Weaveworld

  ‘Are you living alone then?’

  ‘Yes,’ he’d say.

  ‘It’s a big house for one. You must find it difficult cleaning.’

  ‘No, not really.’

  He’d get a quizzical look from the questioner. Then he’d say:

  ‘I like dust,’ knowing the remark would fuel the tittle-tattle, but unable to lie for their benefit. And he could see, as he spoke, the way they smiled inside, filing the remark away for regurgitation over the laundry.

  Oh, he was Mad Mooney all right.

  2

  This time, there was no forgetting. His mind was too much a part of his lost Wonderland for it to slip away. The Fugue was with him all day, every day; and through the nights too.

  But there was little joy in remembering. Only an all but unbearable ache of loss, knowing that a world which he’d longed for all his life was gone forever. He would never again tread its rapturous earth.

  The how and why of this loss were somewhat hazy, particularly when it came to events in the Gyre. He recalled in some detail the battle at the Narrow Bright, and his plunging through the Mantle. But what had happened subsequently was just a series of disconnected images. Things sprouting, things dying; his blood, dancing down his arm in a little ecstasy; the brick at his back, trembling …

  That was about all. The rest was so vague he could scarcely conjure a moment of it.

  3

  He knew he needed some diversion from his grief, or he’d simply dwindle into a melancholy from which there would be no emerging, so he looked around for a new job, and in early July got one: baking bread. The pay was not good, and the hours were anti-social, but he enjoyed the work – which was the antithesis of his labours at the insurance firm. He didn’t have to talk much, or concern himself with office politics. There was no rising in the ranks here, just the plain business of dough and ovens. He was happy with the job. It gave him biceps like steel, and warm bread for his breakfast.

  But the diversion was only temporary. His mind went back all too often to the source of his suffering, and suffered again. Such masochism was perhaps the nature of his species. Indeed that belief was supported by the reappearance of Geraldine in the middle of July. She turned up on the doorstep one day and stepped into the house as if nothing had ever happened between them. He was glad to see her.

  This time, however, she didn’t move in. They agreed that returning to that domestic status quo could only be a retrograde step. Instead she came and went through the summer on an almost daily basis, sometimes staying over at Chariot Street, more often not.

  For nigh on five weeks she didn’t ask him a single question about events the previous spring, and he in turn volunteered no information. When she eventually did raise the subject, however, it was in a manner and context he hadn’t expected.

  ‘Deke’s telling everyone you’ve been in trouble with the police …’ she said, ‘… but I told him: not my Cal.’

  He was sitting in Brendan’s chair beside the window, watching the late summer sky. She was on the couch, amid a litter of magazines.

  ‘I told them, you’re no criminal. I know that. Whatever happened to you … it wasn’t that kind of trouble. It was deeper than that, wasn’t it?’ She glanced across at him. Did she want a reply? It seemed not, for before he could open his mouth she was saying:

  ‘I never understood what was going on. Cal, and maybe it’s better I don’t. But…’ She stared down at the magazine open on her lap, then back up at him. ‘You never used to talk in your sleep,’ she said.

  ‘And I do now?’

  ‘All the time. You talk to people. You shout sometimes. Sometimes you just smile.’ She was a little embarrassed confessing to this. She’d been watching him as he slept; and listening too. ‘You’ve been somewhere, haven’t you?’ she said. ‘You’ve seen something nobody else has.’

  ‘Is that what I talk about?’

  ‘In a sort of way. But that’s not what makes me think you’ve seen things. It’s the way you are. Cal. The way you look sometimes …’

  That said, she seemed to reach an impasse, and returned her attention to the pages of the magazine, flipping the pages without really looking at them.

  Cal sighed. She’d been so good with him, so protective: he owed her an explanation, however difficult it was.

  ‘You want me to tell you?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Yes. I do.’

  ‘You won’t believe it,’ he warned.

  ‘Tell me anyway.’

  He nodded, and took up the story that he’d come so near to spilling the previous year, after his first visit to Rue Street.

  ‘I saw Wonderland …’ he began.

  4

  It took him three quarters of an hour to give her the outline of all that had happened since the bird had first flown from the loft; and another hour to try and fine-tune his account. Once begun, he found himself reluctant to leave anything out: he wanted to tell it all as best he could, as much for his own benefit as for Geraldine’s.

  She listened attentively, looking up at him sometimes, more often staring out of the window. Not once did she interrupt.

  When he was finally finished, the wounds of bereavement reopened by the telling, she said nothing, not for a long time.

  Finally he said: ‘You don’t believe me. I said you wouldn’t.’

  Again, there was silence. Then she said: ‘Does it matter to you if I do or I don’t?’

  ‘Yes. Of course it matters.’

  ‘Why, Cal?’

  ‘Because then I’m not alone.’

  She smiled at him, got up, and crossed to where he sat.

  ‘You’re not alone,’ she said, and said no more.

  Later, as they slipped into sleep together, she said:

  ‘Do you love her? … Suzanna, I mean?’

  He’d expected the question, sooner or later.

  ‘Yes,’ he said softly. ‘In a way I can’t explain; but yes.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ she murmured in the darkness. Cal wished he could read her features, and know from them if she was telling the truth, but he left any further questions unasked.

