Song Of Time (31 page)

I’m breathless, I’m shivering, and I’m still dragging my blankets behind me like drowned wings.

“It was only data from the public domain.”

I nod, thinking how old-fashioned the expression seems.

“I really am sorry. I just got so
absorbed
. I didn’t mean—”

“It doesn’t matter. Forget it.”

“Roushana, I didn’t look at any of this personal stuff on your—”

“Forget it.”

“I wasn’t—”

“
I said forget it!
”

Adam cringes. My voice is a seabird shriek.

“I’m sorry,” I hear myself muttering. “I know you can’t just sit around.

I know you have to do something.”

His expression remains pained.

“And things haven’t been that…
simple
for me lately,” I concede.

“I could go, you know.” I hear the click of his throat as he swallows.

“That might be easier. Do you want me to leave Morryn? You just have to say, and I’ll walk out—I’ll leave.”

“No.
No
. Don’t do that. The fact is, I like having you here. I liked it even when you were barely conscious.”

We both glance over at the red divan as if his ghost might still be lying there.

“And what I’m doing,” I continue, “all the things I’ve told you about my life—all these keepsakes and memories. It’s not just some old woman’s folly, or a stupid act of vanity. All these memories…They’re part of
me
. And the fact is—well, the fact is, Adam, that I’m dying. And the fact is—the
other
fact—is that I’m not prepared to let dying be the end. I mean, why should it? You’re young, Adam or whatever your name is, even if you can’t remember. You’re young, and youth is…Well, youth is all about forgetting, although I know it probably doesn’t seem that way to you now. Of course, being who you are or aren’t, you don’t understand. What I mean, what I
mean
to mean…What I mean to say is that I’m setting down my life so that it doesn’t leave me…”

“Roushana, I understand.”

“You
do
?”

After things have settled, after I’ve showered and changed and got myself properly warm again, I find Adam busy down in Morryn’s kitchen, and the table calmly laid with napkins and glasses.

I slump down gratefully.

“I am aware of these things,” he says as his hands do things to two bundles of asparagus I’m sure I have no recollection of buying.
Chop, chop.
His trim fingernails, so neatly manicured, are captured in the falling knife’s reflection. “I’ve told you—haven’t I?—that mere facts, the way the world is, all make a kind of sense of me.”

“You’re luckier than me, then.”

He grins and twists the asparagus up with string. “You know what I mean.” Then he wipes his fingers and looks towards me. “I was serious, though. What I said. My being here—it’s a tremendous intrusion. What the hell business is this of
mine
? I’m not even Adam. I don’t even have a proper name.”

Abaddon
. He stills says it in that odd way. More than ever, I’m conscious of the huge physical invasion his presence in Morryn has made. He could be anything or nothing, and I’ve invited him here into the little that remains of my life. But I’m so glad that I’m not alone that I find that I’m suddenly blinking away tears. “Don’t go away.”

“Then I won’t.” He shakes his head. “Who am I to pry? Me of all people, eh?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?”

We both smile.

“How long do you have, Roushana? Do you mind me asking?”

“No…” In fact, it’s a blessed relief. So I tell him what I know about the symptoms of my illness, and about my passing, which really doesn’t amount to much, as he crumbles breadcrumbs and then asks me if I happen to have any apricots, or perhaps some raisins, any kind of fruit?

“But you don’t feel as if you’re ready?” Wearing Claude’s old apron, he salts a pan.

“I don’t think I’ll ever feel that way—who could? But no, not yet. And I don’t feel so terrible. Or not at this moment, anyway. I’ll struggle on for a while yet, I guess. And need to sort out my memories.”

He busies himself with the plates. He’s opened another bottle of wine—white this time, to go with the asparagus—of a chateau and vintage that’s probably the last of its kind in the world.

“It’s strange,” he says, “it’s all so
vivid—
what you’ve been saying. Things about your life—Claude Vaudin, of course, but also growing up in Birmingham. And your mother. That time you went to India. And Leo. And Paris. Paris especially. I really can picture you, Roushana, in that red leather raincoat.”

“
What
red leather raincoat?”

“Oh…Didn’t you say you used to wear one?”

I shake my head.

