THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE

It was a beautiful morning, the pale autumn sun rising through a lilac sky, whilst below a delicate mist coiled through rusting trees and over shabby, languorous fields. Away in the far distance birds sang and squawked, heralding the new day.

Sam had woken early, unsettled by the nature of his dream, and so had elected to head outside, to wander a little. Now standing by the fence to the edge of the front lawn, he wore a thick woollen greatcoat over his uniform, a moss-coloured item that had been issued to him on arrival and one that, remarkably, fitted well the peculiar dimensions of his frame. He looked tired and pale, but at least the bruising around his eyes was starting to go down.

‘Morning.’

Sam started at the sound of Rachel’s voice, turning round to see her cross the grass towards him.

‘Hey, morning,’ Sam called, his words vaporising, wisps of fine white in the cold.

For a time they both stood and smoked and looked out across the fields. They didn’t know each other, not at all, and yet there was a natural affinity between them that deprived the silence of any hint of awkwardness.

Eventually it was Rachel who spoke.

‘You know, officially, we’re not supposed to come out here by ourselves.’ Rachel pointed out towards the pasture ahead. ‘Dangerous people out there. Apparently.’

Sam snorted, remembering his drive to Edge Hill from the Estate, the policeman and the fight. ‘I had a bit of a run-in on my way here.’

‘Oh yeah? A rare sighting. There’s not many left down here these days. Those that are, tend to be a little strange. But harmless. Most of us, anyway.’

‘You from round here, then?’

‘Born and raised a couple of miles down the road. My parents were farmers. But then everything changed and it was all over for us. Dad tried to keep the place running, diversify, that kind of thing but...’ Rachel shrugged.

‘Where are they now?’

Rachel took a long draw on her cigarette. ‘Not sure. Mum and Dad left for the city. I came here. They write occasionally but... They don’t belong there. They’re not happy. Work is hard to come by. They seem not to be living exactly. Existing more like.’

For the first time since they had met, Sam detected a note of sadness in her voice; a chink in the armour.

‘You wouldn’t try and find them? I mean, go to the city yourself.’

‘Thought about it, of course, but I’m not sure I could stand it. The idea of me - living there. Seems hopeless somehow.’

‘That’s sad. A shame.’ Sam thought of his own troubles, of the city and the estate and the wider world, all things impossible.

Rachel pulled on her cigarette, slender trails of smoke escaping from the side of her mouth. ‘Hey, Friday night, huh?’ she said, suddenly upbeat.

‘Yeah. Friday already. Only my third day but somehow it feels like I’ve been here a lifetime.’

‘Time flies.’ She checked her wristwatch. ‘Gotta go.’ Rachel spun away into an apologetic turn. ‘See you later. Friday nights are usually pretty fun here. You’ll see.’

Sam waved, watching her walk back across the lawn towards the huge bulk of the main house, and began to ponder the day ahead.

Music came wafting along the cloisters of the East Wing, a rich orchestral sound, growing louder as Sam moved along the passageway towards the large oak library doors.

Entering the room with the minimum of fuss, he stood for a time on the periphery, observing. The morning sky had darkened and the room was cast in a diffuse, crepuscular light. The canvases and paint had gone, and instead the residents lay about the floor, sprawled out on the grey stone.

Across the room, Hal was ensconced in his armchair. Slouched low, he seemed to be part of the way through a story of some sort, although his delivery was so lax, so damply gabbled, that the narrative was beyond comprehension. He looked relaxed, excessively so, a ragged figure, his baritone punctuated by impressive plumes of white smoke that he would breath up into the air, arching his back and neck as he did so.

Crossing the floor, Sam took his seat at the opposite side of the hall. He had to admit there was something wonderful about the library that morning, the light and the music, even Hal’s incessant monotone: all these elements combined to create a rare feeling of peace, and for the first time since his arrival Sam started to feel at ease with his environment, happy even.

