Voices in the Dark (7 page)

He lit another cigarette and inhaled slowly. ‘I remember this one time,’ he said. ‘We were planning a picnic, and your mother decided we shouldn’t bring you. You were a tiny baby. So Stirling promised to remember and take you on a picnic too, one day. That’s what he was like, you know? Things like that mattered to Stirling. I think that’s what I remember most about him, that he cared about things like that. They don’t matter to everyone else.’

‘What was the picnic like?’ I said.

Leo shook his head. ‘We never went. Stirling fell ill and …’ He shrugged and drew on his cigarette.

‘Maybe we should go on a picnic now,’ I said.

Leo watched the flames waver in the grate. ‘Look,’ he whispered, pointing with his cigarette. ‘A horse rearing. Quick, or you’ll miss it.’

‘I see,’ I said. It was a game we’d always played. We sat in silence while the wind troubled the flames, but no more shapes appeared.

‘We should go,’ he said then. ‘Maybe you’re right.’ I waited for him to continue. ‘In April, for your birthday,’ he said. ‘What do you say?’

‘I’d like to.’

He ruffled my hair, then got up and rolled yet another cigarette, standing in the light of the fire. We did not speak about it again, but that was how it was decided. And for the next two months, I remembered.

The twenty-second of April dawned grey and cheerless. I got up and dressed and went to the kitchen, where my mother and Leo were wrapping up a basket of food. ‘Are we still going?’ I said.

‘Of course,’ said Leo with a quick smile.

‘What’s a few raindrops, after all?’ said my mother.

She hugged me tightly, and Leo swung me up onto the top of the cupboard and set me down there so that I was on a level with them. ‘Open your presents,’ said my mother, taking down two parcels from the shelf. ‘Go on. I can’t wait until your grandparents get here.’

I opened the parcels. She had bought me a fur hat that I had dearly wished for. Leo gave me a box of coloured pencils that were so good they made the rest of our possessions look grey and dismal. While I was still thanking them, Aldebaran arrived at the door, stamping his feet against the cold. ‘Uncle!’ I said, and jumped down to run and meet him.

Aldebaran made a great impression on me as a child. His face was so thin when he smiled that you could imagine every bone under it, but he had Leo’s young grey eyes, and he was the cleverest and most impressive man we knew. ‘Anselm, you look older already,’ he said, which made me laugh. He had brought me a book of stories wrapped in brown paper and a rose in a jar.

‘Where did you get a rose at this time of year?’ said my mother.

Aldebaran only smiled. ‘Are you looking forward to the picnic?’ he said, ruffling my hair.

‘Yes, Uncle. Can you come?’

He nodded. ‘They will not miss me at the meetings. I told them my great-great-nephew’s seventh birthday was more important.’

‘Tell us how you are, Uncle,’ said my mother. ‘We have not seen you for days.’

‘Sorry. I have been so busy. Losing Rigel has made things harder.’

‘When will he be back?’ said my mother. ‘I read about it in the papers.’

‘It is a long-term mission,’ said Aldebaran.

I did not understand this conversation, though I listened. I learned, years afterwards, that Rigel had once been the head of the secret service and that Aldebaran had sent him away on some important mission from which he never returned. At the time, I thought he must be some kind of animal – how else could he get lost? ‘Will you find the poor thing again?’ I asked, which made my mother laugh.

My grandmother and grandfather arrived not long after. We set out in a hired carriage. The frost was disappearing from the roofs of the city, and my mother called it the first real day of spring, though the sun hardly glanced out between the clouds all that morning. We spread out rugs in a valley of wild flowers. At that time, the factories and metalworks had barely advanced into the eastern hill country, and you could lay out a picnic anywhere you chose. As soon as we arrived, my mother and Leo unveiled an iced fruit cake.

‘Very good, Maria,’ said my grandmother in almost an approving tone. ‘That looks just the proper thing.’

‘Oh, Leo was the one who made it,’ said my mother. ‘I just drew the pictures in the icing.’

‘Making your husband do the cooking!’ said my grandmother. ‘Whatever next, Maria?’

‘Don’t worry,’ said my mother, cutting the cake carefully into pieces with our old kitchen knife. ‘Leo is not my husband.’

She laughed and made my grandmother shake her head. But my mother’s face turned serious as we sat there. A darkness passed over her and made her shiver. I could not take my eyes away from her, after I noticed that. ‘Anselm,’ said my grandfather then, ruffling my hair. ‘Come and take a walk with me.’

