His lips were unexpectedly difficult to wield, and he saw his mouth try out shapes beyond the books. "One moment," he said indistinctly.
"Don't go hurrying yourself. We know you're busy. Only wanted to make sure you know breakfast's whenever you're ready."
He couldn't have guessed the time from the clogged daylight, but his watch showed it was nearly ten o'clock. "I shouldn't be long," he called, and his lips mimed the words in the mirror.
He hadn't heard the landlady depart when he turned to the next book. The Revelations told how Gla'aki roamed the universe, the annotation said. "His great mind guided the vessel, but even He could not revive the denizens of the dead city which formed its carapace. The city and its secrets far older than humanity were destroyed as the vessel fell to our earth." The scrawl at the end of the following volume seemed to continue the theme. "The disciples of Gla'aki have described the dead city which lies in the depths of Deepfall Water, yet none of His evangelists have understood the greater wonder. What is the apparition of the vanished city but a token of His power to shape His domain through His dreams?"
"What indeed," Fairman muttered. He turned his back on his twin once they'd both shut their books, and carried a trinity of volumes to the safe. Had he learned anything at all from the annotations? They felt to him as if the books had been talking to themselves. He locked the other volumes in the safe and headed for the bathroom.
Someone had been in it recently. The mirror was befogged, and a trickle of water was snaking into the plughole of the bath. Fairman made the plumbing muffle his noises next door and ambled downstairs once he was dressed. He'd hardly taken his place by the window, outside which the fog hovered wakefully above the beach, when Mrs Berry appeared with a trayful of breakfast. As she transferred the plate and the other items to his table she said "We saw you at the theatre last night."
Fairman was distracted by the sight of the occupants of the shelter opposite the hotel. Could they really have been there all night? Their faces were still hidden, suggesting that they could be asleep if not worse. When he saw one of them stir, flexing his floppy gloved fingers on his knees, Fairman said "What did you think of the show?"
"What you did, that's all that matters."
"Surely not all." His response seemed to drive her gaze further back in her eyes, and Fairman said "You have to be impressed by how much they can do."
"You've not seen the half yet."
He had no idea what to say to this. The empty tables all around him prompted him to murmur "I'm sorry to be putting you to trouble."
"You aren't at all, Leonard. None of us."
"Eating after everybody else, I mean."
"You're not. You're our only one."
"Haven't your other guests eaten? Someone was in the bathroom before me."
For an instant Mrs Berry hesitated. "What makes you say that?"
"It was steamed up."
"I expect the fog got in." Before he could argue she said "Look at me keeping you from your meal. That isn't what I'm for."
She stumped away softly but rapidly, returning as Fairman downed the last pliant mouthful. He was gazing at a bunch of sluggish joggers who might almost have been imitating animals from the zoo, some with their fists raised in front of them like paws while others dangled their arms from a simian crouch. "We all need to keep ourselves in shape," Mrs Berry said.
Rather than admit this Fairman said "Could you tell me where I'll find Phyllida Barnes?"
"You'll be seeing our littlest ones, of course. She has them up on Haven Way."
"Not quite the smallest, surely? They'll be at your hospital."
"We've none of those in Gulshaw."
"The nearest one, I mean. The nearest maternity."
"We like to keep it here. Us Gulshaw women don't need all that paraphernalia."
"Some people must, surely."
"If what we drop can't get on without that kind of help, it isn't meant."
Fairman wasn't anxious to learn how much she might be drawing on her own experience, and made haste to fetch his coat instead, together with a carton for the next book. The old folk in the shelter had partly uncovered their faces; the scarves had sagged below their eyes, at any rate. "Good day," they called, two syllables so muffled that he could easily have thought a less commonplace word.
The light was more stifled than ever. The icy disk of the sun gleamed for a moment before vanishing into the wall of fog above the sea as if it had been engulfed by gelatin. No jellyfish were visible beyond the promenade, though at first he had the grotesque fancy that some of the people standing about on the beach were ankle-deep in them. Of course the people were wearing plastic beach shoes, which made their feet look translucent and discoloured and swollen.
