The Light Ages (32 page)

Other guests were drifting down the tiered steps onto the lawns. I could hear the bonging of a gong, but there was no sense of hurry. Everywhere, amid the evening birdsong, the whisper of the trees and the distant splash of the fountains, I could hear the same long sibilant voices, incanting that smiling, whispered song of the single Great Guild of the Wealthy. Highermaster George pointed out Sadie’s mother. She was a small creature, her wizened face almost as painted-on as Mister Snaith’s. And here were a couple in late middle age. Small and ordinary though they were, there was something about them which kept my eye. The man had shifty, rat-like features, and the woman on his arm could almost have been his fatter twin. Our gaze met, and there was a brief
something
before he looked away.

‘Who’s that over there?’

‘Oh—they’re the Bowdly-Smarts …’ Highermaster George clicked his tongue. ‘But they’re pretty odious, believe me. New money always is. Ah! Now here’s someone …’

There was a general stirring, a turning of heads like flowers lifting to the sun. Yet the man who stepped out barely seemed to notice their regard. He was wearing the same plain but well cut suit he’d had on earlier when he’d shown me the way. It was a fine piece of tailoring, but no finer than many of the others, and set off by nothing more than a red tie and a plain unruffled shirt. His too-black hair hung loose to his collar, and parted and fell in a heavy fringe across his broad brow. The effect was casual. Almost as if he didn’t care about his looks—almost, but not quite.

‘That’s
the greatgrandmaster?’

‘Of course.’

A sea of people formed and parted about him as he crossed the patio. The men touched their flies, their guildpins. The women’s fans and bosoms fluttered. And here in his wake was his daughter, Grandmistress Sadie Passington, who looked marvellous in a cream dress. Our eyes caught for a moment. She smiled mischievously.

‘That’s our signal as well.’ Highermaster George got up.

I stood up beside him. But something held me back as the guests dwindled along the terraces.

‘What is it, old chap?’

As if in a shared thought, we both turned towards the house, which was now a ship of light, hanging over the transparent greys of the terraces and gardens. The gong had ceased. The birds were no longer singing. Anna Winters stepped alone through the open doors and into the twilight.

‘Oh, Anna! Wait ..

She paused and turned at the sound of Highermaster George’s voice.

‘You’re so late …’ He took a breath as he rushed over. ‘You’ve almost missed everything.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ she murmured. She gazed for a long time at Highermaster George before she glanced at me.

‘I seem to have lost all my manners this evening, Anna. This is Master Robert, ah—it is Borrows, isn’t it? I don’t think you mentioned your guild. But we’ve been having a most interesting talk.’

‘We’ve met before.’

‘You have?
Well that’s—’

Annalise turned to face me. The lights of the Walcote House were behind her. Her features were in shadow and her hair was like the light itself.

‘What are you doing here, Robert?’

Her voice was soft, gently enquiring. Yet her anger was like a force against my chest. And visiting Missy at World’s End—and what were you doing
there
also, Robert? Why
can’t you leave my life alone?

There was a long pause. Slowly, I became conscious that Highermaster George was still standing between us. He cleared his throat.

‘Well …’ He offered her the crook of his elbow. ‘If you’ll perhaps allow me to lead the way?’

I followed them across the lawns to the marquee. Inside, in the trapped heat, there were more drinks and trays and servants.
And could Sir perhaps indicate … ? Or would Sir prefer … ?
This particular
Sir
was at a complete loss, but Highermaster George untangled himself from Anna to help me find a place, and then sat by me under the lamplit grandeur. Anna Winters was several tables away.

Anthony Passington, Greatgrandmaster Exultant of the Great Guild of Telegraphers, arrived to applause at the raised top table where Sadie and her mother, the painted prune, were already seated. Then everyone stood, and Canon Vilbert intoned a prayer, which, like some tedious guild anthem, seemed just about to round itself to conclusion when it gained fresh wind. After all, there was so much you had to thank God for if you lived like this. For a long time, I kept my head bowed and my hands pressed together. Then I risked raising my eyes and saw that everyone else was staring into the upper reaches of the marquee. It was an interesting revelation to me that the people of the Great Guild of Wealth didn’t lower their eyes but looked straight up at God when they prayed to him. After all, they were almost equals.

