“You make it sound very simple.”
“It is… At least in theory. I’m not pretending everything’s perfect—that’s what the State does here—but I can offer you that same freedom. And peace and quiet, a pine lodge by a lake in a forest, with endless walks and a decent, proper, library, and big fireplaces and logs to burn in the winter, and air-conditioning in the summer—”
“What’s air-conditioning?”
“It doesn’t matter. Or you can live in a city, be surrounded by noise and life. Eat, buy whatever you want at any time of the day or night. Give talks, travel, write essays, or be a grumpy hermit. It’s entirely up to you. The people will love you anyway, just for being Boult and the writer of The Furnace, and for getting away from here, for standing up against, this so-called State.”
“This is…” He shook his head.
“It’s what you deserve, Boult! And it’s why I’ve risked so much to get here and to try to get you out.”
“So…” He felt as if he was stepping across a minefield. “What exactly would happen?”
“I just need to send a signal, and we’ll be picked up by one of our submarines.”
“I’m not a good swimmer, and the currents are—”
“Oh, you don’t need to be. An inflatable boat’s already been hidden amid the rocks on the north shore. We simply pull that out, row to the rendezvous, and we’re both free.”
Now he felt as if he was in one of Kilbracken’s stupid mysteries. But, impossibly, this was real.
“We’ll make it tonight. There’s no point in waiting with that weasely watchman creature sniffing around for a glimpse of your finished book. I’ll meet you down from your cottage on the north shore at midnight. Meanwhile, you just have to do what you’ve been doing for decades for a few more hours, and act the part and stall. Now…” She was opening the hidden library’s door, pushing him out. “…go!”
Boult said farewell to his cottage in the luminous twilight. The empty chair, the empty bed, his useless manuscript left weighed down by slates on his equally useless desk. He’d achieved something here on this island, after all, which was to escape; it was like some unexpected twist in the final chapter of a novel which seems inevitable once it’s occurred. He looked down at his old canvas shoes and his ragged trousers, which would soon be wet. He studied the scuffs on the flagstone floor. More hurriedly now, he left the cottage and stumbled out across the dunes.
The shore. The ocean glinting bright and black as polished basalt. A few stars, a few clouds, and more coming in, borne on the same wind which had ruffled the edges of Gloria’s hair as she’d offered him cherries at this shore’s edge. The aurora, the northern lights, whatever they might be called, had retreated beyond the hazing dark. So had the mainland. All that was left was him, and his last moments on this island.
But Kilbracken! The idea of Kilbracken being read and admired by people in foreign lands who weren’t forced to put up with his contrived, half-literate nonsense left Boult disgusted and dazed. Worse still was the idea that someone like Gloria—but surely not Gloria herself—would someday come to this island to liberate him. Then, of course, the free people of the new lands might imagine he and Boult had an affinity. Put them in adjoining lodges in the forest, neighbouring apartments in the city, make them sit together on literary panels, give shared interviews about how awful life here had been. Expect them collaborate, even. A horrible, horrible prospect, but perhaps it was no more than he, Boult, deserved. And he’d be deep into his next novel by then. Or the one after that, with some short fiction and a few essays on the simple, complex craft of writing dotted in between. Shielded from the stupid and the mundane, which would surely exist even in this new country of freedom and opportunity, by the balm of knowing he was doing what he was good at, and creating something worthwhile that others might actually care to read.
This world he was about to enter wouldn’t be perfect. It was important that he kept that firmly in mind through all the difficulties which he was bound to face. Even more important, though, that he remember what he’d left behind, and why he’d left it. This ghastly State which was its own prisoner, locked in a box of its own creation for which it had long ago lost the key. Which was, he realised, something he’d been wanting to write about through all these seemingly wasted years. Yes—that was it! It suddenly seemed simple in the way that all good ideas, and the urge to write about them, did when they finally came along. He could even use this island as the setting for the languid crisis of a writer much like himself. And Gloria, well, Gloria… She plainly loved and understood his work, and doubtless she’d keep in touch with him as he adjusted to the challenges of his new life, and whatever air-conditioning was. And from that… Well, it was probably just an old man’s fantasy. But you never knew…
Where was she anyway? Boult peered up and down the beach as waves began to wet his feet. And there, at last, was a figure approaching along the shining edge of the strand. He almost shouted. Almost waved. But he didn’t, and in another moment he was glad, for it was Roberts, bearing his usual smirk.