A side street led uphill past Gulshaw Face & Body, apparently both a beautician's and a gym. Perhaps this was where the local folk acquired their tan, though Fairman hadn't seen much of that lately; even the ones he'd previously encountered—Janine Berry's, Frank Lunt's—had begun to fade as if there was no further need for such a sham. Though the slope wasn't especially steep, he felt sluggish by the time he reached the top. Not far around the corner was Sprightly Sprouts, a long grey single-storey building that might originally have been some sort of hall. The exterior was painted with large animals so cartoonish that they hardly seemed to belong to any species Fairman recognised. As he closed the gate of the yard, which was provided with miniature climbing equipment and infantile rides, he heard a woman cry "Here's our visitor. Let's see you all shape up."
He felt abashed and resentful of being used as some kind of threat. As he made for the merrily yellow doors, they were flung open by a buxom woman. Her voluminous dun gown hung straight to her feet from her considerable bosom, which quivered visibly inside the material when she took a step towards him. He might have thought her chubby face quaked too, twitching the tips of her fierce smile and almost closing her small eyes, not to mention jerking her greyish nostrils wider. Though her russet hair was parted well to the left, it framed her face with identical waves. "Phyllida Barnes," she said not much less vigorously than she'd addressed the children. "Good to meet you at last, Mr Fairman."
Once he'd accepted the clammy Gulshaw handshake, she made a tremulous bustling movement with her entire body to urge him over the threshold. "No ceremony, Mr Fairman. They're all waiting for you."
He could hear the children beyond the lobby, where dozens of miniature jackets and overcoats hung in an alcove. As he shut the doors behind him the hubbub seemed to swell up, growing shriller. Perhaps his face betrayed some nervousness, because Phyllida Barnes blinked at him. "Don't you care for children?"
"I've had very little to do with them."
"Maybe you should see to that," she said and appeared to realise to some extent that she was being presumptuous. "We know how much you're doing already, but still."
Without waiting for an answer she opened a door opposite the cloakroom. The babble of children subsided, isolating a few wordless sounds, as Fairman ventured into the room. Most of the toddlers were behind dwarfish desks, though a few children, not necessarily the smallest, lay on plastic mats on the wooden floor. Every child was gazing at Fairman, who had an unsettling sense that he was the focus of attention of a single mind. "We like to start them young," Phyllida Barnes declared. "You're never too young to learn, or too old either."
He supposed she was referring to the classroom ambiance. Quite a few of the toddlers were unduly plump while others were equally unhealthily thin. He was restraining any comment when Phyllida Barnes said "Diane?"
Diane was just as stout but more sluggish, and wore a gown like hers. Fairman was disconcerted to observe how similar her hair was to her colleague's, virtually a mirror image with the parting on the right. "Show Mr Fairman your pictures, everyone," she urged.
Perhaps they had recently been to the zoo or gone walking in the woods. He could just deduce that the paintings were meant to represent something like a hedgehog. Even the
prostrate infants held up spiky daubs on large sheets of paper. "What do you think of that, Mr Fairman?" Phyllida Barnes cried.
"Very nice." In case this sounded insufficiently enthusiastic he said "All of them."
"There you are, children. See who thinks you're developing." Nevertheless she seemed disappointed by his reaction. "What else would you care to see?" she said.
"If you don't mind, what I came for." When she and Diane added their stares to the children's, Fairman said "The book."
"I'll bring it to you. You'll occupy him while I get it, won't you?
Fairman couldn't tell whether she was speaking to her colleague or the children. As Phyllida Barnes left the room Diane said "What would you like to show Mr Fairman now? What shall we do for him?"
After a general murmur that might have included some words a boy or else a girl piped "Walk."
"That's right, you're good at that," Diane said so instantly that he wondered if she found them daunting. "Show Mr Fairman how well you can."
