by Ian Whates
Bill seemed quieter than ever, hunched against the bitter wind with his hands stuffed in his pockets.
“Are you okay?” said Grace. “I suppose this must be hard.”
He said nothing for a few moments. Then he looked at her. “I lied,” he said.
“You lied...? About what?”
“I told you I’d never heard from Ann, but that isn’t true. There’s something I think you should have.” He unfastened the top button of his coat, reached into the inside pocket and produced a letter. He held it gently between his fingertips, looked at it for a few moments, then gave it to her. “You might find what you’re looking for in there.”
Grace recognised Mum’s handwriting immediately. The envelope looked pristine, as if somehow unaffected by the passage of time. The Western Australia post mark was dated July the twenty-fourth, nineteen eighty-one: Grace’s eighteenth birthday. She glanced at the reverse side. “Why didn’t you open it?”
“The only correspondence I ever received from her? The only news... The only...” He shrugged and looked back out across the marsh. “I suppose I was scared of what it might contain. If I opened that envelope there’d be no turning back. Eight east. Grin’s cat. The end of a world. I couldn’t face that again. So there you go. It’s your responsibility now. And just in time, too, by the looks of things.”
Grace followed his gaze just as the spindly contraption of wire and metal suspended beneath the boom began to take the strain.
YOU MIGHT AS well be dead. It’s winter now and the world is white and they let you wander the grounds. You play checkers. Swap stories with the other patients about things that might have happened or didn’t. All what ifs and what have yous. The knives in the canteen are blunt. Funny how there can be so many casualties just from protecting the peace.
You still take your white tablets. You still get the flashes and the flashbacks and the screams. You’re still flying blind over a dark world, and there’s no turning back. You know your career in the RAF is buggered. If they don’t know what happened and the plane’s drowned, buried, a war grave that the War Department is happy to keep that way, they’re not even going to trust you to bash spuds or dig latrines. One way or another, you feel like you’ve destroyed everything.
Then late one freezing afternoon with the orange sun blazing long shadows, you come back inside with frost on your breath. A nurse hurries up to you. You’ve got a visitor, she says. Ushers you to your little white room. You steel yourself for your parents, the Wing Commander, yet another shrink. But it’s not.
Some time passed during which little seemed to happen. Then, gradually, the Vulcan began to emerge in a slow-mo take-off replay. Water cascaded, glittering in the lights, from holes in the aircraft’s carcass. The cockpit windows were translucent and starred. The hull was scuffed and stained a mossy green, the entire structure seemingly coated in fur.
The lift continued slowly. When the bomber was ten feet or so clear of the marsh a man with a walkie-talkie raised a hand and the machine’s ascent was halted. There were distant cheers, a faint ripple of applause whipped away on the wind. The rubber men grinned and slapped each others’ backs.
“Well, well,” said Bill quietly.
“I SHOULD HAVE come earlier.” Ann straightens the sleeves of her black coat as she removes her gloves. Her hair’s done different. Her eyes have changed.
“No, you shouldn’t.”
“I, ah, checked with the doctors. They said it was okay now.”
She’s still standing. You don’t sit down.
“Did they tell you I was mad?”
“No, Bill. I mean, no. Of course they didn’t! What you’ve been through, it must have been terrible. No wonder things have been... difficult for you. And I think that was why I didn’t want to add my own sorrows to yours and make things worse.”
“You haven’t.”
“Haven’t I?” She manages a smile. “Well, at least that’s something.”
“That party, that last day. Do you remember –”
“Look, Bill. What I came here to say is quite clear and specific. First of all, I don’t blame you for any of what happened, and I think you’ve been, I think you are, incredibly brave. Without you, none of us would be here, would we? It doesn’t matter that you can’t remember anything. Without you we wouldn’t have...” She gestures around the cell-like room, into which the last of the sun is pouring its fire. “This. That’s what I keep telling myself, that’s what I know, about Charlie, and of course the others, too. It might have been some accident, but I’m a pilot’s wife... widow. This is what happens. And the other thing I wanted to tell you, Bill, is that I’m leaving this country. I mean, there’s not much to keep me here now, is there?”
“Where?”
“Australia. Probably Perth. I want to start a new life. I know it sounds like a cliché.”
“Good things often do.”
“Yes.” Her eyes wrinkle as she studies him more closely. Catch the light. Gain a little of their old spark. She almost takes a step. The world almost changes. But nothing does. So much for Grin’s cat. “You’re probably right.” Now she’s fussing with her gloves as if the plane is already out there waiting. Signed-off, engines turning. Yearning for the air. “I really must make a move. And... Well, this might sound a little odd, Bill. But I have spoken to the doctors. In fact, I’ve phoned them a few times. So... is there anything you want to ask?”
You consider this. More questions. You shake your head.
“In that case...” She leans a little closer. Her lips touch your cheek although her body, her presence, remains distant. “I’ll leave you.”
“And will you...?” you hear your voice asking.
