Voices in the Dark (6 page)

‘How do you discipline powers out of a child, in the name of heaven?’

‘She runs about doing exactly what she likes. Letting her eat under the table—’

‘She’s upset. We are all upset. It’s been less than a month since Uncle—’

‘It’s long enough. And as for Anselm, I can tell that boy is going to go wrong. I’ve been telling you so for years.’

‘There is nothing wrong with Anselm. Don’t you dare talk like that about him!’

‘They need firm treatment. You are their
mother
!’

‘I have brought up my children in the way I see fit!’ my mother said, her high-class accent catching up with her. ‘Just like you did.’

‘What is that supposed to imply?’

‘Nothing. I’m not implying anything—’

‘If you are not careful, Maria, they are going to turn out exactly like you!’

There was a silence. Then my mother shouted something else, but Leo spoke quickly over her. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s leave them to get on with it.’

Jasmine gave a token smile and put her hand in his. We crossed the street and sat down on the bench in front of the pharmacist’s shop, where an old tree cast its spindly shade across the pavement. Starlings were settling in the branches, though it was still early. Outside the empty shop on the corner, the pharmacist’s two small sons were playing soldiers in their Sunday clothes. Leo lit a cigarette and watched them clutch their chests and expire in the mud of an
imaginary trench. Since the newspapers had been full of rumours of war, they had developed an obsession with fight-ing. ‘Can I go and play with Billy and Joe?’ said Jasmine.

‘Go on,’ said Leo, ruffling her hair. ‘But not soldiers.’

‘Not soldiers. I know.’

We watched her cross the hard mud of the street, walking very elegantly, the way my mother did, as Billy and Joe broke off their game and came to meet her. There was a pause; then they began throwing stones against the wall, ducking every time and shouting, ‘Freedom! Death to the old regime!’

Leo shook his head and lit another cigarette. ‘Not soldiers,’ he said. ‘Revolutionaries. I don’t know where they pick these games up.’

The gusting wind carried a few words to us:‘So bloody-minded!’ came my mother’s voice, and ‘You are a fine one—’ came my grandmother’s. As we sat there, Michael appeared at the corner of the street. He ducked to avoid Billy and Joe’s stone throwing, patted Jasmine on the head as he passed, and crossed the road towards us. He was wearing an old hat of his father’s that he thought gave him an air of distinction, but the material was worn so shiny in places that you could almost see through it. He had stuck a red feather in the band. ‘Anselm,’ he said. ‘Come to the Royal Gardens. My father has been lecturing all afternoon, and I want to go out for a walk.’

‘You’re just on your way back from a walk,’ I said.

‘I know.’

‘Go on,’ said Leo, putting his hand on my shoulder. ‘I will be all right here.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Of course.’

I got up and went with Michael. When I glanced back, Leo was studying something across his knees. It was that book again,
The Darkness Has a Thousand Voices
. As I watched, he took a scrap of paper and a stub of pencil from his pocket and began writing.

‘What is your father doing?’ said Michael.

‘I don’t know.’

‘What’s the book?’

‘The one Aldebaran left him. He has been reading it since last night.’

We went through the demolished part of town and past the government hospital. People were queueing outside, some of them lying on stretchers and others sitting wrapped up in coats on the steps. We passed the Heroes’ Monument on Castle Street, and I glanced up at the memorial to Harold North. His date of death was fixed in the year he had left the country – twenty-two years ago now. ‘And also his wife, the singer and dancer Amelie’ was inscribed under his monument.

As we stood there, thunder began low over the houses, and lightning flashed. The rain came out of nowhere and pounded on the roofs. ‘Come on,’ said Michael, catching hold of my arm, and we ran for the nearest doorway. We stood and watched the rain fall.

‘Do you think there is any way Harold North could still be alive?’ I said.

‘Where did that come from?’ he said.

I told him about the book. Michael considered it for a long time. ‘Maybe,’ he said at last. But he did not sound convinced.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘It sounds impossible. But I wish there was some chance.’

‘If he was still alive, why hasn’t he come back?’ said Michael.

I sat down on the step, and he sat beside me. The rain was falling hard now, soaking the red dust of the city so that it ran like blood. ‘Maybe if he was too scared,’ I said.