The children at the desks stood up at once with a flapping of dun overalls, and he was disconcerted by how tall some of them proved to be. Did they have difficulty in walking?
Was that why the woman had made an issue of it? Or perhaps they were demonstrating as they came towards him how complicatedly they could walk. The children on the mats had raised their heads, and now they began to squirm, rustling the plastic. "Yes, go on," Diane told them. "You crawl."
They set about it as the other children shuffled and hopped and sidled to him. All of them wore slippers not unlike the beach shoes he'd seen earlier, and the room resounded with slithering. All their eyes were on him, widening with eagerness if not bulging with some effort, especially those of the infants around his feet. The children only just stopped short of touching him, instead taking elaborate steps backwards. It put him in mind of some sort of dance—even the crawlers on the floor were finding different ways to wriggle—and he heard a whisper of a song or chant that sounded nearly familiar. "Keep that up and you'll be on the stage," he said.
This didn't seem to be what they wanted to hear, since they continued to encircle him while murmuring the chant their soft loose footfalls almost drowned. Quite a few of their eyes had grown so protuberant that he was put in mind of gouts of liquid. He glanced at Diane, but she was standing well back and watching him as distantly as all the children seemed to be. He was about to appeal to her or even call a halt himself—the intricate movements were confusing him so much that he could hardly distinguish the shapes of some of the players—when they all grew still in unison, even the ones on the floor. Phyllida Barnes had come into the room. "Here's his book," she said.
Did she really need to give the pronoun so much weight? He was still more thrown by the children's response. All their mouths grew round as they stretched out their hands to the book—even the crawlers did—and almost deafened him with a cry that might have greeted a present somebody had just unwrapped on their behalf. "It isn't for you," he couldn't help blurting. "There'll be other books."
A shudder took him unawares. He felt as if he'd been assailed by a denial so concerted that its force was close to physical. As the sensation faded Phyllida Barnes gave him a blink that he could have taken for reproach. "Mr Fairman has to put it with the others," she said. "That's where it's going to live."
"Back to your places now," Diane said.
The outstretched hands sank, and the toddlers shuffled to their desks while the prone children slithered to their mats. Fairman couldn't have said whether every child resumed the same position they'd been in when he'd entered the room. He made for the door, but as he held out his hands for the book Phyllida Barnes murmured "Do you want to say something?"
She didn't let go of the volume when he took hold of it. In her grasp the cover felt clammy, even yielding. "Thank you for taking care of it," he said—presumably he was meant to set the children an example. "I'm grateful to everyone who has."
Phyllida Barnes gazed at him so distantly that he couldn't read her feelings. "I expect you'll say more when it's time," she said and relinquished the book.
She was still in the doorway, and there wasn't room to squeeze past her. As he wondered none too happily if more was expected of him, Diane said "What do we say to Mr Fairman?"
He heard an indrawn breath behind him. It was so enormous that he had to remind himself he was hearing a roomful of children. After a pause they spoke almost in chorus, some of them distinctly enough that he couldn't mistake the words. "So much more to see."
"That's right," Phyllida Barnes said. "We don't know how much."
Fairman had no idea what this was supposed to mean or whether it was addressed to him. When she stepped back, twitching her eyes even smaller and quivering her straightened lips towards some kind of smile, he dodged around her. As he lingered to package the book he said "Do you know where I'm going next?"
"Of course we do. You want Bernard Seddon at Stillwater."
"What sort of place might that be?"
"Where we all go in our time." She appeared to think this was plain, and only eventually said "The funeral parlour."
"I imagine you'll be directing me."
"Maybe you should call him first if you don't mind. We know you're not meant to be put to any more trouble, but just in case he's occupied with someone. We've had a few go lately."
Fairman supposed he should be grateful to the mayoress for making arrangements on his behalf. Phyllida Barnes recited the number for him to type on his phone. Before a bell started to ring he heard the murmur of a song or chant in the room he'd just left. A woman's voice interrupted the bell. "Stillwater. How may we be of assistance?"
