Dan Vyleta - Smoke

“I must ask you again, Mr. Cooper, to relate to me all the events that led to your being attacked in a coach heading from Lady Naylor’s estate on the morning after New Year’s Day, and all events that have transpired since. We need a full accounting. It is, I’m afraid, a matter of national significance.”

Charlie attempts to answer, but his tongue is not working.

“Water,” he croaks, “water.”

Renfrew sadly shakes his head.

“Let us talk first, Mr. Cooper. Here, I will moisten your lips again. It might be small consolation, but I drank a measure of salt water this morning and have not taken anything since. There, on the windowsill: I have poured us two glasses. Let us drink together, Mr. Cooper, and quench this infernal thirst. Once we have finished our conversation. What do you say?”

But Charlie can only stare at him and struggle against the restraints.

“You’ve gone mad,” he manages at last, his mouth so raw it comes out as a whisper.

“If you need to perform your ablutions,” Renfrew answers stiffly, “I can offer a bedpan for your use.”

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The hours creep past. The room’s window looks directly south and Charlie can track the journey of the sun. The window itself is frozen solid, and the sun a matte disk of orange that is being pulled across its frosted pane. Renfrew is sitting two feet from him, a pen in his hand and a lacquered lap desk perched on his knees. He has explained it all very patiently.

“Please don’t think I intend to hide my actions. I even considered informing Mr. Trout this morning, but his political allegiances are somewhat unclear. It would be easy to use this situation to discredit my party. Unconscionable, of course, but very easy indeed. The facts of the matter are these. The baron is planning something — or, if the rumours are true and he has gone mad, his wife is. There is some evidence of their purchasing laboratory equipment from abroad. Don’t misunderstand me. I am a scientist myself and regard the embargo as a folly beyond measure. The old order is moribund. Under the masquerade of virtue it is trying to stop the march of science — of truth! — simply to protect its own interests and prolong its life. All the same a change is coming, a mighty change, one can smell it on the wind these days. But here is the thing, Mr. Cooper. This change — this revolution — it can take many forms. We can have order, or we can have chaos. I — my party, the men concerned for the moral future of the realm — we need to know whether to protect Baron and Baroness Naylor and their projects, or to stop them.

“Did you know that there was a motion not long ago to have the Naylor estate placed under surveillance? Not in Parliament, of course, but in one of the parliamentary committees, the ones that dare to think outside the conventional norms. It was debated very seriously. The trouble is, we are lacking in an executive. A police force. It is said England has secret government agents, but if so, who do they work for? Who gives the orders? Oh no, Mr. Cooper! If we want virtue, it will take ordinary good men to step up and make the business of the country their own. Whatever the risk.

“Don’t imagine then that I will not take full responsibility for my actions, Mr. Cooper. Here, I am writing a report even as we speak. I will send it with the evening mail, along with your statement. Oh, I know, you think what I am doing is a great crime. No doubt your parents will insist on my dismissal once they learn that I have detained you. They may even press criminal charges.”

He pauses, closes his eyes, opens them again. His gaze is serene.

“The Smoke would warn me, Mr. Cooper. If I was doing wrong.”

A curl of grey drifts out of Charlie in response. Renfrew takes no notice. Instead, he takes hold of Charlie’s hand, helpless in its restraint, and speaks quietly at him in tender appeal.

“I was never a utilitarian, Charlie, but for the first time I feel the force of Mr. Bentham’s argument. The happiness of the many outweighs the happiness of the few. Who are we to spare ourselves when a million souls are at stake?

“But enough of this sulking, Mr. Cooper. It is time for you to speak. I have always known you for a boy who has a good heart. Or have your father’s interests poisoned you?”

And Charlie looks past him, watching the slow movement of the sun across the frost-bound pane, like the fog lamp of a distant ship. In front of it stand the water jug and two filled glasses, alight with its glow.

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As the day wears on, Charlie finds it increasingly difficult to take his eyes off the water. It stands four feet from the foot of the bed. The more Charlie stares at it, the more details he sees. The two glasses are filled to precisely the same level. One has a chink in the glass that refracts the light across the water’s surface and adds texture to its shadow. The laws of optics bend the window cross directly behind: at times it is the glasses that appear flat and the window behind that bulges with volume. When Charlie struggles hard enough against his manacles to agitate the whole of the bed, the old floorboards pass on the movement to wall and windowsill and conjure a ripple: trembling water; a speck of dust suspended in the left glass sent dancing until it glues itself to the inner wall and adds its shadow to the pattern. Charlie swallows past his drug-thickened tongue, hunts his mouth for spit, finds Soot sown like grit amongst his gums, and realises he must have been smoking. When he glances over at Renfrew, he catches him, too, eyeing the water with the intensity of longing. The schoolmaster rises abruptly, walks in stiff long strides to the window and lifts one glass up to his eyes.

“The human organism can live without water for four or five days. Longer, perhaps, in our humid climate. And yet, it isn’t dusk yet, and we are both struggling with our fast. Ah, the flesh is weak.” He chuckles softly and replaces the glass in precisely the same position. “A good lesson this.”

When he bends over Charlie to look him in the eye, his breath is sour with his thirst.

“Will you tell me what I need to know, Mr. Cooper? For the good of the realm?”

“No,” says Charlie, his dry lips hurting with the word.

“Then we must continue to suffer, in our modest little way.”

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Renfrew leaves him. For a moment Charlie has a vision of him, sitting in his kitchen, downing pint after pint of fresh water. But at once he knows this is not true. Renfrew is a man of his word. It’s what makes him so terrifying.

Soon Charlie can hear the scrape of a spade against stone. The schoolmaster is clearing a path from door to fence. Charlie pictures him working with brisk, efficient movements, a scarf knotted high, unfurling his long, gaunt shadow away from the dipping sun. It will be dark before long.

As the room grows gloomy and while the spade is still separating snow from stone in long, scraping shovelfuls, Eleanor steps into the doorway. She does not enter but stands with her feet level with the threshold and leans in her head. Her harness gives an odd bulk to her shoulders, as of a knight in armour. A windup knight, a round little key sticking out of her chest. It is easy to believe that, in the depths past her sternum, this key connects to a complex clockwork mechanism of interlocking wheels, weights, and lead bearings; that the whole spare body of hers is a machine. Her face, however, is pure little girl, flushed and shy. Charlie smiles at her. She recoils as though stung, pulls her nose back past the invisible line marked by the tips of her toes.

A minute or two later, however, her head and upper chest once again invade the room. This time, Charlie’s smile does not immediately chase her away.

“Hullo Eleanor,” he whispers.