Voyages in the Underworld of Orpheus Black Read online

  Oh! I’ve got these fifteen-odd eyeballs clacking away in my pocket, and they can be my witnesses. Yes, I like that!

  Death comes two ways, as I say: either with the rumble and sudden warning engine cut of the doodlebug, or silently; with the V-2, you’re blown to bits before you hear the roar of its engine and the sonic boom struggling to keep up. Three thousand miles an hour, Oakley said.

  Three thousand bloody miles an hour.

  You never know it’s coming. So make the most of each and every moment.

  Everything is strangely calm. No yesterday, no tomorrow. No Christmas Eve and no New Year’s Day either. Just the sound of that violin and the stench from the factory. The water from our hoses coils towards the fiddler and makes a pool there before trickling away blackly down the street, trying to find the distant river. The grit and filth of Kilburn transformed. I feel a kind of elation running through me.

  Time to head back.

  I’ll leave one of the glass eyeballs here, tucked into a crack in the brickwork.

  And here I will begin to live.

  I’ve died so many times it isn’t funny anymore

  (and after the first death there is no other),

  but nevertheless,

  it must be said

  that I have learned a little more from each one.

  One should walk through many lives, I think, before starting to judge, before making pronouncements, before saying this is this, and that is that, and the biggest judgment of all: You should . . . You! You should . . .

  And I had to learn that lesson the hard way . . .

  A very hard way.

  Here’s a thing!

  A thing to ponder,

  something to make you sit and wonder:

  a paradox, perhaps,

  or just a trick,

  but

  until you have been someone else,

  how can you know who you are, yourself?

  Of course, that is only something I realized when I died for the first time.

  Or, to be precise, when I began to live again, through someone else’s eyes.

  Because that was when the dance really began,

  as I swung through the years with a querulous voice,

  always trying to sing my song,

  and now and again I was able

  to step inside someone’s mind

  and whisper their name.

  Harry! Harry!

  Can you hear me?

  Do you know who I am, who’s calling you?

  It’s Orpheus, Harry, Orpheus.

  I’ve come to call you to yourself,

  to make you wake,

  to help you see.

  And the most important thing is that you are me.

  Not yet, perhaps, but you will be when you wake,

  when you open your eyes, shaking at the things around you,

  trembling just from seeing the world at last.

  Harry!

  I saw you at the warehouse.

  (Wasn’t it coward that your father called you?)

  You and Oakley, fighting the fire.

  (Didn’t your brother call you a shirker?)

  I know you heard me, Harry!

  Push through the door, Harry.

  Leave those lifeless workers behind

  and push through the door.

  Become me, Harry. Become me,

  and then the adventure can begin.

  And then . . .

  Something I hadn’t foreseen.

  You plunged your hand into a box of blue . . .

  The station is quiet like it always is after a call. Everyone is knocked out with exhaustion or has slipped off somewhere for an hour or two’s sleep. Oakley’s wife was waiting for him and dragged him away home with a bright smile to hide her fear and relief. I’m being let off the last hour of my seventy-two-hour shift, for being a bloody liability, the CO says. My hand keeps reaching for the eyes in my pocket — desperate to pull one out so that I can gaze into that intense blue. There is something soothing in it after the heat and commotion of the factory fire. The unspoken question is still there when I do take a peek at one of them. And I still can’t get that fiddler’s tune out of my head. Sure I know it!

  A note from Ellis was waiting for me along with the cold leftovers under the paper chains and streamers.

  Meet you at the White Horse tonight, E.

  And he’s the one who wants to be the writer in our family! Or used to at any rate. All going to waste now like everything else — and no spare words for me, it seems.

  Feels like I did these Christmas decorations a lifetime ago. You’re the art student, the CO said last week. Make it bloody well festive. So I had set about painting a night sky on the Prussian-blue blackout paper plastered to the hall’s windows for the duration. Planets and constellations, a golden fiery comet and a special wandering star made from foil on the eastern horizon, to herald a new beginning. Seems we still have a little chunk of our normal lives amidst all this chaos, despite the gloomy predictions of the Yank officer I met in the White Horse on Christmas Eve.

  Christmas Eve! Two days ago; seems like a million. Everyone doing their best to celebrate, to forget there’s a war on, don’t you know?

  The Yank was glad enough for the pint I’d bought him, I remember, and no wonder given how hard it is to come by at the moment.

  Heard the rumors? he grunted, squinting into the bottom of his beer mug.

  Rumors?

  About this new weapon the Germans are working on. It’ll wipe this place off the map in a fraction of a second.

  I told him I reckoned the V-2s were Hitler’s last throw of the dice, and it would all be over when the launch sites in France and Holland were overrun (just parroting what Ellis told me to look like I knew what I was talking about), but the American just shook his head.

  That’s what they said about the V-1s, right? Something worse to come, kid. Always is. Always will be. Forever and ever, and amen.

  Like what? I said.

