Arcadia (27 page)

Silvia sits down by his feet. “Now you miss where you come from, yes?”

He doesn't want to say anything to her.

She rolls her neck, unstiffening. “You know something, Rory? I look at you and I see myself.”

By now he ought to be used to her never saying what you think she's going to say, but it startles him yet again.

“I was nine years old,” she says. “I think. Maybe ten. The same as you. One morning I wake up and I'm all on my own. I remember it like yesterday, how it feels. Who will look after me? What can I do? You can't imagine the next day. You think it's impossible, you're not going to live. I'm not talking about when they took me away from the orphanage. That time they put me with people at least. I'm talking about another part of my story, one I don't tell you yet. When I'm far from where I came from, in a strange country, no friend, no family, no one. I lost that morning the only person I loved, like mother and father and sister and brother all in one person. I was a small girl completely alone in the world. You don't believe me? It's true.” She taps his legs, almost in irritation. “And for me there was no Silvia Ghinda talking to me, telling me, I know what it's like for you. No one at all. Only one person I met that day who spoke to me.”

This is such an odd thing for her to finish with that he looks around after a while to see whether something's interrupted her. He finds her staring at him, the late sun making her face glow rust-colored like the cliffs.

“But you don't know about him,” she says, “do you.”

“Me,” he says, “No, why would I?”

She sighs. “Anyway. And after all that, here I am. Twenty years later and many hundred kilometers away. Still living, you see. You too. You will go on. Some days you feel you've come to the end of the road, you can't go anymore, but the next day it's different. OK?”

“OK,” he says. It's very hard not to say what she wants you to say when she's staring at you.

“Me and Lino, we travel a long way together, I told you. Many many months. Many places much worse than this. At the end of every day it's the same: find a safe place, find food. Sleep safe, be ready for the next day.” She stands up: Per's coming back. “We know how to do it. At the beginning we make mistakes. Now, never. Tonight we'll be OK. Tomorrow we'll be OK. We go on. You're like Roma now, hmm? Traveling people.”

He has a terrible vision of the rest of his life being like today, queasy, terrifying, trudging bewildered through wastelands carrying sacks for Silvia and Per and Lino.

She ducks close and whispers in his ear, “But we're close to the end now,” she says, to him only. “Very, very close.”

A sharp whistle comes from somewhere above. “Ah, Lino!” Silvia says, and just like that she's up and away, as if that's it, she's bored of trying to make him feel better. Per mutters something to her and the two of them head away among the buildings, stamping down nettles and sickly grass. No one gives him a second look. It's hard to be miserable when no one notices you doing it. He doesn't like being the last one left in sight of the tied-up dead man on the beach, so after a moment he decides he'd better follow them. A familiar smell stops him as he picks up one of the sacks. He pokes inside the top of it and finds a loaf of Libby's spelt bread.

  *  *  *  

After a lot of trudging around between abandoned cars and mounds of bramble the gang settle on a forlorn bungalow at the very edge of the village, the last house before it surrenders to the tangle of plant matter tumbling down the hill like a fetid green glacier. Inside it's thick with rat droppings and dust and pollen and leaves. There's a room with the remains of two chairs and a sofa. They look as if a goat's tried to eat them. A grey-white kitchen machine's lying on its side with cords trailing out of it like tails.

It's not even the ruin of a house. It bears the same relationship to a house as the crow-mangled flappy puff of flesh on top of the dead men on the beach bears to a human head. The back half of it has collapsed in a heap of brick and chunks of plaster. This is a good thing, apparently, because it means they can light a fire on the floor and let the smoke straight out. Rory can't believe they're really going to eat and sleep here but no one cares what he believes. They gather leaves and dry sticks and handfuls of flammable rubbish and collect their belongings and open bags and arrange themselves around the floor as if this is what they do every evening. Which, he supposes, it probably is.

