The Crash of Hennington Read online

  THE CRASH OF HENNINGTON

  Patrick Ness

  ‘Souls have complexions, too: what will suit one will not suit another.’

  GEORGE ELIOT Middlemarch

  For Marc Nowell

  And in memory of my remarkable great aunt,

  Ingeborg Utheim

  1915–1999

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Prologue. In.

  Part I. Welcome to Hennington.

  1. The Solari.

  2. A Confluence of Nudity.

  3. The Crash on the Hill.

  4. Luther in Limbo.

  5. Maggerty.

  6. The Mayor’s Office and its Discontents.

  7. Father and Daughter.

  8. Mathematica.

  9. Hospitality.

  10. The Crash at the Bridge.

  11. Orthopediae.

  12. The Melting Sanctuary.

  13. Maggerty Eats.

  14. Peter on the Move.

  15. An Offer.

  16. Why Archie Banyon Feels the Way He Does About Women.

  17. ‘The Tale of Rufus and Rhonda'.

  18. Mingle, Mingle.

  19. Duty Calling.

  20. In the Hours Before Morning.

  21. The Crash Before Dawn.

  Part II. There Are No Ends, Only Changes.

  22. Marmalade Leviathan.

  23. Comfort for the Uncomfortable.

  24. Closing the Deal.

  25. Maggerty in the City.

  26. What Do You Want?

  27. ‘Cleave’ Has Two Meanings.

  28. Digitalis.

  29. The Crash at the Pond.

  30. It Always Comes Out Somewhere.

  31. A Basic Question.

  32. Opening the Deal.

  33. Unsentimental Journey.

  34. A Shot Across the Bows?

  35. The Story of Cora, Jon, and Albert, as told to Eugene by Jon.

  36. Max and Talon Discuss the Ramifications of the Weight of Cultural Pressures and Also Buy a Dog.

  37. What Happened Between Luther and Archie.

  38. Maggerty on the Move.

  39. The Frustrating Aspects of Prophecy.

  Part III. All Bets May or May Not Be Final.

  40. Considering Variables.

  41. The Lonely Hunter.

  42. Refuge for the Weary.

  43. Max Has The Same Conversation.

  44. The Crash and The Injured Calf.

  45. Class Reunion.

  46. He What?

  47. In Which Much News Is Confirmed.

  48. Jarvis’ Sermon About the Brandon Beach Massacre.

  49. An Unexpected Intransigence.

  50. A Tentatively Happy Bleakness.

  51. Post-Coital Powwow.

  52. A Casualty.

  53. Fallout.

  54. Max and Talon and The Emu.

  55. Sometimes It’s Just Sorrow.

  56. And What of Eugene?

  57. Fever Dream.

  58. A Most Delicious Proposal.

  Part IV. Commodities.

  59. The Foster Downs.

  60. How to Serve Man.

  61. Ambushed.

  62. Maggerty in Purgatory.

  63. The Reasons Why We Do Things.

  64. Rest.

  65. I’m Begging You.

  66. Young Man’s Fancy.

  67. Old(er) Man’s (and Woman’s) Fancy.

  68. The Prodigal.

  69. Want.

  70. The Worm, Aching to Turn.

  71. Paradise Interrupted.

  72. The Swinging Gates of Opportunity.

  73. A Rush and a Push and the Day is Ours.

  74. Banyon Enterprises.

  75. Listen.

  76. An End and a Beginning.

  Part V. Hopeful Campaigns.

  77. The Furniture Cave.

  78. Letter To The Editor.

  79. The Inevitable Disappointment By Those We Love.

  80. How Things Add Up.

  81. The Smell of Blood.

  82. The Hard Bit.

  83. Re-linking.

  84. Triumph of the Will.

  85. Getting to the Bottom.

  86. The Debate.

  87. Old Love.

  88. The Immobile Journey.

  89. The Schism, Arriving on Schedule.

  90. Cracking Skulls.

  91. An Invisible Threat, Real Nonetheless.

  92. Not the Highest Bid, but the Earliest.

  93. What We Wish For.

  94. A Cold Dish.

  95. Unprecedented Measures.

  96. The Living River.

  Part VI. Election Day.

