‘The stone! Of course!’ Susan walked quickly across the room and picked up the black stone from the corner. Françoise smiled, accepted the object and turned
it in her fingers.
‘It belongs to me. It’s from Mexico, a magic stone. Is this what caused the damage?’ She looked meaningfully at Susan’s face.
‘Yes.’
‘It was a strange sensation when your son came to me. He looked something like Michael, and something … odd … like a fish. It was a huge apparition, taller than the room, though I noticed he bent to see. I don’t understand that part of it. When he reached for the stone his fingers were unreal. But he touched and grabbed the object before everything exploded. So I have seen the fetching technique of your son, in his guise as Fisher King.’
Richard added, ‘And now he’s found the Grail. He has it in his castle.’
‘The Holy Grail? He’s found it finally?’
‘He says he has.’
Carol shifted uncomfortably. ‘But he can’t bring it out himself,’ she said sharply. ‘He needs me to do it. But Mummy won’t let me go …’
Her feet kicked irritably against the chair. Susan watched her daughter squarely, the plaster over her left eye reddening slightly as blood seeped from the raw wound below.
‘Anyway …’ the girl went on. ‘It’s too frightening where he lives, so I suppose I won’t have to go anyway. I don’t like the beach.’
Françoise queried this with a raised eyebrow. Susan said, ‘It’s a part of Michael’s Limbo. There’s a beach and caves, and monsters. We think he has access to a past time, and goes there to hide. I don’t understand it, how it works, but if he’s reaching for objects, maybe he can hide in the past too.’
‘I know about the beach,’ Françoise said thoughtfully. ‘I was just surprised that Carol had been there. What did it feel like, Carol? Can you tell
me?’
The Fish Lizards are dangerous,’ Carol said, and at once Françoise was excited, leaning forward, remembering.
The Fish Lizards? Did you
see
the Fish Lizards?’
That’s what Mikey said it was … It was huge, but it didn’t attack me.’
‘What about the Sea Dragons? Did you see those too?’
Carol frowned. ‘He didn’t mention the Sea Dragons. And I wasn’t looking. I was running.’
‘What about the forests of the Wealden?’
‘Didn’t say anything about the forests.’
Now Richard too was intrigued. He stared into the dead fire, struggling to recollect something that Michael had read to him. Those words: they’re familiar. Did Michael use them?’
‘Yes,’ Françoise said. ‘To begin any fetching he has to cross the beach. When I asked him about the beach … well, hear for yourself. I taped our little conversation. Do you remember? That time you brought Michael to London?’
She placed the small recorder on the coffee table and switched it on. They listened to Françoise and Michael singing, then Michael’s voice, a dreamy, sleepy voice, almost a whisper:
‘… the Fish Lizards hide in the waves and strike suddenly on to the shore. Their jaws have a formidable array of fang-like teeth. The Sea Dragons are as long as their contemporaries … Very quietly and gradually the forest and plains, the tall trees and hideous reptiles of the Wealden passed away—’
Richard remembered suddenly. ‘The book! Grandad’s old book about dinosaurs … of course!’ He went up to Michael’s room, hating the cold feel, the sense of endless space that inhabited the room, as if this was a passage to infinity, without soul or presence. But he found the book, the old leather-bound volume
called
The World in the Past
. It had been published by Frederick Warne & Co. in 1926, and time and reading had reduced it to a tattered collection of sheets and illustrations, still loosely held inside the red cover with its faded golden image of a Stegosaurus. He knew nothing of the author, B. Webster Smith, but remembered being entranced by the language and the enthusiasm of the writing, the sense of pure wonder that the descriptions of coral, and urchins, and ancient seas, and ancient geology had evoked in him as a child.
And there they were, the words that Michael had spoken, descriptions of Icthyosaurs (the Fish Lizards) and Plesiosaurs (the Sea Dragons), accounts of the Wealden forest, the chalk downs, the sandstone cliffs. All of it was here. Françoise read the passages with delight. The volume sat between them, opened, like a gate into another world: Chalk Boy’s world. Richard understood at once.
‘Then his beach is a construct. Images from this book, shaped into the hinterland, the perilous place to be crossed before the Grail is reached.’
‘We call it Received Image Reconstruction.’
‘Do you remember those drawings he used to make, Sue? The monstrous mouths? The cliffs?’ He must have first seen and read this book when he was a toddler. I wondered how it had come to be on his shelves.’