Anna Winters, what little I could see of her across two tables and through the massive foliage of the flower display in front of me, was standing like the rest. Further down my long table were the Bowdly-Smarts. George was right. They did seem odious and ugly. The man had a rat’s pointed face. He and his florid wife seemed wrong inside their clothes, whilst everyone else here fitted everything as tightly as a bud … The canon’s voice ascended to another convulsion of adjectives, paused, and then droned on again. Anna, I saw, peering around a huge centrepiece of flowers to get a clearer view of her, was still gazing up into the air. If I tilted my neck and squinted slightly, her face became one of the flowers in the arrangement, although more perfect. Anna Winters—Annalise—as a flower. Something I could grasp, pluck, control. But everything about her, even her face, her pale simple beauty laid amid the blurring petals—seemed withdrawn from me. The air shimmered for a moment. She was barely there. A space in my eyes.

My head fizzed with wine and hope. That cursed vase of flowers. I don’t know if I let out a small groan, but I sensed with the final
amen
that Highermaster George and several of the other surrounding guests had glanced towards me. People were sitting down now. Servants were presenting the first course to the diners at the top table. I remained standing a moment longer in the hope that I might get a clearer sight of Anna. But the flowers were still obstructing me. Casually, I leaned forward to brush a fern out of the way. But as my arm reached across the table I saw that my fingers had become like smoke, were near-invisible. I let out a yelp and the vase of flowers, although I was sure that I hadn’t yet touched it, exploded in a spray of glass and stalks. Then I was sinking, or the table was rising, water was pattering everywhere, and the white cloth was sliding back.

Faces clustered as I lay surrounded by cutlery on the floor, but only Highermaster George registered any concern about my wellbeing. The rest of them, as I swayed upwards protesting that I hadn’t even touched the vase whilst the table was mopped and cleaned and rearranged by servants, regarded me with vivid distaste. A new and even larger arrangement of flowers was then plonked on the table before me, even more effectively obscuring my view of Anna.
OneofSadiesdiscoveries.
The whisper drifted with the clink of serving tongs. There were nods and smiles. The flowers pulsed like faces; the faces were like flowers, like Mistress Summerton’s hothouse blooms—Missy, whom I should never have visited. One of Sadie’s discoveries. Of course. That was me.

So began one of the worst nights of my life. Social embarrassment may seem as nothing compared to mortal grief, the dull terrors of poverty, the agonies of physical pain. But being laughed at, being made to seem foolish—that is something which is unbearable even for the dogs on the street. The first course consisted of the eggs of quails, which I, distracted in my sopping clothes, attempted to scoop the meat from with the end of one of the many spoons. Looking up as I detected a resurgence of sniggers, I saw that the other guests were prying off their shells with their fingers and eating them whole. After that, and dropping my offending spoon and bending down to pick it up instead of leaving it for the maid, Highermaster George did his best to anticipate my problems with discreetly murmured instructions. But by then it was too late. I could tell, as each new dish arrived, that the people on my and several of the surrounding tables were far more interested in how I was going to tackle it than in eating anything themselves.

Salad should always be eaten from a side plate. There are some dishes which you may consume with your fingers like a savage, and others which you must dissect with your knife. It is also inadvisable to drink large amounts of wine on an empty stomach before you commence eating, and even more so to attempt to stifle your crushing sense of stupidity by continuing to drink through your meal. Above all, it is probably best to ignore comments which are not intended for your ears, nor to ask loudly for them to be repeated, and applaud sarcastically when, after a long pause and an exchange of glances, something else is said in their place.

Staggering outside as the courses continued and my stomach started to roil, falling over flowerbeds under a grin of moon, the laughter streamed with my tears as I spat out large amounts of what I’d eaten. What
was
I doing here in any case? I’d thought, to the extent that I’d properly thought about it at all, that it would be a chance to witness a rare species—the disgustingly rich—in their endangered habitat before they vanished entirely, and, of course, to see Anna. But it had never occurred to me that I’d stand out like a monkey at a wedding. After all, hadn’t I managed well enough on that Midsummer? It had been the same people. The same suits. The same faces. Even now, sniggering and whispering from the darkness, they processed around me. But, back then, I’d floated above the waters of that ballroom. Even the food had been no problem to me and I’d danced like a dervish to every tune ..

There was a whispered discussion behind me. The perilinden trees tinkled and swayed. A white shirt bobbed like a lantern, another drifted away.

‘You’re not quite at your
best
at the moment, are you, old chap?’

I recognised Highermaster George’s voice, the soft pressure of his hands.

