The Light Ages (21 page)

L
OOK AT ME NOW.
Robbie, not Robert. Warehouse ink staining my fingers, borrowed money in my pockets, dressed in a waistcoat almost as fine as Saul’s. Look at me, and look at Saul, and look at Maud, too, hopping from toe to toe in a pink skirt of surprising finery as bracelets tinkle at her wrists on this Midsummer day as we cluster around a shared cigarette by the dustbins between two Doxy Street boarding houses, watching the trams go by as we debate the wild moment for the leap which will take us to the fair in Westminster Great Park.

‘It’s easy for you lads—
I’ve
never done it. And look at these skirts!’

‘Neither have I. How do we know it even works?’

‘Well, it’s up to you.’ Saul’s smile is caught in a slot of noon light. ‘We can always just get
on
the tram ..

But that would be unthinkable. I take a long drag through wet strings of tobacco and pass it on to Maud. Of course, I have to do what Saul says, and so does Maud, although her hands shake as she puffs the cigarette, and for that alone I feel more warmly towards her. Another tram clashes by. Then it’s gone, and all that’s left is the sunlit bustle of Doxy Street—and that tramline; a deep, six inch-wide metal gutter, within which, rattling and gurgling, churns a wyrebright coil of iron.

Maud goes first. She dives out through a lull in the traffic like a lacy bullet and stands astride the rail. Then, elbows tugging the corners of her skirts, she bends. Her fingers, miraculously, are still attached to her hands when she darts back to us. But they are gleaming.

‘You didn’t say this would be
dirty.’

‘Quick—now it’s your turn Robbie.’

Dazed, I push off, dodging a cart and nearly toppling a cyclist until I’m standing astride the tramline as all Doxy Street swarms about me. I can feel the driven metal, those twisting flecks of oil and aether which hiss and clatter between the churning engine houses that punctuate the city in smoking exclamation marks. But the thing is not to think—the thing is to submit to the will of whatever it is that still drives me and to remember that Saul and Maud are watching. And then it’s done, and I’m running back, tumbling dustbins, and Saul is dashing out. When I dare to lift my arms to look, I find that I still have palms and fingers instead of sobbing stubs.

‘It’s coming … !’

A tram is swaying through the Midsummer crowds, black wyreflames and white sparks spluttering beneath its belly. One, two, three carriages, all full to bursting with sweating feastday passengers, and then the last, by which time we are yelling like mad as we dodge the intervening wagons and jump at the tram’s retreating rear, which is at least twice as high and grimy as I expected, and sloped without any place to grip for the very reason of this trick we are trying. But we cling on as the track tunnels beneath us, murmuring under our breath the circle of sound which we have been practising and scarcely believing all morning. My palms are holding as if glued, welded against the rivets, and my breath cannot stop the chant. We cling on, spread-eagled and singing above the turning rails as Doxy Street unwinds in shining fresh-washed pavements, the very stones flushed and steaming with all the bustle of this Midsummer, until, without any change in its direction, or halt in its flow, Doxy Street ceases to be Doxy Street at all, and becomes Cheapside, and finally Oxford Road. The signs, the buildings, the rooftops over the towering windows, the sky itself, all seem to expand and dilate in the sweetly gathering outrush of wealth. Scented with shop produce and brass polish, the Northcentral air lifts and surrounds me as I cling to the jolting back of our filthy tram. Here rise the chapels of the lesser guilds, grey-white or golden, spired and domed; antique churches pillaged from the Age of Kings and re-made with aethered statuary and bolted doors for a God who, along with all the rest of England, took the best and most obvious choice when the world changed and joined up and became a guildsman.

We jump down at Northcentral Terminus, scurrying from the tramaster’s shouts until we reach sudden and amazing tracts of grass, huge sunlit eruptions of tree and water and statuary. There, we catch our breath, and Maud inspects the substantial oily stains on the front of her dress. I look about me. The greatest of all the guildhalls on Wagstaffe Mall rise beyond silver-white avenues of impossible trees in their mountain domes; coppered and silvered and glazed, winking in the sunlight over the rivers of top hats, straw boaters, piggyback children.

‘Come on, Robbie—what
are
you staring at?’ Saul hauled me on through the crowds. ‘They’re only
buildings
for God’s sake! This is only
a park.
We’re here to have
fun,
aren’t we … ?’

