Dispossession (15 page)

And here at the track’s end a thin smoke was rising,
straight and true like the trunk of a tree until the wind caught it and it
eddied into confusion like a moorland tree in the spring’s blur; and I turned
off the engine and left the car right there, and all but ran a dozen eager,
stumbling paces to the lip of the hollow.

This was it, my secret place, my refuge: a haven in my
teenage years and a constant reassurance since, somewhere I kept in my head
like a treasure. Not my home, never that by any definition, let alone Frost’s;
I was under no illusion here, I was only ever taken in on sufferance and I
could get turned away at any time, licence revoked and
never come back, this place is closed to you
.

But it never had been, yet. I came when I needed to, and
here I found what I needed.

o0o

Here I found Luke, today as always, heating water in a billy
over his small fire; and he smiled up at me and made a gesture of welcome,
said, “Jonty, come down. I’ve been expecting you.”

He always said that and as always I believed him, though I’d
come as always on impulse and without warning. Had no way to warn him, indeed,
there wasn’t an address to send a postcard to; and yet every time I came there
was already water heating and two mugs set out. Something cynical in me always
murmured that the water wasn’t so hot yet, and that it was easy enough to hear
a car coming up the track, working hard; but Luke would never work to set up a
false implication, just to impress. He wouldn’t see the point.

Besides—if he cared, which he didn’t—he was impressive
enough simply in himself, that spirit clothed in that flesh which was called by
his name. He stood up as I slithered down the grassy slope into the hollow, he
met me with a hard hug at the foot; and I toppled into his arms like a child, I
clung like a child in despair, my eyes screwed tight shut and my face buried in
the loose cotton weave of his shirt.

Smoke and spices he smelled of, and not the first to do that
to me since I’d woken into this remade world; and I thought maybe that was
another reason why I’d started to believe Suzie when she talked of impossible
things. Not only that she’d had photographs and known about Luke, but also that
she’d tasted like him, a little. In her case it was cigarette smoke and Chinese
spices, poor substitutes, but resonant in combination; now here—at last—was the
truth, the thing itself, Luke’s own golden skin that smelled of woodsmoke
superficially and beneath that the strange spicy otherness that I privately
called the tang of angels.

He pushed me away too soon, but that was Luke. Ice-chip eyes
surveyed me, glacier-green and seeing everything, but only in black and white:
admitting no compromise, no shading.

“You’ve been hurt,” he said, and his strong hands shifted
from my shoulders to my face, brushing feather-light over scabs and bruising.

“Yes,” I said, trying not to flinch, and failing.

“Come and sit down. Water’s heating.”

Water was; and when it seethed in the billy, when it spat
hissing onto the hot stones that made Luke’s hearth, he lifted it two-handed,
bare-handed from the fire and poured into two chipped enamel mugs. I didn’t
blink, either at his immunity of flesh or else at being given nothing but
near-boiling water to drink. I’d been here before.

Instead I sat slowly, wearily, awkwardly cross-legged on the
grass, cradled the mug for the comfort of its heat in my knackered hands and
let my eyes wander around the hollow. Every time I came things were different
here, there were different things; and yet it always looked the same, it had
only ever looked like a junkyard set in a quarry garden, metal scrap and
mechanical parts rusting like nameless, neglected sculptures among plants and
shrubs and even trees that surely shouldn’t grow up here.

I was fifteen when I found it first, on a solitary
adolescent hike; and Luke had been sitting over his fire and smiling up at me,
and water had been heating.

I thought he was nineteen, then. I remembered working it out
practically on my fingers—
older than eighteen, for
sure, but younger than twenty
—and feeling certain, feeling so cocky I
didn’t even need to ask.

Looking at him now, with another dozen years banked up
behind me, I still thought he was nineteen; still thought that was exact. Full
growth but no maturity, whip-fast reflexes and not an ounce more flesh than he
could need or want; fire and hunger, passion and arrogance and the habit of
instant judgement with no sense of perspective, no leniency.

