‘Gorhambury!’ Now scarlet, Snorkel pointed at Gorhambury’s midriff, which was swelling fast and beginning to glow.
In the costumes a network of fine wire and chemicals activated, connected and reacted. At first Gregorius Jones feared his prize asset, his physique, had suffered an adverse reaction from years of training, but as his costume inflated and took him skywards, blessed relief overwhelmed him: sartorial forces were at work. Valett tried to hold Gorhambury down, but succeeded in rescuing only a shoe.
Snorkel shivered with rage as the Head of Music shouted, ‘Play on!’ and the orchestra, briefly stalled, recovered its poise.
‘Yes!’ cried Valourhand, clenching her fist in celebration of the posthumous reach of Bolitho’s sense of mischief and the discomfort of the powers that be.
A deeper realisation dawned: the costumes now had single glowing letters on their chests – p, n and e – and as a waltz motif emerged, their movements cohered in a stately celestial dance. Valourhand glanced down at her own chest to see a red e. To her irritation she found herself orbiting a South Tower scientist, an unimposing young man with buck teeth. More groups of two formed, and two groups of six with two white ns and two red ps, orbited by two blue es. The floating sixth-formers whooped with pleasure. It did not feel like a funeral.
We’re playing atomic particles, concluded everyone except an ignorant Oblong: protons, neutrons and electrons, forming hydrogen atoms for the couples and helium for the groups of six. Bolitho had recreated the first two atoms in the periodic table, the early children of the Big Bang. Every face in Market Square peered up, transfixed, but Vixen felt unsettled as well as entranced – all this just for show?
‘Bloody brilliant!’ shouted her proton, floating around her.
‘Bloody Bolitho!’ she shouted back. They said nothing more as they continued circling each other in the eternal pas de deux of the hydrogen atom.
The tailor gawped, promotional slogans coming and going, ‘the sky’s the limit’ and ‘dress for the stars’ among them.
Gregorius Jones, in a sextet with members of his class, found mid-air suspension ideal for new gymnastic exercises. ‘Arms out!’
‘Sir?’
‘Legs akimbo!’
‘Sir!’
His pupils caught on and followed suit, adding to the grotesquery.
Gorhambury found suspension strangely therapeutic, worldly worries ebbing away as Bolitho’s astral music washed over him. The asymmetry of Rotherweird’s tangle of towers and streets had a peculiar beauty.
A mellifluous singing voice intervened – Fanguin.
‘A life on the ocean wave,
A home on the rolling deep . . .’
‘Fanguin, this is a funeral.’
Chastened, Fanguin stopped, but the spell was broken. Where he had seen perfection, Gorhambury now saw troubling details – a missing slate here, a crooked weathervane there. He made a mental note of their location as the orchestra picked up pace and the floating atomic particles spiralled ever faster above Market Square.
Oblong’s unique costume bore no e, p or n, only a glowing representation of Rotherweird’s skyline, and it held him stationary over Market Square not far above the sloping roof of Doom’s Tocsin. Unfamiliar words tripped into his head – ‘karma’, ‘transcendental’, ‘out-of-body experience’ – he was high enough to be amazed, low enough not to be frightened, as an ocean of faces looked up from ground level, windows and walkways, a forest of arms beside them all pointing at him: Oblong, the privileged soloist, with Rotherweird emblazoned on his chest. Bolitho had in death endorsed him.
Oblong had no idea what the scientific symbols represented, only that Bolitho had bequeathed a message about the beauty of the universe: lucky to have lived in it, lucky to have understood it.
High above, the last stage of the rocket, still descending by parachute, released its payload: a silent volley of light and dark streamers which chased each other between the dancing atomic particles.
Oblong’s costume juddered alarmingly in the nether regions. His skin prickled, seconds before an explosive whoosh propelled him high into space: a human cannonball corkscrewing as he went. The pitch of his screams diminished as he rose, a useful illustration of the Doppler effect, Valourhand noted, for future lessons on the subject.
Then peace and Bolitho’s performers descended.