But it was more than that. Weaving past the stalls, the spivs and the pickpockets and the scrambling lesser urchins, even on the day of the Midsummer Fair, it was the extraordinary nature of the trees in Westminster Great Park which most entranced me. In the Easterlies, just as in Bracebridge, blooms too big and lurid to be the fruit of simple good husbandry would sometimes make it to the baskets of the flower-sellers, and there was always the waterapple and the sea-potato to remind us of the guildsman’s art, but here, bright and solid, were whispering, living creations of dream. Perilinden, which rose tall and silver and chattered its leaves. Cedarstone, far squatter, with its massive red trunk, which was gnarled and polished, the grain beautiful and intricate as sunset caught in the currents of a river. Firethorn, which was an ugly-spined bush up in Brownheath planted for deterrence and protection, was here a chaos of heraldic flowers. And sallow, even sallow, that common herb, became a tree of greenish-white beauty with a scent like bitter honey. As the bands of several guilds struck up brassy waves, I breathed these names like spells. Leaves red and gold, and heart-shaped to the size of trays. Trunks wound with pewter bark. Flowers like downturned porcelain vases. I resolved to come here again—in fact, to leave the Easterlies—and wander more quietly and perhaps forever with the ghost of my mother. But the bustle of the Midsummer was puffing at me, and everywhere, there were promises of greater wonders if you stepped through a turnstile, entered a tent, touched a pretend haft; just as long as you paid, paid, paid. I sat with Saul and Maud, groaning and clapping as white rabbits vanished and reappeared amid fanfares of smoke and gong—all, so it said on the prestidigitator’s sign outside the smelly tent, without the aid of a single drop of aether. It was a hot thy. Passing burlesques, clowns, familiars dressed like little sailors, strange monologues and dioramas of journeys through distant lands, gazing over heads, I bought a wrap of sherbet ice and sucked it greedily. Wiping my numb lips, I looked around for Maud and Saul. I could see no sign of them. But the plan had always been that we would meet up by Prettlewell Fountains at three that afternoon. I had no watch, and no idea of where those fountains actually were, but no matter. I wasn’t lost—lost wasn’t something which happened when you were wandering under the astonishing trees of Westminster Great Park amid balloon-sellers, dancing familiars and spinning acrobats. Not at Midsummer. Not in London. Not when you were Robbie. This Midsummer Fair, I decided, was like London itself. By turns brash and sad, quiet and teeming, stinkingly ugly, heart-stoppingly lovely … And, like London, there were things more easily stumbled across than actually found.

I tried my luck shooting tin birds. I inspected the giant bones of monsters said to have been spawned in a distant Age. There were red-scaled beasts and ravening balehounds. There was an incredible tooting machine like a madly enlivened forest which had been made by the guildsmen of Saxony. I must have wandered for several thoughtless hours, spending what money I had, letting the crowds lead and buffet me, taking in all the horrors and wonders and disappointments of the fair. Then I saw Annalise. She was walking alone, in her own quiet space amid shouting groups of lads, tired families. She stopped by a carousel ride and I caught my breath in the shadows behind, waiting for my heart to stop pounding. She was dressed in a light blue skirt and a puffy white blouse which was bunched at the neck and the sleeves. She had the shape of a woman now, and her hair, pale blond, and coiled, ribboned, plaited, lay across her shoulders. Everything about Annalise was different, and impossibly fine, down to the curve of eyelash which drooped and rose as she watched the children swirling by on their painted drays, but at the same time she hadn’t changed. I’d have been happy to stand there forever, watching Annalise through ride after ride. But if it’s possible for someone’s back, the line of a cheekbone, to convey a knowing amusement, then that was what she managed to do. The colours swept by, the scared and laughing children’s faces, and I became aware that Annalise had noticed me long before I had seen her.

The ride slowed. Annalise turned towards me as the shapes unblurred.

‘So it’s you …’ She paused. ‘Robbie.’ Those green eyes. ‘I hadn’t expected to ever see you here in London.’

So many things, so quickly.
Robbie.
And
I hadn’t expected—
as if, occasionally, she had thought of me over all these years.

‘Neither had I.’ My heart was still racing. ‘Me—or you, I mean.’ I knew that whatever I said would come out as stupid. ‘I haven’t been here long. Just this summer.’

‘So we’re both strangers here.’ Her lips grew an ironic tilt. ‘I’m almost surprised, really. I mean, that you recognised me.’

‘You’re not so different, really, Annalise.’

Those green eyes darkened slightly.

But it was ridiculous, really, to say that she hadn’t changed, when she so plainly had in every shape and detail apart from the one essential part of her which would never change.

