‘What do you mean, someone like me?’ said Mr Hardy with a faint smile.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Someone who understands.’
It was true. He understood more than I did, though I was the one telling him. Even though I was the one who had read the story long before.
Years later, when Ashley looked back at his first school in London, the only thing he could remember was drawing maps. He sat at the back of the class and filled every exercise book with them. There were other schools and other drawings, but maps were what he began with. The teachers tried to stop him, then gave up.
He started by copying pages from Bradley’s book that had every London street. At first Ashley wondered if London was where he belonged after all. It was a city that seemed to have no end, and within it were a hundred other places, with ancient and mysterious titles: Seven Kings, Swiss Cottage, Gipsy Hill, the Isle of Dogs. But sometimes as they rode home on the underground, Ashley close to Anna’s side with strangers’ elbows and handbags digging into his head, strange thoughts came to him. Why was there a network of tunnels under this city with trains running through it? And why did everyone go down into the dark without complaining? And when they went down, who had said that no one could look at each other? Who had invented that rule? At first he thought it was a game the others were playing, like trying not to step on the cracks in the pavement. When he asked Anna these questions, she smiled and said a lot of people wondered about it. But he had not meant it like that. He had been thinking about another place that came to him in dreams, where there were no underground trains and no crowded escalators, and these things would look like inventions out of the future.
After the plans of London, Ashley moved on to the school atlases and found that the places with the mysterious names were not just in England. You could travel across the sea or fly in an aeroplane and reach them. North was Archangel, west were Sacramento and Bitter Creek; in Australia, the place that everyone seemed to think his father came from, he found Cape Catastrophe and Ninety Mile Beach and Alice Springs. He used to ask Anna, ‘Do we come from one of these places?’ It became a joke between them. For several years of his childhood, he was convinced that the area of the city called Belgravia was a separate country.
At his next school, there were no more maps to copy. So Ashley drew other things. The old maps lay in the bottom of the wardrobe in Bradley’s spare room. And sometimes he took them out again and wondered if one of these places was where he was meant to be. He fixed his eyes on the signs when they went out into the countryside in the old Rolls-Royce, looking for places that might be the one he was searching for. But then Anna sold the car, and there were no more journeys, and Ashley forgot about other places and went on growing up.
For several years, Juliette was haunted by a dream in which she and her father walked along a riverbank in the darkness of winter. There had been a boat, and a view of the black estuary, and something before that, so vague that she could not recall it. When she asked her father, he said, Yes, that was the Thames estuary. But beyond that he would say nothing at all.
Juliette believed for several years that they led a charmed life. It was a sentence that she found in a book on her father’s shelves, and it seemed to define their luck. Whatever Richard Delmar wished for, it came to him. A white house in a leafy square, and a fathomless supply of money, and an ancient but fixable Rolls-Royce in which their driver and guard, James Salmon, took them out for drives in the rolling hills beyond the city’s far edges. Juliette did not know what her father did for a living. He sat shut up in his study sometimes, and sometimes he drove away and was gone for days. His business cards said RICHARD DELMAR, SOLICITORS. When she asked him if he had once been called something else, he said no, that had always been his name.
Perhaps the strangest of the things that came to Richard were the people who asked him for work. These people arrived at the door with bundles of their belongings and foreign accents, and Richard always sent them away. Juliette never heard what they said, but Richard always told her afterwards that they had been asking for work – that was what they came for. There was something about them all that Juliette could not fathom. She was eleven years old by the time she worked out the question she wanted to ask. ‘Papa,’ she said eventually. ‘Why do such eccentric people always come to talk to you?’
They were sitting in the drawing room. It was an afternoon in autumn. ‘What, angel?’ said Richard, folding his newspaper. It took a single question to command his whole attention.
‘The people who come and talk to you,’ she said. ‘The ones who come to the door.’
‘They are just asking for work or money.’
‘Why?’
‘One of the hazards of living in Belgravia.’
‘Where do they come from?’
‘All over the country.’
‘So how do they know to come here?’
‘Oh, I expect they just go along the street knocking on every door.’
‘They don’t. I’ve seen them. They come to our door and then they go away again.’
Richard took off his glasses. ‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to employ them, Juliette?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I just wondered, that’s all.’
‘They are lost people,’ he said. ‘Just people who don’t know where they belong.’
There was a silence in which Richard rubbed his eyes and Juliette sat on the edge of the sofa and looked at him. In her new school uniform – a green skirt and a green jacket and a strange green bowler hat that was always getting misplaced somewhere – she felt like a character out of an English comedy. ‘I don’t understand our life sometimes,’ she said.
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know. I just don’t understand it. I don’t belong here.’
‘But you’re getting on so well at Elmlea School for Girls. Aren’t you? And all your friends—’
‘I don’t have friends!’ said Juliette, throwing down the green bowler hat. ‘I don’t have friends. No one understands me! And why do I have to wear these stupid clothes? These aren’t my clothes!’
Richard replaced his glasses carefully.
‘We don’t come from here,’ said Juliette. ‘Years ago, there was a boat and a river, and I didn’t know I was English, and I want to go back.’
