The Actuality Read online

  ‘Who was that?’ Daniels asks, as they make their way back along the lane.

  ‘Just an old lady,’ Evie replies cautiously, unwilling to admit her slip.

  She’ll have forgotten what I said by the time she gets home, she murmurs inwardly, hoping to forestall further criticism, before Simon can get started. It won’t matter a bit.

  You really think so? A busybody like that?

  I found her nice.

  Of course you did. You’d find anyone nice. Anyway, nice or otherwise it makes no odds. She’s going to tell everyone about Evie, about how sweet and pretty she is and exactly where she’s staying.

  Daniels makes himself lunch and, after rebuilding the fire, lies on the sofa, feet stretched towards the flames, and falls asleep.

  Evie listens to his snores and then, reaching across, takes his newsplastic from under the flap of the pack. It is odd that he hasn’t used it since they arrived, and unease from not knowing whether there is anything reported about them is becoming unbearable. She stares at the folded sheet, weighing the pros and cons of opening it.

  What should I do?

  Don’t ask me, Simon says. He is as nervous as she is, but also, she senses, as curious too.

  She climbs to her room, sticking close to the wall to avoid the squeakiest stairs. She pauses at the turn to take a last look at Daniels noisily asleep below.

  She closes her door and climbs onto her bed and sits with her back against the headboard.

  In its folded state, the newsplastic is a modest A5, but after unfolding it four times, it opens into a sheet sixteen times its original size. She holds it out in front but it remains obstinately blank. She had assumed it would automatically activate. Yet again she knows nothing.

  What do I do? she asks.

  Don’t expect me to advise you, Simon replies, this is all your idea.

  She twists it around, holding it vertically and then sideways again and ends up glaring at it. Having overcome her reservations and got this far, she doesn’t want to not succeed.

  There’s an illuminated circle in the corner, Simon says with perfect weariness, on the back.

  Oh. With the light shining through it from the window, it is almost invisible. She places her thumb over it but nothing changes. Perhaps it is fingerprint protected.

  Or you’ve got it round the wrong way.

  She flips the newsplastic over just as a whirlpool of concentric rings spread from the centre, accompanied by a brief throb. ‘Acquiring satellites’ glides across. Anticipation growing, she grips the edges, the pressure from her fingers sending ripples through the page. ‘Confirming location’ comes up and the rings morph into an aerial view of the surrounding countryside, the detail clarifying as the focus narrows. The sensation of zooming earthward generates a wooziness similar to that she experienced when descending in the hova. The roof of their cottage, adjacent to its snow-covered yard tracked by hers and Daniels’s boots, fills the screen. As the camera circles, her own window comes into view.

  The words ‘active subscriber BBC323770H’ briefly flicker and the image of the cottage gives way to the excited popping of headlines and videopix. Her eyes gad over the lively surface and because whatever she focuses on grows instantly larger, she is dragged headlong down a rabbit hole of shifting video imagery.

  She is transported overseas via a war report to the deck of a ship on which roaring rocket-drones, laden underwing with bombs, take off against a grainy evening sun. She shudders as a trawler rams a crowded inflatable, spilling the occupants into the rough waves. She is swept by the windy weather all the way to the distant Republic of Siberia, which in contrast to the freeze afflicting England, basks in a month-long heatwave, and then is sharply summoned back to local events, watching from a stairwell of the quadrangle of Christ’s College the weekend’s riots being suppressed; the black clad police with helmets, batons and shields charging through the porter’s lodge, hurling gas canisters ahead of them onto the snow-covered lawn. She has the sensation of being knocked sideways, falling as the camera strikes the ground . . .

  . . . and queasily holds her head, letting the flaring lights and smoke subside.

  When she reopens her eyes, the sheet has grown calm, almost apologetically so.

  With more care, she reads down the columns and, getting used to how the newsplastic displays its information and how to drill, searches Events, honing in on Cambridge and bringing up, after a few false leads, the Hawking Museum.

