Rupert Thomson: Divided Kingdom

I rounded the boating lake and arrived at the bench where the man with the ponytail had been sitting. In the daylight I could see that somebody had carved a heart into the wood. Close by, on the grass, a notice said NO BATHING FISHING OR DOGS ALLOWED IN THE WATER. I thought of the woman with the tennis racket — the plump sound of the ball landing on the surface of the lake, the black dog plunging after it — then I smiled and moved on. I passed the wolves asleep in their enclosure, and leaving by one of the park’s north-eastern exits, found myself in Gulliver once more. The smallest details came back to me. The smell of coffee, the piano music. The tree where Odell and I had stood and talked.

At last, towards midday, I reached the checkpoint, its steel barrier lowered, two guards on duty in their scarlet helmets. At the rear of the guard-house I could see the place where I had washed. The tap was dripping. Tiny glass beads shattered on the concrete, one after another, without a sound. Otherwise everything was still. The shadow of the watch-tower lay across the road like something that had been run over. I stared out into no man’s land, remembering the tension, the bright-white glare, the stench. It was hard to believe the memory was mine.

I had been standing there for several minutes when one of the guards walked up to me. He had a gaunt, clean-shaven face and clear grey eyes. I didn’t recognise him from the night before. The shift must have changed.

‘Just having a look, are we?’ he said pleasantly.

I nodded. ‘That’s right.’

‘Pretty quiet today.’

‘Do you get much trouble?’ I asked.

‘Not much,’ he said. ‘It’s not like twenty years ago. Things have settled down a lot since then.’

He thought for a while. I had the impression that he wanted to convey something of his life.

‘Sometimes the Yellow Quarter guards do things,’ he said.

‘Like what?’

‘Once, about eighteen months ago, they released some peacocks on to the area that’s mined. We had to stand here and watch as the birds exploded, one by one.’

‘That’s barbaric,’ I said.

The guard shrugged. I was stating the obvious.

‘This section of the border’s haunted,’ he added a moment later.

‘Not the peacocks?’

He smiled. ‘No. There’s a young woman. Mid-twenties. She’s always walking away, into the darkness. You only ever see her from the back.’

‘Have you seen her?’

‘Me? No.’ He paused. ‘She must be someone who was killed here during the early days, I suppose.’ He stared out into no man’s land. ‘Some say they can feel her sort of brushing past them. It gives them the creeps.’ He grinned at me, rendering his scepticism apparent, then glanced at the guard-house. ‘I should be getting back.’

‘Nice talking to you,’ I said.

That afternoon I sat in my living-room and tried to read a book, but I couldn’t seem to concentrate. My eyes kept skidding across the lines of print. Eventually I put on a choral work that Victor had given me one Christmas, then I lay down on the sofa and closed my eyes. Though my mind seemed coated with a kind of scale, the residue of everything I had experienced, the singing had a cleansing effect, the voices overlapping and merging in such a way that the inside of my head became a smooth, shining space. How remarkable, I thought, that my early life had been inaccessible to me for so many years! But might that not reflect how happy I had been back then, how loved? Surely there had to be a correlation between the two. That total blankness stood for something, in other words, something immensely powerful, and it might prove a source of strength and comfort to me, if only I could learn to trust it …

The next thing I knew, the music had finished and the phone was ringing. I fumbled for the receiver, said hello.

‘Thomas?’

I didn’t recognise the voice. ‘I’m sorry —’

‘You haven’t forgotten me already, have you?’

‘Odell!’ There was the most peculiar sensation inside my chest, as though my heart had just been dropped from a great height. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I was asleep.’

‘It’s me who should be sorry. I shouldn’t be disturbing you like this, but I didn’t know who else to call.’

‘Why? What’s happened?’

‘Mr Croy,’ she said. ‘The man I work for. He’s been arrested.’ I began to say something, but she talked over me. ‘If they’ve arrested him, then they’ll probably want to arrest me too. I left my flat as soon as I heard. I haven’t dared go back.’

‘What will you do?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I just had an idea,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to trust me, though.’

‘Be quick. I haven’t got much time.’

‘Do you remember walking round a lake last night?’

‘Of course.’

‘We saw a woman hit a ball into the water. Her dog swam after it.’

‘Yes, I remember.’ Her voice had softened a little.

‘There was a bench,’ I said. ‘Meet me there at seven o’clock. Will you be all right till then?’

‘I think so. But what —’

‘Don’t ask me anything else. Just meet me there tonight. At seven.’

I put the phone down and then leaned back against the cushions. I wondered if Luke had betrayed Odell in order to save that girlfriend of his. Judging by what Odell had told me, it would have been in keeping with his character. Or perhaps, in the end, she had brought disaster on herself. She had broken the rules too many times, and Croy was guilty of having indulged her. Not that it mattered much. When we met that evening, I was going to suggest that she stayed with me for a few days. She could stay as long as she wanted.

Moments later, I seemed to wake up again, which puzzled me, since I wasn’t aware of having gone back to sleep. Outside, the church clock chimed the half-hour, its notes trembling, forlorn. I remembered my appointment with Odell. Jumping to my feet, I hurried out to the kitchen. The oven said 5:32.

I returned to the living-room, switched on a lamp. Thinking back to the phone-call, it struck me how unlike herself Odell had sounded. It would be the shock. After all, her whole existence had been disrupted. Though I sympathised with her — I had a pretty clear idea of what she would be going through — I couldn’t suppress a feeling of excitement. First Vishram’s offer of a job, now Odell’s predicament: both unexpected, to put it mildly, and yet the one dovetailed with the other in a way that was almost symbiotic. A future was beginning to open out before me, a future I could actually imagine. Odell would stay at my place. I would nurture her as she had nurtured me.

How beautifully things had turned around!

Night has fallen on the city like black snow. I sit in the appointed place and wait for her. It doesn’t matter if she’s late. My patience knows no boundaries. In fact, I don’t even think of it as patience; I have no anxiety, no sense of time.

While I was on the phone to her, I came up with a plan. I’m going to forge papers that will give her the right to stay in the Red Quarter. Then no one will be able to harm her. She’ll be safe. That’s why I’ve decided to take the job Vishram offered me. It will make things easier. No, it will make things foolproof.

To live with her, that’s all that interests me. To live with her — and perhaps, after a while, to have a child. We would be undermining the system, of course — its ethos, its integrity … We’d be making a mockery of it. I don’t care, though, not any more. I owe the system nothing.

Imagine what Victor would say if he were still alive!

I tilt my head back until it’s on a level with the sky. Such clarity up there. The stars seem to echo the freckles on her face. Like one of those road signs in the country. I smile to myself and shake my head. In the faint stirring of the air I can feel her breath, her gift — her mystery.