‘No? Huh. You think I should’ve been able to hold her back.’
‘No I don’t. You’re her daughter, not her keeper. But how, how’s it possible for somebody just to disappear like that?’
‘Happens all the time,’ said Phoebe. She paused, hooked her thumbs into the belt of her jeans. ‘I know you helped. I know what you made happen. But nobody could help her. She’s no use, that’s what they think, you see.’
‘You really don’t know where she is? You don’t have to tell me. I just want to know she’s okay. No pressure. I’m not coming after her.’
‘Mum pestered me to find out about Kim – she was dead certain he was – well, my twin. But I never got the right feeling about him. And Phoebus is my mirror, you know.’ She fingered the whorl of hair behind her right ear. ‘It was Mum’s fantasy, that he was doing so fabulously and everything was working out, that she’d done the right thing by us.’ She paused. ‘Mum wanted me to get the autopsy report.’ Phoebe pulled her thumbs from her belt and pulled down the waistband. ‘He’d have had no navel, see. Like me.
‘It took me a while, but even the autopsy stuff wasn’t clear – said, knife wound in area of navel, penetration six inches, pierced the liver, cause of death – that doesn’t tell you if he had a navel or not.
‘Anyhow, I found lots of sites where you can look for your relatives – and I gave some of the stuff to Mum. Though I told her that it’s really up to Phoebus to look for us, and maybe he doesn’t want to.’ She paused and looked straight at Gramercy. ‘I wish I’d met Kim at least one time – I saw him on the telly once or twice. But in person, I’d have known, twins always know. It was terrible to start with, after we were separated and I still feel strange now – but I’ve felt cut off from him for years.’ Her bright head rose sharply. ‘Yess! Mum will find him. That’s what’ll happen. And they’ll come back here and find us – me and . . .’
‘I knew Kim,’ said Gramercy. ‘He was my friend. He was special, I know it’s a cliché. He was my soulmate. Nellie was wrong to see his death as a failure – it was horrible, of course it was. But in so many ways it gave HSWU what we needed. You think that’s cynical. But Kim himself would be really pleased at what’s happening. Not that he’s become a hero. But that his death’s waking people up to issues that they hadn’t wanted to face before. I wish you’d join us, Bebe—’ she faltered at the old, pet name she’d heard Nellie use sometimes, and her eyes filled. ‘The movement’s doing really well: we’ve got an office, a database, hundreds of members mobilising protest in the key areas, and the government’s changing its tune. Kim’s the necessary hero. I wish it wasn’t so. I wish he was alive, but he’s the founding martyr, as Hetty puts it. The new history. Starting with him.’
Phoebe softened a little, at Gramercy’s evident emotion. ‘Sometimes I wake up in the night,’ she began, ‘or I turn around in the street because I’m hearing Mum’s voice again. Sometimes I see her in big landscapes, against huge skies, forging her way ahead, purposefully – keeping going, the way she always did. She’s indestructible.’
Gramercy shivered, and shook her head. ‘No. Nobody’s indestructible.’
‘I thought there was time – time for everything for all of us,’ Gramercy went on quietly. ‘There seemed to be so much ahead of Kim—’ She broke off. ‘God, was I angry, was I fucking angry, I was, when your Mum just took off and didn’t explain. Didn’t even leave a note. When I’d just paid those socking bills for hundreds of pounds for her fucking teeth to be fixed and – never mind.’
‘I think it was because she couldn’t face you to say goodbye. She felt she was letting you down. She was always on about not wanting to let you down.’
Gramercy shook her head again.
‘So what’s all this, then?’ she asked, keeping her dark glasses on as she ducked into the tent, so Phoebe couldn’t see her screwing up her eyes.
It was quiet and dark and underwatery green inside and smelled of trampled grass. She was in the country, this was the heart of the country, the heartland, the depths, the core of the land, dark, high Fellmoor: people doing things the way they’d done them since for ever, and the past was still a safe place, to which everyone belonged.
She followed through the shadows of her dark lenses the small silvery phantom Phoebe presented as she settled herself in front of the monitor. Gramercy took £2 out of her bead purse; Phoebe didn’t look over-enthusiastic, but she didn’t baulk completely.
