‘You know what Uncle said … about using your powers for things like that …’ my mother murmured.
‘You look so ill,’ I said. She did not answer but just lay there, looking grey and sick. I rested my hand on her forehead. It was feverish, in spite of the cold.
‘Anselm, you’re shaking,’ she said. ‘Why are you shaking?’
‘I’m not.’
‘You are. Look at me.’
It was the first time I had met her eyes, and she started. ‘What happened to your face?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I broke my tooth at school.’
‘Are you hurt?’
‘No. It’s just one tooth.’
‘Is that all? Are you certain?’
‘Mama, I’m more worried about you,’ I said. ‘Shall I go for Father Dunstan?’
‘I don’t want to trouble him.’
Footsteps came up the stairs at that moment, and we all glanced round. ‘It’s only me,’ said my grandmother, approaching the door. ‘Why are you burning so much coal? It’s like a Christmas bonfire in here. I wonder you can afford it.’
My mother fell back on the pillows and let out a groan that my grandmother surely must have heard. It did not deter her. She came in and scolded and fussed until Jasmine went stamping to her room in tears. But in the end, my grandmother’s arrival was what decided things. She would not listen to my mother’s protests. She found the midwife’s old address, crumpled under a pile of letters in the desk in the back room, and told me to go and fetch her.
The midwife lived in an apartment like ours, at the top of a house on Paradise Way. She came with me at once, throwing her shawl about her shoulders. ‘Who is treating your mother?’ she asked as we walked. ‘Is it Doctor West? Or Doctor Sarah Law, I suppose, if you live on Trader’s Row.’
‘No one,’I said. ‘I mean, the priest comes to see us if we are ill, but no one else.’
She frowned and asked me nothing else the rest of the way home. She was a small woman and younger than my mother, and she had grown shabbier since Jasmine was born, but there was something of my grandmother about her; perhaps that was why my grandmother approved. She ushered Jasmine and me back into the stairwell as the midwife came in, then closed the door on us.
‘Come on,’ I said. I took Jasmine’s hand, and we trailed down to the back room.
‘Why can’t we stay?’ said Jasmine, kicking the stove. ‘It’s my brother.’
‘Jasmine, come away from there,’ I said. I began boiling water for tea. ‘Tell me about your day at school.’
‘I don’t want to talk about my stupid day at school. I already told you about it.’
‘Did you practise your play? You didn’t tell me that.’
‘Be quiet, Anselm. Let me listen.’
I fell silent. We could hear their voices above us, but not the words. ‘I wish Papa was here,’ whispered Jasmine.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m worried about him.’
‘I know, Jas.’
I tried to hear their voices again, but it was no good. ‘But he will be all right,’ I said. ‘He always is. Papa is luckier than he looks.’
I had thought that would make her smile, but it didn’t. ‘The thing I’m worried about with Papa,’ she said, kneeling in front of the stove so that its light shone in her grey eyes, ‘is that he doesn’t …’ She looked up at me earnestly. ‘He doesn’t want to live.’
‘Doesn’t want to live?’ I said.
‘Yes. He’s not like you and me and Mama. He doesn’t want anything for himself. So he needs to be with his family, because otherwise what does he have any more? He doesn’t care about being all right like everyone else does.’
‘So what do you think we should do, Jas?’ I said, with the sinking truth in my heart that she was right. ‘If you tell me what to do, I’ll listen, but I don’t see what—’
‘We can go to Holy Island,’ she said. ‘We can go and find him. That’s what we can do.’
She was gazing up at me, waiting for a response. I could tell she had been saving up this question. I shook my head. ‘Mama is ill now. It’s a long journey.’
‘How long?’
‘Two days or more.’
‘When the baby is born, we could go.’
‘But when the baby is born …’
‘I know. Anything might happen.’ Jasmine poked the coals in the stove disconsolately. ‘Anselm, when will Michael write to you and tell you his address so we can send him a letter? Everyone goes away. Aldebaran and then Michael and then Papa. When will Michael write?’
