Divided Kingdom

by Rupert Thomson

  ‘Attacked?’

  ‘Three people in a pickup truck. They attacked me. They took my papers and all my money. They took my coat as well.’

  ‘You’re aware, of course,’ the guard said slowly, ‘that it’s a criminal offence to travel anywhere without your papers?’

  ‘I just told you. They were stolen.’

  We weren’t like two men in a pub any more. The mood had altered, the sense of common ground had dropped away. A hierarchy had been established in its place. The guard was beginning to work himself up into a state of necessary indignation. He might even achieve outrage. And if that happened, I would be in trouble.

  You have to act like them.

  I snatched up the guard’s helmet and hit him full in the face with it. He cried out. Hands covering his face, he sank to his knees and toppled sideways, bright blood dripping through his fingers. I took the gun out of its holster and used the butt to smash the radio, then I hurled the gun over the wall. It landed on the other side with a dull thud like ripe fruit dropping from a tree. No greenhouse there, then. I grabbed my possessions and stuffed them back into my pockets. As I turned away, the motorbike fell over, crushing one of the guard’s legs. He cried out again, even louder this time. I hesitated for a moment, then I started running.

  I leaned against a tree at the top of the hill. My mouth tasted of tin, and I felt sick. I had never hit anyone before. Maybe that was why. Down below, the guard was on the ground, the motorbike still lying across his leg. My mind began to spin, hurling out thoughts the way a lawn-sprinkler hurls out water. A motorbike like that might weigh as much as three hundred pounds. It would be hard to shift. There was even a possibility that his leg was broken. Without a radio he wouldn’t be able to raise the alarm, in which case he’d have to wait until a colleague came along, and that might not be for hours. Still, it was only a matter of time before word got out. There’s a man on the loose. He’s wearing a dark suit. He’s not carrying any documents. A pause. He could be dangerous. With a hollow, frightened laugh, I turned and plunged into the woods. I couldn’t form a coherent strategy as yet. I was simply trying to put some distance between myself and what had happened.

  Half an hour later I waded out of waist-high bracken and on to a farm track. On the far side, behind metal railings, was a field of green wheat. A light wind blew. The wheat ears swayed. It was peaceful, but suspiciously so, as though the crops hid an entire battalion of soldiers. When the signal was given, they would all rise up, the barrels of their rifles trained on my head and heart. As I started along the track, I tried to put myself in the guard’s position. There he was, trapped under his motorbike, and with a bloody nose into the bargain. It was an absurd predicament. Humiliating too. Would he be prepared to admit that someone had hit him in the face with his own helmet? Imagine the teasing that would go on at his local barracks! Imagine the nicknames he’d be given! Helmethead, Nosebleed. Arse. Rounding a bend, I saw a five-bar gate ahead of me. A country lane beyond. My mind was still whirling with theories, hypotheses. What if the guard claimed that his bike had skidded in the mud? What if he pretended that he’d never even set eyes on me? I began to see how his discomfiture might work in my favour. It seemed conceivable that I might not be reported after all – in which case I could return to the Axe Edge Inn, where Fay would help me.

  I looked up into the sky. The clouds had thinned, unveiling a strip of the purest pale-blue. I could be in the bar by lunchtime, and think of the tale I would be able to tell! I vaulted over the gate and, buttoning my jacket against the wind, set off along the lane with rapid, determined strides.

  It looked exactly like a crime scene. The pub had been sealed off with bright-yellow plastic tape, the words POLICE – DO NOT CROSS repeated every few feet in black. Two of the downstairs windows had been smashed, and the car-park glittered with broken glass. A plank had been nailed at an angle across the front entrance. There were dark stains at the edge of the road. I couldn’t tell whether it was oil or blood. As I stood there, I noticed something glinting in the ditch. At first I took it for a coin, but then I bent closer and saw it was a ring. Though made from silver, it was uneven, almost crude, and it had blackened here and there, either with neglect or age. On the inside an intriguing inscription had been carved into the metal, with an anchor to separate the first word from the last. So you don’t drift too far, it said.