“There you are, Boult!” Like all inveterate snoopers, the watchman was good at appearing surprised. “I looked in at your cottage, then up and down here. To be honest, I was getting a little worried. I mean…” The smile widened like a the crack in a wall. “We can’t have one of our best writers just wandering off.”
Boult shrugged, wondering if there was still any point in appearing innocent. “Here I am.”
“That’s… Good.” As if they might be overheard on this empty beach, Roberts looked around them. “I’ve been meaning to find you, just to let you know that the publishing requisition we submitted has been formally accepted by the mainland committees.”
“Was there any chance it wouldn’t be?”
“In my experience it pays not to make too many assumptions. After all…” Roberts gave an awkward laugh; almost a seal-like cough. “Here on this island, we can’t possibly have a full understanding of all the needs of the State.”
“I suppose not.”
The two men stood in silence for some time. The stars prickled to greater brightness. The sea retreated, sighed back over Boult’s toes.
“There was something else I felt I should mention. It’s a kind of warning, really. You see, there’s been this new librarian at the library, a young woman. You’ve probably seen her about. The records may even show she’d found the odd book for you and… Anyway, she was arrested in the main square about, oh, noon today. Taken into the State offices for—well, for questioning, if you understand what I mean. So, just in case, a word to the wise.”
“I see. Is that it?”
“Pretty much.” The waves rushed in again, and Roberts took a stumbling step back. “Oh, and I wouldn’t expect to see Hibbert around too much in the future.”
“He isn’t a spy as well, is he?”
“No—nothing like that! It’s just that the quality of his work has become so poor that he’s been deemed to be no longer a productive unit. He’s taking up space, your see, which a better writer could use. So he’s going to get sent back to the mainland. I think he used to be a teacher, but he may have to work his way back up to that kind of privilege in one of the commune mines.”
“What about Kilbracken?”
“Kilbracken? Oh, nothing bad to report there, I’m pleased to say. He’s one of our best, one of our greatest. A national treasure. He’s right up there with you.”
Boult nodded.
“Oh, and I’ll be around sometime tomorrow afternoon to pick up your new novel. Assuming it’s now finished, that is. Clarkie said he saw you carrying it with you this morning when he was sweeping out, and that you had the air of a man who was ready to hand it in.”
“I was. It was just—”
“It’s that title, isn’t it? I know what you writers are like! You all fret and worry far too much about these things when it’s all just ink on a page.”
Boult had turned, and was looking north a
cross the water toward the horizon.
“I’m sure you’ve got something up your sleeve, anyway. Can’t have a novel without a title. But don’t tell me now—don’t spoil the surprise—just let me know when I see you tomorrow, and we’ll finish off the necessary forms.”
Boult stood watching until Roberts had vanished along the shore, and the water was lapping his knees. That was it, then, although he knew enough about the way these things worked to understand that it wasn’t anything like what it seemed. He didn’t doubt that citizen Gloria had vanished just as swiftly and mysteriously as she’d arrived, for example, but she certainly wouldn’t have been imprisoned, let alone questioned, tortured. After all, she was clearly a skilled operative and had done an excellent job, had stripped and gutted him of all the information the State had wanted, and left him waiting here on this shore on the basis of some ridiculous tale that—and at least he’d been right about this part—would have disgraced even Kilbracken’s torpid, creaking pages. The whole thing had been a set-up from Styche’s unlikely disappearance. Although perhaps Hibbert’s initial sympathy and offer of help had been genuine, which would explain why the poor man would never be seen again. Was Styche even dead? And just how long had the empty trick of that useless, unwritten novel, which he hadn’t even made any proper attempt to hide up in his cottage, been known? Long before stupidity and vanity had suddenly caused him to announce it was finished, that much was sure.
