The Sea and Summer

by George Turner

  Upset at being caught wool-gathering, I snapped at him, ‘They didn’t let them run down. We did.’

  I thought he might snap back but he said only, ‘That’s right, we did. We ruined their fine and very expensive roads. Why, Conway?’

  I brushed that off. ‘What do hovercraft want with roads?’ My tone was plain rudeness. This outdoor tutorial setup was primitive and comfortless and I disliked him.

  He said, ‘Bicycles might use them.’

  It had to be a trick remark, not possibly serious. The only people using bicycles were the rare countryside Swill who wobbled around on rusted frames with solid tires cut from the detritus of tips and dumps; you saw them sometimes in triv comedies. You couldn’t imagine city people on them – a man on a bicycle had no dignity, no sense of how ridiculous he looked.

  My face must have said most of that because Nick became ironic. ‘Not bicycles? Our fathers rode bicycles.’ His stare demanded comment. I was the fish on today’s grill.

  Vanity and resentment are a destructive combination. I said, ‘There’s been progress since then.’ He couldn’t know that the word father had called up an image of my own feckless parent on such a machine, elbows stuck out, face red with effort, knees pumping.

  He asked, ‘Is it progress to lose something useful?’

  How many of us have since recognized that question as a lever jammed under our ignorance of the world? I crashed blindly into an answer. ‘They were crude. Besides, people had cars.’ Confusion had entered somewhere, propelled by my father’s shade; logic was lost in a maze of reactions. ‘They had everything they didn’t need. They killed each other with their cars. They killed hundreds of people every day with them. I know. My father had a car.’

  My mind was a chaos of pitfalls centered on my father forever rabbiting on about how things had been better . . . I went cold in the hot sun because control had been lost as well as logic and I felt the squad withdraw from me.

  Nick seemed unaware, concerned only with a line of argument. ‘Perhaps your father thought that private transport had advantages. Did he never tell you that?’

  Some part of me withdrew, like the squad, so that I was able to listen to my anger and my cracked voice screaming at him, ‘Who cares what he told? He told me shit! He didn’t have guts for the real world. He killed himself!’

  In the silence a distant kookaburra laughed, which was possibly fair comment, but the squad stayed quiet with eyes on the ground. They had seen where I joined the bus in Newport and now observed the value of intelligent social stratification – it took a Fringer to create a situation beyond protocol and good manners. I thought of that while my disjuncted tongue made a last comment, a casual coda addressed to memory: ‘There was blood all over the place.’

  Nikopoulps was inhuman; he carried on as though Edward Ellison Conway did not exist, simply switched his questioning to another victim and carried on his intention of upsetting the squad’s view of history and human endeavour.

  I waited for the bird to laugh again. I could have joined in to mock the problems of a stranger in an unexpected land. I had just rid myself of one of them. I had admitted the nightmare of Dad and spewed it out forever.

  3

  At the end of the second week there was a three-day break for home visiting. I stayed in camp. What would have been the point of going back? I was never lonely, never short of internal resources.

  Authority with its big capital A was unhappy about it but didn’t argue too hard, even seemed to understand in its remote way. Eventually a letter was written, with my agreement. It was a dishonest letter but its meaning was plain. A clean break causes less pain.

  Less pain to whom?

  4

  Each day after the first fortnight half a dozen of us were called to private interviews with Nick, and the things that bastard of a man had ferreted out about us were enough to make you believe in the evil eye.

  One of his jobs was the preparation of progress reports on each of our ninety-six. Many years later, when I could look back without wincing, I was able to track down my file and record some extracts (illegally), to learn in partial fashion how a twelve-year-old intellectual vulgarian developed into if not a good man at least one who could carry his shames as learning experiences.

  Here is one of Nick’s progress tapes, made some two months after intake, spoken in the flat, tired voice of a man striving to keep emotion out of an emotional activity:

  August 10, 2044.

  Subject: Conway, Edward Ellison.

