The divide, p.8
The Divide, page 8
‘Job? Sure, a job,’ I said. Noah was beginning to sound almost like a government poster. ‘Yes, I know a job is found for everyone if they can’t find their own. But we know that might mean having to move to the countryside and work on a farm if you are able-bodied or working in a windowless basement on filing and retrieval systems if you aren’t.’
He did not reply to that, just said, ‘And freedom to wander the streets at all hours of the night being preyed on by rapists and murderers? Is that freedom?’
‘That’s one view, I suppose,’ I replied. ‘But very loaded.’
As the sun rose higher in the sky it was getting too hot to sit out there, exposed. We started heading back up the hill, but on the far side of the park from the thickly wooded patch where the Astronomy Club had met. I stared across at those trees then forced myself to look forwards, up to where children were running and shrieking at each other in the playground. I could not let this go, though; I needed to know what he was thinking these days.
‘But are they happy? The people who live there, in Anglia, are they happy?’
Noah slowed, looked ahead then back at his feet and picked up the pace again. ‘Yes, of course they are happy. Why would they not be?’ He looked at his watch. ‘Anyway, time for a cuppa, surely. Let’s get home.’
‘D’you know? I think I’ll do a bit of a jog. Just one circuit,’ I said.
‘Huh, really? Don’t start getting too fit and healthy on me now.’ He pulled me to him for a quick bear hug. ‘And don’t overheat!’ Then he headed for the gate.
I started off with a gentle jog, just heading casually round in a wide arc, under the trees at the top of the park, round and out onto Cheney Lane and back in at the gate further down. There were few people around, and they were all in the distance. I circled, at a sort of cartoon-like, slow-motion jog, the copse where the Astronomy Club had met. I spiralled in, ducked in among the trees and worked my way through to the thick jumble of brambles. Silence. No recent signs of footprints or freshly snapped twigs. Did they come here regularly? Would they ever be back here again? It had to be worth a try. I took the pen and tiny notebook out of my pocket and scribbled, When can I see you? P, and thrust it into the deepest tangle of the briars, where I imagined the entrance might be.
Back home, I headed for the shower, but it would not give me anything better than lukewarm, so I did not linger long. I could hear the printer churning out stuff. Noah was standing over it looking preoccupied.
‘More work?’ I asked.
He looked up. ‘Oh, just SPARAS stuff.’ He had been persuaded by some of our neighbours to become the admin of the South Park Area Repair and Share group, but he seemed to have become more and more involved and was really throwing himself into it.
‘People have started getting their mowers out, and their grass trimmers, and realised they’ve rusted up over the winter, so they’re calling out for spare parts,’ he said.
‘They should try planning ahead,’ I said. I knew he would agree with that. Noah always planned.
‘Absolutely.’ He stacked his papers beside the printer and headed for the kitchen. ‘Lunch?’
‘Do we deserve lunch?’ I asked. ‘We had a big breakfast.’
He put his arms around me. ‘We always deserve lunch.’
‘I wonder what they have for lunch in Anglia. Do you think they have Beluga caviar and Iberian bellota ham, washed down with vodka and champagne?’
Noah turned towards the fridge. ‘Why are you always thinking about life over there? We live here. We like it here. Okay, so it’s a bit chaotic, but it’s our home. Just leave it at that, will you?’
‘Sure,’ I said. No need to overreact, is what I thought. ‘And look, here are some beans.’
He fell asleep later, in front of an old movie from the twenties – some ridiculous action thing which must have been blasting at a hundred decibels through his earbuds, but sometimes he could sleep through anything. I decided to sit on the balcony in the last of the sunshine and catch up with some reading. I started with the SPARAS newsletter Noah had just printed out. It was dull: people offering to sew, oil, grease, crochet, weld, hammer, saw and nail. Other people asking if anyone could sew, oil, grease, crochet, weld, hammer, saw or nail. The last page, however, was something different. Something that was perhaps not meant to be there. Maybe it had got stuck to the others; maybe it had been left by mistake in the photocopier. And the logo sent a cold shiver through my body: it was the striking design of the two snakes intertwined, their heads rising vertically, and the few words I read before the sheet was snatched from my hand – the few of you; special ones; maintaining control; suppression of… and, at the end, the name Nadia – left me confused, stunned. I turned. The sheet of paper had been grabbed by Noah, awake and behind me.
