The divide, p.7
The Divide, page 7
All this would have to wait, however, because all the other museum staff were running round like headless chickens, so I needed to join in the panic. I headed for Marcus’s office and found everyone crowded in.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Come in, come in. Shut the door.’
We all shuffled to find a comfortable position.
‘All department heads were summoned first thing this morning,’ he said. ‘By the Subgarda.’ He muttered the word like it was an obscenity. ‘There has, apparently, been an act of subversion originating in this establishment.’
Liv made a scoffing noise. ‘Subversion. Who here has time for subversion? They’re bonkers. Absolute idiots!’
Everyone looked uncomfortable and Marcus made hushing movements with his hands.
‘Alright, alright,’ he said. ‘Let’s keep our thoughts to ourselves.’ And he looked with pleading eyes at Liv with a sort of ‘these walls have ears’ expression. ‘We will cooperate fully, as none of us has anything to hide.’
We all drifted off to our duties. None of us had anything to hide. Except for Hercules. Was some alarm raised when I requested a loan from Cambridge? Or, more to the point, was my note discovered when my little bronze messenger passed back across the border? If so, I was doomed. That note would obviously have come from me, even if no one would understand what it meant. And the fact that it was written in code would only make things worse for me because it was quite obviously intended as an act of ‘subversion’. Except that it wasn’t, of course. It was simply one sister wondering and worrying about another sister.
That whole day spiralled into an increasing nightmare. The outside doors were locked to the public as the Subgardas poked their noses into cupboards, shelves, storerooms and desk drawers, then into the archives and filing cabinets. They ransacked our files with their thick fingers, leaving papers in random, wrong piles. Their grubby hands pushed through spare glasses, moon cups, lipsticks, wallets. It was draining, for all of us. We tiptoed from room to room, no one allowed simply to go home and leave them to it. If anyone went too near to one of them, they would turn and emit a low growl like a guard dog.
Marcus was a wreck. I managed to catch him hiding in the gallery, taking advantage of the doors being locked to visitors to shift around some of the smaller vases. There was a pale sheen of sweat on his face which made him look grey and aged.
‘What are they looking for?’ I whispered.
‘They’re not going to tell us, not in a million years, not until they find something incriminating,’ he muttered to a red-figure vase.
I felt bold enough to ask: ‘What sort of something? Documents? Stolen objects? Is someone hiding something?’
He glanced at me. ‘Aren’t most people hiding something?’
‘But—’
‘Watch out.’
‘You!’ A loud, metallic, harsh voice. ‘You! Come with me.’
I followed him back into the admin corridor.
‘Take me to your office!’
Once there, he demanded to see my bag, then tipped its contents sprawling over the desk. All my little private things lay there, exposed to his hostile stare and mauling fingers. A woman came to join him, a woman built like a pit bull terrier. She muttered something into the man’s ear, and he straightened up and they both left, abandoning me to my sad little personal treasures. With much stomping of boots, they all departed, leaving us shattered, drained, without even the courage to start picking up the pieces, tidying the mess.
Marcus was putting down the phone as I entered his office. His shoulders were bowed and heavy.
‘They want to curb us even more,’ he said. ‘Hardly any travel to see other collections. It’ll be hell on earth trying to organise a conference what with all the extra paperwork they’re expecting. And they are threatening to stop all inter-museum loans,’ he added. ‘What does that do to our research, eh, Petrichor? What does it do?’ He took a deep breath in and tried to smile and offered to make us coffee out of his meagre supply, which was kind of him, but I could see his hands trembling as he spooned the grounds into the jug. Liv came into Marcus’s room and sat down, followed by Aarav and Alberto, the boy from Portugal on a work placement, who looked as if he had just survived a tsunami. Aarav looked at me, then at Marcus.
‘Where’s Suyin?’
Marcus turned and looked at each one of us. ‘She did not come in today. I don’t think we should talk about it. I don’t think we should talk about anything.’
Most of the rest of the day was spent clearing and cleaning up. The head of Japanese art and textiles could not bear the thought of the Subgardas’ fingerprints on her glass cases and apparently led her team on a massive scrub and polish campaign. There was a certain amount of gallows humour: when Aarav heard there was chaos in the coin department because the pit bulls had pulled out half their trays of Roman coins and just tipped them onto the floor, leading to hours and hours of the staff having to re-weigh each one to allocate it to its correct spot on the tray, he made a lame joke about there being no point in numismatists crying over spilt coins. None of us could even force a smile.
Straight after work, I veloed over to Suyin’s house at Wytham. It was a slog to get there, but at least the weather was not against me. As spring was creeping into summer, the roadside verges, widening as the city’s pavements narrowed behind me, were sprinkled with wild flowers, and I could imagine the bluebells starting to come out in Wytham Woods. The air was soft against my cheeks. It was good to get away from the stress of the museum, and I was keen to tell Suyin all about the day. A slice of lemon drizzle cake and a bit of banal chatter about what colour shoes the children should be allowed to wear to school would be very good for my soul.
