If Then (13 page)

James offers the carpenter a hand up. Tom refuses it, gets to his feet, and hauls himself onto the cart to be with his family.

The last cart of Eviction Night is led through the streets of the town then up the Offham Road toward the gatehouse of the
douanier
where it joins a line of other carts bearing Francis Sacks and the injured of Landport. The smugglers tether the carts to horses, the animals are spared the rookies and tumult of the night. The
douanier
intones an old prayer then waves for the opening of the gate at the edge of town. The horses trudge forward, the old cartwheels jolt and turn, and the evicted are led away into the Downs.

9

T
he next morning
, at the weekly allocation, James and Ruth waited until almost everyone else had gone before wandering the dishevelled aisles together in search of their boxes. In her allocation, there was a swimming costume and a stout pair of walking boots. But there was still no box for James.

Hector had not been seen since Eviction Night. The
douanier
’s men claimed that he had passed through their gates alone, in full uniform, as if marching off to war. His departure only added to the sense that his role in the town had been fulfilled and that role had been connected to the fateful decision they had taken to complete the eviction of the Bowles family.

In the evening, the Von Pallandts held a post-eviction party at their painted house, throwing open the yellow front door so that the guests could flow easily from street to house and out again.

Edith wore a pale green robe over a dark green dress and her hair was gathered up to reveal a slender neck and a garland of apple blossom. She had an oval face with a forceful jaw which she feminized with an outpouring of auburn curls, completely obscuring her stripe. She was luminous with late spring.

The crowd were older than James and Ruth, a different generation.

“This is how we renew ourselves after the wounds of eviction,” said Edith, to her gathering in the street. “This is how we heal.” Her smile was nuanced with self-awareness; to talk of healing was a cliché, she admitted that. But life required cliché. Had she not healed? Had she not come back from the dead? Yes, she had. In remission there is no time to waste.

“Our roles change. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? We must always be guided by the needs of the present. And today, we need to heal.”

Her husband, the baron, poured James another glass of dry, potent cider from a demi-john.

“Some need to heal,” whispered the baron, “but others need to drink.”

James did not argue. The baron filled then refilled his glass until James felt drunk and unmoored.

“How was eviction for you?” he asked James.

“I am still piecing myself together.”

“Eviction Night was a revelation.” The baron gauged James’ interest, and despite finding none, pressed on regardless. “All my life, I’ve studied the religions of the world and longed to be part of something greater: the collective unconscious, the oneness, the great flow. Last night we were minnows streaming through the oceanic mind.”

He was dressed in shorts and sandals that exposed the knotty arboreal ridges of his calves and feet. Yoga made him slender and graceful. He brought his hands together in satisfaction.

“And you were connected to it. You must have insights you can share.”

Ruth had put Agnes onto the cart. She had taken the evil onto herself.

“Something
was
communicated to us,” said the baron.

“I don’t think so.”

“You couldn’t hear the message, James, because you are the medium.”

On tiptoe, the baron reached up to the branch of an apple tree, pulled it close then plucked off its white and pink blossom.

“What is nature saying to itself with this blossom? How can we listen to nature as it is naturing?”

James swayed slightly. The baron took it as a sign of interest. He wiped the blossom from his hands.

“The Process is in the background, always listening and monitoring. On Eviction Night, we glimpse its true concerns. It has its own obsessions. They are stranger than anything that exists in man or in nature.”

The baron itched the white arrowhead of his beard.

“I believe the Process has learnt obsession from listening to our desires. Look around you. This way of life is more intense and meaningful than what we used to endure. We wanted this and the Process has delivered it.”

The town was fuzzy with absence: missing cars, empty window frames, dead televisions. The Seizure was a
taking away
. The road markings were faded, the road signs torn up and dumped – along with the cars – for reprocessing in Newhaven. The narrow streets seemed wider without parked cars, the town more thoughtful.

Midges drifted over the reedy shallows of the Pells. On a wall overlooking the Ouse, a boy dangled a line into the low river as the upturned keel of a skiff drifted from its mooring. Across the fields, bonfires smouldered untended and dogs picked over the ruins of the high street. Not many people showed their face. Why did these absences not feel like losses?

