The Ruins

by Mat Osman

  I perched on the edge of the bed in a pool of puny mid-morning sunshine and let my heart rate return to normal. There was an open laptop on a draughtsman’s table in the corner and I clicked on the Skype icon. There were no entries in the contacts tab so I tried the name Rae had given me last night: Voodoorae. There were two seconds of ringtone and then an unknown face filled the screen. It had wide-set eyes, a tangle of dirty-blond hair and wet lips. The face ducked out of sight and then bobbed up again, eyes popping, leaving me with a view of that same room from which Rae had talked. Then it bounced tiggerishly back into view.

  “Hi dad,” he said, and then was gone again.

  So this was Robin. I should have asked Rae what she’d told him. He must know that his father was away, but beyond that?

  I tried to keep it noncommittal. “Hi Robin.” He examined me, tilting his head from side to side like a bird. What do people talk to kids about? “How was school?”

  “Dadd-eeee,” he whined. “It’s seven in the morning. I haven’t been yet. Are you in England?”

  So she’d said something. My stomach lurched but I told myself we’re only talking, it’s just a game. “Yes, London, look.”

  I stepped back to give him a view of the room, feeling foolish as I did; it could have been anywhere.

  “Awesome,” he said, not really looking. “England is one of the oldest countries in the world and once ruled half the world, including here.” He said this in a rush of words.

  Another voice came through the speakers. “Robbie, who are you talking to?”

  “It’s daddy, I’m telling him about England.”

  Rae swept into view, hair up in a towel. She looked at me on the screen and her eyes flashed. Warning or apology, I couldn’t tell.

  “He knows all about England darling, he’s English, and anyway, I told you never to answer calls on the computer.” She gave me a what-can-you-do smile.

  He stuck out a lip. “It said Brandon on the screen. That’s daddy’s name.”

  “I know, but remember, you never know if someone is who they say online.”

  “I can see him, it’s daddy,” Robin replied, joyful with the power of his own logic.

  “Yes, well, I need to talk to him.”

  “OK.” He disappeared and then stuck his head back into view. “The guards at the Tower of London are called Beefeaters.”

  Rae sat. “Sorry about that, he did a project on England last semester and Bran…” She looked behind her. “Bran helped him with it.” She rubbed her neck. “And I’m really sorry about the other thing, the dad thing. I’ve not told him yet.”

  I breathed out as I felt the weight of the lie. Our connection was so fragile that I couldn’t think of a way to tell her what she was doing was wrong without breaking the spell.

  “Might it be better to tell him? It’s only going to make it harder later, surely?”

  She looked forlorn. A silence grew until she nodded to herself, eyes on the floor. “You’re right, I know. It’s a mess. But we could just do with couple of days when our whole world doesn’t get turned upside down again. Sorry.” She opened her eyes wide and stared at me. Then she craned her neck to see the rest of the room. “So, how is it?”

  “It’s… different. I mean, it’s beautiful, and it’s huge, and obviously expensive. And, the people here think I’m Brandon.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “I didn’t actually lie, they just assumed. I’m not sure why I didn’t say anything but maybe I can find out more this way.”

  “They don’t know that he’s dead?”

  “Nope, I did a quick online search last night and there’s nothing. Neither of his names get a hit in the last five years.”

  “That’s so weird. I thought gun crime was really rare over there.”

  “It is. I think they’ve decided it’s drug-related and washed their hands of it.”

  She made a face. “What he had on him wouldn’t have lasted an evening, I can’t believe it’s anything to do with that.”

  She bit at a cuticle. I’m never sure where to look in these situations. At that little bead of camera, so on their screen you appear to be paying attention? Or at their on-screen image?

  “But how are you?” I asked.

  She looked like she was actively considering the question. “I don’t really know. When I thought he’d just left me it was OK. I mean it was horrible and humiliating and I wanted to curl up and die, but it was at least a recognisable thing, you know? People leave, people get left. Perhaps not as brutally as Bran did but it happens. But this is something different. I can’t be angry at him when he’s just been shot dead. I can’t mourn him when he ran off like that. I don’t know if I’m supposed to hate him or pity him and fuck knows what I’m going to say to Robin. It all seems so arbitrary. I’m on hold.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. She was checking out the room over my shoulder.