“Write?” Ann considers this as she pulls on her gloves. “I think it might be best if we don’t. At least not for a while, eh? Then we’ll see.” And you notice, in the last brightness of the sun, a new thickness to her belly beneath her coat as she turns and walks away.
THEY SAT IN one of those trendy urban coffee shops that has brown leather seats and witty comments chalked on a blackboard outside. Grace had what was supposed to be a flat white, Bill a cup of tea.
“How are you feeling?” she said.
“It’s a lot to take in.”
“At least your crewmates can be put to rest now. It’s terrible they were trapped inside for so long like that.”
“They covered it all up, you know. The Americans insisted. The whole thing’s like some kind of punishment for something I didn’t do. Or maybe I did.”
Grace sipped her odd-tasting coffee. Just when you thought you were getting close to this sad, infuriating man, he began to slip away. “It might seem that way, but imagine the alternatives. Where would we all be now without men like you and Charlie?”
Bill didn’t reply, and Grace didn’t know what else to say. There was a long, awkward silence. Grace watched him as he gazed through the window, the years weighing down. She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him on his own in that little room, so close to the grainy English sky and those howling aircraft. “I’m heading back home next week,” she said. “Probably just as I start getting over the jet lag.” She smiled, but Bill just warmed his hands on his mug. “The thing is... I was wondering if you’d like to come back with me for a while?”
He looked at her. “But, Ann, I...”
She reached out and wrapped her hands around his; could feel the heat of the mug through the coldness of his fingers. “I’m Grace, Bill,” she said gently. “Grace.” She saw a young man’s eyes deep in an old man’s face. Where was he? When?
“Yes, of course. Grace. Australia. Good Lord. Ten pounds for a whole new life. We talked about that once before, didn’t we? One of those times you came to me as I studied...” Bill frowned and narrowed his eyes as if trying to work out what she was hiding from him.
“Well...” Grace considered. “... It’s like you said, Bill: it was a new life. And I was scared and excited and worried, and things probably were
n’t going so well between me and Charlie. We were very close, you know, you and I. You were a good friend. Someone I could share things with and talk to. So now maybe the time’s finally come, eh? Get away from all this... grey. Have you got a passport?”
“Oh, yes. Always renewed but never used. I don’t know. I like it here. I like to see the aircraft.”
“We have aeroplanes in Australia, too, Bill.”
“Australia. It does sound nice, I’ll admit. Beavis flew there, you know. Broke a record.”
“Have a think about it. If you decide you like the idea then I could help you get things sorted out.”
Bill was quiet. He sipped his tea and placed the cup carefully back on the saucer. “It could end up being a one-way ride, of course,” he said. “But then I suppose that was always going to be the case, wasn’t it?”
GRACE LOOKED THROUGH the window as the Boeing hauled its way into the sky. Bill would be down there somewhere, recovering from the funeral and the fly-by, the triangular sandwiches and the pretty cakes and the small talk from people he didn’t know or particularly want to speak to. And now it was all over, and the reporters had already moved on, and the Vulcan would end up in some museum, and Bill would probably just return to his old calendars and his odd attitudes. Things would settle back to how they always were, her family would still think she’d been mad to go on this trip, and the world would continue to turn. But she would at least write to Bill. Maybe phone occasionally.
As the aeroplane entered the clouds and the city beneath her vanished, Grace reached down and took the letter from her bag and studied the familiar curls and loops of her mother’s handwriting as she considered whether to release its contents. It was a connection to Mum, a direct link to a past that might give her all the answers she’d thought she wanted. But Bill was right: once opened there could be no turning back. It was Grin’s cat. Eight east. The end of a world.
She looked outside the aircraft again. The clouds shimmered and skewed. Time faltered. There was a moment of transition. As the gigantic machine emerged into a sky of brilliant blue Grace returned the letter to her bag and settled down for the journey home. Answers, she realised, had a tendency to raise more questions, and perhaps there were many equivalent truths. Unleashing the past, and in the same moment opening up countless futures: it was one of those things you think about doing, but know you never will.
THE SCIENCE OF CHANCE
NINA ALLAN
Nina Allan was born in Whitechapel, London, grew up in the Midlands and West Sussex, and wrote her first short story at the age of six. Her fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Best Horror of the Year #2 and #6, The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women, and Year’s Best Fantasy and Science Fiction 2012 and 2013. Her novella “Spin” (TTA Press) won the 2014 BSFA Award, and her first novel, The Race, set in an alternative near-future version of southeast England, is published in summer 2014 by NewCon Press. Nina’s website and blog can be found at www.ninaallan.co.uk
THE GIRL’S NAME was Rae. That was all she would tell anyone. She was about seven years old, Lyuba reckoned, perhaps eight, although her not speaking made her seem younger.
“Where was she found?” I said.
“Vasilievsky Station,” said Lyuba. “It’s all in the file.” She folded her arms and frowned, staring back at me with a look composed of equal parts impatience and curiosity. Why don’t you listen to what I’m telling you instead of asking mindless and unnecessary questions? She tapped the top of the object in question, an office box file with a marbled grey exterior, nudging it towards me across the Formica table top. Lyuba is brilliant at what she does, but she has no time for what the business strategy manuals like to call ‘people skills’. I once asked her how she thought about a case. My question provoked the same expression, a kind of mystified perplexity.
