Smoke

by Dan Vyleta

  All at once, Charlie’s face turns pale.

  “That’s what Renfrew said to me,” he whispers. “ ‘Ask yourself where all the money comes from.’ ”

  “And, Mr. Cooper, have you?”

  He hesitates. “I don’t know.”

  “Hazard a guess then.”

  Again he hesitates. Then—eyes rising, committed to the truth—the word tumbles out of him: “Sweets.”

  “B&S. Quite. Shares in the factory, up until recently. A royal licence to import the raw ingredients. Colonial holdings. Import licences. The Spencers bought up the monopoly of manufacture, of course, but the business as a whole is far too lucrative to leave to one family alone. Did you know your father was in Parliament yesterday, introducing a new bill? A grief-stricken father: he thinks you dead and blames some Irish migrants who were found with Julius’s gun. The Tory papers call it the New Isolationism. A return to purity, both moral and ethnic. Kick out all foreigners, all nonconformists. Chase off the Catholics and Jews. Limit trade to what we import ourselves from our colonies. No more foreign sin! A high-minded bill. And incidentally rather lucrative for those who hold an import licence. Your father can avenge you and line his pockets all in one quick swoop.”

  She pauses just long enough for Charlie to put his head in his hands.

  “Oh, don’t berate yourself, Mr. Cooper. All the grand families are involved. In sweets and, with the more adventurous families, cigarettes. It’s a system, a network, the weave of the land. Compromise won’t change it.” She rises. “It has been a pleasure talking to you, young man, but it is getting late. Mrs. Grendel will be back any moment and will want her kitchen.”

  In response to Livia’s gesture, Thomas emerges from Lady Naylor’s room. He is just in time to cross the hallway, brush past Livia, and disappear unseen.

  ф

  Dinner is toad-in-the-hole and mash, lies heavy in the stomach. Sebastian comes and leaves again, surprises them with sticky pastries that Charlie has no heart to eat. He remains morose and restless, spends an hour staring through the keyhole at the child. Grendel has found some toys for him, and the little boy sits on the ground, spinning a spindle, before picking it up and smashing it against a wall. It is eerie, watching his anger, with no Smoke rising from his pores.

  Later yet, they sit together, Charlie, Thomas, and Livia, blocking the door to the boys’ bedroom with their backs. A teacup stands in front of them, not far from their feet, and a sheet of paper lies spread out on their laps. It is, thinks Charlie, like they are preparing a walking trip into the hills. For the third time now, he bends to study the crude map and for the third time fails to wrest meaning from it, seeing only its surface pattern, nothing else. Line scrawls on a dirty page; turnoffs marked; crossings circled. A map to the underworld. Legible only for the dead.

  And to Thomas.

  “I think it must be this.” He points, tapping his finger on a row of rectangles, a finger long. “It’s the only place that’s different; and they are in an area quite separate from the rest. And look here, this is the same place drawn in cross section. The rectangles look like they’ve been let into the floor.”

  “They might be pools,” Livia suggests, thinking perhaps of the wet docks that played harbour to Mowgli’s ship. “A series of pools.”

  “Could be.” Thomas points at another section of the map. “This here is the river. And this here must be an entrance. Tomorrow I will go and find it. If I can match the shape of the riverbed to the map, I should be able to locate the street.”

  “What about this then?” Livia asks, pointing her chin at the cup.

  “You know what it is,” Thomas mutters. “Soot. Murderers’ Soot. The kind your mother was collecting when I first saw her. The laboratory was full of it.”

  He leans towards it, reluctant to touch it, then dips a pinkie in, retrieves it, holds it close to the lamp. They put their heads together, stare at its darkness. As she did the previous day, Livia pulls out the stub of a cigarette, undoes the paper, picks through its contents. It’s like comparing road grit with purest tar. There is no easy way of telling whether this Soot is quickened or remains inert.

  “How will your mother save the world with this?” Thomas wipes his finger on the floor, then rubs the spot with a heel, unable to erase the mark.

  “We could ask her. Press her on the point.”

  “No, Charlie. No more questions, no more lies, no more oaths ‘on her husband’s life.’ The only thing worth knowing is what we learn for ourselves.”

