The Child Garden

already happened? I can’t remember. Am I the one who is living, or the one who is remembering?

‘It’s all right,’ said Mike, as other hands came to help. The litter was raised. Mike had to let go of Milena. He cradled up the snapping turtle and Piglet. Piglet carried the rose. All of them were carried in the sling chair. They went ahead of Milena, through the ultra-violet, light along the accordion corridor, into the Public Reading Room.

In the room there was a tall man in white, his face behind a clear plastic mask.

‘How much more virus?’ he asked, disapproving. ‘You all ought to be in whites.’

He was a Doctor. Doctors were the highest Estate of all. They supervised the Health Regime. They tended the Consensus.

‘And what the hell is that?’ the Doctor asked, pointing to Piglet.

‘New…’ said Mike Stone, and couldn’t speak. ‘New life,’ he said.

Vita Nuova, whispered a voice from elsewhere.

‘It’s been ultra-violeted,’ said Root to the Doctor. Her hand was on Mike’s shoulder. ‘Mike, love,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to come away now. Come away, or we get two readings mixed up together and that’s very weird.’

‘We’re already mixed,’ he said, his voice strained.

‘It’ll be all right, Mike,’ said Milena.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It will.’ He turned around and leaned over. She had never seen his face like that before. It was twisted, pulled in many directions at once. He looked at her face, looked over all of it. He’s looking at me to remember, she thought. He’s looking at it to remember me. Root’s dark, reassuring, reminding hand on his shoulder pulled gently backwards. He turned and crawled away.

Milena was left alone on the living floor. My, but dying is lonely, thought Milena. Everyone has to fall away.

What happens next?

She remembered Rolfa. This happened to Rolfa. I saw the wave go through her. When does it come? Do you know it? Do you remember, afterwards, all the things you saw, or only some of them?

Overhead, dim, as if in a dream, Rolfa’s music shook the earth and the stone and the flesh of the Consensus. Rolfa, where is Rolfa now?

The voice spoke again, gently. It whispered in Milena’s mind.

What happens next, said the voice, is that you remember. Everything. There is nothing to fear. It seems to go on forever, and only lasts a moment.

Root? Milena tried to sit up, to look around. Who was talking?

I have to go now. But modicum et vos vitebitis me

In a little while you will see me.

It was Rolfa. It was Rolfa who was talking.

Overhead, through the stone, the music suddenly ended. The Comedy was over.

Space shimmered. Suddenly space and time and thought rolled towards her, all together.

Then the wave struck.

Somewhere in memory, Milena saw the face of Chao Li Song as a young man. ‘The problem,’ said the outlaw, ‘is time.’

Milena remembered being on the Hungerford Footbridge and it was crowded with strangers and old friends. She remembered Berowne standing next to her, and he was alive, alive and young, the wind stirring his hair as if with hope, his smile leached of calcium. ‘I want to be part of it,’ he said.

‘ZERO!’ the people called. ‘MINUS ONE! MINUS TWO!’

Lights came on, one after another, and Milena kept splitting into a thousand selves, a thousand moments, each Now a different world, all the moments of her life moving like a bird in flight, each moment separate. Cause and effect were not enough to unite the world.

Paradise is eternally present and so is hell. Time blurs them, crowds them in so close together that salvation and damnation are one. Memory is like being outside time. It can separate them. Memory shows us what heaven is like, where nothing ever happens. It shows us that moment when desire achieves its end, and stays touching, holding the thing it loves, forever. Memory enslaves us, preserving the horror, bending us to it, moulding us to it. Memory is purgatory. To be saved or damned you have to be outside time. You have to step out of this life.

‘Oh!’ Milena howled, lifting up her thin and dancing arms like the branches of a tree. ‘Oh!’ she cried aloud in both pain and joy.

She met Mike Stone for the first time. She met Thrawn McCartney. The apothecary spun on her heel, and the Bees moved on the tidal mud like a flock of flamingoes. Milena faced Max. ‘A big grey book. What did you do with it Max?’ Al the Snide came to help her. ‘A person is a whole universe,’ said Al the Snide. ‘We call memory the Web. Underneath is the Fire. And that just burns.’

Chinese princesses dancing in orderly rows lifted up fans in unison, before a giant, enthroned crab. The King, from Love’s Labour’s stared at her with a dirty face. ‘The food weeps,’ he said. ‘The coffee screams.’ The Seller of Games was peddling mirror contact lenses, and she was singing in great, clear voice:

It’s easily done, no mystery
With this little item from history.

Milton the Minister fell into the calamari salad. ‘I think of you all,’ said Lucy, ‘like you was flowers in my garden.’ Somewhere there was still the sound of helicopters.

A spreading fire lit up Milena’s life, blazing through all the branches of her nerves. The nerves branched in a yes/no, one/zero code perhaps, but the pattern led to something as dense and as fluid as magma.

I rise up like a tree in smaller and smaller branches, each tiny twig another self. But the roots are lost, the roots of my whole world are lost. I get nervous and my grammar reverses. Bad Grammar for real.

‘Because the Past is you,’ said Root, somewhere. Now?

The purifying fire burned through her, lighting up memory.

Purgatory.

Milena remembered standing on a train platform in Czechoslovakia. She was holding her mother’s hand. At the end of the pink Coral railway, on the edge of the horizon, there was a star. The star was coming for them both. Milena became very excited.

’Ssss Ssss Ssss,’ she called, making the sound of a train.

The train huffed and squealed and creaked its way into the station on huge rubber tyres with a steam engine between them like a calliope, streaming molecules. Crows rose up cawing from the field behind.

The train was huge and strong and friendly, like her father had been. It was as if her father had come back. There was a great hearty screeching and a clunk, as if her father had dropped down onto the sofa to play with little Milena. But between Milena and the train, there was a gap. The gap was dark, and Milena could fall down it. The steps leading into the train were as tall as she was, adult steps, not made for children.

Then her mother hoisted Milena up, as if lifting her into her father’s arms. Her mother spoke. Up we go, one step, two steps.

’Nastupujem! Raz, dva.’

She’s not speaking English, thought Milena remembering. It came as a shock. She’s speaking Czech and I understand every word. I understand it better than I ever understood English. English is not the same: it doesn’t pick me up and swing me. English is a different universe. Czech tongue, Czech time, Czech feelings. A train is a different thing altogether from a vlak. A train is British and mostly reliable and very run down, declasse. A vlak is abrupt and powerful, and takes you to the town, where all good things are. And because the vlak is so important it cannot be allowed just to leave. There must be a tremendous fuss made. Handkerchiefs waved. Women sticking hands and heads through windows, clutching each other, giving urgent advice, making urgent demands. Bring me back the books. And tell Juliana not to