81

VIII

At lunch the next day, we all dined together at Mr. Gwent’s again, making bright conversation as though the past traumas were but a dream. It was not easy, persuading my father that the entire incident was not a case of devilrous possession. Mr. Gwent concocted a story in which he had received a telegram from the manufacturers of Soma tea advising – rather belatedly – that it should not be drunk, for their customers were complaining of all manner of side effects. Upon examination, Dr. Adams concluded that it must have been a passing fever, which assuaged any lingering doubts my father had.

But everything was different: I was no longer blind; I could see. I became aware, for example, of how theatrical Mr. Gwent’s manner was, a consequence not just of eccentricity but of being out of joint with the present age. I wondered, however, why he had remained in Fate’s novel for all this time. Was he really trapped, or was he choosing to stay? His writing career was far more successful here than the real world, I noted. Was his body dead and buried in Fate’s basement, or being kept alive in some way, perhaps through some sort of preservation in an icy tomb?

And how did a character in Fate’s book age? Did time run in natural rhythms, or did Fate manipulate it according to his whims? If I was imprisoned in this novel for another 82three years, for example, then would I only become ‘seventeen’ by the conclusion of my sentence? The thought made me feel so pale inside that I could barely eat; but, upon descrying Mr. Gwent’s urgent expression, I forced the veal down into my churning stomach. Just before I departed with my father, Mr. Gwent whispered to me, ‘Do not fret. I will be able to get you out of here. Soon, I promise.’

Oh, how I clung to those words. I spent that night hardly able to sleep, for I drifted in the eddies of shallow dreams and every time I rose to the surface, the remembrance pierced me again: This is all illusion, you are lost, in the real world your body remains a hollow. The next morning was heavy with knowledge. For these past six weeks, I had risen and put on my shirt and waistcoat with the same ease that I had once yanked on my Levi’s jeans and Primark T-shirt back in Brixton. It was disturbing, how easily I had followed Fate’s dictates, with the mindlessness of a sheep. Was I really so dull, so susceptible to suggestion? Was that why Fate had picked on me? When I considered the past weeks, I realised that I had some memories of the real world – there was the familiarity with Gwent’s mobile telephone, the automatic sketch of the helicopter. Or was I just rewriting these events in hindsight, imbuing my past self with greater awareness?

I should be angry, though, not self-flagellating. Fate was the abuser; I was the victim. You are not to blame, I kept repeating.

As I cleaned my teeth with dentifrice, I pictured the sink in my old flat, which had always been stained and strewn with gunk. A thought wrenched my gut: my flatmate would never be able to afford the entire place by herself, and my 83standing orders from my Co-op bank account would have started to bounce long ago. By now, she would have solicited another young man as a lodger. My belongings had probably been bagged up in black sacks and taken to my mother’s. She would have unfolded all my clothes and put them into the chest of drawers in my old bedroom. Tears streamed from my eyes, tears that mingled with my dentifrice and ran down my neck. The world knew that you were going to interview Fate, I reassured myself as I wept. The police will have been called, an investigation will be underway. They will surely find you.

The snow that fell in flurries over the next two days, icing rooftops and choking up chimney pots, blanketing streets and bringing carriages to a standstill, would have been most picturesque, had it not been for the fact that it was the middle of August. Roses were being killed early; a baby bird, frozen, was found on the edge of our lawn, its mother singing a melancholic lament from her nest above. As the church became veritably swollen with anxious townsfolk, I wondered if Fate was concocting adversities in order to bring his creation under control. Exorcisms were performed daily as though the church had been converted into a theatre, its audience hungry for melodrama. Half a dozen monks had also arrived in Oxford, their purpose unclear. They remained silent at all times, drifting across the cobbled streets like grey ghosts, their faces entirely shadowed by their heavy hoods. They occupied the vestry 84space behind the Vicar during the services, like a celestial army.

I was ardent to speak to Rachel. I had become convinced she was the very woman I had spoken to online and speculated that she needed a spur to inspire her awakening, just as Mr. Gwent had assisted me. When I pleaded to my father that we should pay a visit to the Carmichaels, I felt as though I was auditioning for the part of his son; my voice was an embarrassing juvenile whine. By and by, he yielded to my entreatments. On arrival, however, we discovered a terrible sense of unrest.

We were shown into the parlour, where we sat sipping a tea that tasted so plain Mr. Gwent would have died of disgust. Mrs. Carmichael pointed surreptitiously to the window, which overlooked the street in front of the house.

‘Do not look directly, just out of the corner of your eye. Do you see the monk? He has been here these past five hours. I hear their purpose is to locate those who are possessed.’

I risked a full glance and saw indeed a hooded figure across the road, still as the oak tree he was standing beside. More of this world’s religious absurdity, no doubt, I thought; I sensed that a sneer was taking hold of my face. I had become very conscious of my features during this past week, of attempting to manipulate them in the way a master might his puppet. How hard it was to resist the modern malaise of irony; it afflicted my every action.

