The Sea and Summer

by George Turner

He said, ‘I am not mad,’ and I don’t know which of us he was trying to convince, but I needed to be firm against pity.

  I said to him in the hardest, most clipped tone I could summon, ‘It wasn’t sanity I watched dribbling sympathy while it planned the next torture. I saw your butcher face when you hurt him.’

  Once started I could not stop the attempt to clear the whole slaughterhouse from my mind, ‘Your blood was cold. You played at humanity in moments between, but the truth was in your mad eyes. You loved what you did.’

  For a long time he said nothing, only leaned in a heap against the wall while I wondered what I was achieving aside from some unworthy release of a twelve-year-old’s spite.

  At last he muttered, ‘You young ones are hard. Haven’t been hurt enough.’

  It seemed I would have to wait until he ran out of self-pity, but he rallied in a spurt of hard, energetic speech.

  ‘I’m not mad, Teddy. Things have to be done and they aren’t easy things. I have to work up to them, pretend to myself that they’re right good things, think what sort of man I have to be and get under his skin. Be him for a little while.’

  He seemed to think that made everything plain. In a way, it did. He could search in himself for what he was and let it loose, like an animal . . . Then in seven words he stripped my thinking bare, ‘Nick says you’re an actor. You’d know.’

  I did know. I knew how often I had stood in Kovacs’ footprints, calling myself Macbeth and screwing my courage to the sticking point, Brutus while I sweated my soul away in the intention of murdering the man who had made himself my father, Hamlet in his final rage, his one moment of true insanity when he killed like a hacking vandalizer of flesh – and how, in moments of transformed intensity, I had looked out on the scenery and other players in dazed recognition that they were real and I the imitation who must find its way back to human conduct.

  If my possessed eyes had looked out on a corresponding reality instead of painted props, would the stage murderings have been pursued to their end?

  We can convince ourselves of strangeness because the possibilities are in us; there are realities at the bottom of the mind that can be called on to power the pretence. Any man, given the need, can do anything, be anything. Any man – or woman – can kill. Insanity is when you can’t stop, can’t slow down, can’t withdraw from the final blow.

  Looking into the capacities of my own mind was like peering into some parallel universe where the laws of sense did not operate and anything was possible. The measure of Kovacs was his ability to enter as far as need drove, and retreat at will.

  It was becoming plain what damage these experiences did to him. He had earned his right to be a freakish and difficult man.

  He asked, as if I were judge and jury, ‘Don’t you understand at all?’

  With a feeling of burning some crucial bridge behind me, I said, ‘I can try, Dad.’

  He bowled at me, ‘I told you never to say that!’ and I had to back from his swinging fist.

  I said desperately, ‘Until I meant it.’ His eyes blazed at me out of his huddle. ‘Come on, Dad. It’s a long way up.’

  Did some part of me mean it? I didn’t know. I was feeling very small and confused about my intentions and it was a damnably long way up.

  7

  Vi let us in, looming in a sack of a nightgown, not pleased at being wakened and warning us not to disturb the children. There was little chance of that – living so many to a cramped space, I thought they’d sleep through anything. The beds seemed full of them, packed like small, blanketed sardines. Gordy and Jim were swaddled on the floor.

  Billy’s bed had been left vacant for him (king’s privilege), a narrow affair of planks with a decrepit sleeping bag. He collapsed on it like another empty bag and asked for tea.

  Vi said softly, with venom, ‘You bloody would! At this time of the morning! Feeling sorry for yourself, are you?’ He looked away, not answering. ‘One of those nights, eh? You, copper! Who’s he been beating up?’ When I did not speak, because I did not then recognize her approach to therapy, she reverted to complaint. ‘Tea at this time!’ She settled herself in her rocker.

  I said, ‘I’ll make it!’

  She surveyed me with quizzical amusement. ‘You will? Didn’t I say he’d get you in the finish?’

  I had that to think over while I made tea in the Kovacs’ kitchen. Rightly or wrongly, it seemed I was committed in a puzzlingly schizophrenic loyalty to him and the end of it could only be conflict of interests and duties. Mum would be happy about it and Nick would be proud of a manipulation successfully brought off. Francis would be contemptuous if I read him rightly, but how he felt scarcely mattered for during the climb we had decided what must be done about him.

