Voyages in the Underworld of Orpheus Black Read online

  Keep still now, there’s a good chap, one of the orderlies said. You’re not making much sense.

  They wheeled me on down the corridor, and then there was dazzling light and the roar of the respirator like a hurricane wind in my ears and quiet voices murmuring — and then a quick fade to Black.

  Harry!

  You heard me!

  For a while there, you knew who you were.

  You used your true name.

  I’m so happy I could dance!

  Ha!

  Now we are connected, I can show you some things.

  I can show you the operation they’re performing on your head.

  Would you like to see that?

  There’s a lot of people, the pump of the respirator,

  and even more blood, and —

  You don’t want to know?

  You don’t want to see?

  I’d be desperate if it were happening to me;

  and remember, Harry, in a way, it is.

  For we are one now.

  All right, then.

  I’ll show you something else,

  what you’re longing to see above all.

  The way I live now is a marvelous thing.

  A thing of freedom and boundless expression.

  I get lonely, of course,

  in the solitary times

  when I am between minds,

  but now I’m alive once more, in you, and we can go places and see things and be there in the smallest smattering of time; all we have to do is dream.

  I know where you want to go, Harry.

  I know who you want to see, Harry.

  I am the psychopomp; the guider of souls;

  and I know where you want to be.

  Look. Here it is; this is where the White Horse stood.

  Don’t recognize it?

  You’ve seen enough of these things to know how the world can change in an instant.

  The pub was here, and the grocer’s there,

  and Abraham’s bookshop was somewhere around.

  Look, there are even books that survived the blast,

  while others are now just pages that flutter and curl,

  their stories leaving,

  leaking into the dust that was London.

  But we haven’t come to see books.

  Look, Harry, look!

  There’s a crack in the Earth,

  through which you can see the Underworld.

  And can you see who’s down there, Harry?

  Can you see him?

  He’s alive, Harry. O gods, he’s alive!

  That’s what you wanted to see;

  that’s what you wanted to know.

  He’s alive, Harry.

  Your brother is still alive.

  Listen to me now, Harry.

  Don’t say it can’t be true.

  Everyone else was blown to bits.

  He can’t be down there.

  Harry, don’t be so logical!

  Stop trying to analyze things

  that are beyond understanding.

  Don’t try to rationalize that which cannot be understood.

  If you do, you will lose me again.

  Remember me, Harry,

  Remember . . .

  And know one thing:

  It wasn’t the morphine that made you speak;

  It was me.

  That’s good.

  You’ve understood.

  You’ve stopped trying to know, and started to be,

  just like you and Ellis used to be free,

  as children of the Shropshire hills.

  Now we can work wonders, you and I.

  As one.

  Back in bed. Takes me a while to realize I’m not at my digs with the Hudsons but in the bleachy wards of the Royal Free. Head feels better now under the bandages, though everything seems muffled. Eunice and another nurse just went past, and I heard her say that it was snowing a bit. Sudden image in my head, a burst of memory: standing in the bay window at home in Shropshire, I must have been no more than six or seven, and squeezing in between the long curtains and the cold, condensated glass and staring out into the night as the snow fell. Blanketing, muffling the hills of the Marches. I stood there mesmerized, almost terrified by the depth of the night, the weight of the snow, but also elated. Somehow, trapped halfway between inside and out, I felt invisible to everyone, as if I were disappearing into the snow, the darkness. And Ellis came looking for me, and when he found me, instead of teasing me and dismissing my reverie, he fell into silent companionship beside me, our breaths fogging rough heart shapes on the cold glass.

  Can’t bear to think of him out there, maybe trapped, maybe worse, under the rubble and freezing fog. Must get out of here and get to the bomb site and try and find him. PDQ.

  I wonder if I can just pull this drip out? Wait till morning or go now?

  Agatha’s face in the corridor. Should I stick up for her? If I don’t, will she be stuck here until someone comes to claim her? Her parents must be looking for her — if they made it, that is. Poor thing, I suppose they’ll just put her in some home or something. I keep seeing that look she gave me and the way she seemed to be wanting my help. Mine, and nobody else’s.

  Remember the resolution. Live and live fully. I’ll give myself a couple of hours’ more rest and then I’m going, and bugger the consequences. I have to know what’s happened to Ellis.

  One good thing: Oakley came to visit, and I was really glad to see him. A bit of solid (very solid!) reality amongst all this chaos in my head.

  You OK, then, mate? he asked, dragging up a chair.

  I told him I wasn’t sure, that I thought I’d nearly not made it . . .

  Remember Archway? he said. That blast that knocked me off my feet?

  I nodded.

  Oakley was a coalman before the war, strong as the proverbial bloody ox, absolutely no nonsense about anything. But that night in Archway, we had found him out cold, thought he was having a heart attack, lips blue and face all white from the gypsum. Took a long and ghastly age of pumping his chest before we pulled him back.

  He leaned close now to my bed and whispered, Well, Harry, that night something ’appened. Really weird. But I didn’t want to tell anyone. Not at first.

  He cleared his throat.

  I’ve been wanting to tell someone for bloody ages. Thought you’d understand. You’re different than the rest.