Still, Boult felt oddly grateful to Roberts, or whoever was giving him his orders. He’d had a good innings on this island, far better than he deserved. And now, instead of the hot wires, the drowning baths, the tubes and truncheons and ropes, he was being allowed to do the decent, obvious thing all on his own.
He stepped deeper into the waves, felt their playful nudge and push. Then, and after a few steps, came a deeper undertow of cold. It lifted him, bore him from the shore and—as if it mattered—he kicked off his canvas shoes. He’d never been much of a swimmer, either here, or back on the mainland in the State’s corroded, chlorinous, urinous pools. Still, he found he was striking out with near proficiency and odd urgency. As if it was somehow important that he get as far away from the island as he could. Which, in a way, he supposed it was, seeing as it might upset one of the other writers if they were to find his body washed up on the shore. He was obeying orders, answering the empty call of siren voices, and the north shore had vanished into the gloom when he paused, treading water, to look back.
The water so very cold, and the pull of the currents now so strong he barely needed to swim to be borne alone. And the sky, the sky seemed to be as far away as those stupid dreams of good food, uncourse blankets, lights you could turn off and on without a thought, and that one, brief, kiss. And glinting cities, and deep, dark forests, and roadways filled with purring cars, and work a kind of contentment instead of a dull misery that awoke you trembling and sweating in a room you wished you’d never known. Forget the adulation. Forget the fabulous reviews. The simple peace of doing the thing you knew you existed for would have been enough. Or, if not that, then he’d take this bigger, deeper peace instead.
The grip of the water. The salt, black, incredible cold. But there were lights ahead of him, and voices, and Boult began to laugh until the water choked his throat. It was the biggest joke in the world that he’d somehow managed to swim to the mainland, and surely the island’s biggest lie that it couldn’t be done. But he knew that was wrong as he somehow struggled back to the surface. He was too far out, too lost, and the lights flickered again, turning, seeking, and the accent of the voices was strange. Boult caught rocking glimpses of something sleek and grey and long as he strove to tread water and raise a hand and drag enough air back into his lungs to shout. But it was hopeless, and the voices had stopped calling, and the lights had gone out with a steely clang. Then, in a hissing sigh and a spume of water, the enemy submarine sank down, and Boult was once more alone.
The swimming was almost easy, if you call it swimming now. Better, after all, just to submit to the currents and the cold. He was drifting, he was driftwood, and the urge to be what he’d been, Boult the supposed writer, was almost gone. Pain, after all, was just pain, and drowning was simply drowning, and words were only words, and he really did wish this last straining, struggling part of him would just give up. A strange, shuddering combination of absence and urgency. A lifetime wasted, and now almost gone. Along with Gloria’s inexplicable bravery, and Hibbert’s mild generosity, and Clarkie’s warm beer—and even watchman Roberts, who’d only ever done what he thought he was his job…
Those useless pages lying under their stones back in his cottage were his only legacy, for the young man who’d once written a book called The Furnace had died long ago. Unabridged abridged destroyed censored. Impossible unlikely smile cherries cheery betrayed ignorance arrogance loss. Cold cold cold cold cold. But as he struggled up, eyes searing, salt vomit blocking his lungs, Boult saw that the sky above him was pulsing with glorious grey fire. And, as the lights danced, he knew the phrase he’d been seeking before the sea closed over him for the last time.
Afterword
I’m lucky enough not to have had too much experience of the type of writer’s block that Boult seems to be suffering from, which leaves him unable to produce even a single complete sentence. My own personal variety of the ailment is what I generally think of in retrospect as “busy work”, where I draft and re-draft and tweak and develop new scenes and insights into a seemingly promising project which often feels okay day to day, but never quite gets anywhere.