  The museum’s exterior is a glass prism that appears to hover over the river. It slowly revolves, revealing through each wall a different exhibit. When an image of a young male face fills the page and almost immediately begins to fade, she urgently flicks out a finger to return it, inadvertently sending the index spinning like a carousel. She slows the motion with her palm and, keeping her eyes steady, patiently pages back, a view at a time. The process reminds her of Matthew in the library working the dog-eared cards of his ‘rolodex’, in search of the details of a book lost somewhere on his miles of shelves.

  She finds the boy again. He gazes out, his life-sized presence mere inches away. She touches his glowing cheek, the flesh under her finger dimpling. The plastic is warm to her touch. ‘David – one of a kind’, the words say. ‘Prepare to be astonished. But don’t leave it too long – ends Saturday – folks that’s just five days!!!!’ She breaks away from the boy’s unblinking gaze. Ticket prices and opening times follow and then a final message scrolls across – ‘This exhibition made possible by the generous support of Realhuman Corp., Cal., USA’.

  Evie closes her eyes and rests her brain from the exhausting viewing – the newsplastic may be the present but her own taste is for the old-fashioned books back in the apartment library. When she looks up again, David and the museum have faded from view.

  She finishes her reading by pursuing her original purpose – searching for anything about her and Daniels – the deaths in the apartment and their flight. After ten minutes, she lays the newsplastic aside. She has found nothing. The relief is overwhelming.

  Maybe they aren’t after me at all, she thinks, but this happy notion she keeps from Simon, afraid of a sarcastic put-down. Rather, she lets herself think again about David, his glowing skin and almost colourless lips, set in an unearthly smile.

  14

  Evie picks her moment after breakfast. Daniels has brought a rusty bicycle he found in the barn into the kitchen and propped it on the table on its handlebars. He pastes a thick glue onto the front tyre wall and lays across a strip of leather cut from an old walking shoe. ‘There, good as new,’ he says, standing back and admiring his work. She knows that, in the midst of a task which gives him such satisfaction, he is as relaxed as she’ll find him all day.

  ‘Daniels, can we go on a trip?’ she asks, seating herself opposite.

  ‘A trip?’ He’s taken by surprise. ‘When were you thinking?’

  ‘Today?’ She tries to sound casual, as if the timing is really of no consequence, although the exhibition will not be on for much longer, so of course it is.

  He stiffens and puts the pot of glue and brush back on the side. ‘Is this such a good idea?’

  ‘I just want to go somewhere.’ Dare she mention the museum as being her goal – finding this fellow creature? Her instinct is that it’ll make him less likely to agree.

  ‘Where did you have in mind?’ he asks, as if it is a possibility, but she senses he is not taking her seriously.

  ‘Cambridge. It’s nearby. The colleges are meant to be very pretty. The river has swans which I have never seen and there are museums where I can learn things that will help me.’

  He stares at the bike and with a rag starts to wipe the dust from the frame. She can almost hear him thinking up reasons why they should not go.

  ‘What do you think?’ She reaches out a fingertip and spins the front wheel by its spokes. She smiles up at him, pulling her lips wide, making herself as charming as she can.

  ‘Evie, there’ll be
a whole lot of cameras and a whole load of people.’ He is still resisting, despite all her efforts.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, it’s too much of a risk.’

  ‘Is that a yes?’ Saying it, so he’ll think he is still deciding.

  ‘I’m sorry, Evie.’

  She rests her chin in her hands so that her mouth forms a forlorn little pout. She has a few tricks left yet.

  Daniels looks at her awkwardly. ‘Listen, we’ll go soon.’

  ‘How soon is soon?’

  ‘As soon as we are sure that people have stopped looking for you. In the meantime, you should stick to the cottage. Walking in the lane shouldn’t be a problem. Preferably where I can see you.’

  She drops her head onto her wrists and stares forward, mulling his responses. Things would be so much easier if she could just cry, she’d have him then for sure. Hiding her face anyway as if she is, she stands abruptly and, taking short quick steps through to the sitting room, runs up the stairs to her room.

