Divided Kingdom

by Rupert Thomson

  We paid very little attention to any of this during those early years, Bracewell and I. One could make a case for the fact that we were behaving in character, I suppose. We were sanguine, after all. We liked to look on the bright side, make the best of things. But also – and more importantly, perhaps – our energies were entirely taken up with the man who ran the dry-cleaner’s. Though we spent many tranquil hours basking in Mr Page’s aura of well-being, there was always a part of us that remained on tenterhooks, waiting for the miraculous, the almost unimaginable moment when he no longer appeared to be smiling.

  I had been a member of the Parry household for about twelve months when a brown envelope arrived in the post. Victor took one look at the scarlet peacock stamped in the top left-hand corner and passed the letter to Marie, then he went and stood by the kitchen window. I watched Marie’s dark eyes skim the half a dozen lines of type. I was being summoned to the Ministry of Health and Social Security, she told me. She didn’t think it was anything to fret about, just a routine interview, but the air in the room had stretched tight, which told me there was probably more to it than that.

  When the day came, Marie walked me down to the Ministry, an imposing edifice of glass, flint and pale stone that backed directly on to the river. It was April or May, a chill wind blowing. The Red Quarter’s flag snapped and shuddered on its pole. As we climbed the wide, shallow steps to the entrance I tilted my head back and looked up at the roof, and the rapid flight of clouds past the eaves gave me the impression that the building was falling on top of me. My hand in Marie’s, I hurried onwards, through the double-doors. The hallway in which we found ourselves had the atmosphere and dimensions of an atrium, the space filled with the whisper of voices, the slither of shoes and also with an inexplicable ghostly laughter, and all these sounds seemed to swarm and mingle in the air above us. We reported to reception and were told to take a seat. A man in a dark-grey suit appeared in front of us just moments later.

  ‘Thomas Parry?’

  Smiling at Marie, he asked her to wait where she was. He led me through a roped-off area guarded by a man in a maroon uniform, then past a bank of lifts and on into a maze of open-plan offices. As we walked, he asked me all about myself – how old I was, where I went to school, what I was going to do in the holidays. Though there was nothing original about his line of questioning, he seemed relaxed and jovial, which put me at my ease. At last we reached a door. He knocked twice with a crooked forefinger, then drew the door open and ushered me inside. Installed behind a desk was a stout woman with pink cheeks.

  ‘Sit down, Thomas,’ she said.

  My stomach slowly turned over. ‘Miss Groves. What are you doing here?’

  She smiled. ‘I work for the Ministry.’

  ‘But I thought –’

  ‘You thought I belonged at Thorpe Hall,’ she said. ‘I was just there temporarily, the same as you. How are you settling in?’

  ‘Fine, thanks.’

  ‘And your father? How’s he?’

  I watched Miss Groves across the desk. The transformation she had undergone since I last saw her reminded me of the fairy tale where the grandmother is actually a wolf. I thought about Victor with his pair of scissors and his silver shoe, and somehow I trusted him more, even though he had been trying to hide things from me. I felt that his lie was visible whereas hers was not and I decided that while it would be politic to appear to be cooperating I would say as little as possible.

  ‘It’s difficult,’ I said.

  Miss Groves leaned forwards hungrily, as I had suspected she might. ‘Really? And why’s that?’

  ‘I don’t see very much of him. He’s working so hard, for the railways.’

  ‘The railways. That’s right. Is he enjoying it?’

  ‘Oh yes. Sometimes, on my way to bed, I stop outside his door. There’s always music on, some kind of singing usually, and he’ll be studying his plans.’ I looked down into my lap and wrinkled my forehead, as if I were thinking. Abruptly my forehead cleared and I looked up again. ‘Sometimes he even chuckles to himself.’

  I’m not sure why I said that. It wasn’t true. But somehow I felt that Victor was under threat, and needed protecting.

  Without taking her eyes off me, Miss Groves straightened in her chair. ‘And your sister Marie? What about Marie?’

  ‘We get on really well’.

  ‘No sign of melancholy?’ Miss Groves said casually.

  I shook my head.

  ‘No hints of phlegm or choler?’

  ‘No.’

  Her short pale fingers began to peck viciously at the keys on her computer like a flock of blind hens eating grain. From time to time she glanced up at me suspiciously, as though she expected to catch me in the middle of an indiscretion.

  At last she closed the file and sat back. ‘Do you remember our final lesson together,’ she said, ‘when I read to you about the sanguine temperament?’

  ‘“The paragon of complections,” ’ I said. ‘ “The prince of all temperatures.” ’

  ‘Very good.’ Miss Groves’s eyes glowed, just as they had glowed in the ballroom at Thorpe Hall, with the chandeliers trembling above our heads and the men in armour watching us sidelong, across their cheeks. ‘And to the best of your knowledge, Thomas,’ she said, ‘is that what you see around you?’

  For some reason I thought of Mr Page just then, conjuring him up so vividly that I even caught a whiff of perchloroethylene.

