The Wraiths of War (44 page)

My throat felt as though it was deflating now. I swallowed to enable myself to speak. ‘I still can’t believe it.’ I looked at my hands. ‘And I can’t stop shaking.’

‘It’s the shock. Do you want a drink of water? Or something stronger?’

‘No, I… I want to hear your story. I want to know how you got to this point. Sorry, but… I find it so hard to believe. So hard to get my head round.’

‘I don’t blame you.’

‘But you look so different! You and Kate. How can you and she be the same?’

‘I grew up, Dad. People do.’

‘But your eyesight… and your learning difficulties.’

‘I had eye surgery.’ She made a ‘going forward’ gesture with her hand. ‘In the future. You’ll take me, using the heart. And as for the learning difficulties, I got over them. I was bright, I was determined, I worked hard.’ She smiled. ‘And you were a great teacher.’

‘So how did you get to this point?’ I asked. ‘How did
we
get to this point? Tell me everything.’

Still smiling, she said, ‘For you it started from this night. From the night you found out who I really was. You trained me, Dad – or you will. Because you knew from your own memories what my role would be in pointing you towards the heart in the first place, and helping you along the way. But you didn’t tell me everything. You told me just as much as I needed to know, and then you threw me in at the deep end. That way my reactions and emotions stayed genuine. There was so much I had no foreknowledge of. I didn’t know how Hawkins would end up, for example. Or poor Mary, who worked for me at Incognito. There were times when I hated you for not telling me. But I know it was right. I know you can’t dare try to change what you know has already happened.’

‘So those stories you spun me. About your background. About your dad, the vicar, and how you met Benny…’

‘They weren’t completely made up. Some of it was real – as far as Benny was concerned anyway. He was never in on what was going on, apart from you giving him a ton of money to look after your younger self in prison – don’t forget to do that, by the way.’

I tapped the breast pocket of my jacket. ‘It’s all in the book.’

She nodded. ‘You’ve got a load of setting up to do, Dad. I’ll help you with it when the time comes. It’s pretty complicated.’

‘When is it not?’ I said.

She laughed.

It was odd, but now that she had told me who she was, I could see Kate in her – the way she smiled and laughed, various little mannerisms. I was amazed now that I hadn’t noticed them straight away – though of course I hadn’t been looking for them, had I? Or maybe I
had
noticed, but only unconsciously. Maybe that was what had drawn me to Clover in the first place, had made me instinctively want to trust her even when I’d been wary and suspicious of who or what she might ultimately turn out to be.

Even now, though, I had burning questions that needed to be answered. The most pertinent of which was the one that had led to me being hospitalised again.

‘What’s the story between you and McCallum? How did you get involved with him? And from such a young age?’

She stood up. ‘That’s something it’s better to show than tell.’ She nodded towards my left-hand pocket. ‘Power up the heart, Dad. I need you to take us on a journey.’

When we arrived it was raining again. No, scratch that. It was the same rain I’d been caught in when I’d last been here, about a month ago.

Anticipating my agreement to accompany her on the little jaunt she’d suggested, Clover (or should that be Kate? Even though I’d accepted she
was
Kate, it still seemed too large and crazy a thing to get my head round) had acquired a hat and coat for me to wear that would at least mostly cover my very modern plastic neck brace and enable me to blend in.

We arrived in a darkened doorway across the street from the Hippodrome just as the crowds leaving the theatre were thinning out.

‘This time you’ll be going in through the front with me,’ she said.

‘So where’s my past self now?’

She pointed towards a dark slit between buildings on the opposite side of the wet and gleaming road. ‘At a guess I’d say you’ve just settled down to hide behind the dustbins.’

‘Happy days,’ I muttered, which made her grin.

We waited a bit longer, until the last of the stragglers had dispersed, and then we crossed the road and ascended the steps to the theatre entrance. An old, saggy-jowled man in a light-grey doorman’s uniform was closing and locking the various sets of doors.

‘I’m afraid we’re closed, miss,’ he said, sounding genuinely apologetic.

‘We’re here to see the Great Barnaby. He’s expecting us. Mr Alexander Locke and Miss Clover Monroe.’

