Cloud Cuckoo Land Read online

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER ONE

  His big hands are wrapped around a foam coffee cup, his fair hair hangs across his forehead and his round face is aimed vaguely southwards. He looks like some kind of out-of-work Viking, in need of a break. Early afternoon light pours in through the steamed-up windows. On the other side of the glass the vague, static shapes of buildings across the street can be made out. A few soft-focus people pass, galloping and limping.

  Students arrive in the canteen. They mooch and shuffle along the service counter. They pick up their hot drinks and transfer a few vouchers from Velcro trouser pockets, into the tea-lady’s hand. Then they settle on the orange plastic stools and light hand-rolled cigarettes. They have that air of professional fatigue about them, a fatigue brought on by stringing together the late nights. They sit there in random teams, like preoccupied athletes at rest on the bench, in between turns at the high jump or the vaulting horse.

  Leonard finished his coffee, picked up his bag and left the humid warmth of the canteen. Outside, he pulled on his blue and red winter coat, which was quilted horizontally across the body and arms. It must have been a down-filled coat because a few, spidery white feathers inched their way out of its worn seams. It was a bulky coat, the sort someone who worked outdoors would wear, someone like a baggage handler at an arctic airport.

  He walked a few blocks to the city centre, following signs that pointed to the ‘Administration District’. He walked in the middle of the road as there was hardly any traffic and because the pavements were cluttered with litter. Queuing in amongst the stacked rubbish, were long, orderly lines of people. They carried sacks and buckets, and when Leonard drew level with the head of the line, he saw that what they were waiting for, was food and water.

  He passed through the empty shopping precinct, where the shop windows had been tagged with whitewash. The words ‘Ruptured stock’ and ‘Closing down for good sale’ had been sloshed across laminated glass, with six-inch paint brushes.

  Ahead, where several major roads met there was a messy junction, a roundabout, flyover and subway. He crossed the four-lane thoroughfare by ducking into the stinking subway. There were A to E exits underground, ramps and stairs which made him lose his sense of direction and then brought him back up to the surface again. He trudged up the wheelchair ramp and found himself standing in front of bus-depot architecture: a red brick building, grey-mortared together to form the four floors of the administration complex.

  Leonard entered by a revolving door and stood alone on polished granite. The double-height space had labelled corridors leading away from the reception area. He approached the pale figure who manned a marble-topped desk.

  ‘Hello, I’m…’

  The clerk held his hand up in order to silence Leonard. He then pointed to the corridor marked ‘Interview Rooms’ and said, ‘Move your arse, sir. You’re late.’

  Leonard jogged along the corridor. He passed windows which looked back onto an unbroken stream of cars circling round the roundabout and passing over the flyover. His footfalls caused short, dry echoes. His long shadow was thrown forward and to the left, broken in two like a stick of firewood in the right angle made by the wall and the floor.

  He found the door to the Interview Room. He knocked and took off his coat, gathering it into his chest with a rolling-folding action, which squeezed two wispy feathers into the air. Leonard watched as they floated slowly toward the ground, almost reaching the floor before they were whipped up again in the vacuum created by the opening door.

  He was shown into a large oak-panelled room, which had a tiered gallery of seats up at mezzanine level, full of people gazing down. Leonard crossed the room towards one of two empty chairs placed opposite each other. He thought it an overly theatrical set up and he felt utterly exposed before the general public. When he sat down, the people in the gallery began to whisper softly to each other. They cleared their throats and shifted in their seats.

  There’s always an audience, isn’t there? Silver-haired and respectfully honed into men and women of reason. These people were no doubt the descendants of the drunkards and the toothless hags who hung around the guillotine basket. Leonard had read somewhere that those decapitated heads could remain conscious for several seconds after separation from the body. He wondered what such a head might have to say in those seconds, given that the Duke or Duchess had enough throat left to say anything at all? ‘That fucking hurt!’ probably.

  Leonard sat and stared at the other empty chair. There was such a projection of personality sitting there opposite him that he decided to close his eyes and think positive thoughts. He was determined to do well, although the question he had for himself was difficult. It was, ‘How do you do interviews?’ Do you find out what they want to hear and regurgitate it? Or do you go in with your own entirely new way of looking at things? Leonard was not at all sure he knew. He felt like a remote controlled aeroplane which had flown out of range of its controlling mechanism. He was on his own now (when wasn’t he?) and he would have to rise to the occasion and make his case.

  Fluorescent green strip-lights buzzed high above his head and a pale, bluer light shone in through the windows. In one corner of the interview room, a fifty-year-old woman in a grey woollen suit sat behind a typewriter. She was on standby, the court recorder: ready to take down anything and everything Leonard might have to say.