  Classification: Extra, B Grade.

  Progress summary and comment: 2.

  General: Little overt change. Conceited, reserved, making acquaintances but no friends. Poor team worker; wants personal recognition, looks for applause then pretends to ignore it. Lonely but not admitting it, possibly even to himself. Psych Section advises family relationships crucial to his stable development; for comment, see Addenda.

  Physical: Stocky body type, muscular. Unsuitable for high performance athletics, ideal for endurance activities. Should develop excellent combatant physique.

  Educational: Mathematics poor. (Sibling rejection of brother’s freak talent?) Romantic view of science; enjoys fancy extrapolation and forecasts but little laboratory bent or interest. Word skills excellent; strong interest in literature and acting. Repeat, acting.

  Expressed preference: Police Intelligence Operations. More a romantic than an intellectual choice but successful training is possible. Personality traits make total failure also possible.

  Overseer’s addenda: I feel that his short period of Fringe residence hardened incipient attitudes and his worldview. Obvious diagnosis is profound self-dissatisfaction not yet realized. Psych suggests I persuade him to visit home regularly but his resistance is strong; his readiness to connive at that prevaricating letter to his mother was no small thing. I wish Psych had the job of persuading him.

  Rejection of mother and brother might succumb to time and pressure but Kovacs is a stumbling block. The police report on Kovacs is interesting. He is a Tower Boss with brains and ability and enough sense to operate within his limits. Some contradictions: a family man and a libertine, an extortioner with a penchant for generosity, a thief and con man and probably a killer who protects his tower with a pragmatic morality which includes police-informing on opposition elements. Will fight but would rather plot. Some attempt at self-education. An updated Renaissance condottiero – a thug with brains – carving out a gutter kingdom? Physical appearance unattractive but strong sexual charm. Represents to Conway everything despicable in the Swill stratum, but is on a solid footing with Mrs Conway as family friend.

  How to get the boy home – willingly?

  1. Move Kovacs out of area? Out of the question; too valuable as Tower Boss.

  2. Move the Conways to another Fringe. Too much opposition from allocation departments with eventual refusal on policy grounds.

  3. Enlist Kovacs’ help with the boy? But how? Delicate, touchy.

  4. Shatter the boy’s world view and rebuild.

  3 and 4 are the most delicate and risky but also the most productive if the boy is to have a career.

  A long-term project might be to bring Kovacs into active participation; this kind of Swill alliance is slippery on sociological and psychological grounds but might be attempted as a long-range goal. Should be considered.

  My major problem with this boy is his thoroughly unlikable personality, with few openings for sympathy. He is unhappy but clamped tight. It is hard to want to help him.

  How far ahead he planned and how deviously! I did not know that his rank was Captain, Intelligence, and that his secondment to instructional duties was in the nature of the change said to be as good as a rest. Some sort of occupational joke.

  8

  Captain Nikopoulos

  AD 2044

  Teddy Conway grew into a tough, intelligent man from a tough, intelligent little bugger of a kid. He wasn’t the kind whose middle name is Trouble – they’re
usually easily handled – but the kind you can’t get a grip on while the outside of his mind is so smooth and seamless.

  I never despair of reaching any brat – and Extras can be nastier brats than most – but it took me longer than it should have to realize that all the clues to Teddy were in that second report. In fact my entry into the inner Teddy began when I called him for routine interview shortly after it was dictated.

  He was one of those who always swaggered into the tent, miming self-possession, but he couldn’t restrain his curiosity (thinking it veiled) from scanning the fittings.

  Every intake began by believing that the tutors’ tents were a front for hidden furnishings and equipment for orgies. They were not to be fooled by plank beds exactly like their own or the plain desk with vocorder and intercom and no other visible gear. All façade, they reasoned. There must be screens, mikes, direct-access terminals . . . They accepted only gradually that the tutors lived much as their charges did. How else could we enter the day-today working of their minds?

