The Light Ages (20 page)

‘And who’s
this?’

‘This, Marm, is my friend Robbie.’

‘And where did you get
him
from?’ Marm released Saul and rummaged on a side table to light a cigarette then collapsed back on her sunlit couch. ‘And where are you now living?’

‘Robbie’s from somewhere called Bracebridge, Marm. We’re both up by Caris Yard.’

Ash snowed from the tip of Marm’s cigarette. The sash window was half open. Outside, pigeons were cooing. Marm’s eyes, I saw, as the silence persisted, were restless beneath their painted lids. Like those pigeons, her whole body was shivering slightly.

‘It’ll do for the summer, won’t it … ?’ Saul trailed off, standing in the rucked middle of the carpet where Marm’s embrace had left him. ‘I mean, the Easterlies ..

Another long pause ensued. I breathed more of that medicinal, burning smell as Marm ground out her cigarette in a plant pot.

‘Oh, I’m sure it’ll do
very
nicely. And what kind of work are you doing anyway?’

‘Just around the docks … Collecting things. Well, you know how it is, Marm—it’s money.’

Marm reached to light another quivering cigarette. ‘Of course my darling there’s always
money,’
she said, each word punctuated by a coil within the smoke. ‘Funny old stuff, isn’t it? You can say what you like about all that citizen nonsense, but we need it like the air we breathe …’ Her eyes dulled and drooped as if in sad contemplation of this fact, then brightened as Saul began to reach into the satchel which contained the borrowed pieces we’d been hawking around the stalls all morning.

‘We’ve brought you something …’

Marm was half sitting forward now and half leaning back, like someone caught in a blurry photograph between two stages of movement. Her whole body was quivering. Indeed, I thought, as she hunched forward on that sunlit couch and the pigeons chimed and the smoke and the dust played around her, there was something that was ill-defined about Marm despite all her obvious physical presence. As if you’d have to travel a long way through those folds of flesh and robe before you actually reached her real substance.

‘A gift
now, perhaps, is
always
pleasant … Always something to be waited for …’ Maim was talking to herself in a breathy whisper as Saul unfolded the waxed wafers which contained a scrap of Dutch lace. ‘A surprise without
asking …’
Maim was still talking, and her trembling had become a rocking motion as she leaned closer to inspect the contents of the paper flower which Saul had laid before her on the table. The smoke of her cigarette made agitated leaps. ‘You see, your Marm loves a gift, don’t she?’ And there it was, a fine lace choker, beaded with tiny fragments of jet and lapis lazuli. ‘Imagine all the
work,
my dearie. Those aching hours with the bobbin …’

Snatching it from Saul’s fingers, she raised it to her neck and fumbled with the bead clasp. ‘Will you help your Marm, my darling. These things are so … It’s a little tight. But never mind. It’s the thought that counts. That’s what they all say isn’t it?’ The thing vanished into the folds of her chin. ‘And Marm’s so
pleased
you’re here. Yes she is. So
sweet
of you … Did I tell you that … ?’ I watched as Marm drew Saul into another embrace. She was still talking, but it was hard now to make out the words as she fingered the curls on his neck.

Eventually Saul straightened and looked across at me. He coughed and smoothed back his hair.

Marm studied the end of a new cigarette. ‘But I know,’ she said, ‘
I’m
not the one you’ve come to see here. All the girls are still sweet on you, Saul. Always were, weren’t they? So why don’t you just toddle off and leave your friend with me here. What was it … ?’ She slowly fixed me with her gaze. ‘Was it
Robbie
from
Bracebridge?’

‘But, Marm, you can’t—’

‘Off you go, my darling!’ Ash billowed about her. ‘And you did say the lad was your best friend. So how else can he and Marm possibly get familiar ..

I shot Saul a despairing glance before he closed the door, then watched with a dry mouth as Marm heaved herself back to her feet.

‘Of course,’ she muttered as she waddled across the rugs,
‘I’ve
heard of Bracebridge, even if
he
hasn’t.’ Her hands, I noticed, grew surprisingly still as she tilted the syrupy contents of a decanter into a thimble-sized tumbler on a side table. ‘How could I not have, being in this business?’