And beauty, of course, he was the child of delight; and
pain, of course, an extraordinary pain that faded as his perfect body aged,
which meant not at all; and above and surrounding and engulfing all, the
certainty that there was no forgiveness, that there could be no reconciliation
in this world or any other.

And that also was pure nineteen-year-old thinking, and not
subject to debate. No, he never changed; and I loved him for it, and grieved
for it, and depended on it, and that also would not and could not change.

He sucked unconcernedly at water that would have blistered
my throat, and said, “Tell me about it.”

What, you mean you don’t know
all about it already?
But even a creature who could access infinity was
presumably not omniscient, or Luke would never have found himself here, on this
cold hill’s side; and as he was now, no, of course he didn’t know, how could
he? He might have some sense of prescience for what affected him closely, but
he had no all-seeing eye on the world’s events.

Nor television nor radio, and he’d hardly be reading the
papers every day.

So okay, I’d tell him. I would. But I’d come here to escape,
I’d crossed the country in an effort to leave it all behind, not to bring it
with me. So—looking to divert his mind without any real hope of it, just
grabbing almost at random—I said, “That’s a new caravan, isn’t it?”

Whether he actually needed a caravan, I wasn’t sure. I knew
he could sit all night in the rain quite unperturbed; I thought he could nest
in the open in the snow and not be cold. But even Luke’s parsimony fractured
occasionally. He always had a fire, though I could never reason any need for
that or for his heating the water that he drank; and he’d always had a caravan
up here, though he was rarely to be found inside it.

Once it was an ancient, nameless thing on blocks, painted
institution-green, its door half hanging off and the roof not that secure. Then
it was an Elddis, not new but neatly made, holding together against the weather
and Luke’s contemptuous mistreatment. Something must have happened to that, I
thought; he wouldn’t have changed without cause, and little less than a total
disintegration would be cause enough.

But changed he had. Luke’s new home was an Airstream from
America, a long gleaming silver bullet of a caravan, all aerodynamics and
riveted aluminium, more plane than wagon except that it lacked the wings...

Ouch. Not a good thought, that, around Luke. I had no
evidence that he could read my mind, but likewise no evidence that he couldn’t.

“Yes,” he said, dealing only with what I’d said aloud, thank
God.

“How’d you get it up here? Friendly farmer?” The rough track
would have been no problem, an Airstream could take any amount of banging
about, but Luke had no way of towing one himself.

“No,” he said, “I lifted it.”

And didn’t explain how—on his shoulders, like Atlas? Hanging
from a rope while he flew above, like a helicopter carrying a tank?—and
obviously didn’t want to, for all my curiosity. It had taken me a while to
learn, back when I was a curious and fascinated teenager, but he loathed
talking about those talents and abilities that marked him out, what powers had
come with him in his great transition.

So there we were, seemingly two young men facing each other
across a quiet fire, and neither one of us keen to talk about what the other
wanted; but he was Luke and I was Jonty, and so of course I talked about the
loss of my natural world, so very much less than his.

o0o

Or started to, at least. Didn’t get very far.

“I had a car smash,” I said. “Apparently. I don’t remember a
thing about it; but that’s not all that’s gone, that’s the least of it. I can’t
remember anything from the last couple of months, and I’ve done so much that’s
strange, but I don’t know why. Listen,” with a wry little chuckle, first time I’d
managed to laugh about this or any of it, “I’ve even got married, Luke, would
you believe it? Not to Carol, either...”

He nodded. “I know.”

“Do you?” What, was he omniscient after all? “How?”

“You told me.”

“You mean—you mean I’ve
been
here?
Recently?
” And, at his nod, “When?
Exactly?”

“Six days ago,” he said, exact enough for anybody.

I counted back in my head, then did it again on my fingers
for confirmation. “Was I driving a green sports car?”

Luke just shrugged at that. I groaned, slapping the side of
my own head in apology and then yelping at the stab of pain that rightly
followed, and maybe there was more wrong with my memory than the doctors knew.
Forgetting my bad head was stupid, but forgetting Luke’s limitations was worse
than stupid, it was offensive. To me, if not to him. I’d known him all my adult
life and longer; and no, he wouldn’t know the colour of the car. How could he?