  Go on, I said.

  And hesitantly he told me how, after the rocket blast and the blacking out, quite distinctly he felt a part of himself separate from his body and float up very, very gently above the scene, over the rest of us huddling around, and rolling him into recovery, over all the fuss and bother.

  I was twenty or thirty feet up — like I was on a bloody extension ladder, he said, but I didn’t feel anything, just really, really calm as I watched you lot panicking around me like headless chickens. I felt like I was off to somewhere else, above the barrage balloons that were shining overhead, and I thought I could just cut one loose and float up with it all the way to heaven — or past that to somewhere else even better. Somewhere over the bloody rainbow!

  He stopped and looked at me, alarmed, as if he felt he’d said too much. Then he forced a smile. Don’t tell a soul — or I’ll do you in.

  Cross my heart, I said. Glad you came back to us, though.

  So am I. He smiled, swatting my knee hard. And don’t you damn well think of going nowhere without me, you bugger!

  Dead middle of the night. I’m awake and can’t sleep. I was deeply asleep, and then I felt someone tapping away at my hand, where the drip goes in. Tap, tap, tapping away. Thought it was Eunice or the doctor and growled at them to leave me be, but the finger kept jabbing away, and I opened my eyes to find Agatha sitting on my bed, looking at me, her voice rising in volume like someone was cranking up the knob on a wireless.

  Wake up. Wake up, Harry. Wake up, Mister Orpheus. Wake up . . .

  The conversation was so . . . odd . . . that
I want to put it down as verbatim as I can before I forget it.

  I asked her what the matter was.

  You cannot keep lying here, she said. You have to go and look. You need to find your brother.

  I nodded and asked her if she was supposed to be out of bed.

  It doesn’t matter, she whispered. I will go back in a minute before they notice me gone. My parents might possibly come tonight, and if they do, I do not want to miss them. I need to be with them.

  I had to ask: So your parents are with you? Here in London?

  She looked at me with that intense gaze again.

  It is complicated, Harry. They wanted to come because it was not safe back home anymore. My father said we had to go. They send me on a train first, and they were going to follow me soon.

  Smart chap. But do you know if they are in England?

  She nodded. Yes, they are close. If they do not find me, then I will find them. You will help me, perhaps.

  So they didn’t bring you to the hospital?

  No. Some men with an ambulance.

  What happened?

  A big explosion. I was trapped and covered with white stuff. They got me out, breathe into my mouth.

  She pointed at her lips then, the strangest little gesture, as if I wouldn’t understand without.

  Where were you all?

  She shook her head then and gave me a brave smile. I cannot remember.

  Only to be expected. Must be the shock of being caught in a blast or concussion. If the ambulance boys gave her the kiss of life, then she must have been in a bad way. Guess they’re keeping her in for observation for a while; she looks right as rain, apart from the pallor.

  She smiled again: Mister Orpheus, you will help me find them?

  Stop calling me that, I said. But if you were on a Kindertransport, you must have been here a while already?

  Quite a long time, she said. I am waiting for them for a long time.

  I told her I didn’t understand, but then she heard footsteps coming, and she turned and tiptoed away on the darkened ward.

  At the last moment, she glanced over her shoulder and — in a fierce stage whisper — fired me another volley: You should get out of here and start looking for your brother. But don’t forget about me, Harry.

  The hospital is quiet tonight.

  A good night for mischief!

  A good night for a jailbreak.

  The dimpled Eunice comes by and chats to Harry for a little while, and I watch, trying to stifle my laughter as Harry pretends to be sleepy so she’ll leave him alone.

  As soon as she’s gone,

  he pulls back the sheets,

  and pulls on the clothes they’ve left on a chair.

  Slides on his shoes and slips from the bed

  to the waiting window, where —

  Where he stops, leg halfway over the windowsill.

  Agatha.

  He made a promise to that little girl,

  and suddenly it seems important that promises are kept.

  He comes back into his empty ward,

  takes the door to where he saw her before.

  But she’s gone.

  Her things are still there, so she’s not been discharged,

  not been discarded, nor died in the night.

  But he has to go;

  he has to find Ellis.

  He makes a silent promise to the hospital air

  to return for her,

  then slips into the night.

  Here in Maenad Road, someone’s made a fire from the wrecked timbers, and I’m sitting by that, blanket pulled around my shoulders, shivering like a newborn animal, trying to make sense of what’s happened, numbed and shocked, trying to find my bearings. A dirty tumbler of whisky beside me that I’ll have another go at in a minute. But now I need to get this all down. Something reassuring about the whisper of a sharpened pencil across the paper of this journal. It’s anchoring me, warming me as much as the blanket and the drink.

  The world has been turned completely upside down here. Not a stick or stone of the pub left that I can see, just a huge blast crater tumbled with rubble and debris, smoke rising from the heart of it, the snow settling on the edge but melting in the smoldering wreckage. Teams of women and older men are relaying the remains of the pub and the houses that stood on the corner, working quietly in the dawn light, bundled up against the cold. A dog sniffs at the edge of the crater — looks a bit like our old Lottie. Very similar, in fact, tail busy as she scratches away at something.

