The Fetch

by Robert Holdstock

  At school! Not in the pit, then. Françoise said, ‘I was wondering … has he fetched anything in the last little while? Has there been any sign of his talent returning?’

  ‘None at all,’ the other woman said stiffly, and Françoise had the very human sense that Susan Whitlock was not telling the truth.

  ‘I was thinking not of valuable things, but rocks, or earth, stones … wood … that sort of thing.’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Susan. ‘No stone or wood that I’m aware of.’

  Françoise hesitated, then prompted, ‘Something very simple, like a black ball of stone, chipped and shaped to be sharp on one side … ?’

  ‘I’ve seen nothing like that.’

  ‘I see. Well, thank you.’ She hesitated, made uneasy by the hostility pouring down the phone line. Lee’s presence beside her was reassuring, his hand resting gently on her shoulder as he listened. ‘Susan … ?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘May I come and visit Michael? Perhaps later this evening? I’d like very much to talk to him, to ask him some questions.’

  There was a sigh of irritation, or perhaps frustration. Then came the answer, curt and to the point: that the Whitlock family had some sorting out of its own to do. Perhaps Madame Jeury wouldn’t mind waiting a few days. Then, yes … by all means come and visit. But not today.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Staring at the mess around her, the evidence of an explosion caused by a boy reaching through time and space, Françoise came to the odd and exhilarating conclusion: Michael was fetching from the future. He had reached back from some future time to this moment in 1989 in London.

  The event – the presentation of a black stone trophy to his parents – was still to occur in the life of the Whitlocks.

  Françoise couldn’t know when exactly the event would occur, but as she discussed the idea with Lee she made the assumption that it was still some months off.

  THIRTY

  At the end of the class, at the end of the day, Michael was called to the teacher and told to wait behind with Carol. Then they were taken through the school to the car park and personally delivered into their mother’s care. Susan hugged him and opened the door for him, and at once he felt cold. He pulled away from her, his arms rigid by his sides. The chatter and laughter of the pupils faded and that buzzing returned, the angry buzzing that blanked all his senses, except for the sea and the beach, and the red sandstone caves.

  He watched his mother suspiciously. As she drove from the gates he looked for the man in the brown jacket, but didn’t see him.

  Daddy’s friend had not returned, then, to try and tease more treasures from him.

  At home he was again surprised and suspicious when he was taken straight to the house and told to stay inside. Carol seemed content enough, despite the day being still bright and hot. Michael wanted to go to his castle, but his mother locked the back door and started to make tea.

  ‘I’d like to go and play outside,’ he said grimly from the kitchen doorway.

  ‘Not until your father gets home. I want you to stay indoors.’ She looked round at him as she stirred the saucepan, and smiled. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that Tony Hanson was a bully? Why didn’t you tell me you and he aren’t friends?’

  The thought of Hanson made Michael’s blood run cold. The memory of nights at Aunt Jenny’s made him shiver, remembering the creaking of floorboards as the Hanson boys would come into the room and try to steal his clothes; or the kicks beneath the table during supper; and the simple, increasing sense of menace whenever he stayed there.

  He had never said a word. He had always hoped that he would become invisible, that the boys would cease to see him, aware only of his shadow as it passed fleetingly across the floor or the garden.

  ‘Well?’ prompted Susan. ‘Are you deadly enemies?’

  ‘I don’t like them. They’re rough.’

  Jenny’s boys rough. And Jenny and Geoff so reasonable, so liberal … Susan’s mind couldn’t cope with the contradiction.

  ‘Well, you won’t have to go back. I won’t send you to stay there any more. All right?’

  ‘Thank you. May I play outside now?’

  ‘No. Not until your father comes home. Don’t you have homework to do?’

  Grimly, Michael nodded and went up to his room.

  They had tea. The sun was still warm and the quarry, and its access to the ancient shore, beckoned and called to Michael.

  From his room, as soon as he had eaten, he shinned down the wall outside and ran, head low, down the garden to the greenhouses.

