The Book of Air Page 3

I didn’t turn to the wall. I watched. And when the Masons left I followed.

  I know who the Masons are when they are not Masons, as I knew the old women under their veils when they came for me. We all do, though we never say so. Three of these Masons I knew for certain. Peter who sees to the tanning and is as broad as a tree. Tal, fencer and cottage fixer, narrow and clever with his hands. The third, Uncle Morton, Annie’s father, who I never see but I feel a shadow fall across my heart, though the worst I know of him is a scowl and an angry word. He grew up fatherless like me, and helped raise my mother who was four years younger, so I should think better of him, but cannot. Morton’s limp would show from any distance. It could be black as the pit and you would hear the uneven clop of his feet.

  But there was one I didn’t know.

  They turned out of the yard by the orchard and set off along the moorland road. They made slow progress, and the cart made enough noise creaking over the rutted track that I was able to straggle behind, keeping near the hedge, shadowed by hawthorn and dogwood. I followed to the uplands where the sheep graze. After a while the ground fell away and they reached a river bank where they drew aside into the grass.

  A strange island had grown in the middle of the water. It might have been a shed for a single cow but made all of hazel wands and with walls of woven cloth. It twisted in the current and I saw that it was tethered upstream, one rope to each bank, and sat on the water like a boat. Not like a boat in shape, but like the bed the Mistress sleeps in, which is its own room hung with curtains to keep out winter draughts. A bed then such as Jane might have known, only that its frame was not carved and jointed like furniture from the endtime but crudely twined together, and not in an upstairs chamber of the Hall but out here among the summer grazing where no bed should be, bobbing strangely on the flood.

  The mare sneezed and lowered her head to eat. The Masons were in the water, with Roland, unhooded now and naked to the sky, riding like a corpse on their shoulders. They were up to their waists before they reached the middle and moved unsteadily, feeling their way. Pulling the curtain back they lay him on the bed and covered him with a quilt. The bed rocked on the water, and upstream the rushes swayed where the ropes cut through. They murmured to him then, songs we use to put babies to sleep, chants to fend off scroungers. They drew the curtain around him and waded back to dry themselves at the cart, leaving Roland to sleep, if sleep was possible. I thought I heard him snoring, but it might have been the water rushing between us. I slept, cold as I was with only the bracken to warm me.

  I had a dream of flying and my book that I write in now was on my shoulders. The blank pages fluttered like wings. There was a blaze of cowslips and poppies on the ground and I flew down towards them.

  I woke and it was deepest night. A slip of moon showed between clouds. Its light touched the branches of Roland’s bed where they were stripped of bark, and came to me over the water.

  I closed my eyes and found my dream again. But the book was now a weight that pushed me down towards the meadow, and what had been flowers was a lake of fire. When I was about to fall, I woke with a start and saw a flame above the water and an answering flame below it, and between them the narrow shape of Tal wading from the bank. The flame was the torch he carried, a clutch of branches dipped in tallow. He pushed on towards Roland, steadying himself in the air with his free arm.

  I thought it was a mistake when his torch dipped and the corner of the curtain was suddenly alight. I opened my mouth to cry out, to warn Roland, to call Tal by name, though he was black-faced and muffled as a Mason and his name lost to him. But there was a strong hand on my mouth and the warm breath of a stranger at my ear and my body was pressed to the ground with a man’s weight. I watched the curtains flare into bright colour, and then the frame itself, a winter tree bursting in an instant into blossom. And the stink was of apple logs burning on a winter fire.

  But the smoke hadn’t yet reached me from Roland’s floating bed. It was the stranger’s breath I smelt. Not quite a stranger, then. It was the same stink that lingers on the backstairs, that drifts in the upper passage where the half staircase leads up to the red room and the turret. Sometimes I hear his footsteps. The boards creak and I turn to the wall, because the backstairs are for the Reader to come and go unseen. I have never been in the turret, though I leave food outside the door when I am told and gather empty dishes. This is what I know of the Reader – his quick tread, a glimpse of him in the shadows, the food eaten or not eaten. And the smell, like wood smoke and flowers together.

