Weaveworld

2

‘Cal?’

There was a long silence at the other end of the telephone line, when she thought contact had been broken.

‘Cal, are you there?’ Then he said: ‘Suzanna?’

‘Yes. It’s me.’

‘Suzanna …’

She felt tears close, hearing him speak her name.

‘I have to see you, Cal.’

‘Where are you?’

‘In the middle of the city. Near some monument of Queen Victoria.’

‘The end of Castle Street.’

‘If you say so. Can I see you? It’s very urgent.’

‘Yes, of course. I’m not far from there. I’ll slip away now. Meet you on the steps in ten minutes.’

He was there in seven, dressed in a charcoal-grey work suit, collar turned up against the drizzle, one of a hundred similar young men – accountant’s clerks and junior managers – she’d seen pass by as she waited under Victoria’s imperious gaze.

He did not embrace her, nor even touch her. He simply came to a halt two yards from where she stood, and looked at her with a mixture of pleasure and puzzlement, and said:

‘Hello.’

‘Hello.’

The rain was coming on more heavily by the moment.

‘Shall we talk in the car?’ she said. ‘I don’t like to leave the carpet on its own.’

At the mention of the carpet, the puzzled look on his face intensified, but he said nothing.

In his head Cal had a vague image of himself rummaging through a dirty warehouse for a carpet, this carpet presumably – but his grasp on the whole story was slippery.

The car was parked in Water Street, a stone’s throw from the monument. The rain beat a tattoo on the roof of the vehicle as they sat side by side.

Her precious cargo, which she’d been so loath to leave, was stored in the back of the car, doubled up and roughly covered with a sheet. Try as he might, he still couldn’t get a fix on why the carpet was so important to her; or indeed why this woman – with whom he could only remember spending a few hours – was so important to him. Why had the sound of her voice on the telephone brought him running? Why had his stomach begun churning at the sight of her? It was absurd and frustrating, to feel so much and know so little.

Things would become clear, he reassured himself, once they began to talk.

But he was wrong in that assumption. The more they talked, the more bewildered he became.

‘I need your help,’ she said to him. ‘I can’t explain everything – we haven’t got time now – but apparently there’s some kind of Prophet appeared, promising a returning to the Fugue.

Jerichau went to one of the meetings, and he didn’t come back –’

‘Wait,’ said Cal, hands up to stem the rush of information. ‘Hold on a moment. I’m not following this. Jerichau?’

‘You remember Jerichau,’ she said.

It was an unusual name, not easily forgotten. But he could put no face to it.

‘Should I know him?’ he said.

‘Good God, Cal –’

‘To be honest … a lot of things … are blurred.’

‘You remember me well enough.’

‘Yes. Of course. Of course I do.’

‘And Nimrod. And Apolline. The night in the Fugue.’

She could see even before he murmured ‘No’ that he remembered nothing.

Perhaps there was a natural process at work here; a means by which the mind dealt with experiences that contradicted a lifetime’s prejudices about the nature of reality. People simply forgot.

‘I have strange dreams.’ Cal said, his face full of confusion. ‘What sort of dreams?’

He shook his head. He knew his vocabulary would prove woefully inadequate.

‘It’s hard to describe.’ he said. ‘Like I’m a child, you know? Except that I’m not. Walking somewhere I’ve never been. Not lost, though. Oh shit –’ He gave up, angered by his fumblings.

‘I can’t describe it.’

‘We were there once,’ she told him calmly. ‘You and I. We were there. What you’re dreaming about exists. Cal.’

He stared at her for long moments. The confusion didn’t leave his face, but it was mellowed now by the smallest of smiles.

‘Exists?’ he said.

‘Oh yes. Truly.’

‘Tell me,’ he said softly. ‘Please tell me.’

‘I don’t know where to begin either.’

‘Try,’ he said. ‘Please.’ There was such a yearning in his eyes; such a need to know.

‘The carpet –’ she began.

He glanced back at it. ‘Is it yours?’ he asked.

She couldn’t help but laugh.

‘No,’ she said. ‘The place you dream of … it’s here. It’s in this carpet.’

She could see incredulity sparring with his faith in her.

‘Here?’ he said.

Sometimes she almost found it difficult to comprehend that fact herself, and she had an advantage over Cal, or even poor Jerichau: she had the menstruum as a touchstone of the miraculous. She didn’t blame him for his doubt.

‘You have to trust me,’ she said. ‘However impossible it sounds.’

‘I know this,’ he said, his voice tight. ‘Somewhere in me, I know this.’

‘Of course you do. And you’ll remember. I’ll help you remember. But for now I need help from you.’

‘Yes. Whatever you want.’

‘There are people chasing me.’

‘Why? Who?’

‘I’ll tell you about them, when we get the chance. The point is, they want to destroy the land you dream about, Cal. The world hidden in that carpet. The Fugue.’

‘You want to hide back at my place?’

She shook her head, ‘I risked a call there to get your work number. They could be waiting there already.’

‘Geraldine wouldn’t tell them anything.’

‘I can’t risk that.’

‘We could go to Deke’s place, out in Kirkby. Nobody’ll find us there.’

‘You trust him?’

‘Sure.’

She switched on the engine. ‘I’ll drive,’ she said. ‘You direct.’