  Inside, he checked the tomato plant where he had hidden the heavy gold disc. It was undisturbed, and when he tried to lift the large pot it was as heavy as yesterday. The treasure was still inside.

  He straightened the canes a little, and made a tighter tie of the long, fruit-laden stems of the plant. Perhaps he had been wrong. Perhaps his mother hadn’t, after all, found his secret.

  But the nagging anger wouldn’t go away. Her smiles, her warmth, the way she had looked at him. She was up to something. She knew something and was keeping it quiet. There was a change in the wind, and Michael experienced apprehension in anticipation of what that change might be.

  When he got to the quarry he saw at once that someone had been here. The bushes were bent and broken in places. Someone had used a trowel to dig into the earthfall at the base of the chalk wall. Michael, trained to see signs of interference from outside, could see the footprints of a man wearing large shoes. They led through and round the pit, approached the concealed tunnel, but hadn’t entered the cave.

  Brown Leather Jacket had been here, then. Daddy’s friend, snooping and searching, trying to find something that Daddy had missed. More gold for Daddy. More pretty things for the art market. More money for Daddy.

  Heart racing, his face flushed, Michael scanned the dark edge of the quarry, making certain that no one was up there watching him. Then he shed his clothes and found the chalk paste with which he painted his body. Pressed against the chalk wall, he summoned the gates and walls, then moved, invisible, through his private world, checking the iron, wooden and stone markers that guided the path through the defences.

  Chalk Boy’s call delighted him. Michael turned to the wall and the whiteness dissolved into the long, shining passage. Sea spray wafted from the distant ocean, and he could hear wind, loud, strong, swirling. He ran along the tunnel, passing the middle place where normally he would be stopped, there to peer in frustration at the glimpsed world beyond. But now he walked on, the sound of the surf louder, the howling wind louder. Above these sounds of atmosphere and ocean came the stark, disjointed cries of the creatures that flourished in this world.

  For the second time, but more controlled, Michael stepped into the past, his lungs filling with the foetid atmosphere, his face wet with the dashing spray that came from the billowing waves. The sand was soaking. The caves in the red sandstone glistened and gleamed and he saw much movement there, the shadows of souls, the limbo creatures among whom lived Chalk Boy. Great black clouds whirlpooled above his head, and distantly the air was alive with purple light, flickering and discharging energy.

  The shore was thick with flexing green and orange weed. The bones of some decaying animal, vast in length and girth, were scattered whitely among this restless sea-wrack.

  Chalk Boy’s shadow flowed through the soaking air, disturbing the weed and the sodden sand, surrounding Michael and blinding him for a moment. Michael felt the grip on his neck, but less ferocious this time, and he turned from the storm shore back into the tunnel.

  Rain sleeted across a silent, grassy land. He saw a distant wood, dark beneath glowering clouds. The shrine, with its low, turf roof, was beginning to sag, its walls leaning heavily, its wicker doors already broken and scattered. The tall figures in wood, the guardians, were featureless now, with time, rain and rot. The iron chain that had tethered his dog was rusted, but still hung, moving slightly in the rain, from the sagging beam that ran a
cross the door. The mud was heavy on his feet and he moved in slow motion towards the empty, silent shrine. A fire had burned here once, a great fire, kept alive by men, kept burning for the sake of hope. Now the land was barren, the men gone, the women gone, even the animals fled to the great wood, where they had returned to their wild ways.

  He dragged his feet through the mire, slipping on the mud, tripping on the coarse tufts of grass. The rain was icy and miserable, a drenching, driving downpour that saturated him to the very bone. But he stooped to enter the shrine, and the Grail gleamed and glistened there, its crystal face bright, the face of the Fish aware of him through its closed eyes, the fins with their fingers spread in welcome, drawing him to the Glory, to the memory of the life that had been sacrificed for the sake of a greater life.

