Dan Vyleta - Smoke

She pauses just long enough for Charlie to put his head in his hands.

“Oh, don’t berate yourself, Mr. Cooper. All the grand families are involved. In sweets and, with the more adventurous families, cigarettes. It’s a system, a network, the weave of the land. Compromise won’t change it.” She rises. “It has been a pleasure talking to you, young man, but it is getting late. Mrs. Grendel will be back any moment and will want her kitchen.”

In response to Livia’s gesture, Thomas emerges from Lady Naylor’s room. He is just in time to cross the hallway, brush past Livia, and disappear unseen.

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Dinner is toad-in-the-hole and mash, lies heavy in the stomach. Sebastian comes and leaves again, surprises them with sticky pastries that Charlie has no heart to eat. He remains morose and restless, spends an hour staring through the keyhole at the child. Grendel has found some toys for him, and the little boy sits on the ground, spinning a spindle, before picking it up and smashing it against a wall. It is eerie, watching his anger, with no Smoke rising from his pores.

Later yet, they sit together, Charlie, Thomas, and Livia, blocking the door to the boys’ bedroom with their backs. A teacup stands in front of them, not far from their feet, and a sheet of paper lies spread out on their laps. It is, thinks Charlie, like they are preparing a walking trip into the hills. For the third time now, he bends to study the crude map and for the third time fails to wrest meaning from it, seeing only its surface pattern, nothing else. Line scrawls on a dirty page; turnoffs marked; crossings circled. A map to the underworld. Legible only for the dead.

And to Thomas.

“I think it must be this.” He points, tapping his finger on a row of rectangles, a finger long. “It’s the only place that’s different ; and they are in an area quite separate from the rest. And look here, this is the same place drawn in cross section. The rectangles look like they’ve been let into the floor.”

“They might be pools,” Livia suggests, thinking perhaps of the wet docks that played harbour to Mowgli’s ship. “A series of pools.”

“Could be.” Thomas points at another section of the map. “This here is the river. And this here must be an entrance. Tomorrow I will go and find it. If I can match the shape of the riverbed to the map, I should be able to locate the street.”

“What about this then?” Livia asks, pointing her chin at the cup.

“You know what it is,” Thomas mutters. “Soot. Murderers’ Soot. The kind your mother was collecting when I first saw her. The laboratory was full of it.”

He leans towards it, reluctant to touch it, then dips a pinkie in, retrieves it, holds it close to the lamp. They put their heads together, stare at its darkness. As she did the previous day, Livia pulls out the stub of a cigarette, undoes the paper, picks through its contents. It’s like comparing road grit with purest tar. There is no easy way of telling whether this Soot is quickened or remains inert.

“How will your mother save the world with this?” Thomas wipes his finger on the floor, then rubs the spot with a heel, unable to erase the mark.

“We could ask her. Press her on the point.”

“No, Charlie. No more questions, no more lies, no more oaths ‘on her husband’s life.’ The only thing worth knowing is what we learn for ourselves.”

Neither Livia nor Charlie sees fit to disagree. Instead, Livia asks Thomas, “Are we holding on to it?”

“You do it. I cannot stand to look at it.”

“Then we need a container with a lid. I will ask Grendel for a mustard jar.”

“He is spending time with your mother, Grendel is. I saw them talking just now. She talks. He listens.”

Charlie says it flatly, without insinuation, but immediately Livia is in a temper.

“He is helping Mowgli!” She makes to say more, but then jumps up and storms out, hands deep in her pockets like the urchin as whom she is dressed.

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They remain alone in silence, Thomas and Charlie, legs sprawled in front of them across the floor. It is like it was at school; a mouldy wall where bathroom tiles should have cooled their backs. It’s good this, Charlie thinks, feeling his friend’s weight against his shoulder. Familial; familiar. He is sitting by Thomas’s good ear. It would feel less of a comfort, perhaps, whispering into the wound.

“I have been thinking,” he says, “about what Lady Naylor said. She must have a hand in cigarette manufacture. There is no other way she would know: about the fact that asylums sell the manufacturers their Soot.”

“Do you think she owns the factory?”

“No. She would not need to borrow money if she did.”

“The Spencers then.”

“Them, and a few others. Cigarettes and sweets. The bedrock of Empire.” Charlie spits, feels his breath grow dark. “Funny thing about greed,” he continues. “It doesn’t generate Smoke. I imagine it’s quite a problem for our theologians.”

Thomas turns to him, puts an arm around his shoulder.

“Don’t be bitter, Charlie. It does not become you.”

Charlie tries not to be. It is difficult, he finds. He had no cause before to feel ashamed for being a Cooper.

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As they settle down to sleep, Thomas asks him one more question. He asks it gently, into the two-foot gap that separates their bedding.

“Have you talked to Livia?” he asks.

“Not yet.”

“You should.” Then: “She misses you.”

“Don’t, Thomas. I thank you. But don’t.”

Thomas’s response carries the notes of genuine wonder.

“Christ, Charlie, can’t you smell her Smoke? Can’t you smell what she feels?”

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The next morning Sebastian calls before dawn. He is in a rush, will barely come in, won’t take off his coat. All he wants is to talk. When Charlie, sleep-creased, alerted by his urgent whisper, arrives in the front hallway he is unsurprised to find Grendel to be part of the conversation. Or rather: Grendel is being spoken to, Sebastian’s hand on his wrists. The tones of instruction; too quiet to carry. Lady Naylor is there, too, holding Sebastian’s doctor’s bag. It’s heavy enough to give a list to her tall frame. In the kitchen doorway Mrs. Grendel stands. She, too, is out of earshot, at five feet’s remove. Their gazes meet, hers and Charlie’s. A moment later she beckons to him.

“What’s going on?” he asks once he has followed her into the kitchen. Her back is turned, her hand reaching into a clay pot on the sideboard.

“Lady Naylor sent me out for this,” she replies. “Yesterday. Had me walk for miles, going somewheres where they wouldn’t know me. So it won’t attract attention, me growing rich one day to the next.”

She takes hold of Charlie’s palm and deposits a brown, sticky lump in it. Sugar.

“Go on,” she says, “you need fattening, you do.”

He puts it in his mouth, speaks past the shock of its flavour, sickly and moist.

“What is Sebastian saying? Something go wrong?”

“Don’t know,” she answers, sneaking some sugar herself. “Trust in Grendel.”

But as her tongue picks through her teeth, hunting sweetness, Charlie wonders whether he can.

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Sebastian leaves soon after that. A minute later, Livia is at the front door. She slips out so quickly, Charlie has no time to think. A glance his way before the door closes. An unspoken question. The suggestion of a shrug.

Then she is gone.

By the time Charlie has his shoes on, there is no sign of her, the street outside choking with strangers, refuse, drifting fog. Back in their room Thomas is still sleeping, twitchy in his dreams.

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Livia returns just before lunch. Thomas has woken and left, in search of the sewer entrance. Charlie offered to come, but they did not want to let Lady Naylor out of their sight. It is better this way: it affords Charlie time to gather his courage. All he needs now is for Livia to return before his friend.