How to Stop Time

  Omai looked a little worried. Touched his face. He was probably wondering how on earth he was going to hide.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘You are exotic.’

  ‘Exotic? What is that word?’

  ‘Different. From far away. Far. Far. Like a pine-apple.’

  ‘A pine-apple? You don’t have pine-apples in England?’

  ‘There are probably about thirty in England. On mantelpieces.’

  He looked confused. The sea splashed gently against the bow of the boat. ‘What is a mantelpiece?’

  Byron Bay, Australia, now

  We sit out on a veranda, surrounded by fairy lights and the indistinct buzz of happy conversation.

  The last time I saw Omai, Australia was, to my mind, a new discovery. And yet Omai is still so recognisably the same. His face has broadened slightly – not fattened, just that broadening that happens with age – and there are a few lines around his eyes that stay there even when he stops smiling, but I think an innocent bystander would put his age at thirty-six. He’s wearing a faded T-shirt with a print of a Frida Kahlo self-portrait, advertising an exhibition of her art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.

  ‘It has been a long time,’ Omai says wistfully. ‘I missed you, dude.’

  ‘I’ve missed you too. Wow. And you say dude now? Suits you.’

  ‘Since the sixties. It’s kind of compulsory here. Surf thing.’

  We are kicking things off with coconut chilli Martinis which Omai has tried before and insists I try too. I can see the sea from here, beyond the stubby palms and the vast beach, glimmering softly under the half moon.

  ‘I’ve never had a coconut chilli Martini before,’ I tell him. ‘That’s the thing with getting older. You run out of new things to try.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he says, still the optimist. ‘I have lived beside one ocean or another most of my life and I have yet to see the same wave twice. It’s the mana, you see. It’s everywhere. It’s never still. It keeps the world new. The whole planet is a coconut chilli Martini.’

  I laugh.

  ‘So how long have you been Sol Davis?’

  ‘Seventeen years, I guess. That’s when I came to Byron.’

  I look around at all the happy Australians enjoying their Friday evening. A birthday is being celebrated. A collective roar of excitement erupts as the cake arrives with three sparklers sticking out of it. There is a shower of applause as the cake lands in front of a woman at the end of the table. She has an oversized badge pinned to her vest top. She is turning forty.

  ‘Just a baby,’ I say.

  ‘Forty,’ says Omai wryly. ‘Remember that?’

  I nod. ‘Yes,’ I say sadly. ‘I remember. You?’

  A sorrow on his face too. ‘Yeah, that was the year I had to leave Tahiti.’

  He looks off into the distance, as if that other time and space could be seen somewhere in the darkness beyond the veranda. ‘I was a man god. The sun shone because of me. I was in league with the weather and the ocean and the fruit in the trees. And you’ve got to remember, back then, before the people of Europe came to Christianise us, well, men gods weren’t so uncommon. God wasn’t something up in the clouds. I mean, look at me, I could pass for a god, right?’

  ‘These Martinis are strong,’ I offer.

  ‘I have probably told you all this before.’

  ‘Probably. A long time ago.’

  ‘Long, long, long, long, long, long.’

  A waitress comes over. I order a pumpkin salad to start and red snapper for main and Omai goes for dishes which, according to the waitress, ‘both have pork belly in them’.

  ‘I know,’ he says, flashing his smile. He is still the best-looking man I have ever seen.

  ‘Just thought I’d point it out, in case you want some variety.’

  ‘It’s still variety. Two different dishes.’

  ‘All right, sir.’

  ‘And two more of these,’ he says, raising his glass.

  ‘Gotcha.’

  He holds the waitress’s gaze. She holds it back.

  ‘I know you,’ she says. ‘You’re the surfer, aren’t you?’

  Omai laughs. ‘It’s Byron Bay. Everyone’s a surfer.’

  ‘No. Not like you. You’re Sol Davis, aren’t you?’

  He nods, looks at me sheepishly. ‘For my sins.’

  ‘Wow. You’re pretty famous around here.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘No, sure you are. I saw you surf that tube. It was amazing. It’s on the internet.’

