Arcadia (2 page)

Lytten, who had paused so that he could make sure that the others really did want to hear what he had written and weren’t just being polite, sipped his beer, then picked up his pile of paper once more. ‘Very well. You can’t say I didn’t give you a choice. Pay attention now.’

*

Jay was trembling and in tears by the time he got back to the fields; he headed for the women working away from the men, instinctively thinking they would be more understanding. With a surge of relief, he saw his mother, the brown scarf knotted around her head to keep off the sun. He shouted and ran, buried himself into her warm and comforting body, shaking and sobbing uncontrollably.

‘What is it? Jay, what’s happened?’

She examined him quickly, checking for injuries. ‘What is it?’ She bent down level with his face and scrutinised him, holding him by the shoulders. The other women gathered round. ‘Had a fright,’ said an old woman there to supervise the younger ones.

Jay was sure they wouldn’t believe him. Who would? They would think he was just trying to get out of work. His mother would be ashamed of him, would say he was letting the family down.

‘What is it?’ his mother said more urgently.

‘I saw … I saw a … I don’t know. I saw someone. Something. Up there. It just appeared in a cave. Out of nothing. Then vanished again.’

There was a titter of nervous laughter; his mother looked alarmed and annoyed at the same time.

‘What do you mean? Where?’

He pointed back up the hill. ‘Beyond the stream,’ he said.

‘In the woods?’

He nodded. ‘I didn’t mean to go there. But I heard a strange noise.’

‘He’s making it up,’ a woman said: Dell, a gossip who never had a good word to say for anyone. She’d once been beautiful, it was said, but the hardness in her face had long since covered any loveliness. Her scorn was enough to make Jay’s mother straighten up with defiance.

‘We’ll go and look,’ she said. ‘Come on, Jay. I’m sure it was just a trick of the light. You had a fright, but don’t worry.’

Her kindness was reassuring and, ignoring the others who clearly now thought this was some sort of childish joke, Jay’s mother took him by the hand. Only one other woman came as well, the eldest of them, who thought it her duty to be present at every disturbance, however minor. Everyone else got back to work.

Jay retraced his steps to the stream, then over it and into the woods. The old widow bowed and muttered to herself to ward off the spirits until they all stood once more, looking into the cave. There was nothing. No sound, no light, and certainly no fairy.

‘It was just here. It really was,’ he said, looking to see whether they were angry or dismissive. He got no hint, though; their expressions were completely unreadable.

‘What did this fairy look like?’

‘A girl,’ Jay said. ‘She had dark hair. She smiled at me. She was so beautiful.’

‘How was she dressed?’

‘Oh, like nothing you have ever seen! A red robe, shiny and glittering, like it was made of rubies.’

‘You’ve never seen a ruby,’ the old widow said. ‘How would you know?’

‘It shone in the light, dazzlingly bright,’ he insisted. ‘It was
wonderful. Then she just disappeared.’

The women looked at each other, then shrugged helplessly. ‘Well, there’s nothing here now,’ his mother said. ‘So I think it would be best to forget about it.’

‘Listen, Jay. This is important,’ said the old widow. She bent down and looked him firmly in the eyes. ‘Not a word. You understand? The sooner this is forgotten the better. You don’t want a reputation for being mad, or a trickster, do you?’

He shook his head.

‘Good. Now, if I hear that you’ve been talking about this, then I’ll give you the biggest beating of your life, and I’m a strong old woman. Now, get your water, and let’s go back to work.’

There was an atmosphere for the rest of the day, an odd division between the men, who knew nothing, worked cheerfully and well, and the women, whose mood was subdued, almost fearful. Jay himself remained shaken; he knew, or rather he hoped, that he had not been dreaming. But he also realised that it was unlikely anyone would ever believe him.

