Provender Gleed (25 page)

-- and he could wallow in the depression his body made in the mattress --

-- only there was no mattress.

There was just the bathroom floor that had been under him for more than forty-eight hours now. The blindfold was still fastened around his head. His wrists and ankles were still bound with electrical flex.

It was not as heart-sinking an experience as it might have been, awaking from a dream of home to find himself, as before, in captivity. Bathroom and blindfold and bindings had, in the course of the two days, become the norm. A kind of tired passivity had settled in him. He could, with a strange calmness, foresee spending the rest of his life like this, sightless and helpless, never to look on another human face again, dying an old man on this very spot. There was a contentment in believing that that would be his fate. He was rid of the tormenting hope that somehow, at some point, he was going to be freed. To be back in his bed at Dashlands? Yes, that was truly a dream.

He lay and listened to the building's morning gush of water, the pipes, the ducts, the inner purging, till eventually Is arrived with something for him to eat and drink.

He realised immediately that there was something different about her this morning. A tremor in her voice, a tautness.

'What's up?'

'On the news. The TV. It's incredible. Dreadful.'

'What is?'

'I think... They're all saying we could be going to war.'

'Eh?'

'War, Provender. As in everyone kills everyone else.'

'Where did that come from? I mean, who's going to war with whom?'

'The Pan-Slavic Federation. The western European countries. Just like last time and the time before. It's happening all over again.'

'But that's bonkers! We're at peace with the Pan-Slavic Federation. Europe's all one big happy family. Why would...?'

'Why would what, Provender?'

One big happy family
.

But not one big happy Family.

Had Provender's hands not been tied, he would have slapped his forehead with one of them.

'Has anyone said what the reason for war is?'

'There's some sort of mumbling about treaties that haven't been honoured and other stuff like that, but the main thing is the Federation have started moving troops and warships around in a threatening way and we've had to respond in kind.'

'So nobody's invaded anywhere yet?'

'Not as far as I can tell.'

'You realise what this is, don't you?'

Is paused to ponder. 'You think
you
--'

'I don't think. I know.'

'Your Family.'

'My father, to be precise.'

'Your father's starting a war because of you? How is that going to help?'

'It isn't. At least, he think it's going to help but that's because he's clearly grasped the wrong end of the stick.'

'What do you mean?'

It didn't take Provender long to sketch out the state of antagonism that existed between the Gleeds and the Kuczinskis. Is knew about the feud. Most people did. What she and most people didn't know was just how deep the mutual hatred ran. Provender was certain that his father had pinned the blame for his kidnapping on the Kuczinskis and was taking steps to force them to hand him back. The Kuczinskis, in return, were responding in the only way they could. They didn't have Provender, and they had no doubt told his father that in no uncertain terms. They couldn't, though, simply sit back and let western Europe mobilise for war against eastern Europe. They had no choice but to meet the threat of aggression with the threat of aggression.

'Families can do that? They can throw a whole continent into chaos just because one of them doesn't much like another of them?'

'Is, think about it. There isn't a politician in office who doesn't owe his or her position to Family influence, or else wants to get on a Family's good side. They're like chess-pieces to the Families. Or, no, like trading cards. To be bought, sold, swapped, trumped, disposed of. Politicians, in a sense, are the biggest ClanFans of all. The Families' power just mesmerises them. Being a politician is the closest they can get to being Family.'

'Well, yes, I know all that. What I meant is, Families are
prepared
to do that? They'll start wars over nothing?'

'I think I'm a little bit more than nothing, at least to my dad, but still, I take your point. And the answer's yes. My father's been itching for an excuse to get back at the Kuczinskis. I'm it. Tell me, was there by any chance an Extraordinary Family Congress yesterday?'

It had been mentioned on the news. 'Yes.'

'My dad,' said Provender, nodding. 'He called it. And I bet it didn't go well. I bet he and Stanislaw Kuczinski got right up each other's noses.'

'But the Congress resolves Family disputes. That's the whole point of it.'

