The Ecliptic

by Benjamin Wood

  Quickman loaded his plate with rice and karnıyarık and continued along the serving pass. He reached into the bread basket and collected four thick sections, stacking them on his tray like casino chips. He offered me a fifth but I shook my head. ‘And what makes the lad think I’m such an expert on it?’ he said, adding the slice to his own pile. ‘If languages were my speciality, I’d be translating Balzac, not piddling about with my own rubbish. Want some ayran?’ Again, I shook my head. Quickman was the only one of us who could stand to drink the stuff—a yoghurt gloop with all the flavour and viscidity of a saline drip. ‘You don’t know what you’re missing out on. It’s a little brackish, at first, but you get used to it. Great for the digestion.’

  ‘I’ll live with the heartburn,’ I said. ‘Pass the juice.’ He handed me the jug and waited as I filled a glass, peering towards our usual table.

  The problem was, I understood the boy’s reasons for thinking Quickman could help, but the explanation was not easy to broach with the man himself. An age had passed since I had closed the covers on In Advent of Rain. I could still remember the story and its characters in some detail because it was that rare type of novel—disquieting, note-perfect—that settles in your unconscious and becomes hard to disentangle. I knew that a solemn, friendless boy like Fullerton could not have survived his adolescence without reading it, too. But how could I raise the subject of the book with Quickman? For me to have even hinted at its existence would have been to acknowledge his life before Portmantle, to subject him to a reality he had chosen to renounce.

  In Advent of Rain tells the story of an unnamed girl whose summer is disturbed by the arrival of a visitor from Japan: an old acquaintance of her father’s called Junichiro. It is 1933 and Junichiro, an esteemed mathematician from Nagoya, has come to England to embark on a lecture tour, arranged by the girl’s father, in order to propagate an extraordinary claim. The old man believes he has discovered a formula that can predict when rain will fall on any given day, in any given place—knowledge that he believes will be vital to agriculture and the growth of a global economy in the future. He is keen to share the formula with governments across the world, under certain conditions. Junichiro cannot speak much English, so the girl’s father—a linguist and a don at an Oxford college—acts as an interpreter. The girl spends her summer holiday following them on the lecture tour, going from one university hall to another, by road, by rail, by sea. At each venue, Junichiro pins up a sheet of predictions for rainfall times and locations that later reveal themselves to be accurate. His claims gather weight and interest from the media. Lecture halls are no longer big enough to hold the audiences, so the tour is extended to theatres in Ireland, France, Germany, and America. But, despite offers of employment and financial reward from private companies, Junichiro refuses to divulge the formula. The press speculates that he is planning to auction off the information to the highest bidder. Junichiro tells the girl’s father, however, that he will only reveal the formula if the US government agrees to end its development of atomic weapons. They meet with American officials, who deny that such technology exists. The night before Junichiro is to give a lecture in Munich, he is abducted from his hotel and is never seen again. Just a few months later, the girl’s father poisons himself in rather suspicious circumstances, and she is sent to live with her aunt in Devon. She spends the rest of her life—through wartime and peacetime—trying to find out what happened to Junichiro and her father, without success, until one day a photograph of the old man’s formula is discovered on an undeveloped roll of negatives, found in the archives of her father’s college. Now a teacher of mathematics in her own right, she reads through the old man’s workings and finds them irrefutable. But the world has become a different place, bleak and bruised by war. So, instead of publishing the formula or spreading word of Junichiro’s accomplishment, she bleaches the negatives and burns the photographs, and—in a final touch of poetry—goes out in the rain to bring in her husband’s washing.

  Quickman rarely discussed any aspect of his writing with us, and for me to have gone blundering into a conversation about it, unprompted, would have been to risk our friendship. As we carried our dinner trays to the table, I tried to think of some way to introduce the topic of Japan again without expressly mentioning his book. But my thoughts came jabbering out too fast: ‘So, let’s just imagine, hypothetically, if somebody were to give you a letter from a friend of hers in Japanese, you wouldn’t, let’s say, be able to determine if it was really Japanese, or Korean, or something similar?’

