Turquoiselle (14 page)

“I’ve
told you our nature, but you’d like an actual name? We don’t have one. Not even
in our official or office slang. We’re just – us. Welcome to us, Car. Make
yourself at home.”

Thirteen

In the dream, he
saw the coloured flowers blotted on the meadows, the wilder walks around the
college. White daisies, red and magenta clovers... And then the huge clipped
lawn, with its area for spontaneous rough football, and the river you could
swim in. They had taught him to swim, and once or twice he had even played
football – those items he had been meant to have had taught to him at the
schools. He liked the
aloneness
and the space – and yet keeping the consolidated
steady link to the house. It was a big house, and quite old, 17th Century
perhaps. Or bits of it. There was an orchard with apples. He had never liked
apples before, but these had a sharp sweet acid kick, better than the gin he
had once illicitly tried at age ten and a half. He did not ever like booze any
way. He did not like or respond to ‘teaching’ – but here, somehow, he did. He
learned other things than swimming and games.

He
learned to read properly, that was, to take stuff in, hold and analyse and so
find out what it meant. He learned where countries were, and how they worked,
or were believed to, and how to calculate mathematically, multiply, qualify,
equate. The correlation of numbers, words, codes. To think things through.

He
learned that.

Nobody
ever forced. Nobody nagged or pursued if you missed some class or talk. But in
the end, you did not miss so many. The meals were good, the ‘canteen’. He had
his own room, and it was of reasonable if hardly giant size. He had a music
centre and TV, ultimately use of a computer, only slightly restricted, for
recreation or research. The college was not crowded; its students were ‘selected’
and both male and female. He had sex.

By
then, his horizons partnered, both narrowing and expanding. They were becoming
concentrated
. He was
altered, but altered potentially into
himself
. He seemed to lose nothing he had
wanted. But gained extras. He still stole things. He kept them in the desk in
his room, which could be opened by his using – not a key – but a sequence of
numbers he had chosen and, presumably, (years later he was not so certain of
this), known only to himself.

In
the dream, he saw the flowers in the meadows. He did not care that they were
flowers, or beautiful, or helpful for the environment, but they were part of
the new life he had had. They were, (then) the
Now
.

He
was by the river next, in the dream. About fifteen, he thought, or sensed. And
he glanced up, and on a rise beyond the slow green summer water, he noticed a
stone bench. Heavy was sitting there. Heavy, who he had never seen again after
that day in the park, after the advent of Sunderland and the college.

Heavy
was grown up. Thirty or forty, possibly. Incredibly obese and ungainly, yet
somehow he had been poured into a vast and elegant grey suit, the kind powerful
guys wore in movies from around 1948. He had rested back his peculiar head, and
stretched out his froggish legs, crossing them loosely at the ankles.

Carver
was pleased to see Heavy, yet startled, in the dream. He was going to call out
to Heavy when Donna moved up close to him across the bed, and put her hands on
his spine, and then around him to his stomach, low down, not quite touching his
genitals. The dream faltered and started to swirl off.

He
woke in the dark. Yes, she was close up against him.

Working
on him slowly, softly, with a feline determination. In the beginning, the
commencement of their relationship, he had made the advances more often than
she. But then it came to be almost always Donna who moved first. Lascivious and
eager. It was easy for him to respond, of course. Even once she began to alter,
to become more impatient, unreasonable in other areas, even eventually in the
area of sex: “You don’t like me really, do you, Car? I’m not what you wanted. I
saw you look at that bitch in the restaurant. She’s more your type.
Isn’t
she?” Or, with
deadly ‘reasonableness’ – “Don’t if you don’t want to. You’re too tired. No.
Another night.” Although he never did make it ‘another night’ but always that
one, right then, once she had – what? – propositioned him – laid hands on him –
her pretty, long-fingered hands, with long painted nails, warm, urgent,
fragrant with faintly chemical handcreams, the scent of unreal lilies, of
roses, daisy-flowers, clover –

“Donna...”
he said, and turned over, the last papery fragments of the dream crumbling from
him into thin air.

Her
scent was different tonight. It was smoky and deeper – a cello note that had
been a staccato piping – her skin – was like – velvet – it – There was a faint
light in the room after
all.
There
was no pallor to Donna’s skin, or her hair, and under his mouth the texture of
her neck was feral but very cool. He lifted away from her. Her eyes were there,
abruptly seen, luminous as
the
eyes of Donna were not. He flung back from her and slammed on the bedside lamp.
Both he and she, it seemed, knew to
shut
their eyes then, to protect them from
the glare. And then open their eyes and see. They were ice-blue, her eyes. She
was not Donna. She was the woman from the breakfast, Angela or Anjeela
Merville.

“Good
evening,” she said, with a softly calm politeness. And then she laughed. “You
buzz with electricity. Did you know?

“What
the shit are you doing here?”

“What
do you think I am doing here?”

Carver
swung himself over, off and out of the bed. He was naked, but the disturbed
covers now completely revealed that she was too.

In
the low harsh light she looked young, desirable, her full breasts with their
black strawberries of nipples, her heavy thighs, the mask of black fur nestled
between them. Her hair looked darker too, and longer than he had thought. The
smell of her was lush and tasty. Chocolate, honey –

He
swallowed, and the smell and taste of her entered him.

“Ms
Merville, thanks for your visit. I’d like you to get out now.”

She
lay looking at him. She said, “No, you wouldn’t.”

His
body had responded to hers. In the lamplight it was absurdly obvious.

“Don’t
judge a book by its cover,” he said.

“Nor
you.”

