Voices in the Dark (32 page)

Ashley had been walking for several minutes when a car parked ahead made him slow his pace. It was a Rolls-Royce, gleaming with polish, an old model that looked out of date in this high-class street. The same model that Anna used to drive. Ashley stepped down into the road and walked
around the car, then reached out and touched the passenger door. His fingers remembered opening it a thousand times, when they were still too small to grip the handle. It was the same car. He was certain of it. The number-plate was different, but the car was the same. He ran his fingers over the roof and found the trace of the dent that had once been there.

Ashley glanced up at the house, but the building was in darkness. No lights showed around the curtains, and though a burglar alarm flashed on the front wall, it was clear there was no one inside. He turned back to the car again and looked in through the windows. He had never known who Anna sold the Rolls-Royce to; he had been too young. But he was certain this was the same car. It was like a miracle – that strange dream, and then getting off at the wrong stop, and now here was the old car in front of him.

‘Excuse me,’ said someone quietly from the shadows. ‘Is that your car?’

Ashley looked up, but it was too dark to make out the figure. A man dressed in black. ‘I’m just looking at it,’ said Ashley, and made to go on.

‘Stay where you are,’ said the man, and came out of the shadows.

Richard woke suddenly to find Aldebaran sitting in the corner of the room. He was not a ghost; there was nothing ghostlike about him. He was sitting on the chair with the worn-through foam seat, watching a train go past. ‘Teacher!’ said Richard, fear and sleep constricting his voice.

‘Rigel,’ said Aldebaran. ‘I have been waiting for you.’

‘I thought …’ said Richard. ‘I thought …’

Aldebaran came forward and extended his hand. Richard took it. It was as solid as his own. ‘Aldebaran,’ he said.

‘We had an agreement once,’ said Aldebaran. ‘You were going to come here and find the people with powers. You were going to send me word.’

‘I know,’ said Richard. ‘I know.’

‘Don’t look so sad,’ said Aldebaran. ‘I thought I would never hear from you again when I watched you go away from me that night. I think I always knew.’

‘It was for Juliette,’ said Richard. ‘I thought I would die if anything happened to her. Teacher, maybe I’ve been stupid, but it was always for her.’

‘Your daughter is a remarkable girl,’ said Aldebaran.

‘Yes,’ said Richard.

He let Aldebaran’s hand go. His old teacher had aged in the ten years that had passed. The moonlight rested in every line in his face. ‘Teacher,’ said Richard. ‘Are you—’

‘I am not going back home,’ said Aldebaran. ‘No.’

Richard had been going to ask something else. ‘Why are you here?’ he said instead.

‘I need your help,’ said Aldebaran. ‘You won’t refuse it.’

Richard hesitated, then shook his head.

‘Magic is dying,’ said Aldebaran. ‘But there are still those with powers. Still a few of them. You are the first, Rigel. The second is Anna Devere. The third is your daughter, and the fourth is the king’s son.’

‘The king’s son?’ said Richard. ‘What king’s son?’

‘No one knows about him,’ said Aldebaran. ‘Only R yan and I know.’

‘So why are you telling me?’

‘The fact is, R yan may not have long either, because
there are people who dislike him. Someone else has to know.

His name is Ashley Devere, and he is here in England.’

‘The king’s son?’ said Richard again.

‘Yes. And there is one more person with powers left – at least, the only one who will ever be a true great one.’

‘Who is that?’ said Richard, still half certain he was dreaming.

‘The only one still in the old country. My successor.’

Richard reached out towards Aldebaran, because he seemed to be growing fainter. ‘Help him,’ said Aldebaran. ‘Help my successor. That’s what I want you to do now.’

Richard woke up, and the window was open, blowing a gale into the room. People were arguing in the room next door, and a train was rattling past. And Aldebaran was nowhere. ‘Juliette?’ he said, a strange kind of fear gripping his heart. ‘Juliette.’

He got up and went to the next room and tapped on the door. There was no answer, but the door was open when he tried it. Juliette was not there.

Juliette knew nothing of Aldebaran or her father’s dream. She was sick of the hotel with its grey walls and of her father’s silences, and she was sick of being followed everywhere she went by James Salmon. So she opened the window of her room and climbed out.

