They passed between more of the kind of pillars Dion had seen the main stream pass between while they had been waiting their turn earlier. Nothing interrupted their progress. The wall his father was pushing the trolley towards slid aside and they were disgorged with sudden shock into the teeming din of the arrivals hall, their path flanked by a crowd of people holding signboards. Dion’s father went up to a man holding one that had ‘Lefevre’ written on it in an urgent scrawl. The man took charge of the baggage trolley and navigated them past an array of signs, through the crowds, and finally to a discrete exit, which slid clear for them.
Dion managed to take only a few breaths of the first fresh air he had tasted in almost twelve hours. Then he was ushered into the back of a large car, polished to a shine like he had never seen before. He heard the luggage being hoisted in, the boot lid slam and the doors shut. As they moved off, he watched a chaos of cars, buses, buildings, advertising signs, roadways, exits and entrances pass by, all of which eventually resolved into a single, fast track that swept them away from the airport. The track joined a greater one, and then a greater one still, the car drawn into the torrents of traffic like a leaf hurled into the rapids.
Their car continued to gather speed, keeping abreast of the waves of traffic. Sometimes it overtook, sometimes it was overtaken, the cars and lorries sliding past with eerie slowness against the background blur of the roadside. A low, hard light broke over the land. All around were broad, flat fields, mostly earth-brown, but some with expanses of dull-green vegetables growing. It looked to Dion as if the land had been drained of all vitality, leaving nothing but empty spaces of appalling immensity; their defining limits the horizon and sky.
As he gazed out on this wasteland, Dion felt himself being sucked out into the vast vacuum that was Europe. This was where Miranda Whitlam had come from, and where that man who had called him a filthy little nigger had come from, the man who had thought that slapping him was the way to get to the truth.
*
The memory of it still burned. After the moment of shock at the attack had passed, Dion had taken in the situation in an instant. The reasons for it were beyond him, but it was clear that Miranda Whitlam was going to deny him and that the man was bound to believe anything she said. So Dion had held his silence the few moments necessary to make it clear he was going to choose what he would say and when he would say it. Then he had announced, ‘I’m Dion Lefevre and I done nothing wrong,’ and made off, easily slipping the man’s grip and disappearing into the trees. Behind him, he heard Miranda Whitlam say casually, as if his having been beaten up was of no concern to her, ‘I think he’s Mr Lefevre’s boy, Mr Lefevre who works for my father.’ Then he had heard the man who had been beating him up say breathlessly, ‘That’s good. That’s worth knowing. We can get his father to deal with him.’
His father had continued the beating Miranda Whitlam’s man had started, only his father’s beating was more savage, deliberate and remorseless. As the strap rose and fell, Dion had heard his father growling, ‘You stupid little fucker. I’ve spent years getting on Whitlam’s right side and you go and do this. I’ll be lucky to get a place as a fucking caddy on the golf course after this. Damn you, boy. If you want to go spying, you fucking well go spying one of the local girls, you dirty little creep.’
Dion had not said a word as his father raised bloody welts on his back – this man who had arranged to have his island torn to pieces with holiday homes and golf courses, who had driven his grandmother away, who was threatening to take him away, who was beating him.
Afterwards, Dion had come to hope that the ignorance of the people around him as to what had really happened might actually work in his favour, might indeed cause his father to end up as a golf caddy, still on the island. But all Whitlam had done was speed up their departure. ‘That’s one good thing to have come out it, but no thanks to you,’ had been his father’s final judgement on the matter. So here they were, even sooner than expected, in this enormous space that left him more completely alone than he had ever been before.
*
They entered the edges of a city. Towering factories and storage depots wheeled by. Apartment blocks shrank between giant complexities of steel and glass. Columns of steam rose from enormous chimneys. Any remaining sense of choice and control Dion might have retained had by now evaporated completely. He stared up at the sign gantries straddling the road and saw that the words and numbers meant nothing. He was nowhere and travelling very fast.
The low, hard light breaking over the scene made Dion think of the Cabrits at evening. But it was different here. The spaces that surrounded them, the speed of the car, the low, hard brilliance of the evening light, and each mote of traffic being swept on its predetermined course through the great, empty continent, all conspired to distance rather than include him.
The driver turned on the radio and a high, yearning music with a deep pulse of base rhythm filled the car. The music seemed to draw Dion out of the top of his head into a cool, free realm of infinite possibilities made of nothing except this smooth directed motion, the low, hard light and the pulsing music. In the face of the impersonal immensities he had been cast into, a hopeless dismay came over him. It was all extraordinary and rather lovely, and empty as the space between stars.
He thought of Miranda Whitlam. He ought to hate her. But he didn’t and he couldn’t understand why. This troubled Dion. It troubled him almost as much as the image of her face, looking up with delight as he pulled the crayfish from out of the water, or giving him a trusting half-smile when she had decided to go for a swim after all. But she had denied him and he found himself gnawing on that fact, like a dog with an especially intractable bone. In their brief meeting he had given her the very best he could. And that was something better than anyone else could ever have given her. Surely she had been beginning to realise that. Surely she must have felt something of the perfection in the moment just before that man arrived. Why then had she denied him and looked on him with dismissive contempt? Why had she done that, and why didn’t he hate her for it?
