could have bought him a drink. We might even have joked about the whole experience. But the couple who entered the foyer weren't people I knew or recognised. The man had an equine face and bad teeth, and his muscular figure was wrapped in a long, tight-fitting pale-grey overcoat with a black velvet collar. His companion wore a wide-brimmed hat at such an extreme angle that I could only see the powdered whiteness of her neck and the scarlet of her mouth. Her high heels were sharp as ice-picks. Well, I thought, at least I won't be the only person here.

I followed the directions the girl had given me and soon found myself in a narrow corridor that sloped gently downwards and to the left. Dim lights studded the walls at regular intervals, and there was the smell of warm trapped air. I had assumed the corridor would lead to a theatre of some kind, with rows of plush seating and a stage. I had been listening for the muted buzz of an expectant audience. Instead, I walked into a triangular room which had red walls and a black ceiling. In front of me were four doors, all painted pale-gold. To my right, on a simple wooden chair, sat a man in dark clothes. His hands rested on his lap, and his head was bowed, as if in prayer. For a moment I thought he might even be asleep.

‘Choose a door.' His voice sounded automatic, almost prerecorded. Presumably he had to say the same words every time somebody came into the room.

‘What am I choosing between?' I asked.

‘You're choosing without knowing what you're choosing. You're taking a chance. You're going into the unknown.'

‘The unknown?' I said.

‘You're free to leave at any time,' the man said in the same bored monotone. His head was still bowed, his hands still folded in his lap.

‘So I just choose a door and open it?'

He nodded.

How does one choose between objects that appear to be identical? I had entered the realms of the arbitrary, the intuitive, and I didn't feel entirely comfortable, but I spent a while studying the room and in the end I found what I was looking for. At the foot of the second door from the right the carpet had been worn away, which led me to believe that this particular door was more popular than the others. Now, at least, I had something on which I could base a decision.

I opened the door and stepped through it, closing it carefully behind me as if I were a guest in someone's house. As I let go of the door-knob I became aware of a faint stinging sensation in my hand. Glancing down, I saw that I had scratched myself. Except they weren't really scratches. They looked more like pinpricks – four or five neat punctures in the centre of my palm. It must have been the door-knob. Some jaggedness or irregularity in the metal.

‘Did you hurt yourself?'

I looked up quickly. A boy was walking across the room towards me. His fair hair glinted as he passed beneath the light that hung from the ceiling.

‘Jones!' I couldn't believe that it was him. ‘What are you doing here?'

He just smiled.

‘Are you all right?' I said.

‘I'm fine. Just like you said I'd be.' He took hold of my hand and turned it over. We both gazed down at my palm, the miniature beads of blood. His smile seemed to widen.

‘Are you sure?' I said.

He was still looking at my hand. ‘You shouldn't worry so much.'

They were the very words I had used a quarter of a century
ago. He had remembered them. I had so many questions, but they all merged, forming a kind of blockage, like leaves in a drain.

I stared at the top of his head. His hair had the gleam of beaten metal.

‘What happens next?' I said.

And then it was as if I had blinked and missed half the evening. A girl stood in front of me. It was my sister, Marie – or rather it was a girl who looked just like her. Younger, though. Seventeen, eighteen. The age Marie had been when I first saw her.

‘Where's Jones?' I said.

‘Jones?' she murmured, lips slanting a little.

I shook my head. ‘It doesn't matter. Jones is all right. Jones is fine.'

Her face slowly lifted to mine, as slowly as the sun crossing the sky, as slowly as a flower growing, and her skin glowed as if lit from the inside, and the whites of her eyes were the purest white imaginable. I became aware of a change in the temperature. The air in the room seemed warmer now, and it was scented too, not with perfume, though, and not with incense, no, with something sweeter, more indefinable, more rare – the breath of angels, perhaps …

I don't know how we reached the street. I simply found myself standing on the kerb, the girl beside me, her eyes as dark as liquorice or mink. My heart seemed to have swollen in my chest. My heart felt like a beacon, a source of light.

‘How do you feel?' she asked.

‘I've never been happier,' I said.

She took my hand and led me to a car.

‘Is this yours?' I asked.

She didn't answer.

Before too long, we were moving along a straight road, our progress fluid, cushioned. She handled the car with great efficiency and deftness. Lights streamed past my window, all different colours.

‘You drive beautifully,' I said.

She looked across at me and smiled. The space between us glittered.

‘Where are we going?' And then, before she could reply, I said, ‘I know. I shouldn't talk so much.' It didn't matter where we were going. Our destination didn't interest me at all. I just wanted everything to remain exactly as it was.

I wanted it to last for ever.

I stared out of the window, secure in the knowledge that she was still beside me. To look away from her felt like sheer extravagance. I was so confident of her presence that I could squander it.

The city faded. A glow in the rear window, a distant phosphorescence. I leaned forwards as the car took a series of long, sweeping curves at high speed. We seemed to be climbing, but I could see nothing through the windscreen, nothing except the headlights pushing into the darkness ahead of us. Every now and then a sign would loom up at the side of the road like a skeleton in a ride through a haunted house, only to fall away, insubstantial, obsolete. There was never a moment when I was frightened or even unnerved.

The girl didn't speak again. Once in a while she would glance across the magical secluded space inside the car, and the looks she gave me meant more than anything she could have said. Those dark eyes in the dashboard lights, that darker hair, the muted howling of the wind as we rushed on into the unforeseen, the incomparable – and then I was sitting next to a canal, a street lamp hanging over me, and everything plunged deep in a sickly orange solution, everything deformed somehow and yet preserved, as if in formaldehyde. I couldn't seem to focus properly. My throat contracted, and I coughed so hard that I thought I might vomit. I put my head in my hands and kept quite still. What had happened? I didn't know. I sat there until I felt the cold air penetrate my clothes.

At last I was able to look up. I was at the top of a flight of stone steps which led down into flat black water. Was it the Great Western Canal? I couldn't tell. There was no sign of the taxi. Perhaps I had fetched up somewhere else entirely. I risked a
glance over my shoulder. No, there behind me was the tall white building. I climbed slowly to my feet, then stood still for a moment. The sweat had cooled on my face, and I felt more awake. My vision was sharper too. I made my way across the towpath to the club. When I tried a door, though, it wouldn't open. I tried them one by one, methodically. They had all been locked. I peered through the glass, but the lights had been switched off. All I could see was a dim distorted version of my own face. I banged on a door with the flat of my hand. Nobody came. What would I have said anyway? I went back to the bottom of the steps and gazed up at the façade. The white neon strip above the entrance was quite blank; the letters that spelled THE BATHYSPHERE had been taken down. It was only then that I thought to look at my watch. Twenty-past four. I let out a strangled cry and swung round, staring wildly towards the motionless canal, the empty buildings with their broken windows and their barricaded doors. I had to get back to my hotel – but how?