Ventriloquists (27 page)

Everywhere the carnage was the same, the chaos identical and total. Belongings broken if not atomised; a television sliced horizontally in half, its lower segment now full of water, like a fishtank. Books spread-eagled on every surface, like birds that had fallen to the earth and stayed there to die. Compact discs embedded in upholstery, as if fired by a novice assailant…

‘There’s nothing here,’ said Bernadette.

‘Upstairs, then.’

‘Upstairs.’

Here, the mess and confusion were even worse. Three of the four doors had been yanked half-off their hinges, and now hung at crazy-house, trippy angles that didn’t fit the doorframes. The carpet on the landing was less marshy than swamp-like, to such an extent that Massimo formed the fear (with remarkable ease) that the two of them would slip through, as if into quick-sand.

‘I hate to say this, Bernadette, but I suddenly need the toilet. Which one’s the bathroom?’

‘I don’t think it necessarily matters where you go, Massimo.’

‘This is someone’s house!’

‘Not anymore, I doubt. It’s that door.’ And she flung the beam in the relevant direction, at one of the doors that hung off its hinges.

Massimo squeezed past one of the lopsided doors, thanking God that at least the light in here was better than it had been downstairs. With no boards covering the windowpanes that had remained intact, a dreamy mix of streetlamp and moonlight gave off something better than the black hole darkness. Massimo was able to make out the shower stall, bath, the sink… and the toilet.

‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ he called out. ‘Please don’t go anywhere. No pun intended.’

‘I don’t exactly want to hear your noises, but okay. I can’t even say close the door!’

‘You’re a nurse! You’ve heard worse!’ Massimo assured her, pulling at his belt tongue and unsnapping the poppers at his groin.

‘Yeah yeah. Less explaining and more straining, please.’

‘
Don’t worry – I won’t ned to strain.’ Massimo sat on the seat.

‘Nice image – many thanks for that,’ Bernadette called. As well as she could while still holding the torch, she inserted a finger in her ear. She really did not like hearing the ablutive noises of others. At the same time she could not deny that the wine they’d drunk, on top of a few cups of tea in her last break of what had been a busy day at the hospital, had given her a full bladder as well. She’d hang on, though, she resolved.

In the bathroom it was hazy and strange: it was like his early-morning pee-trips, when he’d sit in the gloom (always sit, even for a pee) because he’d worry that turning the light on would wake him up too thoroughly – and he wanted to go back to sleep. So he’d sit, as he sat now, in surroundings that the darkness had rendered unfamiliar. Or like the times when Charlie borrowed the keys to a nice big property on the sales or rental market.

Sometimes it was fun to pretend that they owned a place as grand as that, especially if it was fully furnished, like the place where Massimo enjoyed receiving stolen goods. A bit of class. The oiks respected it. In fact, with the wine leaving his system but with it having done its job on his brain, if he tried he could almost imagine Charlie had simply borrowed this very house for the evening… Yes. They’d borrowed it and they’d hired a rent boy from Milton Keynes…

‘Am I safe to take my fingers out of my ears yet?’

Ah, there he was now, bless him! Massimo chuckled.

Then the bath gurgled.

The shock to Massimo’s system was sufficient to send his sphincter into spasm. While it was fortunate in one way that he was sitting where he was sitting, the following couple of seconds were pure torture as he struggled to rise and pull up his pants and trousers.

The bath gurgled again – louder this time. No mistaking the noise: a drainy rumble, in a bathroom’s clear acoustics.

‘Oh I smell you haven’t,’ said Bernadette on the landing. ‘Thanks for the bouquet… just when I was getting used to the smell of rot…’

Shut up, woman!
thought Massimo, trying to voice something – voice anything… If the bath was the gate to Oz, then he wanted Bernadette in here with him. A solo voyage sounded horrendous.

The problem was, he couldn’t speak.