A sustained melodic chord and a tinkling effect from the stellarium accompanied the atomic particles to earth. Oblong too floated down. The glowing townscape on his chest faded, as did the letters on the other costumes.
Valourhand alone careered south over the walls into the deserted countryside beyond. Irritation at the malfunction morphed to apprehension as the suit rushed her past the Island Field to Rotherweird’s borderland and into a sharp descent towards a roar of threshing water. Skin and hair turned damp: she was closing on the Pool of Mixed Intentions, where the Rother plunged out of sight and where coins were cast to the river god.
She tugged her sleeves and waved her legs, but the elasticated wrists and ankles and the clinging effect of the moisture frustrated any attempts to steer, until within feet of the water, the costume changed gear for the last time and veered away to land her on the western bank.
She looked east across the river to the marsh. Clouds were scudding in: it looked as if, with Bolitho’s procession done, the night sky wished to veil her face. She could make out the cairn known as the Tower of the Winds atop the only prominence in an expanse of marshland.
The exhilaration of the flight had passed. Teeth chattering, she set off to town at a brisk jog, only to pull up minutes later at the sight and smell of excrement smearing the bank. The stench was vile and acrid, the colour grey-green, the surface flecked with fragments of bone. Valourhand gathered a sample in her handkerchief and resumed her progress home.
*
Boris Polk, Mors Valett and Rhombus Smith adjourned to the churchyard. The priest delivered a short service, which ended with a reading of Bolitho’s self-authored funerary inscription:
‘Earth to sky and sky to earth,
Matter matters in rebirth,
Sky to earth and earth to sky,
Life’s mutations do not die.’
The wicker coffin lay on a low, wheeled wooden trolley, its sides carved with winged lions.
In the shadow of a yew a gifted pupil played a haunting nocturne on the alto sax. Boris affected to apply a handkerchief to the nose while drying his eyes.
Valett waited for everyone else to leave before summoning a minion to wheel the coffin into Rotherweird’s underground mausoleum.
*
Rhombus Smith rarely defied the Town Hall. Harmonious coexistence between Rotherweird’s leading institutions mattered. For Bolitho’s funeral he made an exception. He had altered the text of his speech, added Bolitho’s astral piece to the musical programme and, last but not least, authorised a transformation of Market Square – a wake on school premises would have been anathema to this man of the boulevards.
Within minutes of the last atomic particle returning to earth, a posse of well-rehearsed sixth-formers had set up school chairs and tables around the square, placing candles and cocktail glasses on blue and red checked tablecloths. Few present, including Rhombus Smith, had ever been to Paris, Bolitho’s youthful hunting ground, but candles, al fresco drinking and street music represented their idea of Paris. Accordions and fiddles struck up as Jones filled jugs from a milk churn: Bolitho’s late final cocktail, the Press Up.
The Square exhaled a heady mix of mango, Cointreau and gin.
Stale cake, tepid tea and platitudes formed the staple diet of Rotherweird post-funeral procession get-togethers. Bolitho’s fête broke the mould. The Square echoed to two repeated questions: whose choreography, and what did it mean?
Oblong found neither table nor companion; instead, he stood alone and sul
ked over his ignominious descent in front of so many upturned faces disfigured by laughter. He caught – or rather, he imagined he caught – sidelong glances and smirks, hostile whispers or sarcastic jokes, all targeted at him. Nobody had commiserated.
He patted the rear of his costume, fearful of a second ignition.
Orelia entered the Square, despondent at having missed an unmissable occasion. Oblong looked as though he had missed out too.
‘You look pale,’ she said with what Oblong took to be a mocking smile, and a restraining chord snapped in his usually unexcitable mind.
‘As if you’re all so bloody marvellous,’ he said with a sweeping gesture. ‘Fanguin drinks too much. Finch always knows best. Boris never invents anything really useful. Valourhand is frankly mad.’ He nearly added for good measure, And Bolitho is dead!
Orelia took a step back. ‘And me?’
Emotions fanned by Press Ups, he found a stinging reply. ‘Easy come, easy go.’
Orelia turned away, appalled that she had once harboured feelings for this rude, hapless outsider.
