Dreams Before the Start of Time Read online

  PRAISE FOR ANNE CHARNOCK’S

  A CALCULATED LIFE

  Shortlisted for the 2013 Philip K. Dick and Kitschies Golden Tentacle Awards

  “[A Calculated Life] is lovingly crafted, beautifully made in the economical, expert way a piece of Arts and Crafts furniture is made—pure lines, and perfectly suited to its intended purpose . . . Anne Charnock is clearly a gifted and sensitive author of acute intelligence, writing science fiction of a kind—quiet, intense, thoughtful—we could do with more of.”

  —Nina Allan, winner of the 2013 BSFA Best Short Fiction Award for Spin

  “Charnock is a subtle worldbuilder . . . For readers who want a smart, subtle exploration of human emotion and intelligence, this is an excellent choice.”

  —Alix E. Harrow, Strange Horizons

  “A very noteworthy book . . . What Charnock shares with Philip K. Dick is the ability to write unease . . . She has fascinating, complex things to say about work, sex, family and hope.”

  —Adam Roberts, author of Jack Glass, winner of the 2012 BSFA Best Novel Award

  “This story puts us inside one of the most interesting perspectives I’ve encountered in recent fiction. Jayna’s perspective is so unique that I would happily have followed her anywhere, and, as a consequence, the cleverness of this plot almost snuck up on me. A smart, stylish, emotionally compelling book with literary richness and sci-fi smarts.”

  —Susan DeFreitas, author of Hot Season

  “Charnock [is] an astute observer herself, [and] what results is an inquiry into feminism and society that will make the reader truly pause to compare their own experiences and perceptions.”

  —Speculiction

  PRAISE FOR ANNE CHARNOCK’S

  SLEEPING EMBERS OF AN ORDINARY MIND

  Included in the Guardian’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2015

  “Anne Charnock’s Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind is an expert braiding together of past, present and future that puts a fifteenth-century Italian female artist centre stage to say penetrating things about womanhood, creativity and history.”

  —Adam Roberts, the Guardian

  “Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind is certainly one of 2015’s tip-top releases in science fiction.”

  —Speculiction

  “This quiet, lovely and exquisitely crafted novel is itself a masterclass in composition . . . As in her debut novel, A Calculated Life, the clarity and refined elegance of Charnock’s prose is a significant achievement.”

  —Nina Allan, winner of the 2013 BSFA Best Short Fiction Award for Spin

  “The feminist elements of Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind are elusively contradictory, so much like life!, making this one of those thinking books—the kind with embers smoldering until a second visit. I look forward to more from Anne Charnock.

  —From Couch to Moon

  “The centuries-spanning story gives the mystery an epic feel.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Anne Charnock

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by 47North, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com Inc. or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503934726

  ISBN-10: 1503934721

  Cover design by David Drummond

  For Adam and Robert

  Contents

  PART ONE

  THE APPLE TREE

  FIRST CONTACT

  SOMEONE TOTALLY RELIABLE, WITH BLUE EYES

  BE THE GENTLEMAN

  A TRAIL OF CRUMBS

  FAVOURITE AUNTIE, FAVOURITE UNCLE

  TONI CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF CHINA

  PART TWO

  THE ADOPTION

  THE COLOURS SHOULDN’T WORK, BUT THEY DO

  DREAMS BEFORE THE START OF TIME

  THE WASHING LINE

  LEAVE THE BABY TO CRY

  JITTERY GOOD, JITTERY BAD

  THE RIGHT THING TO DO

  PART THREE

  BABY BERTRAND HOUSE

  ALWAYS MIMMY

  THEY’RE ALL THINKING THE SAME

  MR. FILIPKOWSKI’S LIBRARY

  THE POLES OF INACCESSIBILITY

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PART ONE

  2034

  THE APPLE TREE

  August

  This year’s crop of apples is so poor that Betty Matheson counts the overnight windfalls when she opens her bedroom shutters each morning. Today, she looks down on the gravel path and sees a split apple at exactly the point where she expected to see one; she heard the crunch of that singular windfall just after dawn. As a rule, she collects the apples, or apple, before breakfast. That is, before too much damage is inflicted by stabbing blackbirds and burrowing wasps.