The morning passed, Sam idling by the window, daydreaming. For a time he read, or smoked, anything so as to keep awake, to resist the somnolence that laced the room. But then at around twelve o’clock, just before the shifts were due to change, a strange noise came drifting by. At first it was rather hard to pinpoint, impossible to diagnose. Sam turned away from the window and looked across to Hal, who continued his monologue unperturbed, as focussed as ever. The noise came again, from somewhere towards the back right, this time more definitive: a thick hacking cough. Sam stood and made his way across the room, stepping between the bodies with great care, until he was able to pinpoint the source. A male resident dressed in a smart charcoal suit lay on his side, knees gathered up to his chest, upper body convulsing in great rhythmical pinches.

Sam sprang to his aid, stooping low, rolling him over on to his back. Immediately, it was obvious that the resident was not in a good state; his eyes were sunken and unresponsive, while from his mouth leaked an ivory froth.

‘Hal!’ said Sam as he knelt over the resident, starting to panic. ‘Hal! Could you give me a hand here?’

Hal took a long draw from his cigarette, watching the plume rise high in to the air as he exhaled.

‘Hal! Come on! Hal!’

Across the room, Hal rolled his head to one side so that he was facing Sam, his eyes vacant and withdrawn. He opened his mouth as if he were about to say something but then seemed to change his mind at the last minute, reuniting his lips with an exaggerated movement, a yawn in reverse.

The resident’s breathing became more laboured, the colour of his skin changing from an olive tan to a livid pink. Sam acted instinctively, rolling the man back onto his side and striking him hard on the back, a process which made the poor man cough and splutter in loud, troubling bursts. However, soon the man’s complexion normalised and his breathing became steady, subject only to the occasional muscular twitch.

Happy enough that the resident seemed to be out of danger for the moment, Sam sprang forward, just about managing to keep his balance, darting over to the internal intercom system by the entrance, where he placed a call for help. Presently Morris arrived, carrying under one arm a bright orange canvas-and-metal stretcher. Crossing the library floor, he then took up a kneeling position next to Sam.

Morris looked down at the resident, rolling the man’s head from side to side by way of assessment.

‘He wasn’t breathing so well. And I just wasn’t sure what to do.’

‘OK, good. You did the right thing,’ said Morris. ‘You shouldn’t have had to deal with this. Sorry.’

Sam shrugged, a little proud of himself, that he’d done what was necessary to deal with the situation.

Morris stood up and stared over towards Hal, who seemed to be very close to not only slipping out of the chair but also falling asleep in the process. ‘Let’s get him onto the stretcher and over to the infirmary, shall we?’

They both moved round to either end of the resident and lifted him gently onto the stretcher.

‘OK, on three then. One... two...’

Once at the infirmary there was only so much Sam could do; the man was whisked away by a couple of disinterested medical handlers to be treated. And so by mid-afternoon he found himself heading back towards the library for the remainder of his shift. Here the canvases and paint had reappeared and with them a new shift of thirty or so residents. This group seemed calm, although more animated than the previous batch; some sat and painted while others babbled soft consonants. Hal, too, seemed more animated now, sitting up so that he might shuffle through the daily broadsheet. Sam paused for a moment, looking over in his direction; surely Hal would offer up some kind of acknowledgment? An enquiry, perhaps? However, much to Sam’s annoyance, his eyes stayed glued to the paper in front of him.

The remainder of the afternoon shift was long and hot and uncomfortable; the sun had slid from behind the dense cloud cover and now poured in through the window, causing the centrally-heated room to swelter. As the temperature rose Sam sat and fidgeted, unbuttoning his white tunic, buttoning, crossing his arms. Meanwhile Hal remained concealed beneath his screen of news. Neither man spoke. Not one word. And rather than diminish Sam’s sense of injustice, the silent hours served only to tweak the nose of his resentment.

At around five thirty a team of handlers arrived at the library, coaxing the residents out of the room in single file, away down the corridor towards the west wing and the dining facilities of the main hall.

As usual the floor of the library now demanded some attention, splashed as it was with paint and litter and spit. Sam watched the last of the residents file out, then set to with his mop and bucket, cleaning in small controlled arcs. Meanwhile, across the other side of the library, Hal took down the paper and started to fold it into crumpled squares. Content with its form, he tossed the paper onto the floor and stood, stretching into a yawn.

What is this guy’s problem? Sam thought to himself, absentmindedly mopping the same gleaming section of floor over and over.

