Authors: Jenny Colgan
‘Nope,’ said Arthur. ‘You’ve lost me completely.’
Lynne rubbed her head. ‘Okay. Let’s try this. Been having any strange dreams recently?’
‘No, none at all … except, yes,’ conceded Arthur.
‘Hearing things? Feeling called in any way?’
‘Um, I’m not sure.’
‘But you’ve felt differently, though?’
‘Well, yes, kind of. Yes.’
He was still staring at her. ‘Is this why I think I can ride a horse?’
‘That sounds about right.’
‘So – what … Explain it again.’
‘Well, you know who King Arthur was, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, he’s still King of Britain. Technically. And he is there in times of need. And you are a part of his blood, so you are here in a time of need. That’s why I’m here, too. To make sure you realize that, and stay here, and do your duty.’
‘My what?’
‘Your duty – to this city.’
Arthur sat, looking as if he’d just been hit on the head with a heavy weight. His mouth tried to open, but nothing came out.
‘But –’ he said.
‘Ah …’ he said.
‘This is
bull
shit,’ he said.
Finally, he thought of something. He sat up straight and looked back at her. ‘Do I … do I get any superpowers?’ he said.
‘No,’ said Lynne.
‘But I have got …’
‘You’ve got a mission,’ she said clearly.
‘Really? What? Will I need a sword?’
She shook her head and smiled. ‘You’re on it, Arthur.’
‘What … what do you mean?’
She spread her arms around. ‘This is it.’
‘What?’ His face fell. ‘Oh, you don’t mean … you don’t mean the City of Culture project?’
Lynne nodded.
‘No. You don’t.’
‘It’s your destiny, Arthur.’
‘What? What! No. You’re telling me I’m a member of this famous lineage and I come from this blood – which is very nice of you by the way, so thanks, although of course I don’t believe you or anything – but if I did, I can’t believe it would be to run a town planning unit on an industrial estate.’
Lynne patted him on the shoulder. ‘You know, most people are very proud.’
‘Yeah, that’s probably because they’ve got dragons to slay and lots of beautiful maidens,’ said Arthur petulantly.
Lynne raised her eyebrows.
‘Are there a lot of us, then?’
‘A few. Some have bigger tasks than others.’
‘Are there any alive now?’
‘I can’t tell you that, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh, go on. Just tell me one.’
She half-smiled. ‘Well, John Lennon was one.’
‘Get out!’
‘No, seriously. Very nice chap.’
‘My dad always said he was our second cousin or something.’
‘Twice removed,’ said Lynne. ‘But yes, he was.’
‘Who else?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Lynne. She put both hands on his shoulders. ‘What matters is, you have a sacred trust. This city is crying out for beauty, and fairness, and change. And it’s in your hands. This is your Camelot, Arthur. And you must shape it. It’s your destiny.’
Arthur was shaking his head. ‘Who are you?’
Lynne looked at him straight over her glasses. As he looked at her more closely, he finally realized what was so odd about her. Her eyes were hardly those of a person, but those of a hawk. Yellow surrounded an elongated iris.
‘Who do you think?’
‘Oh, this is PREPOSTEROUS!’ Arthur shouted, leaping out of his chair. Lynne turned to pack away some parchment. By the time she turned back, her eyes were completely normal again.
‘There will be dragons, Arthur,’ she said. ‘Just be careful what they look like.’
‘What if I can’t do it?’
‘I’ll be here to help you.’
She patted him once more on the arm. He thought of something.
‘So, presumably, this is where I got my name from?’
Lynne blinked rapidly. ‘No, that’s just a coincidence.’
‘Oh.’
He headed towards the door. Just as he left, Lynne called out, ‘Speak to Fay.’
‘What … Why should I? She’s taken a set of compasses to all my Bruce Springsteen albums and left them on the doorstep.’
‘I mean it, Arthur. You must speak to her.’
‘And tell her what – to leave my albums alone because she’s dealing with a friend of the once and future king?’
She smiled.
‘Godspeed, Arthur.’
Arthur sat up in bed. Since he’d got home, every so often his head would twist around and he would almost feel like giggling. Perhaps this was one of those new management techniques he was always reading about. Convince your workers that it is their true destiny to work ridiculous hours and kill themselves in the process.
How did they ever employ such a nutter anyway? Surely if they really had a therapist he’d at least know something about it? She must be some crazy person. God, yeah, look at her office. She’d obviously walked off the streets and into the right office – after all, there, everything was always somebody else’s job. They’d all just turn a blind eye, even if a crazy woman walked in off the streets with a dead mongoose and set up a fake therapy practice.
Yes, that must be it. He’d put in something about it tomorrow.
He shook his head again, then switched off the light and turned over to sleep.
This time he could feel the horse move under him, the muscles rippling against his skin, the bright cold of the frosted day. The twigs and icicles cracking above him on the trees, the sound of the crisp bracken under the mare’s hooves. Sparks from her shoes bounced off rocks.
Gwyneth sat before him in the saddle. She twisted her head to look up at him. ‘I’m so, so sorry,’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘What do you mean?’
But her face was a picture of cold and misery, and she merely stretched out a hand from under her cloak and lightly touched his face. Her hand was cold too, and as he clasped hers with his, she handed him a small white flower.
He woke up with the flower in his hand.
‘Oh crap,’ said Arthur to himself in the bathroom mirror.
He peered into the office, unusually late and still feeling distinctly odd in the head.
Everyone had moved into the boardroom by special permission of Sir Eglamore, and it was completely overrun. It looked like a war room. All the computers had come too so they could work with each other without having to pop their heads over cubicles, and it meant the conversation could run in a constant hum, or in Sven’s case, humming and then shouting. There was paper everywhere: charts, graphs, and Marcus’s tear-stained financial projections littered the floor. Sandwiches had built himself a tunnel out of the computer paper circling the table, so he could get from one pot noodle to another undetected, and with less chance of getting one of Gwyneth’s stilettos in the ear.