He smiles ruefully, his lit reflection fanning wings against the many-windowed darkness. “And you’re complaining that
you
forget.”

I drink the wine, thinking of dead lands, dead vineyards and the food, the bottle, is soon finished. I watch as Adam gathers things up and washes them by hand, wondering what ritual this is that we’re now performing, and if he’s going to take flight, dissolve…

“So perhaps I could still help,” he says as he turns towards me. “After all you’ve done for me, I feel as if I owe you so much. At least doing this would be something.”

“What
have
I done?”

“You saved my life. Lying on that shore, being whatever I am, few people would have done what you’ve done for me. I’m Abaddon—I’m nothing—I’m nobody. I wouldn’t have had a chance if you hadn’t found me. It’s not just the food, all the care, the hospitality. It’s everything you’ve shared with me. But I can listen, Roushana. I know it’s not much—”

“Do you think I really need your help? Don’t you imagine I haven’t been on my own long enough to manage something as simple and private as arranging my own memories?”

“But why
not
use me? What other point is there to your finding me? Perhaps people’s lives don’t always cross by pure chance. Some part of you has to believe that, doesn’t it?”

“And you want me to tell you everything?”

“Just let me help you finish what we’re already doing. What else am I for?”

But it’s late, and I let the question wait as I shuffle up the stairs to my bedroom, where Claude’s wardrobe still hangs forgetfully open. Feeling a flurry of old irritation at his careless ways, I push it shut. I cast off my clothes. I brush what’s left of my hair. I cleanse my face. I pull on the nightclothes I never used to wear. Did I shower earlier? Have I been to the loo? I can’t remember, but there are vital new tasks for me to perform instead. An amber bead on my dressing table sips my blood when I touch it, then communicates with another bead—this one seems to be made of tiger-eye—which I lay on my palm whilst I submit to the momentary jab as it inserts the palliatives I need to get comfortably, albeit sleeplessly, through this night.

Morryn fades the lights as I lie in bed. For a while, a precious line of illumination from the landing fans from beneath the door and I hear Adam move up the stairs and go about his ablutions. Then silence falls, picked at by the sigh of the wind. The idea of retelling my life alone suddenly seems as bleak as the coming winter. I should be grateful to Adam—and I am—but I’m Scheherazade: the more of my story I tell, the closer I come to the end.

Something hangs, resolute and dark. It’s the moment itself—the endless onrush of now—which still won’t let go of me. Then, in a strange shift of densities, I become conscious that another presence is beside me, breathing as I breathe, feeling as I feel, listening as I listen, thinking as I think. As it moves and the gravity of the bedsprings shifts, I almost cry out. But it’s only Adam. Taking my hand, he waits for Paris to return.

THE MAINS WATER WAS OFF ON SUNDAY’S election morning. I had to rush out and buy bottles simply to make coffee, and then for Claude and I to wash ourselves. The water sellers were doing a roaring trade. Already, queues were forming and church bells, minarets, loud hailers, domestic arguments, traffic horns, dim gun-shots and sirens resonated across the rooftops as, already late, we run-walked up the hill past the cemetery to give a promotional performance of
Les escaliers de Montmartre
beside the steps themselves. We’d been expecting news media, interviews, applause, but the Metro was down and the farmers had travelled from across France to show off whatever strength they still possessed. Central Paris was gridlocked, and we ended up playing to some jeering children, a few granddames, and a flustered socialist apparatchik who kept checking his bracelet for new messages from the spin machines.

There was another media opportunity for us as we went to vote, or at least to join the long queue of other citizens who wished to do so. Yes, there was new technology, but there was also the
grande dame
at the trestle table beneath an ancient portrait of de Gaulle who would do things in her own way, and at her own speed. She took an especial dislike to Claude. Plainly, she knew who he was, and thus was particularly determined to question his identity. People had died for this right, empires had fallen or risen, and even I’d struggled to vote because of my continuing British citizenship. Looking back along the many faces peering grumpily behind us as we stood in a fog of armpits and inky paperwork, I wondered who was for Boullard, who was for Irissou. Claude and I had once made a game of this as we sat at cafés, but there was no way to tell.