‘Of what?’

‘Of facing his old life. Of seeing Leo again after all this time.’

‘Maybe,’ said Michael.

‘Or maybe if he couldn’t come back,’ I continued. ‘If he was in prison, or ill, or …’ I shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘But if he could have come back, he would have, wouldn’t he?’ said Michael.

‘People do stupid things,’ I said. ‘Without meaning to hurt themselves, or even wanting to.’

‘That’s true.’ He turned his hat round in his hands and replaced it on his head. ‘Very wise, Anselm.’

It was something I had learned from Leo. In truth, nearly all my wisdom was secondhand. We fell into silence again. The storm raged briefly, then wore itself out. ‘Come on,’ said Michael as the rain dwindled. ‘Let’s go to the Royal Gardens and then home.’

‘What about your father?’ I said as we resumed our walk. ‘What was he angry about?’

Michael jammed his hat down harder on his head. ‘He wants to leave the country.’

‘Is he serious? You told me before—’

‘I don’t know,’ said Michael. ‘I don’t know if he’s serious, but he keeps ranting on about it, day and night. I swear to God, it’s all he ever talks about!’

I was startled by the real exasperation in his voice. ‘Do you think he would make you—’ I began.

‘We are in a bad state,’ he said. ‘We have very bad debts. My father is trying to be the first honest pawnbroker in the family, and it’s going to finish the business. He gives people back their things when they can’t pay. A few weeks ago, we had the debt collectors in—’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes. Of course I am.’

I didn’t know what startled me more – that the debt collectors had been at the Barones’ shop or that Michael had not told me. We walked on in silence, along the alley beside the Five Stars Inn. The wind cut sharply, as though it was already winter. I pulled my jacket tighter around my shoulders. It was an old leather jacket of Leo’s, with his cigarette burns in the sleeves.

‘I don’t want to leave,’ said Michael. ‘But I don’t want to stay if things get as bad as they are supposed to.’

‘Where would you go?’ I said.

‘South.’

‘Where south?’

‘I don’t know, Anselm.’ The exasperation was creeping back into his voice. I kept quiet and waited for him to continue of his own accord. ‘The fact is,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to live in a country ruled by the Imperial Order. And they wouldn’t want me. So maybe it would be best just to get the hell out of here.’

‘But, Michael—’

He shook his head then. ‘Let’s not talk about it,’ he said. ‘It might not even happen.’

He had a way of dismissing a matter just when you reached the heart of it, and it exasperated me, but I knew from experience that I could do nothing about it. We ran the last few streets to the Royal Gardens. They were almost
deserted tonight. A few boys our age were throwing stones into the empty fountain. A couple of children were dodging in and out of the old maze. Hardly anything remained of it now except a few overgrown hedges. The government had never been able to afford to restore the gardens. We took the least weed-choked path to the far fence, behind which an old house stood. It was where we always came to get away from Trader’s Row.

The house had been boarded ever since I could remember, and red signs warned trespassers away. Michael and I knew how to get under the barbed wire, and when we were younger, we made a den in the broken carriage that stood in front of the doors and spent every waking hour of one summer there. But we did not go inside tonight. I watched the starlings settling in the pine trees on the other side of the fence, and through the branches, I saw the lights of the castle, appearing then vanishing again as the wind moved the trees.

‘Look,’ said Michael suddenly, making me start.

‘What?’ I said.

‘I thought I saw a light. Look … there.’

‘What, in the castle?’

‘No. In the house. The first floor.’

We both stared at the house, but no light came again. ‘Where?’ I said. ‘Tell me which window.’

‘It was somewhere near the middle.’

The darkness around us was suddenly charged with energy. When we were children, we had firmly believed the house was haunted; that was part of the attraction of the shut-away world on the other side of the fence. And now those old fears stirred in my mind and made me stop breathing as I stared at it. But no light shone from the
windows, though we watched in silence for several minutes.

‘Maybe I imagined it,’ said Michael eventually. ‘Come on, let’s go home.’

By the time I got in, the argument had burned itself out, and my grandmother was leaving. My mother was sweeping up the broken glass from the floor.