'In theory. In practice, when it's not just all the Family heads getting together and having a "we're so wonderful" knees-up, it's a massive bitch-fest. Everyone yells at everyone else, there's a lot of nasty name-calling, then they all go home again. Cathartic, I suppose, but otherwise essentially useless.'

'So it wouldn't stop a potential war.'

'The opposite. Any Family worth its salt, after all, has a munitions-manufacturing plant somewhere in its business portfolio, and an aeronautical engineering firm, and a shipwright's. War brings profits. It's an old maxim but still true. Those air forces will need new planes when their existing ones get shot down. Those navies will need new ships when their existing ones are sunk. And then of course there's the rebuilding. My Family made a killing from the reconstruction of London after the last war. We razed the old Dashlands House and built a brand new one just to celebrate how much profit we'd made.'

'It's about money.'

'It's always about money, Is. Not for my father right now, maybe, or for the Kuczinskis, but for the rest of them. They might have made disapproving noises are the Extraordinary Congress, some of them, but really each and every Family head was rubbing his hands and totting up the potential revenue.'

'That's disgusting.'

'Tell me about it.'

'But no one on the television mentioned anything about your Family or the Kuczinskis.'

'Why would they? Who, ultimately, owns those TV stations?'

'The Families.'

'Exactly. You won't get TV reporters reporting things the Families don't want them to, not the things that really matter.'

Provender heard Is let out a sharp hiss of contempt. For a minute after that she spooned breakfast cereal into his mouth, saying nothing. He could almost hear her thinking, the motor of her brain as troubled but as stoic as that of the extractor fan. Then she said, 'If we got you back to your Family, would that mean --'

The sentence was cut short by the sound of the door being flung open. There was a moment when everything seemed to stop, even the extractor fan. Provender pictured Is, startled, peering round. In the doorway: her accomplice. Provender had built up a mental impression of how the man looked. He imagined, now, a face that was cruel to begin with, further uglified, contorted with rage. The man had been eavesdropping at the door. He had overheard what Is just said. For all Is's protestations that he wouldn't dare lay a finger on her, Provender felt that, if pushed far enough, he would. And surely her unfinished question, what it implied, was 'far enough'.

Absurd notions flashed through Provender's mind. Leaping, somehow, to Is's defence. Interposing himself between her and the man. Taking, on her behalf, whatever the man dished out.

It was easy to be heroic when there was, in fact, little he could do.

Then the man spoke, and Provender was surprised at how even his voice was. Not the fusillade of fury he was expecting at all.

'You done here yet?'

'Nearly.'

'Only I need the bog.'

'Use the bucket.'

'Fuck that.'

'I'll be a couple minutes more.'

'OK. Hurry.'

No sooner had the door closed than Is let out a long, breathless 'Oh God.'

'Did he hear what you said?' Provender whispered.

'I don't think so. Christ, I hope not.'

'Did you...?' Provender hesitated. 'Did you mean what you said?'

'I don't know. Maybe. Shit, no, it's madness. What am I thinking?'

'You're thinking that if you help me, you may just be able to prevent the whole of Europe turning into a bloodbath.'

'Yes, but - I don't know. I don't know how I could do it. I might not get the chance.'

'Does he go out ever? Leave you alone here?'

'Yes. But I never know how long he's going to be gone for. If he caught us trying to...'

'Is. Look at me.'

'I already am.'

'OK. Good. You see me? You see I'm not the inbred Family cretin you thought I was? You see what getting me out of here, getting me back to Dashlands, is worth? This isn't about ransom any more, or whatever the hell the reason is you kidnapped me. The stakes are much higher. This is a whole different business now.'

'Maybe I could talk to him. Explain what you said. About the war and the Kuczinskis and all that. It might change his mind.'

'You honestly think it would?'

'Honestly, no.'

'Me too. And you talk like that to him, it could rouse his suspicions. He could decide not to go out at all. Best not say anything. Act normal. Wait for an opportunity. It'll come.'

'I'm not sure, Provender.'

'Is, please. You know it's what's right.'

'It's crazy.'

'Often the same as what's right, unfortunately.'