It was three floors to the ground, and Juliette climbed down by willpower alone. Every time she felt herself slipping, she fixed her eyes on the stars above and refused to fall. She reached the ground without injury, pulled her coat tighter around her, and started walking back to the old house. She had no fixed plan in her mind, only to get away.

It was a longer walk than she had thought, and by the
time she reached the square, the clocks were chiming eleven. She stopped on the corner and leaned against the railings of a house to catch her breath. While she was doing that, she heard voices. A man in black clothes was talking to a boy beside her father’s Rolls-Royce. Juliette edged closer and listened.

‘I’m just looking at it,’ the boy was saying.

‘Tell me who this car belongs to.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Tell me–’

‘Honestly, I don’t know!’

The boy’s voice had risen. The stranger had pulled out a gun. ‘Where have you been tonight?’ he demanded.

‘In Covent Garden.’

‘Why?’

‘Drawing portraits for money. It’s where I always go. Put that gun down, please. I don’t see what I’ve done wrong.’

Juliette hesitated, then stepped forward. Both of them turned to her. The man regarded her for several seconds, then turned and marched away. The boy was standing with his hands raised and a mutinous expression on his face. He had black hair cut short, a jewel in his left ear, and very black eyes. ‘Are you all right?’ said Juliette, breathing fast because of the long walk and the gun.

The boy made no answer. He just turned and walked away along a side street. Once he was halfway down the street, he broke into a run and did not stop when she called after him. As he turned the corner, something fell from under his arm. It was some kind of book. Juliette started after him, but already he was gone, leaving the book behind him.

Juliette went to the corner and picked it up. The pages fell
open. Sketches came to life in front of her eyes: perfect portraits and detailed buildings and rain-blackened London parks with the lights of cars passing. But there was more than that within these pages, Juliette thought. She studied the portrait of a restless man in a shiny black suit and knew about him suddenly. She knew that he had a wife and a small child and lived in a tower somewhere and that he wanted more than anything to be a musician and leave the city.

On the book’s cover was a name and address. ‘Ashley Devere, 12C Forest Park Mansions’. Juliette hesitated, then put the book inside her jacket to keep it out of the rain. It had come down suddenly while she was studying those pictures. Now she came back to the real world, and fear of the night gripped her. She turned and ran.

Anna was mopping the floor of the hotel entrance hall when a man brushed lightly past her. She turned and looked. He was thin, with a face like a skull, and it made the blood stand still in her veins. She was sure she knew him. ‘Arthur?’ she said. ‘Arthur Field, is it you?’

The man did not hear. He went on past her, out into the rain. And when she went after him, he was just a stranger, an old man who must have come to enquire about a room. He was not Arthur Field at all.

‘Excuse me?’ someone was calling urgently when she returned to the hotel. ‘Excuse me.’

It was the man staying on the third floor. He was standing at the reception desk, looking about anxiously.

‘Yes, can I help you?’ she said.

‘Have you seen my daughter? The blonde girl, about so tall. She’s gone out without telling me.’

‘She didn’t pass this way,’ said Anna. ‘I’ve been here more than an hour.’

He was a tall man, with a scar across his cheek and an expensive suit. He marched about the entrance hall, then picked up the pen from the reception desk and set it down again with an exasperated sigh. Anna went on mopping the floor. The man’s daughter returned not long after, wet through and out of breath from running, and an argument broke out between them. When Anna thought of Arthur Field again, after the man and his daughter had gone back upstairs and left the entrance hall in silence, she thought she had been stupid to mistake that man for him. Her great-uncle could not be still living, in that country he came from. He must be long gone by now. And yet things changed for her after that night. Things changed for all of them.

In the nights that followed, I began to dream about my real father. Sometimes I was kneeling at his grave, and I tried to make out the letters on the stone, but they shrank as I studied them or became a different language or were lost in the dark. Sometimes he was standing over my shoulder, and I could feel his breath cold on my neck. I would turn, too late to see him as he vanished, the breath becoming no more than a draught around the window. I went on dreaming even after my mother recovered. The midwife would not let her go back to work, but she sat in the shop instead. None of us could stop her. My grandmother cooked richer and richer meals every evening, adding expensive cream and lard to the stews in an effort to fatten up the baby. It only succeeded in taking away my mother’s appetite altogether.