  Omai smiles politely, but I can sense his awkwardness. After the waitress has gone he stares down at his right hand. He spreads the fingers wide, as if miming a starfish, then closes them together, makes a fist, turns his hand over. His skin is smooth and caramel and young-looking. Ocean-preserved. Anageria-preserved.

  We chat some more.

  Our starters arrive.

  He begins to tuck in. He closes his eyes on the first mouthful and makes appreciative noises. I envy his easy access to pleasure.

  ‘So,’ he says, ‘what have you been up to?’

  I tell him. About my life as a teacher. About my life before. Recent history. Iceland, Canada. Germany. Hong Kong. India. America. Then I talk about 1891. About Hendrich. The Albatross Society.

  ‘It’s people like us. There are lots of us. Well, maybe not lots.’

  I explain about the help you’re given. About the Eight-Year Rule. About albas and mayflies. Omai stares at me, wide-eyed and baffled.

  ‘So what do you do?’ he asks. ‘I mean you?’

  ‘I go where Hendrich, the boss, tells me to go. I do assignments. I bring people in. Even that isn’t so bad. I recently went to Sri Lanka. It’s a comfortable life.’

  Even to my ears ‘comfortable’ sounds like a euphemism.

  He laughs, concerned. ‘Bring them in where?’

  ‘It’s not a particular place. What I mean is: I make people members.’

  ‘Make? How?’

  ‘Well, normally it’s a no-brainer. I explain how the society can protect them, handle identity switches – Hendrich has all kinds of contacts. It’s like a union. Insurance. Except we get paid, just for living.’

  ‘You’re quite the salesman. You really move with the times, don’t you?’

  ‘Listen, Omai. This isn’t a joke. We’re as unsafe now as we’ve ever been.’

  ‘Yeah. And yet, here we still are. Still breathing. In and out.’

  ‘There are dangers. You – right now – are in danger. There is an institute in Berlin. It knows about you. It has, over the years, taken people.’

  Omai laughs. He is actually laughing. I think of Marion, missing, possibly, for all I know, taken, and I feel angry. I feel like he is challenging me, like an atheist in front of a Catholic. ‘Taken people? Wow.’

  ‘It’s true. And it’s not just them these days. There are biotech firms in Silicon Valley and elsewhere who want the ultimate competitive advantage, and we could give it them. We’re not human to them. We’re lab rats.’

  He rubs his eyes. He looks tired, suddenly. I am tiring him.

  ‘Okay. So what do you do for this “protection”? What’s the catch?’

  ‘The catch is, there are certain obligations.’

  He laughs, rubbing his eyes, as if my words are sleep to be shaken off. ‘Obligations?’

  ‘Once in a while you have to do something for the Albatross Society.’

  He laughs louder. ‘That name.’

  ‘Yeah, it is a bit antiquated.’

  ‘What kind of things do you have to do?’

  ‘Different things. Things like this. Talk to people. Try to get them to sign up.’

  ‘Sign up? Are there pieces of paper?’

  ‘No, no, there’s no paper. Just good faith. Trust. The oldest kind of contract.’ I realise how like Hendrich I sound. The last time I had that feeling was Arizona, and that didn’t end well.

  ‘And what happens when peopl
e say no?’

  ‘They don’t, generally. It’s a good deal.’ I close my eyes. I remember firing the gun in the desert. ‘Listen, Omai, I am telling you. You are not safe.’

  ‘So what do I have to do?’

  ‘Well, the whole idea is for people not to gather moss. Hendrich, he’s always on about not getting too attached to people. And it makes sense for people to move on every eight years. Start somewhere new. Become someone else. And you’ve been here more than—’

  ‘I can’t do that. The moving thing.’

  He looks pretty adamant. I know I have to be straight.

  ‘There is no choice. All members of the society have—’

  ‘But I haven’t chosen to become a member of the society.’

  ‘You become a member automatically. As soon as an alba is located they become a member.’

  ‘Alba, alba, alba . . . yada, yada, yada . . .’

  ‘To know of the existence of the society is to be part of it.’

  ‘A bit like life.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘And what precisely does happen if I say no? If I refuse?’