The doorman gave us the once-over, then touched a finger to the peak of his cap. ‘If you’ll just wait here a moment, miss, I’ll inquire.’

He went inside, closing the door behind him. We stood at the top of the now wet and dirty steps, shielded by the theatre awning, and watched people hurrying by, coat collars turned up and umbrellas raised against the rain.

Now that we had a moment to reflect, I felt strangely tongue-tied. I glanced at Clover and she glanced back, smiling shyly.

‘This is weird,’ I said.

‘I know,’ she replied. ‘Sorry.’

I shrugged. ‘You did what you had to do.’

She was silent for a moment, then she said, ‘It was weird for me too at first. Teaming up with my dad, who was only, like, eight or nine years older than me. It’s a big relief the secret’s out now, though, not least because I no longer have to worry about calling you dad by mistake.’

‘Did you remember me looking like this?’ I asked. ‘From when you were little, I mean?’

She scrunched her face into a
very
Kate-like expression. ‘Kind of. I remember my childhood pretty well. Going back to our old flat was weird, because before we got there I only sort of half-remembered it. But when I saw it again, even though it was smashed up, it all looked instantly familiar. But to answer your question – you didn’t really look
all
that different to me. Just… well, as if you’d had some sort of extreme makeover or something. A few nips and tucks here and there. A bit of gravity-defying Botox.’

‘You make it sound delightful.’

She laughed just as one of the theatre doors opened and the doorman poked his head out. ‘Would you like to come through?’

We followed him through the lobby, along a corridor to the left of the main auditorium and down some carpeted stairs. Though the lighting was considerably better here, and the surroundings a lot grander, I was reminded of the time in Victorian London when Hawkins, Hulse and I had rescued Clover from the clutches of Willoughby Willoughby at the Maybury Theatre. At the bottom of the stairs was a fire door, leading into a narrower corridor with water pipes running along the ceiling. We passed various doors on our left as we were led down it, then turned left into another corridor. On our right was a long dark curtain (the side or back of the stage maybe), and on our left were yet more doors, framed posters for previous shows hanging on the patches of wall in between.

We stopped at a door about two-thirds of the way down the corridor. Like all the rest, it was painted a blue-grey colour, but this one had a yellow wooden star on it, above a sign that read ‘Dressing Room’. As though checking for woodworm, the doorman put his ear to the door and rapped on it at head height with the middle knuckle of his right forefinger.

‘Come in,’ someone called, and the doorman pushed the door open just wide enough to thrust his head into the gap.

‘Your guests are here, sir.’

‘Thank you. Show them in.’

As if the voice had not been loud enough to carry, the doorman stepped back and turned to us. ‘You can go in,’ he said.

‘Most kind,’ said Clover in such an expressionless voice that the doorman looked unsure as to whether she was teasing him or not. She went in first, and I followed.

The dressing room was dimly lit, illuminated only by the light bulbs around and above the mirror on the left-hand wall. Beneath the mirror, stretching the length of the wall, was a long counter or table, cluttered with make-up, used hand towels, a glass vase stuffed with flowers, the remains of a meal and various other bits and pieces. There was a wooden chair set at an angle beneath the table and a threadbare rug on the floor over wooden boards. The back wall was of grey brick, to which various posters and notices were attached. To our right was a big chunky wardrobe, a rack of costumes, and, in the far right corner, an armchair upholstered in faded red velvet. The Great Barnaby – McCallum – was sitting in the armchair, smoking a cigarette, his right foot resting on his left knee. Despite the fact that he was still wearing his stage gear – spats, long fishtail jacket, red mask and all – he looked very relaxed.

‘Come in,’ he said. ‘Have a drink.’ He gestured towards the make-up area, where a bottle of whisky and a couple of crystal tumblers stood on a silver tray among the paraphernalia.

I would have refused – I felt too wired to drink – but before I could say anything, Clover crossed the room and poured us a couple of generous measures. She passed one of the tumblers to me, and despite myself I took a sip, which my nerves turned into a gulp, which made me cough, which ended up causing me to double over, clutching my ribs.

‘Are you okay?’ Clover asked, voice breathy with concern.

‘Bust ribs,’ I gasped. ‘Hurts to cough and laugh.’

‘You’ll be fine once the nanites kick in,’ said the Great Barnaby.

