The Servants (21 page)

“Good. Didn’t fall off once on the way here.”

“And . . .”

  

t h e s e r va n t s

“It was fine,” Mark said, knowing what she’d really meant. His mother had left him and his dad at The Meeting Place, after the three of them had lunch together, and got a cab into town to meet David. Mark supposed this morning must have been kind of weird for David, though his stepfather had given no indication of this.

David, he was coming to realize, was like that. They ambled slowly through the twisting alleys, following the old slope of the land through the stores, down toward the seafront. David wandered off for a time, giving Mark a turn to support his mother, to be the person she leaned on for a while. It was this way when they turned the corner that gave the first uninterrupted view of the sea, and Mark felt his mother straighten a little.

“I like it here,” she said.

They took a break halfway home, and sat outside a café near the base of the old West Pier just as the light started to turn.

“So,” Mark’s mother said. “What are we eating tonight?

You got your heart set on a little of that spring roll action?”

Mark thought about it for a moment.

“Actually,” he said diffidently, feeling as if he was about to suggest that, in some circumstances, down might be higher than up, “I might have had enough Chinese food. Just for a while.”

She looked at him. For a moment, he thought her chin trembled, and her eyes looked a little full, but then she smiled.

“You know?” she said. “You could be right.”

  

m i c h a e l m a r s h a l l s m i t h

“I’m hearing good things about Mexican, though,” Mark said, as David returned with two coffees and a tea. His mother rolled her eyes.

“Good God,” she said. “If you two start ganging up on me, I’ve really had it.”

“Not going to happen,” David said.

“In a million years,” Mark agreed.

A little later, as his mother and David sat talking, Mark walked down to the beach and stood looking out at the remnants of the West Pier. It occurred to him that not being able to walk out there anymore at least meant that, brokendown and ruined though it was, it was protected from the land, from people who might do it harm. He thought maybe that was the best you could do with memories, with the ways things had been. You couldn’t expect to actually walk in them again.

Most of the time.

As he watched, starlings flew out toward the end of the pier, arcing inward from all over the seafront to join the evershifting cloud of birds that had already swooped up and over and around and back, in constant movement, unpredictable but all together. Still they did this at dusk, even though the pier no longer gave them shelter, and was no longer their home. The flock grew larger and larger, moving like liquid smoke over the water, following some pattern only they—and perhaps not even they—knew, as if they were in the service of something they understood no more than Mark, but just doing what they must. As though they were the shadow of God.

  

t h e s e r va n t s

Tomorrow, Mark thought, he might buy a rock cake from The Meeting Place and go visit the old lady downstairs. It had been a few days since he’d stopped by. He was sure everything would be ticking over nicely, but it did no harm to make sure. Some day soon he thought he might even ask David if he wanted to come down there with him, to see something that might surprise him. David had his special tasks too, after all. He had a role in the scheme of things. He also worked for the house.

In the background, Mark heard his mother laugh.

  

About the Author

Michael Marshall Smith attended Cambridge University where he spent the majority of his time writing and performing comedy with the Cambridge Footlights, which led to two series for the BBC. He is the author of
More Tomorrow and
Other Stories, Only Forward, Spares
, and
One of Us
. He lives in England.

w w w.michaelmarshallsmith.com

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

also by michael marshall smith

Only Forward

Spares

One of Us

Credits

Designed by Susan Walsh

Cover design by James L. Iacobelli

Cover photograph by Comstock Images/Jupiterimages

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE SERVANTS. Copyright © 2007 by Michael Marshall Smith. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader August 2008

ISBN 978-0-06-170211-2

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

About the Publisher

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd. 25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)

Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia

http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au

Canada

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900

Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada

http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca

New Zealand

HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited P.O. Box 1

Auckland, New Zealand

http://www.harpercollins.co.nz

United Kingdom

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

77-85 Fulham Palace Road

London, W6 8JB, UK

http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk

United States

HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

10 East 53rd Street

New York, NY 10022

http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com

• Title Page
  
• Dedication Page
  
• Contents
  
  • Part One
    
    • Chapter One
      
    • Chapter Two
      
    • Chapter Three
      
    • Chapter Four
      
    • Chapter Five
      
    • Chapter Six
      
    • Chapter Seven
      
    • Chapter Eight
      
  • Part Two
    
    • Chapter Nine
      
    • Chapter Ten
      
    • Chapter Eleven
      
    • Chapter Twelve
      
    • Chapter Thirteen
      
    • Chapter Fourteen
      
    • Chapter Fifteen
      
    • Chapter Sixteen
      
  • Part Three
    
    • Chapter Seventeen
      
    • Chapter Eighteen
      
    • Chapter Nineteen
      
    • Chapter Twenty
      
    • Chapter Twenty-One
      
    • Chapter Twenty-Two
      
    • Chapter Twenty-Three
      
    • Chapter Twenty-Four
      
  • About the Author
    
  • Also by Michael Marshall Smith
    
  • Credits
    
  • Copyright Notice
    
  • About the Publisher