  Quickman walked ahead of me. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m saying, I don’t think I’d be able to tell the difference between any of those Oriental languages. Never been that far east in my life. All the characters look so complicated, and there must be so many to remember, and I’d probably have to—’

  ‘Stop it, Knell,’ he said. ‘I can see what you’re doing, and I would very much like you to stop it. Immediately’ He placed his tray down beside Pettifer, who was keenly scooping up the dregs of his karnıyarık with a crust of bread. The light was faltering outside and the mess hall was moody with candle flames.

  I went quiet.

  ‘What’s she trying to talk you into?’ asked Pettifer, grabbing the tail of our conversation. He looked at me. ‘Let me guess: that boy’s got in your head again.’

  ‘Keep out of it,’ I said.

  Quickman tore the cap from his ayran and took a gulp. When he lowered the pot, there was a milk-white film on his moustache. ‘What I don’t quite understand,’ he said, padding off the liquid with a napkin, ‘is why you feel so obliged to help the lad. He doesn’t even have the good grace to show up for dinner. Not to mention the fact that he hustled me out of my father’s lighter. I’d quite like that thing back, by the way. But that’s not the point. I’m not going to get dragged into someone else’s creative problems. I’ve got enough of my own.’

  ‘He’s just a boy,’ I said. ‘You should have seen him, earlier, scribbling away on his notecards. If you could just let him know if it’s actually Japanese, that would be a start.’

  Quickman carved up his food. ‘Why can’t you leave him alone? That seems to be what he wants.’

  ‘Because there’s alone and there’s alone.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Explain to me the difference again.’

  Pettifer shifted forwards. ‘I know a bit of Japanese myself,’ he said.

  ‘The difference, Q, is he’s only seventeen, and when you’re that age all you really need is someone to—’ I was so used to ignoring Tif’s interjections that it took a moment for my brain to engage. ‘Sorry, did you just say that you speak Japanese?’

  Pettifer shrugged his eyebrows. ‘Well, sort of. I can read hiragana, anyway. I’m not brilliant with kanji, but I could probably give him the gist.’

  I was so overcome with gladness that I almost leaned over and hugged him. ‘Tif, you gorgeous, brilliant thing—I should have known.’

  ‘It’s these ravishing good looks, you see. They obscure my intellect.’

  ‘Of course they do.’ I blew him a kiss.

  At once, Quickman became interested in the conversation. He put his fork down and gave Tif a querying look. ‘Doko de nihongo wo narattandai?’ he said.

  Pettifer nodded thoughtfully. ‘Nihon de shibaraku hataraki-mashita.’

  ‘Dākuhōsu dana.’

  ‘Chigauyo. Futotta buta dayo.’

  ‘Sōdana!’

  It was quite disconcerting to hear another language emerging from the lips of two people I knew so well. ‘OK, that settles it,’ I said. ‘You’re both going to help him.’

  Quickman stabbed at his dinner. ‘He’ll have to give my lighter back first.’

  ‘I’m sure he’d be happy to trade.’

  ‘My father died with that thing in his hand, you know. I should never have bet with it.’

  ‘You could always try and win it back.’

  ‘I plan to. Just as soon as I’ve reviewed my strate
gy.’

  ‘Oi, you two. Get a load of this,’ Pettifer said, gesturing to the kitchen pass. ‘Mac’s talking to those transients again. We should rescue her.’ MacKinney did appear to be standing in close counsel with Gluck, which would not have been such a grave misfortune in itself, had the irritating Spaniard not also been with him. ‘Is it me, or does she seem to be enjoying their company?’

  It was true: she was laughing, and not in the hollow fashion we had come to recognise, but in that wonderful, resounding way that we had not heard for some time. I was glad that she was smiling again, even if I felt resentful of her sudden bonhomie with the short-termers.

  ‘Crikey,’ said Quickman. ‘This place is going to ruin.’

  Mac’s face was still flushed by the time she came over to join us at the table a while later. As she sat down, a residue of laughter came out of her nose, like steam releasing. ‘Oh Lord, that was seriously funny,’ she said. ‘Did you know that Lindo did impressions? I haven’t laughed so much in ages.’

  ‘Yes, we could hear you cackling from here,’ Quickman said.