Clutching his trousers high (no time to refasten the poppers), Massimo stumbled forward in the darkness – and misremembered the angle of the lolling door. His right shin spanked into the wood – he yelped – and he fell forward, over the rest of the door, and onto the sopping carpet on the landing. Though he ended up on his left side, he had no intention of remaining in this position for long.

The torchlight burst into his face.

‘Massimo,’ said Bernadette’s voice behind. ‘What the fuck?’

Massimo pointed back into the room. ‘It’s in there…’

‘What is?’

‘The doorway – in the bath.’

He must have sounded scared enough for Bernadette to take him seriously: for the next beat of time, while Massimo breathed incompetently and struggled to his feet, she kept the light on his features as much as possible.

‘Get it out my face!’

‘Sorry!’

Bernadette pointed the torch at the flight of stairs that they’d climbed.

‘Not there!’ Massimo screamed at her. ‘
In the fucking khazi!
’

She pointed the torch at the available space between where the door hung wonky and the doorframe. Following Massimo’s collision with the door, and its subsequent reshifting, this space was now a triangle of about the same area (but different shape) as a dinner tray, and into it she and Massimo peered, both of them aware of changes in the atmosphere. It wasn’t the smell of Massimo’s passed stool that hung in the air; it was a sudden chill so acute that it burned the insides of their nostrils and paralysed their nasal capacities. They smelt nothing at first; nothing at all.

Heard
nothing either… until gradually a sound, one that seemed to emanate from the bathtub, came to the ear: a sound of winds blowing hard from outside somewhere safe.

The chill intensified – another dramatic drop in temperature. Without knowing they had done so, Bernadette and Massimo had taken hold of one another’s waists, side by side.

‘
God, it’s freezing in there,’ said the former, feeling the skin pinch on the hand that was holding the torch closer to the aperture.

‘It wasn’t…’ said Massimo.

The light inside the room was changing too: it was brightening far more brilliantly than could be accounted for by a simple pocket flashlight.

‘Getting bright,’ Massimo murmured, but he was not sure if he had spoken. The cold had seized his synapses. If he didn’t move now, he vaguely taunted himself, he would freeze solid in a matter of minutes.

Gripping his waist, Bernadette said, ‘Don’t let go of me. Please.’

Freeze together, would they? Massimo tried to smile: the gesture broke a film of ice that had formed on his upper lip.

Cold…

And he remembered what Benny had told him about the deep-sea fish, where the temperature was oh-so low. The male fish cuddled up to the female… and she absorbed him into her own body.

No!

Massimo struggled and wriggled – he would not allow Bernadette to absorb him – and he wondered if they could be at the bottom of the sea.

How would they breathe?

And why was it getting so bright, if this was the ocean floor?

Still he struggled. Not getting anywhere.

The noise of winds howling, louder now – louder, it seemed, by the second; but
outside
. And they were
in
side – or were about to be – safe from those gales, but without the adequate clothing... in a place as bright as a snowfield in summer.

‘Hold me tight,’ said Bernadette… and her command fed Massimo’s fears of assimilation – of being absorbed – as thoroughly as he himself and his own words (and actions) must have preyed on Nero and Jess.

As the light from inside the bathroom brightened, as the freezing temperatures dipped still lower, Massimo thought of those two teenagers. How ironic that he’d considered dumping their corpses into the very same wormhole into which he would be dragged!

Once more, he tried to smile; but the process of freezing had been so rapid that he could not move more than a couple of secondary muscles that served no purpose here.

His heart… slow… slower. No smile muscles available. Eyes… Ah! He rolled his eyes in their sockets, and he saw that the house that he and Bernadette had entered illegally was all but disappeared. Fading fast. Everything around him –
cold –
was bright white, but he was
in
side –
cold –
and the winds outside –
cold…

Bernadette screamed.

Like inside an igloo
, was Massimo’s last conscious thought. But he heard the voice: it reached him. The voice that said:

‘Well,
you
took your fucking time, cunt.’

Reunion

1.

