by Iain Pears
Letting him join the Saturday group had been a mistake. Previously it had been a group of like-minded, easy-going men who would drink their beer and smoke their pipes, comfortable in their common experiences and outlook. Persimmon changed it all. He wanted to introduce rules, set the agenda in advance, ensure everyone had an equal chance of speaking. He wanted a chairman to run what had been a random conversation and turn it into a meeting. Soon he would want a secretary and minutes written up, no doubt. Persimmon had started coming on Saturdays, clutching ever more pages fresh from the typewriter. Lytten didn’t really know why; it was not as if he could abide any criticism. He was there to teach them, not to learn something from their responses. It was pure cowardice on their part – cowardice masquerading as politeness – that they did not tell him to go away and leave them in peace.
Occasionally Lytten’s dutiful politeness created such inner tension that he could not avoid taking revenge. When he was feeling impishly malicious, it was irresistibly easy to goad Persimmon.
‘How is the science fiction?’ he might ask innocently.
‘We do not say that. We say speculative fiction.’
Off he would go, bathing Lytten in a sea of censorious severity, lecturing him about fiction at the service of education, exploring human potential. Think of satellites, first dreamt of in a short story …
‘Why write a novel then?’
‘It is a way of educating the masses,’ Persimmon would reply.
‘To make great thought available in ways they can understand. Fiction does not interest me. As a didactic vehicle, however, it has its uses.’
‘You are not afraid your readers might see what you are doing and prefer something which doesn’t want to teach them a lesson?’
‘No. Eventually it will be required reading in schools.’
‘Will there not always be rebels and outlaws, poets and dreamers?’
‘I intend to put such people in so the contrast between antisocial disruptivism and constructive behaviour is clear. They will come to a nasty end. We have tamed the outside world through science. Why cannot we tame the inner one as well?’
‘Then what of beauty and madness? Would you eliminate them as well?’
‘Most certainly. Madness will be eliminated in our lifetime by drugs.’
‘I suppose Plato would agree with you. I always thought his world sounded quite dreadful. I will just have to hope that we blow ourselves up before we get to your state of perfection.’
Persimmon permitted himself a smile. ‘That is why the control of technology must rest with those who understand it.’
‘Not politicians, then?’
‘They will be swept aside and replaced by a meritocracy, chosen for ability and dedicated to achieving the best for society.’
*
He slept a little on the boat train, lulled to sleep by Persimmon’s prose. In some ways it was flattering, although annoyingly so. Persimmon had listened to Lytten’s careful exposition about creating Anterwold from the ground up and had decided to do the same. But, through an extraordinary feat of imagination, he had taken the very worst of communism and the very worst of capitalism and fused them together into a monstrous whole. Lytten plodded through, hoping for even the faintest glimmer of a story, a joke, a bit of whimsy, but there was nothing. How he pitied the man’s students.
This occupied him until the bed in the sleeping compartment of the train was prepared and he lay down on the fresh linen sheets and drifted off to sleep. In the morning he took the Métro to the centre of the city, having his ticket clipped by the old lady who had been in the same position the last time he had come to Paris. Then onto the ancient wooden train, thick with the pungent smells of garlic, sweat and Gitanes.
Considering the circumstances, it was strange that he thought neither of his purpose nor his surroundings. Paris was a grimy place; the buildings crumbling and black from neglect, the streets dirty. Sometimes you could see the skeleton of a once fine building, a glimpse of a splendid vista, but by and large it was sad and neglected, somewhat like London, which also showed the signs of decrepitude on every soot-covered wall.
The meeting place was a dingy room in the Hotel du Paradis in another bedraggled part of the city near the place des Vosges, its former grandeur now ruined and derelict. Lytten approached it carefully, old habits coming back to him reluctantly and without pleasure. He was not happy to remember how to avoid being noticed, how to check the way ahead and the path behind. He took no pride in his skill, rather as one takes no pride in the ability to breathe or to walk. It was just a way of life and a way of staying alive.
Why had he introduced an apparition into his story, and why did that continue to bother him? He must be getting old, and lazy. The thought was even in his mind as he walked, quietly and with ears alert for any unusual sound, up the two flights of cold, damp stairs to the room. No sound of footsteps in another room, nothing obviously out of place or strange. The concierge had given no look that was out of the ordinary.
*
Lytten knew who he was meeting, of course; it was going to be the man who had told tales of wolves and forests, and who had listened intently as he had spun his yarns in turn. Why? Because a dreaminess in his eyes made him a good choice, that was all. The others had been too steadfast, too rooted in the ground. Only the man known as Volkov would have conceived of calling a meeting with the Storyteller. Once Lytten had talked to him of Paris, of magnificence and decay, of grand hotels like the Ritz, and seedy, squalid ones, like the Paradis. The name had appealed to him. He had chuckled appreciatively at the idea of Paradise being filled with prostitutes. If only, he had said with a laugh. If only.
Volkov opened the door not with hesitation, but normally and calmly. Foolish; he should be more careful. What if it had not been Lytten? What if instead of a book in his hand he had had something more dangerous?
