I knew Seevl for what it really was. It was no less horrifying in reality, but its horrors were not the commonplace ones of children’s books or folklore.
I was an only child. My mother and father, both native Jethrans, had given birth to another child before me, but she died a year before I was born. I therefore came into a world where I was eagerly welcomed and protectively loved. I was shielded and guarded with almost fanatical thoroughness, for reasons I could not begin to understand until I was almost grown up. Now that I do understand I have some sympathy with what my parents did, but the closeness of their protection meant that until I was in my middle teens I was still being treated as some precious object which might break, or be stolen, or become instantly corrupted in some way the moment their guard relaxed. While youngsters of my own age were hanging around on the streets after school, or getting into scrapes, or experimenting with sex or alcohol or drugs or general misbehaviour, I was expected to be at home, sharing my parents’ friends and interests. I was not a rebel: I went along with what they wanted, possibly because I knew little better. There were some filial duties, though, that I carried out only with numb acquiescence and from a sense of obligation, suppressing the urge to evade them altogether. Chief amongst these duties was to accompany my parents on their regular visits to my father’s brother at his house on Seevl.
My Uncle Torm was a few years younger than my father but had married at about the same time: there was a photograph in our living room of the two young men with their brides. Although I recognized the youthful versions of my father, mother and uncle it took me years to realize that the pretty young woman holding Torm’s arm in the photograph was my Aunt Alvie.
In the picture she was smiling and I had never seen Aunt Alvie smile. She was wearing a gay, flowery dress and I had never seen Aunt Alvie in anything except an old nightgown and a patched cardigan. Her hair was short and wavy, cut attractively about her face, while Aunt Alvie’s hair was long and greasy and grey. The girl in the picture was standing beside her new husband, raising one leg to show her knee flirtatiously to the camera, and my Aunt Alvie was a bedridden cripple.
Soon after their marriage Torm and Alvie had moved to Seevl. Torm had been appointed to a clerical job at a Catholic seminary situated in the remotest part of the Seevl mountains. I assume the priests had been finding it impossible to employ someone, because otherwise I have never found out why Torm would have been offered the job, or even why he – a man of only vaguely defined beliefs – had applied for it in the first place. I do know that taking the job caused a bitter if short-lived row between him and my father.
Torm and Alvie were there with their new baby on Seevl when the war suddenly worsened and made it impossible to return to Jethra. By the time the hostilities had eased again and the war had returned to the long sequence of attritional skirmishes – during which a certain amount of travel between the mainland and the islands was again possible – Aunt Alvie had been taken ill and was not to be moved.
It was during this long period of her illness that my parents made their weekend visits to see Torm and Alvie, taking me with them.
For me they were occasions of unrelieved dreariness and depression: a voyage to a bleak, windswept island, then a long car drive to a cramped and dark house on the edge of a moor, a house where a sickbed was the centre of attention and where the conversations were at best about other adult relatives and at worst about sickness and pain and false hopes of a miraculous recovery.
My only relief from all this, and ostensibly why I was dragged along, was Torm and Alvie’s daughter, my cousin Seraphina. We were supposed to be friends. Seri was about fifteen months older than me, plump and rather stupid, narrow in her ideas and experience and concerned in nothing I knew anything about. We were not in fact at all interested in each other, yet we were forced into each other’s company for the duration of these visits. The prospect of being with her did nothing to relieve those long days of dread before a trip, and afterwards the memory of our sullen hours together was one more reason to want never to go again.
As I left the station in Jethra a policewoman wearing the familiar Seigniorial uniform climbed out of a marked police car and walked across to me. My first impression was that she had a stiff, authoritarian manner. She barely looked at me as she spoke.
‘Are you Lenden Cros?’ she said to me.
‘Yes.’
‘I am Serjeant Reeth.’ She produced a leather-bound ID card, and held it out for me to see. I glimpsed a colour photograph, an official stamp, a printed name, rows of numbers, a scrawled signature. ‘I am to accompany you.’
‘I was told to report to the police,’ I said, confused by her. ‘I was planning to do that tomorrow before I left.’
‘You’re leaving the country.’
‘Only temporarily.’
‘You cannot travel without an escort.’
‘It’s only family business. There’s hardly any need—’
She glanced at me with what I took to be an uninterested expression. I supposed she had orders, and anything I said was irrelevant to her.
‘So what’s the first step?’ I said, disconcerted by this development. I had been planning to stay overnight in the town, and was intending to walk down to the dock area to see if I could find inexpensive overnight lodgings. A colleague at the school had given me the name of a street where he said I would find some cheap hotels. After that I had more general plans to see if I could make contact with one or two of my old friends I thought might still be in the city.
‘Arrangements have been made for you,’ she said. ‘Jethra is a war zone.’
‘I know that of course. How does it affect a short trip to Seevl?’
‘All travel by civilians is restricted.’
