The Chimes Read online

  Clare slumps off, falls to her knees. She scrambles over to Abel. The runner who held her stands straight and still. He looks from me to the knife to the eyes of his leader. There’s a long gash down his face from Clare’s fingernails. None of us move, apart from Clare, who is feeling Abel’s ribs and face, listening to his breath.

  My heart is beating in my ears and I feel sick. I shift my grip and adjust the pressure against the runner’s jaw. My other elbow is tight against his ribs, letting him know what will happen if he tries to twist me off. I don’t remember when I have been so close to another person. He smells of the sweet rot of clothes that have dried damp.

  I throw a sharp whistle through my teeth. ‘You!’ I jerk my head at the one who still stands there bleeding. ‘Get down onto the tracks.’

  Clare’s runner walks to the edge of the platform, executes a neat jump and lands on the rusted rails. Mice scatter.

  What I am holding is a puzzle. How will we get away without them coming after us? Even if Abel can walk, we’ll be slow. The thought of putting one of them out of action doesn’t appeal. I take a breath, but before I can give my next order, there’s a shift in the sound on the platform.

  From the edge of the tunnel where the dark bleeds out into the early light, a figure comes at a light jog. Hands lifting and skating along the air in his coming, and I swear I hear him humming underbreath too. Lucien.

  He vaults up to the platform and stops a way from Clare. On the tracks at a few beats’ distance behind is Brennan. The runner I’m holding goes rigid for a second as he sees Lucien. Down on the tracks, the other runner has turned too. Then he looks back and I see Ratface shake his head once, lento. I clip his ear with the knife handle.

  The next thing I hear is Lucien’s low chuckle.

  ‘Two, Simon?’ he asks, though I have no doubt he can hear them in mind’s ear clearer than I can see them in the half-light.

  ‘Yes. Wandle. They had Abel.’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ begins Lucien, looking direct from Clare’s runner on the platform to the one in front of me. ‘Gentlemen of Wandle. You’re in our territory.’

  Down on the tracks, Clare’s runner walks closer to the edge of the platform where Lucien stands.

  ‘It won’t be your territory for much longer,’ he says. ‘Not if they have anything to do with it.’ And he reaches to the pocket on the side of his jeans.

  ‘Hey,’ I yell, and tighten my grip on the knife.

  With his spare air, Ratface shouts his friend a warning, ‘Jakes.’

  But Jakes doesn’t hear. He swaggers insolently close to the platform.

  In a quick few steps Lucien is crouched beside him. His hand snakes out and he has Jakes by the T-shirt, pulled close under his throat. He grabs the runner’s hand in his fist and removes what’s crumpled in it. Then Lucien leans his head close to the runner and whispers something. A dark second passes. I cannot hear what is said, but I see the runner buckle. His legs weaken and he sways and I notice in shock that he is almost crying.

  Lucien pushes him back gently. I let out my breath as he stumbles and falls loose on the tracks.

  Lucien unbends and looks straight at me.

  ‘Under the Green Witch parallel, the territory is open. We leave you, Wandle runners, to prospect there. We typically have more than we need, so we can afford to be generous. However, it would be worth your while to keep in bounds.’ Then he nods to me.

  I let go the runner I’ve been holding and shove him forward with my foot. He takes a step and then looks back, as if checking he’s done what he was supposed to do.

  ‘Get out,’ says Lucien, reasonably.

  Ratface jumps to the tracks where Clare’s runner is still sitting on his arse. Then he roughly grabs him, pulls him to his feet, propels him forward. The fallen runner stumbles, as if some life or fight has been taken from him. They push off down the tunnel, into the dark. We are left alone in silence.

  Lucien sings the melody for the quickest way back to Five Rover. Brennan takes Abel on his back and Clare walks beside, stroking Abel’s forehead now and again and murmuring to herself in disgust. I’m last. I cast a look back over the platform. I try to think how long we’ve gone without any territory dispute. Why was it worth Wandle’s while to enter our run?