Arthur looked in on them with, it struck him, a near parental air. It was strange to feel so separate from them, suddenly. And yet so concerned. He wandered over to where Sven was frantically typing.
‘What are you doing?’ Arthur asked, gently.
‘Why? Nothing? Why? It’s nothing. I haven’t done anything!’ said Sven, whizzing round.
‘No, no, I was just interested … But it doesn’t matter,’ said Arthur.
‘Oh.’ Sven shrugged. ‘Well, it’s ice density ratios. Look.’
Arthur leaned over his shoulder as Sven pressed a button and initiated a moving graph. ‘The ice moves in waves when you change the climate, just like real ice does.’
‘That’s really nice.’
‘Thanks,’ said Sven. ‘Now, have you finished your bonding textbook bullshit or do we have to talk some more?’
‘Never mind.’
Arthur looked over to where Gwyneth normally sat. There was so much to take in and organize that he had started coming in earlier and earlier. It was nice to get some peace and quiet in the morning and it meant he missed a lot of the traffic. Also, Gwyneth often came in early too, and he got a little happy feeling in his stomach when he saw her glide in with her bought-elsewhere coffee, perhaps a wisp of hair across her face if she’d been buffeted by the wind coming in from the car park. She would immediately head to the root of their latest problem – how to move people around the city, how to grant concessions, where to get the staff – with customary directness.
The submissions and presentations were, it seemed, still months away, but the team had to go up in front of the council in three weeks’ time to humbly ask them that if, on the complete off chance they were to get some hypothetical money, then possibly, just asking, no harm in taking a punt, could they annex half a park and import the largest maze in the world? And illuminate the top halves of all the buildings? And make a forest out of lamp-posts? And the six hundred other crazy ideas various people popped up with every day – ooh, and by the way, they wanted to pump one hundred tons of frozen nitrogen into the river and freeze it, was that okay, Mr Health and Safety and persons in charge of not letting anyone fall through the ice or inhale poisonous gases?
Part of Arthur felt nervous, but part of him felt like he hadn’t had so much fun in years, as he came in, tripped over the mess, shouted out projection figures and tried to get Sven to stop making the maze spell ‘fuck off’ from above in Danish.
As for Gwyneth, well, he tried (and, had he known it, failed utterly) to stay calm and professional around her, but he was definitely … Well, maybe he’d take the team out for a drink to celebrate all their hard work. He knew it was tacky, and that crapping on your own doorstep – even if she did allow him to, uh, crap – was a terrible idea and that it would upset the entire office and unbalance everything and everybody else would hate it (everybody else, actually, already thought something was going on) and it would be terrible … ooh, but even just the idea. Maybe a little business trip away … He found something extremely erotic about the idea of them knocking over the mini kettle in some three-star travel tavern and banging into the trouser press.
Suddenly, with a shock, Arthur realized he might almost be happy.
He quickly quashed any ideas of whatever the hell Lynne had been talking about, and decided to concentrate on the work in hand.
It was in this state of tired but pleasurable reverie at the end of the day that he parked the car outside the house, looked at the house and thought he really must put it on the market, give Fay some money and move somewhere he didn’t hate, when he saw her. At first he thought he was imagining things: thinking about someone and seeing them at the same time. She looked very strange indeed. He watched her for a second, then with a sigh, his stomach plummeting like a runaway lift, he slowly unbuckled his seat belt and opened the car door.
‘Hello, Fay.’ Too late, he remembered what Lynne had told him. Dammit, he should have called her before. It was so stupid, and selfish.
He didn’t even call me, thought Fay, her hands clenching at her sides. He puts a bomb under my life and now he tootles up here looking … looking
happy
. She couldn’t bear it. If she had had the slightest reservation about her plan, about what she’d come here to do, it evaporated. He really didn’t give a shit and he’d proved it, every night, every hour she’d sat on her old single bed at her mother’s house, crying and crying and waiting for the phone to ring.
‘Hello Arthur!’ she said gaily, pasting the smile onto her face and stepping forward. ‘Just came to pick up the … um, coving.’
‘I can’t – I mean, you’re being so good about this,’ Arthur was saying. It was much later. Fay had brought two bottles of wine and he’d drunk most of them.
‘Well, there’s no point in being unreasonable,’ said Fay. ‘These things happen.’
They were dividing up what was left of the plants and small ornaments and finishing off a Chinese carryout. After he’d stepped out of the car, Arthur had been expecting almost anything – John Wayne Bobbitt had briefly come to mind – but a smile and a bottle of wine hadn’t been on the list.
All the way into the house she’d apologized for her behaviour before: talked about how shocked she was, but how she was getting on with life as usual.
‘How’s work?’ he’d asked.
‘Oh, same old, same old,’ she’d replied. ‘You know how it gets in that crazy old world of recruitment.’
‘Yes,’ he’d said, registering vaguely that he never really had.
And now they were lying on the rug, listening to one last unmauled Bruce Springsteen album to ascertain which one of them liked it the best so could take it home, and giggling.
‘Well, you’ve certainly got this stripped down living fashion right,’ said Fay, looking round the practically empty sitting room.
‘Yes. But it’s funny, things keep disappearing. Toilet roll, soap. That kind of stuff. I can’t work it out.’
‘Oh, it’ll come to you eventually.’
Fay rolled herself over onto her stomach and manoeuvred herself towards him.
‘What about … a little bit of old times’ sake?’ she said suddenly, sucking seductively on a noodle.