Thirty-Six

  He had been twenty years old when they found him. A daydreamer, he had always seen his life unfolding in front of him, spanning the distance of time — a single gold thread, tangled in a mess of coarse twine, stretched to the point of breakage, but strong. Meant to withstand. Left outside a supermarket when he was just a few days old, clumsily wrapped in an old threadbare bath towel, he had never known his parents.

  At first, it had just been the man. He had found him sleeping rough, something he had been doing on and off for the past seven months. The back door to a supermarket. He was aware of the irony, but it was covered and kept the rain off. Plus, the guy who worked at the bakery, an older man named Gordon, gave him the bread that was too stale to sell on his way home from work every weekday. On the weekends, he shared with the rats.

  Violence. That’s what the last shelter he had stayed at had accused him of when they threw him out. Very few hostels — as they were more properly called — accepted walk-ins. Most needed a referral from the council. After he was thrown out, he knew he was unlikely to get another. Besides, last time he had been on a waiting list for twelve weeks before he was able to move in. Behind the supermarket, there was no paperwork.

  The man was kind and bought him breakfast, taking him to a café further down the highstreet. If he had smelled, which he was certain he did, the man never said anything. He didn’t pull his nose or look down on him as others did. Instead, he ate with him, and they talked about inconsequential things like the Christmas decorations that were being put up around the town. Eventually, the man had asked him how he had ended up behind the supermarket. He had shrugged and shovelled a forkful of egg into his mouth. Opposite, the man cradled a coffee, quietly waiting for him to answer. The steam from the mug seemed to wrap itself around his smile. He was older than he was and spoke well, like he was someone who knew a lot about a lot, but he never made him feel small or stupid, he just seemed happy to sit and talk with him. When he didn’t answer his question, the man hadn’t asked again. Putting his coffee down, he had pointed to a little boy outside the window. Dressed in a green coat and wellington boots, the boy was chasing a ball down the street, his mother fast on his heels, shouting for him to slow down. Smiling, the man told him he had a boy of a similar age. He nodded and ate another forkful of egg. Turning his eyes back to the table, the man asked if he had any brothers or sisters. He shook his head. The man nodded and took a sip from his mug.

  Two weeks passed before he saw the man again. Just as before, he bought him breakfast. The same café and the same toast, baked beans and fried egg. Outside, it was getting colder. After they were finished at the café, the man had offered him his gloves. He slid them off his fingers and pushed them into his hands. They were thick and blue. He tried to give them back, but the man shook his head and said he simply wouldn’t allow it, and so he had said thank you, and told him that they were by far the nicest pair of gloves he had ever had. In truth, they were the only ones he had ever had. The man had smiled and nodded all the same.

  The next time he saw him, the man was energetic. He greeted him like an old friend, touching him on the arm when he saw him at the supermarket. Strange, but nice. His stomach had grumbled in anticipation of the egg and toast. As they ate, the man told him his father had a job for him. He never explained what the job was, but was clearly happy to be able to offer it to him. Food and a warm place to sleep, the man promised as he cut into the egg, popping the yolk and flooding the plate yellow.

  He hadn’t known what to say. Winter had arrived and it was freezing. Another man on the streets, who alternated between the alleyway that ran down the side of a pub and a covered bus stop, told him that a body had been found in the park. Part man, part ice cube. He was an old timer, so the man said, and hadn’t seen a bed for years. He didn’t want to die like that. He was meant to withstand.

  Before the man left, he accepted his offer. He had been happy — they had both been happy. He had found a way off the streets and the man had done a good deed. Gripping his shoulder as they walked together, the man asked him if he wanted to leave now. He had been in shock, and could only smile and revel in his good fortune as the man invited him into his car. He could feel the twine slackening. The man, smiling at him across the car, his brown eyes gentle and bright, had even let him put the heater on as they drove away. Thinking of the gold thread, he made sure to look for the supermarket as they passed. He wanted it to be the last time he ever saw it.