  “Do you want the tour?”

  “I do. Is that totally shallow of me? I should dry my hair first.”

  “Well you look great from here. Like a blonde Cleopatra.” Her fringe drooped damply over her eyes and gave her a mischievous look.

  She laughed. “Cleopatra. OK, Anthony, I’ll dry after, lead on.”

  I walked her around the apartment, holding the laptop out like a waiter with a tray. I put on my best British voice. “We start in the magnificently appointed drawing room, with its Queen Anne furniture and hints of chinoiserie. Note how the proportions are to the classical model, maximising the light through an etched-glass skylight.” I made her laugh a couple of times and it felt good.

  In the music room I angled the laptop down to show her a chalk diagram. It was a spiral divided into seven sectors, Latin and alchemical symbols in each intersecting box.

  “Woah. Stop. What the hell is that?”

  I brought the screen closer so she could see it more clearly. “It’s a Sigillum Dei Aemeth. One of Brandon’s teenage obsessions. He had one drawn out under the rug in our bedroom until mum found it. It’s what John Dee used to summon angels.”

  “John Dee?”

  “A magician.” Her face clouded over. “Not a Vegas magician, but one of those guys from history, Elizabethan I think. Like a magician and scientist and spy and politician all wrapped up in one. His old house was down the road from ours in Mortlake and Brandon convinced himself that we were long-lost relatives. That’s why he called himself Brandon Dee in the first band he had.”

  “He did?”

  “He did. Until everyone started shortening it and calling him Bran Dee, so he went back to Kussgarten.”

  I walked the laptop up to the balcony where two mannequins, naked apart from a pair of enormous matching headdresses, were positioned so they were staring out of the mullioned windows. They were made with real feathers, the top a replica of a bird’s head — a hawk I thought — with a beak as smooth and black as beetle wings. The feathers continued down the back like hair; they’d reach your waist. The eyes looked wet like drops of ink but when I touched one it was dry and cold.

  “Woah again,” said Rae, “What are those?”

  They were intricately made; the feathers were oily and iridescent and scalloped into a rippling pattern. The point at the end of each down-curved beak was needle sharp. I touched it with the pad of a finger and felt how easily it would draw blood.

  “Fabulous. Put one on.”

  I turned the screen to face me. “I think they’re just ornaments.”

  “Try it, go on.”

  I lifted the closest. It was heavier than it looked and had a kind of Latex skull-cap sewn into the underside of the head. I pulled it on. It was neatly balanced, the river of feathers down the back perfectly countered the heft of the beak. The beak curved down to bisect my vision, giving everything a stereo effect as if each eye was working separately from the other. I tilted my head from side to side, immediately feeling somehow avian.

  Rae gave a shiver. “That’s really something. Is there a
label?”

  I turned the other one over and examined the skullcap. A silk label had a hand-written note on it: kussgarten 17/4/10. Underneath was a crest and the name Fogerty & Baptiste. I read it to Rae. “Ring any bells?”

  “Nope, sounds British as hell though.”

  She wanted to see a couple of things twice: the contents of the fridge and the bathroom cabinets. When I sat the laptop back down she was silent as she towelled her hair.

  “So, what d’you think?” I asked her.

  “Well it’s fucking amazing, of course. I have literally no idea how he was paying for it. But that’s all guy stuff in the bathroom, and the food in the fridge is his taste too, so it looks like it really is his place rather than him leeching off some girl.” She patted her hair flat. “I’m guessing there’s a safe. It’s going to be weird if you have to ask for the combination though.”

  I thought about it. “I’m not sure it’d be that weird. I turned up after a week away, without a key. My hair is different, I don’t know anyone and they accepted all that without a qualm. Brandon’s flakiness might be an advantage here. Hang on.”