  He sighs irritably and throws the rag down. ‘Evie,’ he calls after her as she bangs the door.

  It’s like we’ve traded one prison for another, Simon mutters, as if he had not been against the trip as much as Daniels anyway. For all his talk, events have exposed Simon to be a bit of a coward.

  She thinks back at him, This is not over yet.

  Minutes later, Daniels knocks on her door. It took even less time than she’d hoped.

  ‘Yes,’ she replies, sniffing loudly, as if she’s been sobbing. She is lying on her bed, curled on her side, facing the window.

  He sits on the mattress behind her back and gently touches her shoulder. ‘Why does it have to be today?’

  She twists her neck on the pillow to look up at him. ‘It doesn’t have to be today.’

  ‘Good. In a couple of months, if everything is fine, I’ll take you wherever you want, I promise.’

  ‘I didn’t mean a couple of months either! I thought you may mean tomorrow.’

  ‘Evie, stop this now,’ he says, raising his voice. ‘You’re not a child.’

  No, I’m not, she thinks, I’m older than you, and am supposedly your late master’s widow, however I have let myself be treated.

  Daniels strokes her hair consolingly but she shakes off his hand. He stands and gazes down. ‘Listen, I know you’re itching to see everything – I can only imagine what it must be like – but we must just wait a little longer, that’s all I’m saying.’

  She leaves through the back door. Daniels is in the yard, chopping wood. He glances up as she passes.

  ‘I’m going for a walk,’ she says, avoiding eye contact. ‘In the lane. Come watch me if you like.’

  He sighs. ‘What time will you be back?’ He leans on his axe. He is stripped to his vest.

  ‘I have no idea.’ She pulls opens the gate and lets the spring slam it closed. The two of them have never fallen out before, never even exchanged harsh words, both of them amenable beings in the extreme. The crazy thing is that she is sixty-two years old, if you add her notional age to the years she has been with Matthew, but since this morning she has regressed into a stroppy teenager and doesn’t care. The loneliness of being nearly the last of one’s kind is something Daniels will never have to understand, and meanwhile there is this boy David, maybe the single other creature in the country like her, and for the next few days only, he is just a few miles away.

  Evie follows the lane around the hill, walking where the snow has been trampled and the stiff grass is pressing through. The weather is warmer today and the snow slides from her boots to form a rim of slush around her prints. The steep field to her left lies tangled with brambles and bracken and dotted with scrub and saplings, presumably no longer worth the effort to farm despite all the hunger and malnutrition in the cities. The bare untidy branches have already begun to overhang the road.

  She reaches the church and checks the bus stop. She has never been on a bus and must figure out what to do. A timetable is fixed to a pole. There are only two scheduled this morning and she has missed the first but is lucky that the second is still to come. The clock in the church tower reads nine-fifty. The bus is due ten-o-nine. With this fortunate timing she could be there and back by early afternoon. She is already worrying about Daniels worrying, but she mustn’t weaken now.

  She crosses to sit in the church’s porch, but as she approaches, at each step, the stonework becomes unnervingly more familiar. Is this the background behind Evelyn’s head in the photograph in the library drawer? Had Evelyn and Matthew stood in this actual spot, forty years before? The likelihood they came here is strong, given that Matthew bought the cottage with her in mind.

  She presses on the oak door with her shoulder. Inside, the air is still, and, away from the sun, as cold as the interior of a fridge.

  She stops beside a shelf of hymn books, peering down the aisle towards the altar.

  Then grabs hold of the nearest pew before she falls.

  The end window is just as she recalls it. The tiny figures of Adam and Eve running at full pelt out of the luscious greens of an Eden pregnant with fanciful vegetation and mythical beasts, into a barren desert, pursued closely by a gang of oversized angels swinging aloft flaming swords.

  Her breath comes in gasps. She has, without warning, entered the set of her own wedding. Fake as it may have been, the meticulous craftsmanship of the implant is extraordinary. Not only in the detailing of the window but in every other facet too, from the way the sun glints along the dark pews, casting stripes of darkness, to the hymn board dangling aslant above the pulpit.

