Arcadia

by Iain Pears

  But in his last months even Etheran had begun to wonder whether there was something in the utterances of hermits and the interpretations of mystics. Now here was this manuscript, which had foretold Jay and his encounter on the hillside, presenting a new, unrivalled opportunity to test the power of such things. Jay would, one day, trespass in the forest and the girl would appear once more, near the Shrine of the Leader. That was the prediction.

  Much was uncertain, there were so many passages and words he could not understand or decipher, but the outline was clear. So he would bring Jay to Willdon and see what happened. He would prove to his satisfaction that this manuscript was not, in fact, magical. It was not prophetic. He would present his case at Ossenfud in a blast against all those who took such things seriously.

  ‘Why do you pursue this?’ Catherine asked him.

  ‘Because I need to know. This is undoubtedly a manuscript of high importance. I do not want it diminished by becoming the plaything of soothsayers. It may contain great wisdom. I do not want that lost because it gets tangled up in superstitious babbling.’

  ‘You really think an apparition will show up in the Shrine?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘And if one did?’

  ‘That would be awkward.’

  ‘Does your student know any of this?’

  ‘Not a word.’

  *

  There was no guide in the manuscript about when, or how. If the girl did not appear, then sceptics would argue that it was because the manuscript was a fraud, and mystics would respond that he should have brought Jay to the outskirts of Willdon the year before, or six months later. He had worried for long months, checked and rechecked. Then he had decided. Not doing anything would certainly produce no result. He took Jay to Willdon, left him outside and told him not to dare set foot inside the domain. Then he had gone to wait.

  ‘Is everything ready, Lady Catherine?’

  ‘I believe so. Your directions are so very poor I have had to use almost every man I have at my disposal. But if your boy enters my land, he will be seen and followed.’

  ‘You won’t frighten him? I feel as though I am deceiving him, and don’t want him to suffer for my foolishness.’

  ‘Not a hair on his head will be so much as ruffled.’

  Henary was sitting opposite her at a table. He closed his eyes and put his fingers to his lips, uttering a silent prayer, then looked up at her. Truly, she was a remarkable woman.

  ‘Do not think, by the way, that I am unaware of the gravity of what we are doing,’ she said. ‘I know full well that if this goes wrong and it becomes public then my reputation will be damaged. Gontal would be delighted to have evidence that I believe in summoning spirits and such nonsense.’

  ‘Then why are you helping me? Goading me on, indeed?’

  ‘Because you have fascinated me. Also, if the great Henary is about to make a complete fool of himself, I want to watch. Don’t worry, though; the realisation will be my private pleasure. There is some knowledge which is best kept secret.’

  She leaned back in her seat – higher than his; she liked these little demonstrations of her authority. ‘Are you sure this manuscript is as old as you say?’

  ‘I have no idea how old it is, but it is certainly ancient. I could prove it if you wanted, by showing you how the passage I am working on employs certain symbols, certain grammatical forms, uses words that are otherwise unknown. This manuscript, in other words, may tell us about the age of giants. If it does, then the Story itself may become simply part of a much greater story, perhaps not even the major part of it. If there is any power in it, then that is where it lies.’

  ‘Yet Jay saw a fairy.’

  ‘Coincidence, I’m sure. If it happened again, of course …’

  ‘It would eat away at the foundations of all custom and authority,’ Lady Catherine said softly. ‘Who would listen to you scholars when they could listen to prophets instead?’

  There was a long silence as each stared thoughtfully at the other. ‘Dangerous things indeed, Scholar Henary. We must discuss them later,’ she said briskly. ‘There is one thing, though.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What on earth do we do if someone does show up?’

  ‘I suppose you will have an honoured guest on your hands.’

  Catherine stood up and clapped her hands. ‘You will excuse me,’ she said as a servant appeared in response. ‘I must prepare.’

  *

  For nearly three hours, Henary had to wait in an agony of hope, despair, anticipation. Several times he reassured himself that nothing was going to happen. Bit by bit, news came in which raised his hopes, then dashed them again. Jay was in his tent. He had wandered off. The lad accompanying him was primed to send signals. Henary’s heart skipped a beat, but he had only gone to get some wood for the fire. Nothing more. His spirits rose, then fell once more as the message came through that he hadn’t returned. Then that he had crossed the boundary into the domain.

  Henary rocked back and forward with impatience and anxiety. The soldiers waiting in the forest had not found him. An hour. Nothing. Catherine came in to see how he was, and he snapped at her.

  Soldiers had found him. He was under arrest. ‘And?’ Henary said to the runner who had sped in with the message. ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘No one else,’ came the reply, and he sighed in relief. The manuscript had lied.

  Then one more messenger. The last one. He was brought in by Catherine, who propelled him forward. He stood there nervous and breathless. ‘Well?’ Henary said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A girl. She turned up out of nowhere.’

  Henary felt his stomach turning over in panic. It could not possibly have happened. Was it a joke organised by Catherine to make fun of him? One glance at her face convinced him it was not.