My grandfather could not walk far, on account of his leg, which was damaged in the war, but he led me around the valley and pointed out the flowers and butterflies to me with his walking stick. He was a man who knew everything, and yet he passed on his knowledge quite carelessly. ‘Look,’ he said as a tiny blue butterfly spiralled past us. ‘Princess Marianne Blue. There are hardly any in the city, but you see them sometimes out here. They live just one day, you know.’

‘Just one day?’ I said, startled by that. It made seven years seem an age of some importance.

‘And look at that flower,’ said my grandfather. ‘Bleeding heart, they call it. It looks so like the bloodflower that people still confuse them, and hearts have been broken that way.’

‘Why?’ I said.

‘Because people who find it are convinced that it is the cure for silent fever, and they bring it home for their relatives. And of course, this flower, this bleeding heart, can’t do anything at all.’

Leo got up and wandered away, towards the crest of the nearest hill. I watched him go and lost the thread of my grandfather’s voice. ‘Stop lecturing the poor boy, Julian,’said my grandmother then. ‘He doesn’t want to hear your stories.’

‘Oh, he does not mind it,’ said my grandfather.

‘No, Anselm is a clever boy,’ said Aldebaran. ‘He will be a great man when he grows older.’

‘Perhaps he will be a priest,’ said my grandmother.

‘A great author,’ said my grandfather.

‘Writing is in the family,’ said my mother. ‘On Leo’s side, I mean.’

‘I don’t see why that should affect Anselm,’ said my grandmother.

There was a sudden silence. No one answered, but everyone’s eyes were on her suddenly.

‘Well, I don’t,’ she continued, glancing around at us all but meeting none of our eyes. ‘You are confusing the child, Maria. I think he should be told the truth.’

‘Anselm,’ said my mother, putting a hand on my shoulder. ‘Go and get Leo. It’s time for lunch.’

I got up and started away across the grass. Behind me, I heard my mother’s voice rising and my grandmother’s quick reply. I tried to listen, but I could feel my mother’s eyes on my back, willing me to walk faster. Leo turned when I reached him. He had been gazing at the horizon, where I could just make out a grey shadow beyond the hills. ‘It’s time for lunch, Papa,’ I said.

‘Stay up here with me for a while,’ he said. ‘I want to show you something.’

‘What?’

‘Look – over there on the horizon.’

‘What is it?’ I said.

‘Ositha,’ said Leo. ‘I went there once, when I was training as a soldier. During the war. It is just a ghost town now.’

‘What does that mean, a ghost town?’

‘It means no one lives there. The army destroyed all the buildings, and no one went back.’

We stood for a while looking at that abandoned town on the edge of the sky. Then he took my hand, and we wandered back down to the valley. The argument was over. Aldebaran and my grandfather were talking about the unseasonable weather. My grandmother took bread and cheese and slices of meat pie out of the basket, and Leo handed round the cake, and for a while everything was all right. The sun even emerged.

‘Just to think,’ remarked my grandmother after the food was finished.

‘Just to think what?’ said my mother.

‘Well,’ said my grandmother. ‘Seven years since.’

The silence settled again, more menacing than before. ‘That is enough,’ said my mother. ‘Don’t talk any more about it.’

‘I’m only remarking, Maria. There is no need to take that tone.’

‘There is every need to take that tone!’

My grandmother raised her eyebrows and brushed an invisible fly from her skirt. ‘I’m just saying that it’s seven years since that whole sorry business. That’s all. There, I’ve said it, and you’re free to condemn me as you always do.’

My mother moved so quickly that none of us saw until it was over. She slapped my grandmother hard across the face. Suddenly everyone was on their feet. The apples rolled off their plate and bounced away down the hill. They were
good apples, and I wanted to pick them up, but I was fixed to the ground and could not move.

‘After what I’ve done for you,’ said my grandmother, her voice shaking. ‘After everything I’ve done for you, Maria, and you treat me—’

‘I won’t listen to this,’ said my mother. She picked up our rug and our basket, took my hand, and started for home, though it was five miles. Leo ran after us; none of the others dared. There was such a fierce anger coming from my mother that I thought I could see the air trembling around her. None of us said anything all the way back to the city.