"Could I speak to Bernard Seddon?"
"Is this Mr Fairman? Bernard's engaged with the departed at the present."
"When could I see him, do you know?"
"As I say, he's at the church. He'll be to and fro with the deceased till this afternoon. He asked me to tell you he'll be here for you by three."
"Three it is. If by any chance he's delayed, here's my number."
"He'll be waiting, Mr Fairman. We know better than to let you down."
Perhaps the hushed respect that had crept into her voice came with the job. As Fairman pocketed the mobile, Phyllida Barnes said "You could have asked him to put them off for you."
"I don't think I should when they can't speak for themselves."
He was trying to lighten the inexplicably oppressive mood, but he thought he'd failed even before she said "We all have a voice, Leonard."
If this was a rebuke it was beyond him. He was emerging into the yard, where the climbing frames and tiny rides were so bedewed with fog that they looked as if they'd been dredged out of water, when Phyllida Barnes murmured "It's yours now."
"It's the university's," Fairman said, but her distant look left him more confused than ever.
His route to the promenade took him past Gulshaw Face & Body, where several bald customers were exercising in the gym. They had plenty of reason, given their lumpy shapes. Some were throwing themselves backwards and forwards on bicycles to nowhere, stretching their arms and then their legs in some form of therapy unfamiliar to him. Others were running or striding on conveyor belts, and Fairman could have thought they were elongating their legs rather too vigorously at each pace. He might even have imagined that the indistinct chant that drifted down from Sprightly Sprouts was accompanying if not driving the exercises. Through another window he glimpsed a woman lying supine on a bed for some kind of facial treatment. A hulking overalled masseuse had laid a towel over the customer's face, of course, however much it looked as though she was kneading the pallid surface in order to squeeze features up from it. Fairman didn't linger over the sight but hurried downhill.
The sea had crept out of the fog. Quite a few people were ankle-deep in the water—he could have thought they hadn't moved since he'd passed that way earlier—while others clustered closer to the promenade. The greyish light looked as if it
were being strained through gelatin, and lent all the flesh on display a tint unpleasantly reminiscent of jellyfish. A faint song seeped through the fog, and Fairman was near to imagining that it originated somewhere out to sea until he deduced that it came from the church beyond the murk. The congregation must be singing at one of Bernard Seddon's funerals, but could the mourners be dancing as well? Perhaps this was the activity that made the song too intermittent for Fairman to be sure how familiar it was.
As he crossed the road to the Wyleave, the denizens of the shelter raised their left hands, and one man called out. Surely he hadn't used Fairman's name, but Fairman demanded "What did you say?"
"We're saying no need to rush there, lad."
Fairman couldn't tell who had spoken first or now, and it might have been a third participant who said through his scarf "We'll all be there soon."
"The whole lot of us," another said.
Fairman had an unwelcome impression of being not just watched but addressed by a solitary senile consciousness. Presumably they had the funeral in mind. "You're right, no hurry," he said but made swiftly for the hotel.
There was nobody at Reception, and the building was quiet as fog, yet it felt no more deserted than the view from his room. As soon as he looked out of the window, the oldsters in the shelter saluted him. Waves were crawling forward on the beach as if determined to drag the fog closer to the promenade. He wasn't going to imagine that all the figures in the restless murk were facing him. He left the window and took his latest acquisition out of its papery nest. "Nearly whole," he said.
It was the fifth volume, Of Humanity as Chrysalis. At first glance he took the colophon for an anatomical diagram, showing a muscular skeleton next to a body parted down the middle. The stance of the bones suggested that they might have burst forth of their own volition, however, and the bony grin seemed more conscious than it ought to be. Were there eyes in the sockets? They reminded him of the distant gaze he seemed to have encountered too often in Gulshaw, and he turned to the end of the book. The flyleaf was blank.
The Last Revelation Of Gla'aki Page 9
