“Who is this?” Toby’s heart rate has increased. Sweat prickles against his forehead.
The voice, when it speaks is male, flat, without emotion. Toby is put in mind of a fallen priest, jaded and corrupt.
“O, Eliphar, king-begotten son, these words are mine homage unto you:
Eliphar, sorely-treated man, sold into slavery and made to labour
In the caverns of the beast with many arms, the walker with her wicked smile.
Brave Eliphar, who struggles in darkness for the pleasure of a devil.”
Toby recognises the lines at once—there is scarcely a schoolboy, after all, who would not—as the opening words of the opening stanza of Matthew Cannonbridge’s 1860 verse cycle The Lamentation of Eliphar, Mununzar’s Son, which once inspired a sequence of paintings by Rossetti and which John Ruskin declared “the most beguiling poetic achievement in our national literature since Paradise Lost.”
“Who are you?” asks Dr Judd. “What do you want?” The voice does not slow down nor show any sign that it even heard the interjection.
“O Eliphar, the lonely. O, Eliphar, the outcast. O, Eliphar, the cursed and most hated.
O Eliphar, the runtish one, whose doom was written in the mud and in the mire.”
Toby opens his mouth to say something more but, sensing the pointlessness of the gesture, simply lets the voice drone on (“Eliphar, the thrice-betrayed; Eliphar, the angel-spurned”) and replaces the receiver. Yet somehow it is as if the words do not end with the cessation of the call but rather continue, with their whispering intensity, inside his head.
Quickly, fearing once more for his sanity, he returns to the bedroom and continues to pack—faster than before.
Minutes later, he is outside, hurrying from the house and from his old life, a sports bag slung over one shoulder, moving swiftly down the street as fast as he can without drawing attention, anxious and afraid, like a thing who senses that wolves are already at his heels. Once, he thinks he hears someone call his name. He stops and glances behind him but, seeing nothing, the sweat trickling down his neck and between his shoulder blades, he strides frantically on.
1835
ABOARD THE VIGILANT SLEEPER CONNECTICUT
FOR A TIME now they have been lost to us, Mr Matthew Cannonbridge and Miss Maria Monk, lost at first to the night and to the clockwork quiet of the city and then to the plains beyond, to the open skies, the steady wilderness, to unpeopled lands and to woods beneath the stars—lost to the great expanse of America, to the blank spaces of the map.
Yet, now, at last, after this ellipsis, all of their undocumented adventures, we are to encounter them again, seated together in a railway carriage and travelling at speed towards the city of New York. Miss Monk sits closer to the gentleman than convention would, perhaps, ordinarily allow. Indeed, they are almost touching, a proximity from which he does not appear to shy.
“You are,” she murmurs with a contentment that she would once have thought impossible, “a most remarkable man.”
He does not reply. Although a part of him knows this to be true he has begun to suspect with an intensity of suspicion which is all but a certainty, lacking only a final piece of evidence to place it beyond all reasonable doubt, that the quality in question may not be expressed as she might wish for very much longer now.
“I do believe I owe you my life.”
The wheels of the train rattle upon the track. The engines bellow and puff. The carriage itself rocks to and fro in a manner which is altogether agreeable to them both and which encourages Maria to move a little closer still, the result, plausibly enough, of this cradle motion.
“Nothing…” he murmurs.
“Nothing?” Her tone is one of incredulity.
“Nothing more,” he goes on, although he seems scarcely to have heard her, “than was my duty. Nothing more than I have always tried to do.” There is an edge to his tone, she senses now, something like distraction, even, perhaps, buried deep, horribly fervent despair.
Without thinking, she reaches up to him and brushes his cheek with her fingers. “You should not speak so, sir. You are a good man. The best—the very best—of men.”
Cannonbridge twitches at least and his face convulses into something between a snarl and a sneer. Startled, Maria takes away her hand.
“You think so, do you, madam?”
