The Thing Itself Page 11

  ‘Oh, just you,’ said Jennifer. ‘And security, obviously.’ She was wearing a blue uniform, and had a police-style utility belt, with telescoped-truncheon, pepper-spray, cuffs, around her sturdy waist; and depending from it I noticed what I took to be a pistol. Was it a real firearm? Or was it an air pistol, taser, something like that? I looked at Jennifer herself: an impressively hefty individual, who was in turn regarding me with professional dispassion. I decided against asking her about her gun.

  It did her no good, in the end, anyway.

  ‘Shouldn’t I be in room number one?’

  ‘Room one,’ said Jennifer, nodding slowly. ‘One. One. Cracked shower pan. Maintenance hasn’t got round to fixing it.’

  ‘Oh. Can I assume there’s something comparably wrong with rooms two to sixteen?’

  Jennifer scrunched one eyebrow downward, as if holding onto an invisible monocle. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Of course not,’ I repeated.

  ‘You need clothes,’ said Jennifer. I was ready to take this, given how she was eyeing me, as a snide comment on my shabby attire when she added: ‘Professor Kostritsky says. Size?’

  ‘I’d say she’s a sixteen.’

  ‘Your size.’

  ‘Medium. Thirty-two waist, thirty leg. I don’t need anything fancy.’

  ‘And you won’t be getting anything fancy.’

  ‘I can see you’re in good hands,’ said Sue, smiling an insincere smile. ‘And I’d be getting back to work.’

  ‘Good to meet you,’ I said to her retreating back. I turned to Jennifer. ‘It’s weird having somebody shop for me. Wouldn’t it make sense for me to go get my own clothes?’ The invisible monocle had returned to Jennifer’s face, but I pressed on: ‘I’d need a lift into town, of course. And money. I don’t have any money. But that way—’

  ‘Give you a fold of money and a lift to the train station?’ Jennifer said, sternly. ‘We’d never see you again. Think we were born yesterday?’

  ‘Say what?’ I replied, startled.

  Sue was suddenly at my side again, so she obviously hadn’t gone back to her work. ‘I think what Jenny means to say,’ she interjected, taking hold of my elbow, ‘is that you’ll be too busy with important work here to be wasting time at the shops.’ She led me off. Her hand was small but, on the evidence of my pinched elbow, rather strong. ‘Jenny will sort you for clothes. Let me give you a quick tour of the main rumble room.’

  This was so obviously done it was almost endearing. I decided not to kick up a fuss. I had wandered the grounds unchaperoned earlier in the morning, and the walls, though taller than I, looked perfectly climbable, assuming I did ever decide to cut and run.

  At any rate I was provided with clothes, and the clothes were fine. They assured me that high-up people in Berkshire council had prevailed upon my boss to give me an open-ended sabbatical from my bin-man job. At the time I was too caught up in my immense good fortune to give my old life a second thought.

  I met various other people. Poking around online, I found nothing that explained ‘the Institute’ to me; and googling the names of the people I had met led me into a wilderness of technical computing-theory sites, none of which talked about a well-funded research centre on the outskirts of (were we?) Swindon. This puzzled me a little. It should have puzzled me a lot more. I asked Kos about it, and she said something about both private and governmental stakeholders insisting upon secrecy for multiple, overlapping reasons, until the research was completed and could be announced to the world. I ought to have been suspicious about this. I was suspicious, I suppose. I was just having too good a time to care.

  And, the capstone: a week after I arrived Irma visited me again in my bed, and we repeated our previous encounter, and I was briefly aware of a sense of contentment that I don’t think I’d ever experienced in my life before.

  The following day, at breakfast, I pondered whether this was the unspoken deal, now. Irma would visit me one night a week. On such an expectation of intimacy I was to remain in the Institute. Kos came and sat with me, as she sometimes did. I had grown accustomed to her weird physiognomy (as if I had grounds to object to an ugly face!) and whining voice, although her brusqueness often passed over into outright rudeness. Maybe it was a function of mild Asperger’s. Maybe she was just tired – she always looked exhausted.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said.

  ‘Am I ever going to get to talk to Peter? Assuming he really exists? Does he exist, your head honcho?’

  ‘He exists.’