Not being able to create when it’s the thing you most want to do is both painful and boring in the way of a dull backache. Not quite bad enough to completely absorb all your attention and destroy your entire life, perhaps, but it upsets the rhythm of your days and, whenever there’s a pause in whatever else you’re doing, it returns. Writers, real writers, want to write in the same way that musicians want to play, painters want to paint, or—so I’d like to think—birds want to sing. It’s a natural state. It really isn’t, or shouldn’t be, an either/or thing.
I’m a great admirer of the band Steely Dan, and I used to think it was rather cool that, after the brilliant Gaucho, and the equally brilliant Donald Fagen solo album The Nightfly, he and his co-writer Walter Becker fell silent for the best part of a decade. After all, they surely didn’t need the money, and it rather suited their cool, fuck-you image that they should choose to stop at the peak of what they did. Of course, I learned later that Becker had been plagued by drug, health and personal problems, and Fagen spent much of that “lost decade” trying, and failing, to write new material almost daily.
“Frost On Glass” is another story which took a long time to get right. My attempts over the years to develop the piece always floundered. Half of this was down to finding a simple yet plausible way of expressing the totalitarian society of which this island is clearly just a minute part functions without it taking over the entire story.
In retrospect, the other thing which was holding me back was Gloria herself. Her ambiguous role was always part of how I conceived the plot, but does she represent freedom, or hypocrisy? Is she an escape route, or a trap? And so on. And so forth. But I realise now that what was truly bugging me about her lay deeper than those thrillerish elements, which I was more than happy to play with and leave hanging—at least until the story’s end.
The way I see it, Gloria is the agent of a foreign power who has somehow reached the island to facilitate Boult’s escape. Which means that she fails to turn up for their rendezvous on the beach not because she’s betrayed him, but because she’s been arrested by the apparatchiks of the State. Not only that, but she must have held out for long enough during her interrogation to allow Boult time to try to make his escape. I can’t imagine, though, that she’ll be allowed to live for very long after, nor that her last hours will be anything but horrible.
Which, no matter how I choose to look at it, is an unpleasant fate to set up for a
character, especially one who plainly doesn’t deserve it. Certainly, as I grew conscious of how the end of this story would work, I felt uneasy about what I was doing to this poor woman, who’d risked so much and achieved so little. Gloria had done nothing but stepped into my story and helped to give it life, and here I was giving her nothing but pain, disappointment and death in return.
Obviously, one can get far too sentimental about fictional characters. They come, they go, both for the reader and the writer. After all, they’re only made of pixels or ink. But writers must strive to feel something for their characters, and to understand what makes them what they are. To try to bring them to life, in other words. Once I’d got to the point of deciding what was needed to make “Frost On Glass” work, and what would thus have to happen to Gloria, I realised that an unrecognised squeamishness was probably another part of what had been holding me back. Although, and this surely says something about my attitude to other writers, I never felt any qualms about drowning poor old Boult.
EPHEMERA
Today, this evening, I am she. Sometimes, I am I, and sometimes I, KAT, can be he, or it, or you, or even we, or simply a mood, weather pattern, star, object, idea, universe, philosophical system or landscape. For nothing is impossible and everything is real, or not real, or the truth, or a lie, or some kind of weird metaphor or allusion. At other times, I am simply KAT, and a different kind of I. For I am KAT, the curator.
But tonight I am she, and she is Elizabeth Bennet, and the setting for this ball at the Meryton Assembly Rooms is all candlelight, swallow-tail coats and swishing dresses. And although I, KAT, have experienced this scene many times before, and every quirk and joke and barbed put-down is familiar, I, she, Elizabeth Bennet cannot help but feel affronted by the comment about my “tolerable” looks made by the haughty, handsome Mr Darcy. I, KAT, still find it hard to believe that he and I, she, Elizabeth Bennet, will end up together. I even have to endure the attentions of the ghastly Reverend Collins on my way to this conclusion. But soon, all too soon in this glorious novel—which is surely the high point of Jane Austen’s sunny genius—everything resolves amid wedding bells, happy reunions and romantic reconciliations.
Everywhere: Volume I of the Collected Short Stories and Novellas of Ian R. MacLeod Page 37