  Fisher King. Michael reached for the vessel, struggled to hold it, stretched his arm to fetch the shining vessel, but could not approach close enough to it. His fingers spread wide like the fingers of the King etched in the glass. His mouth opened in a cry of pain like the mouth of the Fisher King, opened and calling, calling for release from the Wasteland that was his realm.

  The Grail was so beautiful. It scintillated. It was so welcoming, so urgent, so serene in its simple shape. The Grail of Jesus, the cup of an earlier age that had been used to symbolize Jesus’s own sacrifice …

  He fetched. He fetched with all the will and strength in his tormented muscles, but his hand reached into another place and touched living wood … He gripped the wood …

  He fetched it back …

  Earth exploded around him, and he was flung across the pit, bleeding from the mouth, holding the flexing, whirring figure, which blinked at him and grinned.

  He picked himself up from the ground, and spat mud and blood from his mouth.

  So close. He had been so close!

  The figure was a clockwork puppet, its mechanism in full, noisy function. Its head turned, its legs worked, its eyes opened and closed, and below its green trousers something rose and fell. It smelled of tobacco. In a part of his memory Michael could hear men’s laughter, and smell the fire, and sense the small, candlelit room and the wide table and the shadows of the men sitting there, suddenly disturbed and terrified when a hand had reached among them. Wherever he had ‘fetched’ had been away from the depressing rain of the shrine, where the Grail had been shown to him. He tossed the dying clockwork doll into the deep tunnel in the chalk, then tugged his clothes on, covering the chalk on his skin.

  The rope ladder had broken a few days before and he left the quarry through the old entrance. It was getting grey as dusk approached and he watched the house, across the field and the low mound of the barrow, with nothing but a cold, dead feeling in his heart. He’d be in trouble, of course. He’d disobeyed his mother. She would be angry, then she’d withdraw as always, and fuss over Carol, or over her lessons, and later in the evening she would cry, and no matter what he said, he would get the sharp edge of her tongue.

  At the garden gate he began to feel desperate. The pounding in his head grew louder, and the sudden, unexpected gentleness from his mother began to nag at him again. He started to feel angry. It was such a hard thing to understand. His jaw was clenched, and so were his fists, and he spent a long minute staring at the path through a red and blurred gaze with which he had become too familiar, listening to the thunder in his skull, and remembering the taunting cries of Chalk Boy whenever he had felt sad with his parents’ behaviour.

  He looked up towards the house and frowned. He could see his father in the sitting room (so he had come back from Scotland!). Carol was sitting at a table, in the light by the open French windows. His father picked her up and swung her round. Carol seemed delighted, her arms waving with pleasure. He saw his father put her down and ruffle her hair, then stand, for a while, staring over her shoulder at her painting.

  Michael looked down again. The red rage wouldn’t recede.

  Now he was mocked again. Carol. Always Carol. Swung in the air, pampered, loved.

  It wasn’t Carol’s fault! It wasn’t Carol’s fault. Don’t be unfair to Carol.

  But the rage remained, and his head thundered, a sea pulse, a wave pulse on a distant shore. He felt sick.

  Then he heard his mother’s voice, raised, he thought, angrily. And then the deeper tones of his father. He walked along the path, looking for them, and realized with a surge of fury that they were now in the greenhouse. He ran towards the glass windows and could see their shapes standing there, blurred, dark outlines through the dirty panes.

  Gold glinted. It flashed in the dying sun more brightly than a torch.

  They had found his disc!

  His father laughed, an almost hysterical sound, the sound of delight. Inside the plant house, the shapes of his parents hugged, then drew apart. He heard his father say, ‘It doesn’t matter. Not for the moment. As of now I’m going to be the best Daddy in the world to young Michael. I’m really going to tell him stories. He deserves it.’

  The words filled Michael’s ears and made him howl silently, his whole body shaking with rage.

  I’m really going to tell him stories …

  You never loved me! All you care about is Carol. You can’t even see me. All you see is the treasure!

