"The Red Tie" - 9
Weekly serialisation of my short dystopian thriller.
“We need to wrap-up,” says the older man. The conversation had meandered inconclusively for a few minutes. “We mentioned the idea of a test for Vincent. Clearly we need to do something more to rule him ‘in’ or ‘out’. Agreed.” The other three nod. “So, unless anyone has any better ideas, I have a little experiment I’d like to try.”
Verna sits a little further forward in her chair; the younger woman a little further back.
“Of course,” says Will.
“I think we should give him a book to re-edit.”
“Just that?” Verna seems surprised.
“Yes. Sounds too simple, doesn’t it? But because of that he won’t be suspicious or think it out of the ordinary.”
“And the book?” asks Will.
“Again nothing contentious on the face of it. But it is a book he will remember. It is a book with, shall we say, ‘connotations’. It will pose a significant challenge to him.” Pulling a small notebook and a pen from his jacket pocket, the senior man tears out a sheet of paper. He writes down the title of a book and hands it to Verna.
She raises her eyebrows. “I don’t think I know it.”
Will takes the sheet from her, reads the title, then passes it back.
A few minutes later four figures descend the fire escape having locked both it and room 1.51 behind them. The older man and the younger woman get into one of the cars, Will into the other. And Verna begins her walk back to the tram stop hoping she will be in time to get the eight o’clock home.
They are part way to the suburbs when the young woman speaks. “Why will he know the book?”
“Because I introduced it to him before he became a controller. I had been giving a careers talk to some college students. It was the end of the day; only Vincent and two or three others turned up. Overall, an unremarkable event — except that Vincent asked to see me subsequently; said he had some questions about the job. We met a few times; at least twice, I think. There’s a particular passage in that book I walked him through, so he knows what’s in there, just beneath the surface.”
“What you left in there,” Marina points out, “although that was a younger version of you — and one without a beard.”
“Yes.” Marcus smiles slightly, his only recognition of her joke. “Which makes it a form of double-jeopardy for him. Firstly because he knows I was the one who originally edited the book and, as you say, knows what I failed to remove. Secondly, he has knowledge of my subsequent history — the false public history that can be tied to the book in only one way — which will no doubt weigh heavily too and add to the pressure. How he edits that passage will tell us a lot.”
“Such as?”
“Whether or not he is neutral. What his leanings are. What he believes in, if anything. And, if he does have a bias, for which side — though I hate to be so binary, so reductive; that’s Will’s territory. If he leaves it as is — or even enhances it — that will tell us one thing; yet it will only take a few small changes to remove its sting, and if that’s what he chooses to do then he will be telling us something else.”
“And then we’ll know.”
“And then we’ll have a better idea.” For a moment Marcus watches the lights in the buildings as they make their way from the centre of town. “But what about you?”
“Me?”
“I didn’t want to bring up your encounter with him, not in front of the others.”
Marina frowns. “They don’t know?”
“No. I daresay they’ll assume you’ve done some digging in the background — it’s your job after all — but that will have been the extent of your involvement. And because you’re who you are… Well, they daren’t question that.” Slowing before a red light, Marcus brings the car to a halt. “You weren’t in any danger or out of control?”
“At no point.” She tries to sound as certain as she can, not wishing to be pressed.
“And” — interrupted by the lights changing to green, Marcus propels them forward once more — “you don’t as a result feel any sympathy towards him? From what I recall he’s a perfectly pleasant young man.” He shoots her a glance then returns his eyes to the road.
“Yes he is. And neutral or not, he’s definitely harmless in that way. But he’s not really my type, dad.” Marina allows a few hundred metres to pass. “So the meal and everything… It was just work, up to but not crossing a line; a favour for a parent…”
“Don’t you dare tell your mother; she’d kill me!” They both laugh.
“To be honest, I’m not sure how much I found out that’s of worth to you.” She is distracted for a moment by a sudden wondering if she has learned anything new about herself. “Nor how much more there is to uncover; probably not very much without forcing him to commit to something. On that basis, is that the end of the experiment?” Marina’s voice as flat and business-like as she can make it.
“Nearly.” Marcus swings the car off the main road and through a set of gates. “I would just like you to give him something… We’ll see what happens then.”
*
Vincent’s inclination is not to go to work on Monday. If he was to phone in and complain that he wasn’t well he is certain they would take him seriously. How could there possibly be any suspicion? Indeed, Verna has already expressed concern that recently he ‘hadn’t been himself’ — which he most certainly isn’t the day after the meal.
He bumbles through Sunday on a vague form of autopilot, relying on habit and memory to get him through. Consequently he eats when he usually does, ensures he remains hydrated, watches too much television in spite of the limited selection on offer. Yet there are differences too; in the afternoon, a longer walk than usual in an attempt to clear the confusion from his head.
