Page 119 of The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

‘Oh, but—’

Blissfully a telephone rang in the next room. Arthur hurried out. Mori folded into his chair. He moved more easily now. Thaniel gave him a programme.

‘I … might have put you in the music,’ he explained.

Mori didn’t say anything and only sat holding the little booklet open on the first page. The theatre had spent some money on it. The title was picked out in gold: the Joy Symphony. Behind his quiet, there was the effort of not saying that he thought describing one person who was not God or the Queen with an orchestra of a hundred and two was no different to trying to do a locket painting with a wallpaper brush.

‘He recognised me,’ Mori said at last. ‘From this. Mr Sullivan.’

‘Yes.’ Thaniel’s insides were churning. ‘But – I haven’t hung a picture of you in a gallery. There are only about five people in London who could translate your name, so—’

‘No, I mean the way you see sound. It’s objective. Someone else could see it in the same way.’

‘Not the same colours, but the same – gist. I suppose.’

‘That’s extraordinary.’

‘Really?’

Mori kicked him gently. ‘Of course it is.’

‘Thanks. But it’s not a skill, it’s just how I see.’

Mori had been looking through the open door through to the next dressing room and the next, where the sopranos were tying each other into their dresses. The tables there were full of flowers and, double framed like that, they might have been something from a painting. His eyes came back and he smiled. He tipped the gold lettering so that it glinted. He kept the pages inclined inward, like he was holding something fragile in them. ‘What is that?’ he added.

Thaniel looked. ‘Easter egg. Want some?’

‘It’s chocolate?’

‘Fry’s do them.’ He tapped it in half on the edge of the table. ‘The altos gave it to me.’

Mori smiled and shared a half with him. It went nicely with the wine. Thaniel watched him and wondered what he would do, if the worst happened and Thaniel’s lungs got the better of him. They weren’t right; he could tell they never would be. The house in Cornwall belonged to a friend of Mori’s who, until Christmas, Thaniel had been pretty sure was imaginary. In his experience only imaginary people disappeared to Peru for ten years, but it turned out that Merrick Tremayne did as well. He’d turned up suddenly, perfectly real, with tattoos, a Bristol accent, and an open invitation to South America. Thaniel liked that idea.

Someone called ten minutes off. Mori glanced that way.

‘I’d better find Six. Do your best, yes?’ he said in Japanese. It sounded private, and soft.

‘I will,’ Thaniel said. He wanted to catch his hand, but one of the sopranos was watching, curious. ‘On the right,’ he added when Mori hesitated at the door.

‘I know.’ Mori opened the door slightly before Six came through it. Thaniel sat still, feeling like he was hearing bells in the distance. Mori had been waiting for her.

‘I thought I’d come and find you in case you’d got lost again,’ she reported. Behind her was a woman in a blue velvet gown, which was so unlike her normal style that Thaniel didn’t realise at first that it was Grace. ‘Oh. This is Dr Carrow. I was talking to her about you,’ Six added at Thaniel. ‘Well, actually we were talking about electricity, and she told me about a new kind of microscope and something sticky.’ She looked back at Grace for help.

‘Medicine,’ said Grace.

‘Sticky,’ agreed Six.

Grace snorted, and then nodded a little to Mori, who bowed a fraction back. They didn’t exactly hate each other. It was the wariness of two territorial lions. Nobody mentioned to Six that Grace had used to be Mrs Steepleton. ‘Six happened to mention that the doctors think you’ve got tuberculosis,’ Grace said.

‘I …’ Thaniel shook his head a little, surprised. ‘Yes? Why?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘at the Aokigahara station, we invented a lot of new things with all the electricity everywhere. Just cobbled together. One of them is going into industrial production now. An electron microscope. Its magnification is far superior to an ordinary microscope. I was using it to try and observe ether particles. It’s no good for that, but I got talking with a friend in the biology department not long ago, and he’s overjoyed, because with the new microscope, he has finally isolated the bacteria which causes tuberculosis.’ She opened her hands a little to say, ta-dah. ‘He’s pretty sure he’s got a cure. He’s looking for people for the clinical trials. It looks very promising indeed. If you’d like to give it a try.’ She came across and handed him a card. ‘He’s at UCL.’

‘Really?’ Thaniel asked, feeling like she’d tipped him upside down.

Grace smiled. ‘Really. Go and see him.’ She glanced back at Six, and then laughed awkwardly, because Thaniel was staring at her. ‘Anyway, I’d better leave you to it.’ She nodded to Mori again and swept out.

‘And us,’ Six said to Mori. ‘It’s supposed to start soon.’