Voices in the Dark (17 page)

He came down the stairs slowly, his head bent to avoid knocking it on the low door frame, then straightened up and looked at me. ‘Can’t you sleep?’ he said.

I shook my head.

‘Neither can I.’ He sat down at the counter and watched the moths thudding softly against the lamp. He did it without really seeing them. I pulled up a rickety dining chair priced half a crown and sat opposite him. I thought I knew what kept him awake, more than anything. Mr Pascal’s talk of Holy Island.

Leo leaned on both elbows on the counter and lit a cigarette. ‘Anselm,’ he said at last. ‘If I ever had to leave … I mean, if I went away …’

‘Is this about Mr Pascal?’ I said.

The smoke gained a life of its own, making ghostly patterns that hung between us. ‘No,’ said Leo.

He breathed in smoke, and his voice shuddered when he did it. I could hear it catching on something in his chest. It was a strange sound, like listening to an old man, but he was only thirty-one. He leaned on the counter and coughed.

‘Your cough is starting already,’ I said. ‘It’s only September.’

‘I know.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Why are you talking about leaving?’

‘Anselm, the other night,’ he said, ‘there was a man standing outside the shop watching us.’

I did not answer. The silence was charged suddenly, as though lightning had run through it.

‘Do you know anything about this?’ said Leo. ‘Have you seen him before?’

I did not know how to answer. I could not tell him that I had seen the man; it would only make him more anxious. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen people outside, but they might just have been walking past.’

‘When?’

‘Weeks ago. It was probably nothing.’

‘Not this time,’ said Leo. ‘This time, there was a man standing outside watching us.’

‘What did he want?’ I said. ‘Do you know who he is?’

‘He could be anyone,’ said Leo. ‘He could be a debt collector. I owe money. Doctor Keller has sent a final demand; the bills are piling up. Someone is going to stop being lenient sooner or later.’

I did not answer. I had seen the bills just now, searching through the desk in the back room, and the situation was bad.

‘Or he could be someone from the government,’ Leo
went on. ‘All able-bodied men older than eighteen are supposed to have signed up for National Service; it’s all over the city on those government posters.’

‘I know that’s the law,’ I said. ‘But they aren’t going to enforce it for months, Mr Pascal says.’

‘Yes, Mr Pascal says.’

‘Everyone says.’

He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another.

‘So is that who you think he is?’ I said. ‘A debt collector or someone from the government?’

Leo shook his head. ‘Anselm, there are things you don’t know,’ he said. ‘I think people are looking for me. I can’t help believing that he’s someone from the Imperial Order who means no good.’

‘Why would they be looking for you?’

He did not answer. He went to the front window instead and stood looking out. The wind was driving pale clouds across the narrow strip of sky. ‘Is it just because our family are royalists?’ I said. ‘You weren’t even in the resistance, Papa.’

‘But I was involved with the resistance,’ said Leo.

I watched the back of his head. He did not turn. ‘I never knew,’ I said eventually.

‘No one knew. It was just a mistake. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m not saying it wasn’t my fault. It was. But no one knew about it, because I haven’t told anyone.’

‘But then if no one knew, how could this man—’

‘I can’t be sure,’ he said. ‘That’s the thing. The Imperial Order seem to know everything, and I can’t be sure any more. I can’t be certain that there wasn’t someone who saw or heard about it and who could have spoken to them since.’

‘Papa, do you really think they are going to take over here too?’ I said.

He did not answer. His silence was worse than anything he could have said. I ran my fingers along the worn leather of the counter to try and convince myself that it was still really there and that everything was the way it always had been. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I said again. I was half proud of him, in spite of his talk about mistakes, and half shocked. The resistance men were all hardened fighters in their time, and I could not imagine Leo ever being one of them.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I was never part of it; it was just a mistake better left forgotten.’

‘How was it a mistake?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

Leo ran his hand backwards over his hair and came back to the counter. When he did, I noticed the letters on the window. Something was different about them. I picked up the lamp and crossed the room, then raised the light to the glass. Half the sign was gone. Where
L
.
NORTH
&
SON
used to be, the letters were scraped away. A network of scratches shifted in the lamplight, arranging themselves into circular patterns. It looked as though someone had taken a file to it. ‘Who scratched off the sign?’ I said. ‘Did you see someone do it?’