Massimo and Bernadette were not permitted to sit down: they were made to walk around in small steps to keep their blood circulation active. Rugs and shawls that smelled of beasts were wrapped around their torsos and laboured onto the quivering racks of their shoulders; and the people who administered these extra layers onto the freezing travellers were short, stocky, muscular, dressed in similar protection against the cold. There were seven of these helpers. Their skin was toast-coloured, their teeth short and yellow; the men wore barcode beards, the women had wide eyes, flattened noses…

And then there was Connors.

It was Connors who had addressed Massimo and Bernadette:
Well,
you
took your fucking time, cunt
… although the apostrophe had been for Massimo’s benefit mainly. It was Connors who had barked his orders to the walls of the iceroom, and in from the cold and the winds had streamed his assistants with their furs and their busyness. It was Connors, it seemed, who ran the show.

The better part of half an hour elapsed before the visitors became comfortable with the new temperature. The shock to the system had been conquered, but more work was needed. Neither Italian brogues nor hospital-regulation flats were suitable footware for the environment; and once they had been allowed to sit (in chairs fashioned from bleached bone of indeterminate origin), the assistants set to wrapping the travellers’ things and feet in more applications of aromatic fur and hide.

Throughout this operation, conversation had been kept at a minimum, and this wordlessness suited Bernadette fine. She was used to the professional company of practitioners going through the medical motions – she was a nurse. And so was the young man helping her to keep warm. They all were – they were nurses… with Connors the watchful surgeon – the doctor on his ward rounds – calling the shots. Yes. This was something that Bernadette could comprehend. To be a nurse required patience (and living with Chris required patience): Bernadette would wait. She could and she would. She would listen to the mad wind throttling the building from outside, and be grateful that she was not in its grip… and she would wait.

Massimo, on the other hand, had some different ideas. He was edgy and restless; as he found himself able to speak, more and more questions – some of them fully formed and sensible, others dreamy gibberish – spilled from his voicebox. He was scared. He was livid. He writhed on his seat, a steady flow of who-why-where-how hissing in the supercooled oxygen.

It was not Bernadette’s place to tell the man to shut up – not in someone else’s home. No. It was
Connors’s
place to tell Massimo to shut up, which he did as the assistants withdrew one by one, their functions discharged for the nonce.

‘Zip it up, Mass,’ Connors said eventually and simply. ‘You don’t come in here shouting the odds in front of my new friends.’

Massimo lowered his head. His breath was a balloon of steam in front of his eyes.

Taking this unexpected cessation in the hostilities as her cue, Bernadette said, ‘Do you mind if I ask a few questions?’

Connors nodded. ‘Sure.’

‘Do you know where my dog is?’

‘Not
Where are we?
Not
What do you do for food around here?’
Connors appeared amused by Bernadette’s directness.

‘I know where we are, and I’m not hungry,’ Bernadette told him. ‘So how about some dog news?’

Connors nodded again. ‘I’m really very sorry about your pet,’ he began.

‘Oh God.’

‘I looked after her’s best I could, swear I did. But there were things –‘

‘All right. She’s dead, you’re telling me.’

‘I’m afraid I am, love. Sorry.’

Bernadette looked away. The walls of compacted ice claimed her attention. Her eyes prickled with tears.

Connors asked: ‘Were you in the house? When you made it across?’

‘Yes. Number 11,’ Massimo answered. ‘So what have you got here, mate, then? With those pygmies running around after you. Is this
The Man Who Would Be King
bullshit? You their fucking leader all of a sudden? King Chris? Lord Chris?’

Connors smiled. ‘You sound a tad envious, Mass,’ he said. ‘But as you’ve asked so nicely – yea, I suppose there’s a certain kowtowing from certain quarters. My reputation…’ He laughed. ‘…it grew a bit as I travelled north.
Prophet
Chris is more like it. Holy Traveller Chris.’

‘Bollocks.’

‘Yeah, that was my own initial reaction, funnily enough. If you want me to, I’ll tell you all about it in a mo. But just tell me first… were you
upstairs
in Number 11?’