  Lee was thirty-six now. For sixteen years he had worked for Robert and his father, and it had been a long time since he had seen the supermarket or dreamt of the gold thread.

  He had been sitting at the window for hours. In the distance, he could see the trees. Over them, the Sun. Earlier in the day, he had seen the younger woman drive past. She hadn’t seen him. The glass was warm now. He placed his hand on the window. The Sun was hitting it directly.

  Behind him, the door opened. It was Robert. He had a smile on his face and beckoned him into the adjacent room. He stood up and moved away from the window.

  In the other room there was a table. Robert gestured to it, and invited him to sit down. It had been laid for two. Toast, baked beans and fried egg.

  ‘It’s been a long time since we’ve had breakfast together,’ Robert said as he pulled out his chair and sat. Lee nodded and took his place opposite. In front of Robert’s place, a cup of coffee.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he said, indicating to his drink. ‘I know you don’t drink it.’

  Lee shook his head. He didn’t mind.

  Robert pointed to a jug in the centre of the table. ‘I got you some juice instead.’ Lee strained in his chair to look. ‘Fresh oranges,’ Robert said. He nodded to the empty glass in front of Lee’s plate. ‘Would you like me to pour you some?’

  Lee shook his head. He could manage.

  They ate together in silence. The only sound was that of their knives and forks contacting the plates. Lee scrapped the beans onto the toast with his knife. The butter had been spread thick, just how he liked it. Eventually, Robert spoke.

  ‘I’ve always treated you well, haven’t I, Lee?’

  The other man was chewing and swallowed before speaking. ‘I suppose you have,’ he said.

  ‘That’s good.’

  They continued eating. Robert stopped to take a drink. Lee poured himself a glass of juice.

  ‘You know,’ Robert said after he put his cup down, ‘it really has been a long time, hasn’t it?’ He was smiling. For the first time, Lee noticed the creases that furred the edges of the man’s eyes.

  ‘I guess it has,’ he said and drank some of the orange juice.

  ‘We’re both older,’ Robert continued, cutting himself a square of yolk-sodden toast, ‘one of us more so than the other.’ He laughed and Lee smiled. ‘Only the other day I was thinking about how much we’ve both changed.’

  Lee put down his glass. ‘You seem the same to me, Robert.’

  The other man looked intrigued, but said nothing. He wiped the square of eggy toast around his plate before bringing it to his mouth. Outside, they heard a bird fly past the window. It was singing sweetly. Both men lifted their heads from their food as it passed by.

  Lee was eating too quickly. Robert asked him if he would like another egg. ‘More toast, too, perhaps?’

  Lee nodded and said he would.

  Robert wrapped his fingers around his cup and sat, smiling, at his companion. Lee finished the last of his egg and put his fork down.

  ‘Is the food good?’ Robert asked, watching the other man reach for his glass of juice.

  Lee nodded and drank.

  ‘I am glad.’

  As he spoke, Robert stood up and moved to the metal hatch in the corner of the room. It opened and a plate was pushed through. Toast and another fried egg. He carried it over to the table and placed it in front of the other man. By the time Robert had returned to his seat, the fork was back in Lee’s hand and the food was being devoured.

  ‘I find,’ Robert said as the other man ate, ‘that the older I get, the less I am able to eat.’

  Lee said nothing. Robert just smiled and took another sip of coffee.

  When the food was gone, Lee placed his hands on the table. His shoulders were wide and they overhung the sides of the chair as he leant back against it.

  ‘Satisfied?’ Robert asked from the other side of the table.

  Lee nodded, a faint smile on his lips.

  ‘Good,’ said Robert. ‘Don’t forget your drink.’

  The other man finished what was left of his juice. Robert leant forward in his seat and refilled his glass from the jug. Lee thanked him and drank some more. Robert returned the jug to the middle of the table.

  ‘Food and a warm place to sleep, that’s what I promised you all those years ago,’ he said. ‘I didn’t lie, did I?’