As he walks he takes himself through the previous evening in as much detail as he can manage, attempting to recall morsels of conversation, subtleties of looks and movement. It proves impossible not to focus on what happened in the lounge, a remembrance occluded by emotion — primarily guilt. Convinced he had done something wrong, as he ticks off laps of the park he tries to focus on the sequence of things and — a little like his circuitous walking — finds himself always returning to the same point: Marina had been the initiator. She had asked if she was forgiven, had played with his buttons, had lain back on the sofa, arched her back so that he might remove her bra, caress her breasts. What had he been doing in any of that other than be at her beck-and-call, following her lead, performing as expected? And then to be so suddenly rebuffed, dismissed.
Before Marina arrived he had been concerned with how he might survive her presence, and now he is faced with trying to understand how he can cope with her absence. It is as if a vital sentence had been edited from a book. Not having resolved that question — the nature of their relationship, or even whether or not they have one — part of his reluctance to go back to the Ministry is driven by not wanting to run into her in the canteen.
In the end the dilemma proves too difficult to resolve and so he allows his Monday morning routine to take over. Five hours further on and he is sitting with the rest of the department listening to Verna as she delivers the Ministry’s weekly briefing. Although the formal — and final — news on Noah is perfunctory, it still manages to draw gasps from some members of the team. It is clear that at one point Verna chooses to embellish the script to provide a little more detail. Given he had been a member of her staff, Vincent thinks such a diversion is warranted, the least she can do. Yet what she delivers is hardly a rallying-cry (she isn’t that kind of person), but rather an attempt to add a little humanity to the Ministry’s cold words.
When she holds him back at the end of the meeting he is unsurprised; it seems a logical bookend to their previous conversation.
“How are you?”
“A little tired,” he says. “I didn’t sleep that well over the weekend.”
“I’m not surprised,” she confesses, and then chases the comment away with “thinking about Noah, I mean. Knowing the news would break today.”
For a moment he says nothing. Then: “But I’m here now; back in harness as it were.” He watches the phrase register with her, the look on her face suggesting a slightly different interpretation to that intended.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” Verna shuffles herself from one mode to another. “I’ve a new project for you.”
“Oh?”
“You’re just coming to the end of a book, aren’t you?”
Though certain he is displaying some kind of confusion, he nods. His work-list has been set only recently and she has already given him a sequence of new novels to edit, work that will take him at least three months. To disrupt a plan so soon is highly unusual.
“There’s a proposal to reissue some of our old titles. The Ministry recognises their worth as works of fiction but is concerned that times have changed, that the intervening years may not have been — what shall we say — kind to them?”
“They need updating?”
“Purely cosmetically. I’m sure that’s what most of it is. But if a job’s worth doing, and all that… After all, we’d hate to lose a good book because our readers found it old-fashioned or irrelevant.”
He nods again.
Verna turns to the table behind her and removes a book which had been part-hidden under a pile of papers. “We thought we’d start with this.”
Only half-way from her hands to his and Vincent has already recognised it. And he knows that within it he will find the section starting ‘Frank spreads the newspaper out on the kitchen table’.
*
The next two and a half days pass unremarkably. Vincent allows the closing out of his existing project to drag on, wanting to put off Verna’s new challenge for as long as possible. When on Wednesday afternoon she comes to see how he is getting on, his response — “just tidying up some loose ends; starting on the other book first thing tomorrow” — leaves him no further room for manoeuvre. On the tram home he tries to tell himself that Frank’s story is just another book, just another job; that there is no reason for him to treat it any differently to all the other books on which he has worked. He has a proven process; surely all he needs to do is to trust in that?
When he arrives home and opens his front door he finds a card from the postal service waiting for him. It tells him they have been unable to deliver a parcel and instead left it with his neighbour who signed for it. Without bothering to remove his coat, Vincent walks back outside and heads to the adjacent house. The door opens just before he gets there. Mrs. Carsington has been waiting for him, watching through the curtains.
The package is not large; about half the width of a piece of paper, but the same length. Nor is it heavy. He places it on the kitchen table and eyes it warily as he removes his coat. He has ordered nothing, is expecting nothing. Hand-written, his name and address presents itself in clear and even script, blue ink. The postmark suggests its origin as being the centre of town, so neither that nor the handwriting provide any clue to the sender. The rear of the package is blank. Teasing at the tape, Vincent opens it carefully, peeling back the brown wrapping to reveal a long thin white card container inside. Flipping one end open, he allows his fingers to find the contents — tissue paper, without a doubt — which he then withdraws and lays on the table. Then he peels back the vibrant purple tissue.
A bright red tie.
Along with the tie is a small card, written in the same hand as on the front of the package: I hope this is suitable, M. He turns the card over expecting to find more words, an address perhaps; he checks the tissue paper and the package to ensure he has missed nothing. There is just the present and the card.
Vincent sits down to examine the tie. It is partially made from silk — which suggests expense. In terms of colour and style, it is exactly the kind of tie for which he had so recently shopped. And it is a tie which, had he found it, he would have wanted to buy but been unable to afford. I hope this is suitable. He looks at the words again and realises he has no idea what they mean, the heart of their message hidden beneath the blue ink. Am I forgiven, perhaps. Then he hears her voice: “I don’t think so, do you?”
If you can’t wait for the rest of the serialisation, you can buy a discounted copy of the book.