Bernadette faced Connors again. Slipping her hands free of the furs, she wiggled her fingers to test their condition of numbness and spoke.

‘Thank you for trying to look after my dog,’ she said. ‘May I ask why the position in the house is relevant?’

‘It’s a theory I’ve developed. The higher you are in the house, the further north you are up God’s body.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘When I came here I was outside the house, as I’m sure you must know. And I landed on a ship at sea. See, the house is the body, I reckon. If I’d been in the basement, I would’ve come here in the far south, right by the Toenail.’

‘By the
Toenail?’
asked Massimo.

‘Toenail Island. You see, all the scale’s to cock… How long have I been away?’ Connors asked.

‘Couple of weeks.’

‘You see? Here I’ve been travelling for nearly eighteen months. That’s why I’ve picked up a bit of word of mouth as I moved along.’

Bernadette interrupted. ‘You’re talking as though this makes sense to you.’

‘It does! It didn’t at first, I grant you that, but you get used to it.’

‘Well, our houses don’t
have
basements,’ she continued. ‘We do have attic space, though.’

‘Right. And that’s what’s further north… if anyone’s mad enough to go somewhere even colder than this godforsaken territory… What’s your name, by the way?’

‘Bernadette.’

‘Chris Connors.’ He stood up and slid across the ice like a skater; his feet were wrapped in fur and cloth. He extended a hand… and after a momentary hesitation, Bernadette shook it, gratefully and at length. A sharing of warmth. ‘I really am sorry about your dog – she was quite a faithful companion to me, especially considering.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And while I’m dishing out the apologies, I’m sorry we robbed your house.’

Bernadette dropped Connors’s hand.

‘It was nothing personal,’ Connors tried to assure her. ‘Massimo’s probably told you: we went to the wrong house. Which I
still
think was your fault, Mass, by the way.’

Massimo snickered. ‘Hardly the point now, though, is it? How the hell do we get back?’

‘Get
back
? There’s no going
back.
’

‘Well I’m not staying
here.
’

‘The door’s there. Mind it don’t slam on your arse on the way out.’

The three of them fell silent. Outside the walls, the wind picked up a gear.

‘What time is it here?’ asked Bernadette.

‘There’s no such concept in the north. It’s seen as blasphemous.’

‘The
time
is?’

‘Yeah. We’re in a place called Gadshin, which if you say it after a couple of hypothetical whiskies, comes out exactly as what it is: God’s Chin. You have to picture – don’t matter if you believe it or not – you have to picture God lying down in the sea, most of the body underwater.’

‘Speaking of whiskies,’ said Massimo, a note of hope in his voice.

‘You already reek of booze.’ Connors withdrew and slid back to his seat.

‘So would you if you’d known what was about to happen.’

‘Fair enough. What did you do? Go to the pub first?’

‘We had some wine in the kitchen,’ Bernadette answered.

‘
And
I went to the pub first,’ Massimo added.

Connors sat down. ‘Well, you gotta get your priorities right, I suppose. But where’s me manners?’ He shouted something in a foreign tongue. ‘I can’t promise you a perfect single malt, but it’s a local preparation at’ll get you good and pissed for bedtime.’

One of the women who had helped dress Bernadette and Massimo entered the room. She did so, not by opening a physical door, but by leaking in through the compacted ice like a mist and reforming in front of their eyes. Fully materialised a few seconds later, she awaited her orders like a servant.

Connors spoke to her in her mother tongue. To aid what might have been a problematic pronunciation, he held up three bare fingers on his left hand.

The waitress stepped backwards towards the wall. It claimed her, and she reverted to mist once again, bowing gently as she disappeared and left the room.

‘I can’t believe I saw that,’ said Massimo.

‘A day or two in this place,’ Connors replied, ‘and you won’t believe you ever thought it amazing.’