‘So that’s where he hides,’ Susan whispered, her face pale as she looked at the bleak photograph of a red sandstone cliff in Utah.
‘It’s very wet and stinky,’ Carol added.
‘It’s a real place,’ murmured Françoise. ‘I’ve met this talent before. The beach
exists
. Like the walls in the castle, like the sounds of anger from these wooden idols in your garden, it’s a real place. And like you, I believe it is remote from us in time. We must
be very careful.’
Françoise woke suddenly, her body racking with pain. She reached for Carol but her hand closed on empty air, and she twisted from the sofa, gagging and struggling for breath. She managed to articulate the beginning of the girl’s name, but that was all. She was vaguely aware that a stark light was beginning to brighten the room. It was dawn. She had slept for hours.
‘Carol!’ she managed again, but then the pressure of winds and screams and pain and chanting and mocking laughter drove her back into a curled ball, her legs working like an hysterical child’s, her hands over her ears.
Suddenly she was calm.
‘Wake up! Wake up!’
The girl was with her, a small, cold hand on her face, eyes wide and anxious behind the gleaming lenses. The glasses were askew, one frame higher than the other and Carol fiddled with them for a moment.
‘I’ve got food for Michael. He needs me—’
‘Don’t leave me. Please. Don’t leave me!’
Françoise was suddenly aware of desperation. She swallowed hard, sat up and ran hands through dishevelled hair. Her mouth tasted foul and she licked self-consciously over her teeth. The girl was watching her in a fever of indecision and
concern.
‘I’ll be all right,’ Françoise said. ‘You’re my shield. I didn’t mean to sound angry.’
Carol leaned forward and whispered something. Françoise, not ready for the instruction, made her start again, listening more carefully. The girl sang: ‘Watching-man comes out of the ground, watching-man comes out of the wood, watching-man can see me here, but can’t harm me if I watch him good …’
That’s a funny song. Is it a charm?’
‘Sing it. It’ll keep you safe. Probably,’ she added, with a nervous glance.
‘Thank you.’
‘I have to go.’
Françoise tugged at her. ‘You mustn’t. Michael will be fine. We have to break the totem field first. Michael will be fine. Please don’t go!’
Carol looked desperate. The shadow of a totem was across her pale face. She struggled physically and in her mind, clearly torn. ‘Men are hunting him. I
have
to go. The Grail is there and I have to fetch it back for him. He’s asked me to. I
must
go.’
Astonished, Françoise fought for clarity of thinking. ‘Have you seen the Grail? Have you really seen it?’
‘Only Mikey’s drawings. But he’s found it now. He says it’s beautiful. It will make everything right again if I can bring it back. Everything will be lovely. The anger will go away, all the anger. Everyone will be free at last. I have to help him. He’s my big brother.’ The girl became even more conspiratorial. ‘He frightens me and hurts me, but I think that’s the other side of him. It’s not Michael at all. It’s Chalk Boy. Chalk Boy lives in a cave near the beach and if I can get the Grail for Mikey, Chalk Boy will never get off the beach again. He’ll be stuck there. That’s what I think anyway. Chalk Boy was killed in a shrine. Thousands of years ago. Men chased him and killed him, his dog too. Then they hid the Grail in the shrine. I had a dream about it in the pit. Michael has found the Grail in the shrine, and I have to
get it. He can’t touch it because Chalk Boy is hanging on to him, strangling him, making him unhappy. Chalk Boy is very bad.
Very
bad. Michael isn’t really as angry as he seems …’
‘Too much,’ Françoise said, dizzy with the breathless flow of the girl’s words. ‘Too much to take in. Too early. I need you to say all this to me again. But I need coffee. Is there coffee?’
‘I have to go.’
‘No!’
‘I
have
to. Sing the song and the watching-man won’t hurt you.’
‘Please don’t leave me. It hurts, Carol—’
But the girl shook her head, hiding her eyes from the woman. She picked up her plastic bag and ran from the room.
Mikey’s drawings. Mikey’s drawings of the Grail
…
Pain! Screaming! Françoise curled up on the sofa again, face twisting with agony, mind trying to hold on to the thought of Michael’s drawings, Michael’s drawings of the Holy Grail…
Watching-man comes from the ground, watching-man comes from the wood …
Release. A sense of calm …
Mikey’s drawings of the Grail … Chalk Boy is hanging on to him, strangling him, making him unhappy
.