‘What was that?’ I asked his retreating back.
‘Oh, just – nothing really.’
‘Nothing? But—’
But he was walking away. ‘I don’t know. Must be an old piece of paper – maybe came in with some leaflets. I dunno.’
Really?
Work was very quiet all that week. Marcus had quietly redistributed some of Suyin’s tasks. We did not even talk about her very much, over tea, as there was not much to say. I rang Lucas, but there was not much he could say either. The children were still in Swindon, staying with his sister; he had contacted a human rights lawyer who had said the same as the other one: just sit tight.
I stayed late in the museum on the Friday evening, finishing off paperwork. The building was dim and my footsteps echoed under the vast ceilings of the galleries as I walked to the main doors and outside to retrieve my velo. It was an unusually chilly evening for spring and I was tired. Someone pushed roughly past me as I waited at the junction on St Giles and I found myself almost knocked off. I shouted a few choice words at the retreating back of whoever it was, but they rapidly disappeared.
The Cowley Road was busy. The road that never sleeps, some people call it with heavy irony, since after curfew it must stand silent and empty. Trams flowed silently and steadily along the centre and a few hopeful restaurant owners had brought their chairs and tables out onto the walkway and enticed some hardy customers. Some of the shops also spilled their produce, on stepped racks, out through their doors to try to catch the last shoppers of the day. I weaved around vegetable stands and lines of shoes or second-hand books, between shopkeepers and café owners holding shouted conversations and waving their arms. Yet even amongst all the mayhem, I felt that someone was following me. It was as though I could feel eyes boring into the back of my head; a shadow tracking my every movement. I tried looking over my shoulder, but it brought a risk of crashing into something and there were so many people, moving in all directions, that I just registered a jumble of activity. I swept fast round the corner onto Southfield Road, sped up the first hundred metres or so then stopped, stepped off the velo and turned round. No one. Yet I was unnerved.
In the flat, I shouted hello to Noah as I hung up my jacket. Something crinkled in the left-hand pocket. Before I even thought, I reached in and lifted it out. A crumpled piece of paper which I smoothed out against the wall to read. Astronomy Club, Warneford Meadow, Sunday 9pm. Bring yoga mat if necessary. My immediate reaction was to want to laugh out loud. Yoga mat. Of course. I knew who had written this and I also knew that the shudder of excitement that flowed through me was not just about finding out more about the Astronomy Club and what they did, not just hoping to find out more about what might have happened to Suyin, but also the thought of seeing the Spaniel again.
The weekend progressed, spent mainly by me trying to think of a valid excuse to go out on a Sunday evening. Then it became simpler. Noah had managed to buy tickets for the new Korean movie that was receiving such good reviews, at least good amongst people who liked that sort of thing. It was a very long movie that he knew would have me twitching in my seat after the first ninety minutes, and so he actually seemed a bit relieved when I suggested he take one of his friends from work or Go society rather than me. On my part, I was hugely relieved to have the evening totally to myself.
8
The Dark Politic
The meadow was a glorious, wide-open space that had long ago been saved from development into a thousand student flats. There was a circle in the middle, kept mown short, which was used for tai chi and meditation and stuff. The rest of the grass grew taller, speckled with wild flowers and the occasional tree. The centre circle would have been perfect for stargazing, with an unhindered view of the wide sky above. And as I crossed it that Sunday night, the dark felt almost complete. Looking up into the sky, I blinked away the residue of artificial light still in my eyes and gradually more and more stars showed themselves to me. I wished I knew their names. It was indeed the perfect spot for astronomers, yet nobody was in that circle that evening. Of course not. I walked across, wondering how I would find the Spaniel and the others. But they found me.
