Destiny's Children - Coalescent. Part 11

Regina was laughing, and outraged. She put down her papyrus and came after him. "That's disgusting!

Give it back-"

But he wouldn't, and they chased around the room for a while. They had developed a way of chasing without touching, of coming close but not quite into contact, a game with subtle, unspoken rules.

At length he yielded, threw himself down on Marina's bed, and tucked the b.l.o.o.d.y little relic back where it had come from.

"She'll know," said Regina.

"So what if she does? It's only Marina." He got up again and walked to herlararium , in one corner.

"I've never taken a proper look at this before." He picked up one of thematres . "By Cybele's left nipple, how ugly."

"Put it down."

"And howcheap -"

"Put it down."

He looked up, startled at her tone. "All right, all right." He put down the little statuette-not in the right place; she promised herself she would fix it later. He said, "So every day you waste good food and wine on these bits of nonsense . . ." He eyed her. "But have you ever seen areal G.o.d?"

"What do you mean?"

For answer he beckoned her, and tiptoed out of the room. Of course, she followed.

Amator had his own ch.o.r.es to complete. Carausias was trying to train him to run the villa, the cause of much conflict between the two of them. But he always seemed to have plenty of spare time, and he seemed happy to spend a lot of it with Regina. When he discovered she liked "soldiers" he proclaimed himself an expert, dug out an old set from some corner of the house, and set it up in the courtyard where they would play. Or he would play ball-catching games with her, or simply chase her through the colonnades, or in the open s.p.a.ces beyond the town walls. Gradually, almost tentatively, a relationship had built up between them.

But there was an edge to Amator. At eighteen he was so much older than she was. Perhaps she enjoyed the undercurrent of danger that she sensed about him, a boy who knew so much more than she did, had surelydone so much more, and yet was so inexplicably interested in her. Amator was mysterious, disturbing, somehow enchanting-but above all he was fun, and he always seemed to dress with color and style, unlike the drab townsfolk.

Cartumandua maintained a frosty silence about all this.

They walked around the courtyard until they came to the head of the stone stairs that led to Carausias's shrine.

She stepped back. "No. I mustn't go down there. Carausias wouldn't like it."

"Well, Carausias doesn't like being bald and fat and old, but he's got to live with it. Come on-unless you're scared." He set foot on one step, then another, and was suddenly trotting down and out of sight.

After a heartbeat's hesitation, she followed.

The shrine was just a pit in the ground. She could hear Amator scratching, and then he held up a candle.

His face seemed to hover in the dark.

In the uncertain light she could see that above the stonework of this little underground shrine there was a layer of darker earth. When she probed at it, it crumbled, and left black on her fingers, like soot. Later she would discover that twice during its short history Verulamium had been burned to the ground, and these burned ash layers were relics of those catastrophes.

An arched hollow had been cut into the wall. In it stood a little statuette, apparently bronze, of a man riding a horse. His outsized head bore a crested helmet. Small offerings had been laid out before him, perhaps fragments of food.

"Behold," said Amator mock-sepulchrally. "Mars Toutatis, the warrior G.o.d of the Catuvellauni. Held to be the Mars of Rome, while that was politically convenient. What now-do you think he will become the Christ? Will we have to carve achi-rho above his head?"

"You shouldn't talk like that," she whispered.

"Or what? Is his horse going to p.i.s.s down my leg?"

"We shouldn't be down here."

"I daresay you're right. But n.o.body is going to know." He bent forward and blew out the flame. The darkness was complete, save only for the faintest of diffuse daylight glows from the stairwell. She could sense his heavy warmth, less than a hand's breadth from her, and his breath was hot on her cheek.

He backed away, his tunic rustling softly. "Now we share a secret." He laughed, and his feet clattered on the stairs. She followed him into the daylight, but when she reached the ground, he had gone.

Chapter 10.

Miami Airport was a thoroughly unpleasant place. The queues of grimy adults and unhappy kids before the immigration barriers were as long and slow moving as I could remember in any American airport.

I'd taken many trips to the States over the years, for work, vacations-and in pursuit of my sister. After going to work in America some fifteen years before, Gina had come home only a handful of times, most recently, and even then grudgingly, for our father's funeral. Her two boys were the only kids in the family-that I knew of, I reminded myself, thinking of Rosa. They had quickly become precious to me, no doubt through some mixture of sentiment and genetic longing. But to get to see them, every time I had to endure these red-eye flights and the ferocity of U.S. immigration controllers.