  She is astonished that they went to so much trouble. Had Matthew planned to marry Evelyn in this very church? And had he wanted her substitute to experience this as her first recollection?

  The door scrapes on the stone flags.

  ‘Evie, dear,’ a voice chirrups. ‘Fancy finding you here.’

  She looks behind her. It is the old woman from yesterday.

  ‘Hello,’ Evie says, trying to sound friendly but not feeling it. The intrusion is a gatecrashing of her most precious memory which, however false, is in danger of being ruined.

  ‘Oh, excuse me,’ the woman says, glancing at the bucket she carries. ‘You must be wondering—’

  ‘Not at all,’ Evie replies, wanting desperately to get away.

  ‘Having an early spring clean,’ the woman continues. ‘My late husband has a stone in the corner and it gets so grimy from the candle smoke. I like to give him a little bath once in a while.’ She titters privately. ‘But my dear, I’m interrupting, you look so sad.’

  ‘I am fine,’ she says, making her way quickly to the door, backing out and letting it crash-thump behind her in her eagerness to escape; the woman’s curious gaze pursuing her all the way.

  As she walks through the streets of Cambridge, Evie keeps her hood up and her head down, wary of the cameras – which are truly as numerous as Daniels suggested, mounted above most shops and on all the college gates. Her visibility is restricted by the fur of her hood but she is still aware of the lenses sweeping around to pursue her as she passes. They seem to single her out from the crowd, maybe attracted by her weaving pace or by her clumsy attempt to pass incognito.

  She reaches the museum at noon, approaching via an avenue of beech trees. It is indeed in the shape of a glass prism, just as the newsplastic had portrayed it, but although built on the side of the river facing the college backs, is neither suspended over it, nor does it revolve. She had let herself be a little taken in, but her anticipation as to seeing this creature, uniquely like herself, is all that matters.

  She buys a ticket from the window, using almost the last of the dollars she took from Daniels’s coat, and runs up the wide stairs to the exhibition hall constructed beneath the atrium, barely able to contain her excitement.

  Up here, the air, heated by the sun through the glass above, is as warm as in a greenhouse and although it does not bother her, no one wears anything more than a shirt and so
as not to stand out she removes her coat also.

  The crowd around the enclosure is several deep, but she squeezes through, wriggling to the front until she is squashed against a twelve-foot glass wall built around a bare concrete square.

  Bare that is apart from a youth prowling the boundary of his domain, staring out at his spectators. He pauses in front of a group of women, peering curiously as if he has never seen such creatures, raising from them loud giggles. He wears just a pair of white tennis shorts and as he steps back, startled by their noise, his stomach ripples in the shaft of light from above.

  ‘David,’ someone calls from the other side, ‘over here.’ They all want his attention as if he is a rock star.

  He resumes his promenade, his bare feet padding on the polished screed.

  ‘Don’t know what the fascination is,’ the man behind Evie’s shoulder says. His chin is so close that his sour breath ruffles her hair. ‘Is this all it does, walk up and down?’

  ‘And these things were meant to be the future!’ his companion responds.

  ‘I only came because my daughter said I should. She went with the school and has been back three times on her own. She’s even got the poster on her wall.’

  Evie can’t take her eyes off him. Such sculpted beauty has never existed for her. This creature with his strong shoulders and narrow hips is like nothing she has ever imagined.

  As he moves along the glass, the pressure grows from behind, wedging her arms to her sides. It is as if he is a magnet, drawing the crowd towards him like iron filings.

  ‘David, I love you,’ a woman calls, and, despite the crowd, she lifts her top and flattens her breasts against the glass.

  ‘Did you see that?’

  ‘Hard to know what the world is coming to. Are you ready to go? I know I’ve had enough.’

  ‘Let’s wait for it to pass.’

  David sidles towards her corner, glaring over her head at the crowd behind. His lips peel back, exposing glistening canines.