Her voice is even, polite: “I can only judge you, sir, on what I have witnessed. And that is all noble and fine. You have saved me, after all, and more than once.”
“I see.” He shakes his head, as if at her naiveté. His manner seems to soften. “Maria?”
“Mr Cannonbridge?”
“Might I beg of you a boon?”
“Anything.”
“You will think me less than a gentleman.”
“Never that, sir.”
“Nevertheless…”
The rattle of the carriage, the whirr of the wheels. Outside, twilight has begun to fall.
“Ask it, sir.”
“Might I be permitted to… kiss you?”
Outwardly, Maria gives only a single, sober nod, as if almost disappointed with the request. Inwardly, she rejoices at the prospect. She is not quite certain if her companion has taken note of the gesture for he takes no action and all that he says is:
“This may surprise you, madam, but I have never yet performed the act.”
Curiously, Maria, who is long accustomed to lechers of every kind, discovers herself to be blushing. “Truly, sir?”
“No. The circumstances have never allowed for it. Unless, that is, in those fragments of lost time I have, in some manner, done what I have not whilst in my conscious state.”
“Best not to think on it, sir.”
“No?”
“Best not to think at all, sir.”
At last, to her relief, he understands. Hungry now, he bends towards her, their bodies suddenly snug and close, his hot breath and hers intermingling, the air crackling with expectation.
He moves just a little closer. She closes her eyes, savouring this instant. Their lips brush against one another, he just as clumsy as she had expected, her urging him on.
And then: quite suddenly, and as though a terrific charge had been passed through her body, the young woman starts violently backwards. She blinks too fast, her hand hovers near her mouth, wipes her lips, hangs helplessly before her. She is shaking— shuddering, Cannonbridge comes to realise, with fear.
“Maria? Maria, my love, what is it? What ails you?”
She backs away from him, staggers upright, hurries towards the door and the swaying aisle beyond.
Matthew Cannonbridge makes no move to halt her but he asks again: “What has affected you so, Maria? Why do you cringe from me now? Why do you flee from my sight?”
Temporarily the fear that is in Maria is displaced by something sweeter. “Oh, you poor man,” she says and her voice is filled with compassion.
“Maria? Maria? What is it?”
“I’ve seen it. What passed between us then.”
“What have you seen, my love?”
“The darkness that is stalking you and…” She stifles a sob. “The darkness that is within. The coldness. The rows of numbers. Row upon row. Almost upon you now.”
Cannonbridge rises to his feet. “Then help me,” he says. “Help me vanquish it.”
“I cannot… I dare not. I…” She wipes a tear from her eye. “Thank you, sir. For all that you have done for me. But now I would rather take my chances. God bless you, sir. God keep you safe.”
And she runs, weeping, from the carriage.
Cannonbridge allows her to go. Instead of following, he simply returns to his seat. He sighs—a long, quivering sigh that might, in others, almost form a preface to weeping. The author restrains himself, however, and sits in his place. He closes his eyes and steeples his fingers as, around him, the shadows grow dark and long.
WERE ONE TO have been on that train with Mr Cannonbridge and Miss Monk and were one to h
ave looked in again upon their carriage an hour or so after the lady’s tearful flight to the buffet car one would have seen no sign whatever of its occupants. Maria would by now have installed herself in the cafeteria, guilty and fretful. But of Matthew Cannonbridge there would be no sign. Indeed, even the most thorough search of the train would reveal no trace of that soon to be notorious gentleman. It is unthinkable, of course, that he should ever have thrown himself from the locomotive. Rather it would be as if he had simply dissipated, as if he had turned to smoke or to shadow or to moonlight before, all at once and without the slightest warning, he is gone.
NOW
LIKE SO MUCH in his life until now, Portsmouth has proved to be a disappointment for Toby Judd.