Yet as soon as the cottage came into sight, I knew something was wrong, different. The warm stone of the building seemed blanched of colour. The windows and door, firmly shut, invited no approach. Stay away, they seemed to say. But I could see bikes stacked around the side of the cottage, so I knocked and called out, ‘Hi, Suyin! Hi, Lucas! It’s only me – Petrichor.’ Silence at first. Then a stirring of movement, followed by slow footsteps. The door opened a crack and half of Lucas’s face appeared. When he saw it was me, and me alone, he pulled the door wider and stepped back. As I passed him, I saw how haggard and pale he looked; his eyes were dull and baggy.
‘Where’s Suyin?’ I asked. The living room was empty, but also different, as the furniture was out of place and there were piles of paper and stuff on the floor. ‘What’s happening, Lucas?’
He grasped hold of his sleeves so tightly his knuckles went white and he stared wide-eyed at the window, then put his hands either side of his head and stared at the floor, rocking a little.
‘Christ, Lucas!’
He looked at me, his head still nodding, not at anything I had said but as though he were trying to make sense of his thoughts.
‘They’ve taken her, Petrichor. Taken her. They came last night – dragged us out of our beds, pinned us on the floor, and the girls, Pet, the girls were screaming.’
‘Oh my god, Luc! What? Where are they now?’
‘I called my sister.’ He looked around the room, as though checking the children had not slipped behind the sofa or were playing hide-and-seek behind the curtains. ‘In Swindon. She came and took them. Just for a few days. They’ll be fine; she’s got children too. Fen and Ju will enjoy playing…’ He started to sob. It was horrible seeing a big, capable guy like him crying. ‘But they took Suyin.’
‘Who took her Lucas? What? The Garda?’
‘No. No uniforms.’
‘The Subgarda?’
‘Yes. No. I don’t know,’ he wailed. ‘They dragged her by her hair, Petrichor!’
‘My god.’ My brain froze; this could not be. ‘Did they say why? What it was all about?’
‘They said suspected of subversion.’
Subversion. That word that brought a chill to our hearts.
‘Where did they take her?’ was all I could think to ask.
‘I don’t know, don’t know. I can’t find out.’
‘Is there someone – a lawyer? I don’t know…’
‘I called the lawyer who wrote our wills, she is the only one I know, and she said she had no way of finding out and I should sit tight.’ He took a huge breath. ‘And it would be quite likely they would release her again after a day or two because that’s what they often do.’
‘Oh.’ How could anyone ‘sit tight’ when the love of their life had been dragged off to god knows where?
I made my way home as though through a thick fog. I could barely see the roads and paths in front of me because of the swirling thoughts and terrors in my head. In the course of one day, so much had happened that I needed to understand. The vague fears that we all harboured about the Subgarda, their powers and their behaviour, had crystallised into stark reality. And it was so close to home now, to my work and to my friend, my best friend. Back home, I stowed the velo away and only when I was through the door of the apartment did I realise how exhausted I was. Noah came out of the living room, looking pretty frazzled himself.
‘Where have you been? You’re hours late.’ He sounded quite angry; I might have expected more sympathy and support.
‘It’s been an awful day. I’m drained. Has the kettle been on?’
‘But where have you been? I know you weren’t taken by the Subgarda.’
‘So you heard about the Ashmolean?’ But how did he know I had not been arrested?
‘Yeah.’ He turned away, drifted into the kitchen. ‘Yeah, I heard something about it at work.’
I followed him in. ‘What did you hear? Why did they dump on us like that? What were they hoping to find?’
He fiddled with cups and teabags. ‘I don’t know. Why should I know?’ He sounded almost aggressive now. ‘Why would you think I would know anything?’
Well, I didn’t really, because he always said he had such a boring job with his statistics and did not know what went on in other government departments. So why should he know? But then why the evasion?
‘I’ll have a bath,’ I said. ‘I’m a bit dusty.’ Though by this time of day, it was likely the hot water tanks would be empty.
After a tepid bath and one of Noah’s famous pasta bakes, I felt a bit better.
7
Snakes Entwined
The weekend was quiet. I was drained, unnerved, disorientated. I wanted to think; or rather, I wanted not to think but to go back to my old life pre-Spaniel, pre-Astronomy Club, pre-Suyin being arrested. Back to the days of knowing exactly what was what and who was who and where I needed to be at any given time of the day. And also of knowing what I could – and could not – eat.
‘Where in heaven did you get this?’ I was staring, my mouth hanging open, I know, at what would have been my usual Sunday morning breakfast of oats and dried apples or pears. Instead, the plate was piled high with bacon – proper bacon with that proper bacon smell. When I was little, my dad used to make bacon sandwiches for breakfast at the weekends, with thick white bloomer bread and a thick lashing of butter and tomato ketchup, and that aroma of grilling bacon would suffuse the house, luring Jasmine and me out of our beds and rushing to the kitchen.
I shoved the bedclothes aside and looked up at Noah. Beside the bacon was a mound of scrambled eggs, rich yellow and creamy; surely more than one egg had gone into that. And mushrooms! Where did they come from at this time of year? It wasn’t mushroom season. My nose and eyes took it all in. My mouth began to water. But first I stood, turned to Noah and put my arms around his neck.
