Divided Kingdom (15 page)

‘One point two billion litres …' the woman with the microphone was saying.

Frank Bland leaned towards me until his mouth approached my ear. ‘Quite a body of water,' he said, and then he nodded again and made his way down to the stern where he collected the surfboard he had brought along.

Once through the main door, we found ourselves in a large draughty area with a concrete floor. The air smelled of brine, and also, faintly, of disinfectant. I felt I had been taken to a down-at-heel municipal swimming-pool, or a brackish and slightly depressing stretch of coast.

Near the turnstiles we were met by a lifeguard. He wore a T-shirt
and shorts, both blue, and his long hair was drawn back in a ponytail. In honour of our visit, the ocean had been closed to the general public, he told us. We would have the entire place to ourselves. He had a languid, absent-minded way of talking. I couldn't envisage him reacting quickly enough to save someone from drowning, but perhaps he was faster in the water than he was on land. Like a seal.

We followed him down four steep flights of stairs, then through several sets of double-doors, the last of which delivered us into a room where there was no light at all. We were standing on wooden slats – a boardwalk, presumably. When I lifted my hands in front of my face, though, they remained invisible. The lifeguard's voice floated dreamily above us. Any second now, he said, the scene would be illuminated, but first he wanted us to try and picture what it was that we were about to see. I peered out into the dark, my eyes gradually adjusting. A pale strip curved away to my right – the beach, I thought – and at the edge furthest from me I could just make out a shimmer, the faintest of oscillations. Could that be where the water met the sand? Beyond that, the blackness resisted me, no matter how carefully I looked.

‘Lights,' the lifeguard said.

I wasn't the only delegate to let out a gasp. My first impression was that night had turned to day – but instantly, as if hours had passed in a split-second. At the same time, the space in which I had been standing had expanded to such a degree that I no longer appeared to be indoors. I felt unsteady, slightly sick. Eyes narrowed against the glare, I saw a perfect blue sky arching overhead. Before me stretched an ocean, just as blue. It was calm the way lakes are sometimes calm, not a single crease or wrinkle. Creamy puffs of cloud hung suspended in the distance. Despite the existence of a horizon, I couldn't seem to establish a sense of perspective. After a while my eyes simply refused to engage with the view, and I had to look away.

‘Now for the waves,' the lifeguard said.

He signalled with one arm, and the vast expanse of water began to shudder. At first the waves were only six inches high, unconvincing and sporadic, but before too long a rhythm
developed and they broke against the shore, one after another, as waves are supposed to. The lifeguard suggested we might like a swim. I rented a towel and a pair of trunks, but stopped short of hiring a surfboard.

Choosing a bathing-hut, I changed out of my clothes and then climbed down to the beach. I had assumed the sand would feel abrasive, like pulverised shingle, or grit, but much to my surprise it had the softness of real sand. Many of the delegates were already swimming, and the lifeguard was looking on, hands splayed on his hips.

He nodded at me as I passed. ‘Enjoy your dip.'

The water was warmer than I had expected. Up close, though, it had a murky quality, and even in the shallows my feet showed as pale, blurred objects. I wondered how exactly one would go about cleaning one point two billion litres of water. I sensed the lifeguard watching me. Taking a breath, I dived through a wave, swam a few blind strokes, then let myself rise to the surface.

Once I was fifty yards out, I turned over and floated on my back, lifting my head from time to time to look towards the beach. At a glance, the sea-front looked convincing, with icecream kiosks and bathing-huts in the foreground and white hotels behind, but I knew that most of it was fake, a carefully contrived illusion. While I was still out of my depth, however, it seemed important to suspend my disbelief. When I started to doubt what I was seeing, a shiver veered through me – a strange, forked feeling that had nothing to do with being cold.

Later, as I dried myself at the water's edge, I saw Frank Bland again. He raised a hand as he ran past, his surfboard tucked under the other arm. He wore a pair of green-and-yellow trunks which emphasised the stocky pallor of his body. Plunging into the water, knees lifted high like a trotting pony, he threw himself face-down on his board and began to paddle with both hands.

On the basis of our brief acquaintance, I would have expected Bland to be an enthusiastic surfer, but not necessarily a gifted one. When he caught his first wave, though, he rode it all the way to the shore, showing a lightness of touch, even a kind of grace, which seemed at odds with his bulky physique. A group of
delegates had gathered near me on the sand, and we all clapped and whistled as he stepped down into the shallows. Bland looked at us and grinned self-consciously. Then, furrowing his brow, he turned the board around and paddled out to sea once more.

