Turquoiselle (21 page)

Croft’s face was strangely both very old and very young. The
features, sockets and lids of the eyes, might have been carved. He seemed tired
but restless, feverish.

“What were we talking about? Ah,” he said. “Chekhov. Have you read
the plays?”

“No.”

“That’s a pity. Nobody reads now. Nothing like that, like Chekhov.
But you’ll have seen the plays acted–
”
Carver did
not reply, or need to. “You’ll know what I mean. There comes a junction, a
crossroads. You have to choose. Jump under the train, blow your brains out.
Ibsen has it too.
Hedda Gabler.
You
can’t go on. The jackals are gathering, the starving black wolves that want to
rip your guts and gnaw your bones. Or you can avoid them. A crash, a flame,
nuclear detonation of the brain and skull. All over. Oblivion. Peace.”

Croft lifted the vodka and poured himself another glass. He sipped
it, laid it down with tender care.

“I think it was quick for him. My boy. They said it was. So young.
So quick.”

Croft sat and did not say anything. Carver did as Croft did. If
Croft finished the bottle, he might lose consciousness, or at any rate become
less
intransigent
,
could be dealt with.

If there was time.

Odd the rest of them had not come here. Something more intriguing
for them to do, obviously. Searching the building. Massing at the exits–

Would Carver have to kill Croft?

And others, would he have to kill others, too?

He was untrained in that. Self-defence to a point, of course. Not
murder.

But he reckoned he could, if he had to, and got the chance. Most
human things were capable of that.

Was Croft starting to go to sleep? His long lids were almost shut.
He slumped in the chair.

Outside, at the windows, a blink of transparent lightning.
Downhill, through the intercessionary trees, a low flat
boom
resounded.
Underfoot, faint yet not to be missed, vibration trembled the floor of the
shed, and the adjacent sheds rattled at their couplings, softly, as if – for a
second – the train would be travelling on.

Something had been blown up. Going on the impact, probably not the
entire building.

Carver went back to the window. The building was not visible.
Instead another pillar of darkness was copiously gushing upward, tinged a muddy
orange at its base. The smoke was already, blown not by any non-existent wind
but by the charge of the blast, swirling uphill towards them.

As the smoke thickened round the sheds, the tremble below ground
ended.

Croft had revived. He sat upright. He drained his glass, poured
another drink and tipped it down his throat.

“No
time to lose now,”
he announced very clearly. “Got to get out, you and I. OK, Car, OK, old man?”
And from inside the jacket, from under his arm, he drew out a slender hand gun,
and set it down by the nearly empty bottle and the empty plate.

Carver, not meaning to, half rose.

“Sit, my friend,” said Croft, his voice musical as any fine actor’s.
“Even like this, I’d be too quick for you. You have to trust me on this.”

Something –
something
– yes, Carver
trusted him on this. Croft would be too quick.

One hope. His aim might not, under these circumstances, be so very
splendid. Not now. So hold quiet, and judge the moment. The moment to dodge,
to dive – or to die.

“The thing of it is, Car,” said Croft, turned in the chair, and
watching him, black eyes wide open, burning and abnormally clear, “I do
mean
to
escape. But how about you? Do you want to come with me – over the mountain and
far away? Oh Christ, Carver,” he said, and the bright clear eyes filled up with
tears brighter than the vodka, or the eyes. “I see it now. I see it. My son. It’s
you, Carver, you, my dear son. Poor boy, poor boy– Say, then, dearest boy, do
you want to escape with me?”

It was gibberish, but not all. Carver had seen at last what Croft’s
escape plan must be. Either there
was
no other path left out of
this Place, or else Croft could no longer access the path. And so the only
route was through the gun.

“No,” Carver said. “I don’t want to escape that way.”

He spoke calmly. Reasonably.

It might not, could not work. It did.

“Good luck then, my dear son. Take care. Get out now, please. And
close the door.”

Carver got up and walked to the door and opened it and at every
step he felt the blazing bullet shear home through him into head or heart. But
no bullet came. Only the smudged greenness outside, the leaves, the patched
clearness and the smoke like fog, old fogs someone had once told him of as a
child.

And peculiarly, through the patches in the fog, an irrelevant
fact came to Carver now, that only this central shed had two steps up to it.
The others, either side, stood on slightly higher ground, and were stepless.
This was the first time he had noticed.

Carver did not look in at Croft as he closed the door.

Carver was down the two steps, just on to the turf and tree roots,
the smoke catching in his throat, when the gun thundered behind him. Carver
stalled, but the bullet had not been for him. Its noise was unconvincing even
so, the one bad special effect which, after all, had spoilt the play’s final
act.

Twenty-One

But another act was due to begin. After an interval.

In the interval, Carver walked off from the sheds, across and over
the rise, and down its further side. The acrid smoke became less here. The
woods were thicker, the scent of leaves and grass persisted. No sun showed, but
from the position of the glare that now and then seared through the overcast,
he thought it must be noon.