  They didn’t speak of it at all thereafter. She was no different with him than she’d been before he told her: it was almost as if she’d put the whole account out of her mind. She came and went on the same ad hoc basis. Sometimes they’d make love, sometimes not. And sometimes they’d be happy; or almost so.

  The summer came and went without much disturbing the thermometer, and before the freckles had a chance to bloom on Geraldine’s cheeks, it was September.

  5

  Autumn suits England; and that autumn, preceding as it would the worst winter since the late forties, came in glory. The winds were high, bringing passages of warm rain interspersed with stabs of liquid brightness. The city found a lost glamour. Clouds the colour of slate piled up behind its sunstruck houses; the wind brought the smell of the sea; brought gulls too, on its back, dipping and weaving over the roofs.

  That month Cal felt his spirits rise again – seeing the Kingdom of the Cuckoo shine, while above it the skies seemed charged with secret signs. He began to see faces in the shreds of clouds; heard codes tapped out by rain-drops on the sill. Something was surely imminent.

  He remembered Gluck too, that month. Anthony Virgil Gluck, collector of anomalous phenomena. He even thought of contacting the man again, and went so far as to dig Gluck’s card out from the pocket of his old trousers. He didn’t make the call however, perhaps because he knew he was ripe to believe any pretty superstition if it promised miracles, and that wouldn’t be wise.

  Instead he kept his eye on the sky, day and night. He even bought himself a small telescope, and began to teach himself the whereabouts of the constellations. He found the process reassuring. It was good to look up during the day and know that the stars were still above his head, even though he couldn’t see them. It was doubtless the same for countless other mysteries. That they shone, but the world shone more brightly, a
nd blinded him to them.

  And then, in the middle of October (the eighteenth, in fact; or rather, the early morning of the nineteenth) he had the first of the nightmares.

  II

  REPRESENTATIONS

  1

  ight days after the destruction of the Fugue and all it had contained, the remnants of the Four Families – in all, maybe a hundred individuals – assembled to debate their future. Though they were survivors, they had little reason to celebrate the fact. With the Weaveworld’s passing they’d lost their homes, their possessions, and in many cases their loved ones too. All they had, as reminders of their former happiness, was a handful of raptures, much weakened with the Fugue’s defeat. These were small comfort. Raptures could not wake the dead, nor keep the corruptions of the Kingdom at bay.

  So; what were they to do? There was a voluble faction –led by Balm de Bono – that argued to make their story public; to become, in essence, a cause. There was merit in the idea. Perhaps the safest place to be was in plain sight of the human world. But there was substantial opposition to the scheme, fuelled by the one possession circumstance could not take from these people: pride. Many of them stated bluntly that they’d rather die than throw themselves on the mercy of Cuckoos.

  Suzanna had a further problem with the idea. Though her fellow humans might be persuaded to believe the Kind’s tale, and sympathize, how long would their compassion last? Months?; a year, at most. Then they’d turn their attention to some new tragedy. The Seerkind would be yesterday’s victims, tainted by celebrity but scarcely saved by it.

  The combination of her argument and the widespread horror at humbling themselves to the Cuckoos was sufficient to outweigh the opposition. Determined to be civilized in defeat, de Bono conceded.

  It was the last time the etiquette of debate shaped the night’s proceedings, as the meeting grew steadily more heated. The escalation began with a call from a harried, grey-faced man that they put aside all pretence to bettering their lot and concentrate on revenging themselves on Shadwell.

  ‘We’ve lost everything,’ he said. ‘The only satisfaction we’ve got left is seeing that bastard dead.’

  There were voices raised in protest against this defeatism, but the man demanded the right to be heard.

  ‘We’re going to die out here,’ he said, his face knotted up. ‘All we’ve got left are a few moments … to destroy the ones who did this to us.’

  ‘Seems to me this is no time for a vendetta,’ Nimrod said. ‘We have to think constructively. Plan for the future.’

  There was some ironic laughter amongst the gathering, above which the voice of the would-be avenger rose:

  What future? he said, almost triumphant in his despair. ‘Look at us!’ There were many downcast eyes at this; they knew all too well what a forlorn sight they made. ‘We’re the last of the few. There won’t be any coming after us, and we all know it.’ He turned on Nimrod. ‘I don’t want to talk about the future,’ he said. ‘That’s just asking for more grief.’

  ‘That’s not true –’ Suzanna said.

  ‘Easy for you to say,’ he retorted.

  ‘Shut your mouth, Hamel,’ Nimrod shouted.

  ‘I won’t!’

  ‘She came here to help us.’

  ‘We’ve had enough help from her to kill us!’ Hamel yelled back.

  His pessimism had found a good number of supporters.

  ‘She’s a Cuckoo,’ one of them now piped up. ‘Why doesn’t she go back where she belongs?’

