Pastworld (10 page)

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Jago seemed pleased, and surprised enough with my progress as we packed the stuff into the wagon. He allowed me to help harness up the skinny horse. ‘Where did you learn to do that? You’ve obviously done it before,’ he said.

‘I’ve never done it before, I told you so,’ I said. ‘I just somehow felt that I could.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I really think that we might make something of you.’

‘What’s the name of the horse?’ I asked.

‘She’s called Pelaw,’ said Jago. ‘She’s the same colour as Pelaw wax shoe polish, so that’s what I chose to call her.’

‘Pelaw,’ I said, and the horse snorted a little and showed her teeth, shook her mane from side to side. ‘She knows her name,’ I said.

‘Oh yes,’ said Jago. ‘She knows her name.’

The woman with the cat collar was warming herself at the brazier. She walked over to me.

‘I know just who you are now, dear, I’ve worked it out. You’re the girl that sometimes walks with poor Jack, near my lodgings,’ she said. ‘You’re his daughter, surely?’

‘I think you are confusing me with someone else,’ I said brazenly, blushing in the cold air.

‘Sorry, dear, but I could’ve sworn,’ she said, and looked at me hard for a moment while she stroked her cat’s neck.

She knew that I was lying.

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I stayed happily with Jago and the family of other travelling players. For Jago my mystery was not where I had come from and why, but my mysterious ability to balance on the rope. Where had that come from?

I began to perform with the harlequin troupe in market places and on street corners. We travelled together on our routes around the fringes of the city and I began to recognise the extent of the gulf between the ‘official’ beggars and the hordes of pinched-looking illicits that we passed and played to every day. I knew I had to continue my new life, my real adventure. I had a strange natural instinct for the tightrope. Within a few short days I could run and skip the narrow rope, for it now really did feel as wide as a road to me. My inner confidence was complete and Jago was pleased.

A few days later the woman with the cat found me again. ‘It is you, my dear, isn’t it? I was right before,’ she said. ‘I know it is you because I saw poor Jack in the street and he said you had gone, run away, and he was in a terrible state worrying about you.’

I had no reason to treat Jack cruelly, even if he had hidden me away and hidden the truth of my situation from me as well.

‘You are right,’ I said. ‘I did run away. I can’t tell you why, but I am happy and safe and want to stay here with Jago. Perhaps I might write a note that you could give to Jack from me to reassure him.’

‘I think that’s the least you could do. It would be a nice thing, dear, for poor Jack.’

So I wrote him a note of reassurance and gave it to the lady with the cat, and she said she would deliver it to Jack. I felt a clear conscience. Jack had brought me up in ignorance. He had never spoken of my father and mother once, and for whatever reason of his own had denied me almost any truth, as well as letting me live in the belief that the world around me was all there was, when it was an illusion, an imitation of life.

Soon I was performing in front of bigger crowds. I remember one afternoon I was wearing a flowing white dress. I often felt moments of real fear, standing at the top of the support pole, the crowd all gathered below me. Jago was at the bottom of the ladder wearing his one-man-band kit, banging on the bass drum with a foot pedal and playing his quivery little tune on the cornet. That afternoon a harlequin from one of the other wagons was balanced half-way up the ladder looking up at me, and holding the balancing parasol in case I felt I should need it. As usual I wanted to show Jago that I could dazzle on the rope. My feet just fitted neatly on to the little platform at the top of the striped pole. There was no safety harness now, no net, no second chance, I was on my own. The strongman was somewhere in the crowd too, waiting in case I should fall. The cornet music stopped, and Jago started playing a sharp roll on the snare drum, which rattled and echoed in the cold air. I knew that when it stopped I would walk forward to the other side of the rope, and no turning back. I looked down at Jago and he nodded. The tumbler held the parasol up to me but I shook my head. Finally the drum roll stopped.

Down among the colourfully dressed crowd were a group of people who were there just to keep the braziers going. They wore leather gloves and aprons, and poked at the brazier coals with long iron rods. This sent bright orange sparks up into the frosted air like fireworks. I could see jolly muffin sellers, and pork-pie sellers, and standing at the front of the crowd there was one particular boy of about my own age. I had seen him before at our other shows, and there was something about him I liked. Something about him attracted me. It was a very odd feeling, something I had never experienced before.

