Tourmaline

by James Brogden

  ‘Still…’

  ‘You know how in movies when the hero wakes up from a ten-year coma and bounces out of bed all muscled and tanned and goes off killing the bad guys who put him there in the first place? It’s nothing like that at all. I was being fed through a tube in my stomach. I was also paralysed down my whole left side. I couldn’t… you know, couldn’t look after myself. Do you have any idea how demeaning that feels? Couldn’t speak properly either. The doctors said they thought with intensive therapy there might have been some gradual improvement but that it was likely I’d need care for the rest of my life. I was a doctor, do you get it? I was the one who was supposed to be looking after someone like me.’

  ‘God, how awful.’

  ‘Yeah, well that wasn’t the worst of it.’ He saw with shock that she was crying now and moved to comfort her, but she pushed him away fiercely. ‘You need to hear this!’ She sniffed and swallowed. ‘I have kids, Bobby. Two boys, Kyle and Sam. Had them when I was too young to know the difference between a gorgeous man and a good one. They’re in their twenties now – handsome, clever boys. I told you that voices were the first things I heard – well, some of the voices were theirs, and I didn’t recognise them. I didn’t know who they were. And when I could see again there were these two strange young men with my mom, fussing over me. I couldn’t remember them, Bobby. They had to bring in photographs to explain to me who they were. I couldn’t remember them being born or growing up – that shitty, fucking bug in my brain had turned me into a drooling invalid who needed to be cleaned up by her mother and it had robbed my of my own children. Do you get that?’

  Speechless, he could do nothing but watch as she cried and talked.

  ‘I thought, fuck this, you know? I’m not strong or brave enough to deal with this. That probably makes me a coward, but nobody should have to live like that. Nobody. So I let it all slide away – I stopped doing the exercises and trying to talk or remember because I wanted it all to go away so much, and one day I fell asleep and ended up back on Stray. It was a lot easier the second time. I took the coward’s way out, I know that, but at least here I can walk and talk and remember my boys.’

  ‘Nobody can blame you for that.’

  She wiped her face. ‘Nobody but me. Whatever happens to me here – and I’ll drown myself before I let that woman have Stray – it’s preferable. But it’s still just an existence. It’s not really what you’d call a life. All of us Strays are living on borrowed time, me more than the rest because I at least had a choice. The thing I wanted to tell you is that since you’ve been here I’ve actually started to enjoy existing again.’

  ‘Well that’s a relief,’ he said. ‘For a moment there I was afraid you were going to declare your undying love for me.’

  She laughed a little at that and finally let him hold her. ‘I may be brain-damaged and terrified, Bobby Jenkins, but I’m not that desperate. The reason I told you what I did is because I don’t want you to be under any illusions of what you might be facing if you do decide to wake up. So. You needed to know that. What I didn’t tell you right at the start was how I managed to wake up in the first place.’

  ‘Was it something to do with those whirlpool things?’

  She nodded. ‘I was fishing out past the Up boom when one opened up randomly right next to Tatters. The first Tatters, that is. It was just too strong for me to do anything about, and I fell in, convinced that I was going to drown, but instead I woke up.

  ‘We call them worldpools. Yeah I know, very funny. What we think is that the worldpools somehow link this place with that place. I don’t know if they already existed and we fell through them, or if we created them by arriving here. They pop up in clusters whenever something big from Tourmaline crosses into the Flats – a bit like white blood cells attacking a virus. Occasionally one of the islanders’ boats will get grabbed by one, which is one of the reasons they don’t like us very much. All I know is that if you really are desperate to get back to the world, jumping into one of those is probably your best bet. When I came back, I found that I had this thing with me,’ and she fished out the small plastic Christmas-cracker compass. ‘It points to where the nearest one is, or is about to appear. Don’t ask me where it came from or how it works.’

  ‘Where did it come from? How does it work?’

  ‘Child.’

  ‘Seriously, maybe something about having gone from there to here and back again has given you a sense for these things, and your mind created that as a result.’

  She shrugged. ‘It works, that’s all I know.’