But logic said yes, I had been driving a green sports car.
Logic was blushing, in fact, logic was humiliated. Suzie had located the crash
in Cumbria and I hadn’t thought beyond that; there’d been so many questions some
of them had to get away, and that one had finished up free and clear, totally
overlooked. But it shouldn’t have. It was no great mental leap from
Cumbria
to
Lakes
;
and from Lakes to Luke was no leap at all, it was apple pie and Wensleydale, a
natural connection in my head.

Put it plain: I’d driven over to see Luke, and then I’d
crashed the car.

Afterwards...

“Luke,” I said, “what did I
say
?
What did I tell you?”

“You told me that you’d got married. In a church,” added
with sublime distaste, a curl of the lip that was part sneer and part physical
revulsion, as at something rank and rotting.

I grunted. “What else?”

“That you were working for Vernon Deverill now.”

“Yes? Doing what?”

“Trying to get a crooked accountant out of jail, you said.”

“Right, I figured that. But did I say why? Or how?”

“No. I didn’t ask.”

No. He wouldn’t have. “So what did I come over for, anything
special?” There must have been a reason, I thought. Young man a few weeks
married, ex-solicitor living it up on a villain’s petty cash: whichever role
counted for more, neither one fitted comfortably with my driving all this way
to spend a day, just a single day with Luke.

“You asked me questions about the Leavenhall Bypass protest,
and Scimitar Security.”

“Shit. Did I? And I suppose I didn’t tell you why?”

A smile, a shake of the head. Motives didn’t interest Luke,
it was only the thing done that mattered. Which left me little better off than
I had been. I knew that the Leavenhall protest had happened, was happening
still; and that Luke was involved, and that the bypass was going ahead
regardless—which last actually didn’t need saying, given what had gone before.
Luke was involved in the protest, therefore the protest was failing. He had a
demonic eye for lost causes, had Luke.

But why I should have been interested in a new road or the
opposition to it, I couldn’t imagine. Vernon Deverill had a connection, yes, he
owned the company that was building the road, as well as the councillors who
had given him the contract; but so what? There were few major projects in the
region that didn’t bear his fingerprints, somewhere along the line. And
Scimitar Security rang several bells with me on a personal level, but none of
them seemed to have a particularly relevant chime.

“Can you remember what I asked you? Exactly?”

“Yes.”

Of course he could, I was only making noises in my
confusion. Luke did this to me sometimes: just a few minutes in his company and
I’d be working to assert my humanity, my fallibility. Asking questions when I
already knew the answers, saying things twice although he’d heard the first
time, that sort of thing. Making mistakes that in retrospect had to be
deliberate, though only on some far-down level I couldn’t consciously access.
Telling him, maybe also telling myself that I really wouldn’t want a memory
etched in anodised steel, not a word or a moment ever to be lost.

I’d take dictation from him if he’d sit still that long, I’d
write down every question I asked him and his every response; but not today, I
decided. Maybe not tomorrow, either.

“Your head hurts,” he told me.

“No kidding.” That slap on the skull I’d given myself had
started a throbbing curse of a headache, which would likely build into a sweet
little migraine ninety-odd miles from my stock of Migraleve.

If I still had any stock of Migraleve. If Suzie hadn’t
changed it all for a bagful of Chinese herbs.

Here and now, migraines were an anxiety but not a problem,
Migraleve not actually an issue. What need chemicals with Luke at hand, Luke’s
hands to hold and help me?

He never fixed anything for good, mind, never for real. I
still got migraines, and bronchitis in the winter, and arthritic pains in my
hip whenever the weather turned wet, where I’d broken it as a kid. But right
here and for now, Luke’s touch would be better than any analgesic.

Would be, and was. He said, “Come here,” and I said, “Would
you?” when I already knew that he would; and I shifted around the fire to sit
with my back to him like he was going to give me a massage, and instead his
hands closed tight and hard around my head.