He had not decided to come here until the very last moment, queuing impatiently for the single extant and functioning ticket machine at Ashbury station, listening to the litany of potential destinations squawking from the tannoy with the weird, repetitive intonations of some officious robot. Only when his fingers reached towards the screen did he make up his mind, to fulfil his long-held ambition to ride towards the sea, to a place where the smell of salt hangs heavy in the air, a place which bristles with nautical energy.
The reality, however, is almost intolerably dreary. The station is choked and unpleasant, the streets unkempt and forlorn, the overriding scent of the place not honest salt but cheap and spoilt food. The town centre, needless to say, is largely indistinguishable from any other similarly-sized town in Britain or—Toby speculates, for he is not an especially well-travelled man—any such place in any First World nation. Homogeneity, he thinks, not for the first time, is on the march.
Still, at least nobody knows him here. He has no connection to Portsmouth—no logical reason to be in this place. Sergeant Angeyo, he considers, will approve of the choice.
He is sitting alone on a bench on the sea-front with only his sports bag for company. In the distance (and this, at least, accords with his imagination) ferries honk and move with stubborn sureness of purpose. Overhead, gulls wheel and shriek. On his lap, purchased by way of a late lunch, sits a punnet of chips, greasy and glistening.
There is a moment then—and this is the last time that he will experience this—when Toby Judd, sitting in the sunshine in an English town, wonders if the whole thing—the warnings of Sergeant Angeyo, that poetic phone call, the dreams, the very question of Cannonbridge’s authenticity—might not be some spasm of his own consciousness, the consequences of incipient mental decay, the sad and tangled fantasies of a man in the midst of a crisis that precedes complete breakdown. And yet, he thinks, it seems so real and so true.
He takes out his mobile phone, checks for messages—for any word from Angeyo—and notes, with doleful unsurprise, that he has not been contacted by anyone who does not wish to sell him something for almost six weeks. He is still peering at the thing when a shadow falls over him.
“D’you want this?” A man, a stranger, in his eighties, white-haired but standing tall, something military about his bearing. For a second or so, Toby is convinced that the man believes him to be homeless and is about to press a coin or two into his hand along with an injunction to spend none of it on booze. Then he understands—a folded copy of the Evening Standard is held in the stranger’s hand.
“First edition. Hot off the presses. Found it at the station. I’d only throw it in there otherwise.” He glances towards the litter bin which stands beside the bench.
Years of training—upbringing and education—mean that courtesy is Toby’s only consideration. He thanks the man and takes the folded paper.
The stranger nods. “Thought you might like something to read with your chips.”
“I appreciate it.”
The man lingers. “Course I remember when they used to wrap them in it. Chips. Fish and chips in newspaper.”
Toby nods with feigned enthusiasm.
“Isn’t allowed nowadays, is it? On account of a few youngsters feeling sick on the taste of the newsprint. Well, we did—we all did at first—but we got used to it. One of the things which marked out my generation, that was: ironclad stomachs.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s probably true.”
“We fought a war on it. Bellies of steel.”
“I don’t suppose I’d ever thought of it that way.”
“Of course it’s rare to even find them wrapped in any sort of paper at all these days. It’s all plastic and Styrofoam now. Shouldn’t be surprised. We live in a plastic and Styrofoam world after all. Don’t we? Nothing real. Nothing natural.”
“Oh, I agree.”
The two men exchange a look of unexpected intergenerational camaraderie. Then the older of the two nods again—“grand chatting to you”—and steps, with stately briskness, away.
With a swell of melancholy, Toby watches him go, as the old man’s stern figure dwindles to a dot along the front. Then he opens the Evening Standard and glares, with an almost lackadaisical quality which will soon seem in retrospect to be absurd, at the newspaper’s headline.
Three seconds later, he is doubled over, his head between his knees, regurgitating his lunch onto the tarmac, feeling all at once more bleak and hopeless than he ever has before.
