Benjamin Wood - The Ecliptic

‘I don’t care. Just go as quickly as you can.’

‘Well, anything above third gear might flatten me.’ He smiled. ‘Listen, I don’t need to know what’s going on exactly, or whatever that thing is you’ve got there—’ He gestured at the bagged-up canvas strapped to my back. ‘But please swear this isn’t going to land me in any bother.’

‘You’re going to be fine,’ I said. ‘It’s not you they have a problem with.’

A bouncing nod. ‘You’re like that pretty girl at school who made me steal things from the tuck shop.’

‘I don’t have time for memory lane now, Tif.’

‘Just an observation. Want this closed behind me?’

‘Yes. Go. Bring them.’

There was a rush of sunlight as the door opened and shut. Through the gap in the blind, I watched Pettifer head up the slope and trundle out of sight. He gave a cheery whistle of a tune I did not know. Then I was alone again, inside the partial darkness of his lodging. The place was dogged by small noises: the tick-tack-tick of the water pipes somewhere in the walls, the crackle of the coals in the stove, the restless yattering of the songbirds in the forest, the gulls and the crows on the roof. I could not relax. My fingers twitched. My spine was tensed like a cable. I needed to sit down but I did not want to have to take the canvas off my back, so I paced around in little circuits.

Up on the wall were masonry sketches and designs for quaint fenestrations. Tweed blazers hung on a rack near Tif’s bedside and his plan chest was dotted with trinkets. The model ship he had built was all painted and varnished, and stood now inside a glass dome on his plan chest — I thought that some huge insect had settled on it, but in fact there was a fracture in the glass that Tif had crossed with sticking plasters. I lifted off the cover to get a closer look. The model was so expertly built that it would probably have floated, but the one word was drab and sloppily applied. Wens of varnish cloyed to all its joints, drips had hardened on the stern. It looked like something a man had assembled and a child had been allowed to decorate. As I put it back, the wooden stand collapsed and a piece of it fell down, landing in the partly open drawer by my ankles. Bending to get it, I noticed the drawer was crammed with drafting paper, tattered at the edges, and could not help but pull the top sheet out, expecting to find an elevation or a floor plan, part of some visionary design for a cathedral. But no. It was more like an artist’s rendering. A carpeted room with a sweeping tiled shelf and ornamented pillars, skinny pencilled women lying frontwise on towels, bathing at a font. I recognised the room at once. The label said: CALDARIUM (PRELIMINARY). I rifled through the plan chest, searching all the drawings, but the same image repeated through them: varying drafts with tiny details changed, or inked in slightly different hues. Caldarium after caldarium after caldarium after—

I tore the last of them in half and balled it up inside my fist. And, rattled now, unthinking, I opened the grate of the stove and threw it on the flames. I was not satisfied with that. The drawers were full of them. I scrunched as many of the drawings as I could gather and fed them all into the fire, jamming them in, smoke thickening around me, glutting the room. The stove could not contain it all. My throat was dry and scorched. I had to run outside to get some air, feeling the closure of my lungs. And, stooping into the sunshine with great reefs of smoke draining out from the doorway, I saw Quickman, Mac, and Pettifer coming back along the slope. When they saw the fumes, they came jogging down and nearly skidded off the path. Mac rushed to me, saying, ‘Are you all right? What happened?’ But Pettifer went straight by me, calling: ‘Christ almighty, Knell, what have you done? You fucking lunatic.’ I turned to see the stove grate open and flecks of singed grey paper dancing in the room like dust motes. He was grabbing at his hair. ‘Is that — oh, for Christ’s sake, everything . She’s burned everything. That’s years— years of my life! You mad fucking woman! What did I ever do to you ?’ His face was flushed so red I thought that he might choke.

‘Calm down,’ Q said. ‘There’s a few over here. They’re fine, look. All isn’t lost.’ He was lifting sheets of paper from the floor, from the chairs, from wherever they had landed.

‘Don’t tell me to calm down! She gets me to fetch you, I come back to this .’ Tif was pacing between the walls. ‘I will — I’ll bloody kill her.’

MacKinney grabbed my arm. ‘What the hell’s got into you?’

I did not answer. I flung off her arm and went back in.

‘Knell,’ she said. ‘ Knell.’

I dragged the suitcase from the bed.

Quickman stared at me, talking very fast: ‘Don’t do it. Don’t leave like this. It’s not going to fix anything.’ He stepped forward with an arm out, trying to take my case. ‘Tif’ll be fine. Won’t you, Tif? We’ll be fine. If we all stick together, we’ll be fine.’ I let him get a little closer. ‘All right, now, come on. Sit down. We’ll clear up this mess now, OK? It’s going to be fine. I promise you.’

But I bolted.

‘ Shit, ’ Quickman said. ‘She’s not listening.’

Mac tried to block me as I came through the door, but she had no conviction — she backed against the cinderblocks as though afraid of being burned, and reached out for my shoulder, grabbing my canvas. The strap tightened on my throat for an instant, and then she lost her grip. ‘Knell — please! My letter!’ I stopped, turning on the slope, the ground giving under me, sliding. She came quickly to me, lifting up a square of paper in surrender. I held out my hand for it, splinters of sunlight in my eyes. ‘Whatever you do from this point on, keep going,’ she said, pressing it into my palm. No disappointment in her voice. Approval. Good wishes. I pushed it into my pocket. ‘Do not stop again, you hear me?’ she said. ‘If you’ve got to get out of here, then run and don’t look back.’ So I did.

I sprinted up the slope, the canvas roll smacking my legs, the suitcase light but awkward. Leaping over tree roots, I made it to the path, and did not turn, did not even wave goodbye to Mac or anyone, just ran as hard as I could go, the pebbles spitting out from under me. The blur of the boy’s lodging waned to my left, the mansion reared up to my right. I kept going, aiming for the woods beyond my studio, and then to the escarpment. But, coming round the east side of the mansion, I saw Ardak hastening towards me with a fire extinguisher. I looked back over my shoulder and the smoke was dark above the trees. When Ardak noticed me, he paused, nearly tripping. He was caught between two emergencies. I went flailing on, already out of breath. He swivelled like a weathervane as I sped by, and then I heard him shouting after me in Turkish. ‘ Dur! Hey! Nereye gidiyorsun! ’ And, glancing back, I saw him coming after me, the extinguisher toppling on the grass. I did not stop but I was slowing. ‘ Hey! Dur! ’ The case was dragging on the draught. Now Ender was hurtling across the lawn to my right and I could not see another way that I would make it. So I let the case go. It went tumbling in my wake, and, suddenly, I had some impetus. ‘ Dur! Hey! Dur! ’ I went past my studio, past another and another, and through the fringe of the pines, Ender and Ardak still in pursuit. The scrub nicked my hands and ankles. The trees narrowed and spread, and I kept looking for the notches I had made in them, but I was too starved of breath to see straight and my strides were all so jarring. If I held to this course I was sure that I would end up by the mushroom patch, but that would be too far — I needed to bear east before I reached the clearing.