Benjamin Wood - The Ecliptic

I could not understand her cheerfulness. ‘We can fight this, you know. The four of us.’

‘Oh, sure. A few cartons of ayran to the face ought to do it. You go for Ender, I’ll take out the provost. Q and Tif can dig our foxholes.’

‘I’m serious.’

She laughed and wagged her hand dismissively. As she got up, a line of ash fell onto the front of her gown and she just smudged it into the fabric. ‘It’s funny to think I’m not going to be MacKinney any longer. I’ve been sorting out her last will and testament. Would you like your inheritance now, or do you want to wait until I’m out of here?’

‘I’m not letting you talk that way. You might’ve given up on this place but I don’t have to be happy about it.’

She ignored me. At the bureau, she dumped her cigarette in a cup and reorganised a stack of books, choosing one from near the bottom. ‘No, I think I’d better give it to you now. . Chances are, you’ve read it, but you definitely won’t have this edition — it’s as rare as they come.’

It was a clothbound copy of Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling. The fading blue cover was wrapped in polythene. ‘Sadly for you, I inscribed it,’ she said. ‘That might knock a few quid off the value when you come to sell it.’ On the inside cover, she had written:

To Knell, who was someone else before I knew her, and will be when I’m gone. Your great friend, MacKinney xx

I felt the urge to cry. It rose through my whole body, starting at my toes. ‘I can’t accept this,’ I said.

‘Just say thank you. That’s all you have to do. And think of me when you look at it.’

‘There has to be a way out of this mess.’

She came towards me, shaking her head. ‘I’m afraid our time is up, old girl. It’s really happening.’

‘We just need to lean on the provost, that’s all, put the pressure on.’

‘Accept it, Knell. I’ve been expelled.’ She tried to make me smile with this, but I could not. The provost’s note was in her hand, and she pushed it into mine, closing my fist over it. ‘Look, do you know how many plays I’ve written in my life? Thirty-six. Know how many of those were actually any good? One. One! If I had a market stall, I’d be in penury by now. But it’s amazing how far one decent effort can carry you, if you let it — it’s taken me further than I had any right to go. I’m tired of retracing my own footsteps for a hint of who I used to be. It’s undignified.’

She released my hand and went back to the bed, neatening the covers. ‘Fact is, I just can’t stick around here any more, pretending that number thirty-seven is going to magically surpass what I’ve achieved before, because, deep down, I know it won’t. How could it? I’ve already written the best play I’ll ever write. I was twenty-three years old and utterly miserable when I wrote it, but that was easily my brightest moment. You never saw it, did you? I wish you had — that production was the most exciting thing I’ve ever been involved in.’ She stopped for a moment, tightening the cord on her gown. ‘It wasn’t even about anything, not really. Just a family going about their days. A few flawed people in a household, making mistakes with each other. No grand ideas, just ordinary life. My childhood, I suppose. It was quite a special thing. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Once your best story’s told, it can’t be told again. It makes you, then it ruins you.’

The bedclothes were now smooth as a tabletop. She started on the pillows, plumping them, one at a time. ‘Well, at least now I can stop trying to be original. And I can see my girls again. That’ll be nice. I’ve neglected them horribly.’

‘You weren’t meant to be a housewife, Mac,’ I said.

‘Maybe not. But if I had thirty-six children instead, I’d be a whole lot happier.’ She dropped her gown and hooked it on the bedpost. The skin about her clavicle was freckled and pinched, but her body was so slender under her nightdress, and she stood there with the easy poise of a much younger woman, confident of her beauty, or at least oblivious to it. ‘Go and put that thing back on the board, would you? If you’re worried about Q and Tif, don’t be. It’s better they think I’m going off with a finished play — for their own sake.’ She went into her bathroom and I heard the taps running.

‘Then why aren’t you giving a reading?’

‘I don’t want to humiliate myself,’ she called.

‘You could just do a few scenes. I could play Willa. Q could be Christopher.’ The idea made me uncomfortable, but I would have done anything for MacKinney at that time. And I thought it would give the four of us a chance to spend her final day rehearsing together, instead of being stuck alone in our lodgings, contending with our projects. ‘You deserve a proper send-off like the others. I’m not letting you leave without one.’

She came to the threshold, a towel around her middle. ‘I’d prefer to just go quietly into the night, if it’s all the same to you.’

‘Definitely not.’

The shower continued to run. Rafts of steam began to flood the space behind her. ‘Q would never do it, anyway,’ she said.

‘Of course he would. You’ve got cigarettes, remember. We could even give Tif a role.’

‘But I’ve already told the provost no.’

I looked at the rumpled notice in my hand. ‘I’ll amend it. Or write an appendix. See, you’re thinking about it. That means you want to.’

‘I suppose it wouldn’t be too awful.’ She went off again into the bathroom. ‘There are one or two scenes we could make something out of, with a bit of rehearsing.’ Craning her head around the door, she said, ‘Tif’s got the wrong kind of voice for it, though. He’ll only ham it up, and I don’t want to look stupid.’ She closed the door. I heard the shower curtain skittering on its rail.

‘What about Fullerton?’ I shouted, but she did not receive me. ‘Mac?’

Once the notion was in my mind, I could not get rid of it. I put the Kipling on the bed and went to the bureau to unpack the typewriter. But I could find no blank paper in the drawers. The room was so dingy, in fact, that the innards of the desk seemed cavernous.

When I turned on the lamp, the bulb popped, startled me. I went to open the curtains. They were the same heavy velvet drapes that adorned the windows all over the mansion, hung on brass loops that were difficult to shift — there was a knack to it, a sideways whipping action. As they parted, the teeming of the rain became louder, more encompassing. And perhaps it was something about this noise and the splatter of Mac’s shower, along with the sudden adjustment to the light, that made me lose my senses for an instant; but as I looked out through the misted panes, I saw an enormous stretch of open water where the grounds of Portmantle should have been, a swaying sea that reached up to the sides of the mansion, as though the house itself were an island and MacKinney’s windows were the coastline.

It was only there for a blink and then it was gone. Everything returned at once: the lawns, the trees, the lodgings, the surrounding sights of Heybeliada. I rubbed my temples, scrutinised the pattern on the wallpaper. Black spots waned in my vision. I had not eaten breakfast yet and felt a little faint. It was tiredness, a touch of vertigo — nothing more.

There was just enough daylight to help me find what I needed in Mac’s bureau. A box of goldenrod paper was buried in the bottom drawer, beneath a heap of manila folders. I spooled one sheet into the typewriter. It was not difficult to replicate the provost’s formal tone, though my typing was very unpractised. I was so slow that the page was still scrolled in the machine when Mac came out of the bathroom, towelling her hair. ‘What are you writing?’ she said.