The UnTied Kingdom (25 page)

‘Is that what your family do?’

‘Did,’ Harker said, and from his tone she knew they hadn’t just retired.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’

‘Were you close to them?’

Harker shrugged, and from his expression, immediately regretted it. ‘I suppose. My dad died when I were twelve, and my sister too, so I didn’t get much chance to be close to them.’

‘They both died at the same time?’

‘About two months apart. Cholera,’ he explained. ‘Took hundreds.’

‘I’m so sorry.’
Glink
.

‘Aye, me, too. My sister was only sixteen. Apprenticed to an embroiderer, used to make beautiful stockings.’ He tensed as she dug in for a small piece of shrapnel. ‘Going to marry a local boy, training to be a clerk. Wonder what happened to him?’

‘Probably joined up,’ Eve said.

‘Nah, can’t see that. Far too smart. Got a career ahead of him.’

Eve was surprised. ‘Harker – you said you’d been in the army sixteen years.’

‘Yep.’

‘So … isn’t this a career for you? I mean, if you were conscripted then it’d only be five years, Tallulah said.’
Glink
.

‘Aye, but I enlisted. Army’s a decent career choice for a lad with no education. Stick it for twenty-five years, you get a full pension. Retire as a sergeant, that’s a very decent pension. Could buy a little house, raise a family. Couldn’t do that if I followed in my father’s footsteps.’

‘But, look, you’re smart. I mean, couldn’t you have trained as … I dunno, a clerk, or–’

Harker actually laughed at that. ‘Eve, you’re asking like I had a choice. My father died. I was twelve, got a mother to support, I was a strong lad, she sent me out to work.’ He hesitated, then added, ‘I was trying to earn the money for the grammar school, but I could never save it. There’s always something else to pay for.’

Eve nodded. ‘I hear you on that one. What about your mother? Did she want you to go to the school?’

‘Oh, aye. Proud of me when I passed the entrance exam. It were just bad timing.’ He held his breath as she went after another small piece, embedded deeply, then said, ‘She was the one suggested I try the army. Of course, there weren’t a war on then.’

His accent was getting stronger, Eve thought as she fished out the small piece of circuitry. Talking about home, thinking about his childhood. His voice was rough. She wondered if he’d spoken like that back when he met Saskia. Wondered if the young officer had fallen for his low voice and soft dialect, rough words to go with his rough appearance. Wondered if Saskia had been attracted to the intelligence that hid behind his street accent.

She glanced up, her face very close to his skin, so close she could feel the heat rising from it. Harker was watching her, one arm behind his head, and he might have appeared relaxed if she couldn’t feel the tension in every line of his body.

She cleared her throat. ‘So. Nine more years and you can retire. And a major’s pension, that’s got to be more impressive than a sergeant’s.’

‘Aye, a lot more.’

‘What will you do? Settle down and raise that family?’
Find a nice girl, a damn lucky girl, and live with her, and love her, and–

‘Dunno. Maybe.’
Glink
. ‘Think I’d get bored doing nothing. I might …’

‘What?’ Eve determinedly inspected a particularly gruesome cut that seemed to have several very small pieces of metal in it.

‘Well, before my father died, when I thought I might go to the grammar, I thought I might become a teacher.’

Eve glanced up, and saw a kind of defiance on Harker’s face. She smiled, more at his expression than anything. ‘Sure,’ she said, ‘why not?’

He looked wary. ‘You think I should?’

‘Harker, you’re clearly not stupid,’ Eve said, bending to the cut again. ‘And you’re good with people. Well, most people. Well, most people who aren’t me. You’re good at leading, and giving instructions. And reading people. I mean, I have no idea how you figured out about the guitar …’ She cleared her throat. ‘And if there’s ever a playground fight I’d put money on you.’

She heard and felt his soft chuckle, but didn’t look up.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘You’re welcome. Now hold still.’

He did, and after a minute or so said, ‘You know, that’s what my mother said. Not about the leading but the rest of it. She reckoned I’d be good at teaching.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘Tuberculosis.’

‘How old were you?’
Glink. Glink
.

‘Twenty-one. I’d just made sergeant. Reckon she told the whole town.’ He smiled, and Eve thought how nice it must be to have a mother like that.

‘Unfair, isn’t it,’ she said, ‘how the good ones die and the crap ones just hang around forever.’

Harker raised his eyebrows, and Eve sighed, digging in for another tiny piece of shrapnel.

‘I mean, your mother, right, wanted to send you to grammar school, picked out your best qualities, understood you, suggested things you’d be good at, and she died when you were still pretty young. Whereas my mother never paid the blindest bit of attention to me until I started landing decent roles in plays and musicals and then she could brag about it to her friends–’

‘Maybe she was proud of you,’ Harker said.

‘Hah. If she was proud of me, wouldn’t she have come to my recitals? Or encouraged me with my piano exams? Or come to watch the plays when all I was doing was standing at the back being Third Villager with no lines to say? You know, the only times she ever exhibited any pride in me was when she could show off to her friends. Or when I made her lots of money. She was made up when I landed the Grrl Power thing. All that lovely money to spend on whatever she liked, and lots of magazines she could show to people, and people taking her picture–’

Harker caught his breath with a sharp sound, and she realised she’d been poking him with the tweezers, right in that deep cut with all the tiny pieces in it.

‘Sorry. Sorry.’

He nodded, exhaling. ‘You’re not close to your mother, then?’

Eve sat back, tweezers in hand. Harker regarded them warily.

