Marcher: The Author's Preferred Text

by Chris Beckett

  This was a man who had fallen in the world. He had grown up outside the Zones, but had tried to make a living with a variety of poorly conceived business ideas, lost all his money, taken to gambling to try and recover it and ended up with no choice but to fall back on the state, even though this put him into the Social Inclusion category which he dreaded and despised. He’d put in an application for de-registration: that was the purpose of the meeting. He’d applied for a rarely granted legal status, in which a person whose financial problems were deemed to be short-term could obtain some state benefits without having to be listed on the Social Inclusion Register. Unable to afford a lawyer, the man had spent days and weeks preparing his case, but he’d failed to convince the meeting. He was too much of a dreamer. No one had been persuaded by his grandiose plans.

  ‘Thank you for clarifying your position, Mr Burkitt,’ he had said at the end, still watching Cyril, still looking straight into Cyril’s eyes. ‘I will have to consider this carefully and decide what action I will take.’

  That’s who it’ll be, thought Cyril, feeling quite relieved. It’ll be him trying to spook me, trying to get his own back, trying to recover some control.

  Now what the devil was his name?

  ~*~

  Somebody coughed and Cyril became aware that a small group of people was watching him, the expectation on their faces just beginning to turn to puzzlement. He cleared his throat.

  ‘Now… Now, as there are a few new people here perhaps we could start with a round of introductions. I’m… No, I’ve already explained who I am, haven’t I? So if we could just go round the table….’

  Dickie Clarke, a jolly man in a blazer and striped tie, introduced himself as the Registration Liaison Officer from the Meadows Housing Association.

  ‘Joy Frost, Headmistress, North Meadows primary,’ barked out the large woman to Dickie’s left. ‘Stacey’s daughter, Saffyre, is one of our pupils.’

  The young GP, Sanjay Rajman, introduced himself irritably. He had been to the Finance Office but he still hadn’t got to the bottom of the problem with the cheques.

  Next to him a blushing police officer, who looked to Cyril if she should still be in school, introduced herself as Karen Stimbling and explained that she was on temporary secondment to the DSI constabulary from Avon and Somerset Police. She said she’d come in the absence of Sergeant Walker and had no personal knowledge of the case.

  So why bother to come? Cyril thought, but out loud he was courteous as ever. ‘Welcome, Karen,’ he said.

  Then there was the family social worker, Lisa Finch, a round fluffy woman whose body seemed to be assembled from balls of wool. Next to her a tall, thin, elegantly coiffured woman wearing a good deal of make-up introduced herself as Harriet Vere-Rogers, a voluntary Lay Representative appointed by Bristol City Council, as prescribed by the Social Inclusion Act. She was a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party and she sat on the boards of many local charities and worthy causes.

  And finally, of course, there was Alice at Cyril’s side, who introduced herself as the note-taker and read out letters of apology from the Benefits Agency and from the Criminal Restitution Service.

  ‘Well, welcome everybody,’ said Cyril.

  He explained that Stacey Rugg held de facto Social Inclusion citizenship status as a result of having grown up in a Zone and of having a Social Inclusion registered parent. She had been given provisional SI status on reaching her eighteenth birthday, but now that she was approaching twenty-one, a decision had to be made as to whether she should be entered on the main register.

  ‘I don’t think there’s much doubt about that in dear old Stacey’s case,’ said Dickie with his friendly, wheezy laugh. ‘Lovely kid. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. But she hasn’t got a clue.’

  Cyril ignored this.

  ‘Stacey, as is her legal right, has indicated that she opposes registration, which is why we are required under the Act to hold this meeting. She’ll be here to put her views to us in person after we have had a preliminary discussion among ourselves. A transcript of the meeting will be made available to her and she’ll be entitled to take the matter to court under section 8(ii) of the Act if she doesn’t agree with our decision. Alice, I wonder if you could read through the background report for us?’