  Pettifer gave his little snort. ‘Who’s Lindo?’

  ‘The Spanish fellow. He’s actually quite lovely. It’s a shame we wrote him off so early.’

  ‘You know, she’s right,’ Quickman said. ‘We’ve been lacking a decent impressionist for a while now.’

  ‘Fine. Be that way.’ She nudged up the bridge of her glasses. ‘You should hear the one he does of you.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s wonderfully subversive,’ Q said.

  Mac huffed. She was sideways on the chair, as though not quite committed to sitting with us. ‘Knell, you have to hear the way he takes off Quickman. He does this clever trick with his mouth, as though he’s speaking through a pipe. It’s hysterical.’ Another spit-ball of laughter came up from her throat.

  ‘Sounds terrific,’ I said, the dullness of my voice betraying me.

  ‘Oh, come on, what’s wrong with everybody? Can’t you stop being so serious about everything for once? A break from all the cynicism might do you some good.’ She stood up, reaching for a slice of Quickman’s bread, but he moved his plate away from her.

  ‘Get your own,’ he said.

  Mac lingered at the end of the table, ruminating. ‘You know, Lindo says he’s getting out of here. He’s close to finishing his collection.’

  ‘Bully for him,’ Q said. ‘That didn’t take long.’

  ‘He’s having a reading soon. We should all go along and listen. It’ll make a nice change to hear something that’s actually complete.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Quickman pushed his plate aside. ‘Bad poetry is one thing, but bad Spanish poetry? That could push me over the edge.’

  ‘Well,’ Mac said, ‘it’s easy to be critical when your best work is behind you.’

  Quickman looked suitably wounded, but he knew better than to rise to provocation. He just drew the pipe from his blazer pocket, tapped it on the tabletop, and bit on the mouthpiece.

  At this point, Pettifer leaned into my ear and whispered: ‘What is she doing?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I whispered back, but I knew exactly: MacKinney was letting us go.

  After all, it would be so much easier to say goodbye if we resented her. If she attached herself to short-termers like Gluck and Lindo in the time she had left, she could forget them as soon as her feet touched the mainland; but we—the stalwarts who had been together, season after season—we would be harder to miss. She was going to amputate us from her side, one by one, starting with Quickman, because he was the newest and the thinnest joint to hack away. Next, she would come for Pettifer, and then it would be my turn. I decided to intervene before that happened. ‘Well, you definitely know how to make a scene, Mac, I’ll give you that,’ I said.

  She glared at me. ‘Huh?’

  ‘I suppose when all that drama’s in your blood, you never lose it.’ I took out the folded pages from my skirt and waved them.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You mean . . .’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Let’s go outside a sec. It’s too loud in here.’

  ‘Yes, I think that’s probably best for everyone.’

  We stepped out onto the landing. The noise of the mess hall softened to a drone. There was a thumbnail of a moon that night, framed in the picture window, and the darkness was thickening above the trees. MacKinney turned on a lamp and leaned against the banister. ‘Sorry for getting irked in there,’ she said. ‘It’s just that Q can really sound so high and mighty sometimes.’

  ‘I’m amazed you’ve finally noticed.’

  She groaned, sweeping underneath her lenses with her fingers. ‘So, tell me: how bad is it?’

  I gave her the pages. ‘Well, first of all, the Willa character, the painter, she reminds me of someone. Can’t think who.’

  Mac shrugged. ‘That’s not exactly a coincidence.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad I wasn’t imagining it. People used to see themselves in my paintings all the time and I never had the heart to disappoint them.’ I put my hand upon her shoulder. ‘The most important thing, as far as you’re concerned, is that the characters felt very real to me—in fact, I understood their situation better than you know. I assume that’s why you asked me to read it.’

  Mac’s face bloomed. ‘They did?’

  ‘I had the most sympathy for Christopher, of course, though I could understand Willa’s dilemma, and I thought she was nicely conflicted. It’s strange, I almost never feel for the man in that kind of scenario—usually, it’s the woman who has to make all the compromises and do all the forgiving. I found that quite refreshing. It’s another kind of infidelity that’s breaking them up, isn’t it? That’s how I read it, anyway. The affair is between Willa and her art . . . I liked that idea. If you’d given me more than a few pages, I could’ve found out what happens next. Now I’ll have to wait and catch it in the West End.’