He was looking up and watching me closely. It’s hard to put it into words, but I liked seeing him and my heart lifted a little. He had such a nice smile across his face. Our eyes met, but in that split, silent moment with the crowd hushed and expectant it unnerved me and I wobbled just a fraction on the rope. A gasp went up from the crowd. I recovered myself quickly but the silence from below was deafening. I moved forward very deliberately, and Jago started the drum roll again. I skipped out across half the length of the rope. The rope dipped down in the middle, and despite the fact that I was as slim as Jago, and as light as a feather, the rope still swayed from side to side in the cold air. I shivered and felt goose pimples on my arms. I was halfway across and almost swinging back and forth on the rope, from side to side. The wind loosened my hair and it blew across my face. I was cold. The drum roll rattled on, and I found myself for a moment glued to the spot. I could move neither forwards nor back. Some of the Gawkers in the crowd shouted up at me. I couldn’t hear clearly what they said, but every shout was followed by laughter. Some part of my mind thought about the balance parasol, and for a split second I wished I had taken it, and I craned my neck and looked back. The harlequin was now near the top of the striped pole, and held out the opened parasol for me just in case. I reached out for it but it was caught by a sudden flurry of wind and snowflakes, and was wrenched out of his hand. We both watched as it sailed out high over the heads of the crowd.

The drum roll stopped. The crowd seemed so intent on watching the bright little parasol spinning and floating over their heads that I went almost unnoticed for a moment. It was time to act; I ran across the rope. I ran all the way back the way I had come, my arms flung out, as if in pursuit of the lost balance parasol. I was so fast that the crowd thought I would fall. A huge roar came up from below, and then I turned and skipped back again the way I had come but even faster. A burst of applause followed. I danced on the rope, I leaped and twirled in the air. I invented moves for myself. I improvised, and the crowd went wild. I went furiously up and down the rope, danced, leaped, and twirled over and over. I had such a sudden surety of balance, such confidence.

I knew that I would not fall, could not fall, I had suddenly, in that moment of athletic showmanship, found not only my true vocation, but my salvation too.

The crowd could see that I had no support, and that no hidden wire was holding me, no safety net protected me. The drum rolls stopped and the cornet tune faded out.

I danced alone on the high rope in the falling snow. I danced with the snowflakes and among the snowflakes. I felt their coldness as they landed on me. It seemed almost as if I had slowed down time itself, so that I actually saw the snow fall slowly all around me. I finished. I stopped and stood perfectly still in the centre of the dipping rope. I raised my arms high above my head and bowed. There was a sudden crash of applause and roars and shouts from the crowd. Clearly I had astonished them. I had astonished Jago too. He looked up at me, the drumsticks in one hand, his face slack and his mouth wide open. I think he had suddenly seen his fortune made.

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Chapter 15

The blind man’s body lay sprawled, half in the gutter, half up on the pavement. An armed ragged man stood guard over it while the rain washed the blood in marbled swirls down the nearest drain.

A crowd of spectral figures had gathered to stare. They huddled under a variety of umbrellas and parasols or else held evening papers over their heads. Some just suffered the wet, regardless. A bobby in a rain cape soon made his way among them. He cleared a path by holding his truncheon out in front of him, nudging and poking people aside. The ragged man turned to face him. The policeman shone his lamp down on to the body.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘A lad knifed him, a young lad in a black suit, he had a skull mask on, ended up round his neck, black hair, skinny thing. He got away.’

The policeman turned back to the crowd. ‘Nothing to see here, now move along please, you are in violation –’ And he cleared them away, pushing his truncheon out at them again, until muttering and mumbling they gradually dispersed, and melted away into the wet fog.

‘I suppose you’re going to tell me now that this will be a “useful” body,’ said the policeman quietly.

‘Very useful,’ said the ragged man, and he produced a little bundle of white bank notes tied round with red string.

‘That useful?’ said the policeman.

‘That useful,’ said the ragged man.

The policeman took the notes. ‘In that case I shall report the body already missing when I arrived. We will have a description of the criminal printed and organise Wanted posters which will be circulated at once.’

‘That would be the best thing,’ said the ragged man. ‘You need to catch young killers like that. Only one punishment they understand.’ He reached his big mittened hands up to his own throat and bulged his eyes out. The policeman nodded, adjusted his cape, slipping the roll of notes into an inside pocket, and set off, away from the body, back down the hill.

Within seconds of his departure the remaining ragged men appeared as if out of nowhere. Together they hefted the sodden body of the blind man up out of the gutter. An old hospital hand cart was wheeled out of a dark doorway and they dropped the body on to the scuffed wooden surface with a heavy wet thump. One of them threw a length of sacking cloth across the body, then put a white hospital orderly’s coat over his rags and set to wheeling the hand cart off down a narrow cobbled side street while the others went their separate ways.

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Chapter 16

Caleb ran across the road and into the confusion of people on the other pavement. He heard a ragged man’s voice call out from behind him. ‘Stop ’im, ’e’s a murderer! ’E’s got blood on ’is hands.’ Caleb dared to look back and saw that yet another ragged man was coming after him. He ran on regardless.

Caleb had been accused of murder, and that was surely subject to the death penalty. He might be hanged and failing that the ragged men would be after him in any case, and if they caught up with him they would finally shut him up. He could feel the rope around his neck, the knife at his heart as he ran.

