Dan Vyleta - Smoke

“We should come here every day,” Charlie says at last, slipping his coat over his shoulders against the window’s draught. A letter sticks out the coat pocket. He notices it, smiles, pulls it out.

“I wanted to tell you earlier. The post finally arrived. It’s from my sister. She sent it well before Christmas, but it only got here today. She says she hopes we will make it in time to join them on their trip to Ireland. She is dying to meet you.” He rubs his sore arm. “I must have given her the false impression that you are very handsome. And kind.”

Thomas returns his smile, then grows serious and begins to pull on his socks.

“You should go home, Charlie. I can’t. Not yet. I need to hear what else she can tell me. About Smoke.”

Charlie does not dispute it. It is one of his talents, Thomas thinks: not to put himself at odds with the truth. What Charlie does do is question the value of Lady Naylor’s conversation.

“When all is said and done,” he asks, “what has she told you this past week? What have you really learned?”

Thomas recognises the doubt at once. It is his own, fought nightly, when he reviews with impatience the sum of his knowledge about Smoke.

“It’s hard to say, Charlie. She never quite tells you what you want to hear. I ask about Smoke and she’ll start talking about politics. How the country used to be liberal but has swung Tory these past twenty years; how the new liberals are gaining ground but they are all terrible puritans at heart and just as bad. That and the Queen is ailing, leaving the business of governing to her civil service. But it’s not just politics. The other day she got stuck on science. The Books of Smoke are outdated, she says; they are literally riddled with mistakes. Everybody knows it, but all the same it’s illegal to change them because it would imply that we don’t have a clue as to what Smoke actually is. Then two whole hours on inventors, German periodicals, the laws of optics, reeling off names so fast it makes my head spin. Apparently there is decades’ worth of new technology Parliament has outlawed and won’t allow to be imported. Factory machinery, weapons, new photographic emulsions. It’s a total embargo: every ship’s searched for machines, blueprints, scientific papers, everything. It’s because the government fears change. The new technology might challenge social order, or something. Make new people rich. Whilst in Italy or somewhere they have a thing now called a ‘telephone,’ where you can talk to people who are miles away from you, just by speaking into a box. The box is connected to another box, by a long wire. The wire transports the words, somehow. As though by magic.”

He watches Charlie picture it. Charlie is not impressed.

“Even if it worked, what use could it be? You’d have to connect all houses in the world with wires. And that’s impossible.”

Thomas shrugs. It is hard to argue with that.

“Then there are all sorts of medical breakthroughs. Vaccinations, drugs, that sort of thing. A new type of microscope.” Thomas leans forward, lowers his voice. “She has a laboratory somewhere. Here in the house. She says she will show me. When I am ready .”

It dawns on Charlie that the past few days of exploration were not as innocent as he had assumed.

“You’ve been looking for it.”

Thomas nods, then hesitates. “Yes. But if I find it, and go inside, it’ll be a breach. Of the rules or something.” He leans back against the wall, throws one of the boxing gloves across the room, aiming for the wardrobe. “I have a feeling Lady Naylor is the type who is a stickler for rules.”

Charlie emulates his throw. His aim is better, but the glove falls a yard short. He wants to know: “Do you trust her?”

Another throw, Thomas’s turn. It hits the wardrobe door, slides down, lies on the ground, laces sprawling.

“I trust her sometimes. Other times I look at her and think she is the devil.”

“Because of London.”

“Yes. To do what she did there. .” Thomas mimes scraping a razor down the length of his tongue. “But then, of course, the woman was already dead.” His face grows hard. “In any case, it does not look like she will talk to me now, not until her son is gone.”

At the mention of Julius, Charlie throws the fourth glove. The throw is wild and it hits the picture frame by the side of the wardrobe, dislodges it, brings it crashing down. They pick the print out of the shower of broken glass. Renfrew grins at them, chin tucked, fists raised, itching for a fight.

ф

They don’t pick up the conversation again until they are back in their room. They have each taken a bath and dressed in fresh shirts; their hair damp and frizzy from being toweled dry. A game board is between them, lined with ivory figurines. Chess. It’s Thomas’s turn. He picks up his queen, twirls her in his hand.

“I still can’t believe I am related to him.”

Charlie waits with his answer until the move is complete.

“Why not? Amongst the old families, almost everyone’s related to everyone. I am sure I have some Spencers in the family tree. There may even be an Argyle somewhere.” He pauses. “Anyway, I asked around. How come Julius does not live with her, his own mother? I tried Thorpe first, but he merely frowned. Disapproving of my curiosity. So I spoke to the coachman, the one who drove us here. He says Lady Naylor married very young. A political marriage, apparently, not a love match. Her husband died less than a year after the wedding, somewhere abroad, in the colonies. When Julius was born, his father was five months dead, and she was living with his parents. He made it sound as though she was kept almost like a prisoner there. You know how it is with some of the more old-fashioned families, the women don’t really have much freedom and when there is a son involved, an heir. . In any case, when Baron Naylor began to court her, they would only consent to the match if she left the child to be raised within the Spencer household.” Charlie pulls a face. “Imagine being faced with that choice. She must have really wanted to get away.”

“Poor Julius.” There is, to Thomas’s voice, not a hint of sympathy. “You are telling me this is why he is such a turd.”

Charlie colours, nods, moves a pawn.

“Yes. Maybe.”

“And why he skulks around with a bloodhound and a valet that looks like a cutthroat.”

“Ah. About that valet. Mr. Price is his name. Here’s something else I heard, also from the coachman, though this one comes via his wife. God knows how she would know, it’s straight from the Spencer family vault. In any case, the coachman says that his wife says that the valet used to be Julius’s rook, his bond servant, back when he was a child.”

“So?”

“So? Did you have a bond servant when you were small, Thomas?”

“No. My parents didn’t bother.”

“You know what they are, though.”

“Of course. They get hired to watch over you when you are ten. It’s a ritual position. For the final year before you are held to be responsible for your Smoke.”

“Oh, it’s not so ritual as all that. They watch over you, day and night. If an accident should befall you, the same injury will befall them. It’s a holy oath: they have to take it in church. My rook, he was my first proper friend. Taught me half the things I know. For a year and a bit he was there, around me, for every breath I took. Slept right outside my room, on a sort of pallet. Picked me up when I fell off my horse. And then he was gone. On to the next job. It rips a hole in your life.” Charlie’s voice has grown hard. It is a tone so unusual in him that Thomas is startled.

“Did you ever see him again?”

“Once. A year or so ago.”