  I realize I have lost my watch somewhere. Must have been in the blast itself, or maybe someone took it off me in the hospital; but it wasn’t with this notebook or my wallet on the stand by the bed. Well, what is time anyway? Artificial. Relative. A tyranny for men and women. Do the trees care what time it is? The sparrows? I reckon not. I’ll live without it for a bit.

  Overhead the sky looks like porridge. No sign of the house that stood opposite with the net curtains flaring. Not a trace of the big old plane tree that erupted out of the paving stones on the corner. Where the hell has that gone?! Launched into space? (Remember Dalston: that lead coffin that got hurled about two hundred yards from the cemetery. God, that stank when it burst open; only time I vomited on duty.)

  Some books on the ground.

  Not a trace of Ellis.

  Have to fear the worst now after what old Greene just told me. (Yes, Greene dodged this particular rocket, it seems.)

  My escape from the Royal Free went better this time. My head felt good, Agatha’s encouraging words pushing me into action. I bided my time until Eunice made her last round, feigned sleep and waited until her footsteps were gone and lost against the hum of whatever it is that is humming — and then pulled out the drip, dressed, grabbed this journal, and made for the window. Then I remembered my promise to Agatha.

  I dodged back round past her room, maybe to take her with me, maybe just to wish her well — but she wasn’t there. An orderly was coming down the corridor, so I tried to look as though I wasn’t a fugitive and asked him where the German girl was.

  Don’t know about no German girl, he said. Are you supposed to be in here?

  No, I said — and walked briskly away before he tried to stop me.

  Odd. Got out by the back stairs as the shimmy down from the window looked just too much.

  I reached the bomb site as first light came up. Found Greene standing at the rim of the crater that’s in front of me now: hands planted on his hips, gazing into the middle of it, mouth open as if he were on the verge of saying something, but no sound coming out. His face was covered with white — gypsum probably — like you always see at rocket sites, the impact so great it pulverizes plaster and throws it over everything and everyone, but it always gives you a shock when you see it. Makes people look like the dead uprisen. I tapped him on the shoulder, and his eyes were big and dark in that white face.

  It took him a moment to recognize me — and then he shut his eyes and groaned.

  I’m sorry, lad, he said. Really sorry.

  I asked him what happened, delaying the question I was desperate to ask, already knowing what the answer would be.

  Popped home to see the missus, he said. I just had a feeling, a funny feeling, so I went home to tell her to take the nippers and go to the shelter. I was heading back when the thing hit. I knew right away it was the Horse. Shook like billy-o, the whole ruddy street.

  Me: Do you know if Ellis was still in there? My brother?

  He didn’t hesitate.

  I’m sorry. I’m almost sure of it. Unless he left in the five minutes I was gone; he was deep in it with that pretty little Wren . . . I’ve not seen them pull his body out, mind.

  He sat down then on the rubble, abruptly, at a complete loss, shaking his head, struggling. That big bear of a man gasping, holding back tears.

  But your family’s OK? I asked, numb.

  The missus and the kids are fine, he said. But . . . He gestured at the crater, but they were all family
too, all that lot in there. We’re all bloody family round here, even the ones I can’t stand.

  His eyes were shimmering, hands clenching and unclenching. I patted him on the back, suddenly felt very cold, chilled right to the heart of me, and found this blanket on an unused stretcher, and whipped and wrapped it tight around. Then picked my way down into the ruins of the pub, the air stinging with smoke, eyes watering, and a damn awful smell that I didn’t want to name.

  Found myself calling Ellis’s name, shouting, Where are you? But my voice wouldn’t work properly, and it came out as a kind of strangulated moan. Like someone trying to sing who hasn’t sung for years. A creaky old man’s half-remembered song. There was a rolling roar of a blast from the East End then, and the rubble sifters stopped and looked up, but I just kept going, wallowing around in the tumble of bricks and smoldering timber, banging my shins, shivering like buggery.

  The moon hung pale over us in the half-light.

  Me, a lunatic.

  Just then, the damn postman came down the street. He barely paused, just took one look at the rubble, then spotted a box at the end of what’s left of the street, a red finger sticking out of the dust. Calm as you please, he went to open it and take out the letters. Posted by the dead, probably, and now their last words have outlived them. But their last letter has survived. Yes, thank you, we’re all well. Tom’s turning two tomorrow. Of course, these nights do give you the heebie-jeebies, but Nan says God will protect us and who’s to say she isn’t right?

  Yes, as I say, after what Greene told me, I have to fear the worst. And yet, standing there . . .

  What was it? Something tickled in my brain. I don’t know how else to describe it. An impulse stirring, like when your body knows it has to do something that your head has completely forgotten.

  I fumbled in my pocket and took a blue eyeball and dropped it in the chaos at my feet. It skittered off a broken piece of brickwork, rolled down a bit of corrugated iron, and plopped through a hole into darkness, some hidden emptiness beneath. It fell and I didn’t hear it hit bottom.

  An image flashed in my head, though, a firing of the imagination seen as clear as the hand in front of my face, as if very, very briefly I could glimpse my brother, lying there below us. Somehow close to me, but far, far away at the same time, the image there for one blink and then gone again in the next.