Weaveworld (81 page)

So; what were they to do? There was a voluble faction –led by Balm de Bono – that argued to make their story public; to become, in essence, a
cause.
There was merit in the idea. Perhaps the safest place to be
was
in plain sight of the human world. But there was substantial opposition to the scheme, fuelled by the one possession circumstance could not take from these people: pride. Many of them stated bluntly that they’d rather die than throw themselves on the mercy of Cuckoos.

Suzanna had a further problem with the idea. Though her fellow humans might be persuaded to believe the Kind’s tale, and sympathize, how long would their compassion last? Months?; a year, at most. Then they’d turn their attention to some new tragedy. The Seerkind would be yesterday’s victims, tainted by celebrity but scarcely saved by it.

The combination of her argument and the widespread horror at humbling themselves to the Cuckoos was sufficient to outweigh the opposition. Determined to be civilized in defeat, de Bono conceded.

It was the last time the etiquette of debate shaped the night’s proceedings, as the meeting grew steadily more heated. The escalation began with a call from a harried, grey-faced man that they put aside all pretence to bettering their lot and concentrate on revenging themselves on Shadwell.

‘We’ve lost everything,’ he said. ‘The only satisfaction we’ve got left is seeing that bastard dead.’

There were voices raised in protest against this defeatism, but the man demanded the right to be heard.

‘We’re going to die out here,’ he said, his face knotted up. ‘All we’ve got left are a few
moments
… to destroy the ones who did this to us.’

‘Seems to me this is no time for a vendetta,’ Nimrod said. ‘We have to think constructively. Plan for the future.’

There was some ironic laughter amongst the gathering, above which the voice of the would-be avenger rose:

What future?
he said, almost triumphant in his despair. ‘Look at us!’ There were many downcast eyes at this; they knew all too well what a forlorn sight they made. ‘We’re the last of the few. There won’t be any coming after us, and we all know it.’ He turned on Nimrod. ‘I don’t want to talk about the future,’ he said. ‘That’s just asking for more grief.’

‘That’s not true –’ Suzanna said.

‘Easy for you to say,’ he retorted.

‘Shut your mouth, Hamel,’ Nimrod shouted.

‘I won’t!’

‘She came here to help us.’

‘We’ve had enough help from her to kill us!’ Hamel yelled back.

His pessimism had found a good number of supporters.

‘She’s a Cuckoo,’ one of them now piped up. ‘Why doesn’t she go back where she belongs?’

Part of Suzanna was ready to do just that: she had no desire to be the target for so much bitterness. Their words stung.
More than that, they stirred another fear: that somehow she
could
have done more than she had; or at least done it differently. But she had to stay, for de Bono, and Nimrod, and all the others who looked to her for guidance in the Kingdom. The fact was that all Hamel had argued made a sad sense to her. She could see how easy it would be to take strength from hating Shadwell, and so be diverted from the losses they’d sustained.
They
more than she, of course; and that thought she had to keep uppermost in her mind.
She’d
lost a dream she’d had a few precious moments to indulge. They’d lost their world.

A new voice now entered the controversy; one she was surprised to hear: that of Apolline. Suzanna hadn’t even been aware of the woman’s presence in the room until she rose from a cloud of tobacco smoke and addressed the company.

‘I’m not going to lie down and die for anyone,’ she said. ‘Especially not you, Hamel.’

Her defiance echoed that of Yolande Dor, back in Capra’s House: it seemed always to be the women who argued most vehemently for life.

‘What about Shadwell?’ somebody said.

‘What
about
him?’ said Apolline. ‘You want to go kill him, Hamel? I’ll buy you a bow and arrow!’

The remark won over-enthusiastic laughter from some quarters, but only served to infuriate the opposition more.

‘We’re practically extinct, sister,’ Hamel replied, his scorn lavish. ‘And you’re not too fertile these days.’

Apolline took the taunt in good humour.

‘Want to try me?’ she said.

Hamel’s lips curled at the suggestion.