  Neither Livia nor Charlie sees fit to disagree. Instead, Livia asks Thomas, “Are we holding on to it?”

  “You do it. I cannot stand to look at it.”

  “Then we need a container with a lid. I will ask Grendel for a mustard jar.”

  “He is spending time with your mother, Grendel is. I saw them talking just now. She talks. He listens.”

  Charlie says it flatly, without insinuation, but immediately Livia is in a temper.

  “He is helping Mowgli!” She makes to say more, but then jumps up and storms out, hands deep in her pockets like the urchin as whom she is dressed.

  ф

  They remain alone in silence, Thomas and Charlie, legs sprawled in front of them across the floor. It is like it was at school; a mouldy wall where bathroom tiles should have cooled their backs. It’s good this, Charlie thinks, feeling his friend’s weight against his shoulder. Familial; familiar. He is sitting by Thomas’s good ear. It would feel less of a comfort, perhaps, whispering into the wound.

  “I have been thinking,” he says, “about what Lady Naylor said. She must have a hand in cigarette manufacture. There is no other way she would know: about the fact that asylums sell the manufacturers their Soot.”

  “Do you think she owns the factory?”

  “No. She would not need to borrow money if she did.”

  “The Spencers then.”

  “Them, and a few others. Cigarettes and sweets. The bedrock of Empire.” Charlie spits, feels his breath grow dark. “Funny thing about greed,” he continues. “It doesn’t generate Smoke. I imagine it’s quite a problem for our theologians.”

  Thomas turns to him, puts an arm around his shoulder.

  “Don’t be bitter, Charlie. It does not become you.”

  Charlie tries not to be. It is difficult, he finds. He had no cause before to feel ashamed for being a Cooper.

  ф

  As they settle down to sleep, Thomas asks him one more question. He asks it gently, into the two-foot gap that separates their bedding.

  “Have you talked to Livia?” he asks.

  “Not yet.”

  “You should.” Then: “She misses you.”

  “Don’t, Thomas. I thank you. But don’t.”

  Thomas’s response carries the notes of genuine wonder.

  “Christ, Charlie, can’t you smell her Smoke? Can’t you smell what she feels?”

  ф

  The next morning Sebastian calls before dawn. He is in a rush, will barely come in, won’t take off his coat. All he wants is to talk. When Charlie, sleep-creased, alerted by his urgent whisper, arrives in the front hallway he is unsurprised to find Grendel to be part of the conversation. Or rather: Grendel is being spoken to, Sebastian’s hand on his wrists. The tones of instruction; too quiet to carry. Lady Naylor is there, too, holding Sebastian’s doctor’s bag. It’s heavy enough to give a list to her tall frame. In the kitchen doorway Mrs. Grendel stands. She, too, is out of earshot, at five feet’s remove. Their gazes meet, hers and Charlie’s. A moment later she beckons to him.

  “What’s going on?” he asks once he has followed her into the kitchen. Her back is turned, her hand reaching into a clay pot on the sideboard.

  “Lady Naylor sent me out for this,” she replies. “Yesterday. Had me walk for miles, going somewheres where they wouldn’t know me. So it won’t attract attention, me growing rich one day to the next.”

  She takes hold of Charlie’s palm and deposits a brown, sti
cky lump in it. Sugar.

  “Go on,” she says, “you need fattening, you do.”

  He puts it in his mouth, speaks past the shock of its flavour, sickly and moist.

  “What is Sebastian saying? Something go wrong?”

  “Don’t know,” she answers, sneaking some sugar herself. “Trust in Grendel.”

  But as her tongue picks through her teeth, hunting sweetness, Charlie wonders whether he can.

  ф

  Sebastian leaves soon after that. A minute later, Livia is at the front door. She slips out so quickly, Charlie has no time to think. A glance his way before the door closes. An unspoken question. The suggestion of a shrug.

  Then she is gone.

  By the time Charlie has his shoes on, there is no sign of her, the street outside choking with strangers, refuse, drifting fog. Back in their room Thomas is still sleeping, twitchy in his dreams.

