This Is What Happened, page 7
Anyway, clothes. Laundry was a chore. She washed things by hand in the bath, and left them to drip dry. Her jeans took two or three days to recover, and felt stiff as cardboard afterwards, as if new again. That was a treat, in a small way. New clothes had been a rarity even before the safe house. Her wages were so small, her rent so high, she’d had to save for everything, and only ever made one purchase at a time. This should have had the effect of making each new item feel finer, but somehow the opposite was true. Nothing took the shine off new boots faster than having to wear them with shabby jeans. Her trainers, though, the ones on her feet now, they were lasting a good while. They’d seen little wear and tear, after all.
But just because the wardrobe wasn’t packed full of clothing didn’t mean it wasn’t useful storage space. Harvey had brought her a handful of DVDs the previous day, perhaps as compensation for there being no exercise bicycle—not now, not ever—and to maximise their novelty, and prevent herself gorging on them, Maggie decided to hide some at the back of the wardrobe, an emergency supply. In forgetting what they were, she’d be storing up a surprise for some future week. There were half a dozen of them, bundled together with elastic bands and bought as a job lot from Oxfam—there were no new films available, and Amazon no longer operated in the UK—and as she reached to place them on the low shelf at the back of the wardrobe, her fingers encountered something, a piece of laminated plastic the size of a credit card, though that’s not what it was. Brought into the light, it turned out to be a library card instead.
And that was how she discovered Dickon Broom.
When Harvey arrived the following day, she had questions.
“Am I the first person who’s lived here?”
“It’s an old house. A hundred years old. How could you be the first person to live here?”
“I meant, live like this. Am I the first person who’s used it as a safe house?”
He was taking his coat off. It was raining, and droplets shone on its collar and sleeves. Wet overcoats had their own peculiar smell, one borrowed from the outside world and brought indoors. Harvey’s coat was better travelled than she was.
“Why do you need to know? Why are you asking me this now?”
He sounded tired and worn, and sometimes when he was like this it ended in argument, or in her crying about something, and him having to hold her a little longer than usual afterwards, though once or twice he had simply left, and there had been no afterwards. Maggie didn’t want any of that to happen, but still. Her story had bumped into somebody else’s, and she wanted to know whether the edges fitted together. At the same time, she wanted to keep Dickon Broom to herself. It was so long since she’d had anything of her own, that hadn’t been brought to her by Harvey.
“I’ve just been thinking, that’s all. Wondering who’s lived here before me.”
And what happened to them, she didn’t add. Where did you go after being at a safe house? Somewhere safer? And what did that look like?
Now he was taking his shoes off. They were black, and scuffed. The expression “down at heel” was probably called for. He didn’t keep slippers here, just padded about in his socks, and these, too, were past their best. Nothing was new. Nothing would ever be new.
“Make some tea?”
She put the kettle on, and he came up behind her while she was dropping a teabag into a cup and put his arms round her. He had been smoking. She worried what the air was like in here, what odours he was letting himself into when he came through the door, but he brought more than enough with him.
He said, “I can’t tell you, Maggie. I’m sorry. You know I can’t.”
“Why not? It’s not like I’m going to tell anyone, is it?”
“Mags—”
“I mean, it’s not like I have people dropping in, not like I’m gossiping on the phone all day. Who do you think I’ll tell, the woodlice? You know there are woodlice, don’t you? I keep saying we’ve got woodlice, and you never do anything.”
“Are you finished?”
“Who am I going to tell, Harvey? I never see anyone.”
“And what happens if you’re caught?”
She wriggled free of his embrace. The kettle was shuddering to a climax, steam ploughing into the air.
“I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry. You’re not going to be caught. You’re safe here.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
She reached for the kettle, but instead of pouring the water into the teacup, she poured it down the sink. More steam billowed, plastering itself to the taps and the surfaces of the saucepans.
“Because it’s tried and tested, okay? It’s a tried and tested safe house. So yes, there’ve been people here before. But I can’t tell you any more than that, and you’re not to ask, all right?”
“Nothing’s safe forever though. Is it?”
For a moment she thought he was going to lie to her, as he had done so many times on similar subjects, but instead he simply nodded. Meaning yes, he agreed with her. That nothing was safe forever. He was past pretending that it was.
“The fact that they’ve not found us yet doesn’t mean they never will,” she said.
“I’m working on a plan.”
“What kind of plan?”
“About getting you away from here. Somewhere where there’s more room, somewhere you can go outside. Out in the country. Far from the cities. They’re not good places now.”
It was odd, but the first thing she felt on hearing this was a splinter of fear. The country. The country was packed full of open spaces, so many of them that they crowded up against each other, barely held in check by raggedy hedges. You could be seen for miles, out in the country.
And then the thought of sunshine took hold of her, and of warm air touching her skin. She thought of walking up a hill to the top, and looking back, and seeing the tracks she’d left in the wet grass.
“When?” she said.
“Soon.”
“How soon?”
“We’ll need a car. These things take time.”
