Voices in the Dark (37 page)

‘I don’t know,’ said Anna. ‘I used to think there would be. I thought there must be people. But I don’t know any more. It’s just us, isn’t it? It always has been.’

‘Do you still love him?’ said Ashley.

She had refused to answer this question nine years ago. But what was the use any more? ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think so. As much as I loved anyone.’

‘But then couldn’t you find some way—’

Anna shook her head. Ashley watched her. He was turning Bradley’s expensive saltcellar around in his hand. The salt covered the table and half the floor, but Ashley had not noticed. ‘Can I go back there?’ he said. ‘Not for ever. I just want to see it.’

‘No,’ said Anna. ‘No, you can’t.’

‘Couldn’t I go and look for him?’

‘No, Ash.’

‘I want to see him,’ he said. ‘I have to see him. Otherwise I think it might be too late.’

‘Too late?’ said Anna, real fear in her heart now. But Ashley did not continue. He just got up and went to his room and closed the door.

Lying awake that night, things became clear to him. He would find some way to go back to Lowcastle, to the house on the banks of the lake where his first memories were. He
would travel backwards, on the road to the north, and somehow by doing that, all the years between would be cancelled out. And somehow by doing that, he would find his father.

Maybe Juliette had been misled by the title, but to her, Forest Park Mansions looked unimpressive and bleak when she found it at last. A broken tree stood in a small square of dirt; in front of it, a bicycle lay stranded without its wheels. She checked the address several times. While she was still checking it, Ashley crossed the window of the flat and stopped and recognized her.

She waited for him to come down. While she waited, she heard her heart take up a steady rhythm and beat faster and faster, as though it was trying to choke her. Then the door opened, and he looked out at her. ‘Ashley,’ she said. ‘I want to talk to you.’

She saw him tap one finger against the door, and he seemed to be considering. ‘I’ll get a coat,’ he said finally.

She waited. Then he appeared again, and they started out together. They walked for several streets without talking. Then Ashley sat down on a low wall and said, ‘What do you want to talk to me about?’

Juliette did not know how to begin. ‘After I saw you last time,’ she said, ‘things changed to me. It was that and other things. My father’s old life. He used to work for a man called Mr Aldebaran. I’ve remembered it now. And we used to live in a house in a city with a castle on a rock. I do have memories from before I was five years old; I just didn’t know, but you made me remember them.’

Ashley studied her face for several seconds. Then he said, ‘That’s where I want to go. That city with the castle. That’s where my father is.’

Juliette had felt, with something like dread but softer, that there was some connection between them. She could not work it out, but she had known. ‘Can I ask you a question?’ she said. ‘Have you ever been able to do impossible things?’

‘Impossible things?’

Juliette hesitated. Then she picked up a dry leaf from the pavement and held it in the air in front of them, and let it go. It did not fall. Ashley stared at it for several seconds. Then he snatched it out of the air and said, ‘Did you really just—’

‘That was what I meant by impossible things.’

Ashley did not answer for a long time. Then he nodded and said, ‘I can do that.’

‘My father writes all the time now,’ she said, ‘and I broke the lock on his door and read what he was writing. It was an explanation about these impossible things. It’s willpower. And people have been born with it in all generations. There are other people, even here in England. It lets you see other worlds and manipulate forces. In my own country, people train in willpower. And that’s where I want to go. Because my father is going to take my whole life away if I stay here. He doesn’t let me out any more. He thinks something is going to happen to me, and he’s sworn never to go back home to our old country; I know he has. But I won’t be happy – I won’t know what the real world is – unless I can go back there.’

Ashley stared at a burned-out car on the corner of the street. He stared at it so fixedly that he might have been somewhere else altogether in his thoughts. They sat like that for a long time, saying nothing. Juliette was breathing fast because of the cold and because of telling him all these things so suddenly.

‘I know about that place you call the old country,’ Ashley said eventually. ‘I think it’s the same place I’m talking about.’

‘Where is it?’

‘North,’ said Ashley.

‘North, and then what?’

‘And then I think I’ll know the way. Once I get there.’

A question was forming itself in her mind, and she did not dare to ask it. But after he fell silent, there was nothing else to say. The wind cut like knives, and a cold rain started. Juliette thought, This rain and this wind are not part of my real life, and if I stay here a hundred years, I will never get used to them. ‘Ashley,’ she said. ‘I hardly know you, but you’re the only person I’ve ever met who understands this.’

‘So what are you saying?’

‘Let’s go together.’

An engine broke the silence, and they both turned. The Rolls-Royce was cruising through the empty streets, with Richard glancing about anxiously from behind the wheel. ‘Quick!’ said Juliette. ‘If my father knows I was talking to you–’

She pushed Ashley down behind the burned-out car.

‘What is it?’ he said.

‘My father told me I could never speak to you.’

‘I don’t even know your father.’

‘I have to go.’

‘Wait–’

Juliette turned and ran towards Richard, with no thought except to stop him before he came any further along the road.

He saw her and shut off the engine and came out to meet her. ‘What on earth—’ he began. ‘Juliette, where have you been all this time?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘I was worried about you. I had to get the car and come looking for you, I was so anxious. Where have you been?’

‘I just wanted a walk.’

‘Get in. Come on. We’ll have to leave the car somewhere and walk; it is much too recognizable.’

Richard opened the car door to let her in, then got in and started up the engine again. They passed the burned car where Ashley was hiding, but Richard did not even glance at it. As they drove off, Juliette could see it receding in the rearview mirror. She directed her thoughts at it, as though the glass was a concentrating lens. Wait for me and we can go together, she thought. You are the only person who knows the truth.