Something
then – something odd – as if, in this quilted lacuna between the frames of
drugged dark and copious alien greeting – anything could
seem
odd any longer –
for a second, she looked
familiar
. He
knew
her. But he did
not.

“Did
Croft send you?”

“No.”

“You’ll
be aware, there will be,” he said, “hidden surveillance in this room. Sound,
too. They can pump noise, even smells through from the kitchen, for example. So
why not the other way with every word intact?”

“If
you say so.”

“You
should
know
,” he said. “What
is it? Get me to fuck you and take pictures? Why –” he said, “why bother. You –
they – have got me, haven’t they? Whoever they are. The nameless corporation
here, the guards who guard the
guards
. They’ve got me, though Christ knows
why.”

She
moved, fluid as a pelt, a silk cord, on to her spine. Her belly was soft and
smooth. Her mouth. Her hair –

“Come
back to me,” she said.

He
went back to her.

As
he leaned over her she said, so softly he barely heard her, “Remember my name,
Car.
Remember
it.
An
-
jee
-la,”
she whispered. “
An
-
jee
la.
Mer
–” But her voice vanished into his
mouth. Instead she put up both her hands, taking hold of his body. Now her
touch burned him.

He
ceased to care about the room and the cameras or the mikes, the Third Persons.
He had forgotten Croft. Perhaps he had been drugged also to this intensity of
mindless lust and strength. Or it was another dream. It was a vehicle – a car
at night, driving straight forward into a wall of fire. You did not stop. You
crashed through into the flames. And then it was over. There was nothing more
to it, nothing at all.

In
the renewal of the darkness she left him. Almost the last of her, her scent,
and her voice again, close to his ear,

“A
J,” she whispered. “AJ, MV.” Nonsense, Irrelevant.

But
that was nothing either. Everything was nothing. Nothing was anything. He heard
the door shut, quietly. How had she got in, the door had been secured...
nothing. Anything. Nothing. He did not sleep, yet a sort of trance fell on him.
He lay in the timeless quietness of near-dark, thinking of Nothing.

About ten
minutes after Croft’s pronouncement, the big man had stirred again. As if after
a pleasant ordinary interval, a pair of old acquaintances, who had shared a
leisure moment in the shade, resumed their everyday procedures. “Let’s walk on
round the grounds, shall we? We can have a look at the sea from the south side
of the house – and there are the sheds. We’ll take a look at those first.”

The
sheds
.

The
sheds, at least from the front, like Russian train carriages.

Like
the shed Carver had maintained back at his house in the village. The shed whose
windows, by night, glowed turquoise, the exact mixed tone of green (a bluish
emerald) and blue (aquamarine) of the lower Second and Third Level Urgency
Alerts at Mantik.

Without
rush or delay they strolled off through the trees and bushes, going east, away
from the sun. The building reappeared, the house, if it was. Aside from its
small rear terrace and benches, it was very modern, a box-like construction,
and of an odd design (some parts built tall, others of only one or two storeys;
some of the roofs angled, most flat). Quite unlike, for instance, the college.
There was a gravel drive visible from here that curled off round the house walls.
Roses grew in terracotta pots. These flowers were all red, and well-groomed, at
variance with the ramble of the rest of the “grounds”.

When
the rise appeared, and the outlay of the scene matched with the version he had
looked at from higher up, in the corridor outside his allotted room, Carver scrutinised
the building. He believed he identified the corridor windows instantly. They
lacked blinds for one thing. For another they were in the top and second floor
of that section. That there were only two floors made sense, as a stair, not a
lift, seemed to operate.

After
one long establishing glance, Carver turned to survey the rise.

Croft
passed no comment. He was already powerfully ambling up the slope between the
trees. Carver followed.

The
sun caught the sheds, lightly but firmly coupled, like facets of a necklace.
Each copied his own shed. He had purchased that shed.
Chosen
it. He did not
know why he had chosen a shed of that type, but it came ready-assembled. And
why should it not be attractive? There.
Here
. And privacy, he had wanted the shed
for that. Outside the house which Donna had had decorated and furnished as she
wished, and set with the blaring screens of TVs. Somewhere to store things he
stole, too. Naturally. Still a stupid kid. A
theave
, as Heavy would have called him, (only
Heavy had never called Carver that), the same way that, for Heavy, a wolf was a
Wolve
and wolves were
Wolfs
– theave,
theafs.

Stop.
Concentrate.

Say
something to the man who named himself Croft.

“What
happened,” said Carver quietly, “to Robby Johnston?”

As
Carver had asked before. Or... had he?

“Who?
Ah, yes. The fellow in the diver’s suit, the black face-mask – or was it a
balaclava? Can’t remember. I’ll have to check.”

“He
was inside the garden. That night.”

“Yes,
he was, wasn’t he. A bit dottery, apparently. Lucky we could step in.”

“I
believed,” said Carver, “from what’s been said, it was Mantik that had the
problem with me. Not Johnston.”

“Quite.
Seems they both did. Not connected, obviously. Had you offended him, this
Johnston chap?”

“No.”

“Sometimes,
Car, we can offend without meaning to. Or noticing we have.”

A
warning? They had reached the sheds, were less than two metres away. Sunlight
soaked them, maple syrup. They glowed. The windows of each one, polished immaculately,
gleamed hard as steel. The gleam helped to disguise – eradicate – anything that
might be inside. But sunlight no longer affected Carver’s eyes. He counted the
sheds, from left to right. Seven. Seven carriages, halted at some station
beyond Moscow. In reality, or on a movie-set. They were even coupled together,
in just that sort of way, or realistically enough. No engine (a steam engine,
obviously) to pull them on. Stalled? They could travel no farther.