Oblong, no less hurt, stormed off.
Meanwhile Madge Brown, fresh from the library, collared her new friend Gorhambury. ‘Did anyone land on a chimney? Get hooked on a weathervane?’
The librarian had a point, for everyone had touched down safely, many in the narrow streets leading on to Market Square. Bolitho had either been extraordinarily precise in his calculations, or his cast had been extraordinarily lucky – and if the former, statistically the favoured view, the Professor must have devoted months to his grand finalé, long before his illness had been declared.
The thought troubled Gorhambury. Deeper questions simmered beneath the surface.
In search of merrier company, Orelia sat down beside Fanguin, who, between gulps and refills, delivered an outline narrative and a verdict. ‘I’m flummoxed.’
‘You look flummoxed.’
‘They’re all hung up on the Big Bang: they think it was a demo, a cheery envoi, life born out of the dark. But . . .’ Fanguin lifted his Press Up and steadied it as if to prove his sobriety. ‘They overlook Oblong.’
‘I only saw from a distance – there were people flying.’
‘We played the particles which make up hydrogen and helium atoms – and most nuclear matter in the universe. And there was a big bang.’
‘So far, so obvious,’ muttered Orelia, bluffing. Educated outside Rotherweird, she had minimal physics.
‘But why does Oblong with Rotherweird on his vest rocket up like a cork from a bottle?’
‘Do tell – how high?’
‘Almost out-of-sight high – he shrieked like a banshee, poor sod.’
‘How awful,’ giggled Orelia, infected by Schadenfreude.
‘Quite. Bolitho liked Oblong – so what’s he telling us? And why send Valourhand haring off into the countryside? Double flummoxed.’
Orelia remembered a comment by Oblong during their brief intimacy. She lowered her voice. ‘Bolitho once gave Oblong a private demonstration in the planetarium. He hinted at a moment in time when prodigies were conceived and suggested a connection with Rotherweird’s origins. He knew more than he let on.’ She slipped in an illicit question prompted by Madge Brown’s intelligence. ‘What do you know of the Hoy Book Fair?’
Fanguin breathed in deeply, as if sampling another miraculous vintage. ‘Think wider England. Think the 1640s.’
Orelia had not expected such a reply. She wagged a cautionary finger; he had slipped the leash. You did not discuss the deep past in Rotherweird – indeed, you shouldn’t know about it.
He withdrew further into shadow, lowered his voice and continued, ‘Democracy is baring her teeth; there’s civil war and regicide. Rotherweird is not immune to these currents. An elected Mayor replaces the Herald and, to avoid the History Regulations, candidates go to Hoy to talk politics. Rotherweirders follow and Hoy folk, always a commercially minded bunch, sell them old things, forbidden fruit, especially books. The event evolves into a Fair, held before every Rotherweird election year. A new Mayor soon has second thoughts and amends the Popular Choice Regulations so now the Fair must do without Rotherweirders. But it remained a Hoy fixture and continues – and not just before Rotherweird’s election, but every year.’
‘How do you know all this?’ she whispered, feeling conspiratorial, and better for it.
Fanguin gestured flamboyantly, as if it were natural genius, before owning up. ‘Madge Brown tipped me the wink after Snorkel gave me the sack. She said I needed an away day. She recommended a local dealer called Broken Spines who sold me a history of Hoy.’ Fanguin reacted to another wagging finger. ‘All right, so it’s history, but what can they do to me now? I’ve no job and no future.’
Poor Fanguin, cast aside for the sin of befriending Flask and for his insatiable curiosity.
‘All library copies of the Popular Choice Regulations have been withdrawn by the Town Hall for rebinding,’ she told him.
‘The canny bugger!’
‘Madge Brown suggested the Fair.’
Fanguin had the glint of combat in his eye. ‘Mark my words: come Saturday week, the gate will be closed. Nobody in, nobody out.’
Fanguin’s radical disregard for the law emboldened Orelia, and she shared with him the location of Salt’s secret door in the outer wall and his hidden coracle. ‘Six a.m.?’ she suggested, her blood up too.