Bernadette shook the image from her head. In the past, in the course of duty, she had witnessed the remarkable – the dead man’s feet dancing a full two hours after his heart had stopped beating; the baby on the operating table, barely five months old, who had clearly said
Try not to hurt me too much –
and she had learned not to question sensual evidence. And of course she owned The Object, which defied its own explanation.

‘Why would telling the time be blasphemous, even on God’s chin?’ she wanted to know.

‘Do you hear them winds?’ was the answer. ‘They’re said to be His breath… Cold as arseholes, right, but that’s what they believe. Some say He’s
snoring
.’

Bernadette waited. When nothing more was forthcoming, she added: ‘But what’s that got to do with blasphemy?’

Connors shrugged. ‘God’s breath should be timeless, right? But who knows? Who
knows
what goes on in the mind of Johnny Foreigner? Ah! Here she comes! Come in, girl!’

The local woman entered by a door in the ice. Although
she
did not need the door, the steaming clay mugs that she carried most certainly did: the
mugs
would not vanish into the air.

Wind spat snow into the room – a violent flurry – and the local woman handed out the mugs, filled as they were with what looked like forest mud raised to boiling point. Bubbles popped on the surface.

‘Tastes better than it looks,’ Connors promised.

2.

‘You travelled north up God’s body.’

‘That’s right. Go on – ask.’

‘…It’s hard to put into words.’

‘No it ain’t, Mass. You’re dying to ask, so ask. One of the things I respected about you from the first was your directness and candour.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Yeah that’s right.’

‘All right then. Ready?’

‘When you are, mate.’

‘What…’

‘…
Yes?
’

‘What was it like in God’s bollocks?’

3.

Bernadette stomped out into the snow. It was morning. Or it was morning by her body clock, at any rate. She had even managed to sleep – six hours by the watch on her wrist, if that meant anything at all. A long shift at the hospital had been enough – plenty! – to ensure that as soon as she and Massimo had been led to their sleeping quarters, irrespective of any residual anxiety, her eyes had clicked shut on her second heartbeat.

If the concept of morning meant anything – if the pale sky was anything to go by, given that it had looked the same when they went to bed – then a beautiful morning was where she’d landed. Undeniably beautiful, but cold and blustery: the sort of climate that Chris would have described understatedly as ‘a bit nippy’ – or as ‘fresh’ – when what he meant was an entire half-degree above authentic physical system collapse. When what he meant was
bloody freezing
.

Thinking now of Chris back at home, Bernadette followed an icy, snow-covered path down a gentle descent. The direction was unimportant: she appreciated the burn in her lungs, the sense of freedom; every stride shook a kink from the muscles in her shoulders and lower back. She’d been tenser than she’d thought. However, continuing to imagine Chris in the house brought back some of this tension. He’d had a game last night (Bernadette had forgotten where), so unless he had done spectacularly well or badly he would have arrived home late. He would have seen the made bed and would have figured that she’d been required to extend her shift. An accident on the motorway, perhaps. Either heavy-of-heart or amiably resigned (depending on how the game had gone), Chris would have crashed on their bed, knowing that these things happened in a nurse’s day. But perhaps he would have tried her phone first…

The idea of owning a phone made Bernadette twitch. It made her reach for where she knew it wasn’t: in the handbag that she wore on her left shoulder when she was out (as she was now); but the spasm of hope faded as quickly as it had sprung into life. The phone was in her handbag all right, but her handbag she’d left at home when she’d popped back to fetch the torch.

Parenthetically wondering if Massimo carried a phone, and if so, what the reception was like, Bernadette strolled on down a track about three metres wide, which was lined with purple bushes that gave off breaths of warmth, and house after house made of snow. Outside a few of these houses, the inhabitants worked at splitting wood or hanging furs on a line. Beasts resembling mules tugged at their tethers; ate from buckets of orange mush that were fixed into the sides of the houses.

A few women said something like ‘Hello’ – closer to
Hulloo
– and most of the men that she encountered nodded politely.
Probably wondering where I’m going,
thought Bernadette.