‘You gorgeous thing. I love you,’ I said. ‘Where…?’
He chuckled. ‘Don’t ask, or I might have to take it away.’
‘Don’t you dare!’ I sat down and tucked in. ‘Where’s yours?’
‘Here,’ he said, climbing into bed beside me with another plate. ‘Though you got all the mushrooms.’
I blew him a kiss. ‘I’ll be grateful,’ I said. ‘As soon as I’ve finished this, I’ll find some time for you.’
Later on, we went for a walk in South Park. Many of the early summer wild flowers were out now. I told Noah about how, when I was little, the council, because they could afford it I suppose, used to mow the whole park regularly so the grass was short enough to play football on. People used to run their dogs. This was still in the days when dogs were allowed in towns.
‘Were your parks like that?’ I asked him. ‘When you were a kid?’ Noah grew up in London; he did not come to Oxford until he was a student.
‘I dunno if they were mowed,’ he said. ‘There were more trees, I think, and there were definitely herds of deer in Bushy Park and Richmond Park; I remember those, and I guess they chomped the grass and kept it short. We didn’t go to the park much.’
‘Oh, poor you.’ I punched him on the arm. ‘Did you stay indoors all the time? Were you always a nerd?’
‘Yeah, I was always a nerd.’
We walked amongst the wild flowers, sometimes holding hands, and I had a brief vision of us being part of one of those old movies where people skip, smiling and laughing, through the daisies, or an advertisement for toilet paper or deodorant or perfume. Thinking that brought my wandering mind back to my father. He always laughed at those adverts, marvelling at the power of persuasion that could sell expensive perfumes by their packaging design and colour, by the music with which they were marketed, by the image of the success of the wearer or giver in terms of beauty, eternal youth, power, desirousness or wealth. Which reminded me of something else. A question of image.
‘Oh, it’s nice to be out.’ I sighed. I took Noah’s arm. ‘And it gives us a chance to chat.’
‘Chat? About what?’
‘Oh, nothing. Anything. Life, the world situation, the state of the nation.’
‘Ha! You’re more interested in the state of the Roman nation two and a half thousand years ago.’
‘That’s so not true! I’m very happy to talk about contemporary issues.’
‘Go on then – what issue of the day would you most like us to discuss?’
A pair of red kites whistled high above us, then one of them swooped down towards some undergrowth over towards the university buildings. She must have spotted a mouse or a vole creeping about, or maybe there was some carrion that needed cleaning up.
‘I’ve been wondering,’ I said, ‘what it’s really like in Anglia. I mean, we all seem to think they have it so much better than we do – more freedom, more money, more opportunities – but how do we know? How do we really know?’
‘Where’s all this come from, Petrichor?’ he said, after a pause. ‘We know what we know.’
‘But do we? Do we really? We know what the government tells us, but, let’s face it, they are our only source of information. I sometimes wonder about Jasmine – if she’s got a better life there. If we should just go on assuming she’s happy.’
‘Jasmine? I thought you never thought about her. I thought she’d cut herself off from the family when she went over.’
I opened my mouth to tell him about the postcards, but did not. Instead: ‘She did, yes. I just sometimes wonder what she’s up to, you know, if she’s got someone. She might even have kids or something.’
‘Hmm.’
‘So when you’re at work, in the department, people must talk about Anglia a bit. You can’t just ignore it. So what do you hear?’
‘I can’t—’
‘No,’ I butted in. ‘I know you can’t talk about your work and I’m not the sort of person to get into algorithms and processes anyway, but just in passing, you know? People must just sometimes mention stuff they’ve heard.’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘Well, I suppose.’
I waited.
Long pause while he strode forwards, hands in pockets, looking at his feet. ‘Well, I only know what we all know. They have more wealth than us. They sold their souls to Eastern Europe, turned their backs on the old country and reinvented their idea of nationhood. They had all the money from the gas and the oil and the Russian pipelines while that stuff was all still going on. They’ve got better education systems, better universities, access to imports from many more areas of the world. Then there’s the space programme, Mars even—’
‘Stuff we all know. But I was wondering, you know, what your ordinary person’s life would be like.’
‘Like, well, they maybe have a higher standard of living. Nobody goes hungry. No hostels for the homeless like we have. They say they’ve managed pollution better than us. The elderly are apparently revered and well cared for. And there are small class sizes, shorter waiting lists for surgery.’
‘And freedom?’ I asked.
‘Freedom? That’s a loaded word.’
A dead oak tree stood in a wide open space in the centre of the park. It had been dead forever, as far as I knew. A metal fence surrounded it, presumably to protect people in case any of the ghostly limbs should suddenly fall. Tall grasses and wild flowers had grown up there, untrammelled. Some worthy committee had recently installed wooden benches at intervals around this fence, designed to fit its curve, so that if people sat on them they would always be facing slightly away from each other. Our wandering had led us to one of these benches, and we sat.
Noah did one of his deep sighs. ‘Some people here say they want more freedom, but what do they mean when they say that? Freedom to have no money and let their children be hungry? You’ve got to remember, Pet, that at least here in Wessex no one goes unemployed. A job is found for everyone.’
