Rupert Thomson - Divided Kingdom

‘Are you dead?’ the girl said.

I shook my head.

‘You’re not a ghost, are you?’

I shook my head again. This time I tried a smile.

‘It’s all right,’ the girl said quickly. ‘I’m not afraid of ghosts.’ She let her eyes run over me — my face, my hair, my clothes. ‘You look like a ghost.’

I knelt down in front of her. Taking one of her hands, I singled out the forefinger and placed it on the inside of my wrist, where my pulse was.

‘You’re real,’ she said.

As real as you are , I said inside my head.

She gave me a look from close up, a look that was shiny, clean somehow, as if she had understood me perfectly, and I remembered what a friend had told me once, that it’s the eyes of children that make you feel old.

The girl was reaching over her shoulders with both hands. ‘These wings are hurting. Could you help me take them off?’

I began to undo the ribbons that held the wings in place.

She wrinkled her nose. ‘You smell bad.’

I know , I said. That’s the whole idea.

Another brief examination from those oddly knowing eyes.

I handed the wings to her. She solemnly surveyed the room, then bent down and leaned them against the wall next to the fireplace. Straightening up again, she looked at me across the point of one shoulder.

‘I have to go now,’ she said.

She turned, just as Odell had done, and vanished through the doorway. Odell. I hurried to the window, but there was no sign of her. Had she already gone across? I strained my eyes, trying to look beyond the floodlights. Nothing.

Panic scurried through me.

It was time.

I withdrew from the window, making for the stairs. In the hallway, I doubled back towards the kitchen. As I passed the open fridge, I saw a figure crouched inside, hands round his ankles, knees pushed up into the space below his chin. It was Brendan Burroughs.

‘Take me with you,’ he whispered.

I had to steel myself against his pleading. I had to pretend he wasn’t there.

But whispers were still coming from the fridge. ‘I can’t stay here any longer. I’m going rotten.’

Leave me alone , I said inside my head.

I climbed out on to the patio. Stone steps led up into a tangle of undergrowth. If I looked round, I knew Brendan’s mysteriously unlined face would be framed in the broken window, and I didn’t even have a lighter on me any more.

I didn’t look round.

Scaling a brick wall at the end of the garden, I dropped down on to the pavement and then started towards the border. I summoned the spirits of all those who had travelled with me. Their innocence, their singularity. Their freakishness. I repeated their names inside my head, over and over. If nothing else, I would remember what they used to sound like, how they moved about.

Neg , I said inside my head. Lum. Neg. Ob.

People running, falling. Burning.

I was still walking, but I had covered my face. My knees trembled, my ankles quaked. My joints appeared to have loosened, as if in readiness for a dismemberment. That little girl would be watching from a window, her gaze intent, dispassionate. Are you dead? I brought my hands down from my eyes. In front of me, no more than fifty yards away, stood the checkpoint with all its sinister and hostile apparatus. Though the three guards were silhouetted against the floodlights, I recognised the swagger, a casual brutality apparent in both their body language and their speech. I faltered. It was then that I noticed the piece of dog shit lying in the gutter. An idea came to me, and I experienced a burst of something like euphoria. What I was about to do would establish my authenticity beyond all doubt. It might even save me from harm. I pretended to notice the shit for the first time, taking an exaggerated step backwards, then bending low to study it more closely. I seemed to hear the guards draw breath. Now that I had their attention, I picked up the shit and examined it painstakingly from every angle, then I crushed it between my fingers and smeared it on to my cheeks and hair. That done, I began to move towards the checkpoint. The guards stepped away from me, waving their hands in front of their faces. Even the attack dog whined and shunted backwards. I just kept going, oblivious, serene. I might even have been smiling. As I passed the sentry hut I heard them talking.

‘It’s true what people say. They’re just like animals —’

‘They’re worse than animals …’

While two of them debated the point, a third aimed a kick at me and sent me sprawling on the tarmac. The dog barked excitedly but stayed well back. All three guards were arguing now. It hadn’t occurred to them to challenge me. In fact, they seemed eager to keep their distance. I’d made myself untouchable.

I picked myself up, walked on.

In no man’s land the lights were so intense that I could see the veins beneath the surface of my skin. I felt transparent. At the same time four shadows splayed out on the ground around me, as if I were a flower with black petals. My face itched, and the stench that lifted off me was unbearable. At the risk of drawing attention to myself, I started walking faster. I wanted this part over with.

The Red Quarter guards were already waiting for me. As I approached I held my hands out, fingers spread. I was making noises that were intended to communicate distress.

One of the men took me by the arm. ‘Who did this?’ he said.

I stared at him, round-eyed, slack-jawed.

He pointed back towards the Yellow Quarter. ‘Did they do this to you?’

My mouth still open, I nodded repeatedly, more than a dozen times.

The guard led me to a tap behind a prefabricated hut. He handed me a bar of carbolic soap and ran the tap for me. I gazed at the dark patch the water made as it splashed on to the concrete.

‘You can wash here.’ The guard mimed the act of washing for me.

I watched him carefully. Then, slowly, I put my hands under the tap and began to rub them together.

‘And your face.’ He patted his cheeks, his hair.

He went away, returning with a roll of paper towels, which he placed on the window-ledge above the tap. ‘When you’ve washed it off,’ he said, ‘use the paper to dry yourself. Then go that way.’ He pointed to the steel barrier behind me.

I nodded again, then pointed at the barrier, just as he had done.

The whole time I was washing off the muck and stink I was talking to myself inside my head. I don’t know what I was saying. Anything that would keep me from thinking, I suppose. All I had to do was turn off the tap, dry my face and hands, and then start walking, and yet I found myself delaying the moment, as if I couldn’t quite believe in the notion of safety or the possibility of home.

In the end the guard had to come over and switch off the tap himself. He stood in front of me, smiling and shaking his head. ‘What are you trying to do? Flood the place?’ He tore a few sheets of paper off the roll and gave them to me, then he put a hand on my back and steered me towards the barrier. ‘Off you go now. Move along.’

As soon as I turned the first corner, I began to run as fast as the cloak and boots allowed. I was like something that had been wound up and then let loose, and I was laughing too. I could hear myself.

‘Thomas?’

I slowed down, stopped, looked round. Odell walked up the pavement towards me. In the light of the street lamps her bracken-coloured hair looked darker, almost black.

‘You took such a long time,’ she said. ‘I thought they’d got you.’ She reached out to take my hand, but I stepped back so sharply that she almost overbalanced.