*

Lytten glanced at his companions and smiled briefly. Most were, like him, men in their fifties; all had the care-worn, slightly shabby look of their type. None cared much for elegant clothes, preferring battered tweeds and comfortable, solid shoes. The collars of their shirts were frayed, except for those whose wives turned their shirts before admitting they were beyond repair. The jackets had leather patches sewn onto the elbows to prolong their life; most had socks that had been carefully, and repeatedly, darned. They were, he supposed, his closest friends, people he had known in some cases for decades. Yet he didn’t really think of them as friends, or even as colleagues. He didn’t really know what they were. Just part of his life; the people he spent Saturday with, after some had been in the library and others had worked on the business of teaching for an hour or two.

All of them had a secret passion, which they hid carefully from most of the world. They liked stories. Some had a weakness for detective tales, and had volumes of green-backed Penguins stacked out of sight behind the leather-bound books on Anglo-Saxon history or classical philosophy. Others had an equally fervent and illicit love of science fiction, and adored nothing better than curling up with a tale of interstellar exploration in between lectures on the evolution and reception of the nineteenth-century Russian novel. Others preferred spy stories and adventures, whether Rider Haggard or Buchan or (for the more raffish) James Bond.

Lytten had a weakness for fantastical tales of imaginary lands, peopled (if that was the word) by dragons and trolls and goblins. It was what had drawn him, many years before, into the company of Lewis and Tolkien.

It was an enthusiasm which had taken possession of him when he was thirteen, packed off to bed for four months with measles, then mumps, then chicken pox. So he read. And read, and read. There was nothing else to do; there wasn’t yet even a wireless set to listen to. While his mother kept on bringing him worthy and improving works to read, his father would smuggle in nonsense. Tales of knights and fair maidens, of gods and goddesses, of quests and adventures. He would read, then lie back and dream, improving the stories where he thought the authors had gone wrong. The dragons would become nastier, the women cleverer, the men less boringly virtuous.

Eventually he had started penning such stories himself, but was always too reticent to show them to anyone. He went to war, then became a scholar, a man of intellectual distinction, and the stories were left unfinished. Besides, it was all very well to criticise the works of others, but in fact it was quite hard, he discovered, to tell a story. His first efforts were not that much better than those he so easily faulted.

Gradually he formed a new ambition, and it was this that he was now, on a quiet Saturday in October 1960, going to reveal
in all its as yet unfinished glory to his friends in the pub. He had spent years discussing the efforts of others; now, after much prodding, it was his turn.

He hoped they would be responsive; members had come and gone over the years, and the best had disappeared – Lewis sick in Cambridge, Tolkien in retirement, becoming too famous and too old to write much any more. He missed them; he would have enjoyed watching Lewis’s face.

‘Very well, gentlemen, if you could put your drinks down and pay attention, then I will explain.’

‘About time.’

‘In brief …’

‘Surely not?’

‘In brief, I am creating the world.’

He stopped and looked around. The others seemed unimpressed. ‘No goblins?’ one asked hopefully.

Lytten sniffed. ‘No goblins,’ he said. ‘This is serious. I want to construct a society that works. With beliefs, laws, superstitions, customs. With an economy and politics. An entire sociology of the fantastic.’

‘A story as well, I hope?’

‘Naturally. But stories take place in societies, otherwise they cannot exist. The first must precede the second.’

‘Don’t we have one already? A society, that is.’

‘I want a better one.’

‘Might it not become a bit boring?’ asked Thompson, briefly pulling the pipe out of his mouth to speak. This time he addressed his remarks to the mirror on the far wall. ‘I mean, I suppose you are aiming at the ideal society, but perfection cannot change. How can things happen? If things cannot happen, then you have no story. Anyway, it’s human nature to change, even if for the worse. Otherwise people die of boredom. If you start out perfect, there is nowhere to go but down.’

‘Besides which, of course,’ added Davies, ‘you risk turning into Stalin. A perfect society requires perfect people. The People
are always a terrible disappointment. Not up to it, you know. Damned nuisance, they are. No wonder rulers go mad and turn nasty. You have no doubt read as many Utopias as I have. How many would you want to live in?’