  His name is Brendan. That’s what the older villagers call him who knew him before he was the Reader, when there was another Reader. I’m afraid of a flogging, but I’m more afraid of Brendan. He knows what I did. It was dark, but he must have known me. He put his hand over my mouth, and his mouth to my ear, and he pressed me into the bracken.

  The bed was a guttering candle before Roland tore through the blackened rags to leap into the water. I heard the grunt as the Reader pulled himself off me, and the sound of his heavy tread in the bracken. The Masons, the three of them I knew as neighbours, waded into the river to pull Roland to the bank. Then they offered him naked to the moon. I saw in that moment, frightened though I was, that the Masons had put him to sleep as an infant, but he had leapt from his burning bed as a man, a man like Rochester who survived the flames when his mad wife set fire to his bed while he slept.

  Then the cart was gone, taking Roland with it, and the Masons and the Reader.

  Jason

  Abigail’s here with mashed potato in a bowl, onion and bacon chopped up in it, and an egg custard. It’s the first time she’s come with food. I knew they’d been cooking. The smell reminded me of hunger. She tells me she put the bacon through the mincer so I wouldn’t have to chew it. The old mincer you picked up at a local flea market – worth more now than a warehouse full of hi-tech food processors. When it comes to it I can’t eat much, but Abigail’s pleased with me. She seems to want me to live. She says we should eat the bacon while we’ve got it. She found it in the freezer. The electrics came and went for a while, she tells me, then just went. But it’s cool in the basement so there’s a lot hasn’t spoiled yet. She wipes my chin where I’ve dribbled. Then she wrings out the flannel and puts it cold to my face. I smell the onion on her hands. She has a bosom you could drown in. All wrapped up in a cotton dress buttoned to the neck, but comfortably there. A strong face that you think doesn’t do emotion, until you learn to read it. She wears a headscarf, three corners gathered in a knot at the back of her head.

  She asks me if the house is really mine and how long I’ve had it.

  ‘Nine years,’ I tell her, and find I can talk. ‘I bought it after the 08 crash. Not because it was a bargain – I would have paid a lot more for it – but because the owner was up to his neck and couldn’t say no.’

  I don’t know why I tell her this. Because it’s my story, I suppose, even though every part of it has lost its meaning.

  ‘You really wanted it, then,’ she says.

  ‘Always.’

  ‘That’s a long time, always.’

  She offers me some custard, moving the teaspoon towards me. I open my mouth and it slides cool and sweet on my tongue.

  I ask her why they brought me here, to the turret, to the highest bedroom in the house.

  ‘Because you said we must.’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘You kept growling and saying Up! In the hall and on every landing. Up! Up!’ She laughs remembering, and covers her mouth, but not before I see how her smile lights up her face.

  It was because of you, Caroline, I wanted to be here – in the bedroom you liked best, on its own little landing across from its own bathroom. OK, you said, a houseful of people, friends, visitors, five children, whatever, but at night they’ll all be elsewhere, somewhere below us, and this will be our haven, our retreat.

  There’s a noise like music. I open my eyes and I’m alone. I didn’t see Abigail go, so I must have slept.
I think it’s the radio, but are there are no radios. I sit up, put my feet on the floor and wait for the dizziness to pass. I get myself to the window.

  And here’s our view. I’ve dreamt of it, longed to see it, felt I might never see it again. More than our view – our place. Lawn as big as a field. The gravel drive running down towards the road. We used to be careful, remember Caro, turning out of our drive, or crossing on foot into the lane to stroll over the bridge into the village, in case some tanked up yokel chose that moment to put his foot down. What chance of that now? The road’s dead. The river has all the life now, obscured by trees but winking where the sunlight catches it.

  I look to the right, westward, and there’s our orchard skirting the lawn, and beyond that the moorland road cutting back to the north and out of sight. The other way, to the east, the old church stands as it has for centuries in its graveyard on the riverbank among yew trees and willows and the straggling edge of woodland. On our side of the road, the meadow, where I see now there are cows grazing and, just visible from here, the High Wood – our own little piece of ancient forest – and somewhere in among all those trees the fence that marks the eastward edge of what’s ours. What’s mine. What might be anybody’s now, I suppose.