  ‘And you’re just his deputy? Look, he’s clearly not on site, or I’d have bumped into him. So he’s somewhere else, and I guess he doesn’t like Skype. So I guess I’m supposed to wait until he swings by the campus. You’re going to tell me he’s real busy now, and can’t spare the time.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Kos, drawing herself back to an approximation of attentiveness. ‘You must speak to Peta. Very soon. But first we need you to do a thing.’

  ‘A thing?’ I knew what she was about to specify. So, I thought to myself: this is why Kos has joined me for breakfast, the morning after Irma had come visiting. It was so clumsily orchestrated it was almost funny. Funny. ‘You mean: Roy?’

  ‘You’ll need to drive down to Bracknell,’ she agreed. ‘We’ll provide you with a car. We’ve spoken with the authorities at Broadmoor, and they’re expecting you tomorrow. After that you can meet with Peta.’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘All right then.’

  4

  Penelope’s Mother

  Affirmation

  Yes I said yes and Pedro sang in my ears and my eyes said I will and the whole of the mountain grew swollen and ripe and riper again and the stars were all overhead it should be possible Albie said his voice so English and solemn and reyfined like a king possible to know if those lights in the night are worlds and worlds inhabited by intelligences not unlike ours and I put my moon mouth o over his sun mouth o and kissed him and the night scratchy with cicadas all saying yes and I saying yes and he making my name into a heavenly body Lunita Lunita over and over and the sandy soil still warm from the day and the whole of the world laid below us but he left his telescope there as we scrambled down the road and he saying Sennora Laredo will be displeased like an Englishman in a novel and I laughing the way and the rock beneath us swelling and he had to return the following day because Tweedy only a captain then shouting at him with his Dublin fury about regimental equipment not to be discarded sir and if he had not gone back to the top of the rock would he have performed again his measurement and found out what happened to the rock

  maybe we would not have known and I even went back to Mrs Caraway with her tarot cards and begged her to see what the spirit world had to say and she peered at me with her eye swelled by her eyeglass like a fish swimming in a bowl so ridiculous they looked and for three days it seemed it was all Albie would talk about his collar stud missing and the collar pricking up at the back so comical and Pedro was in my ears at this time whispering the truth things

  it was after the séance Albie announcing himself to Mama and Papa so stiffly and kissing Mama on her hand and she showing off her English and asking what he did and he saying Sennora as if the tilde had gotten lost in his moustache by day I survey the rock of Gibraltar to perfect the garrisons cartography and I couldnt help giggling and by night he says I survey the night sky oh a stargazer said Papa and Albie bowed a little and Captain Tweedy or was he Major yet I cant remember is your superior officer with her putting great length into those vowels of superior tho I hardly cared if she set her cap at the Irishman for my sake who can see so far ahead I smelt his cologne and later as I lay in bed and Mamatina came to give me besos I said is our new guest not as fine a gentleman as Señor Tweedy and she hushed me but it was him I dreamed about looking at the stars through his great shaft of brass at the moon and the star Sirius and Pedro murmured in my head that the whole cosmos was alive and that he might take a running jump and leap clear free of it and I pictured him jumping
like Icarus from the peak of the rock and flying not down but up fast as a plummet and bursting through the place where the sky is sealed and opening a new way yes and impossibility is no word yes and possibility is everything at the séance it was Pedro who started speaking and I thought it was Mrs Caraway throwing her voice like the stage magician we saw on our voyage to London but his voice was low and o so male and he spoke Spanish and English and ladino all as good as each other and Mrs Caraway could no more do so than rid her face of warts and yes I said and for only a moment I was alarmed that Pedro was some devilish creature and the seven candles ranged around the table squirmed their flames in fear and I shut my eyes but then I opened them again and I knew something potent had changed in me yes and I felt the yes the past and the future were clear to me as if I stood high on the Rock and could see two seas and Spain and Africa and everywhere ranged around me and I saw you my lovely Molly though you were yet to come and I saw marrying the Major and our ancestors all the way back to Abraham and our descendants all the way to the time when time itself shall loosen and the words rose in my mind to my crown shall be added a glory as of stars and yes I said all timidness gone and Mrs Caraway turned over another of her picture cards with portentous slowness and stopped halfway and looked up at me as if she could see something profound had shifted around inside my soul but couldnt be sure what and I only smiled and Albie came the next day was it only it felt as if I had summoned him so handsome and he walking around the patio with me arm in arm perhaps he thought he was paying a teetotum court to me but mamá surely told him I was promised to his superior officer tho he could not keep away from me yes and he showed me his surveying equipment and theodolite and I said the word back to him and we laughed together and he unrolled his charts on the dining table and Conchita loitering and giving us both the evil eye old-fashioned and Andalucian about betrothal yes and sure that Tweedy is a good-looking man still though getting a bit grey over the ears but Albie yes was who I wanted and yes I said I may have him and yes the timid girl was banished by whatever happened at that séance and Pedro coming and now that the future was unrolled like one of Albies charts I could see my darling Molly coming and me feeding her from my breasts the bountiful one and her growing into her beauty and marrying and moving to Dublin and all this vision filled me with the calmness for fear is all the blind future harrying us and when the scales drop away the fear goes too and we sent Conchita out to get oranges and I led him by the hand up the stairs to my own room and we had one another there in my own bed the sheets soft as dandelions and his telescope concertinaed out into a great shaft and the pain and the sweetness folded together and yes I said and however impatient he was I was as much so for I could run the fingers of my thoughts over his mind and maybe he sensed this or maybe not but it meant his pleasure fed mine and we cried aloud together and then hearing the door click down below as Conchita returned and we hurriedly buttoning