  ‘Yes, Miss Groves,’ I said. ‘That’s exactly what I see.’

  I would have been roughly eleven when Victor took me on my first field trip. As we climbed into his clapped-out four-door saloon that morning I thought once again what an unconventional car it was – unconventional for the Red Quarter, that is, sanguine people having little or no attachment to decay – though, knowing Victor, he would probably have argued that the old banger was proof of his optimistic nature, since he firmly believed that it was going to last for ever. I remember asking him if he was taking me to the office. The office? he said. No, not today. He grinned at me across one shoulder. Knowing better than to press him on the subject, I settled back and watched as we reversed past a wall smothered in convolvulus, the limp white bells brushing against the side of the car. In the end, I was happy just to be going somewhere with him.

  We didn’t talk much during the journey. We never had talked much. I often felt the pressure of his curiosity, though, especially since I received my first summons to the Ministry. There had been other interviews, of course – like visits to the dentist, they occurred at regular intervals and filled me with a sense of trepidation – and I had stuck to my theme, embroidering a little when I thought it appropriate – how grateful I was to have been placed with such a wonderfully sanguine family, how lucky I had been, and so on – but I had never mentioned the content of these interviews to Victor, nor had he asked. His was a silent insistence. It was as though he was trying to get me to own up to something, but without compromising himself, without committing himself in any way. At the same time there was the feeling that if nothing was said then everything must be all right and we could go on as we were.

  After driving for an hour, we turned along a one-lane road that led to a modest red-brick railway station.

  ‘It’s derelict,’ Victor said, ‘but not for much longer, I hope.’

  We stepped out of the car into hazy sunlight.

  The line used to serve an area of the country that was now the Blue Quarter, Victor told me, but as a result of the Rearrangement it had been suspended and the station had become irrelevant. In his opinion, though, it could be resurrected. With a bit of imagination and some capital investment, it could be turned into a junction station for the Red Quarter’s new southwestern network.

  Ignoring the danger signs with their jagged lightning bolts and hollow skulls, we struck out across the tracks, the silver of the rails concealed by rust. We climbed down into a urine-stained underpass, our feet crunching on broken glass. We stood thoughtfully on
silent platforms. Weeds flowered among the sleepers. The smell of buddleia and cow parsley was everywhere. But Victor’s eyes were darting about, and I knew that his vision had come alive. He was imagining the trains that would pass through the station, some pausing, others rushing on towards the coast. He could already hear the power humming in the insulators that hung like grubby concertinas above our heads.

  I left him standing in the shade and wandered off along the rails. Two or three hundred yards from the station, where the track curved to the west, I came across a row of carriages that had been abandoned in a siding. A window in the top half of one of the doors had been left open. Glancing round, I made sure nobody was looking, then I hoisted myself through the gap and half fell, half dropped to the floor inside. It was quiet in the carriage, the way someone who’s been gagged is quiet. A feeling of suppression and restraint.

  Entering one of the compartments, I slid the door shut behind me. Two bench-seats faced each other, both covered in a faded turquoise velour. I sat by the window for a few moments. The sun draped itself across my lap. Twisting quickly, I pulled my trousers and pants down, then I lay full-length on the seat and began to rub myself against the rough, almost prickly upholstery. I was thinking of the time I came home to find Marie sunbathing on the small tar-papered roof below my bedroom window. It was one of those warm, still afternoons when the sky forfeits all its colour. The smell of dandelion sap floats in the air, and the tarmac softens at the edge of the road, and if you put your weight on one foot you can leave a print that lasts for ages. Marie had been lying on her back in a blue-and-white-striped bikini with a pile of unopened text-books beside her, one hand beneath her head, the other resting lazily across her belly, and I had to step away from the window, into the shadow of my room, so as to hide my erection. Closing my eyes, I thought of Marie in her bikini, then I thought of how she often bent down to kiss me late at night and how, once, by accident, our lips had touched, and before too long a cloudy juice came springing out of me.

  I was just pulling my trousers up when I heard Victor calling.

  ‘Thomas? Where are you?’

  I dropped to the floor between the seats, then slowly lifted my head until my eyes were on a level with the window. Victor stood fifty yards away, next to something that looked like a giant cotton-reel. He was staring southwards, the fingertips of his right hand pressed upright against his mouth. Still crouching low, I crawled out of the compartment and into the corridor.

  ‘Thomas?’

  I could tell he was worried, and somehow that made me feel good. I took it as proof of something. I didn’t want it to end, not yet.

  Leaving by the same half-open window, I lowered myself on to the loose chippings and edged cautiously along the row of carriages, back in the direction of the station. Once, I kneeled down and peered past the great brown disc of a wheel. I watched Victor take a few paces and then stop. He called my name again. Bending double now, I hurried on. Only when I was clear of the last carriage did I straighten up and walk out into the bright white sunshine.

  ‘I’m over here,’ I shouted.

  Victor moved towards me, shading his eyes. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

  ‘Sorry. I was just exploring.’

