The Sea and Summer

by George Turner

  I had chosen early evening in the hope of a glimpse of Francis, whom I had never seen, before he was packed off to Quarters (a sort of barracks in the rear) for the night. The scanner didn’t waste time on me when I rang – it winked on, looked, winked off. My uniform guaranteed entry.

  She sent a personal servant to open to me; the house staff would have seen gossip in a police visit.

  The personal servant was Francis. There was no mistaking him, though in one-to-one detail the brothers were not alike. Teddy at eighteen was stocky, strong, saturnine, with the appearance of temper tamed and disciplined but ever ready, Francis at fifteen was already the taller but slender, almost frail, with a ready-to-please expression that reached back through generations of washing hands to Uriah Heep. Each in his way resembled their mother, whom I knew only from excellent Intelligence holographs, though I had once let Teddy think otherwise. I disliked Francis on sight and wondered what childish innocence had claimed the Kovacs heart long ago. But Billy was reputed to be a sucker for kids – God knew, he had a swag of his own scattered about.

  ‘Mrs Parkes.’ I knew she was in.

  The boy’s disinterested expression did not change as he asked if I had an appointment. I hadn’t. ‘Perhaps,’ he suggested, ‘you should ask for one.’

  ‘Perhaps you should tell her I have something to say concerning Kovacs.’

  That should have got a reaction, but he was rock steady; being privy to secrets teaches self control. He shrugged, very slightly, with what he may have considered exquisite insolence.

  ‘Little figureman,’ – that reached him – ‘just run to the Ma’am and tell her what the nasty copper said.’

  He didn’t quite dare to spit but said, ‘Please wait,’ and went off – to return smartly with, ‘Please follow me.’

  He was well trained in the spider business – he had not asked my name. Nor, it seemed had she. No names, no pack drill.

  It’s no use trying to describe the house. Half my life has been spent in the Swill and the other half in State offices; I don’t know the proper terms for much of what I saw. Think of hand-made furniture, paintings, drapes, ornaments in metal and ceramic, rooms like jewels, carpets like pictures and lighting that revealed and caressed.

  Some of my kind hate this sort of thing and talk about bread from the mouths of the needy and no person being more deserving than another. I don’t give a damn about the logic of deprivation (no world will ever have enough luxury to go around) because I’d sell my soul, if it was worth anything, to possess what I saw in that house. I didn’t resent the Ma’am, I envied her.

  But the little office where I ended up was just an office: a desk, chairs, a communicator terminal, a built-in catty, a vocorder and a woman.

  She was about fifty, dark-eyed and dark-haired, on the way to becoming heavy-bodied, not much made-up but good-looking in a way that had more to do with character than bone structure. The records said she had never had cosmetic surgery. Her gaze was not defensively expressionless, just a little quizzical. She said, ‘That will be all for tonight, Francis.’

  The kid snuffled, wanting to stay and listen, said, ‘He mentioned Kovacs.’

  ‘So you told me. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight, Ma’am.’ He flashed me a hard look as he went, fixing my face in memory. A freak memory was listed as part of his box of tricks.

  She waited. We both waited, playing the nerve game, both knowing it for a game. She sighed, not giving in, merely ending a nonsense, and said, ‘Five minutes.’

  I said at once, ‘I am an Intelligence Officer. I am Swill born. I am a friend of Billy Kovacs.’ That was a lie. I had not yet met him.

  ‘Is he in trouble?’

  That warmed me to her. Not What does he want? but Is he in trouble? From Sweet to Swill that was a lot. ‘No, ma’am, and he wants no more than he already gets.’ That told her pretty well how much I knew.

  She nodded, the look lighting up a little, becoming more quizzical, ‘So it is you who want something?’

  ‘Nothing you’ll be unwilling to give.’

  She relaxed perceptibly as the unspoken word, blackmail, was implicitly eased out of the exchange.