‘That’s not what I was told before.’ I looked in my wallet. ‘Look, I’ve been given a visa to leave Jethra, and another to reenter within seven days. In fact, I shall probably only need to be there for a day or two—’
Again, I saw the lack of interest in her eyes.
‘Get in the car, please,’ she said.
She opened the back door and I placed my bag on the seat. I wondered if I was expected to sit there at the back with it, but I had no intention of being driven around looking as if I was under arrest. I closed the rear door and went to the front. I let myself in and sat down. It seemed to make no difference to the policewoman. She climbed in and started the engine.
‘Where are we going?’ I said.
‘The ferry does not sail until the morning. We are staying overnight at the Grand Shore Hotel.’
‘I was planning to find somewhere less expensive,’ I said, with some alarm. ‘It has all been booked in advance. The decision wasn’t mine.’
She drove out of the station square and turned into the main road that led towards the city centre. I watched the buildings go past.
My family had lived in the suburbs, a place called Entown, along the coast to the east of the city. I therefore remembered the centre of Jethra only in parts and then from the perspective of a child. I recognized buildings, names of streets, certain parks or squares. Some had vague but poignant and subtly disturbing associations for me. As a child I had thought of the city centre as the place where my father worked, where my mother sometimes went shopping. The street names were landmarks from their territory, not mine. The city today looked disused and unloved: many of the buildings had unrepaired bomb and blast damage to them, and hundreds more were boarded up. There were of course several complete areas flattened into rubble by the enemy bombing. The streets were not busy with traffic: there were trucks, buses, some cars, no new models of any vehicles. Everything looked shabby and patched up. I saw a surprising number of horse-drawn vehicles.
We were held up for a few seconds at an intersection.
Into the silence that lay between us I said to Serjeant Reeth, ‘Do you live in Jethra?’
‘No.’
‘You seem to know which way to drive.’
‘I arrived this morning. I’ve had time to familiarize myself. Police training.’
That last phrase seemed to me to bespeak a certain unfamiliarity with the job, as if that training had not been too long in the past. I stole a glance across at her, saw how young she looked. The traffic around us moved on, she engaged gear and the police car accelerated away. The short conversation ended.
I had never stayed at the Grand Shore Hotel, had never even been through its doors. It was the largest, most expensive hotel in town. In my childhood it had been the scene of society weddings, business conferences and glittering civic occasions. All these must have been before the evacuation to the country areas began in earnest.
We drew up in the car park outside the main entrance, with its imposing and solid façade of soot-dirtied red brick.
Serjeant Reeth stood back as I registered. The clerk pushed across two pieces of white card for my signature: one was for a room in my own name, the other, with an adjacent number, was for the policewoman. A porter took my bag and led us up the wide, curving staircase to the next floor. There were mirrors and chandeliers, a plush carpet on the stairs, gold paint on the plaster ceiling mouldings. The mirrors were unpolished, though, the carpet was worn and the paint was peeling. The muted sounds of our feet as we climbed were poor substitutes for those distant parties that surely must survive as memories somewhere.
The porter opened the door to my room and went in ahead of me. The policewoman went to her own door and inserted the key. As she went inside she did not look back at me.
I tipped the porter and he left. I took my clothes from my bag and hung them in the wardrobe. Because I had been travelling on the train all day I showered, and put on clean clothes. Then I sat on the edge of the bed and looked around at the old room.
It was an unexpected moment of inaction from which to contemplate my past life. I had not anticipated having to spend so much time in the company of someone I had never met before. How was I to pass the evening? Alone, or with the policewoman? Did her escort duties include eating dinner with me? Was she the only officer sent to accompany me, or would she be replaced later this evening when her shift came to an end?
As soon as I thought this I realized that almost from the first moments of our meeting I had been hoping that she was not going to share the escort duty with other officers. For all her cold manner, and the unyielding words we had exchanged, I had found the young policewoman physically attractive. I wondered what chance, what sequence of events, had led to this good-looking young woman being assigned to such a task as escorting someone like me on a journey. Intriguingly, she was already reminding me of someone I had been involved with several years before: they were about the same age, had the same fair colouring. She, Lelian, was one of several lovers I had been with during those years, many of whom I had known only casually. Perhaps if I had met Serjeant Reeth then, different times, different matters, she might have become another of them.
I was older and supposedly wiser now, though. I had learned that casual affairs almost inevitably ended badly. I had made no pick-ups for years, preferring the less concentrated sorrows of abstinence. Serjeant Reeth reminded me of the past in much the same way Jethra itself was doing. I had moved on from both, I thought.
There were no drinks in the room and I was feeling thirsty, so I decided to visit the bar downstairs. I left my room and headed for the stairs. On the way I passed an elevator which I had not noticed on the way up to the room: a printed sign attached to the door explained that it could not be used by hotel guests. When I reached the head of the grand staircase I thought I should, out of politeness, ask the policewoman if she would like to join me for the drink.