  I picked up the old-fashioned rotary handset. The numbers bore pictures of magpies and the old rhyme “One for sorrow, two for joy”. I dialled 2 and a voice answered, “Mr Kussgarten?”

  I calmed myself. “Yes, stupid thing but last time I was here I changed the combination on the safe, it was late, I was a bit paranoid, y’know?” Kaspar made sympathetic noises. “Could someone come and reset it?”

  “Of course sir. Did you want some dinner at the same time, we have that sushi chef over from Kyoto if you weren’t in a hurry for the safe?”

  “Sure, whenever, I don’t need it now, I was just thinking ahead.”

  “We’ll be up in an hour.” And he was gone.

  “Just thinking ahead?” said Rae once I’d put the phone down.

  “I know, I know,” I said, “That might be the single most un-Brandon-like sentence ever uttered.”

  “Maybe. How about, ‘No thanks, I think I’ve had enough’?”

  “That’s good. Or, ‘I should turn in, I’ve got an early start in the morning’.”

  She had a face that you wanted to see laughing. Even on a laptop screen her animation was plain and her smile was like switching a light on. She ran her hand through her hair and, as if she’d read my mind, said, “God it’s good to laugh. One sec.” She looked around her and then got up to close the door. “Another thought. Where do you hide your stuff in hotel rooms? I mean your money and your passport, sure, they go in the safe, but the other stuff? Y’know: drugs, toys.”

  “You’ve forgotten who you’re talking to. I haven’t stayed in a hotel for twenty years and I haven’t had a drug in longer than that.”

  She shook her head. “Sorry, force of habit. You’re really not much like him are you?”

  That gave me a swell of pride.

  She went on. “OK, when I stayed in a hotel with Bran, which was once in a blue moon, then he’d always hide his stuff behind a picture on the wall.” She looked around again. “Which could be kind of a problem there though, because it’s like a fucking art gallery.”

  “Well, I’ve got all day,” I said, “shall we start in the bedroom?”

  Instantly I was blushing but she laughed, “Now you do sound like him. Let’s do it.”

  It didn’t take long. The third picture we tried, a Victorian portrait with the phrase I FEEL SO EXTRAORDINARY written across it, had an envelope wadded into its frame. I laid it on the bedspread so she could see.

  “Open it, open it,” she said, with the excitement of a kid at Christmas.

  I ungummed the flap and pulled out the contents. Most of the space was taken up by bundle of cash, American notes wrapped in red paper bands.

  “Fuuuuuck,” whispered Rae, “Look at all that. How much is it?”

  I started to count it out onto the bedspread. “Fifty, one, fifty, two, fifty, three…”

  Rae only spoke once while I counted, as I reached ten grand, when she let out a long, “No way.”

  In all there was $27,550 there. It sat piled up in neat rows on the bedspread as Rae paced around her living room. I caught flashes of her as she passed the screen. “Thirty fucking grand, thirty fucking grand in cash and I spent last night unpicking some other kid’s name out of a school uniform I got at the thrift store.” She kicked against something under the table and the picture wobbled. “How long has he had this, how long?”

  “I don’t know Rae, sorry, I…”

  She interrupted. “I know you don’t know Adam, sorry. I wasn’t really asking. It’s just…” She threw her hands up. “I don’t know what thirty thousand means to you but to us it’s… everything. It’s the mortgage for five years. It’s a holiday for Robin that’s not just to my folks’ place. It’s a car. Hell, it’s two cars.” She slumped back down. “It’s being able to sleep at night. Where the fuck did he get it?”

  I didn’t know where to start. A couple of things bothered me though. “It is dollars. So he probably didn’t get it here. Unless he was planning to send it home?”

  She snorted. “You could put that right at the top of your list of unlikely Brandonisms. ‘I’ve just made a bunch of cash, let’s send some home.’”

  I rooted around in the bag and pulled out four empty wrappers. “Looks like there was more here too, originally.”

  Rae was very quiet after that. I ran through some scenarios but in truth I had no idea what Brandon might have been up to and after the third theory had trailed away Rae said she had to get back to Robin. I stared at the screen after she’d gone. Should I send her the money straight away? I had no real use for it, though I had no idea how the room was being paid for and I didn’t dare call Kaspar again. I resolved to get her bank details when we next talked.