  I said, ‘I want to give Billy and Mrs Conway a Christmas present. I want Francis home with them on Christmas Day.’

  She did not ask why – the old hand knows that motives are never honestly revealed. She got straight to business. ‘He will be unwilling.’

  ‘Lean on him.’

  She asked, ‘What good will it do Francis?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe none and I don’t care. But his mother deserves something. So does Kovacs, for that matter.’

  ‘Oh, I agree. I don’t know the woman but he is an excellent man, wasted in that environment.’

  ‘Not wasted, ma’am. He’s doing a job he was born for.’

  ‘And he has a policeman for a friend. I can think of a dozen questions you would refuse to answer.’

  ‘I’ll answer one of them: Billy has never said a word to me concerning you and Francis.’

  ‘Thank you. I have always trusted him.’

  ‘Keep on trusting him. Now, about Francis?’

  Her faint grimace suggested that Francis was more necessary than welcome. ‘I have seven days in which to think how to go about it. Should he connect you with the matter?’

  ‘Best not.’

  ‘Very well. What else?’

  ‘Nothing else, ma’am.’ As I left her I thought to say, ‘You can trust me, too, ma’am.’

  She smiled at that, not at me, I imagine, but at all the things unspoken, a game player contemplating the board. I hurried out of the house because if I had loitered it would have had to be for hours, churning with greed. It was the only time I saw how the other one-hundredth of one percent lives.

  The reason for this meddling was Teddy. At eighteen he was through basic training and into on-the-job learning. He had done as well as expected – that is, very well – in technical studies, less well in development as a human being. He understood the social setup and the desperate reasons for preserving it against the dwindling quality of life, but he scarcely seemed to belong to it. He observed the world as though he had no part in its operation.

  He had had just one sexual affair, one which seemed against all expectation to show signs of permanency, with Carol Jones. At his age it was not enough; whatever psychology and sexual convention may say, an Intelligence man needs broad and, if need be, unhappy experience of the world.

  In the same way, he had made only one friend, as if one of anything was enough. That was the scrawny Swill physicist, Arry Smivvers, who had been removed to rarefied intellectual areas where a policeman would have little contact. Teddy had taken the break in sullen silence, as a personal affront from life, but they kept up an occasional contact.

  He needed other, less committed contacts to teach him the multiplicity of humanity and that merely being yourself in an insulated ego is not enough and that the ego must be infinitely elastic in an evolving world. As an actor he could work faultlessly from a script; it was the ad lib situation that found him wanting in completeness.

  He needed people.

  He needed work.

  He needed reminding that it was I who had influenced his training to make him the instrument whose rough shape I had glimpsed six years before.

  The Christmas Day around-up at Newport Twenty-three needed a large team wherein the presence of a few novices would do no harm, so I asked for him to be detailed ‘for experience’ and added a couple of other brats to keep him nervous company on a first major operation.

  15

  Francis

  AD 2050

  For years I filled in the weekends with reading and study. The departmental tutors were a revelation of what teaching could be – learning from them was no grind, more of a release, and long days lost their rigor as the world opened up with an ease that made all my past claustrophobic.

  There was social learning, too. I had started ba
dly with the senior clerk and came in for more unkindness before I discovered the value of reserve, but in the end I got on pretty well with everybody. The Fringe years faded.

  Then came Christmas 2050, and the Department closed down for the traditional break. Quarters emptied on Christmas Eve as most Staff found friends to visit and the community rooms became haunts for a few murmuring ghosts like myself. I did not care; solitude was no burden.

  I was surprised when the Ma’am called me to the house on Christmas morning. I thought at first that she must have a holiday task for me, which could mean a bonus gift, but anticipation evaporated when she handed me an envelope with my mother’s name on it and said, ‘I want you to deliver this for me, Francis.’