  yes Mamatina said something changed in you bonita when you had that tarot reading from the mujer Inglés with the wart on her face something changes yes I said yes I know yes its as if the pauses inside me have evaporated away into the night sky and my soul can flow and flow and

  the year of the war between Prussia and Denmark and all the horrors in America still and him shipping over the dangerous ocean seen from the summit of the Rock a colour beetleblue or shining as the coruscant ants and his ship coming always closer pinned to the breeze by its sails and all of it alive within me yes and all of it fresh and coloured bright yes and this newness filling me with strength and Mama crooning a song for una ninya tan fermoza in the cool of dusk singing los mis males son muy grandes to a tune that is all plums and apples for sweetness and no te lo kontengas tu fijika until he came marching up and in my own mind I could sense his limbs and their strength and his eyes and their calm blue and his mind and his heart hot red and his maleness and as he bowed to me and yes later on the daytime on the summit of the Rock he making his measurements most precisely and I beneath my parasol watching him and our mule chewing thistles and straining to get the juicier ones and tipping over our cart and yes the night visit when he showed me the moon through his telescope and said my name Lunita Lunita over and over and nuzzled my ear and slipped his hand under my skirt and as I cried out in ecstasy lights poured through the firmament and he danced like a Rock ape and shouted about the meteors falling down in shining greens and blues from the black sky yes and the Pedro whispered to me that the lights were my soul

  because the future was unfolded to me I saw Albie married to a woman called Isabel and living in Lewes in England and yes I saw his cardiac complications and the stoutness that would bunch around his midriff and the colour he would turn when the last of his heart pains seized him but none of it could touch my joy yes and I knew he wont find the joy he found with me where softly sighs of love the light guitar where poetry is in the air the blue sea and the moon shining so beautifully coming back on the nightboat from Tarifa the lighthouse at Europa point and he coming all excited down City Mil Lane and taking me by the hand tho everyone could see us together and gasping that the Rock was bigger and he had measured and remeasured and he could not doubt it and he could not understand it and I reached out with my mind and compassed the whole of the mountain yes and it was true and it was I that had done it and I led him to a café table and we sat more respectable and because all I felt was love I told him about Pedro and the breadth of my thoughts now and how the world was all before me now so various and new and because I could run the fingers of my thoughts over his mind I knew he was doubtful so I reached into him and for one moment yes he saw and then he shied away like a stung thing and stumbled but later he came back and we found a place in the garden where none could see and yes he was hot for it as the afternoon was hot and he cried after a little tho it didnt unman him in my eyes

  and he said he loved me and was afraid of me and I laughed and the song came into my head a little two glancing eyes a lattice hid it was as clear as if a woman was singing it two eyes as darkly bright as loves own star arent those beautiful words as loves young star and perhaps Pedro is a womans voice as much as a mans for Pedro must be a creature of spirit and not flesh and so not man and woman like angels perhaps

