Alan Garner - Red Shift

For Billy

Cover

Title Page

Dedication For Billy

Red Shift

Praise

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

“Shall I tell you?”

“What?”

“Shall I?”

“Tell me what?” said Jan.

“What do you want to know?”

Jan picked up a fistful of earth and trickled it down the neck of his shirt.

“Hey!”

“Stop fooling, then.”

Tom shook his trouser legs. “That’s rotten. I’m all gritty.”

Jan hung her arms over the motorway fence. Cars went by like brush marks. “Where are they going? They look so serious.”

“Well,” said Tom. “Let’s work it out. That one there is travelling south at, say, one hundred and twenty kilometres per hour, on a continental shelf drifting east at about five centimetres per year—”

“I might’ve guessed—!”

“—on a planet rotating at about nine hundred and ninety kilometres per hour at this degree of latitude, at a mean orbital velocity of thirty kilometres per second—”

“Really?”

“—in a solar system travelling at a mean galactic velocity of twenty-five kilometres per second, in a galaxy that probably has a random motion—”

“Knickers.”

“—random knickers of about one hundred kilometres per second, in a universe that appears to be expanding at about one hundred and sixteen kilometres per second per megaparsec.”

Jan scooped up more earth.

“The short answer’s Birmingham,” he said, and ducked.

Jan looked across the flooded sand quarry behind them towards the Rudheath caravan site among the birch trees. “Come on.” The earth was still in her hand.

“Where?”

“What were you going to tell me?”

“Oh, that.” He took his shoe off and turned it upside down. “It really is grotty being gritty. I was going to tell you when I first saw you.”

“When was it?”

“When you came back from Germany.”

“Germany?” The earth ran through her fingers. “Germany? We’ve known each other longer than that.”

“But I didn’t see you until you got out of the car: and then I – saw you.”

“I wasn’t away more than a fortnight.”

“What was it like?”

“Anywhere.”

“The people you stayed with?”

“Ordinary.”

“So why go?”

“To see what it was like.”

“And she found that the ground was as hard, that a yard was as long—No. She found that a metre was neater—”

“Tom—”

“Yes?”

“Lay off.”

He put his head on her shoulder. “I couldn’t stand it if you went now,” he said. They walked from the motorway fence along a spit of sand between the lakes.

“‘Grotty’ is excessively ugly,” said Tom. “A corruption of ‘grotesque’. It won’t last.”

“I love you.”

“I’m not sure about the mean galactic velocity. We’re with M31, M32, M33 and a couple of dozen other galaxies. They’re the nearest. What did you say?”

“I love you.”

“Yes.” He stopped walking. “That’s all we can be sure of. We are, at this moment, somewhere between the M6 going to Birmingham and M33 going nowhere. Don’t leave me.”

“Hush,” said Jan. “It’s all right.”

“It’s not. How did we meet? How could we? Between the M6 and M33. Think of the odds. In all space and time. I’m scared.”

“Don’t be.”

“Scared of losing—”

“You’re not—”

“I always win.”

She pressed the back of her hand against his cheek.

“Tell me,” he said. “I’ve been waiting all afternoon.”

The motorway roared silently. Birds skittered the water in flight to more distant reeds, and the iron water lay again, flat light reflecting no sky. The caravans and the birches. Tom.

“Next week,” said Jan. “Right?” Her knuckles were comfortless between his. “Next week. I go next week.” She tried to reach the pain, but his eyes would not let her in.

“London?”

“Yes.” Teeth showing through lips drawn: lines from sides of nostrils: frown and pain lines. “And my parents—”

“It’s a pretty mean galaxy.”

She pulled him to her. “You’re just a baby.”

“Yes.”

“Upset.”

“I’m not upset. I’m panicking. Love me.”

“I do. I do love you.”

“For ever.”

“How—”

“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.”

“Quote.”

“More know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows. And that’s another.” He stood back from her and bent down to skim a stone across the lake. “On one side lay the M6, and on one lay a great water, and the site was full. Seven bounces! Bet you can’t do more than three!”

“Which of you am I supposed to believe?” said Jan.

“Both.”

“When will you grow up?”

“We were born grown up.”

“I love you: you idiots.”

They went round the caravan site by the sand washer. It was a tower, with chutes that fed sand into a piled cone. There was a catwalk to the top, over the chutes. The top was a very small steel plate.

Tom ran up and climbed to the plate. He stood slowly, feeling for his balance. The sand pile was a perfect gradient, one in one. Tom spread his arms, thirty feet above the ground.

“If you drop,” he called to Jan, “it doesn’t half rattle your teeth. But if you jump out as far as you can, it’s flying, and you hit the sand at the same angle right at the bottom, no trouble. It’s the first time that grips. You have to trust.”

He leapt through the air clear of everything and ploughed the sand with his heels.

“Coming?” He looked up at her.

“No, thanks.”

“It’s not what it seems. Or aren’t you good on heights?”

“I don’t like being gritty.”

They crossed the road to the estate where Jan lived.

“That was fairly stupid,” said Tom.

“I was impressed.”

“Not the jump. That was stupid, but the other was worse.”

“It’s happened before.”

“And it’ll happen again.”

“I know.”

“Stupid and infantile.”

They were clear of the birch wood, by open fields. Television screens in the caravans flickered among the white bark.

“Corpse candles,” said Tom.

“Snob. They look cosy.”

“They are. Togetherness!”

“Don’t take it out on them. I’d rather not live in London; but I do want to nurse. It’s as simple as that.”

“I wasn’t stopping you.”

“You weren’t?”

“We’ll adapt,” he said. “You’ll get a fair bit of time off, even in training, and you can come home. It’s quick from London. I’m used to you every day, that’s all, knowing I’ll see you—Oh my God.”

Two men were putting up a For Sale notice in Jan’s garden.

“I was trying to tell you,” she said.

“No one does this to me.”

“No one’s doing anything to anybody.”

“What’s that, then?”

“I was trying to tell you. Mum and Dad have been given a unit in Portsmouth. We’re all moving. We’ve never stayed long anywhere.”

“I reckon it’s a pretty mean galaxy.”

He took a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door. They went inside the house. There was a red light on the telephone answering machine. Jan pulled a face.

“What’s the matter?” said Tom.

“Mum has a patient who rings every day. It’s rubbish.”

“Not to him at the other end.”