One of several Walcote Houses loomed into view. There were servants like dark folds of paper, windows and lights and corridors, conversations about the whereabouts of my room. Apart from the bilious tilt of the ceiling, I felt almost painfully sober, but these people seemed deaf to my protests. And I knew now that the walls would dissolve if I blundered into them, that you could find yourself elsewhere and yet still be here, that the carpets could tilt, the floors turn to seas.

‘Here we are …’ A door of marbled wood loomed. ‘Think we should get you to bed old chap …’

‘I’m fine!
Fine …’ I
struggled as George tried to remove my jacket from me. ‘
You
were there weren’t you? On that pier, at Midsummer?’

‘You mean by the embankment? There was something that used to go on there, now that you mention ..

I flopped on the bed. My shoes were prised from my feet. My socks came with them.

‘But there are so many balls and dances. It’s difficult to remember the details of every one. Especially if it was a few years ago.’

I willed the bed to stop turning, the room to cease cavorting. ‘Still, you look as if you’ll be all right. I’ve put a glass of water on the bedside table.’ His shadow moved towards the door. ‘Annalise.’

The shadow paused. ‘What?’

‘Annalise Winters.’

‘Annalise …’ He chuckled. ‘And I’d always thought Anna was her full name.’

‘Well it isn’t.’

‘Right.’ His face blurred and reformed. ‘She’s a good friend.’

‘I knew her when she was … Much younger …’

‘Oh really?’ Was that a tightness I heard in his voice? Something harsher? Protective? But there were too many Georges, and I was starting to feel sick again—and disgusted, and empty. Where Anna Winters should have been, all those treasured memories, there was nothing now.

‘She can make herself disappear behind a vase of flowers, you know,’ I told him. ‘And I know her well. Even if she says I’m nothing. Just ask Sadie.’

‘Oh, I believe you.’ George’s face retreated. The gaslights flickered down. I heard the whisper of the door across the carpet. ‘And I think you’ll be fine now ‘til morning.’

‘And that vase.’

‘Yes?’

‘I didn’t touch it. My hands were invisible and it just exploded. Anna did that as well.’

Highermaster George chuckled as he closed the door. ‘Now
that
would be quite a trick ..

Blazing shadows. The clatter of silverware and porcelain. The people moving in this bright room are like tropic birds; shockingly iridescent. The windows are painful slashes, the curtains waterfalls of blood. I managed to still my hands sufficiently to pour myself a cup of coffee. I lifted the heavy silver lid of one of the tureens. Steamy visions of maggoty rice poured up at me. No, definitely not food. The voices, the whispers, were more subdued this morning. I was the only one properly dressed in my only remaining trousers and jacket, whilst everyone else was wearing silken extravagances which I supposed might be called morning coats. I was almost invisible again and I decided I might as well stay that way. Even on a Noshiftday, there must be trains to take me back to London, and I had only a few minutes’ worth of packing. I could walk straight out through those doors and along Marine Drive. By late afternoon, evening the latest, I could be back with Saul, Maud, Blissenhawk, Black Lucy.

Two more dazzlingly attired figures emerged into the breakfast room, the man with a gold chain the size of a dock-mooring around his neck, the woman wearing fairy slippers. The Bowdly-Smarts looked as out of place and ugly as they had yesterday, and Grandmistress Bowdly-Smart was proclaiming in a loud voice, waving her wrists in a slide of bangles. Her vowels slid around most of England. I could almost enjoy the raised eyebrows, the whispers, now that they weren’t directed at me.

Grandmaster Bowdly-Smart glanced over at me as I stared at him. Then he turned his back and began to heap out kedgeree. It was him rather than his wife that I recognised—I was sure of that now—but it was the sound of Grandmistress Bowdly-Smart’s voice which finally did it for me. She was telling a supposed friend, who was doing her best to disentangle herself, about some or other gathering of
fellow seekers.
Her excitement grew so intense in doing so that all the padding with which she had attempted to encase her voice fell away. I knew then. I was sure of it. I’d heard such voices a million times, shouting to each other over the fences up and down Coney Mound as they all beat their rugs on Twoshiftday. Grandmistress Bowdly-Smart was from Bracebridge, and her rat-faced husband, as he moved away with a final backward glance to consume his mountainous breakfast—he was Uppermaster Stropcock, who had leered down at me in that tiny office at Mawdingly & Clawtson, and told me I wasn’t good enough for the Lesser Toolmakers, and let me touch his puny haft.
Eyes and ears, sonny.
Even the widow’s peak of his hair, although now there was somewhat less of it and it had greyed, was the same. I was sure of it. All that was missing was his clip of pens and a fag end dangling from his lip.