  The music comes again. There’s a horse-drawn cart passing the church into the sunlight. It moves along the road, flashing between trees, and turns in at our gate. A pole rises from each corner to support a green and yellow awning, which flaps in the wind. I hear the wheels of the cart on the gravel drive. The musician is sitting on the edge, leaning on one of the poles. It’s a clarinet he’s playing and he sways it about, lifting it for the high wailing notes. A monkey swings from the awning. There are other animals roped to the back of the cart – two horses, a donkey and some goats. The cart is stacked with cardboard boxes. The woman driving has a straggle of blond hair and wears riding boots and jodhpurs. Hard to gauge anyone’s height from this angle, but the man waddling behind with the goats looks peculiarly squat.

  They pull up fifty yards short of the house. The musician lowers the clarinet and shouts something. I don’t catch it at first. Then I do. ‘Living or dead?’ And he plays another flourish. He’s been raising his head, turning from side to side to view the windows. Now he looks towards the front door and raises his arms in what might be a wave. Beside him, the woman drops the reins and raises both hands. ‘We mean no harm’ she says, ‘What’s happening here?’ Down out of sight, Abigail must be pointing the shotgun.

  Living, breathing people. It’s good, right? There aren’t many of us. I get a sick feeling, even so.

  Now they’ve made contact, the voices are quieter. The woman’s talking. She lowers her hands and climbs down. The musician too springs down on to the gravel. What right has he got to be so smiley? Where’s he been? Hasn’t he heard?

  ‘Peace and joy,’ he says.

  I’ve hardly the strength to move from the window, but I move anyway. The thought of dressing defeats me, so I pull the duvet off the bed and wrap myself in it. I shuffle across the landing to the bathroom. The sight of the shower is a stab of grief – the travertine tiles you chose and loved, designed to make modern luxury look like it’s stood for centuries softening in the Tuscan sun. I sit on the toilet, shivering under my quilt, my feet cold on the bleached boards, and stare at your paint job. Caroline, the plans you made. You were going to fill the house with colours – posh paints with names like String and Mouse’s Back and – this one – Rectory Red. You pulled me in here when you’d given it a second coat. ‘Look,’ you said, ‘I told you. It gives the porcelain such a lift.’ You were right too. You were always right. One look at the wall and I’ve lost it. It’s not that you did it well. There are places where the emulsion’s bled on to the skirting, and the whole thing needs a third coat. I’d have got someone in, but you couldn’t wait. You never could. You were an enthusiast. And now it’s the most beautiful paint job in the world. I weep until the wall’s a crimson blur.

  I feel my bowels convulse. There’s fire inside me. Then everything loosens in a shuddering rush. The walls darken and close in. I’m inside myself, contained by my own intestines. When my vision clears and the walls recede, I’m drained and hollowed out. Dazed as though from physical labour, I take a minute to breathe. Then I fold a plump cushion of toilet paper from the roll and, shifting my weight sideways, wipe myself. And more paper, until I’m dry.

  I twist round to reach the chrome lever and press it. I feel the spray from the cascade underneath me and hear the steadier hissing as the cistern refills. And only now I remember that it’s a long time since I flushed a toilet. No one’s had mains water for months. Some miracle has occurred, some intervention by the god of plumbing. Or history has been thrown into reverse. The cities are repopulating. The lights are flickering on across the country and around the world. The internet is waking from its strange dream of paralysis and silence.

  The miracle, I realise, is only that up in the attic there’s still water in the tank. It could hold enough, maybe, for a few days of normal use, which means that Abigail and Maud haven’t turned on a tap since they’ve been in this house. And I find myself wondering again who they are and where they come from.

  I make slow progress down the backstairs. My body is a dead weight lugged from step to step. There’s pain in my joints – hips, knees, ankles – left over from the fever. A door bangs below and there are quick footsteps. A figure comes into view. Light from the window catches the dark tangle of hair. It’s Simon. He looks up at me, a doubtful frowning look, head tilted, mouth opening and closing like a fish. He says, ‘There’s…’ Then he does that thing with his mouth again. He makes a noise in his throat, sniffs a couple of times and out pops the missing word – ‘people’. It’s a hard word for him.

  ‘I know, Si. How about that!’ And gripping the banister I sit down on the stairs.

  Simon doesn’t always know whether to breathe in or out when he talks. ‘Funny… people.’

