The Best of Both Worlds and Other Ambiguous Tales - [SSC]

by Brian Stableford

  Jesse looked down at himself and said: “My father will kill me.”

  “That depends how long you’ve been gone,” Angie said. “You haven’t been away a hundred years and more, but I’m pretty sure it’s not Whitsun here any longer. It might be as late as Midsummer. I think I can hit my own Easter dead on, though—it’s a much closer target.”

  “You could stay here,” he pointed out. He seemed to be speaking with his own voice now.

  “I could go to any time at all,” she said, “except the future. But there’s only one that’s mine. You might do better, I suppose, to come with me—to a world with supermarkets, antibiotics and opticians—but you’d be a stranger. Your father might not approve of the state of your clothes, but he’ll know that you’re back where you belong.”

  “Good luck. Miss,” Jesse said, politely, “and thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Angie said. “Any time.”

  She stepped back, then, into the ruined orchard, but she didn’t linger long before hauling herself out of her own exit, thrusting the thorns aside as bravely as Jesse had.

  Unfortunately, the exit didn’t take her back to her bedroom; it deposited her in the narrow alley between the thicket and the back of the house, which the builders had cleared in order to erect their scaffolding. She’d made the effort to see the world as it was, and she was subject to its limitations again. The back door was only a few yards away, but it was locked.

  Angie made her way around the house without any difficulty, but the front door was locked too. She considered ringing the doorbell, but decided against it. Luckily, even though the builders had cleaned up after them, there was plenty of fine rubble lying around. Angie picked up a handful, and began throwing little pieces at Cathy’s window.

  It took more than ten minutes, but Cathy eventually came to the window and looked out.

  “Come down and let me in,” Angie said, in a stage-whisper. “Don’t wake Mum and Dad.”

  Cathy was reliable in situations like that. She came downstairs and opened the door. She looked Angie up and down, and said: “You’re absolutely filthy. Is that blood?”

  Angie looked down at herself. The sweater had given some protection to her upper body, but not as much as her jeans had given to her legs. Her hands and forearms were badly scratched, and her bare ankles too. There wasn’t very much blood, but some of the scratches had swollen up and were beginning to itch.

  It’s the allergies that get you, Angie thought. Aloud, she said: “I’ll clean myself up. Don’t tell on me.”

  “Tell what?” Cathy said. “What on earth are you doing outside? And why didn’t you leave the door on the latch so you could get back in?”

  “I went out through my window,” Angie told her.

  “That’s impossible,” Cathy retorted.

  “I’m an engineer’s daughter,” Angie reminded her, as she pushed past her sister and made for the stairs, feeling suddenly very tired. “The impossible sometimes takes more than a little longer, but if you don’t give it a try, you never make progress.”

  * * * *

  9.

  Angie managed to get in and out of the bathroom without being seen or heard, and clean up her scratches as best she could. She slept late the next morning, and put on a long-sleeved blouse instead of a T-shirt when she got up. It couldn’t hide the backs of her hands and her wrists, but the injuries didn’t look bad enough to attract too much attention. She crept downstairs discreetly, to make sure that no one was waiting for her, expecting explanations.

  In the lounge-dining room, Mr. Martindale was already mixing pink plaster, ready to begin his bold attempt to make the walls smooth and fit for painting. He was wearing his light brown overalls, and seemed to be in a very cheerful mood. The furniture had all been covered in protective sheets, including the TV.

  “Morning, treasure,” Mr. Martindale said, when Angie looked in.

  Cathy had obviously done as she’d been asked, and had kept her mouth shut.

  Her mother was in the kitchen. “How did you get those scratches, precious?” she asked Angie, when Angie reached up to the cupboard to get a cereal bowl.

  “Playing in the garden,” Angie said, vaguely.

  “We told you to be careful,” her mother reminded her, but said no more.

  When she’d finished breakfast Angie went back up to her room, armed with a washing up sponge. She carefully scoured away the four diagrams drawn beside the window. Then she tore up all her failed attempts to draw the maze and took them downstairs to put them in the kitchen bin. She didn’t want to have anything around that might prompt her to see the maze again. If ever she needed to go back in the maze, she would be able to reconstruct it, but for the time being, it seemed best to let the weeds keep possession of the back garden, at least until her father got busy with his chainsaw and heavy-duty strimmer.

  She went outside later, and made her way round to the back of the house to look at the overgrown orchard, but she wasn’t looking for the maze.