  ‘Yes of course, Cyril. Stacey’s mother is Jennifer Pendant, White British, of 65 Daffodil Drive…’

  Dickie chuckled knowingly as old Thurston Meadows hands were prone to do when a member of the Wheeler/Pendant/Delaney tribe was mentioned.

  ‘Her father is Roger Rugg, Mixed Race British of 105 Pterodactyl Way, Hartcliffe North. Stacey attended Knowle South Secondary School and left without any qualifications although she possesses basic literacy and numeracy skills up to Age Level Ten. She has never had a job and now lives on Social Inclusion Allowance. From the ages of 14 to 16 she was accommodated at a group home run by Wessex Family Care. She then moved into a flat at 58c Japonica Gardens following the birth of her first child, Saffyre. Stacey says she is not sure who Saffyre’s father is.’

  Joy Frost sighed.

  ‘Saffyre is now five years old,’ Alice went on. ‘Stacey’s second child, Wolf, is four years old. His putative father is Archduke Wayne Delphonse Delaney, Mixed Race British, now serving a prison sentence for armed robbery and Line offences. Following the birth of Wolf, she moved to her present address where her third child Kaz was born last year. Kaz’s father was one Benjamin Tonsil, black British, now living in the Shotover Farm Zone, Oxford. The child protection agencies have been involved in investigating allegations of child neglect in respect of Stacey Rugg, which Lisa will be filling us in on. Ms Rugg also has a number of Line Offences and other criminal convictions which WPC Stimbling can provide us with details of.’

  WPC Stimbling gave a tiny gasp and began rummaging through her papers.

  ‘Thanks, Alice,’ said Cyril. ‘Are there any questions at this stage? Mrs Vere-Rogers, or is everything clear to you so far?’

  ‘All very clear indeed so far, thank you,’ enthused the Lay Representative, ‘I can only say I am always amazed by the sheer complexity of the problems you…’

  But whatever else she had to say was drowned out by the pounding blades of a helicopter passing low overhead. House searches were still continuing on the Meadows and air patrols moved to and fro over the Zone twenty-four hours a day, keeping an eye out for shifters who might try to slip out of the path of the searchers on the ground.

  ~*~

  On second thoughts, it wasn’t that guy, Cyril decided. He hated me enough, that’s for sure, but he was just too law-abiding to issue threats.

  He remembered another young man, though, at a meeting a few weeks ago, a tiny little mouse of a man with a bewildered little face that was all crushed up like an old beer can.

  ‘You’ll be sorry, mate,’ the young man had said to Cyril as the meeting broke up. ‘You’ll be fucking sorry. I got friends, mate. I’ve got friends.’

  It’ll be one of that chap’s mates, Cyril thought, some poor little runt like him.

  There was a frantic rustling sound coming from WPC Karen Stimbling, who was beginning to think that the amiable but incompetent Sergeant Walker had given her the wrong file.

  Cyril cleared his throat.

  ‘Yes… Now… Before going any further I need to remind the conference of the criteria for registration laid down under section 5 of the Act. We have to be able to agree that Stacey demonstrates what is called in the legal jargon ‘substantial fecklessness’ in two or more of the so called ‘core areas’: Financial Affairs, Family Relationships, Basic Citizenship and Home Management. Secondly, as this is a contested case, we have to demonstrate that non-registration would be, in the words of the Act ‘contrary to the public interest’. Now if we can start with the first core area, which is Financial Affairs. Any comments here?’

  Dickie Clarke immediately launched into a long and, to him, hilarious story of Stacey Rugg’s repeatedly vandalised electricit
y meter. He was enthusiastically endorsed by WPC Stimbling who found that she did at least have that piece of paper and was determined to make the most of it. In a shocked, breathless voice, she read out a list of no less than five separate criminal offences against the Western Electric Company.

  ~*~

  I am an old man, thought Cyril.