As he came in again, he appeared to be travelling much faster than before. Knees bent, one arm extended, he cut across a wave's steep inner curve, the water tearing in his wake like ancient silk. Abruptly, he swivelled and sped off in the other direction. At the same time, a dark-haired man who was surfing near by lost his balance and toppled backwards into the ocean. Bland didn't see him until he surfaced, and by then it was too late. The leading edge of his board caught the man on the temple, and I saw the man go under.

The lifeguard rushed past Bland and hurled himself headlong into the breaking waves. Only seconds later, he was hauling the man up on to the beach. Blood spilled from a gash just above the man's hairline and slid over his face, the colour so intense, so vital, that it seemed to question the authenticity of everything around it.

Laying the man flat on his back and tilting his head, the lifeguard opened the man's mouth to check the position of his tongue. Just then, the man's chest heaved. The lifeguard turned him over, on to his side. The man coughed, then vomited some water on to the sand. I noticed a new silence and, glancing round, I saw that the ocean was quite motionless. They must have switched off the waves.

Frank Bland stood close by, head bowed. ‘I didn't see him,' he was muttering. ‘I just didn't see him.'

I went and stood beside him. ‘It wasn't your fault, Frank.'

‘He came up right in front of me. There was nothing I could do.' Bland's teeth began to chatter. I fetched a towel and wrapped it around his shoulders. Still looking at the ground, he nodded in thanks.

Meanwhile, the lifeguard was pressing a rag against the man's head to staunch the bleeding. At last the man's eyes opened. Rolling on to his back, he let out a groan, as though he suspected
something might be wrong. He closed his eyes tight shut, then opened them again. They flitted across the bright-blue of the artificial sky.

‘Where am I?' he murmured.

I arrived outside the Concord Room at ten-past six, but the party was already in full swing, people talking and laughing as if they'd been there for most of the afternoon. Large crêpe-paper models of our national emblems hung from the ceiling, each in the appropriate colour – red peacocks, yellow salamanders, and so on. I glanced down at my name-badge, making sure it was still securely fastened to my lapel, and then moved on into the room. I had just accepted a glass of wine from a passing waiter when Walter Ming walked up to me. He was wearing the same unusual pale-blue suit.

‘We meet again,' I said.

‘Just as you predicted.' His mouth widened in one of his trademark smiles, humourless and fleeting.

We shook hands. He didn't have a name-badge on, I noticed.

‘I didn't see you at the ocean,' I said.

‘I wasn't there.' Looking out into the crowd of guests, he sipped from his glass. ‘I hear somebody died.'

‘There was an accident,' I said. ‘No one died.'

‘Well,' Ming said, ‘that's what I heard.'

‘You don't happen to come from the Green Quarter, do you?'

‘What makes you think that?'

‘I don't know. Just a feeling I had.'

Ming nodded as if he understood such feelings, as if he often had feelings of that kind himself. ‘Are you going to the club tonight?'

‘What club?'

He reached into his pocket and took out a card that was identical to the one I had been given.

So, I thought. It was a club.

‘I've got one of those,' I said. ‘Someone handed it to me. A stranger.'

‘Are you going?'

‘I'm not sure. Maybe.' Actually I'd had no intention of going – not until that moment, anyway.

‘I think you'd find it interesting,' he said.

‘How do you know?' I said. ‘You don't know anything about me.'

Ming looked at me. His eyes had the opaque, almost filmy quality of stagnant water. I could read nothing in them, and yet the look seemed significant. Muttering something about the need to circulate, he shook my hand, then turned and moved away into the crowd.

I finished my drink.

Ming had used the same words as the man in the railway station. Was that a coincidence, or were the two men connected in some way? Or – more sinister still – was I mistaken in thinking that Ming didn't know anything about me? Could he have been assigned to keep me under observation, for example, while I was attending the conference? If so, he clearly lacked finesse. If not, who was he?

‘You look lost.'

I turned. A woman stood beside me, wispy grey-blonde curls hovering around her head like an aura. Her badge said
Josephine Cox – Conference Organiser.

‘Just thinking.' I gave her a smile that was intended to reassure her.

