—That’s not one of the birds than can change, is it, Mum?
—I don’t know what you’re talking about.
—The ones that turn into people.
—Gav.
—What?
—Just . . . don’t, please.
—Don’t what?
“It’s frightening how blind people are. That’s all been prophesied as well. You remember. A lot of people thought the angel was the devil. Or a pagan god. And then those terrible things started happening, the sacrifices in the stone circles. It’s like the angel came to open everyone’s hearts and all the evil started spilling out. I’ve got to stay. I’ve got to bear witness, you know?”
“Mmm.”
He went quiet for so long that she’d forgotten what he was talking about when he suddenly said, half strangled with embarrassment, “Really I should go with you.”
She tried to lift herself up on her elbows to look at him properly. For some reason her arms didn’t cooperate.
“No,” she said.
“I should be there. Right there. I think that’s why God sent you here, to show me what I should be doing. You were always like that for me.”
We only met yesterday, she thought.
“All those pilgrims who went down there in the beginning, half of them were into black magic. Devil worshippers. Really, can I let people like that be stronger than me? If no one else is going to bear witness . . .”
There was another protracted silence.
“Because you’re not going to, are you, Jess?”
He sounded painfully tense. He must have spent the whole long pause gathering courage to say that sentence.
“What?”
“That’s not why you’re going there. Is it. You’re not going to testify to God’s word.”
She couldn’t care less about his children, wherever they were, but the ruefulness right across the room from her was harder to resist.
“I’m a disappointment,” she said, “aren’t I.”
“No. No, no. It’s so fantastic to see you, I’m so glad you’re here. It’s just . . . I can’t see what’s driving you. If you don’t have faith anymore. Which you obviously don’t. I mean, I don’t mind living like this, I don’t mind being lonely and cold all the time and hungry and whatever, because, see, I know, I know this is what God’s called me to do in this trial. See. But you don’t . . . you don’t have . . .” He trailed off again in mute frustration.
“Oh, I do,” she said. “I do.”
• • •
She was ill, of course. As if her body had been hanging on through days of punishment until it was finally all right to give in, she collapsed. She sweated and dreamed waking dreams and could only crawl out of bed to pee in a bucket. She thought Gwen must have died and was calling for help from beyond the grave, and Gavin was alone in the snow somewhere with no one to look after him except the phone engineer with the beautiful voice. Greg came in and out, emptying the bucket, mopping her forehead and hands, rolling her carefully from one side of the bed to the other to replace the fever-soaked sheet with the one he’d hung up by the stove. He did it all with unfeigned cheerfulness. “Just like old times. Remember how the pipes froze every January? Seriously, I miss that. Looking after each other was the best bit.” He was happier now that he didn’t have to be in awe of her. He was so happy, it brought strange tears to her eyes when she thought about it. Nigel wouldn’t have put his hands on a bucket of piss for anyone, unless it was a dare or there was money involved. She envied Greg. She envied Greg’s wife. She envied her lost and dead sisters, and everyone who wasn’t herself.
Some days later there came that utterly miraculous instant when she woke up and the illness was gone.
It was a late morning. The house was quiet. She felt rather than saw an ambience of thin sunlight. Everything in the room, the boys’ toys, the patterns on the sails of the sailing boats in the wallpaper, looked clearer and sharply outlined. She sat up.
“Greg?”
Her voice sounded croaky, but it was definitely hers. She remembered how she’d got here and where she was going, and the extraordinarily lucky coincidence by which she’d been mistaken for her twin sister, sheltered and fed and given respite.
“Greg?” He must have gone out. He couldn’t stay watching her all day, though he probably wished he could. Other people depended on him too. He’d left a cleanish towel beside the bed. (Bless him, she thought.) She daubed away the remnants of the night’s sweat from her face and her hair, which was down past her shoulders now.
She remembered other things that had happened as well.
Twice.
