Joe Treasure - The Book of Air

It was only later I understood what this might have to do with Jane. We’d eaten the meat and vegetables Dell had cooked up on the fire, and Trevor said, ‘Time for the pitchers.’ The others made a clatter then with their mugs and started calling out, ‘pitchers, pitchers’. I thought at first it was more drink they wanted. But there was no need to shout for that with the jug passing round so freely.

The people stood, those not too drunk to stand, those who weren’t sleeping, and followed Trevor through a doorway. Dell went round with a tray, gathering mugs and dishes. I waited to see what Brendan would do, if he would stay with Dell. I felt a pang of fear that he would. But he followed Trevor and the others, so I caught up with him and asked him what these pitchers were and hadn’t there been enough drinking for one night.

He said. ‘It’s the pictures. Stay close by me and say nothing until you’ve seen them.’

There are pictures in the Hall and every page of the Book of Moon is a picture, but there was excitement in Brendan’s voice and I knew I was going to see another wonderful thing.

Trevor led us through abandoned rooms, some no more than high walls standing among the trees. We climbed a long metal staircase and walked down a narrow twisting corridor until the walls opened into a sloping room where the seats faced all one way. The others knew to sit without being told. Brendan took my hand. ‘Sit here,’ he said, ‘beside me.’

We sat in darkness with only a few stars visible among the highest branches and heard a noise behind us like insects buzzing. In front, where there had been a wall, blank except for the cracks, there was light, and against the light there were words, people’s names that came and went quicker than I could read, quicker by far than anyone could write. I wondered who these people were. Then where the names had been I saw sky, bright but cold as moonlight, and I had no more questions because I was dumb inside as well as out. There were buildings and people walking, and everything sharply shadowed, but pale where the moon touched it. It was as though a huge window was thrown open and I was pulled from my seat to lean out impossibly. Men walked with hats like soup dishes or flowerpots. I seemed to fall in among them and float.

And all this time a noise like the bellowing of cows late for milking and the wailing of the wind in a chimney and the thunderous sound of galloping horses, but not quite like any of these. And not like women wailing at a burial, either, or singing at seed time. It turned my insides to milk, this noise, and churned them into butter.

The men were dressed in white like at a wedding. One of them ran from me, turning with fear as though I meant to do him harm. There was a crack like a metal nail struck with a hammer and the man fell.

I seemed to be with him in the street, and then inside a house grander even than the Hall. I turned back to see if he needed help but could see only Brendan beside me and others, the light stirring on their faces like moths. I felt my eyes pulled back to the strangers through the window.

But my hand reached for Brendan’s hand and gripped it hard. It was a comfort in that darkness to feel it so large and strong.

When they took their hats off, the men were sleek-headed like otters and with hairless chins, and pale as if they never saw the sun. They sat with women at tables. The women turned their heads and their ears sparkled. They grew huge until the space was filled up with their faces. Their mouths moved and sounds came like the chirping of sparrows or the croaking of mating frogs.

And I knew that this was not now or here. These were no scroungers beyond the wall. This was a glimpse of the world of the endtimers and I was in the presence of some great power that lingered after them. We had the Book of Air, but Trevor and the scroungers had the Jane Writer. I remembered how Jane as a schoolgirl longed for a power of vision which might reach the busy world, towns, regions full of life, heard of but never seen. Was this the fulfilment of her longing? Was this how she had taught the endtimers to call to each other at a distance? My mind, in turmoil, settled again on the visions and I forgot to think, forgot that I was sitting with Trevor and Brendan and only watched the people move and shrink and loom again in front of me.

Out of all these faces, some became familiar. A man with hooded eyes like a lizard whose lips hardly moved when he spoke, a woman more beautiful than anything I can think of even with an upturned wash bowl on her head, but so pale I thought she might faint. And I began to recognise words. Someone spoke of drinking and they filled their glasses and drank. There was talk of a ring, and a ring passed across a table. A man sat at a desk, his hands busy at his work. He was in charge, always sitting while the others came and went. I could see he was more important than anyone. His eyes were white. His face was round and dark like an eggplant. He turned from his work, though his hands never stopped, and his mouth opened and he sang a lullaby. A kiss is still a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh. Tears came into the woman’s eyes and shone in the light from the moon. Later when the lizard man heard the song, he rested his head on his arms. I ached to live in this hall and have that great round face hush me to sleep.

And while I was still wiping my tears I heard it – what Trevor had said. ‘Here’s looking at you kid.’ The man with hooded eyes looking at the woman, lifting his glass as Trevor had lifted his mug. I heard it for the first time. It was about looking and it was what we were doing, me and Brendan and Trevor and the others. Here’s looking. A text as deep as any in the Book of Air and as hard to understand, that’s the thought that came to me. I gasped at the strangeness of it. I sat among scroungers and wanted nothing better than this – to be wide awake dreaming, everyone together, the same dream.

There’s so much I never got round to telling you, Caroline. So much I kept from you. Because I was ashamed, I suppose. Of what? It’s hard to say. Shame isn’t logical. It’s a smell that clings to you and maybe no one else can smell it but it’s there anyway.

It was Derek’s idea, the Jesus bus. Mum had taken me to the pictures as a treat for my tenth birthday, and McDonald’s afterwards. We’d seen Back to the Future and it scared the crap out of me. There’s this bit where Michael J Fox is trying to get his dad to make out with his mum at their high school dance and it’s just not happening. He’s got this photo of the whole family back in the future, and him and his sister start to disappear. And I thought that’s my life. Dad’s gone already. Who’s next? Mum? Penny? I could hardly eat my Chicken McNuggets thinking about it.

Next day Derek came round. Mum was at the end of her tether, what with me moping and Penny acting up as usual and Dad not there to help. So Derek started in about this idea of his. He was going to buy an old double-decker, put some bunk beds in it and a kitchen and hit the road. There were other people interested, apparently. ‘How about it, Flo?’ he said, ‘Give up everything you’ve got and follow Jesus, like it says in the Good Book.’ If there was one thing my mum couldn’t resist it was the word of God.

We’d never have gone if my dad had been alive to say no. Derek would never have dared suggest it. Our little terraced house wasn’t much but Dad had put a lot into it over the years. Derek didn’t have so much to give up. He owed more on his flat than it was worth. I heard Dad say once that Derek’s flat was under water. I thought of him in flippers and goggles, catching fish in a frying pan.

They both worked on building sites in those days. Derek was theoretically a plumber, my dad said, by which he meant that he knew about plumbing in theory but was bugger all use in practice.