Alchemy

But then the mocking image of Chris swam in his mind… really swam, because for some reason he found himself imagining her stroking towards him, gliding through rippling green water, slender and naked, with her hair billowing out around her. And then, before he had a chance to enjoy this vision in any way, his mother became part of it too, dog-paddling alongside Chris in her own determined fashion, wearing last year’s navy-blue swimsuit. Roland groaned softly. Chris’s probable scorn and his mother’s inevitable grief were not to be born. Why… why… why had he stolen anything in the first place? That was the rocky question. Why?

Turning his head wearily as if it were a dead weight that had to be rolled along rather than lifted up, he stared at his desk, half imagining he might, if he really concentrated, be able to see where the pens and the red notebook were still hidden, a somehow sinister presence in the darkness of a closed drawer. And at that moment, probably because the closed drawer suddenly reminded him of a coffin, the ancient and irrelevant dream of the magician, Quando, slid into his mind. (“Careful!”) Impatiently, Roland chased both the warning voice and the memory out of his head.

And, after all, he had half expected the voice. What he had not expected was that a strange irritated exhilaration should be suddenly active in him, edging its way through the humiliations of the day, glinting like a random gold thread in the dark weave of the afternoon. He had first felt it leap into life as Stephen turned away from him in the schoolyard; as if, from that moment on, he was set free of family and friends – even free of Chris – to live a life which would be exclusively his own. Of course, having to talk to Jess had been a bit of a drag, though that moment when she had suddenly stopped looking so utterly vacant and had snapped back at him was something to think about. But how could he possibly have enjoyed tracking her – stalking her, really, though the word ‘stalking’ had an ugly sound to it.

Stalk toils! Roland groaned again. He did not want thoughts of Jess Ferret to feel enjoyable in any way. And he did not want to think too much about that odd, sharp glance that Mr Hudson, his hitherto favourite teacher, had given him… a glance which suggested he was being used in some secret way and was not being told what was really going on.

Well, he had the whole weekend ahead of him. It wasn’t as if Mr Hudson had ordered him to come up with a written report on the Weasel by Monday or anything. And then, as Roland sustained himself by contemplating a couple of free days, he caught himself remembering Jess’s blue eyes looking at him under her long, black lashes, and the way her irises and pupils had merged into intense slits – slits which had seemed like peepholes to another universe – before immediately opening out into ordinary eyes once more. Here, alone in his bedroom, he was able to puzzle about that moment. If he had had the chance to look into those slits, would he have seen the curve of bone at the back of her head, or would he have seen himself hanging, arms spread, not actually dancing, yet part of the huge dance?

“Weird!” he said aloud, now staring at the ceiling and running the short memory through his mind over and over again, as if he were editing film. He considered not only Jess’s strange eyes but also the brief intruding reminder of his childish dream.

And at last his mother called him. The takeaways had arrived. Roland swung himself up from his bed and made for the door, pausing as he caught a glimpse of himself in his looking glass. There he was, tall, broad-shouldered, a little gangly but not too bad. His dark brown hair was worn as long as Crichton dress code allowed, which was certainly not very long. It made him look rather more conservative than he really wanted to be, but Chris had streaked it a little for him, so that he seemed to have grown a comb of brassy gold. He couldn’t help knowing that some people – his mother, of course (though she hardly counted), and Chris (because she had told him so), thought he was handsome. All the same, he could never see it himself. Every time he confronted his reflection he saw, yet again, the same old face, and he had no way of working out what it really looked like – except when he saw himself accidentally reflected in shop windows, or in a photograph. Then he knew he looked very like his untrustworthy father, which might mean that somewhere along the line he too would walk away from everything and dissolve into the world out there, never to be found again. Roland cleared his throat and straightened himself, assuming at least the outer appearance of a trustworthy man.

“Fabuloso!” said his inner voice, praising his resolve, and he repeated it aloud, though once the exclamation was alive in the outside world he found he didn’t believe it. There was certainly nothing fabulous about him right then. Quite the reverse.

Hungry! He suddenly felt hungry. How could he possibly have so many troubles and still feel hungry. All the same he welcomed the feeling. At least it proved there were some things in a shifting world that could be relied on.

Roland set off, pleased to have something to look forward to, but in the hall beyond his bedroom door he paused. The wall was hung with family pictures. There he was, as a smiling baby, as a toddler, as a boy of nine delighted with his birthday cake. There was a slightly blurred photograph of Martin in his pram and one of Danny on a rocking horse. There was his mother with her mother, and there was an old photograph of grandparents from the other side of the family, his father’s father looking back at him with a shy, sly smile, and his father’s mother looking as if she did not trust the photographer and might be about to shout instructions. “I’m more than a match for you – more than a match for anyone,” she seemed to be asserting. “Do as I tell you! I’m the boss!” She had a hand on her husband’s shoulder as if she were arresting him.

Roland’s father stood a little behind his mother like a meek servant. “Hi there, Dad!” Roland mumbled. He sometimes wondered if he didn’t wear a similar, cautious expression himself from time to time. Looking at that half remembered, pictured face, he thought that he and his father seemed rather like houses haunted by one another’s ghosts. It was not a comfortable thought. Hungry! he reminded himself. I’m hungry!

