The Child Garden

by Geoff Ryman

  People walked hand in hand or leaned out over the river, shoulders touching. People live with each other, Milena told herself. Most people live with someone else. She felt a new admiration for the way in which they coped. It must be possible, she thought. There must be a way to do it. Watching other people in couples usually made Milena felt like a bottle with a message in it, washed up and left unread. Now, it began to make her feel a kind of kinship.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Rolfa asked, as if everything in this new world followed a polished routine.

  They walked back along the other side of the river. There were children along the embankment, playing with hoops and moored barges. There was a traffic jam of carts heading back to the outreaches full of goods from the markets to be sold again. Young boys on them leaned back onto melons and played harmonicas. A circle of women sat cross-legged on the pavement, shoving slivers of bamboo into shoes. They were cobblers. A small blonde woman with spectacles and a thimble was talking. ‘Well, my Johnny…’ she began, her voice full of pride.

  Rolfa and Milena sat in an old church in John Smith Square and listened to a choir rehearsing madrigals. They went to a market outside Westminster Abbey. Rolfa was hungry again. She bought some dried fish and munched it like candy. She bought a new saucepan and vegetables and bread and more fish. They walked through the August dusk, along Westminster Bridge, past fire-eaters, who blew sheets of flame toward the sky as children watched. Fat men in plaid shorts, Party members perhaps, laughed and passed money. There was to be an ostrich race across the bridge. Jockeys were trying to clamber up onto the backs of the birds. Hoods were snatched from the ostriches’ eyes and they sprang forward. One of them spun in circles and then ran off in the wrong direction. There were cheers. For the first time she could remember, Milena felt young. She and Rolfa walked back to the Shell.

  They lit a candle in the room and sorted out Rolfa’s papers. They put pages back in bindings and reunited different halves of musical scores. They worked in silence. They were going to have to share the bed.

  It was a small bed and Milena, Rolfa and Piglet were all going to have to fit in it. When the time came, Milena was surprised at how straightforward sleeping with Rolfa was. Rolfa simply took off her clothes and slipped under the counterpane. Without any preliminaries, she began to snore. Milena climbed in next to her with only the slightest trembling in her belly.

  Rolfa was hot. Her feet stuck out of the end of the bed to cool. Her snoring was dragon-like, great gurgling snorts, agonised asthmatic wheezes, ruffles of sound like a horse blowing through its loose nostrils. Milena stared at the ceiling in the dark, and felt a trickle of sweat in her forehead.

  ‘Rolfa. Please?’ she asked.

  ‘Yum. Um,’ said Rolfa.

  Milena reached around and pushed shut her mouth. The snoring stopped and then started again. Milena’s hand brushed Rolfa’s shoulder. It was as warm as a radiator, made piquant by the stubble of whiskers.

  Piglet, Milena decided, also smelled of childhood sick.

  Finally she slept, as if in fever, a skittish sleep with dreams. She dreamt that Rolfa rose up all around her and covered her and that they made love. It was a bit like being rubbed by warm sandpaper. Milena could feel the bristles against her cheek and with the tips of her fingers. She awoke in the dark, overjoyed, thinking it had been real, and reached out to find the bed empty and cool.

  There was a sizzling sound. Milena looked up and saw a flame. Rolfa was frying something in the light on the single-ring stove. There was a smell of fish.

  ‘You’ve got fleas,’ said Rolfa, huffily.

  ‘No I haven’t,’ said Milena, sleepily settling back onto her pillow. It was not possible for human beings to have fleas.

  ‘I’m being eaten alive!’ exclaimed Rolfa.

  Milena was dimly aware of a stirring in the bed. She turned her head. There were mites on the pillow. She sat up and examined them.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, remembering. ‘Oh. That’s my immune system.’

  ‘What, trained fleas?’ said Rolfa. When she was angry, Rolfa became something of an aristocrat.

  ‘No,’ Milena said, mortified and miserable. To have forgotten this only showed so nakedly that she had never been in love. ‘No, we call them Mice. They eat fleas. And bilharzia, and hookworm. They live in our skin. They were engineered for us when the weather got warmer. You’re a foreign body. They think you’re a disease.’

  ‘Charming,’ said Rolfa.

