by Nina Allan
Owen smiled. An Unknown Country was exactly the kind of book Anthony would enjoy. Anthony had no memory of their mother, but of all the Andrews brothers it was Anthony who was most like her, a dreamy, mercurial child who had suffered from nightmares throughout his childhood and was afraid of the dark.
“It’s all this rubbish you’re reading,” their father had once insisted, after a particularly bad episode. He had threatened to confiscate Anthony’s books, a jumbled assortment of no fixed hierarchy, in which Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein sat side by side with Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and Wells’s scientific romances rubbed shoulders with Darwin and Freud. Anthony had refused to hand the books over, curling his body around them protectively, as if they were living things.
“Oh, leave him be, Pa,” Stephen had said. “He’ll soon grow out of it.”
Anthony had grown out of the nightmares, but he had never grown out of the books, and Owen was seized with the desire to buy the John novel and send it on to him. He now knew it might be some time – maybe years – before he saw Anthony again, and it seemed important to let his brother know that he was thinking of him. He looked around for an attendant, someone he could pass the money to, but there were none about and after a moment he spotted a metal cash box bolted to one end of the stand. A slip of paper taped to the side invited customers to leave a donation.
Owen dropped a shilling through the slot and tucked the book under his arm. Five minutes later the train came. Owen settled back in his seat and began to read the John book, simply for something to do, but his eyes kept falling shut and he was asleep before the train reached Portslade. He awakened briefly at Haywards Heath, where they were held at the station to let another train pass, one of the new high-speed locomotives that ran on electricity, its sleek, bullet-shaped carriages a gunmetal grey. Owen pressed his face to the glass, trying to get a better look at it, but the train rushed by so swiftly it was hard to see and later he wondered if the whole thing had been a dream. He went back to sleep, jerking awake what seemed like seconds later to the bawling of station announcements at London Bridge.
He stumbled from the train. When he looked to see what the time was, he found his watch had stopped and realised he must have let it wind down. He wasn’t able to find a clock on the station concourse either. He made for the Borough exit, which should have brought him out on the High Street opposite the Marshalsea Road, but when he came back up to street level he found himself at the crossroads between Sanctuary Street and Disney Place, close to where he had become lost after seeing Angela back on to the train the day she came to London.
There must be another underpass, he thought, an exit I’ve not used before. He made off down Sanctuary Street. He knew that if he cut through the houses on the right side of the road he would eventually come out at the lower end of the High Street, opposite Long Lane, but the route was more complicated than he remembered and in just a few minutes he was lost again. He told himself it did not matter, that he should simply keep walking until he came to a place he recognised, which in London you always did, sooner or later. He made his way unsteadily through a number of closes and narrow courtyards, some of them stinking of refuse, others piled high with nameless junk. He was beginning to panic. His foot was hurting badly again, and more than that, he had the feeling of being elsewhere, not in his London at all but in Peter Strickland’s, from the John novel, where there were spies on every corner and government officials who could send you to the labour camps just for speaking out of turn.
He began retracing his steps towards Sanctuary Street and the Marshalsea Road, thinking he would make his way home from there instead, take a cab from the station taxi rank if necessary. He passed several small shops, two boarded up, the other a drab-looking premises he thought he recognised. He looked more closely, and realised he had indeed passed by it once before, that it was the store selling used electrical goods with the fish tank on display. He leaned against the wall, resisting the urge to sit down on the pavement and rest his leg. Some of the junk in the window seemed familiar – a Bakelite telephone, a hand-operated Singer sewing machine – but there were other things too, things that made no sense. A black box, its metallic surface shiny as lacquer, a panel of what appeared to be glass covering most of its front. The glass was greyish, and opaque, slightly convex, giving no clue as to its function. Owen stared at it, stupefied. The fish tank was still there, he noticed, but watching the fish sliding up and down on their invisible wires, he saw they were not in fact fish at all, but silvery, many-tentacled crayfish, or maybe small squid. They moved with a darting liquid grace, weightless in the greenish water. In the uncertain light from the window they appeared more shadow than substance.
They’re like the things in the book, thought Owen wildly. The book I bought for Anthony at the station. He patted his blazer pockets, fruitlessly searching, before realising he must have left the Sylvester John novel behind on the train. He backed away from the window, hobbling to the opposite pavement and then taking the first street he came to, uncertain of where he was going but desperate to put some distance between himself and the things in the aquarium. By some fluke, he emerged almost immediately on to Borough High Street, the large intersection by Newington Causeway and Harper Road. A diesel coach thundered by in the direction of the Elephant and Castle. Ignoring the pain in his leg, Owen walked back up the road to the traffic lights just to the left of the turning into Trinity Street. He crossed the road, trying to appear nonchalant, though he could by now barely stand.
Finally, he was at the house. The first floor lights were on, a sure sign that Morton had finished work for the day and was having supper. Owen felt in his pocket for the key, then discovered he didn’t need it; the front door was unlocked and standing ajar. His sense of foreboding returned. Morton would not have left the door open, it was as simple as that. He stood in the doorway, listening. At first he could hear nothing but the aggravated susurrus of blood in his own ears, but gradually he was able to make out the murmur of voices, coming from upstairs. He crept forward to the foot of the steps, only to draw back in surprise as the voices were suddenly replaced by a burst of music.