She led me across the room and introduced me to a group of delegates. Almost inevitably, we found ourselves discussing the incident that had taken place that afternoon. The injured man was Marco Rinaldi, a social historian from the Green Quarter. He had suffered a mild concussion, Josephine told us, as a result of which he was being kept in hospital overnight. He was going to be all right, though. He was going to be fine. Just so long as none of us thought it augured badly for the conference. I looked at her carefully and saw that she was only half joking. We all shook our heads, some less convincingly than others.

At one point I glanced around the room. There was no sign of the man in the pale-blue suit. It suddenly occurred to me that he might have been an intruder. After all, he hadn't been wearing a
badge, and the name Ming – as in dynasty – could easily have been a fabrication. He had even managed to avoid telling me where he was from – on two separate occasions. I wondered about the level of security in the hotel. Should I call Howard and voice my suspicions? I faced back into the group of delegates. Wait a minute. Maybe I was overreacting. I nodded vaguely in response to something a bearded man was saying. I should relax, I thought. I should relax and enjoy my stay, as the note from the organisers had encouraged me to do.

That night Josephine took me out to dinner, along with John Fernandez, the bearded man, and two people he had met at previous conferences, Philip de Mattos and Sudhakant Patel. Fernandez was from Athanor, a major port in the Yellow Quarter. He worked as a shop steward in the Transport and General Workers' Union. De Mattos also hailed from the Yellow Quarter, though he was employed as a stockbroker on the Isle of Cresset, an offshore tax-haven. As for Patel, he came from just around the corner, as he put it. He had lived in Aquaville for the past fifteen years, where he practised alternative medicine – acupuncture and aromatherapy. It was an unlikely group, and on the way to the restaurant Josephine had told me – in strictest confidence, of course – that she was a little nervous at having two choleric men in her charge and hoped that I might help her keep the peace, but in the end her anxieties proved unfounded. We spent three hours together, and I didn't detect even a flicker of tension or unpleasantness. After dinner, the other men wanted to go to a bar they had heard about, and though tempted by their company, which was exuberant to say the least, I declined, thinking that an early night would stand me in good stead for the many surprises and excitements that undoubtedly lay in wait for me.

Back in my room, I switched on the lights. The dark furnishings and massed rows of dusty second-hand books closed around me. I sat on the end of my bed and looked at the mural – men fishing under a full moon. I had drunk wine with the meal, and then a liqueur, and I finally felt as if I was adjusting to my new
environment. Somehow I didn't feel like sleeping, though. On a kind of impulse, I reached into my coat pocket and took out the card the man in the station had given me.

‘The Bathysphere,' I said out loud.

It was a club, Ming had told me. In the city I came from, we had all sorts of clubs – dance clubs in Terminus, drinking clubs in Gerrard and Macaulay, strip clubs in Fremantle – and I had been to most of them at one time or another, but I knew nothing about clubs in the Blue Quarter. I glanced at the card again. Applied to a club, the name had a certain intriguing ambiguity, I thought, suggesting immersion in a foreign element, a descent into the deepest, darkest depths. Yes, there was definitely a hint of the illicit. If I went, though, I would be breaking the rules Jasmine had laid down for me. No contact with the locals, she had said. But what if I only stayed for an hour? How much damage could I really do? I'd have a drink – one drink – and see what was going on. I'd satisfy my curiosity. If challenged, I would claim to be meeting Walter Ming, a fellow delegate. Somehow, after all the equivocations and obscurities I'd had to put up with, it seemed only fair to use him as my alibi.

Smiling, I shook my head, then I reached for the phone and pressed the button that said
Guest Relations.
Howard answered. I asked whether he had ever heard of the Great Western Canal. Certainly, he said. It led out to the airport. I told him I would like a taxi, if that was possible. He didn't anticipate a problem. Replacing the receiver, I noticed that my heart had speeded up. As I turned back to the mural, one of the rowing-boats rocked quickly, the blink of an eyelid, and a fisherman toppled over the side, into the sea. I looked away for a moment, towards the curtained window. When I looked at the boat again, there was an empty space which I was sure had not been there before. But nothing else had moved or changed. I stared at the area of water into which the man had fallen. He failed to surface. Through the wall behind me I heard laughter followed by a burst of applause. Another hotel guest, watching television. Maybe I was more tired than I had realised. More overwrought. If I went out
for an hour, though, I could still be in bed by midnight. Or, at the latest, one.