  ‘Who is she? What’s her name? What does she have to say for herself?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. But she speaks the old tongue.’

  ‘What about Jay? How did he react?’

  ‘He seemed to recognise her, sir.’

  As the messenger departed, he went over to Catherine. He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her tight. ‘My God,’ he said. ‘What have I done?’

  ‘Congratulations, Scholar Henary, wisest of the wise,’ she said, pulling away and giving him a little curtsy. ‘Who would have thought?’

  Henary shook his head. He could think of no words to even hint at what he thought or felt.

  ‘So, we have a new guest,’ Catherine went on in a practical tone. ‘I think I should give her a proper welcome, don’t you? It’s not often an emissary from the gods shows up. Is she the Herald of the last days? That would be so tiresome. You go and sit down and contemplate your own genius for a bit, and come through when you think you can stand straight.’

  Henary grunted, but knew she was talking sense. He composed himself, reminding himself that he was a scholar of the first rank, a man of authority and the greatest learning. That he deserved respect and honour. It was hard.

  When he was indeed ready, he walked through to the hallway and stood to one side, so that he would not ruin Catherine’s welcome. His heart was beating hard when the doors opened and the welcoming procession came in. He saw the Chamberlain, then Jay, and finally the girl he had thought about for so long, whom he had seen in his mind thousands of times.

  He was disappointed. What to make of her? No spirit or fairy, certainly. Jay’s description had been a good one. She had short hair, a pretty face and a look of bemusement or even irritation. But he expected – what? What was a celestial being meant to look like? There was nothing special about her, except for her strange clothes.

  The moment of study didn’t last long. The girl looked around the hall and her eyes lit on him. She grinned broadly and came bounding over. He didn’t catch the first words, they meant nothing to him, but the rest he understood. She spoke with absolute fluency and ease, as though she wasn’t even trying. ‘I’m so happy to see y
ou! Why are you in those ridiculous clothes?’

  21

  Using the information available, Chang got some money and then a room in a hotel for the night. The operation shredded his nerves but he was desperate by that stage. He needed rest and shelter. He could not risk eating in public again until he had a chance of keeping the food down. He could not go into any public place if the inhalation of tobacco was going to make his head spin.

  What did he need? Somewhere to sleep and eat and clean his clothes; cigarettes; wine, beer and whisky so that he could practise. Illustrated magazines and journals so that he could see how people dressed, moved and talked.

  He also bought a local newspaper, which advertised accommodation to rent and in which, in due course, he could place a notice himself disclosing whether he had found Angela Meerson or not. He examined it carefully. Paper, print; he imagined men laying it all out by hand, huge presses rolling around, the paper being cut and folded, put on lorries in great stacks, taken to shops, then exchanged for money. With the money then moving back from buyer to shopkeeper, to the company, then to the workers, who went out and bought …

  Extraordinary system. All that effort so that he could discover that two rooms (with bathroom available – hot water five shillings extra) were available at twenty-five shillings a week. He had no idea whether that was expensive or not, but it seemed to be well within his means now he had tested the theory of crime on the collection box of St Margaret’s Church and placed the result on Fire Boy at eighty to one in the 2.30 at Doncaster. The voice in his head told him it was a sure thing.

  So he set off the following morning. He was less frightened now by the disorder of life. Everything – roads, buildings, cars and bicycles – fascinated him. He went slowly, taking an indirect route, until he came to the run-down house with a garden that looked as though it had not been tended for years. The windows were filthy, the paintwork peeling off, and it had a general air of poverty that was most evocative.

  He was tired. He was unused to walking long distances, while all around people were striding along or pedalled past on bicycles. There were hundreds of them, thousands. Much of the town was on the move, and most were on bikes. Already Chang was beginning to pick out distinctions – soft caps and rough brown coats meant workers of some sort. Dark material and hard hats meant the richer sort.

  Big old houses needed to be cared for, and that cost money, so many of the occupants rented out rooms. His prospective landlady was one of these. Being alone and lonely, she liked to talk. That he had not bargained for. Within a few minutes of knocking, he was deep in a conversation. His first real one, and a terrifying experience it was.

  It was exceptionally difficult, not least because it became clear that different things were communicated simultaneously – negotiating the rental of a room, obviously, but also who and what you were, whether you were honest and pleasant. Were you the sort of person who could be called on to change a light bulb? What were your interests, background, tastes? Were you – and this was the most important – respectable, itself a concept that was so complicated it was impossible to define.

  The subject of the room did not crop up for some time; much of it was spent telling him things he did not see why he needed to know. She showed him pictures of her grandchildren. He had, he told her, been travelling abroad after a recent illness.

  ‘Oh, dear! Nothing serious, I hope?’

  ‘No, no,’ he said casually. ‘Brain tumour.’

  The stunned look on her face showed him he had made another mistake. ‘Only a little one,’ he added hastily. ‘Hardly anything, really.’

  ‘You must tell me all about it,’ she said brightly, and his heart sank at the very idea. ‘Perhaps you want to see your room?’