  Lee looked at him. ‘No, I don’t suppose you did.’ Something must have caught in his throat as he started coughing. Robert raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m okay,’ the man said, thumping his chest. He coughed again and so reached for his glass to take a drink.

  ‘Slowly,’ Robert said, watching him as he drank. Lee’s coughing subsided. ‘That’s better.’

  Lee settled back in his chair, Robert’s eyes still on him.

  After a minute of silence, Robert said, ‘You are remarkable, Lee.’ His tone softened as he spoke. ‘I knew it the moment I first saw you.’

  The other man didn’t say anything.

  ‘I knew you would be a good fit for the job.’

  Still nothing.

  ‘And, truly, you’ve made me very proud.’

  Lee stayed quiet. He tried to reach for his glass, to take another drink, but found it difficult to raise his hand off the table.

  ‘It really will be sad,’ Robert continued, his gaze dropping to the table, ‘to carry on without you.’

  Lee went to say something, but found his lips were too heavy.

  Robert took a deep breath. ‘Very sad.’ Straightening in his chair, he raised his hand to his mouth and took another breath.

  By now, Lee knew there was something wrong. With heavy eyelids, he looked at Robert and silently appealed to him. The other man saw the fear in his eyes. He stood up and moved around the table.

  ‘Lee,’ Robert said, crouching beside him, ‘it’s okay, Lee.’

  Slowly, Lee turned his head, his neck resisting his brain’s command as it struggled to turn. Robert shushed him and laid a hand on his arm.

  ‘Don’t be scared, Lee,’ he said, his voice low and soft. ‘Everything will be okay.’

  But Lee was scared, and his bottom lip quivered as he tried to speak. He felt his shoulders droop and start to slip away from the back of the chair. Robert stood up and wrapped his arms around him, holding his thick torso upright as he fell towards the table.

  ‘It’s okay, Lee,’ he repeated, gripping the man in his arms. ‘Just try to relax. It will be over soon.’

  Too heavy to keep holding him, Robert gently lowered the man’s head onto the table. As he did, he stroked his hair.

  ‘Sixteen years,’ he whispered as he positioned Lee’s face, so that his left cheek was against the table. ‘I kept you as long as I could.’ Robert was eye to eye with the man now. Lee didn’t blink. ‘But, this day had to come.’ Robert touched the man’s forehead. ‘You’ve sired so many offspring, Lee,’ he continued, ‘and the day my father passed the homestead over to me, thirteen years ago, I knew—’ he paused, his breath catching in his throat. ‘I knew I would be okay, running this place myself. Do you know why, Lee?’ The other man was silent on the table. ‘Because I had you.’ Robert smiled. ‘A fine bull.’

  He held him until the end, even as his last breath died in his lungs and his heart stopped beating. Face next to his, he watched as the other man’s essence expired and faded from his eyes. Finally, Robert placed two fingers on Lee’s neck to check for a pulse. He’s really gone. He sighed and closed his eyes, letting his own head rest on the table beside Lee’s.

  The spool was empty. The gold thread spent.

  Thirty-Seven

  She hadn’t been there when he woke. Tired, he drifted downstairs to the kitchen and made himself breakfast. He ate it in the sitting room on the sofa and must have fallen back asleep after he had finished. Jolting awake, he noticed the Sun was higher in the sky than it had been before. He ruffled his hair and pulled himself to his feet.

  The to-ing and fro-ing between home and university was taking its toll on Alexander. He had been doing it for several weeks and the end was almost in sight. Thankfully. He had arrived home late last night and wasn’t sure how much longer either he or his car could withstand the moving about. Thick white smoke had started billowing out from the exhaust and that seemed to signal its impending demise. He had driven the same car since he passed his driving test aged seventeen. It was probably time for a change.

  Of course, he could have just stayed at university, as he had done every other term since he matriculated. He was, however, becoming more and more disenchanted with the place. What had originally been his escape had become — or perhaps always had been — just another form of captivity. Yet more posturing, stubborn old men. Those he had considered friends, he had distanced himself from, and his studies revealed themselves to be more of a process of box-ticking than of genuine enlightenment. His father had cautioned him not to expect too much before he went three years earlier. It was a place of thinking, for sure, but still one that had been infiltrated and subverted by the other, the sub-homo, and there is only so much you can get from a place like that.