‘I had a wife –’ he said.

Apolline, taking her usual pleasure in offending, jiggled her hips at Hamel, who spat in her direction. He should have known better. She spat back, only more accurately. Though the missile was harmless enough he responded as though he’d been stabbed, throwing himself towards Apolline with a cry of rage. Somebody got between them before he could land a blow, and he struck out instead at the peace-maker. The
assault ended any lingering pretence to civilized debate: the whole assembly began shouting and arguing, while Hamel and the other man traded punches amongst the overturned chairs. It was Apolline’s pimp who parted them. Though the fight had lasted no more than a minute, both had taken a beating, and were bleeding at mouth and nose.

Suzanna watched with a heavy heart as Nimrod attempted to calm proceedings. There was so much she wanted to talk with the Kind about: problems upon which she needed their advice; secrets – tender and difficult – which she wanted to share. But while things were so volatile she feared voicing these matters would simply be further fuel for dissension.

Hamel took his leave, cursing Suzanna, Apolline and all who – as he put it – ‘sided with the shit’. He didn’t go unaccompanied. Two dozen left with him.

There was no serious attempt to return to the debate after this eruption; the meeting had effectively been brought to a halt. No one was in any mood to make balanced decisions, nor were they likely to be so, at least until a little time had passed. It was concluded, therefore, that the survivors would disperse, and lie low in any safe place they could find. There were so few of them left that melting amongst the populous would not prove too difficult. They’d wait out the winter, until the reverberations had died down.

2

Suzanna parted from Nimrod after the meeting, leaving instructions with him as to her whereabouts in London. She was exhausted; she needed to rest her head awhile.

After two weeks back at home, however, she discovered that attempting to restore her energies by doing nothing was a sure route to lunacy, and instead returned to work at the studio. It proved a wise move. The problems of re-establishing a working rhythm distracted her from dwelling too much on the losses and failures of recent times; and the very fact of
making
something – even if it was only pots and plates –
answered the need she had to begin again. She’d never been so aware of day’s mythic associations as now, of its reputation as the first stuff, the base matter from which story-book nations had taken shape. Her skill could only manage pots not people, but worlds had to begin somewhere. She worked long hours, with just the radio and the smell of the day for company, her thoughts never completely free of melancholy, but lighter than she’d dared hope.

Hearing that she was back in town, Finnegan appeared on her doorstep one afternoon, spruce as ever, to invite her out to dinner. It was strange to think of his waiting for her while she’d been adventuring; and touching too. She accepted his invitation, and was more thoroughly charmed by his company than she ever remembered being. He, forthright as ever, said that they were made for each other, and should marry immediately. She told him she made a rule of never marrying bankers. The next day he sent flowers, and a note saying that he’d relinquish his profession. They saw each other regularly thereafter. His warmth and easy manner were the perfect diversion from the darker thoughts that still threatened to intrude when she had time to think.

Every now and then, through the summer months and into the early autumn, she had some brief contact with members of the Kind, though they were kept to the minimum, for safety’s sake. The news seemed to be good. Many of the survivors had returned to the vicinity of their ancestors’ homes, and found niches there.

Better news still, there was no sign of either Shadwell or Hobart. There were rumours that Hamel had instigated a search for the Salesman, and had given up after failing to uncover a single clue as to the enemy’s whereabouts. As for the remnants of his army – those Seerkind who’d embraced the Prophet’s visions – they’d been the authors of their own punishment, waking from their evangelical nightmare to find it had destroyed all they held dear.

Some had sought forgiveness from their fellows, and had arrived, shamefaced and despairing, at that controversial meeting. Others, the grapevine confirmed, had been overcome by
remorse, and had spiralled into dereliction. Some had even taken their own lives. There were yet others, she’d heard – the born blood-letters amongst the Kind – who’d left the battlefield regretting nothing, and gone out into the Kingdom in search of further violence. They would not have to look far.