  ‘They get used to you. It’s what happens to us. It’s what happens when people become lovers.’

  Lovers? Oops. Milena’s eyes popped back in open alarm, and she watched Rolfa, waiting for a reaction. Rolfa went on cooking.

  ‘But. We’re not lovers, are we?’ said Milena, after a little while.

  ‘No,’ said Rolfa lightly, and looked at her. ‘I’m making fried bread and sardine sandwiches. Want one?’

  ‘No thanks,’ whispered Milena. She sat up in bed, and propped her head on an arm and looked at Rolfa. It wasn’t going to be like her dream, or like the sickness, either. Living with Rolfa was going to be something calmer and more certain.

  ‘Here, we go, fleas and all,’ said Rolfa and sat cross-legged on the bed and began to munch. The bed, thought Milena, will be full of crumbs and smell of fish for weeks. She didn’t mind.

  In the morning, Milena got up and went to rehearsals. She left Rolfa reading one of the torn books. As she went down the stairs and walked along the pavements that reflected the low morning sun, the thought that Rolfa would be in the room when she got back was like a hand-warmer. People carried them in winter, little boxes in which an ember of charcoal smouldered. She didn’t even mind going to Love’s Labour’s Lost.

  Inside the bare rehearsal hall, there was an air of high excitement.

  ‘Oh Milena, you missed it!’ said one of the Princess’s ladies. She and Milena did not normally speak.

  ‘Missed what?’

  ‘Oh!’ said the actress, wondering where to begin. ‘We’re not doing the old production any more, we’re doing a new one, our own.’

  The director came in. He looked feverish, eyes glistening. Milena thought he might be unwell. ‘Right!’ he said. ‘All ready for the Birth of the New, Part Two. Milena. You weren’t here yesterday. We’re going to do Dull’s first scene. Now.’

  Brisk, brisk, thought Milena, what’s got into him? She did Dull as she always did him, but now each time that she spoke there were affectionate chuckles from the cast.

  ‘You see what I mean?’ the director said.

  ‘Dull’s not dumb, he’s smart,’ said Berowne.

  What is going on? wondered Milena. They liked my Dull?

  And Milena felt a kind of giddiness.

  I know this feeling, she thought. I think I know this feeling from childhood. There’s something new, and you don’t understand it, and so there is confusion.

  It was the strangest feeling. It was as if Milena were standing at the end of a long, dark corridor. Far down at the other end, someone was talking, but the words were echoing from so far back, were so scattered by echoing, that they made no sense. The person who was speaking from so far back was Milena herself.

  It was a scrap of memory. I’m trying to remember something, she thought.

  ‘Right,’ said the director. ‘Back to Armado and Mote.’ He peremptorily clapped his hands. The cast bustled into place. Milena felt as if she had been awakened from a dream.

  I really don’t remember any of it at all. Any of it. Being a child. It’s all gone. Except for very early on.

  Something destroyed my childhood.

  The play began again.

  Out of costume, wearing street clothes, Armado and the boy called Mote entered.

  From the first word of the performance, Milena thought: it’s all different.

  In the original production which the cast had so hated imitating, Armado was a braggart, arch and florid and wearing a hat full of feathers. The boy Mote imitated him. The
boy was arch and florid as well. He was going to become like his master.

  It was a subtlety of performance that was beyond these young actors. What this Mote had was innocence. Mote had been allowed to become a child again. He was full of joy. He danced with the joy of the words.

  ‘…but to jig off a tune at the tongue’s end, canary it to your feet…’ he said, swaying with each syllable.

  When he was done, the cast applauded him.

  ‘It’s the words,’ he said shyly. ‘They’re virulent.’

  They worked long into the afternoon, utterly without realising it. Time had ceased to be a problem for them. Time became something delicious, the medium in which the words and the performances swam. It’s alive, thought Milena. It’s all become alive. She watched as performance after performance fell into place.

  The Princess of the play was less superior now, more wary and confused. The King was less of a fool and more a good and quiet man. For the first time, you could believe that they would love each other. As the cast watched each other, all of them squirmed with delight. The whole damn play, thought Milena. It’s like some huge wriggling fish. This is what it’s supposed to be like.