  ‘Bust-a-gut funny,’ I ask him,’ or pack’m-off-to-the-farm funny?’

  He tilts his head and his frown deepens.

  ‘Ha ha or peculiar?’

  He shrugs.

  ‘You mean they’re both?’

  ‘Zackly!’ It’s one of Penny’s words. For an insecure person she expressed a lot of certainty – exactly, obviously, don’t be ridiculous, that’s insane. And it slips effortlessly out of Simon’s mouth.

  These people, Simon, did they seem nice?’

  ‘The one with the mmm-blowy thing did. He’s called… Jangle.’

  ‘Jangle! That’s a weird name.’

  Simon gurgles with laughter. ‘I know.’

  I can’t remember when I last saw him laugh.

  ‘Uncle Jason?’

  ‘Yes, Simon?’

  ‘Are you all… better?’

  ‘Well I got this far, didn’t I?’ I pull myself up again, take the last few steps to the turning where he stands. ‘Show me these people.’

  The low door at the foot of stairs opens, the one that leads to the stables, and Maud comes in with a bucket. There’s fruit in it, pears and apples. She stops when she sees me and stands motionless for a moment. Simon signals a greeting, a little wave of the fingers – he’s learned already that the effort of speaking would be wasted on Maud. And she signals back and glances up at me again, eyes unblinking, before ducking her head and hurrying on into the kitchen.

  Through the open door I hear Abigail’s voice, hushed and anxious. ‘What is it, Maud?’ Then raising her voice she says, ‘Is that you, Jason?’

  I feel clumsy that I still depend on speech, and clumsy in my physical weakness as I shuffle into the kitchen, pulling the duvet around me.

  ‘You should have called if you needed something.’

  I’m looking at the visitors. They’re getting to their feet now that I’ve appeared, and it’s not deference to the owner of the house. The woman speaks first. ‘Are you sick? You look sick. Doesn’t he look sick, Aleksy.’
She turns to Abigail. ‘Has he had the sweats?’ She’s a bit bashed about, but striking, even so. God knows what she’s been through.

  ‘And the rest,’ Abigail says. ‘Five days ago at least and he’s on the mend.’ She looks at me as though there’s something she wants me to understand. ‘This is Deirdre,’ she says. ‘Deirdre’s on her way to the coast.’

  ‘Five days? Nobody lasts five days.’ She’s twitchy, this Deirdre. With me in the room, she doesn’t want to settle. She takes a long pull on a cigarette. She’s a classy smoker, all cheek bones on the in-breath, head angled self-consciously to blow. Between puffs her hand is poised at shoulder height, cigarette aimed at the ceiling. She might be thirty – probably less, given the rate at which we’re all aging.

  I ask her, ‘Why the coast?’

  ‘I thought maybe Ireland. They say Ireland’s better.’ I hear the accent now – subtle, like posh English softened at the edges.

  ‘How better? Like people don’t die in Ireland? Nowhere’s better.’

  ‘Five days? Are you sure?’ She’s talking to Abigail.

  ‘How are you planning to get to Ireland anyway? Do you think the ferry’s running?’

  ‘No one lasts five days. Aleksy, tell them.’ Aleksy is built like an ox, but short – less than five foot. The monkey sits on his shoulder foraging in his hair.

  ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ I say. ‘Jesus Christ!’ I don’t know why I’m so angry. Don’t even know what I mean exactly – here in the room while she talks about me? Here alive? Here asserting ownership of my kitchen? All of these.

  Aleksy has been working up to saying something, preparing his hands in a judicious gesture, controlling the involuntary movements of his face. ‘A new miracle every day. We live in a time of miracles. Five days and still alive? Who can say? A survivor? It’s possible.’ He settles on a chair, sitting on the edge so that his feet touch the floor.

  ‘You’re both well, then?’ I ask him.

  ‘Untouched, thank heaven. Who knows why? Polio I had as a child. You work with animals from Africa, they said. Of course you get sick. But they were peasants who said this and knew nothing. That was a long time ago. Fifty years. And then comes the virus – I watch them go down with it, this one and this one, gymnasts and jugglers. Clowns too. All young and full of health. Dead now, their beautiful bodies scattered across Europe, and me still here – no sense to it, no justice.’