the strength to–”
Mr Keeper holds up a hand.
“Please. I know it’s distressing.” He slips the ancient sheet of jagged script back into its pocket and closes the pouch, before returning it to his boiler suit. “There’s nothing can be done right now. These are only words – from a time none of us can remember. They could be wrong. They may not even have come from the hand of the Rag Man.” He leans towards the Maurices. “None of this is set. Not yet. But I couldn’t let the matter go any further without telling you everything.” He pushes his chair back from the table and stands, suddenly cheerful. “Let us wait and see what Megan decides. Let us see what rises inside her. One thing, at least, is clear, though – the Rag Man was very specific. She must be a girl. Still a child. If Megan is the one, her walking of the path must be swift – not years, as was my initiation, but months. I pray she decides soon.”
October 2005
Sophie cleared the paper plates and discarded party hats, the leavings of cake and fruit jelly from the waterproof tablecloth; all the colours seeming dull in the cloud-choked October light. The kitchen was silent now, vacuous and forlorn in the wake of ten small children and their mothers. Streamers hung, pinned to the beams and thrown over the lights in the ceiling, some vague current of air animating them, giving rise to papery whispers.
A blue candle in the shape of the number 5 lay extinguished and partially burned in the centre of the table. Sophie lifted it, turned it in her hands for long moments before wrapping it in a paper bag. She took it to the bureau in the living room and unlocked the hinged writing panel with a key from a small vase on the mantelpiece. She placed the candle beside its four predecessors and a collection of other tiny relics – a lock of his hair, cut the very night he was born; several silky crow feathers; an infantile drawing of a ragged bird, in black crayon; the rattle Louis had made for him; his first pair of woollen booties. There were other mementos – lucky pennies and corks saved from champagne bottles and cards of congratulation – all relating to Gordon.
There was no glow of nostalgia around these artefacts, merely a dark aura. Sophie ached, not with loss, but for something none of the family had had in the five years since Gordon was born: light hearts. They’d birthed him into an afflicted world. It was almost as if Gordon had brought its troubles with him: the changes in the climate and increased solar activity, the creeping totalitarianism of government, the epidemics and poverty, the undercurrent of fear. This was the joyless era Gordon would live through – if he survived. If any of them did.
In one of the bureau’s hidden compartments was a growing collection of letters, sketches and poetry. The penmanship and craft of strangers. Sometimes they arrived in the post. Sometimes they were delivered by hand, or left anonymously on the mat outside the front door. Louis once had a tiny wooden carving of a scarecrow, about the size of a chess pawn, pressed into his hand by a crazed-looking vagrant outside Waterloo Station in London. On one of her shopping trips to Bristol with Amelia Porter when Gordon was two years old, a woman in the street had started screaming and pointing at Gordon’s pushchair.
“He’s coming, you stupid bitch. Open your eyes. Black Jack’s coming to damn us all.”
The woman had dropped her own shopping in the road and run towards them, eyes suddenly wild, hair flying, only to be tackled at the last possible moment by an elderly ex-serviceman who’d witnessed the whole incident.
Everything about that day had been wrong – even before the lunatic woman made her lunge for Gordon. It was the first time Sophie had really noticed how tainted everything looked, the first time she’d admitted to herself that her family was living through dark times. Shop fronts were boarded up even in the most prosperous
Mr Keeper holds up a hand.
“Please. I know it’s distressing.” He slips the ancient sheet of jagged script back into its pocket and closes the pouch, before returning it to his boiler suit. “There’s nothing can be done right now. These are only words – from a time none of us can remember. They could be wrong. They may not even have come from the hand of the Rag Man.” He leans towards the Maurices. “None of this is set. Not yet. But I couldn’t let the matter go any further without telling you everything.” He pushes his chair back from the table and stands, suddenly cheerful. “Let us wait and see what Megan decides. Let us see what rises inside her. One thing, at least, is clear, though – the Rag Man was very specific. She must be a girl. Still a child. If Megan is the one, her walking of the path must be swift – not years, as was my initiation, but months. I pray she decides soon.”
October 2005
Sophie cleared the paper plates and discarded party hats, the leavings of cake and fruit jelly from the waterproof tablecloth; all the colours seeming dull in the cloud-choked October light. The kitchen was silent now, vacuous and forlorn in the wake of ten small children and their mothers. Streamers hung, pinned to the beams and thrown over the lights in the ceiling, some vague current of air animating them, giving rise to papery whispers.
A blue candle in the shape of the number 5 lay extinguished and partially burned in the centre of the table. Sophie lifted it, turned it in her hands for long moments before wrapping it in a paper bag. She took it to the bureau in the living room and unlocked the hinged writing panel with a key from a small vase on the mantelpiece. She placed the candle beside its four predecessors and a collection of other tiny relics – a lock of his hair, cut the very night he was born; several silky crow feathers; an infantile drawing of a ragged bird, in black crayon; the rattle Louis had made for him; his first pair of woollen booties. There were other mementos – lucky pennies and corks saved from champagne bottles and cards of congratulation – all relating to Gordon.
There was no glow of nostalgia around these artefacts, merely a dark aura. Sophie ached, not with loss, but for something none of the family had had in the five years since Gordon was born: light hearts. They’d birthed him into an afflicted world. It was almost as if Gordon had brought its troubles with him: the changes in the climate and increased solar activity, the creeping totalitarianism of government, the epidemics and poverty, the undercurrent of fear. This was the joyless era Gordon would live through – if he survived. If any of them did.
In one of the bureau’s hidden compartments was a growing collection of letters, sketches and poetry. The penmanship and craft of strangers. Sometimes they arrived in the post. Sometimes they were delivered by hand, or left anonymously on the mat outside the front door. Louis once had a tiny wooden carving of a scarecrow, about the size of a chess pawn, pressed into his hand by a crazed-looking vagrant outside Waterloo Station in London. On one of her shopping trips to Bristol with Amelia Porter when Gordon was two years old, a woman in the street had started screaming and pointing at Gordon’s pushchair.
“He’s coming, you stupid bitch. Open your eyes. Black Jack’s coming to damn us all.”
The woman had dropped her own shopping in the road and run towards them, eyes suddenly wild, hair flying, only to be tackled at the last possible moment by an elderly ex-serviceman who’d witnessed the whole incident.
Everything about that day had been wrong – even before the lunatic woman made her lunge for Gordon. It was the first time Sophie had really noticed how tainted everything looked, the first time she’d admitted to herself that her family was living through dark times. Shop fronts were boarded up even in the most prosperous