  Clare lies Abel down by the cookstove and tries to get some sweet milky tea into his mouth, though most of it dribbles back out. One of his eyes is swollen shut, and a bruise spreads down the side of his face. His eyes move under the lids. Lento, like he’s in no hurry to surface. And I see he needs a push to come up. Or something to reach down and hook him.

  I leave the storehouse and run toward the vendors at the edges of the Cut. I run it with my footfalls hard and echoing on the flat concrete. The tunes bristle sharp with banter and haggle among the stalls and carts and blankets. A man with a tall trolley crammed with bottles stands some way down the line of them. Next to him there’s a large pot boiling on a sterno ring that wafts clouds of hot gin steam, heady with sugar and lemon. Rum, sweetwine, porter, brandy, goes the man’s song. Sweetwine, ginpunch, brandy, rum. I fish the tokens from my pocket in exchange for a small, flat bottle of his brandy. ‘Careful of the kick,’ he says, and his braying follows me down the canal.

  The swig I take on the way back burns salted fire down the back of my throat and makes my eyes run. ‘Strong enough to bring anyone back from the dead’ is what I say to Clare when I hand it to her.

  Later, through the curtains, I hear the muffled sound of Abel coughing, then a low murmuring until all is tacet except the rhythm of Lucien pacing. He did not speak to me when I came in, but his voice is somehow still in my head. Do you trust me? he asks, and the weight of his hand on my shoulder. Every spare moment you have, try if you can to remember. I hold my memory bag, let my fingers move over the objects. Silent textures slip through my hands without snag or speech. And then I come to rest on a piece of cloth with a frayed edge. I fetch it up.

  Roughcloth. Hardy, for farm use. The colour faded. Something thrums inside me and I know I have chosen right because I smell the smell of sunheated parasheeting, the peppery perfume of daffs and a green and brown warmth and I go down . . .

  Dappled sun through parasheeting.

  Smell of earth, of green things, of sap and leafmould.

  I’m standing in the forcinghouse where the hard, driving sun makes flowers open before their time and I’m holding the rotted wood handle of a trowel. I’ve been weeding irises in the near fields with the journeymen and it has broken. I’ve come in here to find another.

  Along the walls are shelves that hold tools and supplies. Balls of twine, cardboard boxes filled with old seed packets, leather gloves that still hold the shape of hands, poly seeding punnets that fit one inside the other in tall steeples. But for the life of me I can’t see a single trowel.

  I have been standing for several breaths before I see my mother. She is stripping and splitting bulbs at the workbench at the other side of the forcinghouse.

  ‘Hello, love,’ she says. ‘Why don’t you leave the weeding for a bit and give me a hand with this.’

  I walk over to her through the sunshine that’s coming through the leaves that grow up the para panels. She passes me a short, blunt knife. There is a tremor in her hand and she tries to disguise it by gripping her fingers tight into a fist and releasing them by her side. With her left hand she pushes a trug of clumped bulbs toward me. When her hands are moving, I cannot see the shaking. Is it still there, in the joints? I make myself ignore the thought.

  There is something familiar about where we are standing and what we are doing, the light, the smell, the rhythm of our hands. We have been here before, standing in the same positions.

  ‘There are things you’ll need to know when I am gone, Simon. Some of them important.’ As if she’s stepping out for a while to visit a sick neighbour or to the next village to swap seeds.

  ‘What do you mean, when you’re gone? Where are you going?’ I turn to look at her.
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br />   ‘Keep working,’ she says. ‘Keep splitting the bulbs while I talk.’

  After she’s satisfied that I’m doing so, she continues. ‘You’ve noticed the shaking,’ she says. ‘You know, don’t you, that it will keep coming, that it will get worse. After a while I won’t be able to work.’

  ‘Then I’ll do the work,’ I say. ‘You don’t need to worry about it.’

  She doesn’t answer. Waits a bit.

  ‘You keep your memories in the green bag. The one in your room?’ she asks.

  I am uncomfortable talking about that. I slide a fingernail under a clod of mud, twist the knotted bulb so that it breaks in two. The split is clean and white. I wash the two new bulbs in the bleach bucket and put them into the wet paper. ‘Yes,’ I say eventually.