‘My mother,’ she said, ‘spent most of the money I earned on holidays and parties and clothes that she ruined. The only thing she bought that retained any value was a beach house in Miami, but she put it in her own name. So when the taxman came knocking, it wasn’t among my assets to be sold off. In fact, nothing was in my name. I think, now, she was in cahoots with the accountant. She found him. He was the one who told me not to bother putting things in my name. It was better for tax purposes in my mother’s name. Apart from a couple of thousand kicking about, she’d spent everything. And when I was presented with a tax bill to rival the national debt of Ethiopia, she did precisely nothing. So, no. I’m not close to my mother. And if I ever am close to her, I intend to use the opportunity to punch her, hard.’

Harker whistled.

‘Yeah,’ Eve said, and bent to the cut again.

‘Dare I ask about your father, or will I need more gin?’

She passed him the bottle wordlessly, watched him drink.

‘My father was a nice guy. And he died of a heart attack when I was fifteen. There’s no bloody justice, is there?’

‘Did you expect there to be?’

‘No.’ Eve sighed, extracted another piece of shrapnel. It
glinked
in the glass, which was getting pretty full now. ‘You know, they should stop letting kids read those fairytales where everything is nice and good and bad things only happen to bad people. Because then when something bad happens to you, you just can’t figure out why. You spend your whole life working hard and loving your family and being nice to small fluffy animals, and then your parents get divorced, your father dies, your mother spends all your money, your accountant takes what’s left, the taxman shoves you in a tiny flat with mildew on the walls, you spend three years getting sneered at by people who know you used to be famous and love gloating over you, and then you fall through a damn hole in the world and get thrown in jail for being a spy.’

Harker’s fist was white. Damn, she’d been poking him again. ‘Sorry.’

He let out a ragged breath. ‘Hole in the world?’

Eve shrugged. ‘I dunno. Maybe this is a parallel universe. It’s as good a hypothesis as any. Better than being mad or in a coma. Your England made all the wrong choices and mine got things right. Well, mostly right. Clearly we need to clear up a few issues surrounding the tax system.’

‘You reckon it works in any universe?’

‘Probably not.’

She found a small smile, and somehow so did he.

Taxes seemed a very distant problem right now.

Eve sat back and regarded the dozen tiny cuts and weals in Harker’s chest and shoulder. A couple of them she’d cleaned out entirely, but there were plenty with lots of tiny pieces of metal and plastic in them.

Then there was the circular puncture in his shoulder, which she hadn’t seen before for all the blood and shredded flesh and bits of keyboard in the way. Harker had thought there might still be a bullet in there. Certainly there’d been no exit wound on his back.

She sighed, attempted to make herself more comfortable on the edge of the bed, and bent closer again.

‘Tell me about this England of yours,’ Harker said after a little while.

‘This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,’ Eve murmured.

‘What?’

‘Shakespeare.’

‘Who?’

She sighed. ‘Do you not even have Shakespeare? Tell me what, exactly, do you have in this country to be proud of?’

Harker closed his eyes. ‘Please don’t start that again.’

‘All right. But only because you’re bleeding.’
Glink
. ‘Shakespeare was a playwright. Almost certainly the greatest who ever lived. And he was English.’

‘Was he?’

‘Yes. About four hundred years ago, he wrote some of the most amazing, beautiful, and enduring plays the world has ever seen. You know those theatres on the south bank? The Rose and the Curtain and the Globe?’

‘Aye, what about them?’

‘Well, Shakespeare worked in them. Especially the Globe. I think he owned it. You know, people come from all over the world to see Shakespeare’s Globe. It’s not even the real thing, it’s a reconstruction. And his plays are translated into Japanese and Hungarian and everything in between.
Everyone’s
heard of Shakespeare.’

‘I haven’t.’

‘Well, maybe that’s because you’re a philistine,’ Eve said, extracting another piece of shrapnel. ‘Or maybe it’s because in this stupid bloody world, no one seems to know what they’ve got. He probably wrote all those plays and they just got forgotten.’

‘Probably,’ Harker said, settling with his arm behind his head again. ‘I mean, it’s not like we have Bram Stoker or anything.’

Eve went still. She lifted her head.

Harker was watching her, his eyes half-shut.

‘I asked Charlie,’ he said. ‘That book about the monster. Drank people’s blood. There was a hero called Harker.’ He gave her a crooked grin. ‘Of course, he was Irish.’

That shook Eve back into life. ‘I’m pretty sure he wasn’t.’

‘He was. Bram Stoker was Irish. Charlie said.’

‘And Charlie is always right,’ Eve said sourly.

‘You want to argue with her?’

Yes. I actually rather do.
‘What exactly is going on with you two?’

He tilted his head and looked like he might be smiling. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean you’re practically joined at the hip. I don’t think she does anything without your permission. I’ve seen sheepdogs less loyal.’

‘This is the army, Eve. Loyalty is a good thing.’ He frowned. ‘In fact, loyalty’s always a good thing, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but she’s insane about it.’
And she doesn’t like me.

‘No, she’s not. Look,’ he sighed, ‘I go through this with everyone. Charlie is my second. Has been since she was my sergeant. She’s the best second I’ve ever had. We work well together. We understand each other. She’s very loyal to me because she likes and respects me, and I like and respect her. I don’t know why everyone finds it so hard to comprehend.’

‘Most people who are as close as you two are sleeping together,’ Eve said, and it came out a lot more petty than she’d wanted.

‘Jealous, Miss Carpenter?’

‘Are you kidding? Do I look like the sort of person who’d do a good sheepdog impression?’

Harker just grinned at her.

Eve scowled and decided to change the subject. ‘You said Bram Stocker was Irish,’ she said. ‘What about George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde?’

‘What about them?’

‘Have you heard of them?’

‘Not really.’ Harker yawned, and Eve thought about pushing it but figured that if Harker had never heard of Shakespeare, she was wasting her time with Wilde.

‘I dunno,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I think all this is just nonsense, but then there’s Beethoven, and … well, look, what about the First World War? Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination?’