‘True. Anterwold will be a framework for a better society, not a perfect one, which is obviously impossible. Still, I will need your help, my friends. I will, over the next few weeks, bring you the basic outlines of my world. You will tell me whether or not you think it might work. I will modify them until it becomes strong, stable, and capable of dealing with the feeble creatures that are men without collapsing into a nightmare as bad as the one we already have.’

He smiled. ‘In return, I will listen to you again. Persimmon’ – he looked at the man on his left who had not yet spoken – ‘I hope you are driving a coach and horses through the laws of physics? If you would care to remove that look of disapproval at my escapist frivolity, perhaps you would like to tell us what you are doing?’

*

I want a beautiful, open, empty landscape, bathed in sunlight, Lytten thought as he pedalled his old bike home a little later. Gentle rolling hills, green and dotted with sheep. The very ideal of paradise. At least for an English reader. Mountains always contain evil. They are where people die, or are attacked by wild animals or wild people. We think of mountains as beautiful, but then we can rush through them on a warm train. Our attitude would be different if we had to walk up and down them, buffeted by rain or snow.

It is easy to imagine a world where not only can few people read, few need to or want to. Serious reading can become the preserve of a small group of specialists, just as shoe-making or farming is for us. Think how much time would be saved. We send children to school and they spend most of their time learning to read and then, when they leave, they never pick up another
book for the rest of their lives. Reading is only important if there is something worthwhile to read. Most of it is ephemeral. That means an oral culture of tales told and remembered. People can be immensely sophisticated in thought and understanding without much writing.

Such were Lytten’s thoughts as he made his way up the road back to his house. There was bread and cheese in the kitchen; he’d put the kettle on the hob to boil up some water for tea, put coke on the fire and soon enough his study would be warm. No one would disturb him. The doorbell rang rarely; only the tradesmen – the groceries being delivered, the coal man once a month, the laundry man to bring back a sack of damp washing – disturbed his peace, and they were all dealt with by Mrs Morris, who came in three mornings a week to look after him. Most evenings he ate in college, then came home to read or settle down with a record on his extremely expensive record player. An indulgence, but he had always adored music – which is why his imaginary world would place a high value on song.

He felt genuinely affectionate towards many, but needed few. Take Rosie, the girl who fed his cat, for example. Either she had adopted him, or he had adopted her. Or perhaps the cat had been the matchmaker. She came, and often enough they had long chats. He liked her company, found her views and opinions stimulating, for he had no experience of young girls, especially not those of the most recent vintage. The young were very different these days. Flatteringly, Rosie seemed to like him as well and their conversations would start off on some perfectly ordinary subject, then meander into music, or books, or politics. Much more interesting an individual than most of his students or colleagues. She was insatiably curious about everything.

2

Rosie Wilson breathed in the air with appreciation; she was old enough at fifteen (and a bit, she thought fondly) to recognise the first faint tang of winter. Not that she needed such evidence to know it was coming. She was long back at school, after all, and that was a more reliable indicator of the time of year than anything else.

It was Saturday, and she was free until Monday. Of course there were tasks to fill up the time she could have spent enjoying herself. Walking the next-door neighbour’s dog. Doing the shopping. Peeling the vegetables and washing up after meals. Her brother never did any chores. He was at work today and on Sunday would go off with his friends to play football. That was normal. That was what boys did, and she was doing what girls did.

‘I want to play with my friends too,’ she had protested once. It was the wrong thing to say.

‘You don’t have any,’ her brother had snapped back. He was two years older and already had a girlfriend and was earning good money in an ironmonger’s shop. ‘Brainy girls don’t have friends.’

She suspected that her brother’s statement was true; that was why it had hurt, and that was why he had said it. It was her own fault for passing her exams and going to a school where they taught her things. Her parents had almost refused, but she had got her way.

So she shopped, although she took her time, walking along the canal at the end of the road and strolling over the common with the dog first. It was a good dog, obedient and amiable. She tied it
up outside the shops and it would wait patiently for her.

Except that now it had disappeared. She shouted, looked around, and then heard it barking, down by the river bank. ‘Come here! Bad dog!’ she called out, not too seriously, as she walked over to find out what it was up to.