Maggie was still holding the kettle. She felt ridiculous now, having poured the hot water away. She turned the tap on, and started over.
“It’ll be okay,” Harvey said. “You’ll see.”
She wasn’t a real spy. She had fallen into the role, and then into this half-life, by accident. There were no books about people like her, and no films either. But Dickon Broom was different. For Dickon Broom, the safe house must have been a necessary bolt-hole after a whirlwind escapade. Dickon Broom would have chosen this career for its adventurous possibilities.
Harvey had left. She was alone again, and unsleeping. Sleep was difficult. She had to lure it into her bed with stories.
How long had Dickon Broom lived here? And who had he been hiding from? Dickon Broom, anyway, what kind of name was that? Not a heroic one—something about its rhythm fell wrong—but that only contrived to make it realer. He was flesh and blood, not a celluloid fantasy, and to have arrived in the safe house, he must have placed himself in harm’s way. And not for him, she thought, the accidental assassination of a minimum-wage security guard. He must have really got up somebody’s nose—Maggie wondered whose. Who were the global villains back then? Russian mafia types and Islamist extremists? The US President? Or perhaps it was the Establishment he’d crossed swords with, uncovering some nasty secret about a powerful individual. All those possibilities swept away by the Collapse, as simplifying as a landslide.
Her hand closed around the library card. She had placed it under her pillow, as if it were a love token, or a guarantor of pleasant dreams. What else did you use a library card for, if not to borrow stories? Some of which might have a happy ending.
He’d have been trained in all the things she knew nothing about, in the art of scaling walls and dodging bullets. She pictured him silhouetted against London’s skyline, a sleek shape in tight black clothing, evading faceless guards on rooftops, abseiling through windows. He’d been here in the safe house before the Collapse, but she couldn’t help thinking he’d fought against it, nevertheless. Had perhaps staved it off, preventing it from happening years before it did. Had been sent by Harvey Wells on missions more dangerous than her own, and had returned victorious but wounded, in need of sanctuary. Thinking these thoughts, she felt the basement flat become roomier. He had slept in this bed, laid his head on this pillow. Wherever he was now, those experiences were part of his baggage. The safe house had been one stop on his journey elsewhere, and this meant that she too might move on some day. Just as soon as Harvey got his plan together, and managed to get hold of a car. Things weren’t as easy as they used to be. When Harvey said “car,” he also meant petrol. All those things we used to take for granted.
Her bed was cold, and the sheets slightly damp. The laminated card had sharp edges. She knew that when she woke—if she slept—her palm would retain the dents its corners made. Even ideas could do this, leave marks behind by being gripped too firmly. And now that she had met Dickon Broom—now that he was part of her life in the safe house—she wondered how long it would take him to make an appearance. This seemed the logical next step. He would somehow find out about her—was he still one of Harvey’s agents? His assets?—and come to her rescue. Harvey was a desk man at heart. He pulled strings and cast shadows, but essentially he was one for paperwork, for assigning tasks others would carry out. He was not precisely a coward, and had shown this by standing by her even while Five abandoned its responsibilities, but even so, he had become worn where the outside world had rubbed against him. The Collapse had left him tarnished and afraid, and while he was surely doing his best, this might not be enough to save her. Not any more.
“I need a hero,” she murmured, and though the words were indistinct even to her own ears, she felt them a kind of prayer nevertheless. She did not expect God to be paying attention. But if they could slip through the night-time quiet, and somehow find their way into Dickon Broom’s heart, they might yet prove her salvation. So thinking, she slept at last.
Mornings were difficult. If she was expecting Harvey there was much to do, including having a bath, and thinking of things to say. It mattered to her that she could still be interesting. And on days when she wasn’t certain he’d be there, much of the same routine prevailed. It would be awful if he arrived unexpectedly, and she was unbathed, with a head full of empty thoughts. This had happened more than once, and always ended in tears.
Today was a Harvey day, so she began it with her new regime, forty times up the stairs, forty times down. Her mind found a rhythm while her body was doing this, and the train of thought she’d stepped off last time picked her up again now. If there was a way of rolling back time, how far back she would go? To before she killed Joshua, of course, but having reached that point, there seemed little sense stopping. No, she would travel on backwards through the days, living dusk to dawn, all those journeys from and to Quilp House, all those afternoon breaks in the park before the day’s work began. Maggie had been lonely then, and a little frightened that her life would never change, but as things had turned out, change had not been the answer. Change had wrought havoc. It had erased her from the normal.
Would she go as far back as Jezza, she wondered—to before his deceits had unwound her life? His treachery had been commonplace enough: he had had someone else. But the someone else was pregnant, and that was not. The first Maggie had known of it, Jezza was married. She had thought herself a girlfriend, and suddenly she was the other woman, an identity foisted upon her without warning. She had become un-personed. The life she had thought she’d been living had been erased, and she herself had become a blank.