Fortunately, my father spoke sense: ‘I doubt very much that is their purpose.’ I saw a meaningful look pass between him and Mrs. Carmichael. ‘Thomas,’ he ordered, ‘why don’t you go up to the nursery?’ 85

I obeyed him, though outside in the hallway I lingered on the pretext of tying up my shoelace, whereupon I overheard Mrs. Carmichael telling my father that Rachel’s exorcism had failed, and that the lunacy certificate had now been signed: the doctor would be here for her tomorrow. She spoke as though his arrival would immediately bestow the whole of Oxford with the blessings of blue skies, sunshine and birdsong.

I found Rachel upstairs in the nursery, where she was pouring out tea for Eleanor, who was still frail and scarred from the aftermath of her sickness. I did not bother with pleasantries. It was a relief to speak as a man:

‘Eleanor,’ I snapped. ‘I have an important matter to discuss with Rachel. I would be grateful if you left the room.’

Rachel widened her eyes at me in warning, no doubt assuming that I was contriving to solicit her solitude for amorous pleasures. Eleanor glanced at each of us in cool curiosity.

‘Does it concern her mother?’ she asked. ‘Mama says that they will soon be united.’

I was briefly confused, before recalling that Father had said her mother was also resident in an asylum.

‘I visit her in Hanwell with gifts,’ Rachel said quietly. ‘That is all.’

‘I wish to address another matter, Eleanor,’ I said firmly. ‘One that you are far too young to understand.’

‘If I leave,’ Eleanor pondered, forcing her doll into a coat by the fierce manipulation of her arms, ‘then I will be forced to use my imagination and so I will have to tell my parents what I can only assume to be true.’ 86

‘You are a true daughter of Fate,’ I informed her, testing her reaction, but she merely looked bemused and returned to the nonchalant torture of her doll.

Rachel stared down at her lap, spreading out the tassels from her shawl. If I did not act with due haste, she would be jammed into a carriage and parcelled into a strait-waistcoat. There was only today; only this hour. The frantic pressure drove me to find an answer; I would play at being a storyteller.

‘Rachel – I’m going to tell you a story. I recently visited Mr. Gwent’s house and he allowed me to sit in his parlour and read his latest novel. By chance, the girl in the book is also called Rachel.’ I forced a grin, and she returned it quizzically. ‘Rachel lives in the year 2019 – you know that Mr. Gwent does like to write science fiction. She loves to read, but she is also very sad. One day she decides to visit the house of one of her favourite authors, Augustus Fate. He lives in Wales, in a remote village, and so it entails a long, cold journey.’

‘Where is Wales?’ Eleanor interjected. I was furious, having briefly convinced myself of her absence. Rachel quickly smoothed the tension away, advising Eleanor that Wales was a far-off land where sheep thrived and the rain fell in abundance. Eleanor nodded and carried on pretending to play with her dolls, listening intently all the while.

‘Upon arriving at his cottage she knocks on the door, hardly daring to hope that he might let her in, and so when he does she nearly weeps for joy. He gives her some tea and says to her, ‘I am stuck on my new novel. My characters are simply not convincing and I fear that I need to make them more realistic.’ The tea makes her drowsy and she tumbles 87into a slumber. A stupor, a coma, a state that is not quite living but not quite death – a sort of twilit consciousness. Fate carries her up to his bedroom, and he dresses her in Victorian clothes—’

‘Does he undress her first?’ Eleanor asked, with great interest.

‘That is not important,’ I snarled. ‘He lays her down on the bed and pulls up the covers and there she sleeps, so still that spiders dance over her face. And while her body remains sedated, her mind enters one of Fate’s novels. It is set in the Victorian era – that is, the present, in 1861. She is a …’ – I sought for a word that would resonate with Rachel – ‘a soul trapped in his book, and she might not even have realised this, were it not for the fact that every so often she can hear her narrator: Rachel awoke on Thursday morning to discover that the Carmichaels had planned a trip to Margate Sands. She fears that she is mad, but actually she is simply a very sensitive soul – she is sensing a reality that others are blind to.’

There was a brief pause, before Rachel snorted, laughing dismissively.

‘What an absurd story,’ Rachel said, but I saw panic born in her eyes like the flare of a candle’s flame.

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ said Eleanor, her forehead crinkled. ‘How can a soul be trapped in a book? Do you mean like a flower in a press?’

‘No, the soul roams the world of the book, while the body remains behind. It is done by a certain magic,’ I said. ‘And having her soul imprisoned in a fictional character causes her to suffer great discomfort, for she is shaded with 2019: she rubs against her age, and it causes a constant friction 88that sparks unrest in her mind. At the same time, she cannot admit that this is her reality, for to face such horror is more than she can bear. Perhaps she even feels happier telling herself that she is mad. Perhaps believing she is mad is a comfort of sorts, a way of hiding.’

