Waking Caliban

by Mike Cartlidge

  Boson Books by Michael J. Cartlidge

  Waking Caliban

  The Digital Dream

  How to be a Foreigner

  WAKING CALIBAN

  A Novel

  by

  Mike Cartlidge

  BOSON BOOKS

  Raleigh

  © 2009 Michael J. Cartlidge

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form including mechanical, electric, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  ISBN (ebook): 978-0-917990-96-0

  Published by

  Boson Books, a division of Bitingduck Press, LLC.

  Originally an imprint of C&M Online Media, Inc.

  Altadena, California 91001

  http://www.bosonbooks.com

  email to: contact@bitingduckpress.com

  Chapter 1

  Isbey’s office always reminded me of the sitting room of a venerable gentleman’s club. The leather seats were covered with straps and buckles and the walls sported portraits of dead prime ministers and photographs of Household Cavalry bands. The view from the windows was of old London and the Thames and I could see Whitehall and the Houses of Parliament on the far side of the river. Isbey was an ex-Colonel who still used the title in retirement. When he was a baby, he probably had epaulettes on the shoulders of his romper suit. He had a round, surprisingly soft face but everything else about him, from the small moustache to the creases in his trousers, was crisp and firm. He stood and met me with a handshake and a “good morning” that, like most of the things he said, betrayed nothing as decadent as an emotion.

  The larger of the two men sitting in front of his desk rose to introduce himself. Ernst Bakst was one of those men who turned a handshake into a finger-crushing contest. I always thought this was the sort of pastime people should grow out of when they graduate from primary school but I gave back as good as I got, keeping a poker face to show I hadn’t even noticed. He was probably two inches taller than me, which made him a good six foot, and he was about fifty years old. He might have been an athlete in earlier years but much of the muscle that once padded his chest had moved south. The flesh of his stomach pushed against his belt, marring the lines of his expensive-looking suit. His neck was a fold of fat and his features all seemed exaggerated, fleshy lips under a Slavic nose and heavy brows.

  “Your superior here,” Bakst nodded towards Isbey, “has been glowing in his commendations of your abilities, Mr. Hastings.”

  Strictly speaking, as I worked for the agency on a contract basis, Isbey wasn’t my superior, but I let it go. “Which abilities are those, Mr. Bakst?”

  “Why, the ability to protect those who need protecting,” Bakst told me. I tried to think who he reminded me of and settled for Sydney Greenstreet, circa Maltese Falcon.

  “What do you need protecting from?” I asked.

  He gave a short bark of a laugh. “I don’t need your services for myself, sir. I wish to engage them on behalf of my associate, Dr Robert Roden.”

  I took a proper look at his companion for the first time. Roden was no more than five eight and slightly built, with a sharp nose and narrow, appraising eyes. He held out a hand that, when I clasped it, felt like a pessimistic eel.

  “And why would Dr Roden need protecting?” I drew up a chair and we all sat down opposite Isbey.

  “Professor Roden is a noted expert in his field…” Bakst started.

  “Which is?”

  “The study of Elizabethan and Jacobean literature.”

  “Ah,” I said, “the high-risk world of international Shakespearean research.”

  “I have engaged Dr Roden to perform an important errand for me. It is essential that nothing disturb its smooth process. I’m sure nothing will, of course. Your presence will be precautionary only. I have discussed this engagement with Colonel Isbey and I understand it’s what you would call a Grade 5 exercise.”

  I glanced across the desk at Isbey, who was leaning forward and steepling his fingers under his chin. Under the agency’s assignment rating system, Grade 1 meant that the client was high profile, like an A-list movie star or a prominent businessman, and a definite threat had been made. Grade 5 was the other end of the scale, where there was no perceived danger but the client wanted general protection from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

  It sounded dull but assignments had been thin on the ground and, if you suffer from my condition, idleness is more curse than blessing. “When do we start?”