  When I gave Vi her tea she carried on her tirade. ‘You’ll see plenty of this before you’re through – the Tower Boss without a heart who gets sick for a week after tanning some brat’s arse and comes home to weep over it.’

  I said it had been more than an arse tanning.

  ‘Bones broken? Some blood on the floor? What’s the difference? You know something? He got religion once and found a priest to confess him. Then he decided that God couldn’t stand him and gave it away!’ She rocked slowly, suddenly desolate. ‘It was good for a laugh. There has to be something to laugh at.’

  I protested, ‘You can’t say he’s short of courage.’

  ‘Courage?’ She heaved with unvoiced amusement, or perhaps unshed tears. ‘Knight-in-armour stuff? You mean, plain old guts, the stuff Tower Bosses are made of? You begin to wonder after twenty-eight years of watching this one’s guts run out like water as soon as the pressure’s off.’

  I got out as soon as I could, thinking that Billy paid a stiff price for one wife’s loyalty and another’s love. Thinking, too, that my education in human relationships was bringing only jolting reverses and that anything you might think of people, good or bad, was likely to be true inside the same inconsistent heart and mind.

  A figure came racing up the stairs to meet me. Nick, saying, ‘Caught you in time.’

  I must have been stupid with strain and lack of sleep. ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘Where else would you be? Where are you off to?’

  ‘To Mum’s. For Sweet clothes. I need them.’

  ‘You don’t. Stay away from your mother’s. Don’t you think it’s watched? Now, did you get the story?’

  ‘Yes. The stuff comes in with Canteen stores—’

  ‘Later! Need I see Billy? Does he know anything you don’t?’

  ‘No. I was with him all night.’

  ‘Good. Out of here!’

  From the lobby we waded out into broad daylight but it was still too early for many to be about. Swill streets empty of milling crowds were strange, alien. The huge skirts surrounding each tower set them apart from each other as silent strangers, mute slaves supporting the arch of the sky. The morning brooded between them in cathedral quiet.

  Nick led, not out of the Newport area but deeper into the Enclave, taking a route where the ground rose clear of the water and we could make speed. He said, very quietly, though no one was within hearing, ‘You’re being looked for by people pretending casual interest. You were supposed to lead the pursuit to your principal but you slipped the net. You’re hot. Very hot.’

  When I had nothing to say he asked impatiently, ‘Do you understand just why you are a center of activity?’

  I did understand and had been suppressing the memory, wincing in advance at the anger I had earned. ‘Do you?’ he persisted, as ever, demanding self-abasement.

  ‘I opened my mouth too wide.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I threatened to tell the Swill what I knew.’

  ‘You didn’t know a damned thing that could be proved but the boss man couldn’t be sure of that. He could have had it drugged out of you, but—’ he stopped dead and grabbed my shoulder and glared into my face, ‘—but then he would have had to kill you, rather than send
you back to PI and the departmental storm that would have been roused.’

  I protested that I had told him I wouldn’t really do it, that I had changed my mind.

  ‘And could change it back again if the pressure got too strong. He’s not an idiot. So he had to risk letting you go, to see where you would lead him. He’s a risk taker but he lost you and he’ll be bitter. Your home and every place you frequent will be staked out. They’ll be searching Twenty-three within hours.’

  I asked timidly, ‘Then where do we go?’

  ‘Where I take you. Tell me about last night.’

  He was coolly impatient with the details of the kidnapping, to him routine stuff that anybody could bring off, but he cursed Billy for tripping the sergeant’s block. I said it was accidental but he said Billy must know blocks were routine and had bungled it. He was furious. Then, gravely, because he knew the only possible answer, he asked, ‘What did he do?’ and listened impassively to my account of the mauling, asking only, ‘Did you help him?’

  ‘I couldn’t. I haven’t got it in me. Billy hasn’t, really, either. He’s just about in collapse.’