“Childe Roland to the dark tower came,” he said aloud and laughed. Then he strode past the family portrait gallery, making for the dining room and for the mixed pleasures of food, family and television.

8. SATURDAY (#ulink_efed2347-26ba-5f66-90d2-1d14f7aafb15)

Saturday. Roland half woke, not to the usual luxurious, relaxed, inner-weekend silence, but to the sound of a storm. It took him a minute to realise that the fierce wind and distant thunder were all inside his head. Once he had come to terms with this, he lay still for a while, trying to force a weekend feeling to emerge. After all, he didn’t have to leap up, drag on his school uniform and then argue with his mother over whether or not he would be late unless she let him drive to school in her car. On Saturdays, he didn’t have to point out to her, yet again, that his school was much further away than her office block or that the bus, which stopped right outside their house, also stopped at the very door of that office. Saturday! Of course, he had assignments to do, but there would be time for all that, and time too to do his own thing – a bit of reading, a trek down to the park to play a round or two of tennis with Tom, and later to spend time with Chris. No! Of course, Chris was away for the weekend. Roland grimaced sleepily Saturday’s usual feeling of space and possibility were all in place, so why wasn’t he at ease with the world?

Then, opening his eyes, he found he must have gone to sleep staring through darkness at the bottom drawer of his desk. It was the first thing he saw. So far, with his eyes tight shut, he’d been able to put off thinking about all that. But now – well, he had to face it, didn’t he? After all, it was going to be part of every minute of the weekend ahead of him. Roland shrugged, closed his eyes again and tried to settle more deeply into his bed. But there would be no comfort and ease on this particular Saturday morning. He might as well be up and doing.

It all progressed in a way that was utterly usual, though from time to time, Roland caught himself feeling that he had been displaced and was watching himself from some other dimension, eating breakfast, exchanging a few ritual insults with Danny and Martin, and then helping his mother by loading the dishwasher and wiping the table top. He was watching his own hands as they touched, lifted, folded, opened drawers and held cups of tea, almost believing that they belonged to someone else. Later, he watched himself setting off with Danny and a friend from down the road to the park and the tennis club. Tom was waiting for them. There were often vacant courts at that time in the morning and, after all, it was autumn. Another two weeks and the club would be closing down until next spring. Tom and he slugged their way through a couple of sets, while that distant, observing self watched a little scornfully, knowing that, though all this was actually happening, it was not what was really going on. Roland was simply filling in time until… (“Your serve!” yelled Tom.)

Roland usually beat Tom. He was better at coming up to the net and angling his returns into inaccessible corners, whereas Tom definitely was a back-line man, with long, strong, but largely predictable strokes. However, today Roland was playing carelessly – or perhaps, he told himself (determined to be fair), Tom was playing particularly well. It was hard to say, but one way and another, though he was usually determined to win, this morning he didn’t really care. In fact, he felt superior when Tom, though trying hard to be laid back about his victory, failed to hide his great delight. Later they sat side by side on a bank, watching two courts at once. Danny was playing on one, and there was a particularly lively doubles match on the other. One of the doubles players hit a massive smash, and the few watchers gasped and whistled admiringly as they clapped him.

“Now, there’s style!” said a resonant but slightly lisping voice somewhere behind and above Roland’s head – a familiar voice, he thought. He had certainly heard it before, had heard it long ago, but recently too – somewhere on television, perhaps.

Twisting a little, he tried to look carelessly at the man who had spoken, noting with a vague surprise that he was wearing a hat like a dark sombrero, and a long black coat which seemed a strangely heavy garment, even on an autumn day. Looking up at him from below, Roland made out a thick neck, the underside of a slightly sagging jawline, nostrils and the lower rim of a pair of sunglasses.

There was a gasp from the crowd, and Roland glanced back at the game, just in time to see that one of the doubles players at the nearer end of the court had hit a high lob. The two players on the far side of the net ran frantically inwards, both concentrating on the ball and on nothing else. Colliding violently they fell, spread-eagled on the court, to the accompaniment of mingling cries of sympathy and derision. Fabuloso! he thought as he clapped, irritated to find himself using, yet again, his father’s insistent word.

“Fabuloso!” exclaimed that slightly lisping voice behind and above him.

Roland froze. He took a long, deliberate breath. Then he twisted around to stare for a second time at the man in the black coat, without trying to seem in the least casual about it this time. But the man was gazing at the court in a perfectly normal way for someone enjoying a tennis match. Roland, still looking up and under, could make out even less of him than he had done the first time – just the same powerful neck and the same pale skin beginning to sag under the long chin, and above that, the brim of the black hat. He tried to move forward, but there was someone sitting directly in front of him. How could it possibly be a coincidence that such an odd word had been used at the very moment he was thinking it? Yet how could it could it possibly be anything else?

For a fantastic moment he caught himself wondering if the man in the black coat could possibly be