  Eventually the door opened and an old man entered, a tall, skinny old man with a candyfloss mane of white hair. He was wearing loose sportswear and he hobbled into the room with the aid of a walking stick and thick-heeled, jazzy trainers which took the spinal compression out of his steps. There had been a fair amount of cosmetic tinkering to his appearance, tints of bottled sun and whitened teeth. He sat down in the waiting chair and there was a short, silent pause during which time Leonard felt rifled through by the old man’s eyes, optically frisked. Then quite suddenly the words started spilling from the old man’s gob-hole.

  ‘Right! I expect you know the form, Mr er…’ (he referred to a list of names he was holding). ‘Gopaul. I’ll remind you that places on the survival programme are very limited. So, can you tell me why you are here? Be concise, state your case. Just explain why, of all the people on this God-forsaken planet, I should consider you eligible. Why you, over and above any-bloody-body else!’

  That’s all he said; he then settled back into his swivelling chair, jangled a loose-fitting gold wristwatch around his forearm and waited. Leonard looked around the room, brushed his hair off his forehead and tried, as honestly as he could, to imagine, why on earth.

  ‘Well, now that you have asked me so directly, I find it difficult to explain. I don’t feel particularly special or particularly worthy.’

  There was a pause while Leonard adjusted his sitting position and thought about how to continue. The
old man piped up.

  ‘Have you not read any of the advisory material?’

  ‘No. I didn’t know there was any.’

  Another awkward pause.

  A cough was lobbed out of the gallery and the old man spoke again.

  ‘You are, of course, free to leave without further explanation. It makes no difference to us at all.’

  ‘No, no, I want to explain. I’ve come a long way.’

  ‘Do go on, then. Time waits, as they say, for no man and we’ve a lot of people to get through this afternoon.’

  Leonard leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees.

  ‘Well, to be honest, as a child I can remember that I was constantly moving, upturning every stick and stone and running on to the next. I explored every new object and sensation, I was like a kind of magnifying glass focused on the wonderful. But when I try to look closely at the world these days, my breath seems to condense on the glass and I am no longer able to see. And I used to be able to see so clearly; the green veins of a leaf revealed in the sunlight and after a rain shower, the smell of the dampened dust and the perfect limpid clarity of raindrops hanging from the lowest points of everything. I don’t recall exactly when all of this stopped, but I have somehow left this facility behind me, locked into my childhood.

  ‘I was not reckless as a young boy and I know that I did not misspend my youth, because when I arrived in my adulthood, I still had all the money that I should have squandered in my pocket. I have not really misbehaved as a grown man, either. But I do feel that I have somehow failed, somehow missed the point. At the very least, I have lost the plot. And here I am now, standing before you, thoroughly confused and, I suppose, what I am looking for, what I need, is the chance to put things straight, the chance to start over again.’

  The old man rubbed his chin, nodded and pursed his lips.

  ‘Is that it? I mean, is this supposed to be relevant?’

  Leonard shrugged.

  ‘Look, are you in the right room, Gopaul? Do you know what we are doing here?’

  ‘Yes, of course, survival selection.’

  ‘But what do you have to offer us? What services can you provide? What good are you to anyone?’

  Leonard felt like he was right out on a limb, which was about to break.

  ‘I… I don’t know.’

  ‘Good Lord, where do we get them!’

  The old man stood, walked slowly and deliberately, like a wading bird picking its way through shallow water. He stopped beside his typist and checked the notes, then he wandered back and offered his hand for Leonard to shake.

  ‘Thank you for coming to see us, Leonard. Now, please leave and stop wasting everybody’s time.’

  Leonard put his jacket on, smiled, glanced at the faces in the gallery and left the room.

  He set off back down the polished corridors again, but before he could get clear of the building, just in front of the revolving glass doors, he was waved down by the clerk and ushered towards the reception desk.

  ‘Perhaps you have not been told, but did you know that you are actually forbidden to leave the city until decisions have been made?’

  ‘Yes, I know, but I didn’t do too well back there.’

  ‘I’m not interested in that, sir. You will be notified of the results, but you will have to leave your passport with us.’

  ‘If you insist.’

  Leonard took his passport out of his jacket pocket and handed it over.

  ‘Thank you. And just a general warning, sir: do be careful out there. They are a nasty bunch, a desperate lot!’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

  One laminated glass rotation put Leonard outside on the pavement. He sucked in some fresh air, eyed the sky for rain. He hoped the old man was in some way able to see what he’d been getting at. Who could say what sort of person they were looking for? Now he would have to take his chances and wait like everybody else, wait in a city full of hopefuls, each with that sharp-eyed sense of competition oozing from their skin. He was miles from home, in a city filled with strangers. He’d travelled a long way to get here, several hundred miles by train and bus, and what he had to do now was find somewhere to stay; a quiet, comfortable room in a hotel or guest house.