But rumour and supposition apart, there was little to report. She got on with trying to make sense of her old life, while they made new lives for themselves. As to Cal, she followed his rehabilitation through Kind who’d gone to ground in Liverpool, but made no direct contact This was in part a practical decision: it was wiser that they kept their distance from each other until they were certain the enemy had disappeared. But it was also an emotional consideration. They had shared much, in the Fugue and out. Too much to be lovers. The Weaveworld occupied the space between them – it had from the beginning. That fact made a nonsense of any thought of a domestic or romantic arrangement. They’d seen Hell and Heaven together. After that, surely everything else was bathos.

Presumably Cal felt the same, because he made no attempt at contacting her. Not that it was necessary. Though they neither saw nor spoke to each other she felt his constant presence. She had been the one to nip in the bud any possibility of physical love between them, and she had sometimes regretted that; but what they shared now was perhaps the highest aspiration of all lovers: between them they held a world.

3

In the middle of October her work started to take a new and completely uncharacteristic turn. For no particular reason she forsook her plates and bowls and began to work figuratively. The results gained her few admirers, but they satisfied some inner imperative which would not be gainsaid.

Meanwhile, Finnegan pressed his suit with dinners and flowers, his attentions redoubling each time she politely rejected him. She began to think there was more than a streak
of the masochist in his nature, coming back as he did each time she sent him on his way.

Of all the extraordinary times she’d had since she’d first become part of the Fugue’s story, these were in their way the strangest, as her experience of the Weaveworld and that of her present life did battle in her head for the right to be called real. She knew this was Cuckoo thinking; that they were
both
real. But her mind would not marry them – nor her place in them. What did the woman Finnegan proclaimed his love for – the smiling, day beneath the fingers Suzanna – have to do with the woman who’d stood face to face with dragons? She came to wish she couldn’t evoke those mythic times as well as she could, because afterwards she’d feel sick with the triviality of being herself.

For that reason she kept a rein on the menstruum, which was not difficult to do. Its once unpredictable nature was much tamed now; a consequence of the Fugue’s demise, she assumed. It hadn’t foresaken her entirely. Sometimes it seemed to get restless, and decided to stretch itself, usually – though it took her a little time to realize this – in response to some environmental cue. There were places in the Kingdom that were charged up; places where she sensed a spring beneath the earth, aching to fountain. The menstruum knew them. So, in some cases, did the Cuckoos, sanctifying the spots as best their myopia knew how: with steeples and monuments. Just as many of these territories remained unrecognized, however, and passing through some unremarkable street she’d feel a surge in her belly, and know power was buried there.

Most of her life she’d associated power with politics or money, but her secret self had learned better. Imagination was true power: it worked transformations wealth and influence never could. She saw its processes even in Finnegan. On the few occasions she coaxed him to talk about his past, particularly his childhood, she saw the colours around his head strengthen and ripen, as in the act of imagining he was reunited with himself; made a continuum. At those moments she’d remember the line from Mimi’s book:

That which is imagined need never be lost.

And on those days she was even happy.

4

Then, early in the third week of December, any fragile hope of good times abruptly came to an end.

The weather turned icy that week. Not just bitter, but arctic. There was no snow as yet, just a cold so profound the nerve-endings couldn’t tell it from fire. She still worked on in the studio, unwilling to give up her creating, though her paraffin heater could barely raise the temperature above zero, and she was obliged to wear two sweaters and three pairs of socks. She scarcely noticed. She’d never been so preoccupied with making as she was now, bullying the day into the shapes in her mind’s eye.

Then, on the seventeenth, completely without warning, Apolline came calling. The eternal widow, she was swathed in black from head to foot.

‘We have to speak,’ she said, as soon as the door was closed.

Suzanna escorted her through to the studio, and cleared a seat for her amid the chaos. She didn’t want to sit, however, but wandered around the room, eventually ending up at the frost-scoured windows, peering out of them while Suzanna rinsed the day from her hands.

‘Are you bang followed?’ Suzanna asked her.

‘I don’t know,’ came the reply. ‘Maybe.’