  For a moment, Mac said nothing. I could not tell if she was glad or dispirited. She tightened her fist around the pages, closing her eyes, and when she blinked them open again, they were glassy and mapped with tiny lines. ‘You have no idea how much it means to hear that, Knell. Just to know it made you feel something. Thank you. That was all I needed.’

  ‘Wait until you hear my notes on the punctuation.’

  She smiled. ‘Don’t ruin it.’

  ‘Does this mean we can finish our dinner in peace?’

  ‘OK, but Quickman has to tone down the sanctimony. It’s getting out of hand.’

  ‘I’ll speak to him about that.’

  ‘Good.’

  We headed back to the mess hall. ‘What kind of name is Lindo, anyway?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know. Ask the provost.’

  ‘Hard to take a man seriously with a name like that.’

  But Mac had already tuned out. She was hesitating at the threshold, studying her pages. ‘You really think there’s something worth developing here?’

  With my hand on my heart, I said, ‘I’d stake my sponsor’s life on it.’

  ‘God, it’s such a relief. I can’t tell you how much better I feel.’ She edged away. ‘I might just go to my room and dig out the rest of the draft. Carpe diem and all that.’

  ‘You’re not going to stay and eat with us?’

  She started to backpedal. ‘No, I’ve lost my appetite. Give my pudding to Tif.’

  ‘That’ll go down well.’

  And it was then, as Mac was heading back across the landing, that a surge of footsteps came up the stairway behind us. There was such a frantic energy to the noise, it seemed as though some forest animal had been loosed inside the mansion. But a familiar shape revealed itself—a head of brown hair, a bulky set of shoulders. It was Fullerton. He went dashing up the stairs so fast he could not control his feet. A toecap caught on the very last step, tripping him. His body hurtled forwards, skidding. Knees and elbows slapped the parquet, but he rose quickly to his haunches, stilling his breaths.

&n
bsp; ‘Are you OK?’ Mac asked from the corridor.

  He seemed to be startled by the sound of her voice, shifting his head in her direction. ‘Hello? Who’s there?’

  ‘It’s MacKinney,’ she said. ‘I’m right here.’

  ‘Hello? Is someone out there?’

  I stepped closer. ‘Fullerton, it’s us. It’s Knell and MacKinney. Are you all right?’ But when he heard my voice coming from the other side of the room, a greater panic wracked him. He stood gawping at the stained-glass lampshade above his head, as though fearing it would drop. He wiped the spittle from his chin, checking his fingers. ‘I think I’m bleeding,’ he said. ‘I don’t have much time. How do I get out?’

  ‘You’re fine,’ Mac told him.

  ‘Please. How do I get out?’

  ‘Calm down there, sunshine. You’re not making any sense.’ She turned to me, her face bent with concern. ‘He must’ve hit his head or something.’

  ‘Just tell me which stairs to take,’ the boy went on. ‘Are you there?’

  ‘Fullerton, we’re standing right in front of you,’ I said. ‘Stay still. I’m coming to help you.’ Slowly, I moved into his path, not wanting to alarm him.

  ‘You’re so faint. Please—how do I get out?’ He began to peer at the ceiling, turning in circles.

  I was near enough to touch him now, and I held my hand out, hoping he would take it. But, although his eyes were locked wide open, he did not acknowledge me. I waved my arms and, still, he could not see me. ‘He’s sleepwalking,’ I said to Mac. ‘Has to be.’

  ‘Tripping, more like,’ she said. ‘Look at those pupils—he’s on something.’

  ‘Hello? Are you there?’ the boy called now. ‘Tell me where to go. Please.’

  Mac turned. ‘I’m going to get Ender.’

  ‘No, wait.’ I spoke very loudly and clearly to the boy. ‘Go back to where you started. We’ll come and fetch you.’

  But the boy just shouted to the ceiling: ‘Hello? Please—anyone there?’ Then, under his breath, he said, ‘Fuck.’ He checked his mouth for blood again, and hurried forwards. I had to step aside to let him past.