  This had not always been a city of strangers, but it had quickly become a kind of dormitory town, a place where four storey houses had been cut to bits and boxed off with plasterboard to form tiny bed and breakfast rooms for the rising population.

  He passed a newsagents’ with a bold headline black-waxed onto a paper stand. It read: KILLER BLOND SEX MANIAC STILL AT LARGE!

  The sub-headline read: OIL PRODUCTION GRINDS TO A HALT.

  Both stories intrigued him so he took a copy and tucked it into his bag.

  He had an address in his pocket, his only piece of inside information, hand-written on a folded scrap of paper, given to him by his friend Jerry, who had been to the city in the spring. He had Jerry’s map too, unreadable in the worn out folds but with useful places ringed in red pen. Leonard followed the map toward a place which Jerry had circled more times than the rest and written ‘pucker nosh’ in the middle of the circle.

  When the restaurant came into view, Leonard realised how hungry he was. There were a few tables set up outside but it was October now and the temperature had dropped sharply through the afternoon. Leonard stepped inside onto the polished boards, dropped his bag beside the bar and noted the gleaming white table-linen and church candles. He worried that it was way past lunch and too early for an evening meal, but it was busy enough, with a calming background noise of cutlery scraping china. He sat down facing the door and a waitress dropped an origami menu onto the table as she passed.

  The thing was, that even in that swift dropping gesture, there was some anomaly, her feminine swiftness was over-acted and he was sure that this waitress was, in fact, a waiter.

  Leonard began to scan the menu.

  ‘Excuse me, couldn’t help noticing.’

  Leonard lowered the menu.

  ‘Couldn’t help noticing?’

  ‘The knot in your coat. It’s one of mine!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you mind if I pull up a chair?’

  Leonard shook his head.

  ‘No, I don’t mind.’

  He had black eyes, this man, and a bottomless gaze. His checked shirt was uniquely colourful; it looked as if he had drawn the pattern on himself with felt pens and steel rulers. This man leant forward over the candle and with squinted eyes drew on a cigarette until it was alight. He held his hand out for Leonard to shake.

  ‘Ian.’

  ‘Leonard.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘And I you.’

  Ian lifted a carafe of water and poured some into a glass, then fished a bottle of pills from his inside pocked and twisted the top off. He tapped a couple into his hand and swilled them down.

  ‘So, how are we going to do this?’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  Ian pointed at the drawstring of Leonard’s coat.

  ‘Half-hitch, see. May I?’

  Leonard shrugged.

  Ian reached forward and examined the knot.

  ‘Yes, it’s like I thought.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Look at the way you’ve tied these cords.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘Well, the knot is one of mine!’

  ‘What are you talking about, “yours”?’

  ‘I own the copyright on every major knot in common use; the bends, the loops and slings, the twists and, of course, the hitches.’

  ‘But I’ve been tying this stupid knot all my life, since I was a child.’

  ‘Well, that’s really very honest of you. I don’t really back-date and the rate on that knot is reasonable. Just a small charge this time, then.’

  ‘But I haven’t got any foreign currency cashed in yet!’

  Ian smiled.

  ‘Oh dear, you are a freshman. There’s n
o currency here, Leonard, no cash changes hands at all. The whole place operates on a system of barter and credit note, like I.O.U’s. You’ll learn soon enough, you juggle them, swap them, beg, borrow or steal them. Like for my knot here, you give me a credit note and I’ll pay for my meal with it.’

  ‘But where do I get a credit note?’

  ‘Ah, well, see that’s the same old same old, isn’t it!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Problem. That’s the cash part of the sums, and as always there’s two solutions. You’ve either got to earn it same as anywhere else. In which case, you’d better start offering your services. What can you do?’

  Leonard hesitated.

  ‘Or you borrow.’

  ‘Borrow from who?’

  ‘From you, from yourself, your future. It’s a credit note, see! You write one out and that’s it, you’ve paid. That is, you’ve promised a piece of your future to whoever calls in the note, see?’

  ‘Ah, but…?’

  ‘Never mind, you’ll think of something.’

  He sat back, Ian did, and puffed hard on his cigarette. The waitress passed again, then turned and confronted him.

  ‘Oh no, there’s no smoking in here.’

  ‘No smoking? All right, darling, you’re the boss.’

  Ian pulled a light canvas sack out from beneath the table. He fished his hand into it and brought out a length of rope twisted into a knot. It was tagged with a string and card labelled, ‘Half Hitch’. He had another look at the knot tied in the drawstring of Leonard’s jacket.

  ‘It’s definitely one of mine, I’m afraid.’

  He placed the sample knot in between Leonard’s knife and fork.

  ‘Bit hard to swallow, I know, but there it is all the same. Take a look, she’s a beauty. I found out nobody owned the international copyrights a few years ago. So I bought the lot.’