  It was late afternoon when they were done, and they burst out of the rehearsal rooms, throwing back the doors. They marched out of the room together, elated, their hands on the shoulders, on the neck, around the waist of their director.

  ‘Who needs Animals anyway?’ said Berowne. ‘We’re all Animals!’ They walked back to the Shell in a mob, telling each other excitedly how good they had been.

  ‘You do realise what this means,’ said Milena. ‘It means we’re doing all the plays the wrong way. They should all be like this.’

  ‘Ulp,’ said the King, covering his mouth and swallowing in mock alarm.

  ‘So what do we do next?’ Milena asked.

  ‘Anything we want,’ said Berowne.

  And as they kissed each other on the cheek, dispersing to their rooms, and as Milena climbed the stairs, silent among a few other cast members who lived in her section of the Shell, Milena felt she had some news. She could feel the news ripen in her like a heavy fruit about to drop. The news had been ripened by the knowledge that Milena had someone to tell it to. She had Rolfa.

  Everything is happening all at once, she thought. She was aware that her life had taken wing.

  When Milena got back to her room, Jacob was waiting for her. He stood up from the bed and said, ‘Someone’s been hunting for you. You and Rolfa.’

  ‘A Snide,’ said Rolfa, leaning back on the bed, looking pleased. ‘Papa would have hired him.’

  ‘A tall, thin man,’ said Jacob. ‘I told him no one of your name lived here.’

  Milena listened to the silence in the room. Snides had viruses that helped them sneak and search.

  ‘They can hear thoughts,’ she whispered in fear.

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Jacob, with a sideways grin. ‘It’s not like that.’

  The air seemed to prickle. ‘What is it like?’ Milena asked quietly. You know, don’t you Jacob?

  Still the angelic smile. ‘You catch thoughts. You see things. You feel things in your head. They are very difficult to understand. If you are with many people, the thoughts are jumbled. Milena, you must stay with people.’

  So I can still be part of the play.

  ‘What if he finds me alone?’

  Jacob still smiled. ‘You are many people, Milena. The viruses come from many people. Let them talk for you. Let them recite your lines. Let them add up things. Let them read books. You won’t be traced. All these things are not personal.’

  ‘And Rolfa? She’s here all alone.’

  Hood-eyed, Jacob turned, smiling to Rolfa. ‘Oh, Rolfa, her thoughts are not personal.’

  So Postpeople are Snides as well. What, wondered Milena, are Postpeople for?

  ‘We’d better change rooms,’ said Milena.

  Jacob nodded. Rolfa lay on the bed as if none of it mattered.

  Milena went to Cilla. ‘We’ve got to trade rooms,’ she told her.

  ‘Drop anchor. Hold. Why?’ Cilla asked. She was told the story and was thrilled. ‘Right. Right away,’ she said. ‘We move.’

  ‘A new room?’ Rolfa beamed, and jumped up from the floor. There was a bustling of bags. Rolfa kept cheerfully hitting her head on the lintels of doorways. The beds, the cookers, the pans, the armfuls of paper, were all exchanged in less than an hour.

  ‘I’ll go buy us all supper. See you,’ promised Cilla.

  The new room was even smaller and did not have a view of the river. After the excitement of the move and of being hunted, Rolfa sat staring, disgruntled and pouting.

  ‘There’s no space,’ she said.

  ‘There’s space enough. We got everything in.’

  ‘There’s no space for a piano.’

  For a piano?

  Rolfa, how much money do you have? Enough to keep you in food for a month? How much money do you think I have? Milena had to tell her that life would be different now. Rolfa would have to live the cramped and constricted life of a human being.

  ‘We live in little boxes, Rolfa,’ Milena said. ‘For us there is no buying a way out. We don’t have pianos. We don’t have rooms big enough for them.’

  ‘Then where can I play?’

  ‘There are practice rooms, in the Zoo.’

  ‘They won’t let me into them.’ Rolfa began to pace.

  Something is going to have to happen, quickly, Milena realised. We won’t be able to live like this for long. Something is going to have to happen with her music.

  ‘You can always sing,’ said Milena.

  ‘Where? Where can I sing? If I try to sing here, people ask me to be quiet. And if there’s a Snide after me, I’ve got to keep quiet.’