  “Ah,” said Bakst. His stare left me and fastened on Isbey. “You’ve already started.”

  ***

  An hour later, I was sitting in the passenger seat of Roden’s Mercedes as he drove westwards through the heavy London traffic. The sky was clear apart from a few clouds lurking like burglars on the horizon and I reached inside my jacket for my sunglasses.

  “So,” I said. “We’re going to Stratford?”

  He glanced sideways, piggy eyes suspicious as if he thought I was prying into family secrets. “That’s right,” he told me. “Stratford-upon-Avon.”

  “As in Shakespeare and all that.”

  He sniffed. “You’ve heard of Shakespeare then?”

  “His name came up a couple of times when I was at school.”

  “‘The whining schoolboy, with his satchel, creeping like snail…’”

  “‘…unwillingly to school’. We studied ‘As You Like It’ in the fifth form.”

  He looked outraged that anyone should have sullied the memory of Shakespeare by letting the likes of me near his plays. We made the M1 and he accelerated and pulled the car into the outside lane to pass a lumbering French juggernaut.

  “Know a bit about Shakespeare, then, do you?” I asked him.

  He sniffed, as though the Merc’s air conditioning system was puffing out sulphur. “I’m a professor of English Literature.”

  “What university?”

  “I have tenure at Oxford.”

  I suppose I was impressed, just a little. He may have been a tad arrogant but I figured he must know his Hamlet from his Piglet.

  “That’s why we’re going to Stratford, is it?” I prompted. “Something to do with Shakespeare?”

  He pulled the car back into the middle lane, cutting up a little Nissan and ignoring its driver’s flashed-light protest at his lack of indication. “You don’t need to know.”

  “If I’m to look after you the way I’m supposed to, I probably do.”

  He gave me a sour look and I guessed he was torn between a desire to impress me with his knowledge and a natural reluctance to commune with a lower form of life. “Let us simply say that we are on a quest for literary enlightenment.”

  “And it’s valuable, is it, this ‘literary enlightenment’?”

  He gave me another rancid look and reached for the car stereo, raising the volume some way above talking level. A CD clicked into place and I recognized the lush melodies of Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov. From the volume, I also guessed my injection of crass commercialism into the conversation had further offended his delicate sensibilities. Too bad. I’ve always liked Russian composers, as it happens. I pushed back against the leather seat and let the music soak into my bones.

  ***

  The weather was still bright when we arrived in Stratford. Coaches in the parking lots on the edge of town disgorged brightly-dressed tourists who blinked in the sunlight and straggled along the footpaths. Roden, as might be expected from a professor of Eng. Lit., seemed to know his way around the place. We took an ancient-looking stone bridge over the river and turned left, driving past the Festival Theatre and then, further along the road, onto the forecourt of a hotel called The Al
moner’s Arms. I gazed at the building’s flaking Tudor front without enthusiasm. Since I’d been doing work for the agency, I’d become an unwilling expert on second rate hotels and I could see that the owners of this one had decided to go for the ‘unrestored antique’ look while cleverly managing to avoid ‘quaint’.

  Roden parked the car and we grabbed our bags and strolled into a lobby that looked like a snapshot from a fifties movie, all drab furniture and faded pot plants. The walls were hung with Shakespearean portraits and old maps of Stratford. There was even a suit of armor in the far corner. The bits of the room that weren’t dusty would have looked better if they were.

  “We should get a double,” I told Roden, as we walked towards the front desk. “Twin beds.”

  His mouth dropped. “We’ll get adjacent rooms. In the unlikely event that I need you, I’ll knock on the wall.”

  If it had been a high security job I’d have argued but this was a Grade 5 effort and, at this level, the agency’s rules were flexible. “Have it your own way,” I told him.

  “Thank you so much.”