  97. One Up, One Down.

  98. The Faces in the Distance.

  99. Thrust, Parry, Feint, Touch.

  100. The Message to the Light Wind.

  101. In the Last Quiet Hours.

  102. The Journey of Faith.

  103. The View From Here.

  104. War It Is, Then.

  105. A Kindness.

  106. Three.

  107. Father and Son.

  108. A Lover’s Hand, A Lover’s Breath.

  109. Outside City Hall.

  110. An Albert and Cora.

  111. The Field of Battle.

  112. The Messenger.

  113. Who Are You?

  114. Lair.

  115. To The Faithful Departing.

  116. Ashes, Ashes.

  117. Out.

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue. In.

  She smelled dawn even before the sun looked over the horizon. A low mist clung to the sleeping bodies surrounding her at intervals across the lea. Breath clouded up from her great nose in increasing puffs as wakefulness filled her body. She raised her head and glanced around the sloping green of the meadow.

  The first one awake. Usual and expected. The way it should be and was.

  She turned her head to the sunrise coursing down from the hilltop. A low flood of light illuminated the mist and cast the dozing members of the herd as gray, rocky islands in a sea of white. She breathed in as the morning reached her lips and, leaning back to gather the proper force of weight, hoisted herself to her feet.

  Time to move into the daybreak.

  Part I.

  Welcome to Hennington.

  1. The Solari.

  The front lobby of the Solari was made entirely of marble, even the sunlight. Any hotel guest – say, this one here, with the inappropriate clothes and the reminiscing smile – standing at the entrance to the second most opulent and expensive hotel in Hennington could see in detail the shiny yet persistently flat white-flecked black marble that made up the sprawling floor, though he would be hard pressed to find a seam, the expense apparently having been poured into the material’s quality rather than its beauty. Given that the outside of the Solari was as shiny and edged as a precisely folded piece of foil, it might be surprising to this particular visitor, though perhaps not, that the interior, with its deep black expanses peppered with spots and streaks of white, could be so ominous and still. A blanket of the universe wrapped up as a present, perhaps.

  Stepping inside the lobby’s marble rhombus, the visitor would see marble planters, marble doorways, a marble waterfall tastefully placed beneath a marble sculpture (of a marble-worker), a marble bellhop stand (currently vacant), marble directional signs and an enormous single marble front desk, fully twelve meters long, in the shape of a sperm whale beaching itself seemingly because of unfathomable heartbreak in the deep, deep sea. Looking behind the behemoth, the guest, if he ventured further indoors, which it seems he has, would lay his eyes on the first organic
thing he would have seen so far in the lobby of the Solari, representational whales notwithstanding: a person in the form of Eugene Markham, Solari front desk clerk.

  It is with surly, unhappy Eugene that this story truly begins.

  Eugene sat on his back-paining swivel chair behind the whale, thinking about suicide. Not seriously considering it, just mooning over the act in the manner of many a pale twenty-something with a broken heart. His girlfriend had left him for another man, a non-Rumour no less, but that had happened so often in life it was an insipid topic of insipid pop songs. Speaking of which, Eugene’s band, Dirges For Betty, hadn’t written any, pop songs that is, or at least any good ones or for that matter even any insipid ones, and Eugene was beginning to believe no one ever slept with the bass player anyway. Then there was the scaly chrysalia which had suddenly broken out all over his genitals and which was shaping up to be the only lasting legacy of his now-former relationship. And, oh, yes, he had just been demoted from catering to front desk. So one might forgive Eugene for being less attentive than usual when the shimmery-haired stranger – the selfsame guest who had sized up the Solari, now having made his way to the front desk – checked in. He (Eugene) was too caught up in wondering whether you slashed your wrists parallel or perpendicular to your palm and whether, since your palm was more or less square, this was even the right question to ask.