  I wait too long with the answer.

  He leans back in his chair and shakes his head at me. ‘Wow, dude. It’s like the mafia. You’ve joined the mafia.’

  ‘I never opted in,’ I tell him. ‘That’s the whole point. But trust me, it makes sense . . . You see, if one alba is exposed, it endangers all albas. But you know you have to hide. You’ve been hiding. You told me . . .’

  He shakes his head. ‘For thirty years I’ve been in Australia.’

  I contemplate that.

  For thirty years I’ve been in Australia.

  ‘I was told it was twenty.’

  His face hardens a little. This isn’t good. None of this is good. I think of us on the ship, laughing. I think of afterwards, at the Royal Society in London, when Omai insisted I stay there with him. The fun we had. Drinking gin and telling lies to Samuel Johnson and the celebrities of the day. ‘Told? Who by? Have I been watched?’

  ‘I just don’t understand how you managed thirty years. Have you been moving around?’

  ‘Was in Sydney for thirteen years but been in Byron seventeen. Travelled the coast a little. Went up the Blue Mountains. Mainly, though, I’ve been in the same house.’

  ‘And no one’s been suspicious?’

  He stares at me. I can see his nostrils expand and contract with the intensity of his breath.

  ‘People generally see what they want to see.’

  ‘But you’re on the internet, the waitress has even seen it. Someone filmed you. You’re attracting too much interest.’

  ‘You. You still think you have the fire in your hand. I am still the “Other” you want to steer to your will. Well, you can take that fire and put it in the ocean.’

  Steady thyself.

  ‘Jesus, Omai. I’m trying to help you. This isn’t me. I’m just the middle man here. It’s Hendrich. He knows things. He can stop terrible things from happening, but he can also’ – the terrible truth of it occurs to me – ‘he can also make very terrible things happen.’

  ‘Do you know what?’ He pulls out his wallet and delves inside and places some notes on the table and stands up. ‘If it’s not really you I’m talking to, this won’t be rude, will it?’

  And I just sit there after he has walked away. The food comes and I tell the waitress I think he is coming back. But, of course, he doesn’t.

  In honesty, I thought it was going to go differently. I thought we were going to catch up on old times and talk about all the good and horrifying things that had happened that we could once never have imagined. I thought we were going to talk about bicycles or cars or aeroplanes. Trains, telephones, photographs, electric lightbulbs, TV shows, computers, rockets to the moon. Skyscrapers. Einstein. Gandhi. Napoleon. Hitler. Civil rights. Tchaikovsky. Rock. Jazz. Kind of Blue. Revolver. Does he like ‘The Boys of Summer’? Hip-hop. Sushi bars. Picasso. Frida Kahlo. Climate change. Climate denial. Star Wars. The Cuban Missile Crisis. Beyoncé. Twitter. Emojis. Reality TV. Fake news. Donald Trump. The continual rise and fall of empathy. What we did in the wars. Our reasons to carry on.

  But, no, we talked about none of that.

  I had blown it.

  I was, in short, a fucking idiot. And a friendless one.

  People you love never die.

  That is what Omai had said, all those years ago.

  And he was right. They don’t die. Not completely. They live in your mind, the way they always lived inside you. You keep their light alive. If you remember them well enough, they can still guide you, like the shine of long-extinguished stars could guide ships in unfamiliar waters. If you stop mourning them, and start listening to them, they still have the power to change your life. They can, in short, be salvation.

  Omai lives on the edge of town, at 352 Broken Head Road. A one-storey clapboard house.

  You can see the sea from here. Of course you can. Omai would have lived in the sea if he could have done.

  I wait a couple of minutes after knocking. My head is a dull ache. I hear soft noises from inside the house. The door opens a little. An old woman with short white hair peers out from behind the latch chain. Late eighties, I would have said. Face as lined as a map. Standing asymmetrically from arthritis and osteoporosis. Worried, cataract-infested eyes. Luminous yellow cardigan. She is holding an electric tin opener.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I think I might have the wrong address. Sorry for bothering you so late.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I never sleep these days.’