Of course they did. Their bush craft and stealth skills were more than impressive; they were non-comprehensible. How could people hide behind blades of grass or behind a one-year-old sapling and not be seen? But these people managed it, these self-styled astronomers. There was a hand on my arm before I even heard a soft footfall, a whisper in my ear before I sensed the larger presence of a man standing behind me.
‘Down here, quickly,’ his voice said.
And I was pushed gently down a spiralling narrow path into a deep glade, invisible until one was right on top of it. There, in a tight circle, sat the members of the group I remembered from last time: the Husky, Basset and Red Setter, as I thought of them, plus others, including a young woman with long, pale, silky hair who I had not seen that first time in South Park. She had perfect, translucent skin and a haughty look in her grey eyes. I dubbed her the Shih Tzu. Each of them looked at me, almost as though they were looking through me, dissecting me.
‘You wanted to speak to us?’ said Husky eventually, those pale-blue eyes glinting in the light given off by the single hurricane lamp.
‘Did I?’
Did I? Did I, honestly, want to see them all? Or was it just Spaniel, who was standing behind me now, and I was very much aware of the warmth of his hand where he still held on to my arm.
‘I have questions,’ I said finally.
She gestured to me to sit amongst them on the tarpaulin and speak, and I surprised myself by finding that I trusted these people, people whose names I did not even know. So I told them of my fears about what might have happened to Suyin, about my increasing worries for Jasmine and about how I wanted to find news of her, about why they thought they knew what life was like in the East, why they thought it was so much worse than we had all been led to believe. They all sat there, nodding and listening. Spaniel had settled down close to the Shih Tzu. Too close. My rambling statements and questions began to dry up, but as a final thought, I asked what the twined snakes symbol might mean.
Most of my questions, which had stumbled at random from my mouth, were met with slight nods from the darkly lit heads around me, suggesting empathy, or at least that they had heard all this before. The snakes symbol question, though, elicited a sudden stillness, a slight intake of breath.
‘Where have you seen this?’ asked Basset.
‘I – I saw it lying around,’ I said lamely, holding back from actually naming Noah, but even as I did so, I realised it was not rational to feel I needed to protect him, if there were no accusations from which to protect him.
Basset leant forward, his deep-brown eyes, floppy dreadlocks and baritone voice confirming for me my choice of his nickname.
‘It is the sign of the Dark Politic,’ he said. ‘The greatest enemy of freedom of speech and action, the insidious controller of our way of thinking, our knowledge of what goes on in other countries.’
There. He had said it out loud, and I did not doubt for a moment the truth of it. The Dark Politic, a phrase that struck fear into the minds of those who knew little about it and, people said, mortal horror into those who knew more. And this had now been linked inextricably to Noah.
‘But… but why would anyone have it?’ I asked.
The faces around me in the darkness looked back at me. And I felt them saying, without using the words, you tell us. Why would anyone have it?
Then, thankfully, Husky changed the subject. ‘So – your sister in the East,’ she said. ‘Jasmine. Do you ever hear from her?’
But my mind was whirring. My belief in who could be trusted and who could not was cracking, breaking into pieces and shifting like a kaleidoscope. Yet it was as though she knew that, the Husky, because she moved over and sat beside me, put her strong hands on my shoulders.
‘I realise you may be hearing things you don’t want to hear,’ she said. ‘That it’s almost as though your world is turning upside down. A lot of us here felt that initially, when we started to hear the truth. And,’ she looked hard into my face, ‘when we started to learn that the revolutionary movement here is far stronger and more widespread than people know.’ There was a general murmur of agreement. ‘But the fact is, Petrichor, you don’t have to believe a word we say. You don’t have to listen to us. You can walk away now and carry on with your old life.’