  —Do you have any rooms available?

  Eugene peeled back the skin from a hangnail on his thumb. The strip pulled off all the way back to the first joint. It bled and it hurt like hell, but it was also kind of impressive in its own macabre sort of way. Though he was unaware of it, Eugene cracked a smile.

  —Now why would you want to go ahead and do a thing like that?

  Eugene teleported back from his languor and at last noticed the man standing before him.

  —Can I help you?

  —I might very well ask you the same thing, my good fellow.

  The man was dressed entirely in black, incredible given that Hennington was in the thick of summer, when Hilke’s Winds blew off the Brown Desert, turning the city into a humidity-free place of chapped lips, bloody noses and queer tempers, where the heat rarely dipped below forty during the day despite the best efforts of a calm, cool ocean that seemed as intimidated by the heat as those unfortunate Hennington residents without air conditioning, which, oh yeah, was another of Eugene’s problems. The man in black looked like he was either approaching or leaving behind fifty, but he exuded health like a pheromone. His skin was bronzed almost to the tan of Eugene’s own Rumour hue, but this man was no Rumour. His nearly black hair was clipped short and neat and contained, Eugene was surprised to find himself thinking, a well-nigh dazzlingly handsome sprinkling of gray. The man’s eyes were a green so light it neared pastel, contrasting, even highlighting, his long black coat, black shirt, black pants, black belt and black boots. All in all, a preposterous outfit in this weather. There was another thing. This man had, what was it?, an aspect about him, a warm calmness, a smile that invited, a glance that seemed to show patience as well as an invitation. Maybe it was something as simple as charisma. Maybe he was just an exceptionally good-looking man. Whatever it was, the result was this: Eugene liked fucking girls (a lot); nevertheless, he was aware of the erection pressing against the crotch of his uniform, causing the chrysalia to itch all the more.

  —Let’s start again. I’d like a room.

  The spell dissipated. Eugene’s confusing hardness faded. Something lingered, though, and Eugene’s mind, in its own ham-fisted way, toyed with the something that hovered around this man. If it hadn’t been for a single red pimple near the bridge of the man’s nose, Eugene might have convinced himself he was seeing a vision. Or even a god, maybe.

  —How long will you be staying?

  —I’m not sure. Just got off the train and I’m here. A week. A month. I’m not sure. What’s your name?

  —Eugene.

  —Tybalt Noth.

  Tybalt Noth offered a hand. Eugene, surprised again, accepted the shake.

  —Unusual first name.

  —A ridiculous name given by ridiculous, if loving, parents. I go by Jon.

  —So an open-ended stay is what you’re looking for?

  —You have summed up the matter admirably.

  Jon né Tybalt smiled.

  —I’m visiting an old friend, you see. I don’t know when I’ll be leaving.

  —An open-ended reservation ought to be fine. We’re not that crowded.

  —Because it’s so damned hot.

  The man betrayed not one drop of sweat, despite having recently arrived from the oven outside. Eugene took his identification and credit card and entered them into the computer.

  —You might want to change clothes, sir. The heat doesn’t look to let up anytime soon.

  —Call me Jon, please, and I know about the weather. I’m from here. I can remember many a pressure-cooker summer.

  —Really?

  Why was it so surprising that this man was a Hennington native? Yet it was, most definitely.

  —I just haven’t been back in a long time. These are my traveling clothes. Trust me, Mr Eugene, I brought appropriate attire.

  He took the card key Eugene offered him.

  —Room 402.

  —Thank you, Eugene.

  —And my name’s Eugene if you need anything else.

  Jon blinked.

  —Thank you again. I’ll remember that. I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for, Eugene.

  He grabbed his bag, hitherto out of Eugene’s sight below the rolling back of the sperm whale. Eugene started making sounds about getting a bellhop, but Jon waved them off.

  —I like to carry my own bag.