  I don’t know what jumble of words I spilled out to try to evade the impossible mission; I knew there could be no withstanding her, that I was a rat in a trap. She heard me patiently and said unmercifully, ‘This is a day for reviving love; forgiveness comes easily at Christmas. ‘You need forgiveness.’

  For what? For dragging myself out of the Swill mud? But if I feared Mum’s tears and Billy’s hands I feared the Ma’am much more. I gave in because I must.

  I dressed disconsolately for a black Christmas Day. All the long way to Newport Fringe in the hovertram I rehearsed hopeless openings, even to the simple snivelling of ‘Mum, I’m sorry,’ with a few tears, knowing I could not do it convincingly. Nor could I face forgiveness and a return to that squalid half-house each weekend.

  I had to walk a kilometer from the hovertram stop, under a 43 degree sun; Mum’s place had no air-conditioning and would be an oven. In the street outside, bringing a frightening new repulsiveness to the place, was the water. Where high tides had sometimes been visible from the back fence, on this day I saw the lapping flood at Mum’s gate. In the towers whole lower stories must have been submerged.

  I felt a chill under the summer sun and the impact of a memory . . . Swill swimming like mad . . . The garden had been ravaged by water, so the tide must now have been receding but its residual mud made a filthy mess of my shoes. I hovered between apprehension and a need for yelling anger.

  Knocking on the door, I felt that I stepped off a cliff.

  When Billy Kovacs answered I wanted to run. My mouth dried up. He towered over my nervousness though I was now as tall as he. He wore only shorts and the skeleton that carried so much strength over thin bones made him more than ever a knob-jointed, stick-limbed spider with narrow face thrust to strike. He said nothing, just looked at me without expression as though he didn’t care whether I spoke or died.

  I could not pretend courage; I faced him because I had no choice. I held up the envelope with Mrs Conway printed on it and managed to say, ‘I have to give this to Mum.’

  He did not look at the words his weak eyes would not have been able to make out but turned on his heel to let me pass.

  I saw someone in the passage behind him, a dark, thickset young man in Swill rig. He was in shadow but when he took a pace into the light I knew him.

  His watching face, alive still with the certainty of his superiority, roused an instant blind hatred which until that moment I had not known was waiting in me to break and spill. The old habit of ‘getting on’ with him fled in recognition of humiliations and shames beaten down because too sharp to be borne. They hit my heart and head with the force of all things that made the house detestable and fearful; they made my sight dim and the world spin.

  The fury must have passed in seconds, for I became sweat-cold and in command of myself and none of us had moved.

  I threw the envelope down the passage to his feet and said, ‘You give it to her, favourite boy!’ The words must have had the effect of spittle in the eyes.

  He picked it up but did not speak; the complex expression on his face, more frightened than frightening, meant nothing to my anger.

  Billy seemed, for a fraction of a second, dismayed, but he did not move. I said, ‘There’s no need for me here now, is there?’ and he made the slightest, almost stupefied shake of his head.

  Triumphant, I left them standing there.

  The Ma’am would have to accept the situation.

  And so she did. She made no more attempts to force me back home. Perhaps Billy made some sort of explanation to her.

  One thing cheered me.

  Teddy – brilliant, conquering, Extra Teddy had missed his chance. He was back in the Fringe home with the number two dad he despised. Now, there was a fall!

  I would not fall. The Ma’am was by then renting my talent to a small number of her departmental peers and I was making powerful friends. And making sure they needed me.

  16

  Teddy

  AD 2050

  1

  My first thought on being rostered was that the job would fill the Christmas break, my next that folklore held induction to a first ‘costume’ operation to be unexpected and unpleasant.

  It was.

  We four rookies were herded into what are called the ‘Swill rooms’ for six days before the job, with four old hands – two male, two female – to observe us and short-circuit disasters. Eight people was reckoned average for a Swill three-roomer; the towers had four-roomers as well but I suppose we were being offered maximum discomfort.

  ‘When you come out,’ said the ape who locked us in, ‘you’ll have just the teeniest idea of what being Swill means.’