  ‘So why haven’t I seen any of these worldpools before now?’

  ‘How do you think you got here?’

  He thought this through, trying to remember what it had felt like, surfacing here, and the rubbish and fragments of flotsam which had surrounded him, just like the debris which had littered the water around the Spinner. ‘So,’ he said, ‘the stuff that comes up with them.’

  ‘Dreamwrack. The rubbish left over from when people dream. You know how when you wake up, you’re aware that you’ve had an incredibly vivid dream, but all you can remember are fragments?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Dreamwrack. We use it to build and repair Stray. Same with a lot of the fish around here. You dream, you wake up, and little bits of the dream go swimming off.’

  ‘Wait up. Do you mean that we’re eating people’s dreams?’ He thought about Blenny, Carmen, and Igor gobbling up the bright red beads of his blood and wondered if they were the by-blows of someone’s half-remembered dream.

  ‘They aren’t dreams themselves – it’s like if you get a burning log and whack it really hard you get a cloud of sparks; they’re from the fire but they’re not the fire itself.’

  ‘This is… this is a lot to take in.’

  ‘Well you just settle back and take it in. We’ll be home soon enough. Just take my advice: don’t try talking to anybody about it, not even Seb. They won’t be able to answer your questions, and they won’t thank you for reminding them of where they really are. Especially the Lachlans.’

  As Stray grew larger ahead of them, he tried to imagine a small raft with a woman clinging to it being flung out by the upsurge of one of those worldpools and into this pitiless environment – doing it knowingly, willingly – and began to get some idea of how awful the conscious world must have been for her. He didn’t rule out the possibility of having a closer look at one of them, but in the meantime she’d said that she was enjoying existence again because of him, and he wasn’t about to run away from that.

  9

  The sense of homecoming that Bobby felt when he saw the hub of Stray rising from the blue plain of the ocean took him completely by surprise. He saw arms raised in welcome, smiles of greeting on familiar faces: Stuart, Marjorie, Seb, Joe, and even Sophie, standing aloof on the summit. Knowing the names of places and having memories associated with them – here I learned how to plait cordage; here I dived for kelp and oysters – all flooded up in him quite suddenly and left him trying to help Allie moor Tatters with a strange wateriness doubling his vision. Even his three loyal Fishketeers were there to greet him, darting around under Tatters like dogs welcoming home their master.

  Marjorie fell on the fresh foodstuffs with cries of delight while Allie and Bobby distributed presents to the others: a pouch of evil-smelling tobacco for Seb, a bag of marbles for Joe (‘Because every boy needs marbles,’ said Bobby. ‘We tried to get you square ones so they wouldn’t roll off the dock but they didn’t have any, so be careful with these, okay?’), and a pair of mad Danae fisherman’s trousers for Lachlan in a pattern which was as close as they could get to a tartan. In all the excitement, it was some time before anybody noticed the state of Bobby’s face.

  Marjorie gasped. ‘Dear Lord, Bobby, what happened to you?’

  He’d done his best to clean off the crusted blood, but there were still several ob
vious bruises on his face and an ugly purple welt across his throat left by Jono’s cudgel.

  ‘Well,’ he said, embarrassed, ‘there may have been something of a scuffle.’

  ‘Scuffle,’ repeated Lachlan, his small eyes shrewd and instantly suspicious. ‘Between you and…?’

  ‘Just a couple of the locals.’

  ‘These locals. They wouldn’t have been wearing uniforms, by any chance, would they?’

  ‘Look…’

  ‘Oh for Chrissakes, Stuart!’ erupted Allie. ‘We got attacked, okay? Some foreign woman and her goon-squad tried to abduct me off the street in broad daylight, and Bobby saved me, for which act of bravery the local Sheriff slung both our asses in jail.’

  Marjorie’s hands flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, you poor girl! Are you alright, dear?’

  ‘Fine, thanks for asking,’ she replied, still glaring at Lachlan, who was shaking his head in despair.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ he groaned. ‘I send you off on a simple shopping…’

  ‘Okay, first?’ she shot back. ‘You don’t “send” me anywhere, Braveheart. Second, if it weren’t for me, you’d still be eating fish-heads and the fluff out of your goddam navels. Third, this was always going to happen, Stuart. I’m just lucky Bobby was with me when it did.’

