The options were equally compelling and equally unacceptable. He wandered around the relics of his boyhood life, grappling with the problem. His old bedroom was full of boxes of documents and smelled of damp. Even his old desk bore its load. Christ, the drawers were still full of his wooden armoured cars and glory troopers. He slammed shut the drawers. Mawkish sentimentality was dangerous. The documents in the boxes seemed to be social detritus: letters, invitations to balls and parties, theatre programmes, guest lists, as well as files of invoices from domestic suppliers of oil, coal, water and so forth. These were all signed off by Donald Aldingford. He moved through to his father’s study. He sensed the longer he stayed in the house the less likely he would be able to summon the will to leave it. Whatever the vague risks of the future, the immediate attractions of safe ground under foot, a roof above and beds with sheets, proper toilets and toilet paper were growing ever more seductive.
His father’s desk was much as he remembered it: clear but for the writing mat and a jade fountain pen in its holder. Vellum was in the top centre drawer. In the right drawer—
Lawrence froze. He stared, his face pulsing. His hand trembled as he lifted from the drawer an elegant white cardboard order of service, decorated with gold lining and hand-printed in copperplate. Father’s funeral took place in St Paul’s Cathedral on Wednesday July 28th 2106.
When caught shocked, Lawrence’s fighting instincts locked out all emotion to gather details. The arrival music was “Adagio for Strings” by Samuel Barber. Two hymns were sung: “How Great Thou Art” and “The Day Thou Gavest Lord Is Ended”. There were two eulogies by names Lawrence vaguely remembered from boyhood dinner parties. The music to leave was “Nimrod” from the Enigma Variations.
He sat alone in the silent house, for several minutes too stunned to do anything but listen to creaks and an owl hooting out in the garden. The man he had so despised must have died just after his own despatch to the Night and Fog. That explained why he was never told. A character as conscientious as Donald must have tried to contact him and been left with an impression of utter spitefulness on being ignored.
What would Lawrence have done had he still been free?
After thinking about that, a slow, sliding realisation of waste started to afflict him. A father only lives once and he only dies once. You only get one family. It was all a bit late now—he was Fog on the run. He had nothing. No career. No wife. No family. No identity. In the end, he just shook his head and put the order of service back in the drawer. It was time to be realistic, or try to be. His hands trembled too much for him to write. He had to go for a stroll on the landing to calm down. For family he had one estranged elder brother and that was it. His stepmother did not count as family. He could try to fight on alone through life, or he could do his best to rebuild contact with his one living relation.
The letter he wrote ran to a length that afterwards surprised him, three pages of embarrassingly cramped freehand. It was his first writing in four and a half months—something he pointed out in the letter. He gave a full description of how he had been falsely accused in Oban and his thoughts on why it had happened. He included a brief outline of life at Chatham camp whilst omitting mention of the Value System. That was something he could only describe in person. Accounting for his escape was a problem, since Chatham was on the south shore of the Thames Estuary and the Value System was more than a hundred miles north of there. He emphasized that he was determined to clear his name and would be grateful for help.
This brought him to the decision he could not make: whether to stay in the house or get out of the Central Enclave while the gates were open. It was all a matter of risk. Could Donald hide his brother and hope to keep the secret from a household of two dozen staff for any length of time? It just was not realistic. Lawrence had to get away, back into that bloody cold night.
To seek help from strangers—Sarah-Kelly’s family—was an all-or-nothing strategy. Against that, what were his prospects trying to live as a marginal through the winter? What sort of future was in that life anyway? Answers: minimal and zero. He added an end note he was going out to the Newman barging family at North Kensington basin. After which, he folded the letter and sealed it with wax to keep out the eyes of nosy servants.
Before leaving comfort, Lawrence took advantage of the beautiful en suite bathroom, with its white marble tops and stainless-steel fittings. Once again he had to see that forty-year-old face as he whipped the razor on the strop and began shaving the tell-tale blond stubble. Afterwards, he continued to stare at the mirror, looking through his reflection. He was looking inside himself to see what others would see, the top killer who made a pact with barbarity to gain rank. Only a couple of weeks ago, he had stood in Nightminster’s garden in the Value System and with absolute conviction stated that the surplus had to be prevented to protect the cosmos. All of that certainty had simply evaporated. Where had it ever come from? Had it ever been more than a mindset created by his ambition to reach account-captain first class before his thirtieth birthday? Why else would he have been so sure of something for which he had not the least evidence? The surplus flow was trivial in relation to the immensity of the public drains and the