  The path that Jesse had cleared for them as they had made their reckless journey from the heart of the maze was still clearly visible, although it was by no means straight. Indeed, it wound around the trunks of the hawthorn trees in such in a tortuous manner that Angie could only marvel at the fact that Jesse had picked it out unaided. Even though his sight hadn’t been quite as keen as hers, he had obviously stared at the maze long enough to get a feel for its contours. The light-starved branches beneath the bindweed canopy had become so brittle that he had broken hundreds.

  She could even make out the exact point at which his path had diverged from hers. His now ended suddenly, in what seemed to be a blind alley, but hers extended all the way to the outside. Angie made no attempt to go into the thicket.

  Cathy came up behind her, curiously.

  “Is that where you went last night?” the teenager asked.

  “Not exactly,” Angie replied, vaguely.

  “You couldn’t have climbed out of your window,” Cathy insisted. “You made that up, because you were embarrassed because you’d let the front door close and lock itself behind you, so you couldn’t get back in.”

  “Something like that,” Angie said. Vagueness seemed to be working for her.

  “So what were you looking for? I can’t remember exactly where we were up to when we were making things up, but it was something to do with fairies and fairyland being the land of the dead. You thought there was an entrance to fairyland in there, I suppose—but you figured that you had to get to it at the right time, the stroke of midnight, or whatever.”

  “Pretty much,” Angie agreed.

  “You’re mad,” Cathy said. “What did you expect to happen?”

  “Oh, I thought I might meet a beauty queen and save the universe—you know the sort of thing.”

  “I suppose I do,” Cathy said, although she really didn’t. “You might need tetanus shots, you know. Who knows what might have got under your skin? Weren’t you afraid of rats? I mean, take a good look in there—it’s filthy.”

  Angie knew that Cathy was just trying to scare her with talk of tetanus and rats, and she wasn’t in the least intimidated. “I’m okay,” she said.

  “No you’re not. You’re off your head. You’re not thinking of going in there again, are you? You’re eleven years old—you should have got it into your head by now that there are no secret entrances to fairyland.”

  Angie knew that there was no more point in trying to tell Cathy what had happened than there was in trying to explain it to her mother and father. The spirals she’d drawn had meant nothing to any of them, and never would. They’d never be able to catch the slightest glimpse of the maze, even when the hawthorn, the brambles and the dead apple trees had all been cleared away, to be replaced by a lawn and flower beds. She’d be able to see it, though, if she ever wanted or needed to. She’d always be able to see it, even if she refrained from drawing it again.

  “I think we ought to have a single tree in the midd
le of the lawn,” Angie said. “Maybe we should keep one of the hawthorns, but clear everything else away so that it has a chance to grow properly. Or maybe we should plant one of our own: an oak, say. I know exactly where it ought to go.”

  “That won’t get you into fairyland either,” Cathy said.

  “You really should stop going on about fairyland,” Angie advised her. “You’re fourteen, and that’s a bit old for that sort of thing. Stick to ghosts and witches.”

  “I would have stuck to ghosts and witches, given the chance. You and Dad were the ones who insisted on complicating it. If we’d just focused, we might have got the house on TV. It’s not too late to invent a really good haunting, left over from the days when this was a witch’s cottage and local farm-boys disappeared mysteriously every time there was a full moon.”

  “They’d check,” Angie said. “TV shows have researchers. They’d find out that this wasn’t a witch’s cottage. It was where the landowner lodged the family of one of his stewards, who had the job of managing this bit of his estate. And nobody disappeared mysteriously—not for very long, at any rate. From Whitsun to Midsummer Day, at the very most.”

  “You don’t know that,” Cathy said. “Whatever the researchers found, there’d be all sorts of gaps in it. You can never prove that things didn’t happen. People can make up what they like, and there’s never any way to prove that it wasn’t true. Once the past’s dead and gone, anything might have happened. All that remains are relics, like those scratches on your arms.”

  Angie thought it was time to change the subject. “Are you looking forward to going back to Kingston?” she said. “Is it as much fun as you thought it would be, with Dad at work all day and Mum and me down here?”

  “Absolutely,” Cathy said. “Can’t wait. I’m going to avoid this place as much as I can, no matter how pretty it looks when Dad’s finished painting it. I’m not going to need a country retreat until I’m ninety—not if I can help it. Give it a year or two, and you won’t want to come down here either. You’ll have far better things to do.”

  “Maybe,” Angie said. “Mum and Dad will like it, though.”