I cleared my throat. ‘To be honest, Marm, I’m really not sure-’

‘You mean my son hasn’t told you?’ She tipped back the thimble, suppressed a small shudder. ‘But then, looking at you, I doubt if you’d have understood … Not without a little demonstration.’ Moving close, Marm patted my worn jerkin, running her painted nails along the seams until the stitching crackled. ‘At least you don’t seem to have any lice on you. You barely stink. And Saul’s right—you’re really not doing so very badly down in the Easterlies, although I’m sure some other people are doing worse as a result.’

She laid a hand on my shoulder. It was my turn to suppress a shudder.

‘You see, Robbie, this house isn’t any of the things you might imagine. We’re not like the dollymops in the street, or the tarts in the pox houses …’ She smiled. ‘But then, you still hardly know what
they
are, do you? But take a tip from me and forget
love.
What we sell here is far more precious. This is a
dream
house
,
and we sell dreams. And the dreams come from Bracebridge, just like you do—or some of them anyway. Isn’t that a sweet coincidence?’ She refilled her glass thimble and sipped it. ‘I’m disappointed, really, that Saul doesn’t remember the name of the place, all the years he was here under its spell. But then he’s been trying hard to forget, hasn’t he? Neglecting his Marm, all this rubbish about people all being the same, never coming here,’ she continued with a pout. ‘Not that Marm doesn’t like a present …’ She worked a finger around her neck. There was a sharp snap. She dropped the lace choker to the floor. ‘I’m sure this is what every hovel whore and fishwife is wearing. Pity, really, it’s not quite the look of this Age …’ She hurrumphed. ‘But you still don’t really know what we do here, do you? Would you like to know?’

Marm rubbed my shoulders gently, pressing me down towards a chair in the corner. It was heaped with cushions and a headrest, and bore the smell of other bodies. In a daze, I slumped back and watched as Marm busied herself. She struck a match and set its flame to a small spirit stove. Medicinal breezes wafted as she unstoppered jars and extracted their contents with fine long-handled spoons. A small retort filled with black-brown syrup soon began bubbling. Waxy, resinous, clouds filled the air; that harsh, sweet smell of burning.

‘Fine in mind and body are you, my dear?’ Marm asked as she fluttered about. ‘Heart strong—but then of course it is.’ A long needle like a hatpin glittered, and she stirred its tip in the bubbling retort, then played the glossy bead which formed under the blue spirit flame until it darkened. ‘A few sweet seeds from the sun-warmed tropics. What could be more natural? And aether, too, comes from the ground. It rises and grows and flowers. But then I don’t need to tell you that, do I? You of all people, Robbie. You’ll have to tell me what it’s like in Bracebridge sometime. Do you fly about in the air like changeling sprites, where there’s so much aether?’

The pigeons cooed outside the window.

‘It’s simple, really. We all have
dreams,
don’t we?’ Marm produced a pipe. It was long and thick-stemmed, although the bowl at the end was tiny. Then she made a sign in whispering silk and withdrew a small inlaid box from the cabinet. I felt a tug within me, a burning on my wrist of my long-forgotten Mark. Even before she opened the lid and wyredarkness wreathed out, I knew that it contained aether.

‘So you must tell me what you
want,
Robbie …’ Marm swirled the hatpin into the aether and then thumbed the darkly gleaming bead into the pipe’s tiny bowl. The silks shifted as she sucked at the flame. A tiny black-white star, the bead bubbled and ignited. She let out a jet of dark-white smoke.

‘Oh, you’d be surprised—although I, of course, never will be—at the requests that are made here in this dreamhouse. You men never do quite want the obvious thing that every young girl seeking a husband or a client imagines. It never is quite
that,
although that may be part of it. But if you have a girl you’re sweet on, or one you’re hoping for—then I can give her to you in every way that you’ve ever dared imagine. Or is it
money
you’re after? Or the comfort of fine things? Or something else …’ Shadows flashed as Marm blew out the smoke again. ‘Or is it
fear
that tingles you? A little pain to go with the pleasure? I understand the need for that too. A little shit to flavour the banquet, some piss in the wine … ?’

She puffed again.

‘Open your mouth.’

There was a new tenderness in Marm’s eyes as she stooped to press her lips against mine. She tasted of wine, cigarettes, buttery flesh, and of the sweet-bitter smoke which came pouring into me. I felt a flowering of well-being, a glow which continued to expand until it became so large that the distinction between physical and mental joy dissolved, and with it all my usual sense of self, although I remained conscious of the room, of the sparking carpet dust and the slow waves of aether-curdled smoke which wafted out of the window past the summer-intoxicated pigeons. Cooo Coo. Cooo Coo. And Marm was still with me, sharing the exquisite brush of these new senses. Suddenly, everything was laughably frail. And what
did
I want? What
did
I desire?