The car he was being driven in continued to breast the flood of traffic, until it abruptly hurled itself off into a tributary. Everything slowed and Dion’s sense of infinitely expanding spaces began to ease. They were passing through a tidy industrial area, with low-built, glass-fronted office and factory blocks surrounded by expanses of well-kept lawn. Traffic on the roads they passed along moved more sedately, stopping and starting at intersections rather than rushing furiously on without pause. Then they were in a broad, tree-lined street flanked by discrete building-cubes that glittered with neon advertising in the early twilight. The driver turned into a narrower side street, where residential blocks rose from well-tended grass surrounds. There were low trees spaced at intervals between the buildings. Street lamps shed a harsh, bluish light that silvered the yellowing leaves and cast dark shadows amongst the trees.
Dion had only ever seen such places on the television, usually as backdrop for some drama or comedy. Staring out through the car window was not much different, only there was no sense of entertainment, or even just filling in time. This place was about to enclose him; the car door would open and he would be out there in it. He thought of his grandmother’s talk of stepping into a new world. It had sounded exciting, the way she had described it; full of surprises. But this new world did not look exciting. It looked as if school had multiplied itself a hundred times over, with proliferating classroom blocks set in open spaces that had been perfectly tended by an army of janitors.
The car drew up in the forecourt of one of the apartment blocks. The driver got out and opened the doors for them, first for Dion’s mother and then himself. His father briskly climbed out from the front and stood for a moment surveying their surroundings. Dion felt cool air on his face, air that carried a slightly dank, decaying smell that he was unfamiliar with. He could hear voices of children playing somewhere amongst the buildings. The driver led them directly to the entrance, r
eached into his pocket, pulled out a bunch of keys, selected one and opened the door into the apartment block lobby.
The driver helped them with their cases to the lift, handed Dion’s father the bunch of keys and said goodbye. Dion’s father dropped the keys in his jacket pocket, stacked the cases at the back of the lift, saw that Dion and his mother were in and pressed one of a panel of buttons. It had a five on it. Dion felt himself suddenly heavy, then there was a synthetic chime and a number five lit up in a panel above the door. They came out on a narrow, tiled landing. At each end of the landing was a wall-high window with a potted palm set in front of it. Opposite the lift were three doors, and on either side of the lift entrance were another two doors. Each door had a number on. Dion’s father hefted the cases out of the lift and onto the landing. Then he pulled out the bunch of keys, checked a label tag, walked up to one of the doors and inserted a key into the lock. He pushed the door open and Dion and his mother followed, leaving the cases outside. There was an entry lobby then a spacious living room. The place felt clean and unlived in. It smelled of air freshener. Dion’s father made for the middle of the room then turned to face them. He said, “Here we are. What do you think?”
“It’s wonderful,” Dion’s mother said. She looked at her husband with immense pride.
“I told you I could handle old Whitlam,” Dion’s father said.
Dion looked around, taking in the settee, the two armchairs, the coffee table, the shelf unit and the television. He said nothing, and he had no intention of saying anything. This would be his protection now, his armour. He would be mute or at most monosyllabic. That way this awful world he had been dumped in would have as little hold over him as possible. That way he would protect his memories. He had already had some practice when he was being beaten up by his father. Then he had been silent, letting the pain and humiliation wash through him while all the while he thought only of that moment of perfect awareness with Miranda Whitlam floating in the pool and him knowing he would live forever.
This silence was a lesson his grandmother had not told him. He had been forced to learn it for himself. His grandmother had never told him about adversity and suffering, although she had shown him some rather nasty things that insects did to one another. But in the brief time they’d had together, she had been intent on opening him up to what was around him, and the minor shocks and horrors had been no more than part of that process. What was he to do when it was him that was caught in the trap now? What was he to do when he was five floors off the ground in a place that was nowhere, with all of his grandmother’s vision but none of her strength and power?
8
They had been home only a few days when Miranda Whitlam’s father told her she would have to go to school. He said she needed to be in the company of children like herself and he had identified somewhere he could trust. He said it was called Spielman’s.
“Why can’t I have another tutor?” Miranda asked. Ever since she heard Mr Staels tell her father she needed to go to school, she had been working out her responses. She had even checked out Spielman’s on the web to confirm it really existed.
“You need more experience, Miranda. You need to learn to get to know what it’s like to be out in the world. Tutors won’t give you that. Listen, the place I’ve found for you has some new ways of teaching. It’s called ‘teaching you how to be an operator’. You learn how to make things happen the way you want them to.”
“Why can’t I have Lissel back? – I liked her.”
“I’ve called her already. She’ll give you some lessons to help you get ready. You get three months’ intensive tuition, then we go away for the summer and after that you start at the school.”