We were having a drink together in the Gay Hussar, a vodka bar just around the corner from the main precinct. Lyuba doesn’t socialise much outside of work because she has a young daughter, but she seems to enjoy taking the odd hour off if her mother is staying, especially if it gives her the opportunity to indulge her hobby. Lyuba is something of a vodka expert. In a rare moment of confidence, she once told me that while stationed in Perm she’d won a big vodka-tasting contest.
“Thirty-two varieties, all named by region,” she said. There was a faraway look in her eyes I’d never seen there before.
“My God, how did you even stay on your feet?”
“It’s like most skills,” Lyuba said. It was the closest I’d seen her come to boasting, about anything. “The more you practise, the better you become.”
When it came to answering my question about her methodology, she seemed less confident.
“What do you mean?” she said. “A case is a case.”
“Yes, I know. But how would you describe the process of solving a case? To a lay person, I mean. If you had to?”
She appeared to examine the backs of her hands, then turned them over slowly to look at the palms. She seemed puzzled, as if she’d never seen them before. Lyuba never takes anything for granted. That’s one of her greatest strengths as an investigator.
“Like a crossword puzzle,” she said in the end. “Discovering one fact creates the structure to uncover the next. Every case has an inbuilt logic to it, an internal pattern. Once you can see the pattern, you can solve the case.”
She spoke haltingly, choosing her words with care as you might select small but valuable objects from a shelf, Japanese netsuke say. I could see what she meant with her crossword analogy, but for me a case is less about solving a puzzle than telling a story. Those first few stumbling questions – the questions Lyuba gets impatient with because they seem so obvious and so unnecessary – are my way of finding a way for that story to begin.
THE LITTLE GIRL was found standing by herself outside the buffet at Vasilievsky station. Her name was Rae. When police asked her if she was lost, she wouldn’t say a word.
THERE WASN’T MUCH in the file: a short typed report detailing the girl’s first name, the place where she was found, and the contact details for the couple – their name was Ostrov – who had called the police, a photocopy of a doctor’s report – Caucasian female, 7-8 years old, no sign of contusions, bruising, lacerations, no evidence of sexual interference or molestation, vision, hearing and mobility normal, green eyes, fair hair, no scarring or distinctive markings, query elective mutism?
There was a photo clipped to the doctor’s report, passport-sized and over-exposed. The child’s face was expressionless and pale, her light-brown hair drawn back from her forehead in a green hairband. She seemed a blank, a diminutive ghost. She looked like all lost children. I’ve seen plenty of photographs like that and they’re all next to useless.
The doctor’s name was Shimulkovsky, not one I recognised. The only other things in the file were two photocopied images of a zip-up leather purse on a long leather strap, and two further photocopies of both sides of a newspaper clipping that Lyuba told me had been found folded up inside the purse.
“The purse was around her neck, under her coat,” Lyuba said. “There was no money inside, just this sheet of paper. She made quite a fuss when it was taken away from her, apparently – Glebov said they had to prise her fingers off the strap. She’s been quiet as a field mouse otherwise.”
The newspaper clipping was from an issue of Izvestiya, torn from the top half of the page and so leaving the day and the date – May 8th 1969 – clearly visible. One side featured a report of a fire at a children’s home in the northern city of Milena. The reverse showed part of a photograph: a woman’s face, rendered indistinct by shadows. The caption and the attribution were both missing and, I thought, unlikely to be relevant. I was more interested in the story about the fire. The date made any direct connection with the child impossible – the events described in the newspaper had to have happened at least thirty years before she was born. But what about her mother, or her father? I foun
d it hard to believe that the newspaper clipping had been placed in the purse by chance. Clearly it was a message of some kind. Who was it meant for, though, and what did it mean?
The fire at the children’s home seemed like the obvious place to begin my investigation, but I couldn’t help thinking that the place and date might be just as significant. 1969 was the year of the plebiscite. Milena had been the site of violent demonstrations in favour of what the more reactionary Soviet politicians had once branded the New Socialism. In the run-up to the secession, many of its advocates had been libelled and disgraced. Some had been imprisoned, or reposted to hard-line frontier towns where their voices were diminished, or ignored. The old guard’s attempts to swing the vote had ultimately failed, but plenty of bad things happened before they lost their stranglehold on the nation’s windpipe.
There seemed no obvious connection between a fire in a provincial city and the death-rattle of a corrupt empire, but my instincts told me that there was one and I was used to trusting my instincts, at least where my job was concerned.
It was what they paid me for.
I filed a request to see the girl the following day.
RAE WAS IN the temporary care of Clara Brivik, a police liaison officer whose main work was with vulnerable adults but who sometimes fostered children in an emergency. When I asked Clara if the girl was speaking yet she shook her head.
“Not a word. She’s eating though, which is something. She seems healthy enough. Her parents must be going spare, wherever they are.”
