The Uninvited (34 page)
The boy stops by the boulder that marks the sharp turn of the sheep-path and gazes up. The sunlight refracts in such a way that I don’t see it at first. But then I do.
High at the top of the dark granite, the familiar image scrawled in white chalk.
The eye.
He has been summoned.
In the weeks that follow, there’s a scenario I conjure as a comfort to myself. It comes to me when I sit at my desk, swivelling in my chair and watching the dancing shadows of the candle that I keep burning in the window just in case.
There is a sound that might be a tree branch banging against the door. But it’s a knock. I open the door, and the professor is standing there, his hair and beard spangled with rain.
‘I knew I’d find you here, boy,’ he says.
I remind him I am thirty-six. Then I show him around the cottage, warning him to mind his head on the beams. He smiles when he sees the antique optometrist’s charts he gave me all those years ago. He inspects my dictionary collection and applauds my shelving system, noting what’s arranged on it, and in what configuration. And I show him the hermit crab.
‘It’s nearly finished,’ I tell him. He admires the intricacy of the legs and eye-stalks. The way they emerge so neatly from the shiny concertinaed shell. I explain some of Lang’s origami principles. ‘When I complete it, it’s for you. A gift. I wish I could have done it when you were still alive. But I wasn’t ready. I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry I was the last person on earth to understand. You were right. About the new paradigm.’
‘I know. I’m glad you saw it. I didn’t think you would.’
‘Freddy showed me.’
‘We make a good threesome.’
‘He’s gone.’
‘But he’ll be back. When they’ve finished what they came to do. When mankind has changed enough. When the new course is set. You know that, Hesketh.’
‘Do I?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Hoping and believing aren’t the same.’
He smiles. ‘No. But you can make them be. So when will you finish this famous hermit crab of yours?’
‘When I’ve got past hoping. And seen beyond.’
More and more, I think about the never-ending universe of things that man does not know.
If the old Freddy were here, he would say, ‘Yet’.
But there is no Freddy any more. He is off with the fairies.
And what does ‘yet’ mean, now that time has a whole new meaning?
I love him, no matter what. I know that. But what does a man do with such a love? No stories I know can tell me how this ends. But all flow charts contain a range of possible outcomes, so I have a set of hopes. And some things are already clearly foreseeable. The process of recalibration is quietly under way on Arran. When people dare to breed here again their offspring will be fewer, and better cherished. This new generation will learn that it was children like themselves who halted the juggernaut at the brink of the abyss. That they did not come all this way to destroy us. They came as saviours, bearing the undeserved and astonishing gift of a second chance. And that it is thanks to them that we discovered a new metaphysics of being. I am not a great communicator. But in the work I plan to write, I will try to convey this. I will dedicate it to Professor Whybray, and to Freddy.
I walk on the shore, alone, listening for the cry of the black guillemot.
Lately, more rain has been falling, borne by a fresh spate of hurricanes in the mid-Atlantic. The wind picks up moisture from the ocean and hurls it far inland.
Then, one day, I see him. He’s just a dot in the distance, but I know it’s him, even before I lift my binoculars. I adjust the focus. All that’s left of his clothing is a pair of pants and a torn vest.
‘Freddy!’ I shout. But he’s too far away to hear me.
They all are.
Twenty or thirty of them are coming into view, shoaling by the black stone, naked or in rags, with clumps of salty bladderwrack on their heads and wet ribbons of seaweed or strings of bones around their necks. The lenses of their dark glasses flash weakly in the fading light. Their little bodies are skinny and streaked with grime. Their fingernails are black. Their dry, sunburned skin twinkles with crystals of salt. The crusted-up wings of insects and the legs of miniature sand-crabs cling to the edges of their mouths.
The hidden internal folds of an origami model in progress operate like flower buds or the folded wings of a bird. When you open them out, their intended shape, and their place in the whole and their function, become clear and true.
In that moment, when hope becomes belief, there is enlightenment.
The next morning, with the high, bright sun illuminating my desk, I complete the last fold of the hermit crab.
Outside, I turn my face to the wind and feel the salt mist on my face.
And I am filled with something I can hesitantly call joy.
No book of mine is ever completed without a huge amount of help from friends, family and colleagues who read the manuscript at different stages.
The Uninvited
is no exception. I owe a huge debt to Polly Coles, Amanda Craig, Gina de Ferrer, Humphrey Hawksley, Ide Hejlskov, Sally Holloway, Carsten Jensen, Tom Jensen, Claire Letemendia, Annette Lindegaard, Kate O’Riordan, Matthew Quick and Ian Steadman, for their sharp critical eyes and generous encouragement.
My thanks also go to Marika Cobbold, Raphaël Coleman, Adam Grydehøj, Bill Hartston and Felicity Steadman for their specialist input on matters as varied as Swedish vocabulary, action scenes, folklore, Venn diagrams and industrial relations.
And I am deeply grateful to Clare Alexander, Lesley Thorne and Sally Riley of Aitken Alexander, and to Alexandra Pringle and Erica Jarnes at Bloomsbury for their support, patience and inspiring feedback during the editing process.
Liz Jensen is the bestselling author of seven acclaimed novels, including the
Guardian
Fiction Award-shortlisted
Ark Baby
,
War Crimes for
the Home
,
The Ninth Life of Louis Drax
and, most recently,
The Rapture
, shortlisted for the Brit Writers’ Awards and selected as a Channel 4 TV Book Club Best Read
.
She has been nominated three times for the Orange Prize for Fiction and her work has been published in more than twenty countries. She lives in London.
Egg Dancing
Ark Baby
The Paper Eater
War Crimes for the Home
The Ninth Life of Louis Drax
My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time
The Rapture
The Rapture
The TV Book Club Best Read
In a merciless summer of biblical heat and destructive winds, Gabrielle Fox’s main concern is to rebuild her career as a psychologist after a shattering car accident. But when she is assigned Bethany Krall, violent, delusional, cruelly intuitive and insistent that she can foresee natural disasters, she begins to fear she has made a terrible mistake. And when catastrophes begin to occur on the very dates Bethany has predicted, the apocalyptic puzzle intensifies and the stakes multiply. A haunting story of human passion and burning faith,
The Rapture
is an electrifying psychological thriller that explores the dark extremes of mankind’s self-destruction in a world on the brink.
‘An end-of-days blockbuster to haunt your nightmares … Unputdownable’
The Times
The Ninth Life of Louis Drax
Nine-year-old Louis Drax is a problem child. He’s bright, precocious, deceitful and dangerously, disturbingly accident prone. On a family day out it seems almost predestined that something will happen. But this time it is worse than anyone imagined. When Louis falls over a cliff into a ravine and lapses into a deep coma, his father vanishes and his mother is paralysed by shock. In a clinic in Provence, Dr Dannachet tries to coax Louis back to consciousness, but the boy defies medical logic and the doctor is drawn into the dark heart of Louis’ buried world. Only Louis holds the key to the mystery and he can’t communicate. Or can he?
‘A wonderfully unsettling psychological thriller’
Mail on Sunday
My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time