  Victor nodded approvingly. ‘Just think what we could do with this place …’

  Driving home, we wound all the windows down. The warm air that rushed through the inside of the car smelled of creosote and new-mown grass. Victor put on one of his opera tapes and we both sang along as loudly as we could, even though it was in a foreign language and we hardly knew any of the words.

  That summer Bracewell and I would often cycle out into the lush countryside that surrounded Belle Air. One cool grey morning we found ourselves in a thickly wooded area somewhere to the north-west of the town. To record our presence, we decided to carve our names on a tree. Bracewell used the penknife first. I watched him work, a knob of bone protruding on his wrist, as if he had a marble sewn beneath the skin. When my turn came, I used one of the letters in his name to make my own. Apart from anything else, I thought it would save time.

  Afterwards, I stood back, pleased to have found a connection between our names. In demonstrating that they could be interwined, I had harked back to the secret ceremonies that had taken place at Thorpe Hall, the mingling of who one was with someone else, the sense of a shared destiny.

  But Bracewell just frowned. ‘Like something in a cemetery,’ he said.

  Which, in the light of what happened moments later, I came to perceive not as a rebuke so much as a presentiment.

  As the road left the wood, it dipped downwards, curving right then left, with grass banks on either side. By the time it straightened and levelled out, we were pedalling frantically, racing each other. I saw the danger first and shouted out. We both braked hard, Bracewell’s back wheel sliding sideways and spilling him on to the tarmac. No more than fifty yards ahead of us, the road broke off in mid-air.

  Leaving our bicycles on the ground, we crept towards the drop and then looked over. Thirty or forty feet below lay a heap of shattered concrete and macadam. On either side of it a motorway reached into the distance, its six lanes silent, utterly deserted. Nothing moved down there except the weeds and grasses shifting in the central reservation – a kind of narrow wild garden. All thoughts of the grim fate that might have been ours were obliterated by the mystery of what now awaited us.

  Though the citizens of the Red Quarter still drove cars – no one could deny the pleasures of the open road, especially in a country where the population was relatively small, just over five million – they had launched a series of impassioned campaigns against the motorway. To sanguine people, motorways signified aggression, rage, fatigue, monotony and death. Motorways were choleric, in other words, and had no place in the Red Quarter. Some had been converted into venues for music festivals or sporting events, and others had been fortified, then turned into borders, their tall grey lights illuminating dogs and guards instead of traffic, but for the most part they had simply been allowed to decay, their signs leaning at strange angles, their service stations inhabited by mice and birds, their bridges choked with weeds and brambles or, as in this case, collapsing altogether. In time, motorways would become so overgrown that they would only be visible from the air, half-hidden monuments to an earlier civilisation, like pyramids buried in a jungle.

  We only had to look at each other to know what should happen next. We hauled our bicycles over a fence, then wheeled them down the embankment and out on to the motorway’s hard shoulder. We began to ride north – in the fast lane, naturally. There was the most peculiar sense of risk attached to this. We were like people who believed the earth was flat, and who, despite our belief, had decided to travel at high speed towards the edge. I suspected Bracewell felt it too because I saw a flicker of apprehension in the grin he gave me as we set out. There was also a feeling of suspended danger, as if the silence and emptiness were only temporary and the real life of the motorway might commence again at any moment. More than once, I turned and looked over my shoulder, just to make sure that nothing was coming.

  But nothing came, not ever, not in all the many hours we spent out there. I sometimes wonder whether we hadn’t entered a parallel world which the two of us had somehow jointly imagined, a place where the anxieties of our daily lives could find no purchase, a place where we could finally throw off the wariness that informed so many of our thoughts and actions, and be ourselves.

  I sometimes wonder if we weren’t bound together after all.

  One evening, while I was sitting at the kitchen table doing my homework, Victor appeared in the doorway. He needed to have a word with me, he said. I put down my pen and followed him upstairs. The sky was already dark, and Marie had gone out with friends. A cushioned silence filled the house.

  In Victor’s bedroom I took a seat next to his workstation, its surface hidden beneath the usual clutter of drawings, letters, documents and maps. The TV was on, with
the sound turned down. Michael Song was addressing the nation. I was always struck by how polished he looked, almost literally polished, and how convivial too, like some worldly uncle you wished you saw more often. I watched as Victor switched the TV off, then lowered himself pensively on to the edge of his divan. We sat in silence for a moment or two. A slightly blurred circle of lamplight trembled on the carpet, but the rest of the room lay in deep shadow, mysterious yet open to conjecture, like the prairie beyond a camp-fire. The muted lighting seemed to invite confidences, confessions even, an effect that may well have been intentional.

  ‘They’re saying he’s going to be re-elected,’ Victor said, ‘which is no great surprise really, is it?’ He looked steadily into my face, gauging my reaction, then his gaze dropped to his hands. ‘I’ve heard rumours, Thomas. Children being taken into families and then reporting to the authorities. Members of those families being imprisoned as a result.’ There was another long pause. ‘I suppose what I want to ask you is this,’ he said eventually. ‘Did the authorities tell you to spy on us?’