So her father had discussed this with Lissel already, and Lissel had been prepared to come back for just three months. Miranda felt her regard for her old tutor cool. She had liked Lissel because Lissel treated her as an equal, in contrast to her earlier tutors, who had treated her as a child. But she had also liked her because she had always been there, at least until they were forced to move. The thought of Lissel being willing to just come and go was unwelcome to Miranda. She would prefer to be tutored in these few remaining months by a complete stranger.
But she was going to have to salvage something out of a situation she clearly had very little choice in. She asked, “Will I learn how to change things like you do with those lines you move around – with your ‘hand’?”
Catching the focus of her interest, her father said with exaggerated conviction, “Yes, that’s definitely one of the things you’ll learn there.”
Miranda heard the exaggeration, but still thought there might be something in it. The urgency of her need to move those lines had eased a little – especially since leaving the island – but only a little. She still yearned for her father’s powers. If she could only move those lines like he had, there would be not the slightest chance of her ending up in the wildwood, or in the place where she had seen that boy die. She asked her father, “How did you learn to be an operator?”
“I never needed to learn,” he said, dismissively. Then, catching himself, “- no more than you’ll need to. But it helps to get to know some of the techniques.”
Miranda felt a check in her rising enthusiasm. “But I don’t know how to make those lines move, I don’t know how to make them move so they’ll make things change how I want them to. Do you mean you never learned that – you just did it?”
“Listen, I only move those lines around on the screen because it’s convenient. It’s like using the automatic channel changer on the screen instead of getting up and pressing the buttons on the set. What matters is that you have a screen to operate and to have that – and much more – you need to be an operator.”
He paused, then, decisively, “Miranda, being an operator is about working the world. You just need to know that everything around you is there for you to use and all you have to do is tell it what to do. It’ll provide you with work to do, then people to do the work for you. You just need to know that it’s all there for you. Anyway, you couldn’t help but be an operator any more than one of our young trout couldn’t help but swim, or a foal run around the paddock. You’re going to school to be among people like yourself and to be taught by people who understand you, who accept that an operator is what you’ll be in life. It’ll also give you a chance to make some real money – Spielman’s expects you to make at least the cost of your time there. If you don’t, I’m expected to pay out five times the shortfall. But you’ll succeed. I’ve no doubt about that.”
Miranda still felt her enthusiasm cooling. If it was all supposed to come so naturally to her, why did she feel her inability to move those lines so keenly?
Seeing her uncertainty, her father continued more insistently, “Listen Miranda, all those lines you see on my screen, they just make it easier – easier to extend yourself and make things work how you want them to. Everything is connected now. What you need to do is learn how things are connected and how to work the connections. So they won’t teach you maths at Spielman’s, like you’ve been learning from the screens; they’ll teach you credit transfer and investment, shares and futures; they won’t teach you sport or art, instead they’ll teach you about the entertainments’ industry and how to put on a show; and they won’t teach you science and technology, they’ll teach you information management and product development. They won’t teach you how to be just a cog in the machine – they’ll teach you how to work the machine. Do you see what I mean?”
Miranda nodded. She did see and, to her surprise, was reassured. Having the words somehow made it easier to make sense of things – like her detestation of that island, where her chances of extending or applying herself to anything had been non-existent. And the wildwood – a place so chaotic and amorphous it was impossible to get a handle on anything – a place where you left behind all that was familiar – a place where anything might be done to you.
*
Spielman’s was in Switzerland.
Lissel and Donnell accompanied Miranda to the airport. She gave Lissel a rather stiff farewell and Lissel gave her a brisk hug in return. A private jet flew Miranda to Zurich and a helicopter took her up into the mountains. Donnell accompanied her all the way.
Seen from the outside, the school was a scattering of traditional wood chalets set in meadows. The old pastures swelled out of the land, rising up behind the grounds to merge with an enclosing rampart of mountains high above. Inside, the chalets resembled the more functional luxury hotels favoured by business people the world over, but with rather more wood showing.
Miranda was taken to her room, which had a veranda and a spectacular view facing south-west over the valley. It was one of the best outlooks, but she would only have noticed had it not been. She was aware, however, that she liked the room better than her one at home. The bare boards, Chinese rug and pervasive smell of pine and polish she found pleasant, and there was an agreeable lack of the kind of clutter that had already begun to accumulate in her room after they had returned home.
Miranda also preferred the view. She could go out onto her veranda in the chilly early morning and gaze into the blue, open spaces between the mountain peaks. The brilliant air and light contrasted wonderfully with the dark expanses of ancient forest that filled the mountain valleys. The perimeter woods reminded her of home, but she could see so much further beyond now, up into the great expanses of sky and mountain. She also knew the trees were mainly there to hide the surrounding ring of electrified fences, dogs and guards. These, too, reminded her of home. It was strange though that, unlike home, the absolute security she was surrounded by was never openly acknowledged.
*
“You are here to learn how to operate the world in the same way that your parents have so successfully done. Your choice of parents, if I may put it that way, has ensured that you yourselves have done most of the work necessary. We are here merely to give you the necessary skills.”
In World City Page 8