  and it was some days before we could again get away to the top of the Rock and it was calm evening and everything clear and the dark green western flank of the Rock running down and we strolled like a courting couple though were not and Albie said some foolish things about how his life had run smoothly along til he met me but how I was the rock and then he said Pedro means rock does it not in Spanish it is the same name as Peter and I tushed him and lights started coming awake below us in the town and the sports ground was round as a copper penny and the dusk thickened and the apes capered and finally the stars plinked into vision overhead and each one tickled my mind as it revealed itself and we found a quiet place away from the road and made love again and all my joy yes went out into the cosmos joy and he kissed my breasts and clasped my hips with his hands yes tight as he spent himself and I felt it inside me as the milky way through my body are you a witch he asked me afterwards in awe and a single cloud like a scimitar edged the moon full and ripe white gold not silver and the next day he came to visit with Tweedy and another officer and we all took tea and had to pretend we were the merest of friends but the day after he came back and gabbled that the Rock had grown again after our act of love and that he measured it the following night there being no opportunity for further sweetness between us and it grew not at all and how much is it growing by my fine professor and he said only inches but think of how large an object the Rock runs a length of 3 miles from north to south and is ¾ mile wide and a quarter mile high how many extra thousands of tonnes of mass was added it was coincidence he said o most firm yet there was no geologic evidence for vulcanism in the Rock he said could it be some planetary bulge and Pedro whispered that it was I yes I said yes it was that the space of the Rock had become connected with my mind in a closer ha
rmony than before and that we could as well say my swelling belly was caused by the Rock growing as the Rock growing by my belly that it was possible for a soul to achieve a harmony with the ironmould mark of space itself and time itself and then might the universe itself throb with the pulse of thought and

  and my sweet Albie wrote to the Royal Society or somesuch fiddlefaddle and yes we made love one more time and the stars swooned through him and swooned through me and northern lights folded their bales of cloth in the nightskyport a sight never seen so far south before he said and then he sobbed a little and my infinite tenderness touched his mind and he was quiet as a baby and later as we rode down the Rock he said I am scared of you my beautiful Lunita and I do not know how to reconcile my fear with my love and I said it is the nature of love to be infinite and in such an ocean any fear and jealousy is washed away and I knew that my little Molly was quickening in my belly as I spoke a spark palpable to thought or rather to love and I the very next day he tramped to the summit of the Rock by himself and measured it again and again it was inches higher than before and it was that week or the week after that Tweedy and I were married and none too soon to save his pride concerning the birth of his daughter for a mans pride is the shape his love takes at the point of strength and cannot be wholly mocked and dismissed and for weeks I saw Albie not at all and some nights Tweedy was with me and covered me with his much broader hairier body and some nights he left me alone and I stroked myself yes and thought of the two men I loved yes and how my love reached all men and women too and I dozed and dreamed with each lovemaking the Rock that was me that was my body would swell as I was swelling now and soon it would be miles high and its peak would poke out from the covering of air around the world and into space and men would build curious funiculars to the top and a new kind of port at the top from which ships would fly to the moon and the other worlds with ease and the Rock base would swell and close the gap between Europe and Africa and the Mediterranean would become an oval lake blue as sapphire and pure and it was my own lap and inside it were my own waters and in those waters life teemed and grew clean and strong and I woke because yes Pedro was whispering he was leaving me and his way of putting it was that he had paced out a large enough footprint in his months plodding through time with me and I felt my first pang since he had first arrived for this was separation and felt like a no but he said he would press his heel into the place he had made and leap and where will you leap I asked and he said yes I will leap into yes and then he told me a story out of Plato the Philosopher about how Andalucibiades and Aristophanes and Socrates drank together and how in primal times people had double bodies with faces and limbs turned back from one another like globepeople cartwheeling yes some doublemen and some doublewomen and some men and women and these last were descended from the moon the moon until they were guillotined into separate halves and how they searched their whole lives for their other half that was me said Pedro and I searched long and hard for my other the woman to my man the man to my woman the half of my moon to be joined with the half of my moon and finally we were reunited and in our joy of combination we could leap and so we leaped and wait I said but they could not wait and I was left alone