Of course I could not. I had too many unanswered questions and I believed the Astronomy Club could provide the answers, or at least help me to find them. I just wished that the Spaniel would not find it necessary to sit quite so close to that Shih Tzu. I shook my head, but not in denial, more to straighten out the mishmash of confused thoughts.
‘So your role,’ I asked, ‘is to help people come back? Come back from Anglia?’ I remembered something. ‘So what about…’ I was about to say ‘Spaniel’s’ and realised I did not know what his name was, so I pointed towards him and said, ‘his friend? The one who tried to climb the Divide? Why was he going over?’
I saw heads sink around the circle, as though in a silent mourning.
Basset hound cleared his throat. ‘We’ve been here long enough,’ he said. ‘We need to leave.’
I was back in the apartment well before Noah; a good thing, as I needed time to pull myself together, calm down, wipe the mud and dew off my boots and become whatever passes for normal again. I was annoyed with myself for forgetting to press the Astronomy Club members about what might have happened to Suyin. I could not believe that she was not my top priority and that if I was going to start getting involved with people who were thinking anti-government thoughts and doing anti-government deeds, then I should be asking them to help Lucas.
Noah came in, noisily and huffily kicked off his shoes and shook out and hung up his coat.
‘Breezy out there now,’ he said, coming into the room. By this time, I was settled on the sofa with the screen switched on and a mug of hot tea on the table beside me. An old movie of some sort was showing.
‘What you watching?’
I glanced at the screen where a couple of screechy women were bitching over some ugly wedding dress. ‘Oh. Nothing much.’
He was in the bathroom for a while.
‘So how was it?’ I asked, as he came out.
‘How was what?’
‘The movie, of course.’
‘Oh. Quite good. Yes, quite good.’
‘But you managed to sit through it all, so it must have been more than quite good. Was there any sort of plot?’
‘Of course there was a plot.’ He sounded ratty and moved around, putting away plates. ‘I’m exhausted,’ he said, faking a yawn. ‘I’m off to bed.’
I sat for a long while, wondering what all that was about. Something seemed wrong. Had he even been to the moviehouse? And if not, where had he been and who had he been with? The name Nadia crept back into my mind. I had never before pictured him with another woman, but now I was not sure of anything.
In the museum, Marcus made us settle into a new routine of staying in our offices or gathering in a group for meetings and tea breaks.
‘Don’t be seen in pairs,’ he told us. ‘Don’t let anyone say they saw you whispering in corners.’
‘The Subgarda always hang out in pairs,’ muttered Liv. ‘No one complains about them.’
But we all saw the sense of it. There was a definite feeling, almost a stench, of suspicion in the museum, as though half the people there were spies and the other half were the spied upon, without anyone knowing who was what.
And so life went on: the new constraints becoming the new normal. Until one day I answered the phone to the man at the entrance hall and found myself hearing that a delivery had arrived for me.
I tried to walk with dignity down the stairs. Do not rush, do not look overly excited, I told myself above the loud thumping of my heart. Was it the figurine? Two delivery men and four Garda: this was completely normal for a package coming from Anglia but still was unusual enough to cause people arriving for work, or families coming for an early museum visit, to swerve aside, giving a very wide berth to the whole tableau of disgruntled delivery drivers, aggressive but bored-looking Garda, a hopefully cool and collected, not showing how ridiculously inwardly thrilled she was, museum employee and metre-square wooden box. It was indeed the marble figurine, and after a fuss over documents and signing and counter-signing, my precious cargo was carried to the basement.
Of course, some of the others – Alberto, the eager intern, Liv and Aarav – wanted to be there for the unwrapping. I understood that, really I did, but I needed to be on my own for this. If Suyin had been there, that would have been different; I would by now have taken her totally into my confidence, I knew that. So I had to make excuses to them all, giving various spurious reasons why the unwrapping needed to wait.