In the comics the superheroes have secret lairs full of solemn machinery and grand lonely corners. In the comics they also don't smell. Rory didn't notice it on the boat but now they're crammed in together he can't miss it. Despite all their comings and goings none of the three of them has bothered to fetch a bucket of water, which even he knows is about the first thing you do in the evening, so it's not as if any of them is going to wash either. Though—this thought comes to him slowly, as if there must be something wrong with it—he doesn't actually know where you'd get water here, and, presumably, neither do they.

Silvia wasn't sure they should light a fire but Lino said the two people on horses rode away eastward and he's sure there's no one else nearby. “Look at this boy!” He hugged Rory theatrically. “Cold!” So they've made a pile at the back of the room, right on the floor. It's getting quite dark and uncomfortably chilly. Lino digs around in one of the duffel bags and comes out with a battered black box. He hunches over the tent of twigs in the middle of the pile and is about to open the box—matches, maybe—when Per says, “Let me.”

“Not now,” Silvia says.

Per unfolds the staff from his lap and gets stiffly to his feet. “Yes,” he says. “They do it.”

Lino shrugs and puts the box aside. Silvia sits up. She's a shadow in the room, darker around the edges than the rest of them. “Per,” she says. “It's nearly night. Leave them alone.” But Per's ignoring her, for once. He stands with his legs apart, as if he's on deck again, and thrusts the staff out towards the back of the room, shouting a strange angry word.

“Too long already today,” Silvia says.

Per's only answer is to shout the word again. He jabs the staff into the gloom with a sharp motion, like he's fighting someone invisible.

A fleeting glimmer of uneasy light passes over the unlit fire, gone almost in the same instant it appears.

Per growls with effort and frustration and then shouts a third time.

“
Mamma mia,
” Lino whispers.

This time there's a kind of corkscrew of embers in the air, like the momentary trail of a spinning firework. It twists up with a weird sighing noise and vanishes.

“Per,” Silvia warns.

The big man swings the staff up and grips it in both hands above his head. He strikes it violently down against the floor, once, twice, a third time, shouting the same word each time, and each time louder and angrier until the final blow makes even Silvia flinch. Not a flicker of light disturbs the room. He roars with rage and hurls the staff into the corner, where it thunks against one of the decaying chairs before rolling noisily to a stop. It's the first time Rory's ever seen him let go of it. Per stands there, breathing heavily. No one dares say a word.

Finally Lino picks up his box again and shuffles almost apologetically to the twigs. He unwraps some small smooth things from inside the box and starts striking them against each other, very rapidly, until sparks begin to trickle from his hands. It takes quite a long time for him to coax the sparks onto the dry leaves. While he's nurturing a frail twist of smoke, cradling, puffing, muttering, Per strides slowly across the room and picks up his staff again. He sits down without looking at Silvia.

She leans close to Rory.

“Men,” she whispers, and winks at him.

  *  *  *  

They eat. Nothing's been washed properly so it all tastes of grit and sand. Rory's finally hungry, fiercely hungry as it turns out. There isn't enough food but he knows better than to complain. As well as Libby's bread there are other things from the Abbey cellars. It's hard to imagine how, but Lino's obviously stolen it. They'll have realized, back in the Abbey. Kate and Fi will be furious.

They'll all be there right now, he thinks, sitting in the big room as darkness falls. It'll be just like the evening Ol died, except now it's him who's dead. He's the missing face. He wonders whether his mother's sitting in the corner pale and wasted and not talking to anyone, like Molly was. He wonders whether someone's saying he was a beacon of good humor in dark times. He wonders whether they'll go over to the church on Briar one day to say good-bye to him.

He chews slowly, out of habit, and sneaks glances at his new companions, Per with his squinty eyes and huge shaggy beard looking like a squatting bear, Lino grimacing and picking his teeth, Silvia as dark as fate. They've got things like unzipped sleeping bags to wrap over themselves while they sit. There wasn't one for Rory but Lino found him a padded and hooded coat that's not too big and surprisingly warm. No one talks much until Silvia wipes her hands on her trousers and says, “Now, let's hear your story.”

She means him. “What?”

