That annoyed Rosie greatly, as did the realisation that all these silly rules were going to make her feel like a fool again. In her opinion, she was doing her best in very difficult circumstances. Indeed, when had anyone been in more difficult circumstances?
So when her turn came, the fearful mood had been replaced by one of defiance. ‘I’m a foreigner,’ she announced. ‘I don’t know the words, and I don’t know what I am meant to say, but that was beautiful. Utterly wonderful and I have never heard anything like it before. And your clothes are just amazing.’
Aliena flinched, then broke into a broad grin. ‘Do you like them?’ she said. ‘I was told they looked coarse.’
‘Heavens no! You look like a queen. It suits you perfectly. Velvet, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. It’s more expensive than... well. It was expensive.’
‘I can imagine. Who made it?’
‘I made it myself, but I couldn’t get the seam right.’ She lifted the sash around the waist and Rosie saw how the join of two bits of cloth was rumpled and untidy. Very amateurish.
She made a face. ‘You need to cut little darts right the way around,’ she said. ‘My mum showed me how to do that. I could fix it easily.’
‘Really? Could you really?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then you will. You must. Will you?’
‘It would be my pleasure. A practical gesture of thanks for the delight you have given me this evening.’
Aliena laughed. ‘That is a better way of putting it than many I have heard. Did you like my ending? I put it in just to annoy Rambert.’
‘Who?’
‘Rambert. My teacher. He was the one alone in the boat with a sour look on his face. We had a real fight this afternoon, so I thought I’d put in something unorthodox to annoy him. We’ll have another fight about it later, I suppose.’
‘I thought it was lovely.’ Then Rosie remembered where she had heard it. Just a snatch of a tune, scarcely recognisable. ‘Casablanca,’ she said. ‘That’s what it was. You know. Although I suppose you don’t,’ she added a little lamely.
Rosie started humming ‘As Time Goes By’, then began to sing.
‘You know this melody? What are those words?’
‘Of course I know it. I can’t sing well, though.’
‘No. You can’t. I am astonished you know this. Do you know any others?’
‘Lots.’
‘Sing me one.’
This was enough to make Rosie’s mind go blank. In desperation, she thought of what made people of her parents’ age look happy. ‘I know. There’s this one. You’ll like this.’ She sang a bit of ‘Fly Me to the Moon’. ‘Professor Lytten played me that. Peggy Lee. Good, isn’t it?’
Aliena sang it herself, the same tune but very different words. ‘That’s one of the oldest lines of melody there is,’ she said. ‘So Rambert tells me. It is used only for the most beautiful and poignant of passages.’
Rosie felt confused. She was sure it wasn’t that old. ‘We don’t do songs like that,’ she said. ‘Any old words will do, normally. Doo-wop, be-bop. That sort of thing.’
‘That’s disgusting. For prancing peasants.’
‘I’m sorry if I have offended you.’
‘You are a foreigner, so I will overlook it. This time.’
‘Do you still want me to fix your dress?’
Aliena was torn between her dignity and her clothes sense. ‘Yes,’ she said finally.
Rosie waited expectantly.
‘Please.’
‘It will be a pleasure.’
Rosie left her there, and saw that Jay was still bewitched by the young singer. It would have been inaccurate to say that his mouth was actually hanging open but, in her opinion, he was not behaving in quite the way a companion of hers should behave.
She sniffed disdainfully and walked up the bank of the lake on her own and then saw, standing on the narrow pathway, the tall man she had accidentally insulted earlier in the evening. He had a look of contempt on his face, or what could be seen of it under the mask.
With an exaggerated gesture of ironic distaste, he bowed deeply to her once again.
Rosie flushed, glanced briefly at Jay, who was still staring goggle-eyed at Aliena, and, with an equally exaggerated movement, curtsied deeply back.
24
Jack More was travelling back into a world which was familiar, even comforting, after the sterile, dead and entirely regimented institute that sprawled over the Island of Mull. He talked to no one as he took the old ferry across to the mainland with the workers, then the link to the transport hub fifty miles inland. He sat as inconspicuously as possible, trying to lose himself in the mass of reeking humanity which was, like him, travelling south for work, into the sprawling metropolis which extended for some two hundred miles and contained so many people that no one was even sure how many there were. Most could not move, bound for life to their factories or jobs so that production would never cease. They got up, worked, went home and thought themselves happy. Some, though, like the people now surrounding him, were floating workers, assigned to one task or another as needed; others, he suspected, had run away, hoping to hide themselves and not be noticed. He realised he had become separated from them, even felt superior to them despite being born one of them, in a housing unit of twenty thousand attached to a food processing plant where his family had worked for generations. Jack had hated it, and volunteered for military service simply to escape. Then he had gone into security, to avoid being sent back. Was his time in an institute having an effect on him? Was he getting used to the small privileges that he now possessed? How hard would he try to hang on to them, if he ever had to choose?
It was, after all, most peculiar behaviour for someone like him — someone as he was now pretending to be — to use mass transport and to travel to the grubby, dingy suburbs of the south. He was also going alone, without the usual panoply of security detail and aides which someone of his supposed rank would have insisted upon to give protection from the envious and dangerous populace.
He studied the wan reflections of his travelling companions in the coach, the lined faces, the signs of hunger, the weariness and wariness of their expressions. All were insignificant, consumers not producers, there to be controlled and monitored and to work for the greater good, even if they never knew what it was. He did not examine them directly, but rather in the window of the compartment, half steamed up from the heavy rain lashing down outside. He studied his own face and knew why they looked at him cautiously, a little suspiciously. He was too healthy, too exercised and self-confident, not like those all around him.
Some people did look at him more closely, then glanced away. He did not think any of them were excessively interested, nor did anyone follow him when he arrived at his destination. But then why should they? Cameras were following his every move anyway. He was banking on no one bothering to look at them.
For the next two days he went back to his old business, calling on former colleagues and friends who, unlike him, had remained in the front line of security and policing when he had left in disgust. He could no longer see the point of harassing and monitoring, of travelling into the heart of vast housing complexes to pick up people for trivial offences. The arrests, the interrogations, the forced re-education programmes had no purpose other than to remind people of the power of their guardians. People like him were meant to find and neutralise renegades, criminals and troublemakers, convert them into useful citizens serving the good of all. He had increasingly come to the view that it was a waste of time. Most were incorrigible, and increasingly he doubted that they were much of a threat in any case. They arrested a few to intimidate everyone else and to reassure the masses they were looked after and kept secure. Working for Hanslip was hardly exciting, in contrast, but until a couple of days ago it hadn’t required him to pretend he was doing something useful.