  ‘No,’ Lachlan insisted. ‘If we’d kept a low profile, if we hadn’t interfered, they’d have left us alone. You must have done something on your last trip to get their attention.’

  ‘You’re saying this is my fault?’

  ‘You’re the only one of us who has any business with the outside world. You tell me.’

  ‘Well Jeez, maybe you’re right,’ she replied with scathing sarcasm. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have dressed so provocatively.’ She indicated her threadbare clothes and laughed. ‘Obviously I was asking for it.’

  ‘There’s no need for…’

  ‘I don’t see how this changes anything, Lachlan,’ Bobby interrupted. ‘The people who live on these islands have known about the Flats for ages. They must have done. Do you seriously think that none of them have ever tried to come looking for you before now? Because you’re a fool if you do. The Flats kept you safe today just like they’ve always done – the only difference is on this occasion it’s a little more in your face.’

  Seb chuckled. ‘Looks like they was in your face most of all, my friend.’

  ‘Thanks, Seb. Helpful.’

  Sophie, who had been sitting silently at the edge of the conversation, added very quietly, as if to herself: ‘Other people are the least of your problems.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Lachlan snapped.

  But she drifted back to her chamber without another word.

  Bobby dismissed it. ‘Stuart,’ he continued, ‘this changes nothing if you don’t want it to. When the bruises have gone, you can carry on with your little Swiss Family Robinson Crusoe fantasy as if nothing ever happened. Or – and here’s a thought to explore – you could try pulling your head out of your arse and dealing with the real world for a change. Either way, I’m going for a drink. Excuse me.’ He brushed past and headed for Seb’s not-so-secret moonshine.

  After that, it was easy to slot right back into Stray’s routine as if nothing had happened. Living in such close proximity to each other made it a necessity to let bygones be bygones, and as one day passed after another without any more disturbances from Sophie and no sign of threatening black smoke on the horizon, he began to appreciate what Allie had said about the appeal of not asking questions and pretending that the outside world didn’t exist. Far easier to shell oysters and tend the booms and make love to Allie than fret over unanswerable questions about where or who he was.

  So he drifted with the days, content for a while, and completely forgot Sophie’s parting words.

  Part Three

  Chapter 20

  Homecoming

  1

  ‘Sorry, mate, no kids allowed in the bar,’ said Barry, and he watched the man in the spectacles look around and down at the boy by his side as if seeing him for the first time.

  ‘Oh, sorry, no,’ he said with a little laugh. ‘I haven’t come for a drink. I’m looking for my sister Vanessa. I was told she works here.’

  Before Barry could stop her, Janey – bouncy, helpful, tattooed little goth-girl that she was – piped up cheerfully with, ‘She’s on a break. She’ll be back at one, though. Wow, is this your son? He’s big and handsome, isn’t he?’

  ‘He’s shy,’ said the man, laying a hand on the silent boy’s head.

  ‘Would you like a bowl of chips and some lemonade while you wait?’ she chirped. ‘I can serve you in the snug.’

  ‘That would be very sweet of you. Thanks.’ His tone was amiable, and his smile easy, but Barry watched his eyes behind those spectacles glancing around the bar, checking out the corners and doorways, the lunchtime drinkers, and himself, seeing that he was watched. Barry held his gaze. The Grange wasn’t a violent pub, but he’d learned his trade in the kinds of places where if the bouncers frisked you and found no weapons, they gave you one so that you stood a fighting chance – and every instinct in him screamed that this guy was trouble. Never mind that he had a lad with him.

  ‘We’ll just go through and wait, then,’ said Spectacles, talking to Janey but looking right back at Barry, and went through into the next room.

  ‘He seems nice,’ Janey said as she started pouring a lemonade.

  ‘Well done, my girl,’ Barry replied. ‘You’ve just earned yourself the rest of Vessa’s afternoon shift.’