‘So what do you do now?’

I shrugged. Although, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, I was happy with my life, something about Annalise’s presence made it all shrivel and fade.
I live in the Easterlies. I work the docks,
forging signs on teachests. Sometimes I steal things. My best friend’s mother is a dreamistress. He calls everyone citizen, and the girl he’s going with has hands that are raw from boiling nappies. And look at my own hands, Annalise. Scabbed and inked and nicotined. And I smelled—I could tell now, knew it instantly—ripe and outdoorsy, not quite unpleasant, but carrying an unmistakably Easterlies reek of coalsmoke and herring.

Annalise studied me as I stumbled through my explanation. Her fine clothes, her faint, fine scent which was sweet and unplacable, the jewels at her earlobes, the seemingly poreless flush of her skin, the presence of the assured and highly guilded; all of it breathed out at me as the carousel drays turned behind.

‘And your mother died, of course, didn’t she? I’m so sorry Robbie …’ Her green eyes darkened, lightened. A sea moon behind summer clouds. ‘But you look well. You seem happy.’

‘I am,’ I said. ‘Life’s good. I’m
very
happy.’

She smiled back. ‘And so am I, Robbie.’ The whole fairground spun around us. We were still. Everything else was moving.

There was a pause as she withdrew her gaze. I needed no special powers to know that in another moment she would say how interesting it had been to bump into me again after all these years. If I was lucky, she might offer me her hand before she walked away.

I grabbed her bare elbow. ‘Wait, Annalise. Don’t go …’

She tensed. The fairground pipes were shrieking. The textures of our flesh seemed so different now. As my hand fell away, I noticed her left wrist. She wore a silver bracelet. Above it, raw and puckered in the sunlight and glowing slightly wyreblack, was the Mark of a Day of Testing which I was still sure she had never had.

‘It’s …’ I shrugged. ‘I’d like to know what it’s like. Whatever life you’re now living.’

‘Is
that
what you really want?’ Her smile was returning. I nodded, swallowed. ‘More than anything.’

‘All right, then, Robbie. After all, it is Midsummer …’ She smiled, then. We shared a smile together. It was impossible not to smile at this game we were about to play. Whatever else we were, we were young and the world seemed malleable. ‘I’ll show you.’

We walked through stepped gardens which the fair had left unclaimed. Below us lay the pitched tents, the teeming rides. Around us, in arbours and dangling from trellises, grew yet more plants of strange and impossible beauty. Assailed by scents, colours, walking with Annalise, I was moving through a different world. Ahead of us was a wide grey roadway, and the only sounds came from the sigh of the waiting horses. Beyond rose a cliff face of brick and stone, a unity of matching windows and pediments. A uniformed man saluted us as the doors flashed open. Was it this easy, I wondered, as we crossed red oceans of carpet and a liftboy slid back a brass gate, to enter this other world?

‘How much does all of this cost?’

‘You mustn’t imagine that I live like this
always,’
Annalise said as the growl of a distant engine drew us up through the building. There were aspidistras like small trees and portraits hung on brass rails along the corridors which the lift raised us to. ‘Just wait here.’ She halted beside one of the endless numbered doors. ‘I won’t be a moment. And
you
can’t stay looking like that, can you? We’ll need to get you changed A glimpse of mirrors and cedarstone, a puff of sunlight, and the door closed. I stood uneasily, looking up and down this long hallway. The place was hot and almost silent. Of course, it would be a neat practical joke, for Annalise to drag me into this labyrinth then vanish like those white rabbits in a puff of smoke. But she soon reappeared wearing a fresh skirt and blouse, and her eyes shining damp. Had I but known it, I had witnessed a miracle of feminine speed.

‘Come on then. Let’s get you sorted.’ She bustled up the corridor to a lesser doorway, which was unnumbered, and layered with green baize. She ducked inside. ‘Quickly, now …’

This great London hotel was in fact two buildings crammed into a single space; one, luxurious and languid, belonged to the guests, whilst the other was for the maids, the undermaids, the laundrygirls, the cooks, stewards, handymen, ironmasters, cleaners, shoe polishers. Even here, though, it was Midsummer-quiet, and it grew hotter than ever in these low corridors. Our shadows sped around us as we descended spiral stairways, then turned into white galleries where the air was stiff with the smell of soap and hot ironing. But even here there was no one about. The whole place was charmed, sleeping, deserted. She shoved me down another corridor to another green door.