  She is closing the door. Hastily I say it: ‘I’m looking for Sol. Sol Davis. Is this the right address? I’m an old friend. I was having a meal with him tonight and I’m worried I’ve upset him.’

  She hesitates a moment.

  ‘Tom. My name is Tom.’

  She nods. She has heard of me. ‘He’s gone surfing.’

  ‘In the dark?’

  ‘It’s his favourite time to do it. The ocean never goes home. That’s what he always says.’

  ‘Where does he surf?’

  She thinks. Looks down at the cement path in front of her door, as if there is some kind of clue there. ‘Damn my old brain . . . Tallow Beach.’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’

  I sit on the sand and watch him, lit by the full moon. A small shadow rising up a wave. And then I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket.

  Hendrich.

  To not answer it would only make him suspicious.

  ‘Is he with you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I can hear the sea.’

  ‘He’s surfing.’

  ‘So you can talk?’

  ‘I won’t have long. I’m meeting him later.’

  ‘Is he sold?’

  ‘He will be.’

  ‘Have you explained everything?’

  ‘In the process. Not everything.’

  ‘The film of him on YouTube now has four hundred thousand views. He needs to disappear.’

  Omai vanishes under a wave. The head rises up again. It seems the perfect way to live. Riding a wave, falling off, getting back on. So much of life seems to be based around the idea of rising, of building something up – income or status or power – of living a kind of upward life, as vertical as a skyscraper. But Omai’s existence seems as natural as the ocean itself, as wide and open as the horizon. He is on his board again, on his front, paddling with his arms over the swell of the water.

  ‘He will, I’m sure.’

  ‘Oh, I know he will. For all our sakes. It’s not just Berlin. There’s a biotech research firm in Beijing and they’re—’

  I have heard this stuff for over a century. I know I should be concerned, especially with Marion out there somewhere, but it is just another noise in the world. Like water against sand.

  ‘Yes. Listen, Hendrich, I’d better go. I think he’s coming out of the water.’

  ‘Plan A.
That’s all you are, Tom. Remember, there’s always a Plan B.’

  ‘I hear you.’

  ‘You’d better.’

  After the call I just sit there, on the sand. From here the waves sound like breath. Inhale. Exhale.

  Twenty minutes later Omai is out of the water.

  He sees me and keeps walking, carrying his board.

  ‘Hey!’ I follow him up the beach. ‘Listen, I’m your friend. I’m trying to protect you.’

  ‘I don’t need your protection.’

  ‘Who is the woman, Omai? The woman in your house?’

  ‘That’s none of your business. And stay away from my house.’

  ‘Omai. Jesus, Omai. Fuck. This is important.’

  He stops on the rough grass at the fringe of the beach. ‘I have a good life. I don’t want to hide any more. I just want to be myself. I want to live a life of integrity.’

  ‘You can move anywhere in the world. Hawaii. Indonesia. Anywhere you want. They have good surf in a lot of places. The thing with the ocean is it all joins up. It’s all the same mass of water.’ I try to think. I try to find something in our shared past that will break through the stubborn walls of his mind. ‘Can you remember what Dr Johnson told us, that first week after the voyage? At that meal they did for you, at the Royal Society. About integrity?’

  Omai shrugs. ‘It was a long time ago.’

  ‘Come on, don’t you remember? We ate partridge. He told us that you always had to be ready for new knowledge. While knowledge without integrity is dangerous, integrity without knowledge is weak and useless. I’m trying to give you knowledge and all you are giving me back is integrity. Integrity that is going to get you killed and risk everything.’

  ‘And do you want some knowledge, Tom?’

  I gesture a ‘go ahead’.

  He closes his eyes, as if taking a shard of glass from his foot. ‘All right, I will give you some information. I have been like you. I moved around. All over the Pacific. Anywhere questions wouldn’t be asked. Samoa. The Solomon Islands. Lautoka in Fiji. Sugar City. New Zealand. Even went back to Tahiti. Hopping around. Where necessary I formed the right connections. Found little ways into the underground. Got fake documents. Always starting afresh. Wiping the slate twice a decade. Then things started to change.’