  As of now … best Daddy in world …

  You think that’s all I did this for! And you sent your friend to bully me. You just want … you just want … you just take …

  Michael’s silent scream almost erupted into the world, but it was a shadow scream, adding to the cries of the creatures that prowled the sea’s edge in the million-year-old past. His body shook and shuddered, a sort of rigor mortis in his muscles so that nothing functioned save for the nerves themselves, which made him a trembling, grimacing statue in the garden, a point of rage that was soundless but slowly splitting.

  He saw a gleaming stone, a polished stone, black and smoothed, a heavy piece of ancient rock, smoothed by skilled hands, used in brutal ways … and he reached for it, reached through the sluggish air, fought against the thick barrier, fingers flexing and grabbing to fetch the stone.

  His hand touched it with such ease. He closed his grip and fetched with all his strength! He could hear his name being called distantly … but he ignored the sound.

  He yanked it back, stumbling as it came to him, keeping his grip upon the heavy object and waiting for a moment as the pulse and thud of air and detritus from the past dissipated, leaving him stunned, but clear in mind.

  Without even thinking, acting only on impulse, he twisted his whole body back. Like a discus thrower he flung the stone with all his strength towards the greenhouse, not even waiting for it to find its mark before he had turned and fled the garden. He heard the crash of rock through glass. Still he ran, drawing the evening air around him, sucking the tunnel in his mind closer to him, drawing in the sea and the sand and the ancient storm, dragging all of this behind him like a cloak, a looming, billowing cloak, which slowly folded to cover him, falling across the silent pit like the blackest of nights, settling upon the chalk and the brushwood, and sinking in upon itself, taking everything away from the world except the past.

  The past danced around him in a blur of brightness and shape. He laughed at the splendour and exhilaration of this sudden vision. He reached out and touched here, fetched there, brushed his hands through rooms, tombs, through woods, across faces, across surfaces and over the warm grasslands of lost times. Where he reached he touched: and his eyes saw, and his ears heard, the fears and screams of those who felt this spectral caress, reaching to them from beyond the thinness of the air itself.

  Michael’s castle was complete.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Richard had called Susan from St Albans to confirm that he would be arriving later than anticipated, at about seven in the evening, as he had a visit to make. He would say nothing more. Susan was waiting for him by the gate as the car turned into the drive. She was apprehensive and physically cold and the sight of her husband induced i
n her an emotion of confusion and fear. They looked at each other like strangers for a long while, then hugged with cautious detachment. But the embrace grew tighter, and perhaps there was a real need on both sides. They didn’t kiss, but neither seemed willing to release the other. After a moment Susan drew back and stared at the partial wreck of a man that her husband had become, flicked at his lapels and shook her head, then started to cry.

  ‘You look terrible,’ she said through the tears.

  ‘A good bath, a shave, a change of clothes, a good talk … I’ll be my old self. I know it sounds pat to say that, but we really do have to talk. And I really am back to normal. It’s just …’

  She looked at him moistly, then shook her head. ‘Richard – you’re not back to normal. I don’t suppose you ever will be.’

  He looked shocked, but then dissolved into acceptance. ‘I’ll try, love.’

  ‘I know you will. But let’s have no illusions, shall we? Neither of us is “back to normal”. I can’t see us ever getting “normality” back. Not ever. No lies, Richard. No more lies.’

  ‘No. No more lies.’

  ‘For Michael’s sake, if no one else’s. He’s in trouble? Is he in real trouble?’

  ‘Possibly. But I’ll get us out of the situation. Even if we have to get the police involved, I’ll get us clear of this mess.’

  He thought how pale Susan looked, and found himself touching her cheeks with trembling fingers. She had lost weight, and her eyes were tired grey hollows. Her hair smelled of sweat, and he guessed that she, too, was letting herself go a little.

  Susan and he would deal with their own relationship later, however, and at great length. It would be a long process of healing. For the moment, Michael was on his mind.

  He asked after both his children.

  ‘Oh, Carol’s fine, of course. Drawing and painting as usual. And yes: more enthusiasm than talent. But who needs Picasso in the family? Michael’s locked in his room.’

  ‘Locked in his room? Why?’