  He raised his eyebrows, gazed up at the dark ceiling above us — the kind of face that always knows better. Delights in the fact.

  Some kinda supersonic beam, he grunted. Know a coupla guys at the Ministry. They reckon it’s not far off. How old are you, kid?

  I told him.

  God, he said, and sighed. I remember being nineteen and a bit — and then raised his glass. I’d make the most of it if I were you. And a merry damn Xmas. X marks the spot!

  I nodded and looked around again for Ellis. He was meant to turn up that night, but never did. I tried, really tried, to put away the disappointment and anxiety (and yes, relief) and not let it show on my face. When I looked back, the officer had slipped away into a knot of women haranguing old Greene the landlord, their voices ragged and calling him a Scrooge, threatening to rough him up good and proper if he wouldn’t give them another drink.

  Any more of that, ladies, and I’ll bar the lot of you, he growled, winking at me. But the women just laughed harder and said they’d take some stopping once they got going. I don’t doubt it.

  I scribbled a note for Ellis — Meet me here on Boxing Day? — signed it, Your little brother, and slipped it into Greene’s sturdy hand as I left.

  Keep thinking about that fiddler and that tune — lodged in my head. I should have gone up to him and asked what he was playing, but when I’d reeled in the last of the hoses and turned to find him, he’d gone. Maybe Oakley knows it; forgot to ask.

  I can get to the White Horse before Ellis arrives.

  If he arrives.

  Find us a nice quiet table in the corner and work out what I need to say — all part of the resolution to live fully, to leave nothing unsaid or undone, and try to heal the wound between us. It used to be you couldn’t slide a cigarette paper between us, people said — the Black lads against the world. And now? Now it’s a chasm that’s widening with every passing day. One day it will grow too big. Or one day one of us will be gone and it will be too late. So . . .

>   Hopeful I can find the right words, but I feel nervous. Once you’ve said something, you can never swallow it back down. And I always say too much!

  Or not enough.

  Never the right amount.

  Butterflies in my stomach along with a cold turkey sandwich and some manky sprouts.

  Still waiting for Ellis to show. A pint and a half in me and the pub jam-packed, noisy, but I want to keep a clear head. Good to have something to do; I’ll write these notes and look busy, look like I’ve got things sorted.

  It’s all so complicated between E and me now, and yet it used to be so simple: the two of us playing in the stream beyond the hazel copse. Fighting pretend battles as knights or cowboys, when I thought nothing of raising my toy gun and blasting away at anyone and anything. Older brother included. The starlings rattled in and out of the clacking trees as we ran and whooped and screamed the sounds of death and dying. Making up our stories together as we went.

  Had fun, boys? Father would say, and ruffle our hair if he was in a good mood. (If the order book was looking strong and the factory was gearing up for increased production. And if not, if the voices of reason and moderation seemed to be winning, then he would be silent and locked up in some internal — infernal? — calculation about material costs and labor rates and how many bombs the Ministry might want at a minimum . . .)

  Would have been easier just to follow his plans for me. Into the family business and be part of the machinery of Black and Company, turning metal and chemicals I don’t understand into intricate, perfect devices for the shortening of life. Just couldn’t do it, though. I wasn’t even sure why, at first, just knew I couldn’t sodding do it. Some other blood must run in me! So now Ellis is angry and hurt and dismissive of his little brother who wants to play with paint at a time like this. Who went before a tribunal and got himself registered as a conscientious objector when the summons came. Who didn’t quite make the grade to be an official war artist and got assigned to Fire Force 34. An embarrassment. (The black sheep of the Black family!)

  And yet I know we can both still remember that togetherness. I do, and I believe he does too. I feel it, even in the worst moments, even if we can’t say it, but . . .

  I could do now with hearing the right words. I need to hear them. After that last bust-up at home, I fear I’ve burned too many bridges, been too stubborn, too sure of myself. It’s beyond useless with Father. I can live with that, but maybe it’s not too late for E and me. Truth is I still need him. That brother of mine, who could write poetry as wonderful as those poems he wrote about Orpheus . . . That man can’t have gone for good, can he?

  Those women are back again. One of them screaming out a dirty joke about a V-2 and Goebbels and turning her glittering eyes on me. (Joke funny enough, but not that funny! And probably anatomically impossible.) Damn it. It’s going to be: Why aren’t you in uniform, love? You’re young. You look strong. Do I tell them the truth? Or dodge it with the damaged lung thing?

  Maybe Ellis is right: maybe I am a coward.

  Put my head down and draw them, and hope he comes soon. Might tell him about that fiddler. He’ll like that. Well, he would have, when he was still writing. He’d have spun at least one decent poem out of it, and that could have been the start of a string of poems. How could he give all that up? How on earth can he think, It isn’t the time to be messing around with art? We need it now more than ever, like Chaplin said.