  I let him decide that there were no careless clues exposed for him to pounce on, then said, ‘You’ve been fighting.’

  He knew I wouldn’t accept sullen silence, but the sullen, ‘Yes,’ was as useless.

  I said, tiredly because this was a regular grind with Teddy, ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Why not, Yes, you bastard, and be done with it? ‘What was the fight about?’

  Explaining a blind rage is never easy; he muttered that it was a private matter.

  ‘It wasn’t. What happens in class is public. Your drama tutor agrees. Is she right?’

  ‘I suppose so . . . sir.’

  ‘So do I. Again, what about?’

  How account for rage and shame that had to be released but put him in the wrong and was anyway too great for the cause? He started grudgingly, ‘We’re doing Macbeth—’

  ‘I know, and I know you enjoy drama class. Come to the heart of it.’

  He squared his chunky body and stared at my adam’s apple as if planning damage. ‘It was the dagger scene: “Is this a dagger which I see before me?” There was an argument.’

  He dried up, needing help. I said, ‘There always is about that scene. There’s always someone who wants a prop dagger floating in mid-air, all silver-gilt and menacing. To shock the eyes of the. groundlings.’

  Oh, cunning Nick! The misquotation found a mark in his surprise that this authoritarian oaf knew enough Shakespeare to play verbal games. From a different play, too. Since I was now talking his language, I kept at it. ‘And why not? Banquo’s ghost appears later on, played by a real actor, so why not a real dagger?’

  His tongue wagged obediently, fighting over the class argument. ‘But that’s because in Shakespeare’s day a ghost could be real. Macbeth sees Banquo though nobody else does – ghosts could do that. I mean, the people thought they could. But the dagger is only in Macbeth’s mind. He doesn’t even see it clearly, that’s why he asks, “Is this a dagger—?” ’

  It’s marvellous how a little enthusiasm can charge a mule’s face with life. ‘And so?’

  ‘You don’t have a dagger on stage. He acts it. He makes you see it as he does. A sort of vision.’

  If the expression limped, the thought was valid. I asked, ‘How does he do that?’, which was unfair, and I made it more so by demanding, ‘Show me!’

  Beth Castle had said the boy’s skill was considerable, but falling into character in drama class, with everybody keyed up and the air already smelling of another world, is very different from doing it from a standing start in a sweaty tent with a gimlet-eyed so-and-so challenging you to justify your thesis. He got the first line out and dried up in that total, terrifying blankness that is the actor’s dread.

  I went around to the front of the desk and took pose as Macbeth, hand outstretched to ward off horror, eyes peering into a corner of the tent. ‘Like this?’ And I let loose with ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me?’ in the hollow tones of an escapee from an echo chamber.

  It must have been excruciating but he let me get to ‘And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood’ before he interrupted me in sheer outrage ‘No, not like that, Nick!’

  That was lèse-majesté but it was not a moment for cavilling. ‘What am I doing wrong?’

  He frowned and fulminated like the ghosts of all the great directors since Stanislavski, ‘You’re acting all the time. The audience has to be looking for the dagger, not watching you! Their eyes have to be behind yours, looking out. You have to stay as still as possible.’ He was in flood, laying down technique to a clumsy understudy. ‘You can move when you say “Mine eyes are made the fools o’ the other senses.” You can turn your back on the vision there, but in the new direction there it is again. You say “I see thee still,” but this time there’s blood on it and it won’t go away because your mind keeps it there. You say so: “There’s no such thing; It is the bloody business which informed thee to mine eyes.” So you can’t use a real dagger.’

  A fine run, Teddy, but now back to earth – to tent and tutorial ogre. ‘Show me!’

  Show me he did, taking the speech with the least possible body movement save for that one turn, speaking it not loudly but like a man talking distractedly to himself. It wasn’t great art – you don’t get that from children – but it showed enough to set me thinking. He really saw the damned dagger. The rhymed couplet at the end defeated him as it has defeated Macbeths for centuries – there’s no way to speak it that doesn’t tear the magic.