‘Let me do that,’ said Leo. As he took the dustpan and brush from her, I saw his fingers rest against hers for a moment.

‘I see
you’ve
decided to grace us with your presence,’ my grandmother remarked as she crossly swept past me at the door. ‘I will see you all next week.’

We listened to her heeled shoes vanishing along the street. ‘Jasmine wanted to speak to you,’ my mother said as I took off my jacket.

‘What about?’

‘I don’t know. She told me to send you upstairs. I think she wants some help with her newspaper cuttings.’ My mother smiled tiredly and touched my arm as I went past her up the stairs. I knew it was a kind of apology for my grandmother.

Jasmine was sitting up in bed, cutting up a newspaper with my mother’s dressmaking scissors. ‘Anselm, help me cut along the edges,’ she said. ‘I can never do it right.’

‘Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?’ I said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘But help me first, Anselm.’

I sat down on the edge of her bed. There were two articles – one was about the king and the second about Aldebaran, another testament from a great man who had once known him. Jasmine had already cut out a picture of the king looking tired and handsome, and she was
arranging it in the last remaining space on her wall. She collected every article about them both; if someone raided our house, they would think it the hideout of some outlawed band of royalists. I cut around the articles carefully and handed them to her. ‘There,’ I said. ‘Will those do?’

‘Thank you, Anselm.’ She laid them carefully on the chair beside her bed.

Aldebaran’s wooden box was there beside them. She glanced at it and sighed. I had not looked at it properly until now. The lid was carved into a neat pattern of stars, and the inside was balding velvet. I opened it and then closed it again, then set it back down beside her bed. ‘It’s a nice box,’ I said. But I did not really understand why he had given it to her.

‘Anselm, are you sad?’ she said.

‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’

I hesitated. But I could not tell her about Michael leaving. I felt as if I could make it less likely by forcing myself not to even think about it. ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘It’s really nothing at all, Jas.’

Jasmine picked up the box and began tracing the pattern of stars with one finger. ‘Anselm?’ she said, pausing halfway along the line and gazing up at me.

‘Yes.’

‘Why doesn’t Grandmama like you?’

She was looking up at me intently, her thumb in her mouth, and I could tell this was what she had wanted to ask me all along. ‘She does …’ I began. But it was no use. Jasmine had been able to see my thoughts since before she could talk. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Sometimes she doesn’t act as if she likes any of us very much.’

‘But she’s different with you,’ said Jasmine.

‘Maybe.’

‘She is. Can’t you remember when she started being like that?’

I hesitated. ‘She’s always acted like she disapproved of me, as long as I can remember. Not all the time, but sometimes. My seventh birthday – that’s the first time I can think of.’ I made to leave. ‘To be honest, Jasmine, I gave up trying to understand her long ago. I wouldn’t pay it too much attention.’

‘You’ve never told me the story of your seventh birthday,’ she said.

I smiled at that. ‘There isn’t a story.’

‘You could make one.’

‘No, I couldn’t.’

‘Please. Make me a story about your seventh birthday.’

It was something to think about instead of the storm that was rising again outside and Michael’s talk of leaving. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘But only a short story. It’s half past nine already.’

‘All right,’ said Jasmine, replacing her thumb in her mouth. ‘A short story.’

It started with Leo’s writing. On winter nights when I was a small boy, he used to sit by the fire writing pages and pages, and I tried to copy him even before I could spell out my own name. The year before my seventh birthday, my mother was working late as a governess, and the evenings were long. Leo and I used to sit and write while we waited for her to come back. And it was on these evenings that Leo talked to me about his past life. One night he told me about Stirling. I was struggling to copy a line of a poem out of my
school textbook, and Leo stubbed out his cigarette and said, ‘You remind me of him, you know.’

‘Who?’ I said. He had been thinking aloud.

‘Stirling,’ he said. ‘My little brother.’

I closed my book. In the metal coal bucket, I could see my reflection, a large-eyed boy with reddish brown hair and a mouth just like my mother’s. ‘It’s not that you look like him,’ said Leo, seeing me studying it. ‘I don’t mean that. But there are certain things about you that are the same.’

‘Tell me about him,’ I said.