Richard sat up and gripped the arms of his chair. He did it suddenly and then released them, but Juliette saw. ‘I don’t know why I can’t remember,’ she said. ‘I can’t even remember my mother; that’s the worst thing of all. Why can’t we go back and visit that place? Why don’t we ever talk about it?’
‘All right,’ said Richard quietly. ‘All right, I can tell you about it.’
Juliette waited, the force taken out of her anger suddenly. ‘We used to live in a country that was very dangerous,’ said Richard. ‘And I made enemies. I was the head of the secret service. Your mother was part of the secret service too. But I put several members of a gang in jail, a gang called the Imperial Order.’
‘The Imperial Order?’ said Juliette.
‘Yes.’ Richard studied the mock-medieval figures on the rug. It was a pattern in which three hunters chased endlessly after a leaping stag, and tall maidens bestowed their smiles from the windows of a castle. ‘They came to the door one night,’ Richard said, so steadily that his voice had no feeling in it at all. ‘I wasn’t at home. Your mother answered. You were just a little girl. They came to the door with guns, and your mother …’
Juliette stopped breathing and covered her mouth with her hands. She sat like that without moving, and Richard did not go on. ‘So we left,’ he said at last. ‘The man I worked for agreed to send me to another country. When we got here, I broke with him. I threw away my papers, took all the money out of the account he left for me, and changed my name. Then we came here. It is an easy city to hide in. So there you are. That’s why we left our country. That’s why we are not going back. Because I wanted to keep you safe, Juliette. I�
�ll die rather than let anything happen to you. I swear I’ll die.’
His voice broke down altogether, and he got up and went to the window and stood there with his back to her. Juliette stared at her green hat on the floor. It looked stupid, lying there, and she could think of nothing to say. ‘What country is it?’ she said.
‘It’s better that I don’t tell you.’
‘Is there anyone else from that country here in London?’
Richard did not answer. Juliette wanted to question him further, but the story had frightened her more than she could say. And after that day, her life did not seem charmed any longer. Her father had committed a crime to keep her safe, and Juliette could not help glancing over her shoulder as she walked about the city guarded by James Salmon, as though that old fear from across the sea would somehow catch up with them.
FOUR O’CLOCK
THE FOURTH OF JANUARY
‘This is the bleakest time of the night,’ said Mr Hardy. ‘Did you know that? When it’s so long since the day before you can’t remember the sunlight, and the morning still seems a hundred miles away.’
It was true enough, but we were all on edge that night, and it was not just the darkness. Earlier, driving up towards the coast, we had come to some kind of roadblock. What its purpose was no one could say. Soldiers without uniforms had stopped us and muttered between themselves for several minutes, brandishing their rifles. Then they had searched our belongings and let us continue.
It was still dark now, and it would be dark for several hours, but the driver was already preparing the coach in the grey yard outside the door. A few stars were shining over the town, and smoke drifted low over the snow-covered ground, driven on the east wind. The little boy was pale with too little sleep. He and his mother were sitting close to the fire with their suitcases piled around them. Then, after a while, they went out to the hall to wait for the coach to set off.
‘We won’t leave yet,’ said Mr Hardy. ‘It is too dangerous to travel in the dark.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘What I don’t understand,’ said Mr Hardy,‘is why your father never studied magic.’
‘He lost all interest in it,’ I said. ‘And maybe he had a point. What can magic do to make things all right?’
Mr Hardy nodded. Then he got up, went to the window, and walked back again. His hands were twisting together all the time, and he kept nodding vaguely.
I was startled to see tears in his eyes. ‘What is it?’ I said. ‘Is there something wrong?’
He shook his head and looked as if he would speak. He looked like that for a long time. Then he said, ‘Anselm, will you go on telling me? My heart is so heavy suddenly.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘If you want to hear it.’
He nodded and sat down at the table. But his hands were still twisting underneath it. They went on like that, as if he had no power over them, all the time that I was telling him.
OCTOBER
I woke one morning to hear my mother and Leo arguing. ‘I wouldn’t suggest it unless it was for everyone’s good,’ he was telling her, nearly crying with anger.
‘What is this?’ demanded my mother. ‘You are going to leave me to bring up your children because life gets tough, Leo?’
‘It’s the law,’ he said. ‘I’m supposed to sign up. It’s the law, Maria!’
‘Leo, you know perfectly well you could avoid it if you had any wish to stay!’
‘No,’ he said. ‘No, it’s not that. It would break my heart to leave them. It would break my heart to leave you all – you know it would – but I swear you don’t know the half of what’s happening, Maria. I don’t even understand it myself.’
‘Do you want to never see us again? Is that what you’re saying, because—’
‘I didn’t say never! Maria, I didn’t say that!’
‘Anselm,’ murmured Jasmine, at my door. She slid round into the room and reached for my hand. Her thumb was damp where she had been sucking it, but I let her take my hand anyway.
‘Shh,’ I said, and stepped closer to the doorway. Through the narrow crack, I could see them, face to face on opposite sides of the room. My mother was leaning over the back of the sofa, one hand clasped to her mouth.