He realised it was the old man’s radio. Morton was definitely in, then. This should have set him at ease, but still it did not. He closed the front door behind him and switched on the hall light. There was a note on the telephone pad, a date underlined and what looked like a telephone number. On the chair beside the hall stand was a copy of the Evening Standard. He reached for it automatically. The headline was about a bank robbery in Clapham.
The paper was dated 30th July, more than a week in the future. He was reading about a crime that hadn’t happened yet.
Owen’s mind rejected the idea, not so much because it made no sense but because it seemed to have no bearing on the matter in hand. He dropped the paper back on the chair and began to make his way upstairs.
“Morton,” he called. “Are you there? Please answer me.” He gripped the banister, breathing hard. He knew that calling would do no good – if the old man had the radio on and the door closed he would not hear him. He would have to go up there and see what had happened. The thought filled him with a deep unease. His stomach heaved, and Owen knew that if there had been more in it he would have been sick. Step by painful step he climbed the staircase, straining his ears for the least sign of movement. He could hear the radio more clearly now, a musical quiz show Morton was fond of.
I’m going to play you the opening bars of a symphony, the announcer was saying. I want to hear the name of the composer. Fingers on your buzzers and here we go.
There was a bright upward flourish, the sound of massed strings. Owen knew nothing about music. It always amazed him how quickly Morton came out with the answers. He had sometimes joked that the old man should apply to be on the show himself, but Morton only laughed.
There was no light on in Morton’s rooms. The sound of the music in the twilight was eerie and somehow mocking. Owen felt desperate to be ri
d of it. Quickly he made a light, his hand shaking. The first thing he saw was that the long wooden stool Morton used to rest his supper tray on had been overturned. Spilled tea and broken crockery had made a mess of the carpet. Morton’s body was by the window. The old man lay on his side, a rust-red trail of congealed blood issuing from his right nostril. His eyes were closed, one of them swollen shut, the eyelid rudely disfigured by a heavy bruise.
His body was cold. Owen had never seen anyone dead before. He had begged to see his mother, to say goodbye, but his father said no.
“You’re too young for that,” he said. “It’s best you try and remember her the way she was.”
He had remembered her as she was, clasping the memory close like a priceless possession, yet he had never stopped wishing he had been able to see her after the doctor left, to clasp her hand one more time. He had always felt this gap in his knowledge of her as an abandonment, a turning away of his face when she was most in need.
He leaned over the old man’s body, stroked back the wispy hair from the stony brow. He felt no pain, no horror, just an enormous puzzlement, a lack of comprehension that, he realised only hours later, was his first numbed presentiment of grief.
He could not yet grasp that Morton was absent. He kept wanting to ask the old man what had happened. Apart from the broken tea cup and Morton’s body, the room looked as it always did. The Meissen figurines on the mantel shelf had not been disturbed, and the corner bureau, where Morton kept his bank book and a supply of cash, seemed to be in order. Owen moved slowly around the room, touching things like a blind man, searching for clues. Eventually, he realised the only object missing was the clock he had made and given to Morton, the prototype of the tourbillon watch he had decided to christen the Hurricane.
It was then that he knew for certain who Morton’s murderer was – Lionel Norman, or if not Norman himself then someone who had come here on Norman’s behalf. He remembered the letter Norman had sent – the avuncular tone, the trite little anecdotes – and felt a dull rage. The idea came to him again that Norman had planned this, that somehow he had known when Owen would be out of London, and made his move accordingly.
And Morton – frail and slow and utterly defenceless – would have been an easy target. Owen sat down on the floor by the old man’s body and took hold of his hand. The radio was still playing. The music quiz finished and the news came on. After that there was a documentary on the common toad. Owen listened, the tears flowing down his face, thinking how much Morton would have enjoyed the programme. Morton was like his Uncle Henry in that way – he loved collecting facts.
When the programme finished, Owen covered Morton with the chequered blanket from the back of the sofa, tucking it gently about his shoulders as if he were sleeping. He found he could not bear to cover his face. Then he went down to the hall and dialled the number the old man had scribbled on the telephone pad.
The phone was answered almost immediately, as if the person at the other end had been expecting his call.
“Who’s there?” Owen said. “Angela, is that you?”
The line was terrible, heavy with static, but he thought he could just make out someone saying his name. He pressed the receiver against his ear, straining to hear, and then it slipped from his hand. He bent to snatch it up, almost pulling the phone off the table.
“Are you still there?” he said. “Can you hear me?”
There was a series of clicks, and then the line went dead. Owen dialled the number again but this time he got the engaged tone. He tried once more with the same result. He began to doubt he had heard anything in the first place.
He bolted the front door and went back upstairs. In his room, he pulled off his filthy shirt and washed himself in the bathtub. The act of cleansing made him feel immediately stronger. He put on fresh clothes and then began to pack.