  Chang nodded eagerly, anything to bring his ordeal to an end, and she led him upstairs, then upstairs again. As he followed her frail form, he eagerly drank in every detail – the brown paint, the wallpaper peeling charmingly off the wall, the smell of damp exuding from the carpet. The aroma of old food hanging in the air …

  There was a bed, a desk, a little heating device, a couple of chairs with the stuffing coming out of them, dirty yellow linoleum on the floor.

  ‘I should have it all painted, I suppose …’

  ‘It is perfect. Perfect. Just what I wanted.’

  She seemed quite surprised by his response. ‘Well, if you’re sure …?’

  *

  Chang sat on the old bed, his feet tapping on the cold linoleum. He found it helped him think. He could feel a thin gust of wind coming in through the ill-fitting sash window, and he was cold. He sat perfectly still for many hours, digesting and sorting information, occasionally getting up and distracting himself by switching on and off the taps in the small cracked ceramic sink on the wall.

  He was fairly confident that everything he needed had now been restored; the transmission had wiped his memory, and it had taken time for the information to seep back to a place he could access. He was fully himself again, and he even knew what he needed to do.

  His job was to find Angela Meerson, and he had to do that by finding Henry Lytten. His secondary task was to find and recover the manuscript known as the Devil’s Handwriting. Then … what? He had no idea.

  He did some breathing exercises to achieve a measure of concentration and slowly wrote down a list on a piece of paper. He could not yet rely on being able to remember efficiently. As fast as his memories had come back, he had jotted down notes. Angela. Henry Lytten. Rosalind in that article. Not much, as he found writing incredibly hard, but enough to help him recall the details.

  Then he went shopping, which took much of the afternoon because every item was sold in a different shop, and in each one he had to wait his turn. He returned home with three pounds of carrots, some bread, a packet of sugar and some baby food. Not perfect, by any means, but not bad for a first go. He also bought a bottle of whisky, one of beer, one of gin, two cigars and a packet of cigarettes. The baby food was delicious.

  *

  Well, he said to his memory, tell me. What do I do now?

  There was a long silence until the response came back. ‘You might as well get on with finding this Henry Lytten.’

  ‘How do I do that?’

  ‘Ask your landlady if she has a phone book, and look him up. Then I can give you directions. Will you want the pretty route or the quick one?’

  Did he want to go home? he thought as he walked cautiously down the street the next morning. Could he survive here? Perhaps he could use the knowledge he had in his head to make some money, settle down. He could blend in. Get married, join a darts club or play snooker on a Friday. Buy a car, and wash it on a Saturday morning. Have children and worry about them. Go on holiday to the seaside every August. Could be worse.

  He crossed the road (narrowly being missed by a bus) then, with increasing confidence, walked north until he came to Polstead Road, where the directory said Lytten, Dr H., lived. He was red-faced and puffing from the effort, but walked until he stood outside what was supposed to be the house. Now what? Should he just ring the bell? Was that allowed without an appointment? The idea frightened him. What would he say? He stood in the entrance to the scruffy little front garden as he thought through all the options. As he stood, the door opened and a man came out. Chang stared, fascinated. He was of middling height, with thinning hair, a portly look about him. Perfectly ordinary face. He wore those strange trousers with a ribbed effect and a green checked jacket. Chang watched as he bent down and put on a pair of bicycle clips, then grabbed a bike and, with a mighty push, began to wheel it towards the road, and towards him. He spoke, but Chang was too flustered to understand.

  ‘Are you Henry Lytten?’

  ‘Yes. Can I help you?’

  Chang panicked and ran.

  22

  For all its gloomy side, I found the Second World War immensely useful. By keeping quiet, watching and listening, I perfected the art of being a middle-class lady of uncertain antece
dents. Indeed, I learned how to be quite English in my general appearance, and devoted myself to growing flowers and wearing tweed. When I was in England, that is; I left all of that behind when I went back in 1946 to my little house in the south-west of France, where I spent much of the next few years growing vegetables and cooking.

  In France (which I preferred for the food and the weather) I cultivated a generally bohemian air which satisfactorily disguised my occasional lapses. I also set up as a sculptor. Not because I wished to express my creativity in a three-dimensional plasticity, exploring the multi-faceted tactility of the solid form, you understand. I was rather more used to expressing myself in eleven dimensions and found a mere three a little puerile. But in the 1950s I started to build the new, improved version of my machine and, as it resembled a piece of abstract modernism, I decided that I might as well explain it as such to anyone who saw it and asked.

  Once I had thought about it for a decade, I realised that the machine itself was not that difficult to construct; the version I had overseen for Hanslip had been over-designed because it passed through so many committees that it ended up being far more complex, expensive and cumbersome than was necessary. I needed no materials that weren’t easily available and I realised that the amount of power required could be greatly reduced with only a few modifications. Until I worked that out (in about 1957) I had the problem of potentially needing the output of an entire power station to get it to function. After serious thought I reduced that requirement to a quantity I could get out of an ordinary plug socket, which meant I could finally start building properly, rather than just playing around.