When we got home, my mother locked herself in their bedroom, and we could hear her crying bitterly behind the closed door. Leo’s hands shook as he smoked a never-ending chain of cigarettes. ‘Come on,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ll take you to a restaurant and buy you a cake. As it’s your birthday. Anselm?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Please.’

‘No, I don’t want to.’

‘Anselm, please. Come on.’

He badly wanted my birthday not to be ruined, but I kept up the resistance. Eventually he gave up and sat down at the table and rested his head against his hand.

‘Papa?’ I said. ‘What did Grandmama mean about a sorry business?’

‘Nothing,’ he began; then he shook his head. ‘Anselm, listen. Just before you were born, some bad things happened, and your grandmother can’t help remembering them.’

‘What bad things?’

Leo traced a line in the flour lying on the table. ‘They
lost their money and had to move to Citadel Street. Your mama has told you about that, hasn’t she?’

‘Yes, she’s told me.’

‘Your grandmother sometimes talks as though you had something to do with it,’ said Leo. ‘But you didn’t, and no one thinks you did – just remember that.’

We sat for a long time listening to my mother cry. Then Leo got up and went to the bedroom door. I could hear their voices, my mother’s tear-choked and Leo’s gentle, saying, ‘Come on, Maria. Come on. Shh now.’After a long time, she stopped crying. I remained where I was, in the silent living room. I was suddenly certain of the truth. If Leo told me the misfortunes of the family weren’t anything to do with me, it meant – somehow – that they were.

Jasmine listened to that story in silence, then lay down quietly. ‘Well,’ I said,‘that’s the best story I can make of it. It all happened so long ago, years before you were born.’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘So?’ I said. ‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t know.’

The clock in the square chimed ten. ‘You should probably go to sleep,’ I said. She was already yawning. She reached up to kiss me goodnight and let me arrange the blankets around her. I turned out the lamp and left. But I could tell from the glint of her eyes as I closed the door behind me that she was still awake and thinking. Maybe it was remembering all those people who were gone now – Aldebaran and my grandfather, and somewhere far back the ghost of my real father – or maybe it was because I had never really worked out the truth about what happened the year I was born, but I could not sleep either that night.

* * *

The Imperial Order marched every night during those last days of July, and every morning the newspapers carried more reports of rioting in the north of the city. Leo did not sleep. He sat up at nights in the back room of the shop, smoking an endless line of cigarettes and studying that red book. And in those days, the world began to change.

We did not realize it at first. No one spoke about it, only the newspapers. First there were those reports of militants rioting in the north. Then General Marlan of Alcyria threatened the states to his east with war, and Titanica threatened retaliation. Marcovy, a country I knew only from geography lessons, threatened Titanica in return to protect its coal-mining interests. Maybe we did not pay enough attention. But those places were hundreds of miles from us, and Aldebaran’s death still went unresolved. The king’s face appeared on the front of the newspaper every day, looking old and tired. ‘My duty to you is to promise you what Aldebaran always promised,’ he stated. ‘Our country will not go to war.’

The last days in July were national holidays, and in former years we had shut up the shop and gone to the Royal Gardens every evening to dance as the stars came out. Neither Leo nor my mother seemed much inclined to go this year, and we kept the shop open. Then, one morning, Mr Pascal came to our door before seven o’clock. Leo was still lighting the stove, and I was out in the yard fetching water.

‘I just spoke to Mr Barone,’ he said breathlessly, shoving a newspaper at Leo. ‘Alcyria has declared war on all the states along its eastern border. It’s official. It’s no longer just a threat, North.’

Leo took the newspaper; I leaned over his shoulder. On the front page was a line drawing of General Marlan with his fist raised. Below it a map was striped in black arrows that covered half the continent. Leo ran his hand backwards over his hair. ‘What does this mean?’ he said.

‘I hardly know,’ said Mr Pascal.

Jasmine came skipping down the stairs at that moment. Leo threw Mr Pascal a quick glance. ‘We are getting on well with those old books,’ he said in a voice that hardly faltered. ‘Come and see.’

Mr Pascal folded the newspaper. They went to the counter and turned over the contents of the box he had given us. I followed them. Jasmine wandered into the room and looked up at Mr Pascal. She could tell when something was wrong in half a second; our only hope was to conceal what the trouble was, and from Leo’s fierce glance, I knew Mr Pascal wouldn’t dare say anything more about the newspaper report.