He stood there, a cautious smile on his face, very different from the man Lytten remembered with his fair, cropped hair, the short stocky stature, the sad eyes that would fix you intently, then dart away. His face was unlined, almost fresh, as though he had led a life without concern. Lytten remembered also the impish grin, the other Volkov, jolly and exuberant, the caricature Russian. He gestured for Lytten to come in, throwing the door wide to show there was no one else there.
It is an important Russian who can go out alone in a western city. A trusted one; the only other people around – apart from the raddled women smoking away their loneliness in every arch of the crumbling square – were those shadows Lytten had sensed as he walked from his hotel; sensed but never seen or heard. There were no Russian minders, but …
He gestured for Lytten to sit on the rickety chair.
‘Shall we begin?’
‘By all means.’
‘Then,’ he said, screwing up his eyes and almost reciting, saying words he had practised often, ‘I wish to come and live in your country, with a job and safety. I ask for your help.’
He paused, then grinned broadly at Lytten. ‘How was that for a start?’
‘Very good,’ Lytten replied.
*
Volkov asked for no assurances and set no conditions. They would talk properly when they were back in England. Until then it was better to say nothing. A sensible precaution; the conversation was carefully arranged just in case someone had put microphones in the room. Unlikely, but possible.
So they did not discuss why he wished to defect, to abandon country and family and the high position of a colonel in the Soviet secret services. ‘Let’s just say that I want to see Salisbury Cathedral,’ he said. It was a poor explanation, said with a faint smile, but it was good enough. Her Majesty’s government was to be presented with its latest intelligence coup because of the power of the English language. Volkov knew England was not like Thomas Hardy’s Wessex, but he was attracted by a country that could produce such works. He was attracted by an illusion, a fugitive from reality, rather like Lytten was himself.
G
etting him to England was not, in principle, difficult. Except that Henry had noticed another shadow on the wall as he looked out of the window, and remembered now that he had heard a footstep, a very faint scuffling, as he walked through the street that led to the hotel. Then he wondered about the strange man who had stared at him outside his own house the previous day.
‘I think we may have been noticed,’ he said quietly as he studied the street below some more.
‘I saw no one,’ Volkov said.
‘Maybe not.’
‘I have told no one,’ he added.
‘Hmm.’ Lytten again drew back the curtain very slightly. Again he saw the faintest movement under an archway; one of the girls glanced to one side and moved away. It was enough; all he needed.
‘Let us be cautious, though. Just to be on the safe side.’
*
What was supposed to be simple had now become complex, but he had done more, and worse, in the past. It was not so difficult to lose those following him. Just after eleven, he and Volkov slipped out the back of the hotel, across a courtyard, and took the Métro to the Gare Saint-Lazare, travelling by an indirect route, waiting on platforms to study passers-by, getting on trains then getting off again at the last moment. Neither saw anything to give cause for concern. Then they boarded a small commuter train which went only into the suburbs, and found a hotel for commercial travellers behind the station. The next morning, Lytten got him on a bus to Rennes, then another to Granville. A tiny port, filled only with fishing boats. Lytten found one that was setting out that evening; it would deliver post and food to Jersey late at night, then head for the open waters of the western Channel the next morning. With the help of a suitable inducement, the captain agreed to take them. Ports in Jersey rarely bothered to check the passports of fishermen coming from France, and ports in England rarely checked boats coming from Jersey either.
By Thursday – and Lytten was aware that he had been away much longer than he had intended – they arrived in Weymouth, then took the stopping train to Salisbury. Here they stayed the night with an old friend from school, a clergyman who had never had any contact with the intelligence services. A good friend, who lived in the Close in a very cold, very badly looked-after house which had a large number of unused bedrooms. Here Volkov could stay until Lytten decided what to do with him.
Lytten was satisfied with him, but would he convince Sam Wind? Would he be assessed as a fraud, a plant or a treasure? That was out of his hands. The Very Reverend Horace Williams (MA Oxon) agreed to act as host and so, after extracting a firm promise that he would stay in the house and behave himself, Lytten left Volkov behind and took the train home. Unorthodox, possibly even rash, but it was an unusual situation. He could not tell anyone of his prize for fear of spoiling things. Now, he thought as he walked alone to the railway station, a little peace at last.
20
After Henary left an ill-humoured Jay by the side of the road outside Willdon, he went off on his donkey feeling strangely downcast. He hoped he was doing the right thing. He didn’t even know what outcome he wanted. Did he want just to spend an evening with the Lady Catherine, discuss pleasant matters and return the next morning to find Jay there, still in a bad mood?
If that was what happened, it would be an immense weight off his shoulders, certainly. The alternative promised difficulties and heartache. He had spent much of the last five years working on the problem; he had constructed an entire intellectual edifice of speculation which now rested entirely on Jay being disobedient. But what would that really mean?
He could share his ideas with only a few people, but fortunately the Lady of Willdon was one of them. He had taught her informally before her marriage and continued to do so afterwards. He had advised her after Thenald’s death, taught her much of what she needed to know about rule and authority. While few outside the world of the scholars had much taught knowledge, some grandees were educated to a fairly high degree. None would use it for practical purposes, but many studied the stories and loved lengthy discussions about their meanings. Some, by their own efforts, came to a level of understanding that approached that of the scholars themselves. Catherine was one such.
