Divided Kingdom (46 page)

‘Good,' Odell said. ‘Just right.'

To the south the landscape brooded. The sky had lowered, and the air above the hills was smeared with rain.

By the time we reached our first village, something unexpected had occurred. My mood had soured. I was in a bad temper after all, a genuine bad temper, which meant I no longer had to worry about standing out.

As soon as we entered the village, Odell said, ‘I thought you told me we were there,' and she stopped in the middle of the street and put her hands on her hips. ‘You fool,' she said, ‘you stupid fool. Hey!' And she grabbed me by the upper arm.

I'd always hated being touched like that. Swinging round, I raised my fist as if to strike her. At the last minute, though, I turned aside and slammed my hand into the front wall of a house. I watched the grazed skin ooze blood, then whirled away from her and stormed up the street, scattering the chickens that
darted, cackling, across my path. I might even have trodden on one of them. I felt something squirm out from under my boot, but I didn't bother looking down.

‘Oi,' said a woman in an apron. They were probably her chickens.

I glared at her, and she sprang back into her doorway as though pulled from behind by an immensely powerful hand.

Rage surged through me. Such a rage.

The air filled with the jangle of fairground music, and I turned to see a white high-sided van grinding its way up the street, a loudspeaker bolted precariously to its roof. Every so often, the driver interrupted his music to proclaim the delights of his hams and sausages, his tongue. Odell stopped the van and bought a few items, then it passed me and dipped down an incline to the village green. A crowd had gathered there, beneath a large, gnarled oak, and once the racket the van was making had died away I could hear the shrieks and squeals of children. There must be an attraction of some kind, I thought. A juggler, perhaps. A puppet show.

As I drew nearer, Odell caught up with me and took my arm. ‘No,' she muttered. ‘Keep going.'

This time I didn't shake her off. Something in her voice told me she wasn't acting. She led me down the road, past grim, grey houses, their windows either too low or too high, and oddly asymmetrical, as if only dwarves and giants lived inside. Before long, the village was behind us, and the children's cries had faded into the distance.

‘It was nothing you need know about,' she said.

The smell of melted snow on the grass verges, the sky above the fields grey and pale-yellow.

After a while two men in work clothes appeared on the road ahead of us. I pushed my hands into my pockets, feeling the rips in the lining. Each new encounter was a test of our authenticity, our nerve, and I couldn't help but believe that, sooner or later, we would be found out.

The men slowed as they reached us.

‘Seen the heads?' said the shorter of the two.

‘We just came from there.' Odell pointed back along the road. ‘There's three of them. All bitches.'

The short man laughed lasciviously. He looked at his companion, eyes like bits of wet glass, then the two of them moved on, quickening their pace.

I waited until they were hidden by a bend in the road, then I went and leaned on a farm gate. I had received an image of a woman. Ears and nose cut off. An apple wedged into her mouth as if she were a suckling pig.
Seen the heads?
I retched once or twice, but nothing came up. Cold sweat all over me.

Odell laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘I'm sorry you had to hear that. It was the only way.'

I know
, I said inside my head.
I understand.

Do you want to get out of here or don't you?

It was dark by the time we entered the next village, but Odell made no attempt to find a room. It might have been the gingerhaired twins sitting on a bench outside the post office, one gnawing avidly at his thumbnail, the other aiming a kick at a dog as it loped by, or perhaps it was the fat woman in her front garden who took one look at us, spat sideways and withdrew into her house. This was a sour embittered place, a place that had turned its fury against itself, and it would have no patience with the likes of us.

We had reached the edge of the village and were beginning to prepare ourselves for a night in the open when we saw a caravan parked in the corner of an orchard, a white shape seemingly afloat among dock leaves and thistles. Odell forced the door – a sharp dry snap, like the cracking of a nut – and we climbed inside. The curtains were already drawn, but a faint glow eased through the frosted-plastic sky-light, just enough to see by. There were cushioned bench-seats, ideal for sleeping on. There was even a sink, with running water. We fastened the door, using a metal catch. If anyone came, Odell said, we would escape through the window at the back.

