On thebus out to the heath, Laurie asked himself why it was a matter oftrust.Because it was; in the cold, lonely gap between his lastsight of Sasha and now, Laurie had felt faith falter.It occurredto him that he had never had a friend, not one he cared aboutenough to exercise the gift of letting them alone when need be.Hehad always been able to take people or leave them, accept them asthey were, with nothing but mild, detached interest in their mythsand their masks.
But whatthe hell were Sasha’s?This refugee who wouldn’t seek refuge, a boywho had known his mother well enough and long enough to beperfectly, idiosyncratically bilingual and yet who would not orcould not talk about her beyond the barest facts of her existence.He told himself that he had never doubted Sasha, and a hot rush ofanger went through him that he even need do that much.
God, no.All Laurie’s incertitude, his lack of faith, should be reserved forhimself.What right had he ever had to approach Sasha, disturb thedignity of his survival with his easy handouts?Something in Sashamust have despised him for it, sweeping through the underworld andpicking out what he fancied, like Madonna choosing African babies.Sasha had never shown him contempt by a word or a look, but he musthave felt it.Laurie felt it.Even now, what was he?A fraud,playing at poverty, while not five miles away, his father’s houseglimmered like a ship of diamonds in the night.
The people of the encampment knew him for what he was, at anyrate.Sasha had been his passport, his key to the city there.Without him, he was nothing but an intruder.Mama Luna was nowhereto be seen, and Gunari only grunted negatives to his hesitantquestions.Gunari lumbered after him like a bear all the waythrough the camp to Sasha’s caravan and leaned in the doorway, facea hostile blank, while Laurie looked hopelessly around the crampedliving space.For what?A note, a sign like the ones he had read ofin childhood, made of leaves and stones?Patrin, Sasha had told him those werecalled.Not a myth at all, but rather a sophisticated messagingsystem still in use today.Even if he had, Laurie could not haveread it.In every way that counted, he was utterly ignorant.Theycame from different worlds.Sasha’s visits to his had beenshort-lived miracles.
Lauriemissed the last bus home and walked back to East Hill, a trip thattook him half the night and left him so footsore and exhausted thatthe other half was not a trouble to him; he fell facedown onto thesofa and slept still wrapped in Sasha’s jacket, the lingering scentof Sasha’s skin and the greasepaint on Laurie’s own combining tosend him lurid dreams, where he and Sasha met as lovers in a lostShakespearean play, ran like deer through the Forest of Arden withruthless hunters on their heels—leaped, despairing, hand in handoff the Hungerford Bridge.He woke with the taste of the river inhis mouth, and Sasha was still gone.
OnSunday morning, he walked down to the Tube station.He had tocollect some of his clothes.He had to see Clara.Telling himselfthat these were his sole reasons, he got onto a train bound for thecity.
Chapter Ten
A finesnowfall was beginning in the Mayfair streets.Falling on lastnight’s frost, it was causing London’s heart to go into its usualpalpitations.Already a taxi had skidded into the back of a bus,and a truck was slewed at forty-five degrees across ChesterfieldHill.No one was hurt.There were just a lot of muted Britishexpostulations, and only the cabbies were rude enough to soundtheir horns in the ensuing jams.Laurie walked through the chaos,barely seeing.He felt like his own ghost.He could hardly claim,after two weeks away, to have gained a new perspective on thisworld, but still it struck him deeply—the sameness, the infinitedifference.The crowds on the pavement: much the same mix of facesand races, most of them subtly transformed, lit up, padded out,made sleek by good diet, by the leisure to be out here in thedaylight engaged in their Christmas shopping.This had beenLaurie’s world twelve months ago.
Heremembered that his biggest concern then had been Clara’s desirefor a kitten, and his own half-child, half-adult plots to ransomone of the pedigreed darlings from its cage in Harrods’ pet storeand plan out a life for it on the Mayfair upper floor, where itwould never run afoul of Sir William’s temper or his mother’sallergies.The least of his problems had been affording it.Hispocket money would have covered the whole litter.Now he was, hesupposed, an independent man.He had a job and a lover and littleelse—although both job and lover felt so tenuous to him on the backof lonely nights and increasing forgetfulness about food that hecould scarcely believe in even them.
