"Oh, it's that little room over there," he says, pointing to a door in the corner. "You shouldn't really go in if you're not a member, but I should think it'll be all right. Obviously you can't take any of the books out. And I'm afraid you can't take your bag in with you."
He signs me in and takes my bag. Then he gives me a laminated pass.
"Just go straight in," he says.
The local history library is a dusty, low-ceilinged room split into three distinct sections by the layout of the shelves and the position of several desks and one microfiche reader. I instantly feel comfortable in here, around the musty smell of old books. There's no one else here but me, and I wonder if I'd get arrested for just crashing out here at the end of the day. Probably.
I drift around looking at faded old spines of parish records and biographies before I realize I'll need the computerized records to find what I'm looking for. There's a terminal in the corner, just under a CCTV playback of what's going on in here. I sit down, but it feels odd seeing myself on TV, and I'm a vague shadow in the corner of my eye as I type in the keywords "castles" and "Devon."
There are several books on Devon castles, and I choose a couple with pictures and take them to one of the desks. I flick through the largest book, which contains line drawings of all the major castles in the area. Exeter Castle and Powderham Castle are too grand and rectangular, as are Berry Pomeroy Castle and Bickleigh Castle. Gidley Castle and Lydford Castle are both too square. There are several castles by the sea. But the castle Burlem was thinking of was on a little mound. Finally I find pictures of two castles that are on mounds. They're both circular. My heart is like a machine that's been turned up a notch. I've now got two choices. I almost know where I need to go. I have to look at another book—this one with more recent photographs—before I see that one of the castles is now really just a ruin, like a tooth left in a giant's mouth.
But the other one looks exactly like Burlem described: like a giant's ring thrown on a hilltop. And I can see what he meant about the absence, as well. The picture I've got here in this book, this aerial view, certainly does make it seem like the space—the thing that isn't there—is more important than the walls, which are. If you look at the castle for long enough the walls blur, and it's as if they don't have any point at all, except to keep all the nothingness in.
Chapter Twenty-three
By four o'clock I'm standing outside the house from Burlem's memory: the one he lives in with Lura (or, at least, the one where he lived in December); the one you get to by walking past the cheese shop and turning right and walking up the narrow cobbled street. It's a tallish, thin gray stone cottage with green wooden shutters over the front windows. It looks cozy, but it also has an air of the fortress about it. Maybe that's the effect of the shutters, or just my paranoia. I'm not actually sure I should be here at all, but I'm fairly certain no one's been following me. Well, at least, no one in the physical world. I realize suddenly that I should have gone into a church just in case one of those Project Starlight guys (or the dead KIDS) is in my mind. It's too late now, though. It was probably too late almost from the moment I set off this morning. If they've been with me at any stage, they'll know where I'm going. But if they've been with me at any stage they won't need to know where I'm going: They'll have their recipe.
But I don't think they are here, anyway. I think I'm on my own.
In fact, I know I'm on my own. I don't think I've ever been so alone in my life. I hesitate before lifting the heavy brass door knocker. My eyes are filling with tears, but I don't want to seem unbalanced when, and if, someone opens the door. When did I last cry? I didn't cry after Patrick fucked me at the university, or in the service station toilet; I didn't cry when my parents finally abandoned me for good; I didn't even cry when I left Adam at the priory, probably hating me, probably gone forever. But now, standing here in the early twilight, in the cold air, with seagulls squawking above me, and stars already beginning to prick the sky, I want to cry more than I ever have before. I gulp it back. But if this doesn't work then I'm totally fucked. I have no home. I have no money. I have no family.
I lift the knocker and bang it twice against the door.
Please be there, please be there, please be there.
I see smoke coming from the chimney: Someone is in.
After two minutes or so I'm just about to knock again, but then a woman opens the door. It's Lura. I recognize everything about her, from the flowing clothes to the gray shoulder-length hair streaked with pink. I suddenly realize that I haven't worked out how I should play this. I know what it's like to make love to this woman; to lie to her; to live with her. But I should probably pretend I don't know her at all. As long as I remember I am me, that's perfectly true.
She doesn't say anything.
"Hello," I say. "I wonder if..."
"Sorry?" says Lura. "Who are you?" Her voice, which I recognize anyway, is educated and low-pitched, with just a hint of a German accent.
"I'm sorry to bother you, but..."
"Yes?" She's trying to hurry me up. Maybe she doesn't like people pissing her around, wasting her time. But I'm not sure she's going to like what I've got to say, either. Although she has to. She has to, because I've got nowhere else to go.
"I'm looking for Saul Burlem," I say.
Lura's face looks as though it's been freeze-framed in one of those movie special effects that lets the rest of the world just carry on as usual around the frozen object. Then she's normal again, except for the fear I can now see in her eyes, like the beginning of a storm.
"You're looking for whom?" she says.
"Saul Burlem," I say. "I need to see him. Would you mind telling him that Ariel Manto is here? Tell him that I found the page and I have to speak to him."
As I speak, the fear in Lura's eyes hurricanes outwards and now she reaches a hand up to her face, as if to steady it: to stop this; to confirm, perhaps, that she's imagining it. This must be the last thing you need when you're in hiding. This, if you're in hiding, must be your worst nightmare.
"Who are you?" she says.
"I'm Saul's Ph.D. student."
"You're... No. I know where you've come from."
"I'm not with them. I'm not part of Project Starlight."
"How do I know that? If you aren't with them then why the bloody hell did you come?" She takes a deep breath and touches her hair. "Saul isn't here, anyway. He moved on, about two months ago. He went..."
"Ariel?"
It's Burlem. He's standing behind Lura.
"Saul," I say, "can I...?"
"Let her in, Lura," he says, in his gravel voice. And then, leaning against the wall in the hallway while I walk in: "Oh fuck."
The downstairs of the house is an open-plan space with wooden floorboards and oak beams that you access by walking through a wide hallway and through an arch. A fire is burning at the far end of the large room, and there are red, brown, and dark yellow rugs everywhere. There's a large dining table on the left-hand side of the room. At the moment it has a newspaper spread out on it with a half-finished cup of coffee on a wicker mat. Just beyond the table there's a black-and-white dog asleep in a cane basket, and then, at the edge of the room, what must be a set of patio doors covered with heavy curtains. As if the dog knows I'm looking at it, it glances up at me sleepily and then falls asleep again. There's a mantelpiece over the fireplace with an assortment of items on it: a couple of rosettes, a framed black-and-white photograph of a man and a woman, a hairbrush, a set of knitting needles, and a vase of blue flowers. The closest thing to the fire is an armchair with some knitting balanced on the arm. There are two sofas—big, deep, and yellow—and they face each other across the fire but set slightly back from the armchair. One of them looks more used than the other, and there are books and papers scattered on it. There's a coffee table—a polished section of tree trunk—between the sofas, with books and old crosswords and Biros all over it. There are tall piles of books on every surface, and the whole right-hand wall is covered with thick pine shelves, a bit like the ones from Apollo Smintheus's apartment, but stocked with what must be hundreds and hundreds of books. There's no TV.