Arcadia Page 15

  “No,” Silvia says. “I know it’s OK.”

  “A boy?” Per says. So he can speak after all. He sounds the way you’d imagine a bear might sound. He’s foreign too: the word comes out like beuy.

  “I know this boy,” Silvia says. She’s half Per’s size but she sounds absolutely in charge.

  Per slumps back in his seat. “Crazy,” he mutters.

  “What are you looking for?” Rory says. “I can help. I know everything here. Better than anyone else.”

  “It’s not here,” Silvia says. “Not on this island. It’s in England.”

  There’s quite a long silence.

  “You’re trying to get to the Mainland?” Rory says.

  “We were caught in a storm.”

  “You mean . . . You were in a boat?” Of course they were, he knew that already. But it’s unthinkable. The sea’s cursed; no one survives it. “What about Them?”

  Silvia cocks an eyebrow.

  “I thought They don’t let anyone . . . They kill everyone who goes to sea. All the men.”

  “Ahh,” Silvia says. “The sirene.” Hearing the Italian word, Lino echoes her: ahhh. It sounds like Silvia said sea-rainy. “Well, Rory, you see. Pear has a gift too.”

  “Don’t say,” Per grumbles.

  Silvia props her arms on her knees and fixes Rory with her weirdly gripping stare. “We come a long way. Longer than you can imagine, Lino and me. We come to the sea, we find Per and his boat. And his gift. Now we’re sailing to England to find the most important thing in the world.”

  “Don’t say. He’s a boy.” Hissa beuy is how it sounds.

  “Not just any boy,” Silvia says sharply, and though Per must be three times her size Rory gets the feeling he’s just been told off.

  “What’s that?” Rory says. The mystery is indescribable. He can almost feel the black frame of the panel around the scene, the vivid ink light filling the panel, the wide-eyed boy in the superhero’s lair.

  “The most important thing in the world? It’s a ring.”

  Per snorts angrily. “Crazy!” But Lino, who’s been following the conversation as best he can, frowning, nodding, bubbling with contained excitement, now hops onto one of the tables, gesturing happily at the three of them. “Si si si! We are ’obbits! Big ’obbit, small ’obbit, lady ’obbit!” He laughs delightedly. “We go to find ring. Ring of biggest power! Biggest magia.”

  The light in the room wavers suddenly, like it’s liquid and someone’s stirred it. “Stupid talk,” Per says. The glow at the end of his stick is contracting, dimming. “They want to go. Take the boy out. Boy!” He makes sure Rory’s looking at him, and makes a zipping motion across his closed lips.

  “Is good boy,” Lino says. “Not say to people.”

  “I won’t tell anyone,” Rory says. “I swear I won’t.”

  “I know,” Silvia says. “Now you should go.”

  “Can I come back?”

  “I think you will,” she says, standing up.

  “I don’t know how I can help,” he says. He doesn’t want them to send him back to the open air. He doesn’t want this to be over. “I don’t know about the Mainland.”

  “Maybe you know more than you think,” Silvia says.

  Dread of what’s waiting for him outside comes all in a rush. “I don’t even know if I’m going to be here for long. My mum wants to take me away. She thinks They’re going to kill me if we stay. I might not even be here tomorrow.”

  Silvia crouches in front of him. She’s so close and so intent it’s like she’s trying to hypnotize him, or searching for a secret hidden in his face. “You know I tell you Lino has a gift, and Per has a gift? I have a gift too. A gypsy gift. Do you know what the gypsies are famous for?”

  “Stealing?”

  Lino hoots with laughter again, absurdly loud in the dusky stillness of the room. Rory flushes, deeply and instantly ashamed. She just grimaces for a moment.

  “Telling fortunes,” she says.

  “And stealing!” Lino says, in his best careful English. “Clever boy!”

  “Pssh,” Silvia hisses at him, not angrily. “Telling fortunes. Reading hands, tea leaves. Ball of glass. What do you think, Rory? Do you think Silvia knows the future?”

  The best he can answer is, “Dunno.”