  I had just slipped the ring into my pocket when I heard a whirring sound, and I looked round to see a bicycle come freewheeling down the hill towards me. I recognised the rider as the fair-haired singer from the night before. When he saw me, he braked and sat astride his bicycle, one foot resting on the pedals, the other on the ground. He had a gash on his cheek, and three of his fingers had been bound with tape. I asked him if he had seen Fay Mackenzie.

  He looked past me, at the view. ‘She’s been arrested.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘There was a raid.’ He looked at me again. ‘Who are you, anyway?’

  I told him roughly what I had told Fay, adding that I had been attacked and robbed shortly after leaving the pub. Fay was the only person I could trust, I said, and I needed her help.

  ‘She’s the one who needs help,’ the man said. ‘I hate to think what they’ll do to her.’

  Midnight was striking, he told me, when they heard engines snarling on the hill below the pub. The lorries were enough to scare you in themselves – enormous military vehicles with searchlights mounted on the top, their wheels the size of tractor wheels, thick shapes carved into the tyres for grip. The police were members of a special riot squad, armed with rubber bullets, tear-gas and electric cattle-prods. At least thirty people had been arrested, and many more were injured. The Axe Edge Inn had been officially closed down until further notice.

  ‘But why?’ I said. ‘What’s the reason?’

  ‘They don’t need a reason. They can call it anything they want.’ He glanced at his taped fingers. Then in a bitterly ironic voice, he said, ‘I expect we were jeopardising national security.’

  ‘You got away, though.’

  ‘I was lucky.’

  The world seemed to flatten, to spread out sideways. With Fay gone, I had no one to turn to – unless … Into my head floated the image of a large bearded man dancing with a bright-green rabbit.

  John Fernandez.

  I remembered that he lived in Athanor, the Yellow Quarter’s biggest port. As good a place to disappear as any. Ports were heterogeneous, chaotic, filled with strangers. If I went to Fernandez, though, would he hand me over to the authorities? Somehow I couldn’t imagine it. I hardly knew the man, and yet I had spent enough time in his company to realise that he was something of a maverick. Despite his bulky, shambling presence, he had a quicksilver quality. A conventional reaction could not be relied upon, which in my current predicament could only augur well, I felt. In the end, it had to be a risk worth taking.

  I asked the fair-haired man where the nearest railway station was. He pointed back the way I had just come. It was fifteen miles, he said. Maybe more.

  ‘I’d like to buy your bicycle,’ I said.

  The man laughed.

  ‘I’ll give you a good price.’ I took off my jacket and, reaching into one end of the collar, eased out a banknote and held it up.

  ‘That would buy you three of these,’ he told me.

  ‘Yes or no?’

  The man shrugged. ‘Please yourself.’

  Handing him the money, I took the bicycle and swung my leg over the crossbar. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I suppose I should be going.’

  Hands on hips, the man was shaking his head. Clearly, he couldn’t quite believe the direction that events had taken.

  ‘Safe journey,’ he called out as I rode away.

  The wind roared in my ears, and the air was so cold that tears slid sideways into my hair, but I felt liberated, almost giddy. I began to sing. I had no words, only a melody, and though the piece sounded familiar I couldn’t place it. That didn’t stop
me. I sang until my throat hurt. At first I assumed it was something to do with Victor, a favourite tape of his, but two hours later, when I drew up in front of the station, my mind seemed to open, revealing a door standing ajar and a landing beyond, not L-shaped like the house on Hope Street, but wide and spacious, with a hallway below, and light showing through the dark bars of the banisters … Could I be remembering music my parents used to play after I’d been sent upstairs to bed?