Twice, she’d heard a voice calling her by a name no one except her sister knew. There were other times she might have imagined it, but twice it had happened for sure: the recollections were as precise and solid as the objects on the shelves beside her head. Set aside all her sleeplessness, her despair, her exhaustion, her self-hatred, anger, recrimination, hope, the whole mental blizzard she carried around with her, and they were still there.
How?
Answers do sometimes come dawning, but not in this case. There couldn’t be any gradual understanding. No process of thought available to Iseult Stokes, née Clifton, could have led her step by step from that question to any kind of remotely acceptable answer. Instead she found the answer already there, not rising like dawn but clear as day.
It’s—
• • •
—Mum?
—Yes, love?
—You know magic?
—Yes?
—Well . . . how do they do it?
—I’m not sure what you mean.
—Magic. Like magic tricks. How do they work?
—Like card tricks, you mean?
—Yeah. Actually, no. I mean proper magic. Stuff that looks impossible.
—I don’t really . . . I’m sorry, sweetheart. Can you give me an example?
—Like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Not when there’s a secret compartment. When you know the hat’s empty, they show it to you so you can look inside and feel around so you know there’s no trick.
—Oh, I see.
—So, how does that work?
—You mean how do they do it?
—Yeah.
—I . . . I have no idea. It’s a secret. Apparently when you learn to be a magician, you have to promise you won’t tell anyone how it’s done. Which makes sense, doesn’t it, otherwise it would spoil it.
—Spoil what?
—Oh, Gavin. You know. The fun. If you knew how a trick worked, it wouldn’t be any fun to watch someone do it, would it?
—But then—
—Anyway, you get on with your homework while I finish unloading the—
—But I mean, if it’s a trick anyway—
—Gav.
—Then it’s not really magic, is it?
—Of course not. There’s no such thing as real magic.
—But then where’s the rabbit come from? If you know there isn’t a secret compartment.
—I don’t— Look, Gavin—
—No, but if you know. If they show you the inside of the hat.
—Will you please not interrupt?
—Sorry, Mum.
—I already told you, I don’t know. Probably it is a secret compartment actually, they just make it so clever that you can’t see it even when you look closely. Or maybe it’s hidden up your sleeve. I don’t know, that’s why people like watching magic shows, isn’t it, because you can’t figure out how they do it. Have you finished your homework?
—It’s easy, Mum, it’s only geography. So you know they do it?
—Do what?
—Do the trick.
—I don’t see— Yes. Sorry. Yes, that’s right. What’s your geography this week?
—So it looks impossible but it isn’t really.
—Gavin. What do you think “impossible” means? Think about it. You can’t do something if it’s actually actually impossible.
—So it’s not magic.
—No. Of course not.
—They shouldn’t call it magic, then.
. . .
—Mum?
—I don’t want to talk till you’ve finished your geography.
—But I think I—
—I said. Not until after your homework.
—You’ll be upstairs by then and I’m not supposed to go in your study.
—Oh for God’s . . . All right. Tell me quickly.
—Okay, what if, what if, okay, it just happened? Not in a show. ’Cos if it’s a magician doing it you know there’s a trick, but what if it wasn’t, what if any old person took a bunny out of a hat. Like in Waitrose. Like they just did it.
—What do you mean?
—How would that work?
—It couldn’t, obviously. No one can do that. Gav, I think I see what you mean now, sorry. You mean do things like that only happen in magic shows, don’t you. You see, when a magician does it, it looks like magic, but actually everyone knows it isn’t even though they call it that. It’s just fun to watch. Even though deep down everyone knows there’s no such thing. It’s fun to pretend.
—I wasn’t talking about pretending.
—Well. Never mind.
—I was talking about if someone did it and you knew there wasn’t a trick.
—All right. All right. Then it would really be magic. Gavin, you’re not concentrating at all. That coloring’s not very good. Look at the edge there.
—Mum?
—Sweet Jesus. What?