  The three-roomers were designed, some thirty years earlier, for at most three people. ‘At most’ now meant as many as could find floor space. Two of the old hands grabbed the double bed while we were still feeling depressed by the general squalor and leered at us, ‘Mother and father take the snoozer, the rest of you doss where you can.’

  The other old-hand woman (her name was Elsie) pushed through to claim the single bed and Freddy the Grunter (one of our old tutors) stretched on the couch. ‘Floor’s free,’ he said and went to sleep. No one meant to be helpful.

  We examined the flat. The furniture, old, worn and rickety, was in character. There was no light globe in the bedroom. (‘Don’t need it,’ said Father smugly.) The cupboards were empty; a kitchen shelf held a few battered containers and pans and half as much crockery as we needed, all of it cracked and discoloured. The filthy windows looked out on a blank wall across an alley.

  Our personal case was no better. We had the Swill rig we stood in and which we would wear for the job, plus one change of underwear. We also had a week’s supply of Suss coupons for slipping under the door with a note of what we wanted.

  We conferred on how to use the coupons intelligently for a week’s needs. We ignored our coaches, knowing they would not help. We made very cunning outlay for food before anyone thought of detergent or toilet paper and had to do some more cunning corner cutting to squeeze them in without minimizing rations. Luckily I remembered some of the things I had heard from Arry, and thought to look at the stove. One hotplate was working. The others could have been fixed easily – if, between us, we had had a spanner or a screwdriver. That changed the food list again, increasing the order for fruit and canned supplies, which were coupon expensive. The simple matter of a sufficient diet began to look difficult, but we laughed at ourselves and coped.

  We stopped laughing when, after the supplies arrived, we discovered that the fridge was not working and we had to make a few huge meals of perishables before they rotted and then go on very light rations for the final three days. The coaches did not offer to share their more experienced arrangements.

  The triv screen blew out on the second night. An unhopeful call to Complaints achieved nothing.

  There is no point in detailing the week’s disasters: the lows were humiliating and the highs little better.

  A fine low occurred when we found that the water, when it wasn’t rusty, ran only at times, not always the same times and then only in half-pressure trickles. It had to be stored in the bath for lack of containers (after we had improvised a plug) and used mostly for cooking. On the second day personal cle
anliness went by the board.

  The flush toilet became a problem. On the fourth day we learned the consequences of flushing only when the water was ‘on’ instead of using some of the precious bath supply – the sewer became blocked. Forget the shifts we were put to for the rest of the time. The stench was appalling.

  The coaches, of course, adapted as to the manner born. The girls taught us the reality of lack of privacy by undressing casually when the fit took them and choosing our toilet sessions to sit on the edge of the bath and chat while we relieved ourselves, not budging when it came time to reach for the toilet roll. Wiping your arse under the stare of an attractive woman is a fine inhibition breaker. Otherwise the coaches did little but observe and tut-tut when tempers ran high.

  Run high they did. The first fight was on the third day after an argument about food, a shamefaced affair that petered out with no damage done. The coaches were alert observers. The second fight went the distance but was still a gentlemanly exchange. The last one, on Christmas Eve, was a yelling brawl that might have ended badly if the coaches hadn’t stepped in with some smart chopping and throttling.

  ‘Make good Swill, this pack of young thugs, won’t they?’ said Freddy and took no further notice.

  When we were let out the fresh air in the corridor was perfume but the uniformed copper who released us said, ‘Christ, but you’ve got the smell right.’ We demanded baths but he sent us straight to Action Briefing. ‘Mustn’t wash off the smell when you’ve worked like pigs to get it.’

  That, we believed (wrongly as usual) was the greater part of the reason for the filthy exercise.

  There were sixty-four operators in the Briefing Room, all in costume with a general look of having picked their gear from rubbish tips. Possibly they had, but anything that was not a blocked lavatory was attar.