He left the house at first light, taking Morton’s money stash with him. He knew the old man would not mind, that he would want him to have it. On the way to the station he bought a copy of The Times. The date beneath the masthead was 22nd July, the day after his journey to Worthing and still just over a week before Morton’s murder. He had eight clear days before anyone came looking for him. He hoped it would be enough to make his escape. He was entirely innocent of the old man’s death, but still there were certain questions he would rather not be asked.
He took the Northern Line to St Pancras, and while he waited for his train he bought a postcard of the recently renovated terminal, the vast engine shed designed by WH Barlow in the 1860s. He addressed the card to Angela Norman, c/o 17 rue de Durel, Sommières, France.
I am on my way, he wrote. My thoughts are with you always.
At a little after ten o’clock, Owen found himself on the Eurostar, bound for Paris.
part two
TIME’S CHARIOT
My first time machine was a Longines. It was given to me for my eighteenth birthday by my mother’s brother, Henry Pullinger. I suppose we should have called him uncle but we never did. With my sister Dora it was because she disliked ranks or titles of any kind. With me it was just that I never thought of him that way. The word uncle always conjured up images of sinister good humour shading to idiocy. Henry Pullinger was a kind but serious man who was always trying to make up for Dora and me not having a father. He was central to both our lives, although not for the reasons he seemed to think he ought to be. His nervous attempts at discipline, the pep talks relating to school or sex or what we ought to aim for in the future – these things made us laugh behind his back when we were children and feel embarrassed as we grew older. What we loved about Henry were precisely those things he tried to hide from us: his shyness in the company of strangers, his taste for foreign food and expensive clothes, most of all his outlaw status, his indifference to social norms.
He looked very like my mother, the same dark colouring and frowning expression. People often mistook them for twins. Dora was the spit of Henry. I was the odd one out. With my fair hair and pale skin I was given to understand from an early age that I took after my father.
Henry lived alone in a flat in West Kensington. He hated clutter and dust, and kept the place scrupulously clean. For some years during my early teens he shared the flat with a young architect called Thomas Byrne, who designed metro systems and sewer complexes, anything involving tunnels. I loathed Thom because I didn’t like having to compete for Henry’s attention. Dora claimed to be in love with him. There was a game we played in which Dora would concoct all kinds of lurid fantasies about Thom and I would pretend to get angry. Thom went away in the end. He got involved with some minor film director but it turned out to be his wife he was interested in, a lanky Yemeni girl with slim hips and bitten nails. Henry seemed to take it philosophically, as he seemed to take everything. He had his books and his students after all. At the time of Thom’s departure he had just started work on what he jokingly called his magnum opus, a biography of Rimbaud that took him ten years to write. It was a strange book, mixing conventional biography with passages of fabricated reportage and Henry’s own personal diary during those years. It left the critics divided.
Henry dedicated the book to my mother. Her name was Violet. When my father left she went back to her maiden name and became Violet Pullinger once more. I always liked the name. It suited her long pale hands and bony wrists, her frizz of dark hair. Dorothy and I were left stranded with our father’s name, which was Newland. It seemed right for us, Dora and I. We were a new land after all, a country of two.
I never set much store by birthdays. I disliked the fuss and bother on account of something you had no say in. I paid my eighteenth birthday even less attention than usual because I was in the thick of A level exams. On the day itself I had a difficult history paper and wanted nothing more than to get the day over with. In the evening Dora and I had been planning to sneak up to town and see the new Brian de Palma movie but Henry had other ideas. When I arrived back at the house after finishing the exam I found my mother
looking put upon and Henry looking portentous. He had dug out some crystal glasses from the box under the stairs where my mother kept the tableware and china that had been given to her as wedding presents. There was a silver toast rack, I remember, some horn napkin rings, a sherry decanter. Henry was filling the glasses with champagne.
“Happy birthday, Martin!” he said as soon as he saw me. “Did the paper go well?”
I took a glass of champagne and in the business of clinking glasses with Henry managed to avoid answering the question about the history exam. As far as Henry was concerned this was an important day for me and he wanted to celebrate it accordingly. I glanced at Dora. She was wearing a green velvet dress that was too tight for her. She shrugged and said nothing. Our plans were ruined but neither of us could bear to disappoint Henry. He was all set on going up to town but I suggested we try somewhere local instead.
“It’s beautiful out,” I said. “Let’s walk across the park.”
I didn’t want us to end up at one of Henry’s usual haunts because I knew my mother didn’t like them. She never much enjoyed eating out because she felt uncomfortable being on show. In the smart Soho restaurants Henry favoured she would eat even less than usual.
“Do you know anywhere suitable?” asked Henry doubtfully. He was always mystified by South London, which he thought of as a repository of knife crime, grubby takeaways and discount supermarkets. I told him there was a good Chinese restaurant in Blackheath. Dora and I loved Chinese food and so did Henry. I took Dora’s hand. The sky had the colour and translucency of amethyst.
Henry ordered the food. He loved to take charge in these situations and we were happy to leave him to it. Dora and Henry and I made short work of the meal, while my mother picked at a small bowl of chicken satay. When Henry ordered another bottle of champagne she perked up a little.
“I’d like to propose a toast,” said Henry. He tapped the end of his knife on the rim of his glass. “To Martin, who today makes the transition from boy to man.”
