Rupert Thomson - Divided Kingdom

The figures moved effortlessly across the rough terrain. She tried to draw level with them, hoping to get a look at their faces, hoping to talk to them, but no matter how quickly she walked they contrived to keep the same distance ahead of her. And then she forgot all about them because she saw Victor sitting on the ground beneath a stony ledge. She hurried over, knelt beside him. He had fallen, he said, but he didn’t think he’d hurt himself. His eyes were bright and pale. Did you see them?

She nodded.

White People. He had been about to launch into a discourse on their behaviour when he noticed one of them standing near by. Come on. He wants to take us down.

They followed the white figure until the border appeared below them. When they looked round to offer thanks, they found that they were, once again, alone.

To Marie, the story was a confirmation of the White People’s uncanny psychic skills, but my scepticism remained intact. They had been able to lead Victor and Marie down from the ridge because they were acquainted with out-of-the-way places. It was in places like these that they had been forced to live their lives. Also, they didn’t want other people intruding, perhaps. Victor and Marie had strayed on to their territory, and the two of them had been gently but firmly escorted away from it.

I watched the cloaked figures vanish into the shelter of a wood. Though I didn’t think I would need rescuing that day, the knowledge that I had set eyes on them gave me the feeling that nothing bad could happen, or if it did, then it wouldn’t be anything that couldn’t be remedied, and maybe, in the end, that was all people meant when they talked about unusual powers.

I stayed in a village pub that night. My only anxiety was that the authorities would have alerted rural communities for miles around, and that people would be on the look-out for strangers, but nobody even gave me a second glance. The next day I set out early and made good progress, arriving at the station towards four in the afternoon, just as the rain came down. I bought a one-way ticket to the capital.

When the train pulled in fifteen minutes later, I chose a seat by the window, facing forwards. My carriage was nearly empty. It was a Friday, I realised, and most people would be travelling in the opposite direction, going to the country for the weekend. Opening my wallet to check on the state of my finances, I noticed a piece of plain paper hidden in among the banknotes. Come and see us in the summer , it said. I’ll take you swimming. Under the two lines of looping handwriting was the imprint of a girl’s lips, the colour of crushed raspberries. She hadn’t signed her name. She hadn’t needed to. As we walked back to the house, her hair had flown into my face, half blinding me. She had laughed and then apologised, plucking the long, sweet-smelling strands out of the dark and twisting them into a knot. We had parted in the stable-yard, outside my door. The summer … Words like that had no significance for me. I couldn’t imagine where I’d be in six days, let alone six months.

I looked at her mouth again, the pattern of white lines as distinctive as a fingerprint. So intimate, that mouth — and the waxy fragrance of her lipstick lifting off the paper … Although she had brought me tea less than forty-eight hours ago, I felt I was thinking back to an event that had taken place in the long-distant past; it seemed exaggerated, almost apocryphal, even though nothing had happened. I imagined trying to tell the story to somebody — Vishram, for instance. There was a storm that night. A gale. I was in my room, reading a book. At first I thought the wind had blown the door open, but it was a girl… And Vishram would smile in that patient, knowing way of his, and he would say, You slept with her. And I would say, No, I didn’t. That’s the whole point. Vishram would shake his head at what he would undoubtedly see as slowness on my part, a wasted opportunity.

I settled back in my seat. The rain was still falling, each drop wriggling diagonally across the outside of the window. The telegraph poles slid by, their wires sinking, rising, sinking. When I thought of Vishram, he seemed too vivid a concoction, somehow. His suits shimmered. His nails were as dark as dried rose petals. He didn’t walk, he floated. He was extravagant, improbable, a character enlisted from a dream. It occurred to me that I had forgotten to let Sonya know about his offer of a job — and he’d been so insistent. Ah well. Tired after the day’s exertions, I leaned my head against the head-rest and surrendered to the rhythm of the train.

On waking, I saw that I was no longer alone. A girl was sitting on the other side of the carriage, reading a newspaper. She must have boarded the train while I was sleeping. She was smartly dressed, in a tailored black jacket and wide black trousers, and on her feet she wore a pair of men’s brogues, also black. She had hair the colour of copper wire, or bracken, and curious heavy-lidded eyes, and her face was covered with freckles to such a degree that she gave the impression of having been camouflaged. I was still studying her when she looked up from her paper and met my gaze.

She took a fast, shallow breath. ‘Don’t I know you?’

‘I’m sorry?’ I said. ‘Do you mean me?’

‘Yes.’ She smiled quickly. ‘Sorry. It’s just that I thought I’d seen you somewhere before.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You’d remember my face, I suppose,’ she said lightly.

‘Yes.’

‘It’s striking.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘People often say that about me.’ Her voice was still light, objective. ‘I’m “striking”, apparently. I always have the feeling it’s just another word for odd.’

I laughed. ‘Where do you think you might have seen me?’

She turned in her seat and looked directly at me. Seen straight on, her face had even more power to unnerve. The way her eyelids lowered over her eyes, the distance between her cheekbones, the strong line of her jaw. Above all, her mouth, which was incongruously voluptuous, the top lip carved with delicate precision, the bottom lip succulent and drowsy. And then the freckles — as if she’d hidden herself behind a kind of veil or screen and was watching me through it. Taken all at once, these features gave her a look that was poised somewhere between the sensual and the menacing. I had never seen a face quite like it.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said after a while. ‘In Aquaville, I think.’

‘I’ve only been there once, and that was for a conference.’

‘Was it about two weeks ago?’

‘Yes. The Cross-Border Conference. It was held at the Sheraton.’

Now she was laughing. ‘I was there.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Really?’

‘Every night they put a chocolate on my pillow,’ she said. ‘It looked just like a smile.’

‘That’s right.’ I had forgotten about the chocolates.

‘And then there was that trip to the Yellow Quarter. I had such a bad feeling about it. I didn’t want to go.’

‘You weren’t hurt?’ I said. ‘In the bomb, I mean?’

She shook her head. ‘I was dancing at the time. There was a disco in the basement. Flaming something. We were all evacuated on the spot. What about you?’

‘I was in my room when it went off. I got out down the fire stairs.’

She folded her newspaper and put it on the table in front of her. ‘I must have seen you at one of the parties,’ she said. ‘Or perhaps I heard you speak. I don’t think we actually met.’

‘What were you doing there?’

‘Oh, nothing very important. I was just an observer.’ Looking down, she pinched the crease in one of her trouser-legs between finger and thumb and let it go again. Then she glanced at me quickly, so quickly that her hair still hung in her eyes. She used both hands to tuck it back behind her ears. ‘So what are you doing now?’