Outside the terminal, the weather seemed unseasonably humid and hot for October. n.o.body was there to greet me, of course. I took a cab from the airport to my hotel in Miami Beach. I was only maybe twenty miles from my sister. But taking a hotel room was my habit. I'd long learned not to put unnecessary pressure on Gina by actually having her put me up, despite my having flown around the world to see her.

I generally stayed at Best Westerns, but for this trip I'd decided to spend a little money, and had used the Internet to find a room at a big spa hotel on the coast. The hotel's air-conditioning was merciless, of course, and the temperature must have dropped twenty degrees as I stepped through the sliding doors to reception. But I was pleased with the plush, sweeping interior, the atrium done out in tiles of chrome and purple, the huge sunken bar, the glimpses of chlorine-blue pools beyond wide gla.s.s doors. Meeting rooms in bays cl.u.s.tered around the atrium; evidently the hotel relied a lot on corporate business, and I wondered if Gina got much work here.

My room was on the twelfth floor. I turned on the TV and briskly unpacked. The room was big, expansive, with a balcony that gave a view of the sea-at least it did if you crowded right up against the rail, and peered past the flank of the building and across a busy highway. It was late afternoon, but as always after a transatlantic flight it was eerie to see the sun still stranded so high above the horizon. I've always found flying tough.

I knew I should shower, have a drink, sleep as long as possible. But I felt restless, vaguely disturbed; right now my life seemed to be too complicated to let me relax.

I put on a fresh shirt, grabbed a handful of dollars, made sure I had pocketed my magnetic room card, and went out to the elevator.

I walked through the bar, through those big picture-window gla.s.s doors, and out to the pool area, a complex miniature landscape of white concrete. The heat was heavy, steamy, and my English trousers, shoes, and socks felt ridiculously heavy. For sure I wished I had brought a hat.

There were only a few people by the pool. A group of thirty-something women, bronzed, in bikinis, a little overweight, had gathered on sun loungers and were cooing over images in a digital camera- housewives attending the hotel's health club, perhaps.

There was an ungated gap in the rear wall of the pool area. I pa.s.sed through and walked down a short path edged by long gra.s.s. I found myself on a boardwalk, a long wooden walkway standing over the sand and gra.s.s on low stilts. It stretched to my left and right, to north and south. Before me, beyond a broad stretch of pale gold sand, was the sea. There was a breeze in my face, hot but bl.u.s.tery. I could see n.o.body swimming, and a red flag fluttered over a small stilted structure, maybe a Coast Guard station.

Hurricane Jonathan was rattling around the west Atlantic; it wasn't expected to touch down on land but was creating swell and wind.

I wasn't planning to swim anyhow.

I knew that if I walked south I would approach the town center, so I turned that way and set off. I walked briskly past a series of gargantuan hotels, great art deco confections of concrete in shocking pink or electric blue, like s.p.a.ceships parked along the Atlantic coast. The boardwalk was easy on the feet, but I seemed to be the only stroller. A few people pa.s.sed me, or overtook me, joggers or speed-walkers, mostly young professional-looking types, dressed in Lycra or sweat suits, tiny headphones clamped to their heads, their faces closed, unseeing. At regular intervals there were little open kiosks, with big b.u.t.tons you could press to call for police help.

This was my first time in Miami Beach. Gina had moved here only nine months earlier. She ran a small company in partnership with her husband of fifteen years, a New Yorker called Dan Bazalget. They had met in New York during an electronics product-launch event; they had both been working in PR, for the same company on different sides of the Atlantic. They had already been in their forties, with the complicated pasts you acquire by that age; Gina had a childless divorce behind her, and Dan actually had a twenty-year-old daughter, whom I'd never met. But once they had glommed onto each other they had soon gone into business together, and then sailed into parenthood, producing two fine boys as easily as sh.e.l.ling peas, despite Gina's age. Now, based on Gina's Florida inheritance, they sold something called "conference visioning and management"-coordinating probably unnecessary conferences for senior business types.

My father the accountant had always mocked Gina's job t.i.tle. "I mean, can you take a degree in 'conference visioning'?" he would ask. Well, actually, yes, you could. I didn't begrudge Gina her thoroughly modern choice of career or her commercial success-not much, anyhow, given the usual sibling-rivalry envy for a sister who in every aspect of her life had always seemed to do better than I ever had.

When I had pa.s.sed most of the big hotels I cut inland, pa.s.sing through an alleyway. I crossed Ocean Drive, where even the police officers wore skintight shorts, to reach a main street called Collins Avenue.

