Jem looked into his wine and a frown traced a line between his eyebrows, pulling at the scar over the left one. ‘Who did I say the Queen was a minute ago?’
‘Victoria.’
He pushed his fingertips over his forehead. ‘Sorry.’
‘Does it hurt?’
Jem touched the scar. ‘No. I don’t think it’s this. It’s just … fog. It’s been coming on since Harris,’ he said, and stopped on a strange tone that wasn’t quite finished. Kite waited for him to add something else, but he only drank the last of the wine and set down the glass. ‘Dear God, I can tell I’m going to be boring tonight. You haven’t got cards or – obviously you’ve got cards,’ he laughed when Kite took the pack from his pocket.
They bet with buttons. Jem picked them up all over the place. Whatever he was wearing, he always had a reliable supply in his pockets.
‘Only nine ships left now,’ Jem said after a while. ‘If nothing else, we’ll be on shorter stints. Home more often.’
Kite nodded.
‘You’ll have to come and stay with us on your next leave.’
‘Mm.’
Jem kicked him. ‘Why are you so determined not to?’
‘Look. Agatha doesn’t want to share her very tiny apartment, or her husband.’ Jem and Agatha had bought some rooms in Leith, bartered with Agatha’s jewellery. They were basic, hardly bigger than the tenement apartment in Cadiz, and they were above a bar of extremely questionable morals. Agatha had been nothing but cheerful about it, and quick to stress that it was extraordinarily lucky to have found anywhere at all in the refugee-flooded city, but he could tell she was falling into a kind of shock, and he didn’t blame her. She had never expected to be poor again. ‘So it would be far better for your marriage and for the health of my sister’s tolerance for me if I die in a hedge before I come and stay with the two of you.’
Jem didn’t laugh. Instead he watched him for too long, then dealt another round. He didn’t look angry, but he never did, and Kite could never tell when he was. He must have been sometimes.
Despite not having taken out a cigarette since boarding the train, Jem still smelled of them; the heady sweet Jamaica blend was in the grain of his skin now, and even in the cold weather – even if he was cold himself – it seemed warm. By long association now, though it wasn’t there, Kite always caught gunpowder with it. More and more, it brought on a strange feeling that Jem was always right on the edge of igniting.
Jem laid down a card. ‘You’re coming home with me after this.’
‘I just told you—’
‘I’m not negotiating. At least two hours every night with a proper roof and a proper fire and real food, whenever we’re on shore. I cannot – I cannot live any more counting the number of times I’ve seen you by the stars on your arm.’
Kite sat still at first and couldn’t speak, because his throat had closed, then went round to him and hugged him. Jem kissed him once, very soft, and paralysing until he did it again and Kite got back enough control over the nerves in his hands to pull him nearer. After a second, Jem locked the carriage door and lifted Kite into his lap so they could sit chest to chest, his hand over the tattoo as though he wanted to rub it out.
The steward rang a bell down the carriages half an hour before they came into London. Kite was already awake. He put together everything that they’d scattered about, which wasn’t much, then pressed one hand to Jem’s chest when he showed no sign of coming to by himself. When he opened his eyes, he looked disorientated.
‘Nearly there,’ Kite said.
‘Oh … right. Thank you.’ He sat up gradually and looked around, then seemed to come back to himself and put away the blankets and the bunk, and went out without saying where. When he came back he was neater. An inspector came soon after him and asked to see their tickets. Jem handed them over and the inspector clipped out the ‘Glasg’ of Glasgow. Jem took them back slowly, not as if he were sure what was going on.
‘Jem. Are you all right?’
‘Sorry? Yes, I … not really, I … this is ridiculous, but where have we just come from?’
‘From Glasgow. From Eilean Mòr, the lighthouse. Do you remember?’ Kite said quietly. It had been a bad hit Jem had taken, the one that gave him the scar – even being clipped by a recoiling gun was bad – but Kite had never seen anyone suffer the effects so long afterwards.
‘Yes. Yes, what … were we doing there?’
‘Looking for your son. Finding a couple of libraries, maybe.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Jem said, himself again. ‘What the hell was that?’
‘You just forgot for a minute what—’
‘That’s not normal, that’s never happened before.’ Jem’s voice broke halfway. ‘Everything was gone, I didn’t know who I was bloody talking to, not since I woke up!’
He pushed his hand over his mouth. Kite levered it away and put both arms around him. Jem hugged him tight. Outside, the limits of London were sliding by, tenements and washing lines, and then houses with gardens. There was a strange brown mist in the streets. He thought it was smoke at first, but there was too much of it. Nearer the station, tributaries of track ran together and, beyond them, dull grey walls and wires stretched overhead, some singly and some in tentacular clusters that wound down wooden poles. He couldn’t see what they did. Unease hit the seabed under his diaphragm. They looked like totems, the kind the Caribbean maroons made, that might have been memorials or KEEP OUT signs. He wouldn’t have known it was London if Jem and the timetables hadn’t said so.
Jem gripped his hand as the train glided into