  Athanor shocked me with its brazen air of dereliction. I suppose the name had led me to expect a wondrous place, a place of magical transformation, and yet, as I emerged from the gritty gloom of the railway station and started walking down one of the port’s main thoroughfares, I saw stretches of barren land sealed off by wire-mesh and wooden hoardings, whole sections of the city laid to waste, whole streets demolished, gone. At one point I passed a pub that stood entirely on its own, defiant yet piteous, like the last remaining tooth in a punch-drunk boxer’s mouth. In the years prior to the Rearrangement the city would have gone under completely were it not for all the money made from drugs, and traces of that warped energy were still visible in the developments along the docks, the casino complexes and the flyovers that swooped dizzily through the centre. Still, the city seemed defined by omissions, by absences. Athanor: an oven used by alchemists. I couldn’t imagine all this grime and decay turning to gold, at least not in the near future.

  Not long after arriving, I saw a group of ten-year-olds with voices like crows and no eyebrows, soft drinks in their hands, and bags of crisps, and mobile phones. Over the choppy paving-stones they came, with predatory speed, only fanning out and flowing round me at the very last minute. One of them lifted the flap on my jacket pocket, his fingers deft as a gust of wind, but it was just habit, a kind of reflex. He had already scanned me as a prospect and rejected me. With hindsight, I was glad I had left my bicycle at the station. I was glad too that my overcoat had been stolen. As it was, the gang never guessed that I had a small fortune sewn into my collar, nor that a silver ring hung on a piece of string around my neck. I touched one hand to my bruised forehead. Oddly enough, the fact that I’d been attacked now stood me in good stead. It made me more authentic, less visible. I could imagine tourists flying in to Athanor with stick-on stitches and fake scars in their luggage, as one took sun-cream to the beach, for protection. Want to enjoy your stay in the Yellow Quarter? Want to blend in? Make sure you look badly beaten up! Choose from our unique range of cosmetic wounds and injuries!

  In a street not far from the cathedral I found a pub called the Duke’s Head. The walls were the colour of raw liver, and the wood floor was strewn with cigarette butts. It was Friday night, and people stood three or four deep at the bar. A mosaic of faces, everybody talking. The air mostly smoke. When I got close enough, I sat on a stool and ordered a double brandy. It was a cheap make, and the first taste sent a shudder through me. I held still and stared between my knees, hoping I wouldn’t bring the drink back up, but then I felt the warmth hit my stomach and begin to spread.

  The journey to Athanor had gone smoothly – that is, until a woman got into my carriage. She had a boy of about four with her, and he had noticed me immediately. Children are like the police, I thought. No one can make you feel guilty the way a child can. Standing on his mother’s lap, the boy had levelled a finger at me. What’s that? The woman glanced in my direction. That’s a man. The boy hadn’t seemed at all convinced. In an attempt to deflect any awkwardness, I asked the woman what his name was. Thomas, she said. That’s my name, I told her. Did you hear that? the woman said to the child. The man’s called Thomas, just like you. The child shook his head. No, he said. I smiled at the woman and shrugged good-naturedly, then I stared out of the window, pretending to take an interest in the scenery. What’s that? Strange how appropriate those words seemed. With his innocent yet merciless gaze, his almost feral intuition, the boy had seen me for what I was – at large without papers, stateless, no longer properly a person.

  Putting my drink down, I asked the landlord whether it was possible to make a call. He directed me to a pay-phone in the corridor that led to the toilets. The phone-book had been torn in two, but luckily the front half had survived. I ran through the ‘F’s. There he was, the only FERNANDEZ J. in the book. I memorised his address – 176 Harbour Drive – then returned to the bar and ordered another brandy. When the landlord brought me my drink, I asked if he knew where Harbour Drive was. He couldn’t think, but an old woman with a black eye-patch overheard and answered for him. Take a left out of the pub, she said, and then keep walking for about a mile. I’d see the road on my right. There was a chippie on the corner. I thanked her, and she promptly banged her glass down on the bar in front of me. She wanted a large vodka, with no ice. I bought her one. When she had swallowed it, which only took a moment, the glass hit the bar in front of me again. I smiled at her and shook my head, then I finished my brandy and eased down off my stool. As I turned to go, the woman put her face close to mine and lifted her eye-patch to reveal the scarred and hollow socket underneath. I pushed through the crowd to the door, then I was outside.