  ‘What?! Why?’ Her face was a picture of dismay. ‘I’m meant to be off at two!’

  ‘Because if that was her brother, then I’m the Queen’s left tit. Cancel your plans, bab – I’ve got a phone call to make.’

  2

  The delivery yard of the Grange was narrow and stacked along both sides with plastic bottle crates, aluminium barrels, and overflowing skips; it backed onto a brick labyrinth of alleyways and service roads between the office buildings, lap-dancing clubs, Chinese supermarkets and multi-storey car parks which occupied the rest of the block, and despite the phone signal being a bit rubbish, it was one place where Barry could be guaranteed that he wouldn’t be overheard.

  He dialled Vessa’s number, cursing when he was put straight through to her answerphone.

  ‘Vessa,’ he started, ‘it’s Barry. Look, flower…’

  A hand closed over the phone, hard – unbelievably hard, actually – crushing his fingers against the plastic until something snapped, and he screamed. His fighter’s instincts took over, and he swung his left fist up and around, but it too was caught and crushed in a grip impossible for a normal human being. He screamed again and fell to his knees in front of the spectacled man and his boy. Incredibly, the boy was growling. It was the sort of sound he’d only ever heard in dog-fights.

  Degan looked down at the man whose fists he held and tutted.

  ‘Barry Ryan Norris,’ he said. ‘Deputy manager of the Grange public house, cocktail bar and, on alternate Fridays, burlesque club, yes?’

  ‘There’s a security camera on this yard, sunshine,’ he grunted. ‘I suggest you fuck off before I count to three. One…’

  ‘Three,’ Degan finished for him and squeezed harder. Something crunched in Barry’s left hand this time, and he howled. Blood trickled down his wrist from where Degan held him. ‘Mr Norris,’ Degan continued, ‘believe it or not, I’m not interested in you.’ The lad squatted down next to him and made that snarling noise again. Barry couldn’t concentrate very well through the pain, but there seemed to be something terribly wrong with the boy’s mouth. ‘My only concern is to get Vanessa, or Sophie, or whatever it is she’s calling herself at the moment, safely back where she belongs. I’ve been to her flat, but she’s not there – now, I could wait for her to get back, which is prob
ably the smart thing to do, but my life is generally quite tedious, and this is the most interesting thing that is likely to happen to me for some time, so I hope you don’t mind if I live it up a little.’ The hradix, meanwhile, was sniffing at the moaning man and drooling. ‘This little tyke, on the other hand, is very interested in you. Don’t blame him, though. He’s had a very long and boring trip down here. You know how kids are.’

  The hradix grinned, revealing enough teeth to make a shark jealous. The grin kept on widening, curving up to its ears.

  The only thing that Barry could think as he watched its maw widen and come rushing towards him was of an old television ad for toothpaste, in which a little cartoon man’s head flipped back a hundred and eighty degrees so he could brush right at the back. Better get a flip-top head! babbled his brain, over and over. There were no prayers, no life flashing before his eyes, no last thoughts of his mother – no consolation whatsoever. Just meaningless gibbering and then screaming blackness as his throat was torn out.

  3

  When Vessa returned from her lunch break via the staff entrance at the rear of the pub, she stopped at the sight of a man – forty-ish, shaven-headed, wearing glasses – lounging by the open back gate. He wasn’t particularly large, but he filled his skin in a way that created an impression of compressed power, and her nerves screamed instant recognition.

  Hegemony.

  ‘Hello, sweetie!’ he said brightly.

  ‘No!’ she whispered, faltering backwards.

  ‘Oh, come on, Sophie,’ Degan grinned. ‘Or whoever you are right now. Are you really going to tell me that you’re surprised? Did you actually think that you could hide from us?’

  ‘I’m not… how… but you’re not a doctor.’

  ‘That’s right. I’m not from the hospital. I’m from a different department – what you might call the ‘bring ’em back alive’ squad. You’ve been promoted, sweetie! I’ll tell you all about it on the way home. Come on,’ he reached to take her elbow. ‘The car’s just around the corner.’