‘I did it,’ said Leo.

I stood there stupidly, the lamp still raised in my hand.

‘I did it,’ Leo said again. ‘Anselm, sometimes it is better to be anonymous, you know? The Norths are Aldebaran’s family – I don’t think there is one person in the city who doesn’t know it. Do you remember when we used to have well-wishers coming to our door, in the old days? People who thought Harold North was some kind of
martyr. You probably don’t remember; you were too young.’

‘I remember,’ I said. ‘A woman brought a wreath once.’

‘Yes.’

‘But, Papa, why take our name off the window now—’

‘Because I’m frightened,’ he said. ‘I’m frightened of what they will do when Harold North is no longer a martyr.’

‘Is everything going to be all right?’ I said.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t think so. Anselm, I have such dreams.’

I had always admired Leo for his honesty, but sometimes I would rather have heard him lie. I would rather he had said, Yes, forget about the men outside the door; it will be all right. I rested my forehead against the window and stared out. Somewhere in the east, a fire was blazing. The Imperial Order burning old buildings was no longer a new occurrence. A derelict building on Citadel Street, two doors from our old house, had gone up in smoke.

‘It is not just because of my father,’ Leo said. ‘Anselm, it was a very bad thing that I did. If it ever comes out – if anyone ever learns about it – I will be in trouble. And so will you – all of you.’

‘What did you do?’ I asked, turning to him. The way he spoke about it made my heart turn cold. ‘Maybe if you just told me—’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘But it was something connected to the resistance?’

‘Don’t ask me. I know telling you would be dangerous. Anselm, don’t tempt me to do it.’

‘All right. All right, I won’t, Papa.’

My own voice sounded frightened, like a child’s. ‘I wish Aldebaran was here,’ Leo said. ‘I never knew how much I
relied on him before.’ He sat down at the counter again and lit a third cigarette. ‘Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I start wondering where he is now. Is that madness? I don’t know. I can’t think of him as just gone away for ever.’

‘He’s still watching over us,’ I said. ‘I believe that much.’

‘When you lose someone,’ Leo said slowly, ‘they watch over you. I know they do. But the fact is, they can’t always help you any more. They can’t be there to catch you. That’s what troubles me about it. To think that if I died, I would see you and Jasmine and Maria suffering and not be able to do anything about it. Is there anything worse than that?’

I did not know what to say. I did not like to think of it. ‘Papa?’ I said, changing the subject as far as I dared to. ‘Did you ever find out about that book? The one that Uncle left you?’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing of consequence. I asked Markey about it.’

‘You asked Daniel Markey?’

‘Yes. I met him by chance, and Mr Pascal thought he would be the only person who would know.’

‘I suppose he would be the only person.’

Daniel Markey was the best antiques valuer in the city, and a long time ago, when Leo was training as a soldier and every next man was in the military, Daniel Markey had been his sergeant. They acknowledged each other but hardly more than that.

‘So what did he say?’ I asked.

‘Nothing. He didn’t know the publisher. No, I’ll just have to leave it. I don’t think it’s a sign – not really. I think it’s just something Uncle thought would occupy me for a few hours. It was a bit like Harold North. As if he had written another book. I think that’s all Uncle meant by it.’

Asking Leo about the book seemed only to have added to his melancholy, so I gave up and made tea instead. Leo drank shakily; in the silence, I could hear it sliding down his throat each time he swallowed. I picked up the newspaper and turned over the pages. The rich people in the portraits stared back, people whose concerns were politics and wars.
INVASION IMMINENT
, the headline threatened.

‘If a war could really be coming, we should try to stay together,’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t we?’

I knew it was childish to be so afraid. I had asked it because what he had just said made me think about him dying. Leo put his hand on the back of my head, like I was a little boy. ‘You talk more sense than anyone sometimes, Anselm,’ he said. ‘It’s true. We should always stay together.’

He took the newspaper from me and leafed through the first few pages. His hand came to rest at a picture of the king, under a report on the minute details of the split in the government.

‘He would give us a few hundred crowns,’ I remarked, half joking. ‘To pay those debts.’