Fanguin considered. ‘We’ll need outsider currency.’
‘A travelling buyer always has currency,’ she said grandly. ‘I do generous rates, no commission.’
Fanguin was beaming like a rewarded child when Boris joined them, looking uncharacteristically anxious. ‘I’ve been burgled.’
Fanguin chuckled; Boris’ untidiness was as legendary as his twin’s sense of good order. ‘How on earth did they find anything?’
‘I created a sheet of invisibility film – not for export to the wider world, or here, just a frolic, but it’s vanished . . . I think.’ Boris came clean. ‘The ingredients cost a pretty penny, and I haven’t told Bert.’
Orelia could only smile – vanishing invisibility film was the point, surely. He had doubtless mislaid it.
‘It’ll turn up when you least expect it,’ added Fanguin unhelpfully.
*
Oblong slammed the front door of his tower flat, fuming. He could not begin to fathom why he had been singled out for such humiliating treatment. How they had cheered and jeered! He penned a letter of resignation. If Rotherweird did not want him, he did not want them.
Then a cautionary voice broke in: in the outside world he had no qualifications, no job and nowhere to live. Rotherweird offered work and novelty, from subterranean passages to crewing a coracle, quite apart from their darker adventures.
His thoughts turned to Orelia and he realised she had been normally dressed, so not part of the celestial dance. Indeed, he had not seen her during the procession. And who would not look pale after being propelled into the heavens? He just might have been unfair. ‘Easy come, easy go’ had not only not been merited, it was plain rude. Shuddering, he replayed his onslaught. He had struck at his friends, one by one – Finch, Fanguin, Boris, Valourhand and Orelia.
Rage became wretchedness. He replaced his resignation letter with the following:
Dear Orelia,
Apologies – I really did not mean what I said. Consider me scrambled by space flight and Press Ups.
Jonah O x
*
Gorhambury, homebound, reflected on his aerial view of the town. He saw the body politic with the Golden Mean as the spine, the roads and lanes as limbs and arteries and the Town Hall as the head. This body was in perpetual need of sustenance, repair, training, self-discipline and governance – and without a head, the body could not administer such complex functions. Changing a head which worked struck Gorha
mbury as a precarious exercise . . . and yet, might change lead to improvement in unexpected directions? The founding fathers must have thought so.
Democracy or enlightened despotism? The argument raged in his head. Perhaps the people should choose.
*
Plop! Another miss as the ball of paper bounced along the carpet, soundlessly, so rich was the pile, to nestle beside its companions near a basket some ten feet from Snorkel’s desk. Snorkel’s despair deepened as he scrunched and threw another essay prize entry. They had, without exception, been unremittingly dim, bland and impractical, the products of honed academic minds without a glimmer of political nous.
The evening’s events had cut him to the quick. His network of spies had failed to scent the chaos to come, and worse, the crowd had relished the occasion. Was his confidence in Rotherweird’s conservatism misplaced?
He needed a kindred spirit, someone with energy and vision to nurture his destiny – and his dynasty.
*
Fanguin, homebound, made five mistakes, each a consequence of the one before. First, he could not resist recourse to his whisky flask. Second, he could not resist singing in a loud voice a ribald song entitled ‘What the Dromedary said to the Camel’. Third, so rapt was he in the magnificence of his own performance that he did not see the Gatehouse guards walking towards him. Fourth, he misinterpreted their polite attempts to silence him as an attempted assassination. Fifth, he fought.
*
Estella Scry watched the procession and its aftermath from the north bedroom window balcony. She disliked the joshing camaraderie on view – centuries of self-imposed solitude had drained her of empathy – but she admired in the pyrotechnics an unusual mind at work, a breaker of moulds. She had never met Professor Bolitho, who had kept to the School. The stellarium’s shimmer of abstract sound reinforced an intriguing thought . . . Surely not? But why not? Her fingers worked at the silk cuffs of her shirt as concern slipped into ecstasy. Oh please, do make it so. Vengeance and fulfilment beckoned.
She descended to her sitting room and polished her sculpture. Keep focus, keep discipline.
Wyntertide Page 6