33

It was known as the Chapel, but that was a misnomer and something of a bitter joke. It was no House of God. It was a folly built on a rise about half a mile west of Dashlands House, close to the site of the original house before the original house was flattened and replaced with the newer one. A cylindrical structure capped with a dome, it mirrored the observatory which stood on another, higher rise a mile due south-east. Externally, the sole difference between the two edifices was that one had a high-powered refractor telescope protruding from its roof.

The superficial similarity was no accident. Both Chapel and observatory had been erected in the mid-eighteen-hundreds by Prosper's great-grandfather, Cardamom, amateur astronomer and ardent atheist. The observatory peered up into the universe and saw only stars and space. No God up there. Plenty of beauty and scientific wonderment, but no God.

The Chapel, by contrast, was blind. It didn't have an eye on the heavens. It was deliberately purposeless. Inside, there was a flagstone floor, a low circular dais at the centre, and, set equidistantly around the wall, alcoves of the kind that could have held idols, statues of saints, representations of gods, something like that, but here were left ostentatiously empty. The message was clear. Deities had no place in the Gleed scheme of things. The Chapel was a parody of a church, a mock temple, blasphemous in its bareness. There was nothing within it to genuflect before, not even an effigy of Mammon.

This, nevertheless, was where Cynthia came when she needed to pray. There was nowhere else to go, nowhere else where she could be guaranteed solitude and silence and stillness, nowhere else on the estate that even vaguely resembled a place of worship. The cool air, the damp smell of stone, and the hollow, hushed echoes, all reminded her of the cathedrals of her childhood. The Lamases were rare among Families in that they had not wholly dispensed with religion. Perhaps it was because the trappings of Catholicism, especially Roman Catholicism, were reassuringly gilded and grandiose. Equally it might be because, as Cynthia's father often said, it was wise not to reject the Almighty altogether, on the off-chance that He did exist. Confession, too, and the taking of the Sacrament, and general prostration before a higher power, did much to shrive the wealthy of their guilt about being wealthy (assuming they felt such guilt in the first place). Attending a two-hour Mass every Sunday was a small investment of time, given the psychological and spiritual dividends one stood to gain from it.

As a girl Cynthia used to love going to Mass: the otherworldly elegance of the Latin catechisms, the fragrant fume trails left in the air by the huge swinging silver censers, and the fact that everyone in the congregation, not least herself, was decked out in their very best clothes - the men in crisp blazers and trousers, the women a froth of underskirts and mantillas, black cloth everywhere, wave upon wave of it in the pews, a sea of dark, solemn self-effacement. She had been Confirmed. She had learned her
Ave Maria
and was given a jade rosary by her parents on which to toll it, all one hundred and fifty times, to expiate her sins. She had believed everything the Church claimed, implicitly, perfectly. She was so devout, her mother even began to ask her, half jokingly, if she was thinking of becoming a nun.

But Faith had ebbed from her as she reached adulthood. Faith, it seemed, was for children, who were innocent enough to accept it at face value, and for very old people, who had to have something to cling to as the shadow of extinction loomed ever larger. The world was infinitely more complicated than religion could account for. Life had shades and hues that the Church's broad primary-colour statements simply could not match.

Cynthia was not lapsed. A belief, of some sort, persisted, like a high tide mark in her soul. She returned to Faith whenever she needed it, and was always somewhat surprised to find it there where she had left it, more or less intact, a little rusty but still serviceable. The Chapel, which she was just about the only person ever to visit, had become a sanctuary for her when things got difficult - and being married to Prosper Gleed, not to mention being mother to Provender Gleed, meant things often got difficult for Cynthia. She still had her jade rosary too, and to sit for an hour in the Chapel's emptiness, thumbing the beads one by one about their silk thread and murmuring the words of the
Ave
till they lost all meaning, brought solace in even her darkest moods. The unadorned walls and vacant alcoves were a far cry from the stained-glass splendour and seething iconography she had known in her youth, but such plainness was, in a way, better. It was a closer reflection of how she felt inside.