  So why bother then?

  He still needed a medical education and it was unreasonable to expect his father to teach him absolutely everything. Robert was a busy man, and he himself had endured the same struggles that Alexander was currently experiencing. Or so he says. In addition to that, it was important to be seen as a part of the system. To worship the same institutions and pieces of paper that they did. To — as Ernest Stansfield had dedicated his whole life to — live in plain sight and dismantle them using their own systems. To take advantage of their inherent failings and find sustenance there. To live as parasites. It was a terrible truth, but that was what the other had made them: outcasts in their own world.

  And so Alexander remained in the system, and would do until he graduated and became a certified, societal recognised doctor. A product of their system, he would be infallible.

  He buzzed at the door to the Seat and she let him in.

  ‘Good morning.’

  She turned in her chair and smiled. ‘Good morning.’ Motioning for him to come in, she asked if he had slept well. He sat down in the chair next to hers and said he had. Knee to knee, she told him he looked tired and he agreed he probably was.

  ‘You don’t have to make the journey,’ Mary said, her chair swaying side to side as she swivelled it with her feet. ‘If it’s too tiring.’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s okay.’

  Behind her, the monitors were on. Each screen bore an image of a location somewhere on the homestead. Women in all stages of motherhood, from conception to pregnancy to lactation. Children could also be seen on several of the cameras, boys and girls of different ages, playing and laughing, their expressions bright with youth and innocence. On one of the screens, which was connected to an external camera, Alexander saw his father carrying a box of equipment. Heavy mechanical weighing scales and a telescopic height measure bounced up and down in the box as he crossed the screen.

  ‘A busy day,’ he said, nodding at the monitor.

  ‘He’s burying himself in it,’ Mary replied, running a strand of her hair through her fingers. ‘He still hasn’t got over last week.’

  Alexander nodded. ‘Grandpa said.’

  She let go of her hair and grinned. ‘I imagine he was his usual sympathetic self.’

  ‘Yeah, and overflowing with sensitive opinions and advice.’

  Mary laughed. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘You can imagine,’ he said, resting his head against the back of the chair. ‘About how it was when he was in charge and how disappointed he is that I’d turned out to be even more of a—’ he paused, recalling the impromptu lecture he had been subjected to before leaving the house, ‘I think the term he used was mollycoddled buttercup — more of a mollycoddled buttercup than my father.’

  ‘Ouch,’ Mary said, still swivelling her chair from side to side. ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he answered, closing his eyes. ‘Just told him I hoped his knee hadn’t bothered him too much in the night and kissed my mother on the cheek before leaving to come find you.’ His face stretched into a smile and she laughed again, her knees contacting his as she spun the chair.

  When he opened his eyes Mary was looking at him, as if waiting for him to say something more. He touched her knee and smiled. ‘Walk with me?’

  She nodded.

  As they got up to leave, Alexander took one last look at the monitors. C Building. Camera five. Pandora was there. Where else would she be? Her back was to the camera and she was fiddling with something that he couldn’t quite make out. A fresher with short hair said something from the sofa, which made her turn her head. Now in view of the camera, Alexander thought her face looked soft and happy. Her lips moved quickly as she replied to the other woman. As she spoke, her hand trailed over her stomach, her thoughts elsewhere.

  ‘Are you coming, Alex?’

  Mary was by the door, her mouth slightly curved as she watched him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, turning away from the screens and walking to her, ‘I’m coming.’

  They fell into rhythm with each other as they walked. Pulling him by the hand, Mary led him onto a path that grazed the treeline and curved around the base of a hill, and, should it have been followed to its end, would have led to the vineyards that covered the far side of the homestead. She was the same height as him, if a little shorter, and Alexander examined the movements of her face as she told him about a book on metallism she had just finished reading.