  Cilla did not come bringing supper. Jacob came instead with a message.

  ‘He is in your old room,’ said Jacob. ‘The tall, thin man. He will not go away. He is sitting on the bed. Cilla was playing Madam Butterfly over and over in her mind. He knew that. I said, Cilla your friends are waiting at the cafe. So she could leave. She asked him to go, and he shook his head. How long he will stay there I don’t know. But I think he will soon come here.’

  They had to move again. To move a second time was not fun. It was wearing. They traded rooms with Cilla’s boyfriend, a well known young actor, who made a great show of condescending. Milena did not like being grateful to him.

  They spent the night in their new, glum room and did not even light a candle in case the Snide was watching. They spoke in whispers. Rolfa walked back and forth at the foot of the bed.

  ‘When I was bad, Papa would lock me in the closet,’ she said. ‘It was very dark and I knew there was no one to come for me. So I used to sing to myself in the dark. And it got so that I would do bad things like not make my bed or make a terrible mess in the kitchen, just so that I could be locked away. The dark was the only place I could sing. But here, I can’t even sing. It’s so small, I can hardly move.’

  And Milena felt it again, the echo of memory. I’ve done this before, she thought. It was a habit, a pattern, something she could fall into if she didn’t think about it. It was as if she had been snatched up so quickly and hauled into adulthood that part of her self had been left behind. It was as if only the shell remained, the structure. The strange soft creature she once had been was left behind. The child self did not realise what had happened. Perhaps it was still back there, in the past, still talking.

  I don’t remember, but I think that I probably talked to the newcomers. I suppose that in the Child Garden the orphans wept for their lost homes, even homes they had hated. Milena suddenly found the idea of homeless children unaccountably moving. I must have sat with them at night in the dark, like this.

  And this is a child I am talking to now. Milena understood Rolfa then. Rolfa was still a child. Milena would have to take care of her for a while.

  ‘Can you sing in silence? Like reading music?’

/>   ‘It’s not the same,’ said Rolfa.

  She will have to become part of the Consensus, Milena decided. If she becomes part of the Consensus, she can be Placed in the theatrical Estate. They will let her use the practice rooms at least. At least they will pay her, give her money and a place to live. If nothing happens she will go. She will have to go. What is the difference between this and Antarctica? It is still exile. The thought did not come to Milena that she herself was the difference.

  That night she couldn’t sleep again. She was trying to think of what she could do. Could she ask Jacob to sing the music that he remembered? Could she coax Rolfa into one of the rooms of the powerful, and persuade her to sing, cold? Milena finally fell asleep, sitting on the floor, only her head and shoulders resting on the bed.

  She sat up suddenly some time later, knowing that she had been asleep. It was still dark outside. The counterpane was over her shoulders.

  ‘I have been in bed forever,’ said Rolfa. ‘Isn’t there something we can do?’

  ‘There’s a market open now. It’s for stallowners, open early. We could go there!’

  They crept down the unlighted stairs of the Shell, clutching on to each other, dreading a tall thin shadow. They slipped through the streets, their hearts pounding. They followed a butcher’s cart, pulled by a huge and plodding white horse with a beautiful white mane. They reached the gas lamps, with their shining cotton wicks, and they saw the heaps of things to buy. Sparrows in cages had been dyed bright colours. There were whole smoked chickens, old furniture, T-shirts with pictures printed on them, musical instruments, and piles of fruit and vegetables.

  ‘Pooh wants this,’ said Rolfa. ‘Pooh shall have it.’ She bought a pineapple. The stallowner was looking at them.

  ‘Isn’t it funny how a Bear likes money,’ Rolfa said, sorting coins. Milena felt her mouth go taut with embarrassment and the danger of it. He will remember us, she thought. They left as a corner of the sky was turning silver and the sound of horses’ hooves announced the city was waking up. Streetsweepers in blue uniform nodded hello as they passed.

  It became their new routine. Rolfa went to the market in the mornings in the dark. It was her time out. Milena would get up with her, and help her shave in the showers, a candle planted on the floor. Then Milena would go back to bed and lounge in its warmth. That was her time. When the sky was lighter, she would get up and clean the cooker, and undo whatever damage Rolfa had done with her pre-dawn fry-up.