  Since his early retirement package had been agreed he had spent a good deal of time looking back at his own life and gloomily punishing himself for the decisions ducked and the opportunities missed. When he had first got a job as a social worker all those years ago he had started out with some sort of vague intention of serving the downtrodden of the world. But ever since then he had taken the path of least resistance, falling into whatever niches became available after each of the many reorganisations of the welfare system that had taken place. Each step had somehow seemed reasonable and defensible at the time and yet he had eventually ended up doing a job that was, if he was honest, almost the complete antithesis of what he originally had in mind.

  He was useless at it too, though whether this should be a source of pride or shame he wasn’t sure. He knew he was an embarrassment to the agency. He knew that the early retirement package had been agreed as a means of getting rid of him.

  Maybe it was the DSI on the phone there, he thought, with a grim little inner laugh. Maybe they’ve hired a hit man to bump me off, so as not to have to pay my pension.

  ~*~

  ‘…and then of course there are the so-called lodgers,’ said Dickie Clarke, ‘but that’s another whole story…’

  Another helicopter came by overhead. It was so low that, beneath its engine and the thrub-thrub-thrub of its blades, they could just faintly hear the crackling of its ground-link radio.

  Dr Rajman drummed his fingers impatiently on the table.

  Joy Frost glanced at her watch.

  ~*~

  ‘Do you often give seeds back to shifters?’ Charles asked, as they drove back from Weston in Fran’s immaculate car.

  ‘No, not often, but I’ve done it a couple of times. Some of them are so scared of these dead worlds. It just seems cruel not to let them have one little seed as a back-up. I mean I hate slip – you know I do! – but what difference does one lousy seed make? I know Mike has done the same. And Rami too. They don’t tell you about it because you’re such a stickler and they’re worried that you might feel duty-bound to snitch on them. But surely even you’ve done something like that at some time or another?’

  ‘No. I can honestly say it’s never even occurred to me.’

  ‘Haven’t you ever met a shifter before who was terrified of dead worlds?’

  ‘I have, yes, several. And I can remember at least one who begged me to give him a seed just like Andrea did there. But I never thought it was an option. It just seemed like one of those lines you don’t cross. I mean if they don’t end up using it to get out of a dead world, then they could give it to someone else, couldn’t they? Or, if the stories are true, they just could keep it by them and wait for it to divide into two or four or eight. So we’d be helping the stuff to spread and in the end we’d be bringing more shifters back to us.’

  Fran clucked her tongue.

  ‘Yes, but when they’re so desperate.’

  The world loomed strangely out at them. Trees, animals in fields, a stone house, a young woman with a child: everything was pregnant with mysterious significance, like objects in a dream. And within the car there was a similar intensity. Slip eroded the boundary between one individual and another. Each of them seemed to have almost direct access to one another’s minds and there was a feeling of deep connection between them, different though they were in age and outlook and background.

  ‘Sometimes I feel that there’s something about this world that’s obvious to everyone but me,’ Charles confessed. ‘It seems a straightforward thing to you that you should sometimes bend the rules and, now you tell me about it, I can see why. And yet in another way you lot stick to the rules, the basic spirit of the rules, and I…’

  He broke off, realising he couldn’t go any further without telling her about the stolen slip in his sock drawer.

  ‘I’ll tell you what your problem is,’ said Fran shortly, ‘You spend far too much time talking to yourself inside your head and not enough talking with other people.’

  They drove on for a few minutes in silence. Suddenly, and at the exact same moment for both of them, the face of a sallow surly-looking young man with a little wisp of a beard came into their minds, incongruously accompanied by the most intense feelings of love and longing. They both knew at once, without even having to think about it, that they were looking at Andrea’s boyfriend Tim as Andrea herself saw him.

  Fran pulled over into a lay-by. Tears came streaming from her eyes. She snatched at a box of tissues on the dashboard, blew her nose.

  ‘I can’t drive anymore. I’ll kill us both.’

  She looked rather soppy and foolish, her mascara running in black smears down her face, and Charles felt embarrassed and even a little repelled, though in his own mind too an intense grief was welling up.

  ‘It’s the slip,’ he told her, reluctantly putting an arm round her shoulders.