  A bloke just told me drunkenly, The fog’s as thick as blooming sheep’s wool out there. That was good. Also that pubs are stat-ist-i-cally (he had some trouble there) the most dangerous places in London right now. Looking at those women arguing furiously, you could believe it, but he meant because of the bombs. Obviously. Apparently you stand more chance of being killed in a pub by a V-2 than any other building, though why the Nazis should be picking on public houses of north London he was at a loss to explain.

  That tune still running around and around in my head.

  Here’s Ellis . . .

  It may be instructive,

  before we proceed,

  to issue some lines of history.

  It may be as well,

  before we go on,

  to talk of events that are now long gone.

  This,

  this, then . . .

  . . . this . . .

  . . . is my story.

  The tale of what happened to me,

  Orpheus,

  your humble servant.

  But even before we begin,

  there are problems.

  For I never had just one tale,

  since no one ever told it the same.

  Some said this, while others said that;

  some told it well,

  while with others it fell flat.

  And we don’t have long;

  I must soon return to Harry and his song.

  This is his story, his. Not mine.

  Though as I said, they intertwine.

  So I’ll tell you the version that I like best.

  Simple, it is; there’s nothing to it.

  Allow me now to walk you through it.

  I’ve already told you about my song;

  that’s one thing everyone’s agreed upon.

  And most will tell you how, on my wedding day,

  my wife, Eurydice, was taken away.

  Bitten by a snake, struck down dead.

  Persephone came for her, and led her

  down to the Underworld,

  to dwell in the dark

  of Hades’ kingdom.

  Forever.

  I was left.

  Bereft, unable to be,

  unable to sing for months on end,

  determined to win Eurydice’s life;

  determined to be restored to my wife.

  I journeyed into the Underworld,

  and that part too, every one tells;

  how I dared to venture into Hell.

  There was more, much more, but . . .

  That’s enough.

  That’s enough for now, I think.

  Because I left Harry on the brink

  of meeting up with Ellis, his brother.

  And do they still know how to love each other?

  Have they forgotten their common blood?

  Will they greet each other as they should?

  That’s something I would love to see.

  So I return now,

  eagerly.

  Amazingly, the number 354 bus is still running. We’re bumping over cracked roads, wheeling round heaps of darkened rubble, going at a clip. Not sure we’re heading the right way, if I want to get back to my current digs, though! Mrs. Hudson will be hopping mad if I wake her and her husband up again coming in too late. At least they respect my stance. Not many do. And three weeks is the longest I’ve stayed anywhere this year.

  We are definitely going the wrong way. Muttering from the back of the bus, and the driver just called out to say if anyone knew a better way to Hampstead, they were welcome to come and have a blooming go themselves, and he wasn’t about to try the Great North Road because someone said there was a dirty great hole in it. Big explosion now towards the East End. You can feel it shake the seats. More still to come tonight? Already launched? Already in the dark skies above?

  Rockets or not, bumps or not, I have to jot this down before I forget it all. The conversation with Ellis was more intense, more troubling, than I thought. But good to have had it, good to have tried rather than dodged — and maybe it even helped a bit.

  So.

  He looked better than when I last saw him in the hospital. Felt a surge of relief to see those hollowed-out cheeks of a month ago had filled, that his color was back. As for the wound, he said the plate’s doing its job on the bone, the scar is dry now, and he’ll be right as rain. And then he can head back across the Channel and do his bit for the push to Berlin. That was his opening salvo — the last words emphasized to give me a slap — and then silence for a bit until I proposed we drink to each
other’s health, and he nodded. So we did.

  He looked at me. That steady gaze that says, I know just a little better than you. An extra year and six months of wisdom!

  What did you want to talk about, then? he said. I don’t want to rehash all the old arguments about Father and the rest of it.

  Why not? I asked.

  Because it doesn’t get us anywhere. Never will; waste of time.

  Silence. Then:

  You’ve let people down, Harry. A bloody conchie in the family! Aunt Vanessa even thrust a white feather at me to give you when I saw you. As good as blamed me!

  She’s an idiot, I said, she always was — and tried a joke instead. You should tell her I nearly rescued some shop dummies today in Kilburn.

  He made a face and looked like he’d rather be anywhere but there, and I veered away. Easier topics first, I thought, maybe some idle gossip to build some bridges. What did he think about the rumors of a new German super weapon, for example?

  Rubbish, he scoffed. Absolute tosh.

  That’s what some said about the V-2s, I argued. People wouldn’t believe them even when the first ones hit.

  He nodded, a slight concession.

  I reminded him how last year everyone was talking about the four-hundred-ton glider bomb. Terrified it was imminent. That’s exhaustion for you, or the fact that the end’s in sight and suddenly you can’t believe you’ll make it. So people have to invent some new horror. Like that mysterious hum people are going on about. I hadn’t heard about it until the other day, but apparently there’s been a stack of reports of a steady, pulsing drone that sounds like it’s coming from under the pavement. People hearing it all over London. Audible at night when there’s a gap in the attacks: a throbbing deep underground. Supposedly.