  “I tell you, I have the gypsy gift. I see the road ahead. What I see tells me I think we meet again, you and me.” The room’s noticeably darker, as if the light from Per’s stick is being gradually swallowed by a rising tide. Her eyes are glinting.

  “Not long,” Per says.

  “When are you going to the Mainland?” Rory says. He can feel this whole enchanted scene slipping away, sinking like the light.

  “When the time is right,” Silvia says. “We don’t hurry. We find another boat, we wait for the wind, we go.”

  “Quick now,” Per says.

  “Via via via.” Lino turns Rory around and marches him into the black corridor.

  “Good-bye,” Silvia says behind him, but already he’s at sea in the dark again, just trying to keep his footing as Lino nudges him along from behind, and he can’t answer.

  * * *

  The outside door groans open. It’s dazzling outside. He’s amazed to see the island, the world he knows. The dazzle fades quickly. It’s late afternoon, shady and chilly on this east side of Home. Everything smells of the sea, vivid and wild.

  Lino pushes him out, not roughly. “Go to mamma,” he says.

  If it wasn’t for the small man behind him, his odd round head poking around the door, Rory would be telling himself he’d imagined the whole thing.

  “She like you,” Lino says, grinning.

  His mother? What’s he talking about? “Who?”

  “Who. Cretino. Silvia. She like you. I see this.” He winks. Rory looks away, heartsick. He doesn’t feel like being teased.

  “Can you do magic?” he says.

  Lino frowns as though he doesn’t understand, then shrugs.

  “Can you make it windy? Really windy? So it’s too rough to sail anywhere?” But Lino’s wide eyes are blank. He doesn’t care.

  “Go to mamma,” he says, and pulls the door shut with a bang.

  * * *

  Rory was right. It’s the worst trouble he’s ever been in.

  Ali’s the one who finds him, up at the top of the Lane. She takes him back to the Abbey where he gets told off by Missus Grouse while Laurel and Pink go off to get word out to everyone else who’s been looking. Kate arrives first and tells him off some more, and goes on telling him off in front of everyone else as they come in. Finally his mother arrives. She’s red-faced and red-eyed and breathing like she does when she wakes up from a nightmare. She doesn’t say anything at all, just grabs him by the wrist and drags him outside. Some of the others try to stop her. Viola says she and Rory ought to stay overnight at the Abbey and then his mother blows up at Viola so badly that everyone else sort of falls out of the way like it’s an explosion, even Kate. So Rory gets hauled back to Parson’s and sat down at the table, and that’s when the real telling-off begins, complete with shaking and slaps and tears and his mother doing her thing about how she wishes she’d died at the beginning of it all, right after What Happened.

  It’s somewhere around the middle of the telling-off that Rory gets his unbelievably brilliant idea.

  12

  Next morning: the last of his childhood, though he doesn’t know that yet.

  The first thing he does is go to the window and push aside the curtain. The sun’s coming up bright in a clear sky but the tops of the hedges are fidgeting and he can hear gusts.

  He was awake long into the night. First it was because he was buzzing with choked rage, later because he was praying for wind and rain. The only clouds he can see are worryingly thin and high but at least it’s nowhere near calm. One day is all he needs. One morning, if he can just find a way to be left on his own for a bit. He’ll have to be on his best behavior. If there’s no other way, he can al
ways say he has to go for a poo. His mother won’t follow him to the toilet, surely.

  He goes downstairs determined to be obedient and helpful. To his surprise his mother’s acting normal as well, as if she hadn’t spent the previous evening screaming at him and telling him she wished he’d gone off and died instead of Jake and Scarlet.

  It soon becomes obvious, though, that today’s not going to be a normal day.

  The breakfast his mother’s making is what gives it away. It’s the porridge Libby taught them to make with milk and the half-wild oats. There’s a whole saucepan of it on the stove, enough for six. She’s standing there stirring large handfuls of dried apples and pear into it, so much sweetness he can smell it while he’s still on the stairs.

  “Who’s that for?”

  Her face is full of lines and her eyes are tired but she gives him a determined smile.

  “You and me,” she says.

  “All of it?”

  “Every little bit.” She must have used the whole tin of milk. They only filled it yesterday.

  “Shouldn’t we share that with someone?”