We walked down through the Tuileries past steaming heaps of manure, overheating lines of traffic and building-sized objects of agricultural machinery to attend a meeting about tonight’s premiere. Creative consultants, accountants, first violins, floor and lighting managers, caterers and printers came and went as Claude and I sat in the general manager’s office. Claude was in busy repose, and seemed totally happy. I watched, still loved, the leonine way he moved, his looks, his easy, reassuring laugh which rang out most cheerfully at times when others were at their most flustered. Even in this airless office, he remained cool. No, it wasn’t an act. This really was him, just as it had been him up on that stage playing incredible piano with tiger-stripe Jill that first time we met. The bigger, the busier, the more crisis-ridden and chaotic the situ-ation got, the more Claude seemed to grow in power and affable control. He checked his bracelet for calls as if willing on the next crisis.

We took lunch on the Rue de Lappe, sitting outside whilst the pavement blazed under one of those steel hoods which pumped out refrigerated air. I remember that the house red was particularly good and that we shared it and a basket of bread and a bottle of non-Christos water whilst Claude checked his bracelet, summoning shapes and colours above the breadcrumb-strewn table which resolved into the image of his parents. Tony and Lujah said hi to us both, smiling from a bench with dawn-lit mountains rising spectacularly behind them. Paris sounded bad, and they were so,
so
grateful to have escaped Washington this summer. And here they were, resolutely doing the old American thing and living the tourist dream in, yes, can you believe it, a genuine Winnebago! They were heading west across Wyoming, and it really was beautiful here, up in God’s good acre with the pines thriving and beavers in the creeks and not the faintest whiff of dirty old politics. Still bearing their smooth Washington smiles even in the great outdoors, Tony and Lujah Vaudin faded.

Then Claude’s bracelet gave another chime. Slowly, it became apparent that this latest crisis was nothing to do with music, and then that it involved the tobacco warehouse which he was acquiring for his Project. The thing was this. The thing was—well, there’d been a plan, a sort of scheme: one of the events, one of the happenings, which were so much a characteristic of this particular election…

It was useless trying to summon a car, so once again we walked. Buildings twisted in the heat. Rooftops flared like embers. Bowsers had drawn up at street corners to dispense water, but everyone was taking the bottles which were now being given out for free by Christos’ followers. How did I picture the scene to which Claude was taking me? Despite all the pranks and happenings which Claude’s agitprop friends carried out, it was certainly hard to imagine that they’d have had the organisation and the nerve to kidnap the man whose face was portrayed on all those bottles. Not that Claude himself had been involved. Not greatly, anyway, but it had probably seemed like something worth trying, or at least an idea too amusing to simply dismiss. And they’d need somewhere to take him—so why not use the tobacco warehouse, seeing as he was buying it anyway for his Project?

The building seemed empty at first as we climbed through it, but, up in the ferocious heat of the top floor, a small but impressive virtual recording studio had been set up. Tiger-stripe Jill was there, although the hair which I’d once watched flail as she danced in
le Chien Heureux
whilst Claude played miraculous piano was cut short now. Here, as well, was Thibaut Effram, a novelist from the time when there had still been novels, who affected a grey beard, long robes and the distracted air of all failed artists. As he came over to grant me the sour kiss which the English part of me never wanted, I thought he made a far more convincing messiah than the figure who sat hunched amid the circled tripods of sensory recorders. But, even chained to a chair and with most of his head covered by a virtual reality helmet, you could tell this was Christos.

“It doesn’t look good, does it?” Claude muttered. “What sort of image do you think this will make?”

Tiger-stripe Jill rubbed her cropped hair. “Says he’s the son of God,” she snorted. “He’s got bones like chicken wings.”

“We didn’t lay a finger on him,” Thibaut added. “It was just—well, he started to struggle and slipped just as we were getting him into the van…Then his arm puffed up. It can’t be anything serious.”

The doctor who’d been quietly attending to Christos was a grey-haired woman who’d been there in the anarchist riots of the old G8, but had probably imagined her anarchist/situationist days were long behind her. Wearily, and speaking in whispers even though Christos would be unable to see or hear anything within that VR helmet, she confirmed that he had a fractured humerus. Nothing too bad, she’d splinted it, given him pain-killing and anti-inflammatory patches, and was confi-dent it would heal. But still, it was bad enough…