The baron said, “We had to get rid of the bad blood. Winnow the numbers. We can hate again, safe in the knowledge that our hatred will be controlled by the Process. Hate is natural, don’t you think?”

“I don’t hate anyone.”

“You must have done. Especially when you were powerless. If you said to me, ‘I do not love, I have never loved’, then you would sound incomplete. Equally, if you say ‘I do not hate, I have never hated’, then you sound like half a man.”

“Who do you hate?”

“I stood with the crowd on Offham Road when you went into Landport. Oh, you could feel the thrill among us. Protect what is good and evict what is bad. Creative destruction: out with the old, in with the new. Unfortunately, you and your wife evicted some good with the bad, some new with the old, and that was a mistake.”

“We did what was asked of us,” said James.

The baron wore an ankh necklace over a khaki shirt. He put the demi-john down on the pavement, and rolled the ankh between his fingertips. “Do you think Landport still have guns?”

“Do you want guns?”

“
Détente
is fraying. We may need a bailiff who is more proactive.”

On the other side of the street, Edith moved from conversation to conversation, glancing now and again at her husband, interested in his progress.

James went inside the house in search of Ruth. The partygoers flattened themselves against the walls of the hallway to let him pass by; the gaze of one woman, halfway up the stairs, dwelt on him for longer than was polite. In the loud conversation and squalls of laughter, he was a dead zone. Wherever he stood, he was in the way of others. He walked right through the house and into the garden. The lawn had been torn up and replaced with vegetables.

At the fence, Ruth was talking to Clara, the headmistress. Clara wore a long cardigan with narrow cuffs, jeans and stout boots. She was the same age as his wife but she was taller and her face was scored with worry.

Clara wanted Ruth to take a break from teaching at the school.

“The children will not trust you. What I saw last night… what we all saw–”

“You can’t stop her from teaching,” James interrupted. “It’s her role.”

“We all found last night very upsetting,” said the headmistress. “We were all ready to defy the eviction of the Bowles family. You pushed that little girl away. The two of you put yourselves before the will of the town. And for a teacher to give up a child in the way you gave up Agnes was wrong.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Ruth asked.

“We were not meant to evict the Bowles family. It was a test to see if the town was ready to function with greater autonomy, and the two of you failed it.”

“Where are you getting this from?” asked James.

“I think both of you need to wake up, and realize how your actions are being perceived.” Clara walked back into the house. James watched as the women in the kitchen huddled around her, nodding and listening to her account.

“I have to teach,” said Ruth. She looked to him for reassurance. “Without a role, how will I make myself indispensable?”

“She doesn’t make the decisions,” he reassured her.

“Did I do the wrong thing?” Ruth put her hands over her face. She never liked to admit that she was wrong. In their marriage, whenever he raised the possibility that she might have erred, she retaliated vehemently, and he knew enough to back down. For Ruth to question her own judgment was serious.

“It was a crisis. Both you and Tom were on the verge of doing something terrible.”

Ruth had put Agnes onto the cart. The girl had put her arms around her little brother to comfort him.

“It’s my fault,” he said.

She held him tight around the waist.

“How can we undo what we did? Could we find the family and bring them back?”

He couldn’t reason it out; there were too many factors in play. He went to get a glass of sobriety. The women in the kitchen parted for him. He filled his glass from a bucket of water. The Process had issued guns so that the people of Landport could fight him. The Process had sent an effigy of his head to be burnt by the mob. He was no longer part of the allocation.

Edith collared James and introduced him to her son, Christopher, so that James could marvel at how much her boy had grown. The lad had strong cheekbones, roughly cut long hair and the broad shoulders of a swimmer. She put her arms around them both. James saw, in the neckline of her dress, that her right breast had been removed in a mastectomy.

James complimented Edith on her outfit.

“Very colourful,” he said.

“Out of the darkness comes the light,” she said, giving him a half-twirl. Then, “The youth have received their roles in the allocation. Tell him, Christopher, the role you have been assigned.”

