Chapter 44

I push back the blanket, retrieve bag and coat from the crate. The familiar routine. The tape’s gone, the bedroom door is closed.

Has Gene taken it in with him? Is he listening to me while the real me fastens the collar of my coat and hurries down the stairs into the street?

 

Tape 5

 

The appointment begins in the usual way. ‘Soothesayer,’ says the client, ‘I feel as ragged as that poor, torn fish out there.’

Out in the sea a fish’s face floats past, a giant filmy mask of lips and empty eyes, with trails of muscle streaming behind like tails. Other parts of its skin follow; two fins like torn-off hands trying to catch it.

The client lies back, waiting for me to step up to the game. The lenses glint golden in her eyes.

I had intended to soothe her but suddenly I cannot.

The words are stuck inside me. If I soothe, I feel I will break something. I am an elastic band stretched to forever; it will not take any more.

I say: ‘I cannot soothe you.’

She blinks, digesting this. ‘Oh well, in that case we can xech. I’ve never had a xech from you.’ She takes a preparatory breath.

I shake my head.

She stands up. ‘I’m calling the monastery.’ Her voice is crisp.

I don’t know what they will do with me. But I have nothing more to give. I am at a dead stop, as though ahead of me is the edge of a cliff and I must turn away before it drags me over.

They send two seniors, who escort me into a taxi. They do not speak, not even to each other. To an onlooker we appear to be in devoted contemplation. But none of us can find the words for this awkward, uncommon occasion. I catch a smell in their robes; they are carrying sedatives. But I’m not going to resist.

At the monastery they take me to a room where a man is waiting. The seniors are unable to find the words for this transaction either, and hurry past me to their more familiar duties.

The man who is waiting for me looks unusual. His skin is dark and his eyes are like raisins behind his cheekbones. His clothes smell of outside.

We leave the monastery. The marble entrance is deserted. There is no goodbye from the seniors, not even a malicious xech.

We go down a narrow alleyway and into a tunnel. Not the same one I went up before to get to the surface, but very like it.

Outside, under the wide open sky, the air is a hot mask.

Far away in the dunes, something is moving. The sand forms a cloud, travelling towards us. It comes closer. A shape develops at its head. First a black dot in a wake of sand. Then no bigger than a bug. It grows into a vehicle on skis and halts beside us in a rasp of dust.

A cover lifts. The driver pulls a cowled hood over his head, muffles a scarf around his mouth and speaks through the material.

I seem to be expected. As they talk, the sandy wind scours through my clothes. My hands and face tingle. I pull my robes tighter around me but the sand forces its way through the thin material. My clothes are not made to withstand the weather here.

I take a last look at the wide, glittering sea, which contains everything I know.

 

 

I jump into my car, shivering so hard it’s difficult to stab the key into its hole. I swing across the roundabout and accelerate up the hill.

I have left behind everything I know. You just nailed my life, Andreq; or that grey-eyed wood-scented devil did.

It used to be so simple. I played and I tried to play better. I tamed duet partners and they tamed me. I kept freelance gigs ticking over. Then it broke and I had to leave. And now I feel like I’m caught naked in a dream, thrown out with just my thin skin while everyone else copes just fine.

So full marks for perceptiveness, and maybe even for repeating my mistakes through the reincarnation continuum. But what are we all going to do about it, eh?

It’s gone two o’clock and there are few other cars on the road. The ones I do see are breaking the speed limit. It’s after hours; normal rules don’t apply. We’re all wanderers, out later than we intended, trying to get home before we’re beaten by the cold.

I pull on the handbrake in front of the cottage. The black windows reflect the two points of my headlights as I close them down. The Dowmans have long ago gone to bed. They are not night birds, they keep regular hours and get up for church.

I push open the front door of the cottage, grateful for the homely aroma of Jenny Tollderson’s pot pourri, the sprigged comfort in her Laura Ashley collection. The Ansaphone light is on. I get ready with a pen at the A4 pad and press play.

A long moment of white noise like the ether breathing, then a voice. ‘It’s Andreq.’ Then click.

I think I actually shriek.

The only reply is the wind rustling the trees and the sound of a car on its own business a long way away.

After a moment I laugh at myself and dial 1471. The last call was made at seven o’clock but the number was withheld. At that time I’d been at Gene’s, although of course it wouldn’t be him, such a trick was too cheap. It must have been one of the many people who phone up looking for Jenny. I add another message to the pad. Andrew/ Andrea? Saturday 9th.

I turn the radio on. I pray that Radio Active is feeling cuddly and not playing another kooky whalesong experiment. Or, like the other day, when it had a programme where three guys discussed their rare records of railway trains.

Radio Active obliges with a lush American ballad. Cheesy as brie, but a relief.

Soothing the storm. Isn’t that what we’re all doing really?

No, I’m just trying to stay alive until I can play again. And that had better be soon or I’ll be so shrivelled I’ll never get back.