‘Go ahead, Bebe darling, tell my fortune,’ said Gramercy Poule. ‘Can’t be worse than what’s been happening so far.’
9
Threnody
you aren’t really dead now you can’t be it can’t be not that not all my plans all my hopes come to this after the struggle when I thought I’d found you a safe place in Enoch with a family who would bring you up to fit in Phoebe says I’m dreaming that I don’t have to feel like this she says she would know if you were you she says she has no sense of your being the one I loved so from the beginning I thought I could hold you in my dreams and keep you safe there if my thoughts kept concentrated on wishing you well I could weave a shining indestructible web that would hold you like a cradle first then a safety net when you grew I was paying out a line between you and me in my thoughts all the time we weren’t together you were there at the end of its silk and you weren’t struggling but dancing
the important point was to be vigilant on your behalf it was vigilance that made me give you away vigilance on Phoebe’s account and on yours and the trick of the vigilance was to imagine what might happen and forestall it
but this raider in the playground I never thought of that
now I look back and some of the bitter times are turning sweet in memory
you used to remind me sometimes of your father that could hurt but now even that doesn’t give me pain but a kind of longing again to fold time back to have all of it again but different
they say we are the strays of history and we lick our master’s hand because we don’t know better maybe but what I feel I feel and I only know the love I felt even when I was cast off that is the lot of my past the story I lived and if life was a book I could write it another way but that isn’t possible with a life if it’s wretched it’s still the only one I have you are its core even if I am a fool and a slave and can’t grasp the full condition of being free
but was it you in my lap when we were abandoned among the tombs? was it you Lycia picked up in her velvet mouth and carried away to the cliffs to safety from the rushcutters that day? my thoughts could work changes then I could dream a man into a frog then
you played with Phoebe on board the Shearwater and the sailors nicknamed you Sunshine for obvious reasons you sang with Teal on the road to Tirzah even the first months on Tirzah’s streets strike my mind now as happy you were light and strength to me
or was it you? but but you became serious in Enoch if it was you Enoch dimmed you
maybe Phoebe is right
but she never was with the one called Kim she never saw you in the flesh the way I did
she doesn’t want you to be you because she still says we’re going to find you she doesn’t want me to have a reason to weep she wants me to stop grieving it gets on her nerves
I get on her nerves
I could believe her I can believe her I will believe her
I will look for you again you must be somewhere here one day one of the faces will be you again
you will be well all will be well we shall be well
EPILOGUE
The ID card portrait, which had been taken for Ella’s permit of sojourn, was sent by Gramercy to the Voice of the Streets, and appeared in due course on the back page dedicated each week to Missing Persons. Freddie, operating a Polaroid camera in the offices of the Advisory Council, had taken the picture after their representations had first won right of appeal against the decision to deport Ella and Phoebe, and it had been found, with the documents of her whole dossier on the case, on the bus that
was carrying Ella to Enoch for a final hearing.
In the picture, her face looked clenched; there was a blaze of something furious in the eyes that seemed madness in that context, beside half a dozen lost souls’ blurred family snaps, but may have been the result of a failure of the red-eye switch on the camera.
The notice read:
‘Ella Outis, known to her family and friends as “Nellie”, has not been seen since September 199– when she left Fellmoor on the coach to travel to Enoch; she had an appointment with a lawyer who was accompanying her to the central tribunal of refugees and asylum seekers for a final hearing. She never arrived for the appointment.
‘Ella/Nellie arrived in this country eight years ago from Tirzah; she can speak well in English, and knows several other languages. She was in some distress when she disappeared, so her friends and all those who know her are very anxious. They have attempted to reach her by every means, and there have been unconfirmed sightings of her sleeping rough in different parts of the city. The authorities want her to know that every care and consideration will be shown her and that she does not need worry about facing penalties if she makes herself known again. Her health and safety are their foremost concerns.
‘Ella/Nellie is in her early forties, five foot three inches tall, with dark eyes, and mid-length dark hair with some grey in it. She may be wearing glasses.
‘If you have seen her, or have information about her state of mind or her whereabouts, please call the Missing Persons National Helpline on the number below. All calls will be treated in strict confidence.’