Still holding my ribs, I looked up at him. ‘What do you know about nanites?’

Smoke was wreathing his face. When he smiled his teeth looked very white through his black beard.

‘You’ll enjoy this bit,’ he said, ‘when it gets to your turn.’

Maybe if my mind hadn’t still been trying to process the revelation that Clover was my daughter, I might have understood what he meant. As it was, I frowned at him. ‘What?’

He leaned forward in his chair, so that the light fell across his face. He peeled off his red eye mask. Then he peeled off his moustache and thick black beard.

I gaped. I could almost hear the cogs in my head, whirring madly, as I tried to make sense of this new revelation. I imagined the electronic voice of a computer from a 1970s TV show:
Does not compute, does not compute…

My legs felt hollow. As if reading my mind, Clover grabbed the wooden chair from under the make-up table and swung it towards me.

‘I think you need to sit down, Dad. You look a bit pale.’

I sat with a thump, my damaged pelvis groaning in protest.

I stared at the Great Barnaby, unmasked. ‘This isn’t right,’ I said. ‘You – I – can’t be him. The Great Barnaby is McCallum.’

My older self grinned back at me. He looked a few years older than I am now. ‘That’s right,’ he said.

‘But that doesn’t—’

And then it hit me. I looked at Clover. And then I looked back at my older self. He was nodding.

‘We
are
McCallum,’ he said softly. ‘We’ve always been McCallum. It’s an eternal circle, Alex. I found out ten years ago, because I was in your shoes, that I was destined to become McCallum, and that years from now I was destined to die by my own hand and be the guardian of the heart forever. You see, the heart has only had one guardian.
We
created it, and it, in turn, created…’ he waved a hand ‘…well, who knows? But the path is a complex one, and even I don’t know if it’s always exactly the same. But I do know it’s one we have to stick to, if only because we
remember
it. And also because, ultimately, this life of ours is a long one and a good one – so why would we
want
to change it?’

Glass chattering against my teeth, I took a gulp of whisky. It burned. My mind was a fairground ride, dipping and wheeling and spinning. I said, ‘So you’re saying that sometime in the future you’ll force me to murder you?’

‘Not
me
,’ my older self said. ‘
Us
.
We’ll
decide. And it’s not murder, it was never murder. It’s suicide. And it won’t come from a bad place. It wasn’t a mistake; it wasn’t a robbery gone wrong. It’ll only come when we’ve had enough, when we’ve lived a long life, and are too old and tired to carry on any longer.’ He took another drag on his cigarette. ‘You saw the old man you thought was McCallum about a week before he died. You remember? That day you were arrested?’

I nodded.

‘You’ll see him again. And he’ll tell you what I’m about to tell you, what he told
me
. When you first met Kate as Clover, she told you McCallum was in his nineties.’ (He nodded at Clover as he said this.)

‘But that wasn’t true. He was more like a hundred and forty, a hundred and fifty. He confessed to me he didn’t know exactly, because he’d lived so many lives in so many times he’d lost count of his true age. Even now I’m living this life here and another life in “our” present day; I’m jumping between the two. We can be away for six months at a time and it doesn’t matter. Because we don’t age like normal people. The nanites keep us young and healthy. They slow the ageing process right down.’

I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know whether to be happy at the prospect of a long – very long – and eventful life, or appalled at the thought that it was mapped out for me, that I had to stick to a pre-arranged plan.

I’d need time to think it through, to come to terms with everything. In the meantime, I focused on the fly in the ointment, the rogue element that could theoretically undermine everything.

‘What about the Dark Man? Who’s he? What’s his role in all this?’

My older self placed his hands on the arms of the chair and pushed himself to his feet.

‘Let’s find out, shall we?’

It must have been weird for Clover, being in between two versions of her father, both of whom were holding her hand, but she seemed to take it in her stride. The time transition was infinitely easier for me than it normally was, travelling as a passenger of my older self and
his
heart. The only disadvantage was that I had no idea where we’d ended up, not even when we arrived. One moment we were in the Great Barnaby’s dressing room, the next we were surrounded by chilling fog. I shivered and flapped at it, but it continued to press in, covering my face and hair with wet kisses.