Nobody but Agatha seems at all concerned about the prospect of revolution in this country. Everyone walks around in a state of extreme presentism, as if the world has always been the same and always will be the same. She feels alone in her concerns, as if she is alive in 1913, with a unique foresight of what is to come, or at Versailles in 1788. What did Madame de Pompadour say when she left the palace? Après nous, le déluge.
Agatha pushes Fedor down, and stands. The room is unlit. She has been sitting at her desk all evening and the long dusk has burned low. There’s something about the night in this city that is brighter than the day. The spread of muddy phosphor illuminates dark corners. The emphasis of shapes that sunshine melts. The drawn, bending, sonorous beams of buses loping from stop to stop.
Fedor trots across the large, oblong room and scratches the paneled door with his front paw. Bare wood shows through the paintwork from prior expressions of impatience.
Agatha follows him and pulls at the handle. The lights in the landing are dim but she can just about see the shadow of a man standing to the right of the doorway.
“Have you been there the whole time?” she asks.
“Yes,” Roster replies.
The dog begins to lick the man’s wrinkled hands feverishly. Agatha notes again the discrepancy between the affection Fedor shows to her and to Roster.
“You spoke to Elton,” Roster says.
“I did,” she replies. “Were you listening?”
“It’s difficult to hear properly through these doors but I caught the gist. You’re taking my advice.”
“I told him what you said.”
Roster nods.
The dog whines.
“There’s fresh water in his bowl,” says the old man. “I’ll take him out for his evening business.”
He lopes down the stairs, hunched like a locust. The borzoi trots behind without being called, all legs and bones and white feathers: an albino vulture.
Tremors
Debbie McGee feels the ground beneath her quake and grind. The vibrations catch the cracked skin on the soles of her feet. They pulse up through her legs, into her pelvis and up through her organs. The tremors unsettle thin blood in loose veins. The residue of cartilage that still resides between her bones drags and creaks. The liquid around her brain trembles and the coarse strands of her hair quiver. Her eyes are no longer instruments of vision but instruments of vibration. They are now tactile. Touch becomes her only sense. Light and color fade, and the scent of the cellar diminishes.
Debbie stoops and bends her knees until they touch the ground. She holds out her arms and turns both palms away from her body and places them on the ground. She holds herself on four points like a half-spider awaiting prey then lowers her right ear. The compacted sun-starved bare earth is cool against her face.
The trembling stops. She presses her cheek deeper but feels nothing. She stretches out her limbs and lies on her front, listening. She hears vermin in the walls and feels the cold and damp.
She remains in that position for nearly half an hour, until Paul Daniels comes to find her.
“What are you doing?”
“Listening to the earth.”
He leaves, and pulls back the curtain across the opening that leads to that part of the cellar.
Debbie listens for a while more, then turns her head to try the other ear. After twenty minutes in this position she rolls onto her back and falls asleep.
Grubs and worms, awakened by the tremors, begin to settle again within the tunnels they have mined. They have followed the quaking rocks and dug deeper than ever before. Now the clamor from below has quietened, they are left with the familiar shuffle of the city above: the pulsing of human footsteps, rubber wheels scuffing tarmac, pencils being dropped, hammers striking nails, knives and cleavers landing on chopping boards, mugs of hot coffee clunking on tables, bums on seats, bodies on beds.
Woodlice dwell in the cracks between the bricks of the cellar wall, in the places where Victorian mortar has worn away. When night falls and the little light that refracts through the squares of glass between the cellar and the pavement fade to an amber glow, they creep from the cracks and scuttle around and over the sleeping woman and gather any fabric or flakes of skin that still hold sustenance.
Dark Room
The room is dark but still a place for looking around. Three women watch Bastian as he and Rebecca pass. Two of the women return to their conversation but the third stirs her cocktail and keeps her eyes fixed on the back of Bastian’s head, his shoulders, his long back, the way his auburn hair catches the dim reddish haze and shines like dull tarnished copper, the color of a well-worn penny. She looks away only when Rebecca, at Bastian’s side, turns and catches her eye.
The club is decorated in varnished wood and glass. Mirrors hang in strategic locations to create the impression of infinity held by four walls. Light speaks to light. There is a bar at the back and a collection of dark leather armchairs.
A barman pours measures of gin then tips them into a cocktail shaker and adds measures of vermouth. He seals the lid and shakes then pours the liquid into tall martini glasses.
Bastian watches him work then orders two gin and tonics. The waiter sets the glasses on the bar and fills them with the liquids over crushed ice. Bastian pays with a crisp twenty-pound note and refuses change. The waiter thanks him. Rebecca stretches her lips over her teeth to form a smile. There is something mocking in the expression.
They sip in unison. Rebecca stands back to