  Nick was neither surprised nor sympathetic. ‘He’s notorious for it – the thug who weeps for his victims.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Billy weeps for himself.’

  Nick was savage, with Billy, with me, with the whole sick operation. ‘ “Billy” now, is it? A touch of reality does make a difference! Do you know that forcing a block can bring on a heart attack? What did the poor bastard tell you?’

  To me the shock had been my brother’s involvement; stripped of that, the rest amounted to little. The stuff was delivered in cartons direct to the Stores, addressed personal care of the Unit Intelligence Officer – Nick interjected a satisfied ‘Ah!’ – who made it available to the troops as sexual bait. The cover story was that this was a softening-up exercise to get the little Swill sexpots thoroughly hooked on super-strength narcotic and so open up an information line for some higher-up purpose unstated. ‘It goes in by special delivery from Eastern Imports.’

  ‘That’s part of the Ma’am Parkes’ demesne.’

  ‘Yes, and it is carried by special messenger.’

  ‘Did you get a name?’

  At the look on my face his sour mood lifted. He slapped his thigh and spluttered, ‘Wouldn’t you know it? So young Francis has a tiger by the tail! To him they’d be only boxes of chewey, filthy stuff the lower classes use. Swill’s delight.’

  I said with that special patience of restrained anger, ‘He’s in danger. Now that Sykes knows what the stuff really is he’ll talk and the troops will take it out on Francis as the only one they can get at. Kill the evil messenger! Some of them have used the chewey themselves—’

  ‘Are you telling me Billy has sent that man back to his unit? Is he out of his mind?’

  ‘What else could he do? The man was in terrible shape and where else could he go? If Billy hadn’t sent him back to his MO he’d have been lamed for life.’

  Nick said thoughtfully, ‘I might have let him rot. Think what will happen when this story gets around the regiments.’

  ‘Nothing worse than if it got around the Swill.’

  ‘Think, boy! The Swill can be kept under by soldiers but who can keep the soldiers under?’

  For once he did not expect a reply and my sick feeling of having walked blindly over a precipice was no comfort. He was silent as we crossed the far edge of the Enclave and moved into a Fringe area I had not known existed. We stopped at a grimy dwelling with a boarded-up shop front, a design that had not been built in a hundred years, with shop and store space below and a small dwelling above. The ground floor, Nick said, was a ‘safe house,’ one of several PI kept for emergency use. I did not ask who lived above. He would not have told me.

  The musty, uncleanly shop section contained an old counter, a cupboard, a table and a few chairs; it was purely for birds of passage. Nick opened a large carryall that stood on the table. ‘Our uniforms.’ He dragged them out. ‘Towel. Shaving gear. There’s a cold water gulley trap at the back door. Hurry it up.’

  I spotted, in a shed at the bottom of the backyard, the snout of a small patrol hovercar. ‘Our transport,’ Nick said. ‘Hurry.’

  I did not ask why, simply hurried. In something under five minutes we were shaved and in uniform. Pulling on my pants, I asked, ‘How much trouble am I in?’

  He was blunt. ‘Your career is over unless I can salvage it. That sergeant! Christ almighty!’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘They’ll have more trouble with me.’

  That I could believe. ‘Who’s they?’

  ‘In the last analysis, the whole damned government.’ He swept up the bag with our Swill rags in it. ‘Out!’

  By seven thirty we were on our way. ‘Where to, Nick?’

  ‘To get Francis, we can hide him in the towers—’

  ‘Billy thought that. He’d die of fright.’

  Nick continued across me, ‘—we’ll have a pawn for bargain and blackmail.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘Mainly to save our own skins. Once that’s attended to we can look ahead.’

  ‘What about Francis afterward?’

  He fished in the dashboard locker and brought out a packet of sandwiches. ‘Hungry?’

  ‘Yes. About Francis . . .’

  ‘The more I hear of him the less I care what happens to him.’

  I said without much conviction, ‘The way he’s turned out isn’t all his fault.’ He stared ahead at the road; I tried again, wondering how well I knew Nick after all. ‘Mum cares. She doesn’t talk about it but she cares.’