I bought a small tourist map for a few dollars from a drugstore and briskly toured Miami Beach's highlights. There was an art deco area, a small district peppered with ornately decorated buildings- hotels, private homes, banks, bars, some set behind heavy security gates. The most beautiful building of all seemed to be the town's main post office, a pointlessly grand edifice across whose magnificent floor queues snaked desolately.

I couldn't quite get the city into focus. There was a faint sense of sleaze about the place, of a past of dirty money and menace-and yet somebody had made a determined effort to clean it up, as witness the alarm b.u.t.tons on the boardwalk. And I knew my sister well enough to know she wouldn't bring her kids to a place she couldn't make them safe. Still, I was relieved to get back to the boardwalk, and the huge physical presence of the sea.

I never watch American TV. Those constant ad breaks make me feel hyperactive, as if I've been taking too much sugar. I ordered up a movie, a comedy, and a room service "snack," bigger than most Sunday lunches back home, with a half bottle of Californian Chardonnay. I was asleep before the movie was over.

"George. Lovely to see you, et cetera." She took my shoulders and actually gave me an air-kiss, her left cheek brushing mine, her lips missing me by a good couple of inches. Automatically I shaped up for a second kiss on the right, but I'd forgotten that's the European way-in America you get just the one.

Well, that was about as much affection as I generally got from Gina.

She said, "As you can see I took time off work to see you, though Dan couldn't get away. The boys are on their way home from school. I secured them a half day off." Her accent was vaguely mid-Atlantic.

"I appreciate that . . ."

Her house was modern, the walls wooden, perhaps a little sun-bleached around the front door. The rooms were filled with light, lined with bookcases and TVs-it seemed there was a set in every room, and in most a computer-and there was a bright but slightly irritating smell, perhaps of pine-scented air freshener. This was a big, sprawling homestead set in an extensive acreage of finely cut lawn, over which sprinklers hissed, even at this hour, eleven in the morning. There is always so much s.p.a.ce in America, so much room.

But the first thing I saw when I walked into her hallway was Dad's grandfather clock.

It was a big, moth-eaten, unmistakable relic, whose heavy, tarnished pendulum and time-stained clock face had made it a kind of focal point of our childhood. I hadn't noticed it missing in my clear-out visits to the house in Manchester. But now here it was-it looked as if it might even have been renovated- and I realized that Gina must have taken it from Dad, presumably with his consent, before he died.

She saw me looking at the d.a.m.n clock. We both knew what it signified. It wasn't that I wanted the clock, or would have stopped her taking it, but I would have appreciated some discussion over this bit of our shared heritage. It wasn't a good start to the visit.

She took me to a breakfast room, sat me at a polished pine table, and loaded a coffee percolator. We sat and talked, inconsequentially, about the continuing fallout from our father's death: the sale of the house, his business affairs. She didn't ask me about my own life, but then she never did.

She looked her age, midfifties, but good with it. She looked physically relaxed, the way you do if you work out just enough. She'd let her thick blond hair fill with gray, and it was swept back from her temples and forehead, a little severely. I always thought of her face as a far more beautiful version of mine, her features more delicate, her chin smaller, her nose not quite so fleshy. Now wrinkles spread around her eyes and mouth, and her skin was a little weather-beaten, polished by the Florida sun. But she still had the family eyes, limpid and clear gray, what one of her boyfriends used to callsmoke-filled .

We ran out of facts to swap, and the silence was briefly awkward.

She said, "It's good of you to come. It's important to be with family at a time like this. Et cetera."

"So it is," I said. It was true. For all the unending tension between us, as I looked into that face that was so like my own, I felt a certain peace I had lost since Dad's death.

But she broke the spell by saying sharply, "I know you think I should have stayed longer after the funeral."

"You've got your life to live here. It was easier for me to handle it."

"I suppose it was," she said. It was a coded put-down, of course.You had the time because, by contrast with me, you don'thave a life. That's sibling rivalry for you.

I pulled her sc.r.a.pbook about Regina out of my jacket pocket and put it on the table. "I found this at home. I don't remember you making it."

"Before your time, I suppose."

"I thought you might want it."

She pulled the dog-eared little book toward her. She didn't pick it up, but turned the pages with the tips of her thumb and forefinger. It was as if I had presented her with her afterbirth pickled in a jar. She said coldly, "Thanks."

I was irritated, with her and myself. "s.h.i.t, Gina. Why do we find it so hard to get on? Even at a time like this. I'm not here to fight-"

"Then why?" she said coldly.

"For Rosa," I said without hesitation. I was satisfied to see how her smoke-filled eyes, so similar to mine, widened.

That was when the boys burst in, to our mutual relief.