Her heart was pounding. Forget Jezza. Up the stairs, down the stairs. Up the stairs, down the stairs. She put her hand to her stomach as she climbed, imagining it diminishing beneath her palm—Podge!—and would have laughed at herself had there been anything to laugh at. Sweat was gathering in the usual places. The air would be swimmy with it soon, and she would have to light more candles, and flap a towel to make it scurry into corners, and have all its molecules swap places.
How far back would she have to go to change everybody’s future? To make all the molecules swap places, everywhere, and make things utterly different?
She remembered the café where she’d spent so many afternoons, with its view of the park, and the pond on which ducks swam. That was where she’d first laid eyes on Harvey Wells. She could even recall the specific afternoon, one on which she’d been feeling optimistic. She’d sent a tweet, her eleventh? Central Perk for coffee and cake! Nom nom! How many followers had she had—nine? Seven? Some ludicrous number. Did they wonder what had happened to her? Were they anxious to know how many more cups of coffee, slices of cake, she’d enjoyed since then? Did they tweet amongst themselves, Where’s Maggie? I always liked her. It’s a shame she slipped off the map.
One hundred and forty characters. That was how many you were allowed in a tweet. One hundred and forty characters, like a hugely-cast soap opera. No one knew that many people. Not in London, anyway. In a village, perhaps, but not in London. London was far too full of people to know that many.
She had lost count of her ascents, her descents, but she knew she was nearing the end because her legs felt about to give way. She wondered how many of these Dickon Broom had managed. She thought probably two hundred. At least. A man like Dickon Broom would keep himself in shape. His life was one of constant training, with emergencies waiting round every corner.
Seventy-nine, she decided. Eighty. And that was that.
Maggie sat on the bottom step, her body quivering as if in anticipation. She recalled weather like this, the moments before a storm, when the very air felt wet with rain that hadn’t begun to fall. But she hadn’t seen weather in a long time, and might have been misremembering.
Later, she bathed and dressed. It was in the bath that the idea first came to her, and grew like a seed from stony ground. Was that biblical? It sounded biblical. You would never expect it to have taken root, let alone put forth a stem. And this reminded her of something . . . It was the plants at Quilp House she was thinking of, their pots brimful of smooth pebbles. Those plants had grown healthy, their leaves the size of dinner plates. Stony ground had something going for it.
The idea was this: she wanted to go out.
When she’d first arrived in the safe house, that was all she’d wanted. Or all she’d wanted after the first few days, anyway, days during which she’d been too shocked by what had happened, Joshua dying, to want anything. While absorbing that grief she mostly lay in bed, hoping no one would find her, but it was astonishing—frightening—how life asserted itself, and made fresh demands. The same way roots clung to life among the stones: always this need for survival, always. So after a few days she had wanted to go out, to breathe proper air, but by then the Collapse had begun, and Harvey had had to explain that it wasn’t safe. That if she were discovered while things were so lawless, there’d be little he could do to protect her.
“But Five—”
“Five are propping up the country,” he’d said. “Five are making contingency plans in case the bottom drops out. And we go into free fall.”
She had tried to imagine what that was like, a country in free fall. It would involve high winds, trees bending low and buildings becoming loose. But Harvey had a bleaker frame of reference:
“Like Germany between the wars. You remember those stories, how it took a basketful of currency to buy a loaf of bread? And if you got robbed, it was the basket they were after. The money had no value.”
“Things can’t get that bad.”
“Can’t they?”
We’re only ever three meals away from anarchy, he said. Think of the happiest family you know, the most secure, the most well-balanced. Now remove food and warmth and shelter, and picture how they’d cope.
“And that’s just the backdrop.” He put his hands on her shoulders, but not to embrace her. He wanted her to be looking into his eyes while he spoke. “They’re after you, Mags. The people whose job it was to protect the company we tried to hack into.”
“The Chinese secret service,” she’d said, her voice a whisper, nearly a lisp.
“You’re safe here. Trust me. But you can’t leave. Not yet.”
And so she hadn’t.
But things had calmed down, hadn’t they? Things weren’t as bad as during the police strike. She couldn’t remember when that had been, exactly—spring of last year?—but it was long finished now. And the streets here had never boiled over anyway, one or two nights of loud brawling aside, which could as easily have been pub overspill. Even under the new dispensation, with foreign hands twitching Westminster’s threads, people would still fight for stupid reasons. It didn’t matter that clever ones had become available.
The idea wormed away within her all afternoon. She made a new kind of meal from the contents of the same old tins, and all the while she was preparing it, the idea was fastening its grip.
She would tell him, she decided. As soon as he turned up. Tonight. She would tell him:
“I want to go out.”
Harvey laughed. “Good idea. Where shall we go? A movie? A pub?”
“I’m not joking.”
“You think you’re not joking. But you don’t know what it’s like out there.” He put an arm round her. “Come on, Mags. We’ve talked about this. You’re safe—we’re safe—as long as we’re careful. And being careful means staying in here.”
“You go out.”
“Of course I do. It would be more suspicious if I disappeared. That happens, they’d come looking for me.”
“Do they know you’re a spy?”
“They?”
“The Chinese.”