  “Will they, though? They go on and on about needing a change of scene, but it’s probably the sort of thing that’s nicer to think about than actually to do. I think Dad will get bored once it’s all fixed up and there’s no more engineering to do—no more building-plans and timetables. Once he’s finished the garden and it’s all complete, I bet he’ll give it a year or so, and then put it back on the market. We’ll sell it to someone who really is ready to retire and put down roots— and then Dad will probably want to buy another ruin somewhere. If we don’t make it on to one of those haunting shows, I suppose we can probably get on TV anyway, on one of those house-rebuilding shows. At least they go out on the main channels instead of digital backwaters.”

  Angie hadn’t thought about the possibility that her father might find that he didn’t need to get away as much as he thought he did. She didn’t know how she felt about the notion that Orchard Cottage might be sold on once it the house and grounds were fixed up. She decided after a few seconds thought, however, that her business here was probably finished. She wouldn’t be going back to the heart of the maze again, whether there was a protective tree there or not. She didn’t need a place to get away.

  “There must be spirals everywhere,” she murmured. “In Kingston, in the middle of London. It’s just a matter of learning to see them.”

  Cathy had already lost interest. “I’m going back indoors,” she declared. “The TV’s covered up, but I’ve got my laptop and my phone. I’ve got better things to do than grub around in bushes.”

  Angie followed her sister to the back door, and went with her into the kitchen. “I’ll need some curtains for my room,” she said to her mother.

  “Of course you will, precious,” her mother said. “We all will. But we need to get the plastering and the painting done first. Your father’s never going to finish all the plastering this weekend, you know. There’s just too much. I’ll be able to start the painting on Tuesday, but we’re going to have to do the job in stages. It’ll be nice when it’s finished, though.”

  Angie went into the lounge-dining room then to watch her father at work. She stood quietly to one side, not wanting to disturb him. For ten or fifteen minutes he got on with the job, almost as if he didn’t know that she was there, but eventually he looked round at her. “I’m sorry you can’t help, treasure,” he said, “but even if you had the knack, you’re not tall enough.” He turned back to his work immediately, but it wasn’t necessary for them to maintain eye contact to continue the conversation now that it had started.

  “That’s okay,” Angie said. “Do you suppose, now that I’m nearly twelve, that you and Mummy could stop calling me precious and treasure?”

  “If that’s what you want, tr...I mean, Angel. Is Angel still all right?”

  “I suppose so. I thought we might keep a tree in the middle of the back garden. Just one, somewhere near the middle. I’ll be able to pick the exact spot, once most of it’s been cleared.”

  “That might be nice,” her father agreed. “It’s good to plant something that might live for centuries, growing all the while. An oak, maybe? This is England, after all. You know how to pick the spot, do you? Does it have anything to do with those drawings you found? Is it the mysterious centre from which all the spirals spread out, perhaps?”

  “I scrubbed out the drawings on the wall,” Angie told him, evasively.

  “I thought you wanted me to take photographs—I hadn’t got round to it yet.”

  “It’s okay,” Angie said. “It would be a good idea to plant the tree, even if you decide to sell the cottage once you’ve finished fixing it up.”

  “You’ve been talking to Cathy,” her father observed. “She’s got her own ideas about the way things ought to go. Can’t blame her— she’s a teenager. I might forget, once now and again, you now, and call you treasure by mistake.”

  “The world’s not as safe and simple as we think, Daddy,” Angie said, thinking that she ought to make some attempt to tell him, and to warn him. There are more ways to get lost than you might imagine, and there are things that try to get in where they aren’t wanted.”

  “You’re nearly twelve years old, all right,” her father observed. “You’re right, I’m afraid—and the awareness will never go away. We just have to learn to live with it, and do the best we can. Plaster over the cracks, make things as smooth as possible—and then paint over the plaster, to produce exactly the appearance that you want, exactly the appearance that you need. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that fixing things up and decorating are a waste of time. You’re an engineer’s daughter, remember. You know the motto.”

  “Sure,” Angie said. “It’s true. The impossible did take a little bit longer—but it was worth the trouble.”

  It was strange, she thought, as she went back into the kitchen, how two people could talk to one another so easily, and so comfortably, without either of them really knowing what the other was talking about. It was strange, too, how little that mattered, if the people could find the right things to say, even without knowing.

  She told her mother what she’d said to her father about not calling her precious and treasure any more.

  “Well, I’ll do my best,” her mother said, “but I’m making no promises. Will you be calling me Mother from now on, instead of Mummy?”

  “Probably,” Angie said.

  “Well,” Her mother said, with a sigh, “I suppose you’ll be a teenager soon, and you’ll have to keep up appearances, just like Cathy. You’ll always be precious, though, even if we’re not allowed to say so.”

  “I know that,” Angie said. “I won’t ever forget it.”

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