—Would that be okay?
• • •
—magic.
• • •
Iz prayed. Not in the sense of addressing herself to God: she didn’t think God had anything to do with it, or if he did, then he certainly wasn’t going to do anything about it. But she did know that something entirely other than herself was at work in the unfolding of events, something out of her range. She tried to focus on that idea. She didn’t bow or kneel because that would have felt like pretending. She did, however, close her eyes, to shut out everything that she’d formerly thought made up the reality of things, and in the no-space behind her eyelids she found herself thinking of Gav’s Miss Grey, who had, after all, surely been real in this other new way; so she prayed to her.
She spoke words aloud, because otherwise it was just echoes and half phrases in her thoughts.
“Please let me find Gavin,” she said. “I’m very sorry I spent so long telling him you weren’t there. Just let me find him. I only want to say I’m sorry, I was wrong. I don’t expect any more than that. But please let me have the chance to say it to his face. And to hold him. Once. Please.”
Truth is a rare beast and, when flushed from its lair, a dreadful one to stand and face. The truth was that Gawain was thousands of miles away as Iz murmured her ineffectual prayer, every steady step he took stretching the distance further; and Miss Grey was dead.
22
Hello there. Welcome back.”
“Hi.”
“Sitting up and everything. You’ll be taking solid food next.”
She smiled.
“Feeling better?”
“Thanks to you.”
“All part of the service.”
“I’m so sorry, I—”
“Shh. None of that. You’re a great patient anyway. Much better than having sick toddlers. You didn’t throw up once.”
“I wonder what it was.”
“Fever, mostly. I suspect you were just worn out.”
“How long have I been in bed?”
“Four days. I think. It’s amazingly easy to lose count. Don’t ask me what the date is. The spring’s definitely coming, though. There’s a thaw on its way. At last.”
At last.
The map she’d taken from the first house she’d broken into ran out near here. While it was still light he spread out his own maps, clearing space by a window so they could peer over them together. “Don’t think this means I’m letting you go anytime soon,” he said, the joke sounding far more nervous than it ought to have. “So. There it is. You never told me exactly where you’re going?”
She was so close. During the worst days, the couple of days after she’d had to abandon the bike, she’d forgotten that she was actually going somewhere. The journey had become its own endless purgatory. But now she was rested, her head was clear, she was going to get . . .
“There.” She drew a vague circle around the crook of land below Falmouth. “Roughly.” She saw the word on the map, Pendurra, taunting her with its empty precision. They might not be there still. Or they might be cut off, alone, in trouble, who knew? The map couldn’t tell her anything. But she’d get there, she’d see for herself what had happened. She’d find them.
It was a few moments before she noticed Greg was staring at her, not at the map.
“You told me you weren’t,” he said. Under his gingery fringe his brow was knotted.
She looked at the map again, trying to hide her confusion, and saw it straightaway. Just a handbreadth inland from Pendurra, another name off by itself in a patch of green: Trelow.
“Sorry,” she said. She could feel his eyes on her. “I . . .” She tried not to let any of her own astonishment show. They couldn’t be more than a couple of miles apart, the place Iggy had hidden herself in and then been expelled from and the place where Gwen lived. How could that be possible? Gwen hadn’t gone to do whatever it was she did there until at least a couple of years after Iggy had died. Could it just be coincidence? Greg was waiting for her to finish her sentence. She tried to concentrate on assuaging his suddenly doubtful look. “I didn’t want to mention it at first.”
“Fair enough, I suppose,” he said.
What could she say to disguise the fact that she apparently hadn’t even known where Trelow was? She avoided his eyes. “There are still some bad memories.”
“I sort of knew. To be honest.”
“You did?”
“Well, where else would you be going? And. You know. I can see how you might have . . .”
He waited expectantly. He’d almost been embarrassed to look at her, before, but now she felt herself being scrutinized.
“Unfinished business,” she said.