  ф

  Livia returns just before lunch. Thomas has woken and left, in search of the sewer entrance. Charlie offered to come, but they did not want to let Lady Naylor out of their sight. It is better this way: it affords Charlie time to gather his courage. All he needs now is for Livia to return before his friend.

  Charlie hears her footsteps in the stairwell. He has been waiting for their sound and slips out onto the tiny landing to catch her there. It has been raining and she is wet, her hair clinging to her head and face. It makes the ears look large, their rims delicate and pale, like fine bone china. The miner’s jacket is big around her shoulders, weighted down by water and dirt. Charlie looks and looks. He wants to tell her that all is forgiven; that he does not want to stand in her and Thomas’s way; that things are not her fault and, anyway, there are bigger things afoot. He wants to touch her, hold her hand—like a friend, a brother—rest his forehead on her shoulder.

  “You followed Sebastian,” he says.

  “Yes. I found out where he lives. A hotel, not far from here. I thought it might be useful to know.”

  “Good idea.”

  She steps up to the landing, makes to round him. But then she stops, inches away. The cock of her head is that strangest of mixtures. Modesty and strength. City grime dusting the fine down of her cheeks.

  A pencil line of Smoke rises from Charlie, light and grey. He is glad for it. It will tell her what he feels.

  She looks at it without flinching; opens her mouth, tasting it, tasting him; reaches out and laces her fingers into his.

  “Whom do you love?”

  He says it and sees Livia smile over the phrase. What would Thomas have said? But that’s just it: Thomas wouldn’t have asked.

  “You,” she says. “Him. Both.”

  “Yes. But you love him like a bride. And me like a sis—”

  She interrupts, cheeks flushing, displeased at being told what she feels.

  “It isn’t as simple as that.” She snorts, steps up, kisses him. “There! I’ve been learning to smoke.”

  It’s a peck or rather a bite: his lips between hers, tugged and held for the length of a breath; a passing of Smoke, of emotion—hunger, confusion, triumph, fear—from skin to skin and lung to lung. Then Livia rounds him and opens the door.

  Behind it, Grendel stands, looking flustered, Mowgli’s porridge on a tray.

  ф

  Charlie watches the feeding. The boy won’t handle the spoon himself but he will sit there, mouth open, and allow Grendel to deposit a spoonful; will chew it slowly and sigh, world-weary, his eyes screwed up and cold. When the bowl is nearly finished the boy holds a dollop on his tongue then suddenly bends forward and spits it at Grendel’s feet. It is deliberate, a test: the small brown face insolent, the body tense, ready to bolt. Grendel kneels, cleans it up, offers another spoonful from the bowl. But the child has moved away and wrapped himself in blankets. All this Charlie sees from the keyhole. When Grendel turns to leave, the boy looks after him. A curious look. Suspicion mingled with the dawning of trust. Charlie rises just before Grendel pushes open the door.

  “Can I go to him?” he asks, but Grendel shakes his head. “Mr. Sebastian does not wish it.”

  “Why do you follow his orders?”

  “The boy is scared,” Grendel says. “You are kind, but you will scare him. With me, he knows I won’t smoke. Even when he bites. He can sense that I’m harmless. Down to my bones.”

  Charlie understands what he means. Grendel radiates something. Holiness; an absence. A man estranged from sin.

  “Then Livia is right. You are an angel.”

  Grendel hesitates. “I fear I am one of those who stood at the edge of heaven, looking down. Dreaming about their Fall.”

  ф

  Thomas returns late. Finding the sewer entrance proved harder than he thought, his hand-drawn map of the underground and the city’s streets impossible to match. In the end he chanced upon an Ashton engineer in a company cab and ran behind it until it led him to a work site. Thomas snuck into the sewer for several hundred yards before being thrown out by a foreman. What he saw was a maze of tunnels and a mechanical pump the size of a house, pumping water down a giant bore. He got nowhere near those giant pools marked in pale rectangles upon his map.

  “We are running out of time,” he keeps saying. “It’s been forty-eight hours since they infected Mowgli. Another day and he’ll start changing. We must find out what she is planning before then.”

  “Then we will go tonight,” Charlie suggests. “We must take him along. In case we don’t want to return.”