Several of the domains scattered around were of immense age and possessed treasures of great antiquity. In theory, written material was meant to be given to the scholars to be copied and protected. A copy was always presented to the original owners when this had been done, to make it worth their while. It was understood that every scrap which might elucidate or expand the Story should be known, catalogued and made available. Except, of course, that human beings often fall below the standards expected of them and there were still many documents and manuscripts the scholars knew nothing about. Henary had found some at Willdon.
The manuscripts were old but exceptionally well preserved. Half a dozen fragments and scraps written in scripts which took immense labour to decipher. Even now, after many years of study, he had only managed some thirty lines of text.
It was all but meaningless, yet that suggested its meaning was deeper than anything Henary had ever come across before. Words were magic; he who unravelled them took possession of their power. Properly deciphered, even these few lines of scribbles might shed light on the darkness, the forgotten times. He who understood the darkness would also understand the Return, for the beginning and the end were one and the same.
His colleagues would have been violently critical of him for keeping it to himself. There was a reason nothing was known of the darkness and that was, mainly, that people did not want to know. The exiles returned, settled, and history began. Men believed two things simultaneously: that there was no before, and that it was the age of giants.
Instead, the scholars focused on the Story, which began with the Return. All else was myth and allegory, which was left to the mystics, the hermits, the seers and the insane. There were many of them, the believers in prophecies and signs and hidden meanings. It was a constant struggle to stop them from whipping up people with silly ideas, of gods and disasters. The world will end; a Herald will come and summon the emissary of the divine. He will judge Anterwold and either forgive it or destroy it. It took a perverse mind to read such stuff into the texts, unless you deliberately quoted them out of context. By concealing the document, he had saved it from being hidden in an archive or from being an encouragement for the foolish.
He had found it when Catherine, then the dutiful wife, was sorting out the muniments room to restore some order in it after the neglect of her husband. Mainly legal documents, the memorial stories of long-dead members of the domain, records of crop yields and so on, dusty unrewarding work that had taken weeks to complete with a handful of assistants. The manuscripts were in a lead box, inside a wooden, iron-clad chest.
‘Do you wish to take them?’ Catherine had asked.
He had shaken his head. ‘Not yet. Not until I know what they are.’
‘How can you know, if you can’t read them?’
‘Work, my Lady,’ he said with a smile. ‘The sweat of my brow, the labour of the years. Persistence and effort. If I can’t read it, no one else can. So I’m hardly depriving the scholarship of anything.’
‘Arrogant man!’ she said. ‘Even if you are truthful. Tell me why it is so important.’
He had done so, and she had listened with fascination. ‘Where did we come from? Who are we? Who were the giants? I doubt this will provide an answer, but it may offer clues.’
‘This will tell you?’
He smiled ruefully. ‘How should I know? All I’ve unpicked so far is a few short sentences. It speaks of a young boy who has a vision on a hilltop. His name is Jay. The longest passage reads, “It smiled once more, a radiant, celestial smile that brought the warmth back to his body. It raised its hands in what Jay took to be a gesture of peace, then took a step back and was gone.”’
‘What do you think is the meaning of it?’
‘It makes no sense to me. It is obviously of a deep religious significa
nce; the balancing of the celestial with warmth in the sentence suggests linkages between heaven and comfort. Note the words “what Jay took”, which imply doubt and hidden threat. But it is only a passage from a larger text, which remains hidden to me. Then there is another, longer one which I cannot read.’
There the matter had rested until one day, some months later, Henary had gone on a Visitation and had been interrupted by a questioning child. When he had interrogated the family about the boy, he had got the shock of his life.
‘Please forgive him, please. He’s not been himself. He had a shock today, on the hillside …’
‘… says he saw a girl. Don’t we all …?’
‘… makes things up. Sees a fairy. Then the fairy vanishes before anyone else can see it. Of course it does.’
But the name was wrong. Until he questioned the boy himself – ‘everyone calls me Jay.’
Henary had not slept that night. How could it be? What did it mean? How could a child have relived so precisely a sentence of such antiquity?
*
He had to know the truth but Jay knew nothing. So Henary had taken the boy and begun his education. He had responded well; indeed he was a very able student who had bolstered Henary’s reputation. This Henary carefully hid from his pupil. Jay knew, certainly, that he was quite clever, but Henary did not wish him to become proud, for ‘pride dulls the mind, and blunts the spirit.’ All the while he waited, and whenever he went to Willdon he took out the manuscript and worked on it some more. The girl and the boy would meet again, the words told him eventually.
Henary was annoyed by this, and the temptation it represented. He was trying to unravel the document as a light into the past, and here it was, offering the very different temptations of prophecy.
He had spent his entire career attacking such stuff. All the mystical nonsense babbled by his feeble-minded colleagues he would dismiss, and methodically pick apart their musings, subjecting them and the texts to the cold light of reason. The Story was the truth, but it was not always direct in communicating it. It certainly contained no magic and no prophecies. It concerned what was, not what will be.