Though she had promised me nothing but tantrums that day, she had broken her own rules within the first few hours. She had
been aware of my fragile state, I think, and whenever we found ourselves alone she would link her arm through mine and tell me how well I was doing. Once, as we stood beneath a tree, sheltering from the downpour that had been threatening all morning, I turned to look at her. I had no memory of ever meeting her before, or even seeing her, but that now seemed irrelevant. In the tarnished half-light of the storm her eyes had taken on the strangest colour, a new commingling of green and black, ambiguous but vivid, and the breath stalled in my throat. All of a sudden I wanted to touch her. Did she guess what I was thinking? Possibly. Because she chose that moment to announce that the rain was letting up and it was time to push on.

By late afternoon we had left the Wanings behind. In a sense, though, we had merely swapped one set of dangers for another. The Wanings may have lapsed into anarchy, but we had just as much to fear from the so-called forces of law and order, whose reputation for corruption and brutality was common knowledge. As the sun was setting, we saw our first roadblock. Fortunately the two officers were facing the other way, questioning a man on a bicycle, and we were able to slip behind a hedgerow and flatten ourselves against the ground. As their jeep finally roared past, a cigarette butt landed in the grass no more than a hand's width from my right elbow. Though it had been discarded, it continued to smoulder, all the virulence of the Yellow Quarter concentrated into that stubborn quarter-inch of ash.

Following a meagre supper in the caravan, Odell began to talk. Before too long, she said, we would be passing through built-up areas. Things would move faster, and I would have to be ready to act decisively. If we got into any kind of confrontation, for instance, I should leave immediately. Just leave. If we already had a place to stay, I should go back there. Lock myself in. If not, I should wait near by. She would extricate herself. That was her speciality. If for some reason she failed to reappear, I was to carry on towards the border. I would have to cross it on my own. In the darkness I reached out and squeezed her hand to let her know that I had understood.

At dawn I was woken by a vicious scratching, and I sat up
quickly, thinking someone was trying to get in. Then I realised it was coming from above me. Through the skylight's blurry plastic I saw arrowheads, delicate as pencil drawings. It was just birds' feet. Birds walking on the roof.

We left the caravan soon after, fells rising in blue-black curves above the mist. Later, the sun burned through. We drank from a stream that tasted metallic, as if we were sipping the water from a spoon. We walked south and then west, clouds tumbling in the sky, huge sweeps of land on every side. We saw no people, not even one. There was only the sound of our boots in the grass and, sometimes, the clatter of a pheasant's wings as, startled by our approach, it heaved itself into the air.

That night we curled up in a hut that smelled of sheep, the ground outside littered with shotgun cartridges and brittle clumps of fleece. The wind kept me awake, levering its way into every crack and crevice in the walls. In the morning we climbed down to flat land. Houses now, and villages, with youths standing around. They would be smoking or kicking a football about or trying to put each other in headlocks. Their eyes would flick in our direction as we passed, and I sensed the shape of their thoughts, dark and splintery. I had to work hard not to show any fear. The memory of those strangers stretched across the road still lingered. I noticed a boy leaning against a wall next to a newsagent's. He watched us go by, then slid a few words out of one side of his mouth, and the boys who were with him laughed, the noise so abrupt and harsh that two crows lifted from a nearby tree. No one actually confronted us, but that wasn't the point. It was the constant, unremitting threat of violence that I found wearing. It was the sense of apprehension, the dread.

In the early afternoon we stopped to rest. The road shadowed a railway cut, and we climbed over the wall and installed ourselves on the embankment, so as to be hidden from any passers-by. Odell unwrapped the cold meat and bread, leftovers from the day before. A passenger train rushed past below us as we ate. Odell eyed it thoughtfully. The sky had clouded over.
A chill wind bent the blades of grass beside me, and I huddled deeper into my creaky leather coat.