  Thomas and Livia are quick to agree. They are all fed up with waiting. One might start a revolution, it comes to Charlie, or thwart it, just from this, a hunger for movement, for action.

  “Mowgli is locked in,” Livia reminds them. “But Grendel has the key. I will talk to him.”

  They see her speaking to Grendel later. It is easy that evening to catch him alone: Lady Naylor has been much preoccupied and has kept to her room. It is a whispered conversation, private, at the end of the corridor; Livia holding her holy man’s hand. His face is so kindly, so prone to blushes and nervous smiles that it is only by the tilt of Livia’s chin they can guess at the urgency of their talk.

  “Will he help us?” Thomas asks her bluntly when she returns.

  “Of course he will!”

  “And he won’t—”

  “He gave his word,” she barks, storming off, leaving both Thomas and Charlie in the wake of her Smoke. They sniff it like the lovelorn pups they are.

  “Pissy,” Thomas decides.

  “But she’s pretty when she is.”

  And for a moment they forget, almost, that they are to fight a duel for the favours of her heart.

  ф

  They decide on leaving early that night, but deep in the flat they can hear Lady Naylor stir and move about, so they wait until the moon is gone and the night made blacker by rain. The plan is a compromise of sorts, between Livia’s trust and the boys’ suspicion. Thomas will sneak into the room in which the Grendels sleep and see whether he can find the key to the child’s cell. If not, Livia will wake their host and remind him of his promise.

  “He will help us without fail.”

  But in the end there is no need to wake Grendel. When they step into the hallway, they see his wife’s shadow, sitting alone in the kitchen, the faint glow of embers in the stove behind her back. Not for the first time Charlie notes their ignorance of her Christian name. She remains, to them, a stranger. They start, crowd around her, assault her with whispers.

  “Quiet,” they hiss. “Don’t be alarmed.”

  And: “We need to speak to Grendel. He must unlock the child’s door.”

  The angel’s wife is stony-faced. She seeks out Livia’s form amongst them, shorter than the boys’ and framed by pale hair.

  “I know. He told me you had asked him. He told me everything.” The woman rises, pushes through them, pulls something out the pocket of her skirt. “There is no need to wake him. I have the key.”

  The door squeaks when she s
wings it open for them. Charlie winces, but nothing stirs in Lady Naylor’s room across.

  “Quick now,” says Thomas. “The child must not call out.”

  They rush forward, into darkness, find the blankets, the bunk. Behind them, the door falls back into its frame, the lock snaps.

  “I’m sorry,” says Mrs. Grendel. Her voice is dull, muffled by wood, by distance. “He said you mustn’t follow. They’ll be back before long.”

  Around them the room is empty, the child long gone.

  CAESAR

  They capture Nótt. This happens before Mother but after Sebastian. I’m having trouble with words, with time. I’m different now, transformed. A buzzard climbing the updrafts of Smoke. My bones hollow, my body a husk: reinhabited. I, the dark twin of my former self, flesh of my own liver. I am my own father and mother; Renfrew my midwife; the mask my baptism and my last rites. Children cower when I pass them in the streets.

  They take Nótt away. A man with a billy club, breaking her legs. They tie a rope around her neck and drag her; her jaws snapping, a whine in her throat, not a bark. I watch them do it, and I do nothing. It is of no consequence. Nótt is the past, my boyhood, my becoming. I trained her nose for Smoke. My own nose is better now, better than hers. I can smell your needs across the chill of a city square, can sort their flavours, weigh each urge: taxonomise. What I like, though, is to get close, inhale you like a flower. Dogs with their noses up each other’s arses. I understand it now. The bouquet of vice. Bottle it and you’ll be rich.

  But, of course: I am already rich.

  London is an ocean of Smoke. People float on it like scum: waterlogged, helpless, half aware of others circling in the depths. I came to it and plunged, handed myself over to its rhythms; its storms and tides; its eddies and swells. Cold, rich, salty. I plunged and I gorged. Not on food, mind. I don’t remember what I ate. Refuse, wild things scuttling in the alley; scoops of old, encrusted Soot. My head is light these days, my stomach a knot. My clothes hang from me like rags.