“Exactly. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“Is it something you want to talk about? Can I help?”
She had no time to think about it. “I’m looking for my sister,” she said.
“I didn’t know you had a sister.”
“Two.”
“You didn’t get on with your family, isn’t that right? Remember that night we played Who Has the Worst Parents?”
She chuckled, a little uncertainly, but only a little; it wasn’t difficult for her to imagine Iggy on the subject of their parents. “Vaguely. Who won, again?”
“Well, me, obviously.”
She’d made a clear error, she could feel it at once. “Of course. Sorry. I was just—”
“So what happened to your sister? May I ask? How did she end up at Trelow?”
“I’m not sure.” She knew she ought to change the subject, or get up and say she had to go outside, but she felt a reckless urge to carry on. Every time he started reminiscing about Trelow, she felt he might be about to let slip something that would make everything clear. “The same way I did, probably.”
“You mean she joined the community? I had no idea.”
“I don’t know if she did or not. We weren’t in touch. She might have.”
“You can’t have told her about it?”
“
No. No, of course not. I’m not sure what— Perhaps she just found her way.”
For a while she didn’t dare look up at his face, but then it felt more awkward not to. He was still frowning, brooding.
“You never said anything about how you’d found us. I always remember that. That prayer, though. You remember? We always said it together every evening. You always squeezed my hand so hard at the Amen.” She’d run out of vague lies, but fortunately Greg began to recite a moment later. “‘Thank you above all for leading us here to serve you.’ What was it we used to say? ‘All our separate troubled paths have come together in peace here.’” He looked at her expectantly.
She reached across to take his hand and squeezed it. “Amen.”
“I always remember that.” His hand was hot and weak. He released hers reluctantly. “It was very mysterious. Like your paths were particularly troubled. Gosh, Jess, you were so . . .” He laughed his short, embarrassed laugh. “And here you are again, out of nowhere. All mysterious and glamorous.”
“Glamorous? I peed in your bucket.”
“Seriously. You’re— It’s like you’re on a mission. I feel sort of small.”
“I’d probably have died without you.”
He went as pink as raw meat. It was all too obvious that there was nothing he’d rather have heard her say.
They discussed the way she ought to go until it got too dim to see the map. He wanted to light one of his candles so they could carry on, but she wouldn’t allow it, partly because he only had two left, and partly because the dimness gave her respite from maintaining her act. He said the only thing that mattered was avoiding anywhere there might be people. All the stories he’d heard were that Cornwall was lawless, beyond the three or four towns along the main road where the survivors had gathered, and even there the influx of pilgrims had brought on a chaos of overcrowding and disorder. The coming thaw might open the roads again, but he doubted that would mean things getting back to normal. He’d heard that Ruth’s speeches were becoming more incendiary. (She remembered Nigel huffing at the television in fury. That’s right, tell them what they want to hear. Make it all sound so bloody simple. Rabble-rousers. You can’t argue with people like that. They ought to get a sniper in a helicopter, best way to shut her up. Shit, there’s the fucking phone again.) There were marches in other towns and cities up and down the country now, marches that turned into riots, riots that ended in burnings. He’d been to Okehampton while she was ill, to collect his diesel allowance, and the talk going around the army kids who handed out the supplies was that Ruth was going to be arrested. All of it might have been no more than rumor, but the only safe option was to stay far from the road for as long as she could. The route he plotted out for her took her up onto the moor, where it had been hard enough for people to live even before the snow came and made it impossible. Once across it she’d have to turn southward, looking for the open downs, passing through the valleys as quickly as possible, and, eventually, crossing the main road. He drew a zigzag line on the map in pencil, steering the remotest route he could find, picking out a crossing point where the road was at its narrowest and far from any towns. When she lay down in the boy’s bed that night, she couldn’t sleep for thinking about that line. It felt like a prophecy. I know the way now, she thought, lane by lane, turn by turn. I’m going to get there. I’m coming.
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