’Ello ’ello ’ello. Wot’s all this then?
That’s the voice of Cerberus, the savage mythical three-headed dog (one ‘ello per head). In ancient myth he guards the dead at the gates of the Underworld to make sure none of them can leave. He’s got very sharp teeth, he has the heads of snakes rising off his back like hackles and he’s talking in English music-hall comedy language to what appears to be a good old British bobby, which is an old-fashioned word for a British policeman.
This British policeman, though, is from right now, he’s the latest corrupt upgrade, and he’s crossed the river Styx and come to the entrance of the Underworld to show each of Cerberus’s heads some fun photos of himself and other uniforms doing fun things like making V signs over and adding fun racist / sexist commentary to the pictures of the bodies of real murdered people which he’s circulated on the fun police app he and his pals are using these days, in this land of union-jack-the-lads in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty one, in which this story, which starts with me staring at nothing in my front room on the sofa one evening imagining a meeting between some terrifying aspects of imagination and reality, takes place.
Cerberus doesn’t even raise an eyebrow (and he could, if he wants, raise six at once). Seen it all before. Let the bodies pile high, more the merrier in a country of people in mourning gaslit by the constant pressure to act like it’s not a country of people in mourning.
Tragedy versus farce.
Did dogs have eyebrows?
Yeah, because verisimilitude’s important in myth, Sand.
I could have, if I’d wanted to know for sure, got off the sofa, crossed the room and had a look at my father’s dog’s head to check.
But I was past caring whether dogs had eyebrows.
I didn’t care what season it was.
I didn’t even care what day of the week.
Everything was mulch of a mulchness to me right then. I even despised myself for that bit of wordplay, though this was uncharacteristic, since all my life I’d loved language, it was my main character, me its eternal loyal sidekick. But right then even words and everything they could and couldn’t do could fuck off and that was that.
Then my phone lit up on the table. I saw the light of it in the dark of the room.
I picked it up and stared at it.
Not the hospital.
Okay.
A number I didn’t know.
It surprises me now that I even answered it. I’ll have thought it’d maybe be someone my father’d worked for or worked with who’d heard what had happened and was phoning to see how he was etc. I still felt a trace of responsibility about such things. So I got my responses ready. Not out of the woods yet. Under observation.
Hello? I said.
Sandy?
Yes, I said.
It’s me, a woman said.
Uh, I said none the wiser.
She told me her name.
My married name’s Pelf but I was Martina Inglis back then.
It took a moment. Then I remembered.
Martina Inglis.
She was at college the same time as I was, same year, same course. She and I hadn’t been friends, more acquaintances. No, not even acquaintances. Less than acquaintances. I thought maybe she’d heard about my father (though God knows how she would’ve) and even though we hardly knew each other was maybe calling me now (though God knows where she’d’ve got my number) to be, I don’t know, supportive.
But she didn’t mention my father.
She didn’t ask how I was or about what I was doing or any of that stuff people generally say or ask.
I think that’s the reason I didn’t hang up. There was no pretence in her.
She said she’d wanted to talk to me for some time. She told me she was now assistant to the curator at a national museum (could you ever have imagined I’d end up doing something like that?) and she’d been travelling back from a day-return trip abroad where she’d been sent by the museum in one of the gaps between lockdowns personally to accompany home from a travelling exhibition of late medieval and early renaissance objects an English metal lock and key mechanism, a device, she explained, way ahead of its time and an unusually good and beautiful version, quite important historically.
So she’d arrived back here in the evening and stood in line at border control for the very long time it took to reach the front of the queue of people whose passports were being checked manually (most of the digital machines weren’t working). Then when she finally reached the front the man behind the screen told her she’d given him the wrong passport.
She couldn’t think what he meant. How was there such a thing as a wrong passport?
Ah, wait, she’d said. I know. I’m sorry, I’ve probably just given you the one I didn’t travel out on, wait a minute.
A passport you didn’t travel out on, the man behind the screen said.
I’ve got two, she said.
She fetched her other passport out of her inside jacket pocket.
Dual citizenship, she said.
Is one country not enough for you? the man behind the screen said.
I’m sorry? she said.
I said, is one country not enough for you? the man said again.
She looked at his eyes above his mask. They weren’t smiling.
I think that’s my business, not yours, she said.
He took the other passport from her, opened it, looked at it, looked at the two passports together, looked at his screen, typed something in, and she realized there were now two masked officials in uniform standing very close to her, just behind her, one on each side.
If I can just see the ticket on which you travelled here today, the man behind the screen said.
She got her phone out, scrolled it till she found the ticket, turned it and held it up towards him. One of the officials took the phone out of her hand and passed it through to the man behind the screen. The man put it down on top of her passports. Then he sanitized his hands from a bottle on the desktop.
If you’d like to step this way please, the other official said.
Why? she said.
Routine check, the other said.
They started to lead her away.
Your colleague’s still got my phone. He’s still got both my passports, she said.
Returned to you in due course, the one behind her said.
They took her through a door and through another door into an anodyne corridor with nothing in it but a scanner. They ran the bag with the small packing crate in it containing the lock and key mechanism, which was all the handluggage she had, through their scanner.
They asked her what kind of weapon was in the crate.
Don’t be silly. It’s obviously not a weapon, she said. The broader object is a lock, it was once the lock on a 16th century baronial money chest. The long object next to it isn’t a knife, it’s the lock’s original key. It’s the Boothby Lock. If you knew anything about late medieval and early renaissance English metalwork you’d know it’s a very important historical artefact and a stunning example of workmanship in blacksmithery.
The official opened the packing case roughly with a knife.
You can’t take it out! she said.
He took the wrapped-up lock out and weighed it in his hands.
Put it back, she said. Put it back right now.
She said this with such fierceness that the official stopped weighing it from hand to hand and rather stiffly put it back into the packing crate.
Then the other official demanded she prove she was who she said she was.
How? she said. You already have both my passports. And my phone.
So you have no hard copy of any official accreditation for transporting a national historical artefact? the official holding the packing crate said.
They tried to move her to what they called the interview room. She held on to the side of the scanner’s belt with both hands, made her body as heavy as she could like protesters on the news and refused to go anywhere peaceably until they’d given her back the cracked-open packing crate and let her check that both the Boothby Lock and its key were still in there.
They shut her and the bag with the packing crate in a small room with nothing in it but a table and two chairs. The table was made of grey plastic and aluminium, same as the chairs. There was no phone on the table. There were no windows. There was no visible camera on any of the walls to which she could wave or signal, though there may well have been cameras she couldn’t see but God knows where, Sand, but people can do anything with a very small lens these days. ...
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