  “I don’t feel like seeing anyone.”

  “What about the Meeting?”

  “Sod the Meeting,” she says, stirring. “Sod the lot of them. Come on, I think this is ready.”

  She’s used all the dried apple and all the dried pear. He can see the jar on the counter where they keep it and it’s empty. At the end of a particularly long or particularly exhausting day they’d sometimes open that jar, take out one strip, tear it in half, and share the half, enough for two bites each.

  He’s beginning to feel worried.

  “Shouldn’t we be Eekonomical?” he says cautiously.

  “You know what? I’m tired of economical. I’ve had enough of it. Don’t you think?”

  He doesn’t know what to think. This isn’t at all how he’d imagined the morning going. This isn’t how he could imagine any morning going. She’s breaking six different Rules at once.

  “Eat,” she says, spooning it out.

  It’s good. It’s painfully good. It goes on being good after the five or six mouthfuls, which are what meals are supposed to consist of. It gets better, if anything.

  “What about . . .” He doesn’t quite know how to put it. He has to be on his best behavior, he doesn’t want to set her off, but he also wants to know what’s going on. “What about everyone else?”

  His mother puts her spoon down carefully. “Everyone else,” she says, emphasizing the words like Ol would do with a rude joke, “has decided I’m being selfish. Everyone else doesn’t think I know what’s best for my own family. I don’t give a damn about everyone else. Actually.”

  The sweetness in his mouth turns ashy.

  “We’re not leaving today,” he says, “are we?”

  “The sooner the better.”

  “But.” His stomach’s turning. “It looks really windy.”

  “We can manage a bit of rough weather.” She smiles at him, and suddenly he sees a sort of skin over her smile, and over her eyes, a glaze, a strange mask. “You’re a good little sailor.”

  For a start, this is nonsense. He’s always hated rough sailing. Everyone knows that. Jake and Scarlet were the good little sailors. And Dad. She hates it too, she always has. She and Rory stayed home and watched telly when the others went out for a sail, that’s how it worked. But as well as being nonsense there’s a terrible threat in it.

  “I don’t like it when it’s rough.” He’s got to stay calm. Best behavior.

  “Rory.” She reaches across to pat his hand. She’s not getting angry. She’s alarmingly calm herself. “There’s nothing more to discuss. You and I are finished here.”

  “But—”

  “Eat up now, and we’ll go and choose you some clothes.”

  She leaves the saucepan on the stove, and the dirty spoon and bowls on the table. She doesn’t even give anything a quick rinse.

  * * *

  She won’t let go of his hand, all the way down the Lane. She acts like it’s nice handholding, like she’s not pulling him along, but she won’t let go.

  Gulls ride the breeze silently overhead. When they spread their wings wide they sail east, in the direction of Martin, and the Mainland.

  “It’s really windy,” he says.

  She doesn’t break her stride. She doesn’t look or sound like she’s going to lose her temper. She’s frighteningly steady. “We’re going, Rory,” she says in her normal voice. “Try and get used to it. Tomorrow, maybe, or the next day. As soon as I’ve got everything ready.”

  A tremor of relief ripples through him. “So not today?

  She smiles. “Why? Are you in a hurry?”

  “No!”

  “Maybe,” she says. “We’ll see.”

  “Not today,” he says. “Please.”

  “I don’t know,” she says, like it’s a joke. “It looks like quite a nice day for a trip.”

  “I bet it’ll be calmer tomorrow.”

  “Oh? Do you?” They come down to the Pub and turn along the back of the Beach. Looking down the Channel, under the rust-colored ferns on the two hills of Sansen, the Gap’s crisscrossed with whitecaps, sparkling in brilliant sun. “Little weather forecaster, are you?”

  “Look how windy it is in the Gap.”

  “All right then, how about tomorrow? Shall we agree on tomorrow? Mister weather forecaster?”

  He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t think she’s listening anyway.

  “I’ll need today to get loaded up anyway,” she says. She’s working it out aloud to herself. “I did the fuel yesterday, that was the really tricky bit. The rest’s just bits and pieces. I’ll bring the boat round to the quay here when the tide’s up. That’s the easiest way, isn’t it? We’ll do it like that.”