  We signed the register and, once we’d received our keys, rode to the second floor in a lift that was almost as ancient and free from restoration as the rest of the hotel. The world’s oldest bell boy started to carry our bags down the hallway, searching for our room numbers with a look of bemusement, as though he’d never been here before. I took the bags from him and let him concentrate on his search, tipping him and shooing him away after he’d opened my door in preference to letting him come inside and get completely lost.

  My room was basic but after some of the places I’d slept when I was in the army, anything that was dry and bug-free was fine with me. I dropped my bags onto the bed and then left, locking the door behind me. Roden was already waiting for me in the corridor and we took the creaky lift back downstairs and strolled out into the late-morning sunshine.

  The town was full of sightseers, blocking the sidewalks and clogging the tight streets as they made their way between Shakespeare’s birthplace, the museum and various other points of historical interest. Apart from the odd disparaging remark – apparently he thought the birthplace was a fraud perpetrated by the local corporation – Roden didn’t seem any more inclined to talk now than when we were in the car. I let him lead the way and we roamed around until, at one o’clock, we fetched up at one of the town’s many old pubs. This one had a garden next to the narrow, murky Avon and we ordered light lunches and carried drinks – a pint of bitter for him and an orange juice for me – into the sunshine. A sparse lawn, separated from the street and the river bank by a low wall, was sprinkled with wooden tables occupied by tourists and lunching shop workers. We found an empty table and sat down under a striped umbrella. Roden still wasn’t talking and I sipped my juice and left him to his silence.

  It was all very uneventful until, after a couple of minutes, Roden climbed to his feet and began to walk away from me. I stood at once and started after him but he waved me back to my seat. “I’m supposed to go wherever you go,” I said patiently.

  He shook his head as if he was talking to a small child. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Orders,” I said. “Except when you’re safe and snug in your hotel room, I don’t let you out of my sight.”

  “It’s perfectly all right,” he grumbled. “I just happen to have seen a colleague of mine. He works in the Literature department at the university.”

  I hesitated. I knew Oxford was only a few miles away, but he’d given no previous indication that he knew anyone in the pub garden. He pointed towards a table by the river that was occupied by a bald, middle-aged man in light-colored slacks and a hounds-tooth sports jacket. The man’s face was unremarkable except for the eyes, which were small and unusually close-set: when he saw me looking at him, he glanced away, apparently fascinated by the contents of the mock-wicker basket on the plate in front of him. I had to admit the guy didn’t look dangerous. He was about as well-built as a canteen waiter in a Sumo training school and I could sense his timidity from where I stood.

  “Look, Hastings.” Roden was tapping his fingertips against the seams of his trousers and his lips were tight around his teeth. “Bakst didn’t say you had the right to eavesdrop on every innocent conversation I had. You’re just supposed to protect me, that’s all.”

  I shrugged and watched him walk over and sit down in front of the other man. I did a quick scan of the garden – nobody was taking the slightest interest in any of us – and sat back down just as my ploughman’s lunch arrived. Roden had ordered scampi and I thanked the waitress and asked her to take the plate over to him. The waitress laid the plate in front of him and got a glare for her trouble. More tourists in loud clothes and sun hats arrived and I could hear hassled parents by the river tell their offspring to sit quietly and stop throwing French fries at the ducks. I wondered what the hell I was doing here. As threats to personal security went, everyone in this place was about as threatening as Mickey Mouse on Prozac.

  Roden, however, had discovered a new enthusiasm for conversation. I could see him leaning forward over his scampi and talking animatedly. The other man looked as though he wished he were somewhere else, but the Professor probably had that effect on most people. Eventually, Roden reached across the table and prodded his index finger into the other man’s chest. His companion nodded his head and then, dropping his napkin onto the table, stood up and headed back inside the pub. A few seconds later, I saw him emerge from the front door onto the street and hurry away in the direction of the town center.

  Roden came back, carrying his plate, and sat down beside me.

  “Pleasant chat?” I asked.

  He stared at me. “I imagine our conversation would have been of little interest to you.”