  In years gone by, the tree was so burdened that apples thumped down on the lawn throughout the night. Back then, she discarded any split apples, any apples with a bruise, and all the small apples that, she convinced herself, were too fiddly to peel. When she’d filled her two-handled blue bucket with near-flawless windfalls, she felt she’d met her responsibility to the tree. The rest had to go.

  She wonders how such a perfectly shaped and healthy apple tree could have caused her so much stress. Whenever she went away from home, she implored neighbours to collect the windfalls. “Or take whatever you can reach on the tree.” She felt embarrassed, offering apples from the bough after offering the windfalls. But surely it made sense to everyone to take the windfalls first.

  As it happened, most of her neighbours had their own apple trees, so Betty inevitably returned home to a war zone of fallen apples—cracked and speckled brown with fungal eruptions. She can’t erase the memory—the scars and the rotting.

  These years most of the apples are small, and there’s no surplus.

  Five small red apples hang high in the tree’s crown, too high for Betty to reach even at a stretch from a ladder. She hopes they’ll have a soft landing.

  Nothing is as it should be. Her husband dead, despite being five years her junior. That wasn’t supposed to happen. She never imagined herself as the one left behind. And Aiden, her son, so loving. So loving, but . . . “Damn it, Aiden,” she says through her teeth. She imagines herself placing her arms around the trunk of the apple tree. Her caress morphs into a bear hug. She tears the tree from the ground, roots and all, and she thrashes the canopy against the ground.

  Still in her pyjamas, Betty turns from the window and pads across to her walk-in wardrobe. Reaching into the far right corner behind her nana’s red fox-fur coat, she allows familiar thoughts to surface: Come the apocalypse, she’ll be glad she hung on to her nana’s furs. Who on earth will have any qualms about fur when no one has central heating, when survivors are marauding, scavenging for out-of-date tins of baked beans?

  Betty has carried this conviction for thirty years.

  From behind the fur coat, she pulls out a long, soft case, drags the zip from top to bottom and pulls out the air rifle. She takes a tin of pellets from the side pocket.

  She walks back to her bedroom, throws open the windows, breaks the rifle and loads a pellet. She aims at the topmost red apple and fires. Reloads,
aims and fires. Reloads, aims and fires.

  The apple tree has stood, ready, for so long. A decade ago, the tree surgeon came to cut away the low branches and tidy up the crown. Betty and her husband tied string around the branches to mark the line of the cuts. They wanted a three-foot lateral that could take a child’s swing. As for the other low branches, the surgeon said they should be cut in line with the trunk, but Betty and her husband insisted he cut them proud of the trunk. Otherwise, a child would find it too difficult to climb the tree.

  And now Aiden’s girlfriend is having a baby. He came up last weekend, and when he told Betty the news, she assumed, as anyone would—after all, he’d made a special effort to visit—that the baby was his. Aiden recoiled as Betty clapped her palms together.

  “No!” he said. “I’m sorry, that isn’t what I’ve come to tell you. It’s not mine.”

  She still had her palms together when he moved from the armchair to sit next to her on the sofa. “Millie wanted a baby, but the time’s not right for me. I’m not ready. In fact, Millie and I are taking a break.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re still best friends. You know, Mum, that’s how it’s always been with Millie and me. We’re not into the physical side of things. I keep trying to explain—”

  “But she’s your girlfriend. You live together.”

  “Well, not any more. That’s what I’ve come to tell you—I’ve handed in my notice at work; I’ve decided I want to travel.”

  Holy Mother of God. He wants to travel! “But who’s the father if it’s not you?”

  “She’s going solo. Donor sperm.”