‘No,’ said Leo. ‘No, he has sold all his furniture to give the money to the poor. It says so here. All the state furniture is gone. He must be desperate.’

‘What does he do now?’ I demanded. ‘Eat his banquets sitting on the floor?’

The idea was not particularly funny, but we both laughed, and once we started, it seemed better to keep laughing, in the cold shop with the wind howling outside, than to stop and let the darkness advance on us. I fetched our overcoats from the back room and turned down the lamp, and we waited for it to get light.

* * *

The next day, a fine frost clung to the dust of the city, and slogans had appeared overnight on every wall. The side of Mr Pascal’s shop bore Ahira’s and Talitha’s faces. The pharmacist’s front window was obscured with black slogans. Jasmine walked very close beside me all the way to school. The police were wandering about in every street, with their guns across their shoulders.

‘Don’t leave me,’ said Jasmine when we got to the gates. ‘I don’t like it at school.’

‘Jasmine, don’t start this,’ I said. My eyes ached from yet another sleepless night. ‘Of course you like school. Go on.’

‘No. Anselm, I don’t. Don’t make me go.’

I pushed her towards the gate. She whined and clung to my hand. ‘Jasmine, just go inside,’ I told her, but she would not, and it turned into an argument. I was so late for school that I had to sit at the back of the classroom, far enough from the heat of the stove that the window was still frosted. I could barely hear Sister Theresa, and my mind drifted.

On the shelf at the back of the classroom were stacks of dusty old history books. They were left over from before Lucien’s regime, and no one used them any longer, but nothing was thrown away in Queen Anneline Government School. I reached for one now and turned to the back, where the genealogies of the noble families were. When I was a little boy, I used to wonder if one of these names was my father’s. It seemed stupid now. I studied each name in the St. John family and half of the Markovs, then turned over to the de Fiore family and traced the line down again. It was cut off before the last descendant, a Jean-Cristophe. I supposed it meant they had disowned him.

Since resolving to find out the truth about my real
father, I had done nothing about it. I thought of Michael telling me to go to the graveyard or the records office. If he had still been here, I would have done that. But it was not simple. It felt like a betrayal of Leo, to try and find the man he had long since replaced. And it was as though I was breaking some unspoken promise to my mother too.

‘Change places!’ called Sister Theresa, bringing me back. We changed at the end of every lesson now; the people at the back of the class got too cold otherwise. I shoved the book onto the shelf again and moved further forward.

The sun fell below the houses as we walked home from school, and the city grew as cold as death. The wind skinned your knuckles as though there was grit in it. Jasmine and I walked without speaking, our scarves pulled up to our eyes. ‘I can’t believe anywhere could be so cold,’ Jasmine said through rattling teeth as we crossed the new square.

‘Explorers in the north survive in places much colder than this,’ I said.

She trekked out ahead of me, pretending she was wading through snow. ‘What do they discover?’ she said.

I did not know. We read about them in the newspapers, but they were mostly Alcyrian. ‘Oil and gas, I think. So they can invent machines. They say it’s going to be a new era, across the whole continent, when these machines are perfected.’

I had heard this from Mr Pascal. Jasmine wrinkled her nose under her scarf. ‘Imagine going somewhere colder than this just for oil and gas. They must be looking for something more important.’ She stopped then and took hold of my arm. ‘What’s that sign?’

I looked where she was pointing. It was an arrow,
painted in black on the side of a house. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Come on, it’s too cold to stop.’

‘There’s another,’ said Jasmine as we passed the next end building. ‘Shall we follow them?’

‘I think it’s getting ready for snow.’

‘Look. Another one, Anselm! Stop and look.’ She tugged my sleeve. A fresh blast of wind drew the tears from my eyes. ‘Can we follow them?’ she said. ‘Please.’

‘Let’s just get home,’ I said. The police were still about, and it was growing colder all the time. I tried to pull her on. In response, Jasmine turned and ran away down a side street. ‘Jasmine, come back!’ I shouted. She did not slow. I hesitated, then followed her. The wind drove into my eyes running in this direction and forced the tears faster out of them. At the end of the street, there was another arrow – a whole line of them, leading away along an alley.