  He smiled again, warmly and, it struck Eugene, incongruously for being dressed like a fallen angel. He turned and walked to the elevators. He seemed shorter than at first sight, but he moved with a sense of balance so sure and smooth that he seemed to glide. At the elevators, he turned.

  —Is The Crash still hovering about town?

  —Of course. They never change.

  —Ah, that’ll be something to see again.

  The elevator arrived. Jon disappeared into it. Eugene looked back at his computer screen. Jon Tybalt Noth’s return address was in the Fifty Shores, which meant that he had traveled three and a half thousand miles across the widest expanse of the Brown, by train, dressed in black. Eugene entered a note reminding the evening staff to check if Jon needed any other cooling amenities. He thought for a minute, erased the note, and decided to ask Jon himself at the end of his own shift.

  Poor Eugene. He never knew what hit him.

  2. A Confluence of Nudity.

  Many years before she became the Cora Larsson, legendary Mayor of Hennington and remembered in a generation of matronymics, Cora Trygvesdottir went sunbathing in the nude and met the man who would become her husband. The scene: infamous Conchulatta Beach, that prime piece of land hooking its way over the southern entrance to Hennington Harbor, its crescent stretching from calm harbor to violent strait to calm ocean. Cora went alone, a not uncommon occurrence during a final year at college spent fleeing the daily catastrophes of two flatmates. Her natural inclination for serenity left her unable to really enjoy the boom crash of college life. That she excelled at it and later at law and still later at politics seemed to Cora to be the same sort of infuriating fate joke as penguins being such great swimmers: you did what you were good at and tried to ignore the fact that your flippers were really handicapped wings.

  And so here was Cora, hatless and tanned, humming to herself, marching down to the beach, having parked her hasty in the last available slot. She carried a law coursebook, but even she knew that it was more or less a pretext. Henningtonians were not an especially beach-worshipping bunch, but neither were they beach-foolish. There were rules. The beach was a place where she could expect quiet and calm, especially if she read from an unattractive book of laws and even more so if she removed
her bathing suit, de rigueur as the beach edged west. A naked sunbather was a serious sunbather, and Cora could wear her nudity as a shield against bothersome, over-friendly beachwalkers.

  Along with her law book, Cora carried her hasty keys, a tube of sunblock with a much too low defense level, a small bottle of water, and a Mansfield U beach towel. She wore only sunglasses, sandals and a bikini, more appropriate attire having been left in the hasty’s trunk. For a Wednesday, the beach was crowded, but Cora made good time heading past the unseemly hordes of casual visitors. As she got further west, the families thinned and solitary sunbathers became more common. No one was in the water. It was hammerhead season and even with the iffy safety nets, you only swam if you were suicidal or drunk.

  She grew faintly aware that the female-to-male ratio on the beach was beginning to tilt in favor of the men. She was a confident young woman, but still she relaxed a bit as the number of muscled, oiled bodies covered in the tiniest of suits began to grow. She removed her bikini top, bunched it in her hand, and received nary a glance from the men baking in the sun. Still further and the tiny suits shrunk all the way into not being there at all. She began to glance an impressive variety of penises in an ever-more impressive variety of states of excitement. Slowly, the lone sunbathers became pairs of sunbathers who now paused in their activities and watched Cora curiously as she passed. Seeking only solitude, Cora followed etiquette and kept her eyes to the middle distance, pausing just long enough to remove her bikini bottom once the danger of any male who might leer had thoroughly passed. Now on the ocean side, she selected a spot at the edge of some brush that led back to the base of the cliffs. She spread her towel, piled her belongings, and lay down to read.

  She was awakened some time later by a voice.

  —Good God, you’re about to burst into flames.

  Cora opened her eyes, and the pain began there.

  —Ow.

  —No shit, ow, are you going to be able to walk?

  Cora forced her eyelids the rest of the way up and saw her future husband, Albert Larsson, for the very first time. He was clothed only in sandals and a concerned expression. Cora turned a little and reached for something to cover herself up, but the excruciating pain from the burn quickly overtook any notions of modesty. She croaked out a question.