  “Just trying to be friendly.”

  “That’s not necessary. Keep me safe and your opinions to yourself and I’m sure we’ll both be satisfied with the arrangement. Just remember you’re the hired help.”

  “Ah,” I said. “‘A rogue and peasant slave am I’.”

  He scowled at me for a moment. “All right, you’ve heard of Hamlet.”

  “Something else we did at school.”

  He shoveled scampi and French fries into his mouth and glared at a passing duck. I could tell he wasn’t too impressed with me. Maybe he’d expected Jean-Claude Van Damme.

  ***

  When we returned to the hotel, Roden announced that he needed to talk to someone in reception. I leaned on the counter beside him and checked out the faces in the lobby. After he’d attracted the clerk’s attention, he asked if anything had arrived for him. The man behind the desk checked and shook his head, his face bland.

  “Are you quite sure there’s nothing?” Roden asked. “I was expecting a package of some sort. Or a fax.”

  “There’s nothing under your name, sir,” the clerk replied.

  Roden glanced sideways at me and scratched his chin. “It could have been addressed to a Mr. Sadler,” he said at last.

  The receptionist checked again and, again, shook his head.

  “I wish to be notified the moment something arrives,” Roden demanded. He stalked off in the direction of the lifts and I had to hurry to catch up with him. When the lift door closed, he glowered at the walls as the contraption groaned its way upwards.

  When we reached the second floor, I walked along the corridor with him until we reached his room. As soon as he’d unlocked the door, he stepped inside and tried to slam it in my face. I blocked it with my foot and, against his objections, pushed past him and checked that everything inside was as it should be and there were no scary monsters hiding in the bathroom. It was all in order, in that tidy manner that hotel rooms have assumed from Hong Kong to Chicago, right down to the folded sheet of paper on top of the toilet roll and the foil-wrapped mint on the pillow of the bed. Roden watched me with his arms crossed and I made him promise to call me if he planned to leave the room. He treated me to another of his collectio
n of sneers.

  “I have work to do,” he told me. “And I shall eat in my room tonight. Do you think I’ll be safe ordering my own food from room service and brushing my own teeth?”

  “Don’t open the door to anyone without identifying them first, okay?” I told him. “Anything strange or suspicious happens, don’t think twice, just call me. Bang on the wall, use the phone, whatever. Any time.”

  “‘For some must watch while some must sleep,’ eh? I’m sure you recognize the quote, as you’re such an expert on the melancholy Dane.”

  “Right. ‘I shall all times the perfect guardian be’,” I replied. As I closed the door behind me, I noticed he looked a little nonplussed. No doubt he was struggling to work out just where in Shakespeare’s vast canon I’d found those particular lines.

  As well he might, the bastard. I’d just made them up.

  ***

  I watched an old Bogart film on TV and then read a few chapters of the book – a history of the Norman Conquest – that I’d brought with me. My concentration waned. I got up and, pushing the curtains aside, looked from the window. I heard the chimes of midnight from a church clock and was adrift on a sea of darkness.

  Churchill used to call his depression the ‘black dog’ but I’ve always seen my ailment as something more feral. Wolf-like. I could detect the creature, now, circling just beyond the peripheral vision of my mind’s eye. I pulled the drapes closed and sank a couple of mini-bottles of scotch, against my old shrink’s advice that alcohol made my condition worse. The night was warm and I stripped to my underclothes and lay on the bed with only a sheet over me, trying to keep my memories at bay.

  I suppose at some point I fell asleep. Certainly, something roused me. I never have that experience people talk about where they wake up in a strange room and, for some seconds, don’t know where they are. At the moment I wake up, I always know exactly where I am. I kept still apart from the slightest movement of my head as I glanced at the bedside clock. It was just past two a.m. There was no light in the room except for the clock’s display and the tiny red light on the TV’s control panel. Everything was quiet but the tingling in my fingertips told me something was wrong.