He sat under a tree, as he had before. He waited, not for another
theatrical surge, (explosion, shot), but perhaps for his brain to catch up. It
did not seem to. It maundered around the edges of the plot, the story-line,
veering off as if bored, to other, tinier events – an ant on a blade of glass,
indifferent to the larger world and intent on its own life-drama; an increasing
awareness of his own tiredness and physical hunger – when had he last eaten?
God knew – which the cold water had not alleviated.

However, the fact of the unfinished water bottle was what, in the
end, made him get to his feet. He needed more fluid, he thought, and besides
there might be something palatable in the fridge, aside from anchovies.

So, back up the slope Carver went, and straight up the steps to
the shed door.

Only as he opened it did he properly understand, aside from a mere
concept, that a man lay dead now in the wooden room, or dying even, if Croft
had got his last move wrong.

Croft had not. He had been infallibly perfect. The chair had
fallen again as the power of the gun propelled him from it. Croft lay a brief
space from the chair, and the gun too had separated from both the chair and the
man, done with them, and its role temporarily concluded.

One could not mistake that Croft was dead, either. He had known
what he did, had maybe practiced it earlier, (dress rehearsals). A smear of
blood had ebbed from his mouth, a fragment of a tooth. His face otherwise was
only closed, as his eyes were; more a shutter than a face: No one home. The
back of his skull, and some of its formerly internal cargo, had flown free to
strike the wall.

The smell that hung there was bizarre yet over-intimate, human
discharges of different inevitable sorts. The visual effect, despite its utter
conviction, contained an intense element of unreality. Carver found he was
not
convinced. Although he
knew
, with intrinsic built-in knowledge, as of life and death themselves,
that the procedure had been achieved and was complete.

Nor could he move. He did not have full liberty. For example, now,
he could not – or would not – go to the fridge. Somehow, but speaking aloud,
he ordered himself to the table, and grabbed the bottle of water.

Then he found it hard to leave the table.

Where was he going? To the door, and out again.

Leave this – this room – area – stage-set – leave it to the
remains on the floor.

“
Come
on
,” Carver said aloud. His voice was iron, emotionless.

My
son
, Croft had said. But not to Carver, however it had seemed. It was
to the past Croft had referred, the past that went by so slowly.

My son. Years ago. They killed him. Not enough... to bury.

Carver turned, gained the door, went out. He shut the door
carefully, and locked it with the triple keys.

The smoke was getting less. How much time had gone by now? The
sun, or its implication, had shifted. Below, through the trees, he could just
make out movement around the building. Nothing nearer. And nothing there was
distinct enough anyway to ascertain what damage had been caused.

He must get on.

Try to reach some aperture of escape, even if he had not ever
located anything on his forays. He should have taken the gun. He knew
sufficient to fire one. Go back in then, into the shed, approach the body, take
the gun.

He was not afraid or anxious about the body. It was not that. And
yet somehow it would not be possible to go back into the shed again.

Carver walked down from the rise once more the other way, away
from the building, the sheds, northward. He got now about two hundred metres.
There was a bench, not stone with griffins, only plain wood, backless, no arm
rests. Carver sat on the bench.

Drink the water. Pull himself together. (They had been fond of
that expression at the schools.) Why did no one else come in this direction?
But they would. In a while. He should have taken the gun. Or perhaps it had
held merely a solitary bullet. No, at least two – Croft had offered to kill
Carver. There must therefore have been at least one more – or did he know
Carver would not consent, or did –

A bird called from the tops of the trees, shrill and angry.

Carver drank the water.

The
interval was concluded. Carver found he had lain down full length on the bench
and slept. Had the water been drugged? No. Stop that. Exhaustion, that was all.
And carelessness – due to what? Shock? Fear? Insanity – yes, no doubt that. The
chemical or viral madness that struck this Place – introduced–

All the trees had changed to a smoky copper. Red Alert,

6th Level – only sunset. Pull yourself –

He sat up, and the empty plastic bottle fled from him,
dissociating itself, as the gun had from Croft.

Somebody was standing on the rise, where the sheds were, above
Carver, and looked over at him. The figure was painted, on its right side, a
sunset, nail varnish red. A woman. Then she dropped down, the way a cat or dog might
have that had been standing on its hind legs to perform a trick – He could not
see her now.

Carver did not shift from the sitting position. Not aware of it,
still he knew the woman was springing down the hill towards him. As she broke
through the mix of shadows and shapes on to the apron of the weedy turf, he
nodded. “Hello, Ms Merville. Out for a run?”

She had halted.

She stood knee-high in fern, wild geranium, the taller grasses.
Despite her contemporary jeans and T-shirt she had, with her long dark hair and
curiously rhythmic stasis, a look of something classical. She was slimly curved
against the light. Her hair reached her waist. Her eyes were not blue – they
were – some freakish overlay of the dying light.

“Car,” she said, “come with me, back to the sheds.”

“No,” he said pleasantly. “I don’t want to, thanks.”

“I know what happened,” she said. “I saw him through the window.
But there are six other sheds. One of those.”

“We’ve all gone fucking mental, Angie,” he said. “Better get used
to it.”