‘I don’t know!’ I said.
‘Don’t shout at me.’
‘I wasn’t shouting,’ I said, too loudly. But I felt beleaguered by her questions, and my tooth still ached, and in pieces in the stove was a demand for three thousand crowns we had no way of paying. We fell into silence again. But I did not want to listen to their voices above us, not knowing what they said. ‘Here,’ I told Jasmine, picking up her copy of The Beggar King from the sideboard. ‘Let’s practise your play.’
‘I don’t want to,’ she said.
‘Go on. I want to hear how it’s going.’
‘No.’
‘Please. It will make the time pass faster.’
She began reluctantly. I took all the other parts. While we were still reading, my grandmother appeared. ‘You can come back in now,’ she said. The midwife passed us on the stairs and went out by the side door. My mother was lying on the sofa under blankets, tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘What is it?’ I said, and alarm began to constrict my throat.
‘The baby is not well,’ she said. ‘It is much too small.’
‘Maria.’ My grandmother gave a quick sigh. ‘I have told you already – I’m sure it is nothing to worry about. The midwife said this was a normal winter fever.’
‘But that it could be dangerous. That’s what she said. It could be dangerous because the baby is small! And I have to give up work, and how will we pay the rent then, and I’m so afraid—’ My mother’s voice rose and choked her.
Jasmine reached out and tried to brush the tears from her face. I could think of nothing to say. I felt like it was filling the whole room, my helplessness, and suffocating me and everyone in it.
‘But it will be all right?’ I said at last. ‘Won’t it, Mother?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You will be all right?’ I said.
She did not answer. Jasmine started to cry too.
‘Of course it will,’ said my grandmother. ‘Maria, this is an overreaction.’
We sat dismally in front of the fire, my mother lying very still on the sofa, with the tears leaking occasionally from her eyes. Jasmine kept trying to bring her cups of water or read to her or bring her toast balanced shakily on a plate, until my grandmother scolded her and made her cry again. And all the time the shop stood closed, and our debts weighed heavier. Eventually I could not stand it. ‘I am going out,’ I said.
‘Where?’ said my grandmother.
‘The markets. I want to sell a few things Leo left. I will not be long.’
I took the best jewellery out of our shop window and made the circuit of the stallholders in the new square. There was one merchant in the corner who everyone avoided, a woman who sold relics of Lucien’s regime – old army badges and paintings of war criminals and books with titles that proclaimed war and revolution. Out of desperation, I tried her; she was the richest of the stallholders now. She gave me half a crown for a chipped bracelet. ‘Good fortune to you,’ she called after me as I left. To be shown charity by a collaborator was too much. I dropped the half-crown into a beggar’s cup as soon as I reached the next street.
Carts rolled past me, piled high with people’s possessions. They were still leaving the city. In some of the streets, there were now lines of TO LET signs, and the houses stood locked and barred. The snow began to fall onto the grey drifts that still lay in the streets. No snow remained clean in this city; the smoke and th
e dust clung to it within an hour of falling. I thought about where to go. Standing in the snow, a kind of purpose came over me. It was too cold to stay still and deliberate. I started for Dr Keller’s house.
I stood for several minutes in the street outside, looking up at the black front door. Then I walked up the grand old steps and rang the bell. A maid in uniform opened it, a girl about my age. ‘I want to see the doctor,’ I told her. She disappeared, throwing her hair over her shoulder, and left me in the snow.
Police on horseback went by, the horses’ hooves falling heavily in the slush of the road. I waited, fixing my eyes on the boot scraper at the top of the steps. It matched the plaque beside the door with the doctor’s name on it. That boot scraper was shaped like the gate of a country house, done in some brassy metal that gleamed against the snow, and there was even a little brass bird on the corner of the gate.
The maid appeared at the door again at last, and frowned at me for looking too closely at the scraper. ‘The doctor won’t see you,’ she said. ‘He is with his family, and his hours of work are over.’