  I went through the rest of the apartment, not really certain what I was looking for. Each time I walked around it something new seemed to appear, as if it was changing behind my back. Kaspar came up with a handyman and the sushi, and I sat on a piano stool to eat. Colourful little squares of chilled flesh: reds and pinks and yellows like pools of paint on a wooden easel. It tasted subtle to the point of blandness. I took a Diet Coke from the fridge and a packet of crackers and stuffed them in my pocket. I needed to get back anyway. The timer on Umbrage’s various processes would be winding down about now. Soon after that the lights would fail. It didn’t strictly matter: few of the automated systems suffered from a shut down, but the idea of the city in darkness always made me antsy.

  I packed a few things: Brandon’s journal, a book on John Dee that he’d scribbled notes in, and his laptop. I was halfway out the door when I thought of his clothes. Kaspar’s up-and-down earlier had been a warning that looking facially like Bran might not be enough. I went back to the carved oak wardrobes in the bedroom and came across the only part of the flat which had any kind of order to it. It was show-home neat: suits gave way to jackets, then a brief stretch of trousers yielded to a long section of shirts while a dull rainbow of knitwear made up the far side. Below, in the drawers, was underwear and beneath that pairs of shoes in a rack. Everything looked brand new and the overbearing smell was of leather polish. It was too much choice, much too much. Some mathematical part of my brain that is forever spinning away in a quiet corner whispered to me the possible combinations. Ten suits times twenty shirts, plus a handful of jumpers. Multiply in the ties and even without the shoes and belts you had 12,000 outfits. Enough for every day of the rest of my life.

  I picked something from the middle of each section. A grey suit in some heavy, densely patterned material over a pink shirt with cuffs as starchy as cardboard. I pondered the ties. I’d never seen Brandon wear one but they were probably here for a reason. In the end I decided against it purely because I couldn’t guess what colour would go with the grey and pink. I spent ages trying to get the cuffs to work before I realised they needed cufflinks so I settled for rolling them up under the jacket. The shoes
were beautiful: sensuous, curved things the colour of calves’ liver. Though they looked new they fitted without rubbing and I blessed our shared DNA. In the mirror I didn’t look like Brandon but I looked like somebody. I felt the weight that decent clothes give you, that air of substance. It had been a good idea.

  In the lobby again I felt Kaspar’s gaze flicker over me. I thought, for a moment, of lizard’s tongues.

  “Off again so soon? Are we expecting you for drinks later?”

  It was already nine o’clock, but Brandon would keep later hours than me.

  “I don’t think so. I’m seeing a friend. I may stay over.”

  “Of course. Jay was supposed to be coming tonight, would you like me to reschedule?”

  Who was Jay? “That’d be great Kaspar, I’ll be back early tomorrow morning.”

  He smiled at that so I tried a Brandon wolfish grin. “Well, early for me.”

  He looked down at my feet. “Are those the Lobbs?”

  I’d read the name inside the shoes upstairs, thankfully. “They are, well spotted Kaspar.”

  He gave a sigh. “Beautiful, beautiful things.”

  Umbrage was running down but it was nothing drastic. The tracklights on the far wall were just dropping below the screen that simulated the onset of night, and the hillside funicular was throwing a looming shadow that slid across the back wall. I sat in the ticking semi-gloom and ate a bowl of cereal. My heart-rate spiked when I thought back through the day. There had been a slip of dislocation whenever I’d used one of Brandon’s phrases or actions. It was lying without anything being untrue, a grey area between realities that made me uncomfortable. And Robin too. That felt strangest of all. The tug of his eyes on me, his waves of need: these weren’t things to be toyed with. Rae would tell him, soon surely, and make a liar of me.

  I washed up my cereal bowl and lowered the blinds against the street-lights outside. The shimmer from Au-Hav’s monastic caves would be my nightlight. I pulled the sleeping bag hood tight over my head and tried to think of nothing at all.