Thecrowds that had once excited and scared him by their rich densitywere now simply obstacles.Once he had drifted in them, let themcarry him along, but more often than not, as he struggled up thepavements today, the occasional knock or shouldering contact feltto him hostile, ready and willing to hurt.The same buzz ofcommerce was going on—but here, Laurie saw for the first time, theshopkeepers plied their trade from caskets of jewels, magicalcaverns that bore little semblance to East Hill’s dingy grocerystores and charity shops.He found himself pausing outside windowshe had sailed past, oblivious, all his life, putting a hand totheir frames to steady himself and try to breathe.Every commodityhe’d just begun to learn to fight for was spread out in wildabundance.Lights blazed.Food halls touted free samples of theirdelicacies on trestles outside the shops.Wide-flung welcomingdoors spewed thousands of pounds’ worth of heat every second intothe street.
No onefrom Sasha’s world was to be seen.In a way, Laurie couldn’tunderstand it.Starving men and women should overwhelm this place,surely—sweep the trestles clear of fresh-baked marzipan slices,fill rucksacks and plastic bags.Stand beneath the hot-air ducts inblessed relief from the cold.He saw a woman take one bite from amince pie, make a face of amused disgust, and drop the rest intothe gutter.
His headspun.No, the underworld people could not come here.After one weekaway, Laurie could barely come here himself.No police were neededto man the barricades.No chance of revolution in London today.Notiny upper class to tear down—instead, a huge majority ofmiddle-class souls, some good, some bad, most here spendinghard-earned money, some living on the wages of sin.All of themwith just enough to have forgotten or to be unable to imagine howit felt to have nothing at all.
Charityworkers shook tins and were not ignored.That kind of giving cameeasy enough, Laurie knew.Palatable.At a remove.But someone likeGyorgy, with his stolen shopping trolley full of rags, could notpush his way up these pavements and into this world’s golden heart.Probably no one would stop him.But empty belly, unwashed skinquailed and grew faint in the face of it.After a few weeks, youwould not even try.
Heturned off Avery Row and into the quiet residential streets thatled to his own.Once out of the crowd, he thought he’d be able tocatch his breath, but the sense of mild suffocation stayed withhim, as well as a headache and a needling pain in his stomach.Hetried to think when he had last eaten.He still had his array ofeconomical and nourishing foodstuffs in the flat, had evenreplenished them yesterday in Sasha’s recommended grocery store,where Sasha’s friendly shopkeeper had cut him a deal on his apples.What had been missing was the prompt of appetite.Without it, theboxes and bags were just abstracts.He had put them neatly away andforgotten them.He wasn’t hungry now, though he knew he should havebeen.
Sasha had said, “I’ll come back toyou.Can you trust me?”And Laurie hadtried.But Sasha had come to him from nowhere, and the nowhere thathad swallowed him allowed Laurie no handholds, not even thepossibility of imagining where he had gone.
Thegrand facade of Sir William’s mansion rose up before him.Lauriehad to stop for a minute, cold sweat crawling in his armpits.Heclutched at the wrought-iron railings until the wash of vertigopassed.He could, he knew, find the key beneath the garage door andslip into the house through his old escape route.He could perhapsnever encounter any of the denizens of this world, who had becomelike cardboard cutouts in his head: his father’s misshapen andbearlike, his mother’s made of tissue and like a doll’s.Clara’s…
No.Herswas real, three-dimensional.Flesh lit from within by unmarredspirit.He had to see her.He owed her.And he would walk throughthe front door of his own house.
To hissurprise, it was open.Just a crack, as if company was expected,and beyond it, through the tinted glass of the porch, he could seesigns of activity, human figures passing back and forth.