  ‘Mothers are impenetrable.’ He gave me the ghost of a grin. ‘How you do love suffering humanity all of a sudden. Your brother has to be snatched, whether he deserves it or not. After that the finest crystal ball couldn’t see what will happen. If we don’t take him, and quickly, they may well get rid of him before the soldiers pick him up.’

  Eighteen is no great age; I felt helplessly young amid the realities of a world I had thought I was learning about but had only taken for granted.

  ‘Who would – get rid of him?’

  ‘Kill him? The executive division of Political Security. What the triv calls the Secret Service. The boss man you saw at Med Section was Arthur Derrick, Superintendent, Confidential, Internal Affairs. See how important you have become!’

  I saw and was shocked into petrifaction. It took time for the implications to show themselves. ‘All this means that our own people are spreading the chewey. It doesn’t come from outside.’

  ‘It may come from outside but our people are surely using it.’

  ‘Billy’s cull.’

  ‘I think not. That’s a last resort idea. More likely a try-out to see what can be done and how, if it ever becomes necessary. We’ve made it go badly wrong for them.’

  He patted my knee and I thought he was about to make some useless apology for getting me into this dangerous affair, but what he said was, ‘Always be sensibly afraid but short of shit scared. Eat your sandwich.’

  22

  Nola Parkes and Arthur Derrick

  AD 2051

  1

  Nola Parkes

  At seven, dressing-gowned, waiting for my morning tea to cool, I called, ‘Come in,’ expecting Gwen with my outfit for the day, but it was Tallis, still wearing his pantry apron. ‘I thought it better to come myself, ma’am, than to risk staff gossip.’

  Strange, In twenty years he had never come beyond the outer door of the private suite. ‘About what, Tallis?’

  ‘A caller, ma’am. A Mr Arthur Derrick.’

  Only a stupid woman would not have been alarmed by that name at this hour, but half a lifetime of dissimulation pretended only mild interest. ‘Thank you for the thought, Tallis, but I am not about to be arrested.’ Was I not? ‘You recognized him?’

  He allowed himself the knowledgeable half-smile that can make a private servant unbearable. ‘In societ
y service, ma’am, a useful memory may avoid a contretemps.’

  The years had earned him the right to a little gratuitous insolence. ‘Ask him to wait ten minutes.’

  ‘He is urgent, ma’am, and there are others with him. Plainclothes policemen, I think.’

  I cried with an aging woman’s assumption of gaiety, ‘No woman of fifty delays an urgent gentleman.’ Fifty-six, in fact and he knew it. ‘But must I receive him en déshabillé?’

  Tallis was not amused. ‘His haste might recommend it, ma’am.’

  A suave cynic, my Tallis, but he had had the sense to bypass the staff. ‘In the office,’ I said, ‘in three minutes.’

  I ran a washer over my face and a comb through my hair, donned a hairnet and slippers and took the cup of tea with me as a stage property to fiddle with if nerves failed – and received him in character as a working woman taking the day as it comes. And, to my surprise, without a tremor.

  He left his four policemen (even my inexperience could identify their large frames and set, slightly overfed faces) in the small library, dropped himself into the client’s chair and remarked coolly, ‘You haven’t changed much, Nola.’

  I found myself retorting with sincere sharpness, ‘In a dozen years I have changed considerably. So have you. What do you want? Tea and a chat?’ Why do we imagine that aggressiveness shows self-possession and innocence?

  The dozen years was the time since we had been – almost – lovers. It was for the best, I believed, that his departmental ambitions and my clandestine dealings warned me that the liaison could be a dangerous one. I had managed the disengagement clumsily and now his easy use of my first name rankled and accused.

  He had changed in more than appearance. His thin body was as stiff now as then, his hair a little greyer, his generously wide mouth the same deceptive slit, his green-grey eyes as coolly lively – and his vanity less hidden. Success had relaxed the caution that once disguised self-love as enthusiasm, had exposed the mental preening of a man proud of his status and appearance and forever conscious of both. I suppressed the temptation to tell him that the youthful basin crop was a mistake on a man edging sixty.