Easy as a ghost, I lifted from the chair and passed through the wall above the spirit flame. All the windows were open along the carpeted corridors of the dreamhouse beyond. A fresh breeze had risen up from the Thames, quenching the heat of the afternoon. Heavy-leafed ferns nodded in their pots like undersea weeds. The air pressed me on, gently insistent, as I floated on through flock walls. This was indeed a strange and complex building. Here was Saul, holding court amid the flypapers of the kitchen with the other dreamhouse mistresses who remembered him growing up as a lad here; a sweet novelty to be kissed and tickled until his growing bulk and the male croak of his voice, which would have upset the customers, forced him out into the streets.

Thistledown, I floated on, passing through a window. There was London, green and gold and floating on this warm early summer afternoon. I laughed and spiralled in the huffing updrafts of an engine house, and watched the insect traffic, the pinhead people. The rooftops grew mountainous towards Northcentral, punctuated by spires and domes and the cool recesses of courtyards, the dark flash of Hallam Tower. Here, the landscape was surprisingly green, jewelled with ponds and the intricacies of rooftop gardens, all set around the vast and jagged emerald of Westminster Great Park. I would happily have dived down to float in the wake of the striped buggies and the flecked umbrellas, or danced with the kites which floated above the lawns, but the streaming air of London still bore me upwards until the sky dimmed and I was tumbling and lost. The wind was colder up here, and I could tell from its scent, its persistence, that it was blowing me north. England was teeming below me, and I struggled against it, but the power of the aether spread its dark wings and bore me onwards.

SHOOM
BOOM
SHOOM
BOOM.

There it lay; Bracebridge, curled once again in the lazy warmth of a summer Halfshiftday. I saw that the ashpits had still barely began their climb up Coney Mound and that the old warehouses on past the allotments were standing. I had fallen once more into the past. SHOOM
BOOM.
The rivermeads. The glinting brown river. Rainharrow’s grey-green flanks, swirled by ruins and sheep paths. The grey strip of High Street. The tile and brick blur of Coney Mound. And at the centre of it all, neat in this sunlight as a map, a blueprint, a vision of this industrial world, lay Mawdingly & Clawtson. Roofs and yards. The spreading arms of tracks and depots. The black glow of the quickening pools. There was East Floor, where my father worked, and this bigger roof with its proud chimneys could only be Engine Floor, beneath which, far down on Central Floor, deep in the riven earth, the pistons still flashed and hammered even on this Halfshiftday afternoon as figures shouted and scurried across the far fields and picnic squares of blanket paved the path beside the river. SHOOM
BOOM
SHOOM
BOOM.
Then something, somehow, changed. The amazed air fell silent. The figures on the football fields halted. The river seemed to stop flowing. Even the sunlight froze. There was a rumbling, followed by a series of huge but dull detonations which rose and grew louder, drumbeat by drumbeat, pouring up into the thunderous, drifting silence which had fallen over the town. Then, in a wyrewhite torrent of gas and pressure, the roof of Central Floor exploded. Flames fountained, their light blackening in the onrush of steam and aether. There was chaos and smoke. Girders flew. Dust plumed. The darkness shivered, the sky shook, and I was tumbling back through it into nowhere, driven by the breaking air.

‘You’re a strange one for sure.’

I could feel a chair, a smoky rasp in my throat, as the elements of the dreamhouse room slowly gathered themselves around me. The sun was still shining, the pigeons were still cooing, I was in London, and Marm was flapping about me like a fallen kite in her bright dressing gown. My eyeballs were stinging. I felt ill and giddy.

‘Don’t think I’ve ever travelled so far with a client.’ Cleaning her implements, she blew her pipe clean with a little toot. ‘Or got so little out of it. Oh, here it comes …’ With an expert movement, she grabbed a tin bucket just as I leaned forward, my stomach lurching. ‘Perhaps it’s the money that makes the difference,’ she continued, stroking my head as I vomited. ‘Perhaps you should have
paid—
not that you could afford it. But despite all the rubbish Saul talks, nothing’s ever quite so good when you get it for free, is it?’