UPON HIS EVENTUAL recovery, acting instinctively and forgetting the facts of the matter in the pure sensation of the moment, Toby’s first thought is to attempt to phone his wife. Stumbling away from the bench and from those terrible words that are upon the front page, he reaches for his mobile, summons up her number and presses the call button. Oddly yet, somehow, not wholly unexpectedly, there is no connection, only a shrill, elongated sound, then silence. He tries again. The result is the same. Another number. Same again. The battery is fine, his credit should be ample. He gives it one more attempt. A shriek, then silence.
He wonders—and he has no idea if such a thing is even possible— whether the phone might not be interrupted, or blocked, in some way. After what he has just read there is nothing now which seems entirely beyond the pale.
Overhead, a seabird whoops and screeches as if in mockery of him. Then, in the distance, like something glimpsed from the past, Toby catches sight of a red phone box. That most antiquated of notions: a public telephone. Wondering at their continued existence, he reclaims his sports bag, then walks on. A breeze picks up and he smells salt for the first time. He hurries on. Behind him, the pages of the Standard turn in the draught, rustling and sighing slyly.
THE BOX IS further away than it first seemed and, for a while, as Toby walks towards it, as quickly as his churning nausea will allow, he even begins to speculate that the thing might be some optical illusion, a mirage conjured by a mind still grappling with horror. In painful increments, however, the cherry-red booth hoves gradually nearer until at last his hand pulls open the heavy iron door and he steps inside.
How long since he has been within one of these things? Five years? Ten? It smells of stale, sickly deodorant combined with something foul underneath. He wonders what the space is used for predominantly now—not, he suspects, for the making of legitimate calls.
As he feeds his change into the metal slot and taps in the number he even considers the wisdom of his actions. But soon instinct and tradition take hold.
“Caroline?”
Her voice is frosty and comfortless and achingly distant. “Toby?
What is it? Why are you calling on this weird number?”
“Have you seen the news?”
A pause. “The news? Toby… you realise that we can’t just chat
like this anymore, don’t you? We’ve got to move on with our own lives. Find our own happiness.” “You don’t understand. No. I’m not calling just to… chew the fat.”
“The what? Listen, sorry if I sound harsh but I just can’t imagine that either of us has anything new to say to one another. Toby? Toby, are you still there?”
Dr Judd has been distracted midway through the speech by a knock on the glass of the box. There is a man outside—early thirti
es and balding, yet solidly built and in possession both of a braggart’s swagger and of the very worst collection of teeth which Toby has ever seen. The interloper looks extremely cross and is at present busy miming making a phone call, one hand clamped angrily to ear, the other gesticulating expressively.
“Give me a minute,” Toby says.
A tut. “You phoned me!”
“Sorry. Not you. There’s a man outside.”
“What? Where are you, Toby? What’s going on?”
“Something’s happened, darling.”
“Not ‘darling’. We’ve been through this.”
Another tap on the pane. Toby snorts and says: “In. A. Minute.”
The man sets his face into an expression of what he presumably imagines to be menace.
“Darling, I’m at a crossroads and I want to do the right thing but I’m scared and I’m fairly sure I’m in real danger and I need the help of… somebody I love.”
There is a long silence from the other end of the line. Another tap on the window which, Toby, frowning, ignores. It comes again and, in a surge of fury, he gives the stranger his middle finger.
“I’m going to sound like a bit of bitch now, Toby. I know that. But you’ve got to understand that we simply can’t do this any longer. I’m with J J. And I’m really not coming back. Ever. It’s necessary for you to accept these things.”
Toby bites hard on his lower lip. His vision seems to flicker. “Then I’ll…”
“Yes? What will you do?”
“Then I’ll do it on my own.”
As Toby places the receiver back into its cradle the door is wrenched open and he is pulled from the booth.
“Don’t fucking give me the fucking finger.” The stranger’s breath is rank and smells of tobacco. He is wearing too much cheap deodorant.
“Perhaps you need to learn some patience,” Toby suggests.
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