‘You got up too suddenly,’ Leo said, halfway between exasperation and concern. ‘I was making you a slice of toast. You are supposed to eat before you get up; otherwise the sickness hits you worse.’
‘I got up, Leo, because you told me you wanted to leave us—’
‘No,’ said Leo. ‘No, you don’t understand. Maria, you’re pale. Will you just sit down?’ He tried to push her down onto the sofa.
‘I won’t sit down!’ she said, throwing off his arms. ‘Damn you, Leo North, I’m not some invalid. Let me go!’
She looked like a girl my age when she was angry, white-faced and shaking and convinced of her own righteousness. Leo ran his hands through his hair as though he wanted to rip it out.
‘You would be better off if I went,’ he said desperately. ‘You don’t understand. You don’t see what I am saying. Please—’
‘Of course I understand!’
‘Maria, please!’
His voice was growing hysterical now; he did not sound like the father I knew. ‘You can live with your mother; there is space for you three. Without the rent to pay, I can borrow the money we need, and I’ll be back before the baby is born, so why won’t you just let me—’
‘Because we need you here, you complete bastard,’ said my mother, and slapped him hard across the face.
Leo gave up abruptly. He went out onto the stairs and lit a cigarette. A cold silence fell over the house. My grandmother tutted incredulously as she gathered up her things to leave. And when I went down to the bathroom that afternoon, I found Leo in the yard, breaking up firewood with a blunt axe and his bare hands. I watched the shabby gilt doors of a cupboard fly into pieces in the frosted air. ‘We could have sold that,’ I said.
‘It’s worth more like this,’ said Leo.
I stood there watching him destroy the cupboard with a ferocity I had not known he had. He was so far away in his silence that I could think of nothing to say. Jasmine wandered down the stairs with her thumb in her mouth. ‘Anselm, Mama is busy working,’ she murmured. ‘Can we go for a walk?’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Get your coat and scarf.’
‘It’s going to snow,’ said Leo, pausing for a moment and glancing at the yellow clouds gathering over the castle. He was out of breath, and sweat was standing out at the edges of his hair.
‘Not yet,’ I said, and closed the door on him. We put on our overcoats, and Jasmine took my mother’s red shawl, and we set out. As we left the back room, my mother kept her head bent stubbornly over the schoolbook she was marking. But her eyes gave her away. Every time Leo struck the cupboard, her eyelashes flickered, as though she was afraid.
Out on the doorstep, the wind cut sharply. Half the shops in the street had closed early today. Saturday used to be a good evening for trade, but since the Imperial Order had taken to roaming the streets, Trader’s Row had grown silent and dismal. The wind only gained in cruelty as it narrowed itself to drive through the street.
‘I would have liked to go and see Michael,’ said Jasmine sadly.
I put my hands in my pockets. ‘Yes.’
‘Anselm, look!’ she said then.
‘What?’
She tugged my sleeve and pointed to the Barones’ window. For the first time in weeks, there were no workmen sawing up planks or sanding down the shop walls. And as we turned to look at it, the lights began to come on, until the whole street in front of the shop was illuminated. The new letters on the window stood out blackly: J.W. FORTUNE, ESQ.
People were glancing out of their windows now, but no one came out. We were alone in the windswept street. ‘Look,’ Jasmine said again, pressing her face against the glass. There were no longer any grilles on either of the windows. One of them was taken up with a large painting
; in the other was a heap of gold and silver chains worth thousands of crowns, lying there like an invitation to thieves.
‘Can we go in?’ said Jasmine.
‘Why not?’ I said. ‘It’s open.’ Without thinking much about it, we stepped inside.
It was like standing in the middle of a nobleman’s house. The furniture was all old and valuable, piled high in corners and stacked up to the ceiling. The paintings above were dark oil portraits of beautiful women and noblemen standing in front of their fine houses. There was no one at the counter. I noticed a shelf of books and wandered over, but I recognized none of the titles. The Glorious Liberation and Heroes of the Iron Reign were there in several editions. While I was running my finger along the spines, someone appeared at the door of the back room.
‘Good afternoon,’ said Jasmine politely.
I turned. It was a man with oiled-back hair and a gold-toothed smile, and I knew his face. He was the man Michael and I had seen that last evening, at the jewellery stall in the market, the man with the suitcase and the Alcyrian accent who tested a gold medallion with his teeth.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said. ‘My first customers.’
‘We’re traders too,’ Jasmine told him. ‘Not customers.’
‘Oh?’ said the man.
‘We live next door. Are you J.W. Fortune?’
He shook his head. ‘That’s just what I call my shop.’
‘What’s your name, then?’ said Jasmine with an air of suspicion.
He laughed and lit a cigarette. ‘Jared,’ he said. ‘To you.’
He smoked some perfumed tobacco, unlike the cheap cigarettes that turned Leo’s fingers yellow and racked him with coughing.
‘Everyone has been wondering about you,’ said Jasmine, going up to the counter.
‘How so?’
‘Because we never saw you. At school, Billy and Joe said they climbed up the back wall and saw you making kidnapped children into meat pies to sell in your shop.’
He laughed, a slow laugh that had a studied air. ‘Who are Billy and Joe?’ he said.
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