Behind him, Hal made for the door, his right shoulder dipped, a trope which gave him a shuffling, hopalong gate, a busy kind of action. Sam watched him go, seething all the while. Not only had he been ignored but now, once again, he was left to do the work alone, to carry the shift by himself.

For a moment Sam mumbled and mopped, and moped. But then something snapped. He threw the mop to the ground and hurried off in pursuit, charging into the cloisters to see Hal twenty yards ahead.

‘Hey!’ His voice echoed ahead, weaker than he would have wanted.

Hal stopped dead in his tracks.

‘Hey... there’s more mopping to be done, you know.’ Sam kicked the skirting rail, annoyed that he had led with such a lame duck.

Up at the end of the corridor Hal made a slow, deliberate turn. ‘Excuse me?’ he said, a tremendous menace underlying his gravelled delivery as he scuttled back along the corridor to within a couple of feet.

Sam blinked several times in rapid succession, shifting from one foot to the other. ‘More mopping to do,’ he said.

‘And you want me to help you mop? Is that it?’

‘Yes.’

Sam looked at the floor, embarrassed.

Grunting, Hal stepped closer. ‘What’s the matter, sonny? Eh?’

They were only inches apart now. Sam continued to stare at the floor, hugely angry, absolutely passive. Hal leaned in closer so that he could speak directly to his ear. He smelt of cigarettes and yarn and glue. ‘Hey!’ Hal barked.

Sam stumbled back a couple of paces down the cloister. Hal’s face was energised, open and inviting - he seemed to be enjoying the role of antagonizer, indeed was made for it. A minute passed, longer perhaps. More than anything Sam wanted to confront this wretched little man, but he could not, was incapable of it. Never had he been so appalled by his own lack of fight and with every passing second he wished it wasn’t so.

‘Come on then, Dickie. Spit it out.’

‘My name’s not Dickie,’ Sam said, his voice flat, with only a hint of the anger that was its foundation.

‘Like I care,’ Hal spat back at him.

Sam tried to gather himself; within the context of a life, the incidents of that day had been minor and yet for some reason this was different. Sam had not come all this way to be taken advantage of, to be pushed around. Inside his mind small pockets of rage exploded, individual insurgencies that piled one on top of the other, graduating, bending Sam away from his most trusted escape route, the path of least resistance.

‘You could have helped me today,’ said Sam, trying to keep his temper in check.

‘You didn’t need me. You didn’t need help.’

‘But that poor man. He was dying and you did nothing.’

‘Dying? Ha! That’s a good one. Fellow must have had a reaction... But we’re all about the greater good here. Didn’t you know that?’

‘What? A reaction to what?’

‘Oh, come on, Dickie.’

Sam thought for a moment, trying to catch up to him. ‘You drugged them.’

‘Administered peace, my son. They’re already ‘drugged’ - I just peppered the dosage a little to ease us all through the morning. So where’s the harm in that? You’re just pissed off because you think you did all the work today.’

‘You could have killed someone! Can’t you see that?’

‘Hate to break it to you, chief, but these people are virtually indestructible. Their bodies are, anyway. Wish that I could have taken a few of ‘em out. For their sakes.’

In certain respects Hal was repellent, but at the same time, he seemed so full of ragged energy that it was hard not to like him. What galled Sam the most was that he was beginning to see the logic in Hal’s argument; the morning shift had been special and the residents seemed happy. Perhaps the man that had choked wasn’t in danger, not really. Whichever way, Sam had had enough. ‘Piss off.’

Sam shouldered past, making his way along the cloister. And then moments later he heard from behind the soft pad of Hal’s lolloping trot, followed by a small hand that came snaking over his shoulder.

Hal looked across at him as he drew level, smiling now.

‘Not bad, not bad. Sorry to badger. To be so crude. But one can’t be too careful around here. Do you know what I mean?’

‘No. Not really.’

‘Ah. Well. You will. Come on, it’s Friday night. Buy you a drink?’ Hal tightened his grip, a squeeze that read as an apology, a challenge, a declaration of friendship perhaps.

For a moment Sam hesitated, torn between extreme dislike and a certain levity, gladdened that he had withstood such trauma as Hal could create. ‘Guess I could have one?’

‘Yes!’ cried Hal, his voice echoing along the cloister. ‘We have a winner!’