  At that point, Betty felt like heaving. She looked out of the window as though seeing her garden for the first time; the world had become unrecognizable. “Donor sperm? Why didn’t she use yours? Why does she want a baby with a stranger?”

  Looking back, she knows this upset him. He didn’t say anything at the time, remained calm, but the deep crease between his brows gave the lie. He stood up and walked to the kitchen, filled the kettle with water. She realizes now that her remark had been disrespectful—of him and of Millie. She’ll be more careful in future. But saints alive! He surely deserved it.

  Aiden returned to the sofa with two mugs of tea. He said, “Listen, Mum, it’s still exciting. She reckons it’s a boy, and she’s chosen a name. She’s going to call him Rudy. And guess what? I’m so chuffed. I’m going to be the child’s godfather.”

  Betty made him his favourite dinner that evening. She switched on the outdoor lights set into the lawn around the apple tree. She noticed for the first time that the light was a cold white light.

  She asked him—over beef, Yorkshire pudding and homemade horseradish sauce—how Millie would cope looking after a baby on her own. Had he any idea how difficult it was going to be for her? And how would she manage for money? Had she worked it all out?

  He shrugged and said it wasn’t his job to micromanage her life, but obviously, they had talked about it. In any case, her parents had already stepped in to help out; they’d stumped up the money so she could buy a flat. And Millie had asked Robyn, her older sister, to move in with her. “Millie and her sister are close. I think they want to live together permanently.”

  “Permanently?” Betty was incredulous.

  He didn’t answer.

  She said, “What happens when you get back? Will you start over with Millie?”

  “Possibly. I might be in another relationship by then, but if I’m ready for fatherhood, I could have a baby with Millie. If that’s what she wants. If she’d prefer to know the father.”

  Betty wondered at his weary smile as he said, “I’d do anything for her, Mum. I love her to bits.”

  He didn’t say one word of thanks for the dinner, as Betty recalls, which wasn’t at all like him. He left a slice of perfectly cooked beef on his plate, and he didn’t even touch the second of his Yorkshire puddings.

  Betty knows she shouldn’t shoot from the bedroom window; a pellet might zing through the beech hedge into her neighbour’s garden. Nevertheless, she loads the air rifle once again and takes one more shot at the topmost apple. It thumps to the ground and splits. She leans the air rifle against the windowsill. She wishes she had one of those big American shotguns with a loud, convincing pump action.

  FIRST CONTACT

  “Millie Dack, sit back down! You’re not buying a round if you’re only having tomato juice,” says Toni. “Same again, everyone?”

  “Finish the story first, Toni,” says Atticus.

  “I’ll leave you in suspenders,” she says.

  They all titter. Toni points in turn to the glasses on the table and raises her eyebrows at each of her friends, prompting a decision. Dry white for Alice. A pint of London Pride for Alice’s workmate. Red for Atticus, who says, “The French merlot, not the bloody awful rioja they serve here.”

  “I’ll switch to sparkling water,” says Millie.

  “Good for you!” says Toni. She beams a smile. “Feeling okay?”

  “Not great. I’m losing the morning sickness, but I’m tired out. I won’t be staying long.”

  Toni reaches out and strokes her hair. “You’re looking well, kiddo.” And she slips away to the bar.

  Millie loves her friend’s travel stories; they’re so vivid. Whenever Millie recalls them, she has to remind herself she wasn’t actually there. She has never been Toni’s travelling companion. She likes the idea of travel, but the thought of packing a suitcase—choosing which linen shorts and slinky dresses to take, which sandals and jerseys to leave behind—generates a whirlwind of uncertainty. And she doesn’t care for strong sunshine, so she ignores beach holidays on any list she happens to peruse—“Best Weekend Getaways,” “Bucket-List Destinations.” Nothing truly tempts her. It’s a mystery to Millie how the world is populated with billions of souls consumed by lifelong wanderlust. She’s the odd one out, preferring to stay close to home. So far no one has noticed this minor quirk. Even Aiden never commented. She allowed him to believe she was hellbent on saving money to pay off her student loans. Quite apart from her packing dilemmas and her dislike of sunshine, she can’t face the hassle of delayed flights, missed connections, insect bites. Whereas Toni Munroe takes it all in her stride—she views the accumulation of daily dramas as the signature of any adventure.