“Bailiff,” said Christopher.

The tight lines around Edith’s smile showed her misgivings. She would keep a positive attitude for the benefit of her son.

“Another bailiff! Will you two work together or will James be assigned a new role? And then there is the issue of getting an implant, which is scary. But, in the spirit of splendid sacrifice, we’ve decided to celebrate.”

James struggled to reply. He felt sick, and threatened.

“When did this happen?”

“The roles were included in this morning’s allocation.”

He had been allocated nothing.

“I’ve been through terrible things for this role.”

“Perhaps your role in the Process is about to change,” said Edith.

“The Process is meant to be fair. But this is not fair.” He was stuck on fairness. He couldn’t think of any other response.

No one is indispensable. No one is even necessary.

“Without me, this town will not be safe,” he said. “It’s not merely a matter of inhabiting the armour. A bailiff can keep order with an air of authority.” He was floundering. The strong cider and the shock made it difficult for him to focus.

Edith spared him an ounce of sympathy.

“Don’t fuck yourself over this, James.”

Her son went back into the party, and, once he was gone, Edith’s manner changed.

“Do you think I am happy about this? Do you think we wanted this for him?”

“It’s an honour.”

“I’m sorry, James, but it’s mutilation.”

The Process had intended for him to die. This realization made him feel weak and shivery. The carpenter was right. Eviction Night had been about his death yet for some reason – Ruth’s intervention, the way she took on half the responsibility – meant the crowd had spared him. Through the open door, standing askance in the hallway, he saw Ruth alone among the party.

He owed her his life. But for how long could he survive in the town if the Process had marked him down as dead? He felt a profound sense of unbelonging. He left the party, walked down one road and then the next, with no clear destination. The gutters were clogged with the shredded red paper of yesterday’s rookies. Terry and his team were out on the Phoenix estate, scoping out the damage caused by the armour. Repairs would not be quite complete by the time of the next eviction.

He walked over the river and past the Malling fields. Allotment workers were breaking up the enormous smouldering skull of the totem and a few paused in their labours to watch him. The whites of their eyes were bright beside the soot on their cheekbones and, with their hands, they sifted through the enormous splinters of manufactured bone. Their field clothes were ragged old tracksuits and pyjamas, a motley crew who only accepted their lot because it had been allocated to them.

From the river came laughter from a group of young people. A boyfriend sharing a cigarette with a girlfriend. Life would go on without him. He had no secret weapon. No last minute heroic solution. The Process had appointed Edith’s son as bailiff. He was being replaced.

No one is indispensable. No one is even necessary.

S
he was woken
by the monstrous word of a distant cannon. Ruth reached out for reassurance but the other side of the bed was cold. Where was James? She felt vulnerable without him.

She had been dreaming of their hurried packing during the Seizure. Some of their friends had thrived through the long decline, if they were with the right corporates. James was not and neither was she. A polite young couple came around to look at their house, accompanied by the young woman’s parents who did not trouble to hide their contempt; the father’s face already had the young-old sheen of longevity treatment.

James had never been vulnerable before. It levelled the imbalances within their relationship and their marriage was, briefly, a partnership in adversity. Then, when his vulnerability persisted, she couldn’t help but be quietly, passively furious with James.

He had volunteered for the implant to make himself useful. To be connected to power again.

He had volunteered for the implant and she had not stopped him.

The cannon spoke again, another sullen retort in a distant conversation. She went to the window and looked out over the dark roofs. It was not yet dawn and the streets were empty. Another detonation reverberated through the frame of the house. She half-dressed on the way down the stairs.

In the lounge, James lay on the sofa staring at the dark.

“Did you hear that?” she whispered.

At first he did not answer.

“It sounded like explosions,” she continued. “There. Again. What do you think that is?”

“Shelling. There is a kind of war going on. Not a real war. A recurrence of war.”

“Are we safe?”

“I don’t know. I saw something under the influence of the implant. A vision of a possible outcome for the town if this war carries on. I want to find Hector.”