  I gave him the nod of applause without extravagant compliment and asked, ‘Is that how you did it in class?’

  Sullenness returned full strength. ‘No . . . sir.’

  ‘How, then?’

  The young bugger took his revenge with a straight face. ‘More like you did, sir.’ The sir came easily as an act of impudence. ‘I hadn’t had a chance to prepare it.’

  ‘But you’ve spent time preparing it today. Why?’

  ‘Because last night I got it wrong.’

  ‘And they laughed at you?’

  If, as they say, looks could kill . . . ‘Yes . . . sir.’

  ‘So you hit the nearest set of teeth.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Without regret.

  ‘Belonging to Squadman Graves.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘An enemy?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Simply the nearest. And he hit back?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Naturally. Who won?’

  He looked mulish. ‘Nobody. They stopped us.’

  Oh, dear me, watch out next time, Graves! ‘If they hadn’t, who would have won?’

  ‘I would.’ Conscious of unseemly bragging, he modified it. ‘I’m stronger than he is.’

  ‘Maybe, but when you hit out at the nearest, what if it had happened that the nearest was your tutor, Miss Castles? Would she now have a split lip?’

  Seeing the pit dug for him he admitted unwillingly, ‘No, sir. I would have controlled myself.’

  ‘Hitting a tutor is not permissible but a smack in the teeth for Graves is?’

  Humiliation is to dig your own grave, then be forced to crawl into it. ‘No . . . sir.’ Sir, you bastard.

  ‘But forbidden violence is sweet, eh?’ It was time to bring forward a plan I had designed for him and a couple of other hotheads. ‘As from next week you will attend an additional night course. Three times a week. Judo.’

  His blank face told me he had never heard the word. Why should he? Teaching martial arts had been banned for thirty years. (But Police Intelligence teaches them. Very nasty.)

  ‘It is a course in the philosophy of non-violence allied to the art of self-defense. You will learn how to protect yourself, which is essential in a policeman, but also how self-defeating violence can be. You will be given mental training in repressing violence in yourself. What does all that add up to?’

  He wasn’t slow. ‘Self-control, sir.’

  ‘I will be
your instructor.’

  That didn’t go down well, so I passed to the next matter, where I expected strong resistance. ‘Your mother wants you to visit home.’

  He looked murderous, no other word for it. It hit me so hard that for a moment I lost hold of the situation and said something untrue and stupid. ‘So does your brother.’

  He said baldly, ‘I don’t believe you.’

  He didn’t care how I might react. He wasn’t angry; he was frightened and fighting for his freedom. It was an extraordinary impression to gain from a kid. I was knocking too suddenly on his secrets, yet too far committed to stop.

  With the special grace that favours blunderers, he helped me. ‘That creep wouldn’t look at me if I was dying.’

  That disposed of Francis. ‘Your mother—’

  He cut me off, not so much with rudeness as to prevent unwanted urgings. ‘She knew I wouldn’t be going back.’

  Her letters to the Department had said differently. ‘Did she tell you that?’

  He gave me a brat’s brazen, eye-to-eye look. ‘You can tell. You can always tell.’

  ‘Tell what you prefer to believe.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Bluntly, challengingly, slamming that door.

  ‘Did she beat you?’

  ‘No.’ Then, with unforgiving spite, ‘She hit me once. Anyway, I’m not going back.’

  I said, ‘There’s nothing to stop you,’ and by blind chance struck gold.

  ‘Yes, there is. Kovacs.’

  I had known of the aversion but not the power of it. ‘Billy Kovacs?’

  He was shocked. ‘You know him?’

  ‘I know about him.’

  He didn’t care for that; nobody likes being told that Authority fingers his private existence. ‘He’s shit.’

  ‘That word only means you don’t like him.’

  ‘He’s a criminal.’

  ‘Can you prove that?’

  ‘He takes my mother’s money. A stand-over Swill bastard.’