  Toni is halfway through the tale of her latest travel disaster, and Millie senses a classic in the making. What was that ancient silent film serial, she wonders? The Perils of Pauline. That was it. Toni attracts peril. Or maybe she travels more frequently than most, so she’s bound to experience more calamity.

  Toni’s story so far: some guy took her suitcase off the airport carousel and rushed away into Prague. She knew it was a guy because she found herself in a deserted baggage hall with his suitcase—the same model—with a luggage label stating Mr. E. Strickland. “It’s the last time I travel with a black suitcase,” she said. This Strickland guy had wrapped a strip of fluorescent green tape around the bag’s handle. “Can you believe it? He still took my suitcase, which”—she threw her hands out in recalled disbelief—“had gold twine around its handle. How could he mistake gold twine for green tape? And I had a blue club card attached to my case, which he didn’t.”

  “So you were stuck with some slummer’s baggage,” Alice said. “The indignity.”

  Toni traipsed to the customer services desk at the far end of the baggage hall. The assistant told her, “Don’t worry, Ms. Munroe. This happens all the time. We’ll get your bag back to you within two hours. Mr. Strickland will come straight back to the airport. It always happens.” Except, the assistant evidently copied the address down incorrectly from Toni’s information sheet, laid out under her nose on the high counter; four hours later the bag hadn’t arrived.

  And now Millie and her friends wait for the rest of the tale. Atticus helps Toni carry the drinks from the bar to the large oak table they’ve commandeered by the window of the Hermit’s Cave pub.
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br />   “Go on, then,” says Alice. “Finish the story.”

  “So, I’m on the phone in my rented flat. The airport staff tell me the suitcase has already been delivered to my address.”

  “Oh shit,” says Alice.

  “I know. I get them to repeat all the information on the manifest, and that’s when I realize it’s been delivered to the wrong building in my street, the wrong street number. I dash out to find number twenty-five—it’s half a block away. Huge austere edifice. Very Eastern European, enormous double-entrance doors, dirty windows, no lights on inside and an entrance buzzer with a small nameplate . . .”

  Her friends are leaning in, captivated.

  “It’s the Kyrgyzstan consulate. Un-bloody-believable. Completely shut for the weekend by this point.”

  Millie can see that Toni’s predicament is funny only in hindsight—surely she was sweating buckets.

  “I pressed the buzzer. No one answered. So I banged on the doors with my fist, but I hardly made a sound—the doors were massive. God knows what they made of the surveillance footage when they came in on Monday. I phoned the airport, again, and they kept me on hold while they checked. Lo and behold, the courier reports that my case is still in his van. And there’s me trying to break down the consulate door. Eventually—the next day around noon—my case arrives. I honestly expected to receive a note of apology and a bottle of wine from Mr. Strickland. But nothing. Nada.”

  “You knew his name though.”

  “Yeah. It was tempting to track him down. However, you can start a war that way.”

  A competition ensues over who has a better lost-luggage story.

  Three of Alice’s work colleagues arrive. Toni wanders over to join the new contingent at the end of the bar. Atticus makes a move to join them, but then settles back in his seat. After a couple of minutes, he feigns nonchalance and drifts across to stand beside Toni. He takes a swig of his beer; he doesn’t join the conversation. Millie notices Atticus place his hand at Toni’s elbow. Millie guesses he’d prefer to have Toni all to himself—but he’s caught Toni midflow in conversation. She glances at him. The smile she offers is fleeting, keeps him in a holding pattern—Not yet, not now, she seems to say.