‘I don’t want him to come out,’ I said. ‘I am here to talk to him.’
‘About what?’ said the housemaid, refining her high-class accent.
‘He is our landlord. There’s some mistake in the accounts. That’s all.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t fetch him.’
‘No,’ I said. She was already halfway to closing the door. ‘Listen, you have to. It won’t take long, but I want to talk to him. You have to fetch him.’
‘What is all this?’ said the doctor, appearing behind the maid in the hallway. He regarded me in silence for a moment, then stepped out the door and pulled it closed behind him. He had a glass of spirits in one hand. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s perishing cold. What is it?’
‘I came because … sir …’ I hesitated. ‘Thank you for treating my mother earlier.’
‘It was a favour to my neighbour, that’s all. Look, why are you here?’
‘That letter you gave me,’ I said. ‘This final demand.’
‘Yes. I know what it says.’
‘I think there was a mistake,’ I struggled on. ‘I mean, not a mistake, but I think …’ He watched me in silence. ‘Sir, you must know we can’t pay it. I came here to ask you to treat us fairly. The rent is five times what it was. You must know we can’t pay.’
‘Mr North, your finances are your own concern. I charge what I charge.’
‘But you must know—’
‘Look,’ he said, lowering his voice and stepping closer to me. ‘You are the boy who assaulted my son, aren’t you? Answer me.’
‘I didn’t assault him,’ I said. ‘He was the one who started it; he said things about my family he had no right to say.’
‘Listen to me very carefully,’ he said. ‘I want you off my property in the next five seconds.’
‘I’m not on your property!’ I said.
‘You are on my steps. I have seen the bruises on my son’s face, and I will be taking it up with the police.’
‘Look at my tooth, then,’ I said. ‘Look what he did to me – it’s much worse. And he said things about my father.’
‘Oh, you people are all the same,’ he said with a kind of
exasperated smile.
‘What people?’ I said. ‘What people are all the same?’
‘Goodnight.’ He slammed the door and drew the curtain across behind it.
‘What people are all the same?’ I said again. The door remained shut. No one in the house had heard. I sat down on the steps. I had not meant to say what I just had, at least not the way it came out. I had intended to reason with him, to apologize for giving John a black eye and make him see that it was not justice to raise our rent because of it. Pointless schemes drifted in and out of my mind. I thought about walking to the palace gates and telling the guards I was a relative of Aldebaran’s and asking the king to help us. But the king’s debts were worse than ours. Dr Keller’s probably were, too, I thought. Half the wealthy in this city lived off money that was not theirs. And that made me think of Michael, because it was like something he would have said. I wondered if I really could go and find him when all this was over.
The thought passed and the snow fell harder. I got up and started down the steps.
As I went down, I heard voices laughing behind the yellow glow of the curtain. I stopped. ‘Anselm Andros?’ John Keller was saying and laughing as if his ribs would break. If I had not heard that, I might not have done what I did. It was a stupid thing to do; I knew it even at the time. I walked home and waited until everyone had gone to bed. Then I put on my overcoat and an old hat of Leo’s and covered half my face with a black scarf my mother used to wear to church. I went back to Dr Keller’s with a file and a crowbar. I dug the boot scraper out of the old concrete it stood in and prised the brass plaque with his name off the wall. It was not hard to do. Then I took them to the all-night pawnbroker’s and sold them for scrap metal. Behind the curtain, they never stopped their laughing.
I had to pass by the auction rooms to go home, and I could hear shouting and stamping from an upstairs room. I stopped and listened. I thought I would go in for a while and listen to the trading, and maybe my heart would be less restless. I was already regretting what I had just done. The clocks were striking ten, but what sounded like a packed auction was taking place inside.
I went in. The building had a dingy stairwell with barred windows, and when no one lit the lamps, it was impossible to find your way up without stumbling. But I made out a square of light around the third door at last. I opened it and went inside. The room was crowded. People sat in front of the walls on benches and old crates and stood packed in the centre. There were rifles everywhere and blue flags hanging from the ceiling. At the front, under a guttering gaslight, a man was shouting from the stage. I saw all this before I realized that it wasn’t an auction. Then it was too late; they had shut the door behind me. ‘That’s right!’ shouted the man on the stage. ‘Come in, come in.’