CHRONOLOGY
Lycania
400–350 BCE Cult site of Leto founded
250–275 CE Tomb carved with bas-relief
c. 325–350 CE ‘The Letoniast Version’ (papyri in the hand of the Circumflex Scribe)
425–475 CE Cartonnage or face mask made for tomb occupant; linen bands inscribed
620 CE Necropolis buried by landslide
Cadenas-la-Jolie
700 – CE Disputes over territory between Ophiri, Lazuli and others
998 Fortified outpost founded by St Cyriacus; conflict between Ophiri and Lazuli persists
1135 Birth of Cunmar on northern littoral
1165 The Great Siege of Cadenas; definitive victory of Ophiri; Cunmar becomes Vice-Procurator in Cadenas
1175 Ser Matteo and Cunmar make a pact; Leto, aged five, given as pledge
1178 Leto sent to Convent of the Swaddling Bands
1181 Leto returns to the Keep
1184 Leto’s wedding; birth of twins – Phoebe and Phoebus; Cunmar deposed and Chrysaor takes over rule of Cadenas; restores Lazuli power
c. 1190 Anon., Annals of the Convent of the Holy Swaddling Bands
c. 1200 Chronicle of Barnabas; depositions for the Petitio in Causam Sanctitatis Laetitiae drawn up to present to Congregation of Rites
c. 1350 The ‘Cunmar Romance’
HMS Shearwater
1839–41 Sir Giles Skipwith’s excavations in Lycania; transportation of the ‘Leto Bundle’ to Enoch, deposited in the Royal Museum of Albion
c. 1850 Hereward Meeks, Keeper of Near Eastern Antiquities (1858–76) begins transcribing and cataloguing Misc. Mss. deposited by Sir Giles Skipwith
1859 Adventures of a Ship-Boy, etc. published
Tirzah and Albion
1956 Hortense Fernly born
1960 Gerald McQuy marries Araminta St Clair
1963 Gramercy Poule born
1970–75 Civil war in Tirzah
1971 Leto and the twins arrive in Tirzah
c. 1972 McQuys adopt Kim
1975 End of siege and fall of Tirzah; Dr Séverine Martin’s promise
1982 Gramercy’s hit single ‘People Like You’; first album in the charts, ‘Freedom Days’
1987 Kim McQuy founds HSWU (‘History Starts With Us’); The Fanfare brings Phoebe to Enoch for operation
199– Kim McQuy begins job at Cantelowes Primary; demonstrations at National Museum of Albion; Gramercy Poule tours with her band; Hortense Fernly travels, accompanying the Bundle . . .
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I owe more than I can express here to loved ones, to friends and colleagues, and my gratitude goes to all of you, who have opened avenues, offered suggestions, sparked ideas and argument, shown interest, offered encouragement. Above all, Carmen Callil made it possible to begin this novel in the first place; Irène Andreae saw me through to its close. Talking with Nick Groom has been a continuous stimulus, a resource, and a pleasure. Conrad Shawcross has inspired me and inspires me in every way throughout. My thanks, always, to them for everything they do. Alison Samuel, my editor, read different incarnations of the novel with acuity, helpfully tempered by enthusiasm and sympathy; Gill Coleridge has sustained me unfailingly with her considerateness and generosity; Lucy Luck’s spirited optimism gave me heart. I would also like to thank Trinity College, Cambridge, for precious time granted to me in 1998 as a Visiting Fellow Commoner. I’ve drawn on many writers and many sources; but I would like to acknowledge in particular Sophie Cragg for performing playground songs; the late Dom Sylvester Houédard for his translation of Basho; Suniti Namjoshi for that press clipping about a frog massacre; and Roy Kotansky for his unique work deciphering magical gems and amulets.
The author gratefully acknowledges the kind permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux to quote on page 243 from Elizabeth Bishop, ‘The Map’, Complete Poems 1927–1979 (1984).
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781409028765
Version 1.0
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Copyright © Marina Warner 2001
Marina Warner has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published in Great Britain by
Chatto & Windus 2001
Published by Vintage 2002
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
The Leto Bundle Page 45