  ‘That is good. You should keep them with you always.’ She turns to me. ‘Simon, when you choose a memory, what happens?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘In your mind. What happens?’

  What happens when I put food in my mouth? I taste it. What happens when I hold a memory? I see it.

  ‘I see it,’ I say. ‘The pictures come into my mind. They stay for a while, then they go. What do you mean?’

  ‘You know not everybody can do that, don’t you?’

  I look at her, disbelieving. ‘Why would anybody make mem­­ories at all, then?’

  ‘It’s not an easy thing to explain. What people can and can’t recall. How they do it. It’s a bit like the mudflats.’ She looks at me, then, like she’s fixing something in with the drill of her grey eyes. ‘When the water lies at the far edge of the sky. At its edges the two elements are blended. Forgetting and remembering are like that. It’s hard to tell one from the other at times. But, yes, you’re right. Some people never make objectmemories.

  ‘And those who do make physical objects, most don’t see memory in them at all. They keep them for comfort. Or there’s a bare shadow in them of what happened. If you don’t know any different, a shadow is probably enough. Of course, there are a few like you who can see them clear, as if they are happening. Then there are those like me.’

  ‘What can you do?’

  She holds her hands out from her so we both see the current that plays over them. Thumb and smallest finger oscillating in the air like she’s playing an octave trill on an invisible klavier.

  ‘I can see memories,’ she says, ‘that others have made.’

  I am silent. The idea is impossible.

  There is a sound at the end of the forcinghouse and we turn at the same moment. Standing at the door is a man, his expression scared. He sees me and draws back, pushes the bag that’s slung across his shoulder behind him.

  ‘It’s all right,’ my mother says. ‘You can come in. This is my son.’ She turns back to me. ‘It’s your choice, Simon. You are old enough to decide.’

  The man comes closer. I recognise him. It’s Johannes, who teaches rudiments and solfege at the local school. I raise my hand in the notes for greeting and he carves out the response. So crisp and clear I can’t help feeling the implied correction of my slumped tones.

  ‘What do you have, Johannes?’ my mother asks.

  ‘My son is leaving the village,’ he says. ‘He will be prentissed to one of the instrument makers in London.’ He comes forward and the pride is evident on his face. I know Charles. He came up in my year. A skilled lutenist. And a bully.

  ‘I have many memories of him, of course. But this is our final dinner.’ He holds out a coiled mettle lute string. ‘I want to remember it particularly. We played a duet that he wrote for the occasion.’ He hums a phrase and places the string on the bench in front of my mother.

  ‘Thank you for bringing this. I will keep it. Would you like to be told of it again?’

  He nods. ‘Tell it to me next time at the market. Then I’ll decide when after.’

  He leaves, and my mother places the memory on a piece of roughcloth.

  It’s a while before I can speak. Everything I thought I knew about my mother is shifting, moving, modulating. ‘Does anyone forget they’ve given them to you?’

  ‘Yes. Most wish me to remind them, tell them the story of it again. But some are happy to forget as long as I keep the objectmemory safe.’

  She beckons to me. ‘Over here, Simon. Come.’ I walk nearer.

  ‘My mother had the skill to keep others’ memories too. It goes in families.’ She looks at me, and her look is a question.

  ‘It’s illegal?’

  ‘Yes, it is. And you will have to understand the danger. But isn’t it better to know what you can do? Then at least it is your choice.’

  She is asking me to touch it. ‘I’m not sure,’ I say.

  Then there is another noise, this time sharp and loud. My father is standing a few feet inside the door. A basket hangs loose in his hands. On the dirt floor, the bulbs it held are scattered askance and rolling in misshapen half-circles. My mother spreads her arms wide. It is an unthinking movement and for a moment I wonder whether she is shielding what she is doing from his vision, or whether it is my father who is the one that must be protected.

  If you did not know him, you might not hear the anger as he forms his words careful and precise. I can feel the cold coming from across the room and I draw back.

  ‘You gave me your word,’ he says to my mother.

  ‘What did I say?’ she asks.

  ‘Don’t play those tricks.’