‘But if such a character did exist,’ Rachel’s voice was trembling, ‘then surely she has forsaken all freedom. Surely her escape is impossible?’

‘The question is one of free will versus fate,’ I said. ‘Mr. Gwent instructed me that the characters in the book are free to react to events as they please – after all, the author himself wanted real people because he lacked inspiration, because his own creations were so two-dimensional. They can do as they please, but they are knitted into the society and age of the book’s setting. The author too can do whatever he likes, whether brewing up a storm or causing snow to flurry from the sky in the midst of summer. It is his amusement. He is a cat with mice between his paws.’

‘He is a sadist too,’ Rachel said, with unexpected venom. ‘He is cruel and mocking—’ She broke off and glanced upwards briefly; at that moment, happiness rang in my heart, for I knew that she not only believed me, but had sensed these truths for some time.

Eleanor broke the silence.

‘This is all very strange. I think you might end up in an asylum as well, Thomas.’

‘Oh, I don’t give a fuck,’ I snapped.

Eleanor screwed up her face. ‘“Fuck” … what does that mean?’

‘Nothing,’ I said roughly. I heard the clatter of a carriage pulling up below, the impatient neighing of our belligerent 89horse. Nanny climbed out and glared up at the window. ‘Rachel, the situation is urgent. I am certain that Gwent’s heroine is able to escape.’

‘But what about the other people in the book who aren’t real?’ Eleanor asked.

‘They are sketches. Paper-thin. Lacking any depth or soul.’

Eleanor went pale and turned away from me, feigning fascination with a tangle in her doll’s mane. I turned back to Rachel.

‘Time is pressing. We need to get back to 2019 as soon as possible. But I’m not yet sure how we do it. Maybe it is simply a case of breaking the spell through knowledge of it.’

Rachel was silent for a few moments, and I sensed her inner consternation. But then she shook her head.

‘But there is no spell,’ she asserted. ‘This is all just a story.’ She forced her pale lips into a tight smile. ‘And as sweet as it is, it is disturbing young Eleanor and you must cease the telling of it. Gwent intended his story for adults, not children.’

I blinked, exasperated by the fierceness of her wilful denial.

‘2019 is a very fine era for women to live in,’ I said hastily. ‘They are free to live as they wish – to choose whether they want to marry or to have children, they can be doctors or even prime minister.’

Rachel turned to the window, glancing down at the monk by the oak, who had latterly been joined by several others.

‘You might consider that asking such questions is 90angering our Lord above. Have you not detected a sudden change in the atmosphere around us?’

‘I care not for any change! I care not for his anger! I believe that it would be better to exist in the present!’

‘I like 1861.’ Her tone was defiant. ‘I am very happy here.’

I heard footsteps on the stairs: Nanny was coming. I played the only card I had left.

‘And will you remain happy when they put you in an asylum on Friday?’

Rachel’s terrified expression haunted me throughout my journey home. I felt certain she was the Rachel I knew in the world outside. A silence permeated the carriage and I found myself engrossed in memories of when we had first exchanged pleasantries in the suicide forum. It seemed such an odd coincidence that we now both found ourselves ensnared in Fate’s trap; there was surely a reasoning behind this that I had yet to ascertain.

Gazing out at the world around me – at the snow falling in the smoky twilight, at the Oxford colleges with their impervious stone – I wondered at how solid it all seemed despite being nothing more than an idea in a man’s mind. We had discussed similar ideas in our debates. Rachel had pointed out that much of contemporary civilisation was based on ideas: a legal contract is little more than gobbledegook without our species’s belief in the idea of it; money too had no material reality, it was based on a trust system, a shared belief. Rachel had spoken of life with such detachment: she said she could not be sure if she was ascending 91to enlightenment or sinking into the depths of depression.

My father interjected, announcing that the asylum would surely be a ‘tonic’ for Rachel, as though she was about to take the sea air or a batch of smelling salts. My acidic sneer no doubt silenced him, but the remorse that then filled his eyes provoked a guilty meekness in me. I waited for him to admonish me, but a curious air arose between us. For in that moment, my look had irrevocably turned the tables of the relationship, as though he was the child and I the parent. I was no longer in awe of his words, but judging and dissecting them.

I felt a nostalgia then for my prelapsarian state, for the six weeks of childhood I had enjoyed in 1861, however illusory, had possessed a sort of sweet innocence that I had not been privy to in real life for some time. In the true world, my mother had been a constant, but my father had frequently been absent. And just when I had grown used to that absence, he had habitually reappeared, upsetting our balance by creating a familial triangle with sharp edges. By comparison, my childhood here had been a fairy tale, and the man who sat beside me was the father I had always dreamt of having. That I had loved a fiction with such unconditional delight disturbed me, and even as I glanced at him then, the complexity of character behind those features was so persuasive that I found myself smiling back at him. Once more, we were father and son.