Determinedly, if shakily, she went upstairs and sang vigorously at each of the fetishes, marking a clear space through the house, a corridor of psychic cease-fire. In the boy’s room she found the desk, opened the lid, leafed through the sheets of white paper. She found images of the Grail, and they reminded her of the simple drawing of a simple child, naive, rough and ready, every feature either exaggerated or reduced. From her bag she took out the drawing of
his castle, the picture he had given to her years before, the circles and walls, the gates and the bizarre and unflattering figures – herself especially! She smoothed the drawing out and sat at the desk, letting Michael’s imagination, his creativity, start to seep into the turmoil of feelings and images that comprised her own mind at the moment…
Terrified, Carol walked through the quarry. She was suddenly cold. She clutched the bag of food to her chest, ducking through the thorns, gritting her teeth as she edged through the gorse. The pit was eerily silent.
When she entered the place where a rise in the ground marked the site of the disposal of the earthfall from years ago, she felt like crying out, but managed to stay silent as she stared at the sad, hunched shape of the body that crouched there. The man seemed to be bowing to the East. He was kneeling with his head tucked down, squashed up as if hiding, face to the chalk wall. His head was very bloody. There was a spatter of blood on the chalk.
It was Brown Leather Jacket, as Michael called him. By the body lay the shield that had killed him, the shield that once Michael had described to her, tall and thin, painted green, with the silvered shape of two hares drawn on the face. It was part of the armour of a king, and had been kept beside the watching-man where Daddy had been digging, up in the North, up in a peat wasteland in Scotland.
The shield had been summoned at last. Carol edged past it, seeing how sharp it was, how bloody it was down the side where its edge had sliced through the evil man.
Michael was suddenly behind her and she dropped the bag of food in shock. She bent down to pick it up then looked anxiously at her
naked, white-skinned brother. He had painted himself with chalk again, except for his eyes which were black. And now, too, round his neck he wore three small, shrivelled creatures on a piece of leather.
‘What have you got for me?’ he asked suddenly.
Carol clutched the bag harder. She could smell something nasty in the air, and half realized that it was coming from the dead man behind her.
‘Did you kill him?’ she whispered.
‘Sort of. The others ran away like rabbits.’
‘Did you kill him with the shield?’
Michael grinned, then did a little dance. ‘Fetched it. Fetched shield. It came like a discus. Sliced head. I didn’t even touch it. Daddy will be proud of me. Daddy went to where I fetched it. Daddy dug. Daddy knew.’
Again, the hungry look, then in his normal voice, ‘What have you got? I’m starving.’
‘There wasn’t any pickle left,’ she said nervously.
Michael looked angry. ‘So what have you got for me?’
‘Some cornflakes. A tin of tomatoes. I’ve got the can opener too. And some ginger biscuits, but they’re a bit soft.’
He watched her furiously. She shook in her trainers, holding the bag to her chest harder, not liking the anger she could sense in the starving body of her white-skinned brother. ‘It’s all they had …’ she said, close to tears. ‘There’s no food left. Everything’s rotten in the freezer … everything else has been eaten.’
He snatched the bag from her hands and peered inside. ‘Brown sauce? No brown sauce?’
‘All gone. We made soup with it last night.’
He threw the bag away. ‘Wasn’t hungry anyway.’
Still shuddering with tears, Carol said, ‘Françoise is in the house. She’s very frightened. Can’t you tell … please tell Michael to
forgive them … Please let them out.’
He hesitated, then reached up and clutched her face, drawing her close. She resisted slightly, but was too overpowered by the presence of her brother, by his anger, to struggle. She thought:
Don’t hurt me
… but the words stayed inside.
He said, ‘Listen to me. Are you listening?’
‘I’m listening.’
‘Will you take the Grail home for me?’
‘Yes,’ she said in a slight voice. ‘But I’m frightened of the Fish Lizards.’
‘Listen to me. Do what I say. When you follow me, close your eyes! Trust me. When you smell the sea, run. If you trust me, nothing can harm you. If you trust me, you can bring me home. You can carry me home. You can take me back to where I belong.’
After a brief, frightened moment, Carol nodded. Using her blouse to clean her glasses, she looked apprehensively at the wall of chalk through which, in a moment, Michael would lead her. She had hardly returned the frames to her eyes when Michael grabbed her and her world dissolved.