  ‘I said I would not take them to London anymore. I didn’t say I would no longer keep them. I can’t refuse to take them. I can’t turn people away.’

  ‘What you said is that you would look to your safety so we could bring up our son. You said Simon would stay clear of it. Do you want him to be hunted down and tortured? Killed?’ The muscles around his mouth work even after he stops speaking. His hands clench, unclench. I am afraid, though not sure what I am afraid of. When I was young, he would carry me across the fields and I thought nothing could come for me, not even down out of the sky.

  My mother speaks piano. ‘We don’t have the right to choose for Simon if he has the gift.’

  Mouth crooked like it’s broken. Everything out of line. ‘Don’t have the right? What rights are left? He is my son and I might forget everything else, but I won’t forget that. I won’t let him do this.’

  He takes my arm and pulls me to the bench where my mother steps aside. He bends me over the bench with his weight at my back so my face is close to the memory. So close I’m almost touching it with my chin. I stare at the string. Threads tuft off the yellow cotton at its tail where it once wound onto the peg of the instrument.

  ‘Look at it, Simon. Look close,’ he says. ‘Do you see it? Other people’s pain? Other people’s happiness?’ He pulls me back up toward him and puts his hands up to my cheeks. ‘You are not going to die for that,’ he says. And then he punches me in the stomach.

  The floor is cold and the nails’ smooth heads touch like mouths on my bare feet. The echo of my father’s punch is raw and empty in the centre of my belly, and a part of me feels like crying. I walk to the balcony, open the door and lean out. It is empty, only the tomato plants climbing their way slowly upward in the silver light. At Lucien’s quarters, I stand still for a while. My heart is loud. I am certain that I have forgotten something. I should not disturb him. I clear my throat, enough that he would hear. I wait. Five long breaths. Then, in one movement, I soundlessly pull aside the curtain.

  It is bare, empty. There is no shelf. No memory bag. No candles. His hammock is folded neatly on the ground next to a grey wool blanket the same as the one in my quarters. Lucien has gone.

  I go back to my quarters, pull a jacket from the small bundle of clothes that makes my pillow. I dip a waterpouch in the parabucket. I take my knife from my ankle and slip it through my belt so that I can feel the cold of it lying against my stomach. Then I slip the bolt out smooth, push down the latch and try to open the door as silent as I can.

  Nothing is moving
out on the race. I stay close to the storehouses, slide past lento and pause at the rubble of the row past ours, where one section of the side wall has been destroyed. The wind comes off the river and blows between the emptied buildings, giving birth to fast new currents.

  Then, down the far end, just before the cranes, I see a figure weaving. It moves forward lento, and every few steps it stops.

  Even while standing it sways back and forth and has to hold its arms out in a curious way. Just before the first broken bridge, the figure clips down to its knees and empties its stomach into the water there, hunched over and all out of tune.

  Lucien’s walk is from the top of his head down, his neck pitched straight as a plumbline, like a keen vibration. This is just some poor sick soul who’s wandered into our territory by mistake. There is nothing I can do for them except offer some water, perhaps point them out past the race and back to one of the parks or crosshouse yards. The crumpled shape is visible only as darkness in the surrounding faint moonwhite and I pat my knife. Just because someone is so sick they’re vomiting their guts into the river, isn’t to say they won’t have some strength left for a fight.

  Yet something keeps me pressed against the brick for longer. A thought like a note off-key. In the greying light I see in my mind the path the intruder would have followed. Along the towpath, then up Liver Street steps, then through the alley between the bank and the old dockland museum. As soon as I have the path in my head, I see fretlines of fine cord running across the turning alley and the flights of steps. Nothing that would do you harm, just enough for a nasty trip, a face full of gravel.

  Snares and triplines invisible on the grey concrete. The morning spent putting them into bodymemory: running, bending, lifting feet and jumping. It had been a game, Clare the best at it and quickest, like a fox.

  No stranger would have had a chance making it down the narrowest part of the steps without being tripped or snagged. Definitely not one this sick. When this thought comes to me, I understand that the person spitting on the race is not a stranger at all. I push myself quick from against the storehouse wall and move toward Lucien.