"George!" "Hey, Uncle George . . ."

Michael was ten, John twelve. They were wearing summer gear, T-shirts, shorts, and huge, expensive- looking trainers. Michael had some kind of complicated Frisbee under his arm. I actually got a hug from Michael, and a punch on the shoulder from his older brother, hard enough to hurt. From those two I took whatever I could get.

I could see their gazes wandering around the kitchen. "Go to my hire car and take a look in the boot."

"Thetrunk ," they chorused.

"Whatever. Go, go."

I always enjoyed playing the indulgent uncle, if only because I had a knack of spotting presents that suited my nephews' tastes. John always seemed a little duller than his brother, and would be content with computer games and the like, pa.s.sive entertainments. But little Michael was always a tinkerer.

Once I found an old Meccano set-an antique from the sixties, from my own childhood, but in mint condition. Michael had loved it.

My gifts didn't work quite so well this time. I'd bought them both robot-making kits. You'd put together a motor and wheelbase with a processor you could command via a PC interface, so producing a little beetlelike creature that could scuttle around the room, avoiding chair legs. The beetles could even learn simple tasks, like how to push a table-tennis ball up a ramp. But in the better American schools they build critters like this for homework. The boys dutifully played with the kits for a while, though.

We ate lunch, a simple but typically delicious fish salad-my sister was annoyingly good at everything- and Gina sent us all outside the house.

Over the immense back lawn we chased Michael's Frisbee back and forth. He had modified it: it had a series of round holes carved neatly around its perimeter. It shot through the air like a spinning bullet.

More engineering: later Michael showed me a whole collection of modified Frisbees, kept in a box under his bed.

He was actually working through a series of experiments in a systematic way, using a bunch of stuff from junk shops and friends' lofts, trying to design a better Frisbee. At first he had done what you'd expect a kid to do, cutting out smiley faces, building on cabins for model soldiers, installing gigantic fins. But he'd quickly progressed to experiments focused on improving the Frisbees' actual aerodynamic performance. He had cut out patterned holes, or notched their edges, or scratched spirals and loops into their surfaces. He was even keeping a little log on his computer, with a scanned-in photograph of each change, and results given as objectively as he could, such as records of greatest distance achieved. I was impressed, but I felt kind of wistful, for I would have loved to have been around to share this with him.

I found flying that d.a.m.n Frisbee hard work, however. When the boys had been smaller it had been easy for me to keep ahead of them. But now John was nearly as tall as me, and both of them were a h.e.l.l of a lot more athletic. I was soon puffing hard, and embarra.s.sed at my lack of competence with the Frisbee.

And tensions between the two of them soon emerged. They made up a catching game with rules that quickly elaborated far beyond my comprehension, and when John infringed a rule-or anyhow Michael thought he did-the bickering started.

Anyhow, so it went. Running around that sandy lawn, with the Atlantic breakers rumbling in the background, I worked as hard as I could while the boys barely broke a sweat, and it was with relief that I welcomed the next milestone in the day, which was Dan's arrival home from work.

"Hey, boys." He left his briefcase at the back door of the house and came bounding out onto the lawn to join in the Frisbee game. "George! How's the mother ship?"

"England swings, Dan."

He asked about my flight and my hotel, and I was gratified that Michael started telling him about my robot kit. We played for a while. Then we took a walk along the beach-sandy and empty, a private stretch reserved for the estate of which this house was a part.

As the boys ran ahead, still impossibly full of energy, Dan and I walked together. Dan Bazalget was a big man, built like a rugby player. I knew he had played football at college, thirty years before, and his bulk seemed too large for his short-sleeved white shirt. His face was broad, his eyes small. He was bald, and had shaved the remnant fringe of his hair, so that his head gleamed like a cannonball.

Dan was good at conversation. He asked me about the aftermath of Dad's death, and unlike my sister drew me out a little about the state of my life, my work. But there was always an odd reserve about him, his deep brown eyes unreadable. He would look at me and smile, ostensibly generous, neither judging nor caring. To him I was surely just an appendage of his wife's past, neither welcome nor unwelcome in his life, just there.

As the sun began its journey down the western sky, we returned home for dinner, the boys running ahead, still whooping, hollering, and fighting.

The meal was strained. The kids picked up on the tension and were subdued. Gina was polite enough during the meal, and her gentle chiding of her children for lapses in manners and so forth was as calm and efficient as ever. But her smiles were steel and fooled n.o.body.

Before the dessert she went to the kitchen, and I joined her, ostensibly to stack dishes and help make coffee.