“You’re wrong,” she said. Her voice, as his had previously been,
was expressionless. “You haven’t. I haven’t.”

She was beside him. She had advanced so smoothly somehow he had
not properly seen her do it. Her hand rested on his neck, was gone. Where her
hand had touched, a coolness spangled. She smelled wonderful. Her eyes were not
blue. Her hair hung to her waist. She was like a beautiful snake.

“Get up, Carver,” she said, and now her voice was metallic and
cruel, and he had got to his feet.

The sunset stayed as they walked up the rise, a rich Burgundy red,
diluting and sinking only on the right, while they climbed.

The sun was going down on the wrong side of the sky.

Or – the sun was going down – twice–

At the top of the rise, there were the sheds again, repetitions,
facile. Carver saw the pieces of sky and the sun was already just down, and in
the proper quarter, westward, over there to the right. All else was twilight,
and greying. But here.
The rose-red varnish went on.

The central shed. To the left of them. Or course. The shed had
raised its profile through blue and green and yellow and orange. It was scarlet-crimson
now. As he had predicted before: 6th Level Urgency Alert.

“Yes,” she said. “Car, the keys work the same on every shed. Open
this one.” This was the last shed to their right, nearest to the greying west,
the seventh.

He found the keys, undid the central door of the seventh shed.
When they were in he locked the door shut. It was dark inside, nothing in it,
empty of tables and fridges and Croft.
Just over
there, the stain of red soaking in, strengthening as all the dusk went out.

Velvet black of night, with a ruby fastened to the collar.

Anjeela had brought food, ham and cheese rolls, Greek salad, and a
thermos of black coffee – these self-evidently obtained from the (probably now
defunct) take-out annexe.

He ate sluggishly, a sullen kid not wanting to give in. The coffee
had kept most of its heat. That was better. When he offered her a share she
shook her head. She stuck to the lukewarm litre bottle of water she had
brought. They all knew him, his preferences. His weaknesses. They
had
known. Now she did. Just her. And himself. If he anyway knew anything – either
about himself or anything at all.

When they had finished their meal, about half of which was
uneaten, she set the leftovers neatly to one side, covered protectively by
their wrappers. (He had seen Sara do this, never Donna. And not so many other
women. But they had never had to “Watch the pennies” as Sara had sometimes
said.) (Had Anjeela had to watch them? How did you, anyhow, watch a penny? You
would lose interest.)

In the dark of the seventh shed, with only that red neon blotch to
remind him, he watched this woman as carefully as any penny. Her own light-complexioned
darkness had an alluring visual effect. A figment of night made into a woman–

For a long time, aside from his thanking her for the food and
offering to share the coffee, he had not spoken. She had not spoken at all
since they came in here. She sat on the floor as he did, and across from him,
again faintly side-lit by the glow, that also aureoled her hair. Which definitely
was much longer. Not extensions, he thought. A wig perhaps – but the hairline
had no look of a wig. The hair had grown silky. It moved loosely when she did.
She had very beautiful hands. The paleness of the nails against the dark
skin... But neither her nails nor fingers extended themselves.

Without preface, a savage and raucous wailing and bellowing broke
out in the distance, the sound of exultant rage and agonised protest so
generally and often heard – and seen – on such TV stations as Al-Jazeera or the
British BBC.

“They’re still some way off,” she said at once, as the inhumanly
human notes quavered and abruptly fell apart to nothing. Was she reassuring
him?
Seeking
reassurance –?

“Yes,” he said, “How long for, do you wonder? Before they come up
here.”

She shrugged. “When they do, they do.”

“You’re happy with that.”

“I accept it will happen, sometime.”

“Pragmatic, then. You’re pragmatic. Christ, we shouldn’t be sat
here,
waiting
for
them–
”

“I am not,” she said, “waiting for them. I am
waiting
to
tell you something, Mr Carver. Something you will need, and ultimately must
understand. Though very likely not at first.
That will be difficult
for you.”

“Oh, difficult. Sure.”

He got up and went to one of the windows. Any lights might
possibly not be spotted through the red smoulder from the central shed. Where
the ground descended, surely only the blackness of the moonless, starless overcast
night paid out its folds. The up-and-down building, what might be left of it,
seemed now to offer no locating illumination. Even the smudges of fire had
died. It was, like this, invisible.

“Well then, Anjeela. What is it you have to tell me? You’re
pregnant perhaps–
”
He was astounded by what he had just said – redundant,
crazy – oh, crazy, of course – “rather soon to know, isn’t it?”

“No, I am not pregnant, Mr Carver. Nor, incidentally, is your
partner, Donna. She never was. As you suspected, I believe.”

“Why,” he said woodenly, “are you calling me
Mr Carver
.”

“What would you prefer?” she asked. Almost as Sunderland had said
it that time, so long ago, a hundred years, in the flat with Sara shut in the
kitchen, and the world changing so fast – so fast – “
Car
?
Andrew? Andy?
Andreas
?”

“I don’t care what you call me. I wondered why you’d
altered
what you called me.”

“I thought you might prefer more formality at this moment Mr
Carver. Given what I have to and am going to say.”