  She turned on him angrily.

  ‘I know it’s the bloody slip you stupid boy. I’ve been in this job as long as you have, remember? Do you think it’s only you who feels and understands these things?’

  ‘No, I…’

  ‘Other people have minds too you know, Charles!’

  ‘Yes, I…’

  ‘Other people suffer as much as you do!’

  ‘I know. I just…’

  Fran leant over and planted a moist kiss on his cheek.

  ‘Sorry my darling, you didn’t deserve that. You try so hard. And it wasn’t just the slip anyway. It was thinking about that silly girl Andrea on her own, and her losing her One True Love.’

  She blew her nose again.

  ‘Well I suppose if she’d stayed with him,’ Charles offered, ‘he would have turned out to have feet of clay like the rest of us. At least now…’

  ‘At least nothing! Now she’ll never find that out. She’ll spend the rest of her life creeping about through the worlds, mooning over her lost love and thinking that if only she could have been with him, everything would have been wonderful. If she hadn’t lost him, perhaps she would have discovered for herself that he was just a big baby like her – if not more so, seeing as you men are all big babies anyway – and about as capable of making a commitment as…’

  ‘Why the anti-man stuff all of a sudden?’

  ‘Because… because those two men have gone and left her all on her own,’ she began, then started crying all over again.

  Charles knew that Fran’s husband had left her for a younger woman and he dimly remembered her telling him once that her father had abandoned the family when she was a child. Things connect together, he thought. Life is like a piece of music with themes that repeat themselves over and over in different keys and arrangements and tempos. It wasn’t a particularly original thought, but it sort of struck him. And it occurred to him that if he understood this truth a little better, he would finally know how to answer Jaz’s question.

  ‘But you, Charles,’ she said. ‘You’re not like them at all. You’re so brave and proud and you’re so… so lonely.’

  She drew him to her and gave him another kiss on the cheek. Suddenly Charles found himself pulling her towards him and pressing his lips against her mouth, her neck. They were both panting and she slipped her hand round his waist under his jacket. He’d undone the top three buttons of her blouse before he finally pulled himself back.

  ‘We’re in a right state aren’t we?’ he said, attempting a laugh. He opened the car door and climbed hastily out.

  He realised as he spoke that his erection was clearly visible and he turned away hastily to hide it. He got out his phone to call for a taxi.

  ‘It’s ridiculous that we’re even expected to drive when w
e’ve just been dealing with shifters,’ he said, ‘let alone just after someone has actually vanished in front of us. It’s just ridiculous.’

  His hand was shaking so much that he could hardly punch the buttons on the phone. With an equally wobbly hand, Fran buttoned herself up and passed him a tissue to wipe off the tears and make-up which she’d smeared across his face.

  ~*~

  Stacey Rugg had her hair shaven off in parallel stripes from front to back in order to allow the closest possible contact between dreamer moodpads and her scalp. Many people on the Zone did the same thing, often also using souped-up dreamer units which gave double or treble the legal voltage in order to maximise the fear, the lust, the thrill… Stacey’s hands were tattooed with names and knives and hearts and her arms were cross-hatched with self-inflicted scars. All her front teeth were missing and her ears were riddled with holes from which hung bones, hearts, tear-drops and hammers. Imbedded in the skin of her forehead was an ornament called a Soulfire currently popular in the Zones, a fake gemstone containing a hologram that supposedly changed colour to match your mood. On her hip was a little scabrous feral child, his face smeared with something sticky and red.

  Everyone went quiet, as they always did in these moments when they had finished picking over a ‘case’ and were confronted with the real human being. Dickie remembered, with a tiny pang of discomfort, an amusing but completely unfounded suggestion he had made earlier that Stacey was ‘on the game’. Karen Stimbling hoped that, in his summing up, Cyril would not repeat that she had called Stacey ‘obviously a complete and utter disaster’, which now seemed to her a little excessive, given that she had never met or heard of the woman until today.