“You know a little bit of my story now, a little bit of Lino's and Per's. It's your turn.”

The others are all looking at him.

“I don't have a story,” he says.

“Nobody,” Per says. “Just a boy.”

“This is England,” Silvia says. Rory can't tell who she's talking to now. “This is where everything changed in the world. One day's walk from here, two days, is the end of our journey.” She draws a wide circle in the air with her fingers. “The center. You think it's an accident when all of us are here together? Nothing here is a mistake.” Per shrugs: he can't follow so much English, he doesn't understand and doesn't care. “You,” she says, pointing at him: he blinks in the firelight. “You knew nothing, until Lino and me found you. Then the two of us became three.” She mimes the addition, unfolding fingers on her raised hand. “Now we are four. It's the same road. All going together.”

“With no Rory,” Lino says, “nothing.”

“That's right. Without him we would not be here.”

Rory doesn't want to feel a shiver of pride when she says this, but he can't help it. In the silence that follows he stares at his hands. He doesn't want anyone to see that he's pleased.

“Is it so close?” Per says in a thick whisper.

Rory starts. It's as if someone else has spoken. He's never heard Per sound anything other than grumpy before, but suddenly there's longing in his voice, or hunger.

Silvia nods.

“Where?”

“East,” she says. “Not far. Not more than two days. One, I think.”

“For sure?”

She nods again.

Lino, who's been watching this exchange carefully, leaps up and starts dancing back and forth between her and Per and Rory, clapping all of them on the shoulder in turn, talking rapidly and with uncontrollable excitement, squatting down beside them and hugging them one after another. He ends up sticking close to Rory, evidently asking him something over and over again, turning aside only to implore Silvia to translate.

“He says what will you do when we find the ring.” Lino's obviously not satisfied with this translation, and corrects her emphatically, but she smiles as if determined to ignore him and says, “If you could do anything. If you could choose. Lino, he's going to learn how to use his gift, and Per the same. What do you say? You won't tell us your story but maybe you can tell us this instead.” Lino starts to berate her in Italian; she turns to him and with a quick
shh
cuts him off.

They're all looking at him again.

“What d'you mean?” he says.

“If you could wish for anything,” she says, “and it would be true. What would you wish for?”

He stares between them. “So it's like a wishing ring?”

“Maybe like that,” Silvia says. Per's about to grumble something but she silences him too.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Ring of biggest power,” Lino declaims.

“
Shh
!
”

What does he want? Silvia's waiting for him to say something. He thinks of extra chocolate and more TV time but it's like someone else has put those wishes into his head, Ol maybe. Then he thinks of wishing that What Happened could unhappen and everything could go back to how it was in The Old Days. He's heard the women wishing this all the time. Kate tells them not to but Missus Grouse especially goes on and on about it. A lot of them wish that the people they've lost weren't dead. He tries wishing that too, but it still feels like someone else is choosing, not actually him. He thinks about things nobody else can wish for, things which belong only to him, like reading comics or talking to Her, but he can't make them into one big wish. He knows he ought to wish he could go home. His mother, his bed. He can't say that to Silvia, though, it would make him sound like a baby. And anyway—he doesn't know where he gets this thought from: it's almost as if he's plucked it out of Silvia's face, her eyes glimmering as the fire takes hold—it wouldn't even be true.

  *  *  *  

They're going to take turns staying awake in case the people on horses come back. Rory doesn't have to take a turn. Silvia tells him to sleep while she watches. Per and Lino lie down and go to sleep just like that. He can't see how they've done it. It's incredibly uncomfortable. He's spread out a torn piece of carpet long enough and dry enough to curl up on but it's doing nothing to protect him from the hard floor, plus it's scratchy and smells of outside. He's got no pajamas so he's wearing the same clothes he had on all day, and the coat they found for him. They're salty and stiff, and he's cold anyway on the side that's away from the fire. It's noisy in the half-collapsed room too. The fire pops and hisses and there are things scuttling around in the brambles outside. Silvia goes out a couple of times and scrapes around for more things to burn.