She answered my knock at her door after only a moment’s delay, as if she had been standing there, waiting for me. She was still wearing her uniform, but she said she would enjoy a drink, and thank you. We went downstairs together.
The door was locked and there were no lights showing inside. In the lounge I rang a bell and after a short delay an elderly waiter came to serve us.
When he had taken our order and left the lounge the two of us sat awkwardly at the table, avoiding each other’s eyes.
Making conversation, I said, ‘Is escort work something you do often, Serjeant Reeth?’
‘No. This is the first time.’
‘Do people need escorting often?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve been serving the Monseignior for less than a year.’
‘So how did you come to be assigned to me?’
She shrugged, laid her fingers on the surface of the table and stared down at them.
‘Duty rotas are worked out, jobs go up on the noticeboard in the corridor. We’re expected to put our names forward. I saw this assignment coming up so I volunteered for it.’
Just then the waiter returned with our drinks.
‘Will you be dining in the hotel this evening?’ he said to me.
‘Yes.’ I realized I had spoken for us both so I looked at Serjeant Reeth for confirmation. ‘Yes,’ I said again.
When he had gone, and while another silence between us endured, I looked around the lounge. We were the only people there, perhaps the only guests in the whole building. I liked the airy, gracious feeling in the room, with its tall windows and long velvet drapes, the high Consortship light shades and the broad-backed wicker chairs grouped around the low tables. There were dozens of potted plants, great cascading ferns and tall parlour palms, lending a feeling of growth and life to an otherwise decaying old building. All the plants were green and thriving, so someone must still be looking after them, dusting them, watering them.
The policewoman’s awkward silences gave me the opportunity to try to assess my companion. I guessed her age at about twenty-two or three. She had not brought her cap with her from her room, but the uniform – crisply starched, deliberately asexual in appearance – effectively neutered her. She wore no make-up and her light-coloured hair was drawn back into a bun. She seemed shy and uncommunicative, and unaware of my regard.
At last it was she who broke the silence.
‘Are you from Seevl?’ she said.
‘No … I was born here in Jethra.’
‘Then do you know Seevl well?’
‘I haven’t been there for many years. What about you?’
‘No. I’ve never been out of the country.’
‘Do you have you any idea what Seevl is going to be like?’
‘I’m told it’s barren. Mountainous, with not many trees. Wintry all year round. I’ve heard about the wind.’
‘It’s not quite as bad as that,’ I said. ‘I can’t claim to know it well, although the scenery won’t have changed much.’ I took more of my drink, intending to swallow only a sip of it but finding myself almost emptying the glass. I needed something to ease the stiffness of our conversation. ‘I used to hate going across there. I always dreaded being there.’
‘Why?’
‘The mood of the place, the scenery,’ I said vaguely, avoiding specific memories. Back there in my mind were thoughts of the feeling of being inside the seminary, of Alvie and her depressing bedroom, the open moors, the constant wind, the dead towers. All these were inexpressible to a stranger. ‘It’s bleak, but that’s not all. I can’t describe it. You’ll probably feel it as soon as we land on the island tomorrow.’
I said this last sentence deliberately, leaving it open for her to tell me that she was sharing the duty with other officers, but she did not pick up on it. I found that rather pleasing.
Instead, she said, ‘You sound like my brother. He says he can tell if a house is haunted.’
‘I didn’t say the place was haunted,’ I said, quick to its defence. ‘But you’re right about the wind,’ I added.
Jethra itself was built in the shadow of the Murinan Hills, but to the west of the city was a wide, straight valley that led northwards into the foothills of the polar range some distance away. For all but a few short weeks at the height of summer, a stiff wind c
ame down that valley and vented out to sea, whining across Seevl’s treeless fells and moors. Only on the eastern side of the island, the part closest to Jethra, were there villages of any size. The only north-facing port, Seevl Town, was there.
One of my clearest childhood memories of Seevl was seeing it in the springtime. I could look to the south from my bedroom window and see the blossoms shining pink and white and bright red on the trees along the roadsides and in the boulevards of Jethra, while beyond, out in the Midway Sea, there would be Seevl, still with its wintertime crust of snow.
Serjeant Reeth’s mention of a brother gave me the first glimmer of information about her background, so I asked her about him. He was also in the Seigniory, she said, serving with the Border Police. He had been serving in the mountains, but now he was hoping for promotion. His unit had recently embarked for a spell of duty on the southern continent. The war was still confused to those taking part and confusing to those who were not: from the point of view of civilians remaining in the north, following the progress of the military campaigns was difficult, because of the unfamiliarity of the landscape and geography of the southern lands and the lack of identifying place names that people could recognize.
At least the islands remained neutral for the time being, although in my own case it was a mixed blessing. If Seevl had been annexed to Faiandland – as for a time it had been mooted it might be – getting across to it from the mainland would have been a straightforward matter. As things stood, the island’s neutral state meant that it was technically foreign territory.
The Dream Archipelago Page 9