Then, in the last week of November, a letter arrived in Michael’s writing. Jasmine came running up the stairs and
shoved it into my hand, saying, ‘Open it, Anselm! Open it!’

I did not know, until I had that letter in my hand, how heavily the anxiety had been weighing on my heart. I could not open it. I just stood and stared at the envelope until Jasmine snatched it from me. ‘Hey, Jasmine!’ I said, and took the letter back and opened it. ‘Anselm,’ it read. ‘My parents are in the south of the country. I have gone north. I can’t say anything else. I’ll try to send word to you. Michael.’

‘What does that mean?’ said Jasmine.

I did not know. But at least it was something. I checked the postmark – he had sent it four days ago. I read it several times and put it in the inside pocket of my jacket. Four days ago, Michael had been safe. All through school, the corner of the envelope rested against my chest, along with those papers of Leo’s that were in my jacket pocket. It was a good sign, in spite of everything. In spite of the fact that Dr Keller had ordered us to leave the shop by today, and we did not have the rent he had demanded. I still had not told the others about his letter. I was praying that some chance would come to save me, though I didn’t know how.

‘Anselm?’ said Jasmine that evening. ‘People sometimes die, don’t they, when they have a baby?’

‘Not often,’ I said. ‘Jasmine, what has brought this on?’

She wandered away across the room. I watched her go. We were down in the shop. I was trying to sort through the mess in an attempt to find something that might sell in the markets. I had thought about parting with one of the things Aldebaran had given us, after Jared Wright talked about it. I had even taken my medallion to the pawnbroker’s to ask. But the woman there flatly refused to believe it was his. And so far, our searches in the shop had unearthed nothing of any value.

‘Not often,’ I said again. ‘Hey, Jas? Don’t worry.’

She gave me a weak smile.

‘Mother is better from her fever,’ I said. ‘And the midwife says the baby is still all right.’

‘How often do they die?’

‘Hardly ever.’

‘If a hundred women had a baby, how many would die?’

‘I don’t know. Less than one.’

‘Less than one is one,’ said Jasmine.

‘No, it’s not. It’s not the same. It means if two hundred women—’

‘Oh, shut your mouth, Anselm!’ she said. ‘There’s still a chance, isn’t there?’

I could not blame her. We were all worried, and my own replies sounded heartless and inadequate.

‘What if Mama dies?’ said Jasmine, half crying now. ‘Papa has already gone. Then we’d just be left here, us two and Grandmama.’

‘It’s not going to happen,’ I said. ‘She’s better, and the midwife is looking after her now.’

‘If we don’t have enough money, will the midwife stop coming? Grandmama said—’

‘Don’t listen to Grandmama.’

But I could not help asking, in the silence that followed, ‘What did she say?’

Jasmine brushed away a tear and sniffed. ‘She said she didn’t know how we would find the money to pay for the midwife, and if we didn’t, she would stop coming, without any doubt.’

‘It will be all right,’ I said. ‘She won’t give up on us just like that.’

‘And Mama said we hadn’t paid the rent,’ said Jasmine. ‘She was worried about it.’

‘We’ll pay the rent,’ I told Jasmine. ‘You’ll see.’

‘How?’

‘I have a plan.’

‘What is it?’ said Jasmine.

‘It’s a very good plan, only I can’t tell you about it, because I haven’t completely worked it out yet. Not completely. But you’ll see.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

Jasmine watched me for a moment. Then she sighed and raised her eyes to heaven before trailing upstairs, leaving me alone in the shop. There was no point in lying to her, though we all still tried it. She always knew.

‘Jasmine,’ said my mother that Sunday evening. ‘Get out the Advent lantern.’

Jasmine ran to the cupboard to get out the lantern we had been saving, then set it carefully on the table in the back room and lit it with Leo’s matches. Last year came back to me clearly as she did it. Jasmine had climbed onto a chair to light the lantern, and Leo had put his arms around my mother’s waist and kissed her hair, in one of his fits of lightheartedness. I saw that moment as clearly as if I had fallen back into the past to stand there again.