  Part of Suzanna was ready to do just that: she had no desire to be the target for so much bitterness. Their words stung. More than that, they stirred another fear: that somehow she could have done more than she had; or at least done it differently. But she had to stay, for de Bono, and Nimrod, and all the others who looked to her for guidance in the Kingdom. The fact was that all Hamel had argued made a sad sense to her. She could see how easy it would be to take strength from hating Shadwell, and so be diverted from the losses they’d sustained. They more than she, of course; and that thought she had to keep uppermost in her mind. She’d lost a dream she’d had a few precious moments to indulge. They’d lost their world.

  A new voice now entered the controversy; one she was surprised to hear: that of Apolline. Suzanna hadn’t even been aware of the woman’s presence in the room until she rose from a cloud of tobacco smoke and addressed the company.

  ‘I’m not going to lie down and die for anyone,’ she said. ‘Especially not you, Hamel.’

  Her defiance echoed that of Yolande Dor, back in Capra’s House: it seemed always to be the women who argued most vehemently for life.

  ‘What about Shadwell?’ somebody said.

  ‘What about him?’ said Apolline. ‘You want to go kill him, Hamel? I’ll buy you a bow and arrow!’

  The remark won over-enthusiastic laughter from some quarters, but only served to infuriate the opposition more.

  ‘We’re practically extinct, sister,’ Hamel replied, his scorn lavish. ‘And you’re not too fertile these days.’

  Apolline took the taunt in good humour.

  ‘Want to try me?’ she said.

  Hamel’s lips curled at the suggestion.

  ‘I had a wife –’ he said.

  Apolline, taking her usual pleasure in offending, jiggled her hips at Hamel, who spat in her direction. He should have known better. She spat back, only more accurately. Though the missile was harmless enough he responded as though he’d been stabbed, throwing himself towards Apolline with a cry of rage. Somebody got between them before he could land a blow, and he struck out instead at the peace-maker. The assault ended any lingering pretence to civilized debate: the whole assembly began shouting and arguing, while Hamel and the other man traded punches amongst the overturned chairs. It was Apolline’s pimp who parted them. Though the fight had lasted no more than a minute, both had taken a beating, and were bleeding at mouth and nose.

  Suzanna watched with a heavy heart as Nimrod attempted to calm proceedings. There was so much she wanted to talk with the Kind about: problems upon which she needed their advice; secrets – tender and difficult – which she wanted to share. But while things were so volatile she feared voicing these matters would simply be further fuel for dissension.

  Hamel took his leave, cursing Suzanna, Apolline and all who – as he put it – ‘sided with the shit’. He didn’t go unaccompanied. Two dozen left with him.

  There was no serious attempt to return to the debate after this eruption; the meeting had effectively been brought to a halt. No one was in any mood to make balanced decisions, nor were they likely to be so, at least until a little time had passed. It was concluded, therefore, that the survivors would disperse, and lie low in any safe place they could find. There were so few of them left that melting amongst the populous would not prove too difficult. They’d wait out the winter, until the reverberations had died down.

  2

  Suzanna parted from Nimrod after the meeting, leaving instructions with him as to her whereabouts in London. She was exhausted; she needed to rest her head awhile.

  After two weeks back at home, however, she discovered that attempting to restore her energies by doing nothing was a sure route to lunacy, and instead returned to work at the studio. It proved a wise move. The problems of re-establishing a working rhythm distracted her from dwelling too much on the losses and failures of recent times; and the very fact of making something – even if it was only pots and plates – answered the need she had to begin again. She’d never been so aware of day’s mythic associations as now, of its reputation as the first stuff, the base matter from which story-book nations had taken shape. Her skill could only manage pots not people, but worlds had to begin somewhere. She worked long hours, with just the radio and the smell of the day for company, her thoughts never completely free of melancholy, but lighter than she’d dared hope.

  Hearing that she was back in town, Finnegan appeared on her doorstep one afternoon, spruce as ever, to invite he
r out to dinner. It was strange to think of his waiting for her while she’d been adventuring; and touching too. She accepted his invitation, and was more thoroughly charmed by his company than she ever remembered being. He, forthright as ever, said that they were made for each other, and should marry immediately. She told him she made a rule of never marrying bankers. The next day he sent flowers, and a note saying that he’d relinquish his profession. They saw each other regularly thereafter. His warmth and easy manner were the perfect diversion from the darker thoughts that still threatened to intrude when she had time to think.

  Every now and then, through the summer months and into the early autumn, she had some brief contact with members of the Kind, though they were kept to the minimum, for safety’s sake. The news seemed to be good. Many of the survivors had returned to the vicinity of their ancestors’ homes, and found niches there.

  Better news still, there was no sign of either Shadwell or Hobart. There were rumours that Hamel had instigated a search for the Salesman, and had given up after failing to uncover a single clue as to the enemy’s whereabouts. As for the remnants of his army – those Seerkind who’d embraced the Prophet’s visions – they’d been the authors of their own punishment, waking from their evangelical nightmare to find it had destroyed all they held dear.

  Some had sought forgiveness from their fellows, and had arrived, shamefaced and despairing, at that controversial meeting. Others, the grapevine confirmed, had been overcome by remorse, and had spiralled into dereliction. Some had even taken their own lives. There were yet others, she’d heard – the born blood-letters amongst the Kind – who’d left the battlefield regretting nothing, and gone out into the Kingdom in search of further violence. They would not have to look far.