  From the fish-and-chip shop Harbour Drive sloped upwards, becoming steadily more prosperous. After half a mile the road levelled out, and it was here that I found number 176, a detached house with a garage. I walked in through the front gate, climbed the steps to the porch and pressed the bell. The house looked closed up for the night. Even the stained-glass fanlight above the door showed only a faint glimmer from inside, as if a single lamp had been left on at the far end of the hall. I hoped John Fernandez hadn’t gone to bed. I pressed the bell again.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  I jumped. It was Fernandez, and yet I had heard no footsteps, nor had I noticed any lights go on. Was it possible that he’d been watching out for me? Had he somehow known that I would come?

  I put my mouth to the letter box. ‘It’s Thomas Parry. We met at the conference.’

  A moment of absolute stillness, then two locks turned and the door swung inwards. We stood facing each other, in near darkness. Fernandez was wearing the same black-rimmed glasses he had worn on the night of the card game.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he said.

  ‘Could you let me in?’ I said. ‘I’ll explain everything.’

  He looked over my shoulder, scanning the street, then looked at me again. For a few tense seconds I thought he might turn me away – he would have been quite capable of such a reaction, I was sure – but finally he stood aside, and I stepped past him, into the hall. He closed the door and fastened both the locks.

  ‘I was just going to bed,’ he said with his back to me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I had nowhere else to go.’

  I followed him through a door on the right side of the hall. He told me to watch my head on the way down. At the bottom of the stairs we turned left into a long low-ceilinged room with a mustard-coloured sofa at one end and a desk with a swivel chair at the other. In the middle of the room two armchairs faced each other across a shag-pile rug. Dark-brown curtains hid the windows. On the desk, in an ornate silver frame, was a black-and-white photograph of a woman in her late twenties or early thirties. She had thick dark eyebrows, creamy skin, and black hair that curled in beneath her chin.

  ‘My sister used to have hair like that,’ I said.

  Even as I spoke, I was overwhelmed by sheer exhaustion. Sinking into the nearest chair, I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. I gripped the arms of the chair like someone bracing himself for take-off. Like someone afraid of flying.

  ‘I should tell you,’ I said. ‘I’m here illegally.’

  I opened my eyes again. Fernandez seemed to stand out against the furnishings, almost as though he had been superimposed.

  He moved over to the desk and opened the deepest of the drawers. He took out a bottle of whisky and two glasses. ‘The night the bomb went off,’ he said. ‘You disappeared.’

  ‘What happened to the conference?’
<
br />   ‘It was suspended. We were all sent home.’

  I gave him an abbreviated version of what I had done during the hours immediately following the explosion.

  ‘And you’ve been missing ever since?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  I watched him carefully. This was the moment I hadn’t been able to predict, or even imagine. Either he would think of an excuse to leave the room, and then he would go upstairs and call the authorities, or he would – he would what?

  ‘Drink?’ Fernandez held the bottle out towards me.

  I shook my head. ‘Thanks. I’ve had enough.’

  He poured himself a single measure, then placed the bottle and the unused glass on the desk and stood facing the curtains. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘About me.’

  ‘I didn’t.’ I paused. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘No one told you anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Strange,’ he murmured. ‘I had the feeling you’d seen through me. Something you said, I don’t remember what. Or it might’ve been a look you gave me.’

  ‘I had the feeling there was something unpredictable about you,’ I said. ‘When I thought of you this morning, when you came into my head, somehow I couldn’t imagine you turning me in. So here I am.’

  ‘You took a pretty big risk.’

  ‘I know. I seem to have been doing that lately.’

  Fernandez flashed me a look over his shoulder. I ought not to be glib or flippant, I realised. I had almost certainly endangered him by coming to his house. Him and whoever he lived with. That woman in the photograph, perhaps.

  ‘I had no choice,’ I said. ‘You were the only person I could think of.’

  ‘What do you intend to do?’

  ‘I need to get back to the Blue Quarter.’

  ‘The Blue Quarter? Why?’

  I had known that he would ask that question – or that someone would – and yet I hadn’t been at all sure how I was going to answer. I leaned forwards in the chair. ‘Remember the club I asked you about?’