Suddenly all the eyes in the room were on me. He regarded me for a moment, then resumed his shouting. ‘The Imperial Order are coming,’ he said. ‘And when they do, those with loyalty will be rewarded. There is a reason why our nation is poor. It is not because of Lucien’s government. It’s because of the king and his followers. The Alcyrian government knows this!’
I had frozen when the crowd was watching me, but now their eyes were fixed on the stage again. There were some hoarse shouts that might have been approval or disagreement. Under the harsh light, I could see the sweat rolling down the sides of the man’s face, like some picture of a martyr. ‘That’s right,’ he said, licking his lips and glancing around at us all. ‘That’s right – the Alcyrian government continue to demand reparations from the king, not because they want to steal our wealth but because they want to redistribute it.’
I did not understand this theory, but it seemed to grip the crowd like an infectious disease. After each sentence, the cheers grew stronger. They made the lamps shiver in the ceiling and rattled the blacked-out windows. ‘Redistribution,’ shouted the man. ‘It has already begun, and I encourage you to further it. But when the Alcyrians come, they will help us. They want to take back what belongs to the true nation. They want to take it from the Unacceptables, the priests, the foreigners, the homosexuals, and when they come, they will give it to those who deserve it.’
There was an outbreak of cheering so loud it made me shiver. People glanced at me because I was not clapping. But that cheering had brought me back to my senses. I turned and pushed through the crowd, not slowing when people elbowed me, until I reached the door. ‘Leaving, are you?’ shouted the man from the stage. ‘Stay and hear the next speech at least.’
I went out and closed the door behind me. Leaving took all the courage left in me, but I had no choice. I knew that if I had stayed, I could never have spoken to Michael again.
Fear overtook me after that brief act of defiance
, and I ran down the steps and out into the dark. As I turned down an alleyway, someone caught me by the shoulder. ‘Anselm,’ he hissed. ‘What were you doing at an Imperial Order rally?’
For a crazy moment – I don’t know why – I thought it was Leo. But I turned and saw Jared Wright there instead. ‘Jared?’ I said blankly. The cigarette smoke was different; I should have known.
‘I wasn’t at an Imperial Order rally,’ I said.
‘You just came out of one.’
‘No, I didn’t. It was a mistake.’
He raised one eyebrow.
‘I didn’t mean to go to it,’ I said. ‘I thought it was an auction, so I went up. I came straight back down again when I saw.’
He looked at me for a moment, taking in the hat and the black scarf and the raised collar of my overcoat.
‘Honestly,’ I said. ‘I know it doesn’t look like it, but I went by mistake.’
He hesitated, then threw his head back and laughed so hard his gold teeth flashed. ‘My God, Anselm,’ he said when he had finished. ‘You really did think it was an auction.’
I waited while he continued laughing and stamped the snow off his shoes. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you home.’
‘I don’t need taking home, sir.’
‘Come on, I’m going that way anyway.’
We walked without speaking for several streets. The stars had come out overhead. I made out the one Leo had shown me – the orange star in the sign of the bull that was supposed to be Aldebaran. Or perhaps I had mistaken it. It was shining very brightly tonight, like a fire far off on a hill. Jared might have noticed it too, because he glanced up, then said, ‘I don’t suppose Maria has told you to avoid me?’
‘No,’ I said.
He grinned as though he did not believe it. But his face grew serious again. ‘So what did you think?’ he said.
‘Of what?’
‘The rally.’
I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’
‘They are not sane,’ he said. ‘The whole lot of them are not sane. It worries me, and I don’t mind telling you. I’ve pledged half a million crowns to the government. Not that I support the king, but his advisers are better than these maniacs.’
Voices in the Dark Page 24