‘Are you all right, Juliette?’ said Richard, but she did not answer. It was like finding your balance or listening for a true note. Anything could set it off-key. As they gained speed across a roundabout and into the traffic of the main road, she found Ashley’s answer in the low hum of the engine. Yes. I’ll wait for you. Tell me when.

Mr Hardy stretched out his legs, and I heard the joints crack like an old tree in winter. A strange kind of calm seemed to have come over him. He took out a metal flask and poured us spirits, and we both drank. ‘The coach will be moving on soon,’ he said. I glanced to the window. But the coach was not there; the night drew out a while longer. I did not want to go on with my own story, not yet. The hardest part was still to come, I thought, like the last miles of this journey.

I knew him well enough by now to wait for his verdict without asking him for it. He rubbed his hands together, and I heard the joints crack again. Then he poured out another glass of spirits. I swear his blood must have been pure alcohol. He sipped the spirits thoughtfully, then said, ‘All this makes sense, you know.’ Then he was silent for so long that I was sure he was thinking of something else.

He was still racked with coughing. ‘Are you sick?’ I asked him.

‘Not so bad,’ he said, wiping his eyes. ‘No, not so bad – thank you.’

I waited for him to stop coughing.

‘Can I ask you a question?’ he said when he had finished. ‘Do you think Leonard started to write these things after he read the book?’

‘What book?’ I said.

‘
The Darkness Has a Thousand Voices
.’

I frowned. I was not certain if it was that or Aldebaran dying or both. ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘It was only after he read the book that I saw him writing again. That book haunted him. I think he always had a faint hope that Harold North might still be alive.’

‘You read it too,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

And what did you think?’

‘It’s very like Harold North.’

‘Do you remember that night when we talked about love?’ he asked me.

Sometimes I could not keep up with the drift of his thoughts.
‘When you told me about the girl you fell in love with?’ I said.

‘Yes.’

‘I remember.’

He set down his glass of spirits. ‘I was dishonest,’ he said. ‘I made it sound as though I had always acted properly, when in reality I am not such a good man at all.’

I wondered if he was a criminal. But that thought passed. He was too honest; it ran through his whole being, and it was impossible that he had committed any shameful act.

‘We’re almost at the harbour,’ he said. ‘It will only be a day or two more. And, Anselm, there is something I’ve been meaning to tell you before I lose my courage. And before I hear the end of what happened. I’ve been meaning to tell you for days.’

‘All right,’ I said, misgivings rising in my heart in spite of my attempts to dismiss them. ‘What is it?’

‘After I married the girl with the angel’s voice,’ he said. ‘After I married Amelie—’

‘Amelie?’ I said, making us both start. ‘Did you say Amelie?’

‘Yes.’

I stared at him, and he coughed violently again. ‘Go on,’ I said.

‘Well, after that, our luck turned,’ he said, speaking quickly
now. ‘She became a famous singer and dancer, and I became a famous writer. At one time, I was said to have been the best of my generation. Probably just the fashion of the times. Anyway, the times changed. We had to get out; people no longer liked what I said, and there was a price on my head. There was no way we could take our children without endangering them too. It was like with your father; just the same. I could hardly credit it when you told me. And I did a very bad thing, Anselm. I told my eldest son that I would send word for him to come after us.’

Mr Hardy shook his head at that and went on shaking it. ‘My wife passed away while we were in exile in Alcyria. I heard that my son, my younger son …’ His voice choked. ‘A boy I had left at two years old … my God. He died, too, in one of the silent fever epidemics.’ He studied the surface of the table and breathed in and out again several times before he could continue. ‘It was a year after when I heard what had happened. How could I go back to my other son then? How could we speak to each other, after I had betrayed him like that, after the others were both gone from us for ever? So I stayed in Alcyria, and I pretended I had no family. I told you I was half mad. I think that’s true; it was no exaggeration. I had once been so great and so famous.’ He took a shaking breath. ‘No one reads my work now. But there was one other book I wrote, after I finally came back to the city to try and make amends.’

The spirits were dripping from the glass in my hand and falling heavily onto the floorboards. It took me several seconds to realize what the sound was, and I did nothing to stop it. I just stared at him while he twisted his hands.

‘
The Darkness Has a Thousand Voices
,’ he said, and his voice shook and quavered out of control. ‘That was mine. I wrote it because I was too scared to go back and find my family. I thought that perhaps if I wrote something else, it would be like a sign …’ He shook his head. ‘I am not the same man I was. How could I
go back and see my son again? But I wanted there to be some message out there for him. I wanted him to have hope.’

‘Are you saying … ?’ I began.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes.’ He doubled over coughing, and when he spoke again, it was in a faint whisper. ‘I am just Mr Hardy now. Before that, I was Harlan Smith. And longer – a very long time ago – I was Harold North.’

‘No,’ I said. It was too strange to believe it like that, in one sudden blow. I felt as I would if a saint stood before me or a figure from some history book. I went on staring at him while the spirits dripped onto my boots. Then he stumbled forward, and I caught his hands. The glass smashed on the floor; neither of us heeded it.

‘Shall I go on west?’ he asked me. ‘Tell me, will it be all right? Heaven knows I should have come back sooner. I thought I was too late, but I always had powers in my blood, and I think I was lucky to find you. I think I was more than lucky. Anselm, will he want to see me – even now, after all this time?’

I had to think about it. I could not answer him at once. I knew Leo’s happiness or despair depended upon it. He had spent nearly all his life not knowing where his father and mother were, and to learn that one was dead now and one a broken old man … was that better than not knowing at all? ‘Yes,’ I said at last, and I knew with certainty. ‘Of course he would want to see you. Of course he would.’

It was a long time before Mr Hardy grew calm. Then he wiped his eyes and said, ‘I have to know what happened next. I have to know the end of the story. Do you see why now?’