He ran on hard, pushing his way through the tidal flow of pedestrian traffic. He ran back down the hill in the rain. He ran back to that long empty curving road with the caverns and the dark spaces and the railway arches. He turned, looked back again for an instant, and saw that his pursuers hadn’t yet turned the corner. He skidded to a sudden halt, sliding on the wet pavement. Stumbling forward, he turned and squeezed himself into one of the deep, dark brick archways. He caught his breath. Three ragged men soon appeared. He watched them pass, his hands on his knees, drawing breath as quietly as he could. Two of them ran past his hiding place, without as much as a glance at where he crouched. One other, following, stopped and turned. He peered into the dark archway. Then he came forward and crouching under the entrance way he crossed through into the wet darkness. Caleb saw him for an instant outlined against the faint light at the entrance, and then the figure entered the gloom, walking straight in towards where Caleb stood with his breath held and his fists clenched. Caleb moved backwards, lifting his feet very carefully, lightly, and placing them back down as gently as he could on the wet cobbles. The space opened out behind him into some sort of access tunnel with a low arched ceiling of mossy, dank brick. He felt beside him and by touching the slippery wall he slowly guided himself backwards. He held his head down as he went deeper into the darkness. He felt an open niche in the tunnel wall beside him and he slipped into it and crouched down.

He waited then, his heart pounding. He gathered his thoughts with his eyes shut. He counted in his head and then he counted again. He heard the grunts and kicks of whoever was exploring the shallow space of the archway. Heard something being scraped and smacked on to the walls.

‘Come on out, you little skull-faced shit. It’ll be better for you to give yourself up now. Don’t make me find you.’ It was the voice of the broad young ragged man with the umbrella.

Caleb’s breathing finally slowed. He listened to the drops of condensation as they fell from the low arched ceiling above him. He kept his eyes closed; he had the strong feeling that if he opened them he would see the ragged young man standing right in front of him under his tattered umbrella, just waiting patiently, like a cat with a mouse, to kill him. If he kept his eyes tight shut, he would neither be seen nor found. It was a crazy irrational thought, but he clung to it as tightly and as foolishly as his poor father had clung to the belief that he always knew the right way to anywhere with his inner compass. He heard what he realised was the umbrella being scraped, struck and poked at the walls close to him. Heard the harsh metal tip
scraaaatch
in long, flashing strokes against the bricks close to his head. He was saved by being tucked into the recess. He heard the footsteps scraping and dragging over the cobbles, moving away. Then there was silence.

Caleb stayed still, squatting down against the damp bricks for a very long time. He had nowhere to go now, nowhere to make for. He had no friends to turn to anywhere in the whole huge, dark, filthy crowded phony city. Caleb realised in horror that he didn’t even know the address of the Halloween party. He had taken no real notice of that engraved invitation or of his father’s boasting about it to Mrs Bullock. Their lodgings were miles away in Islington. He had only the vaguest idea of how he might get back to them, and that meant the train. The station was not that far away but he knew that the ragged men would be looking for him by the station entrance. It would be an obvious place for him to go, so he ruled it out.

He stood up and stretched himself. His head was full of conflicting thoughts and emotions. He thought of criminals like ‘the Fantom’. Pastworld had a reputation for the razor and the knife. Even his father, a once important Buckland Corp. employee, a so-called ‘imagineer’ couldn’t protect himself. His father was now just another brutal Pastworld statistic. Was most likely dead, sprawled on his back, his pockets plucked empty.

No one on earth knew now where Caleb was. He felt a sudden cruel and insane freedom, as if a heavy burden had been lifted from him.

He sighed out loud, as if expelling all of the held-in breath and emotion of the last hour. He leaned back against the brick arch. He was free to escape from himself if he wanted to. He had finally and properly run away from his over-planned, overprotected and over-regulated life. He could live here, hide in all the dark foggy disorder around him, escape as many others had allegedly done before. He was free to reinvent himself as he wished. No longer just a boy from the suburbs. He could be an adventurer, a soldier, a thief, a secret killer bent on revenge. These were stirring and startling thoughts, and they took place at very high speed, somewhere deep in the back of his whirling head, and not even at a conscious level; they just welled there, competing with all the shock and the horror at what he had seen.

All he had left in this particular version of the real world were the clothes on his back, the mixed pile of heavy coins in his pocket and the poor blind man’s rusted pocket watch. It was still attached to its length of dirty string, and he found he was still holding it, gripped tightly in his hand. He moved nearer to the entrance where there was a little light. He stared down at it. The glass cover had been removed, so that the blind man could feel the hands of the watch, to tell the time. Caleb held the watch out in the thin light. He listened; it still ticked; and then he turned it over. Something was cut into the back of the watch case. Caleb tried to make it out in the gloom. He licked his finger, and smeared it across the silvery metal. Words were engraved in a fine copperplate script:

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It had once been his father’s watch.