We were about to move on when a goods train rattled down the line towards us. Instead of the usual trucks, it was hauling several transporters, each of which had a tarpaulin lashed over its main frame. Odell began to slither down the embankment, signalling for me to follow her. When she reached the track she ran alongside one of the transporters. Catching hold of a stanchion, she swung herself up on to a metal footplate. I tossed her my bag, then hoisted myself on to the same section of the train. She was already loosening the ties on one corner of a tarpaulin. We ducked under the heavy plastic and found ourselves pressed up against a yellow sports car, one of three, all identical in make and colour. I tried the door on the driver's side, fully expecting it to be locked, but it opened with an expensive click. I hesitated for a second, then climbed inside. The smell of leather upholstery enfolded me – the smell of newness itself. Odell climbed in after me. Settling behind the steering-wheel, she pulled the door shut. The smooth swaying motion of the car, the darkness beyond the windows, the presence of a girl beside me – for a moment I was able to fool myself into thinking that it was my first night at the Bathysphere and nothing else had happened yet.

‘I've got another story for you,' Odell said.

I turned to face her.

‘Not so long ago,' she said, ‘I was in love with someone …'

I smiled. It was a good beginning.

His name was Luke, and they had met when she was twenty. One Sunday evening she was waiting on the platform of a provincial railway station. She wanted to get back to the city, but there had been all kinds of delays and cancellations, and people were standing three or four deep by the time the train pulled in. Then she saw him, through one of the carriage windows. He was reading a book, his face lowered, his black hair falling on to his forehead. In that same moment she noticed that a window in his carriage had been left open. She tended not to use her gift for her own personal gain, not any more, but that evening she decided
to flout the rules for once. A damp flurry of wind took her over the heads of the other passengers, through the window and down into the seat directly opposite the dark-haired boy. When he looked up and saw her, his eyes widened and he breathed in sharply.

‘What are you staring at?' she said. ‘Do I remind you of someone?'

‘No.' He seemed momentarily dazed by the speed and boldness of her questions. ‘I didn't hear the door open.'

‘Perhaps you were asleep.'

‘Asleep? I don't think so.' He glanced at his book. ‘I was reading.'

‘Then perhaps you were in another world,' she said.

The train shook itself and then began to move. She stared out of the window, pretending to take an interest in the lights of unknown houses, distant towns.

‘I'm sorry,' he said after a while. ‘I didn't mean to be rude.'

What she had loved most of all about Luke was lying next to him while he was sleeping. He always looked so untroubled. She thought that if they slept in the same bed for long enough she would acquire that look of his. At the beginning she would stay awake for hours and try to draw the calmness out of him. She used to see it as a grey-blue vapour drifting eerily from his body into hers.

She had wanted to be with him for ever – in fact she'd been quite unable to imagine
not
being with him – but she had made a mistake: she told him what she could do. In bed one night, with all the lights out, she turned to him and said, ‘You know when we first met, on that train …'

‘I
knew
it,' Luke cried when she had finished. ‘I knew there was
something.'

Initially, he was seduced by the glamour of it. He saw a kind of peculiar, inverted celebrity, and that excited him. But he soon started to feel that their relationship had its roots in deception –
her
deception – and the subject would come up whenever they argued. The fact that she had fooled him. Made him look stupid.

‘No, no, you don't understand,' she would cry. ‘It was because
I loved you. And anyway, you almost guessed. Even then, at the beginning.'

She should never have told him. She should've been content simply to have profited from her gift. But she had been unsure of herself, perhaps. She had hoped to bind him to her still more closely. Once, many years ago, a great-aunt had given her some advice.
An air of mystery is just as valuable as wit or beauty. It keeps people interested – especially men.
And certainly, for the first few months, Luke had suspected there was a side to her that he hadn't understood, and he would worry at it almost pleasurably, as you might push your tongue against a loose tooth. When she told him the truth, however, it allowed him to think that the riddle had been solved. He had reached the end of her, and there was nothing more to discover. Far from binding him, the knowledge set him free. He could move on.