Perhaps his mother was having one of her interminablepre-Christmas sherry parties.Laurie found himself oddly thrown—notat the thought of all those tipsy Mayfair ladies, although that hadbeen bad enough, determined as they always seemed to be to molesthim as he tried to hand around the bloody sherry, diamond-loadedfingers ruffling his hair, playfully patting his backside.“Oh, Marielle!Isn’t he handsome?Isn’t hegetting big?”
Laurierepressed a snort of laughter and looked at the unlatched door.Somehow, if it was open to him, he could not just walk in.Puzzledat himself, he rang the bell.
Mrs.Gibson appeared almost immediately, her portly frame coalescing atan uncharacteristic trot through the glass.Laurie smiled inrelief.Charlie had been right; she wouldn’t go.She pulled theporch door wide, then came to a halt at the sight of him.She saidhoarsely, “Master Laurie.She isn’t with you, is she?Oh, God.Sheisn’t with you…”
Lauriepushed the main door open and stepped into the porch.He caughtGibson’s elbow and guided her collapse onto the marble bench.Hecrouched before her and, when she broke into ragged sobs, put outhis arms and held her as she had so often held him.“Gibson.Gibson, who isn’t?What’s the matter?”Fear beginning a slow slidethrough him, Laurie patted her shoulders and head, seeing withindefinable disturbance that her gray-streaked hair, normallyimpeccably brushed back into its bun, was tousled and escaping instrands.“Who isn’t with me?”
“Clara.It’s Clara.She’s missing.”
Lauriesat back on his heels.Gibson, after a moment, raised her swolleneyes to him.She looked terrible, as if she had been crying fordays.He dug in his pocket and found a tissue from the Empire’smakeup table, slightly smeared but usable.“Here,” he said, handingit to her.Her words were clear enough, he supposed, but theywouldn’t seem to go in.“What do you mean?”
“We tried to get in touch with you, but your mobile was off.”Shakily Gibson blew her nose.“Oh, Laurie.She was upset when youleft.We thought maybe…we thought maybe she’d gone to you, or you’dcome and got her.That was our last hope.”
Last hope.Laurie frowned.At thesame time, he could feel an incredulous smile trying to start.PoorGibson.She did love them, didn’t she?Him and Clara both.Allthis, because the little bugger had taken a huff and hidden herselfsomewhere.It wouldn’t be the first time.And she couldn’t halfhold out.It had been hours when she’d last disappeared, the wholehouse in an uproar.Well, it was tough.Time was up.Laurie knewall her hiding places: attics, wardrobes, even a disused bathroomwhere the side panel of the bath came off, a frequent lair.Hepressed a kiss to Mrs.Gibson’s wet cheek.“It’s okay,” he said,getting to his feet.“She’ll just be upstairs somewhere.I’ll flushher out.”
He was halfway up the first flight of stairs when her voicetugged him back.In his run across the hallway—ten long stridesacross the black-and-white marble from porch to polished-oak newelpost, time enough to reflect that this house was not just adifferent world but a separate fucking universe from the East Hillflat—he had seen strange things, but not taken them in.Faces hedid not know.And he had heard—weirdly, it brought to mind theopening scenes of TV shows likeCSI, when the camera was panning in,the atmosphere mic open—an electrical chatter, hissing, andtruncated static.He stopped on the stairs, not yetturning.
“Laurie, love,” Mrs.Gibson called.There was so much pain inher voice that tears stung Laurie’s eyes, though he still could notgrasp at the problem.“She’s been gone for three days.”
Thecrackling was the sound of police radios.Returning down thestairs, Laurie could see one of them, attached to the shoulder of agrave-looking young woman police constable waiting in the hallwaywith an older man behind her.The WPC put out a hand to him, as ifhe needed steadying, and Laurie automatically took it.She said,“Are you Laurence Fitzroy?”
“Yes,” Laurie replied.He was surprised he sounded so sure.Something gave in the muscles of his legs, and he felt himself sitdown hard on the third step.“Who are you?”