  When they get to the Club she turns off and goes down the side road to the row of tall weathered wooden houses overlooking the Channel.

  “Are we going to the Stash?”

  “Of course,” she says.

  These houses were built by the Club for posh holidaymakers. They’re too cold to live in with their big windows and high ceilings and being right by the water, but they’re solid and dry inside, so this is where the Stash is. Kate’s been talking about moving it to a place they can lock—the keys to these houses are long lost—but that’s a job for later, when they can spare the labor.

  All the household things they’ve salvaged from all over the island are piled up here. Coats, shoes, sheets, towels, cotton bags, blinds, strips of carpet, dishcloths, all kinds of clothes. The bulkier things are downstairs. She picks out a couple of suitcases and hands one to him.

  “Let’s fill one each,” she says.

  You don’t just go in the Stash and take stuff. That’s not how it works. It’s unthinkable. “Did they say it’s OK?”

  “Never mind that,” she says. “We’ve got as much right as anyone.”

  The clothes are upstairs, in what used to be the main bedroom. The stairs are carpeted, thick with dried dirt but still fascinatingly soft, so Rory and his mother don’t make a sound as they go up. The curtains across the big window facing the Channel and Briar are drawn. His mother pulls them back, revealing green streaks of lichen on the glass. Dust dances in the sunlight.

  “Right,” she says, putting her hands on her hips and examining the neatly sorted piles. “Warm things are what we need. Good boots first. Let’s try those ones on you.”

  “I knew it was you,” Fi’s voice says. Rory and his mother both flinch.

  Fi’s leaning in the doorway. Her bare feet made no noise at all. She must have been in one of the little bedrooms at the back. She looks glum.

  “Obvious all along, really,” she says, folding her arms. They’re big strong arms. She’s broad-shouldered, built for garden work. She’s blocking the doorway.

  His mother tries to draw herself up straight but she’s been caught red-handed and all three of them know it. “We’re taking what
we need,” she says. “Same as anyone would.”

  “That’s rubbish, Connie, and you know it.”

  “Oh, so you and Kate own all this now, do you?”

  Fi shakes her head. “You know, if you’d only asked, everyone would have been happy to let you have whatever.”

  His mother looks like she’s trying to think of a response before giving up. She turns back to Rory, holding up a pair of brown walking boots. “Try these,” she says. “They look about right.”

  Rory’s face is burning. He can’t look at Fi, but he can’t pretend she’s not there either.

  “Maybe you could at least try to think about how much you need,” Fi says. “I have to say, I thought you’d be finished by now.”

  “What are you saying?” His mother’s sorting through trousers now.

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  His mother drops the suitcase she’s holding abruptly, and for the first time that morning Rory can hear her beginning to crack. “No, Fi, I actually don’t know what you’re talking about. Actually, I’m a bit tired of being told what I’m thinking. Who made you the island police? Why don’t you leave us alone?”

  “Well, that’s an easy one.” Fi’s accent gets more Scottish when she gets riled up. “Because someone’s got to make sure you don’t clean out the whole Stash.”

  “Two bags!” His mother’s gone very shrill. “That’s too much to ask, is it?”

  “Two bags today,” Fi says.

  There’s a pause. His mother is breathing too fast, too noisily.

  “What does that mean?” she says.

  “You think no one noticed what’s gone missing the last couple of days? Why do you think I slept here overnight?”

  Another pause. Rory can’t stop himself thinking at once of the piles of clothes in the mysteriously firelit room deep in the ruins of the Hotel. He fumbles at the laces of the boots.

  “Are you accusing me of stealing?” his mother says.

  “Actually, I’m standing here watching you steal with my own two eyes.”

  His mother takes a couple of hasty steps towards Fi, who doesn’t flinch, of course.

  “Rory and I are taking things we might need.” She’s trembling with weak defiance. “For whatever we’ll find. Because we’re not going to sit on this godforsaken miserable island until he dies. It’s one bag for each of us, and if you and Miss High and Mighty Kate think that’s too much you can go and fuck yourselves. For a change, instead of fucking each other.”