The End of the Day Read online

  Copyright

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

  Copyright © 2017 by Claire North

  Cover design by Duncan Spilling—LBBG

  Cover photo by Ayal Ardon/Arcangel Images

  Cover copyright © 2017 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright.

  The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected].

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  Redhook Books/Orbit

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10104

  hachettebookgroup.com

  Simultaneously published in Great Britain and in the U.S. by Orbit in 2017

  First Edition: April 2017

  Redhook is an imprint of Orbit, a division of Hachette Book Group.

  The Redhook name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

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  Additional copyright information is here.

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-31674-3 (hardcover), 978-0-316-31676-7 (ebook)

  E3-20170215-JV-PC

  Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  PART 1: LANGUAGE CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  PART 2: ICE CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  PART 3: CHAMPAGNE CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  PART 4: RATS CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  PART 5: CLOTTED CREAM CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  PART 6: LAUGHTER CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  PART 7: SCUBA CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  CHAPTER 76

  CHAPTER 77

  PART 8: ROAD CHAPTER 78

  CHAPTER 79

  CHAPTER 80

  CHAPTER 81

  CHAPTER 82

  CHAPTER 83

  CHAPTER 84

  CHAPTER 85

  CHAPTER 86

  CHAPTER 87

  CHAPTER 88

  CHAPTER 89

  CHAPTER 90

  CHAPTER 91

  CHAPTER 92

  CHAPTER 93

  CHAPTER 94

  CHAPTER 95

  CHAPTER 96

  CHAPTER 97

  CHAPTER 98

  CHAPTER 99

  CHAPTER 100

  CHAPTER 101

  CHAPTER 102

  CHAPTER 103

  CHAPTER 104

  PART 9: MUSIC CHAPTER 105

  CHAPTER 106

  CHAPTER 107

  CHAPTER 108

  CHAPTER 109

  CHAPTER 110

  BY CLAIRE NORTH

  COPYRIGHTS

  NEWSLETTERS

  Part 1

  LANGUAGE

  Chapter 1

  At the end, he sat in the hotel room and counted out the pills.

  He did not do this with words, nor mathematics, nor did his hands move, nor could he especially blame anyone else.

  It didn’t occur to him that Death would come; not in the conscious way of things. Death was, Death is, Death shall be, Death is not, and all this was the truth, and he understood it perfectly, and for all those reasons, this ending was fine.

  Tick tick tick.

  The world turned and the clock ticked

  tick tick tick

  and as it ticked, he heard the countdown to Armageddon, and that was okay too. No point fighting it. The fight was what made everything worse.

  He was fine.

  He picked up the first pill, and felt a lot better about his career choices.

  Chapter 2

  At the beginning …

  The Harbinger of Death poured another shot of whiskey into the glass, lifted the old lady’s head from the dark blue wall of pillows on which she lay, put the drink to her lips and said, “Best I ever heard was in Colorado.”

  The woman drank, the sky rushed overhead, dragged towards another storm, another thrashing of the sea on basalt rock, another ripping-up of tree and bending of corrugated rooftop, the third of this month, unseasonal it was; unseasonal, but weren’t all things these days?

  She blinked when she had drunk enough, and the Harbinger returned the glass to the bedside table. “Colorado?” she wheezed at last. “I didn’t think there was anything in Colorado.”

  “Very big. Very empty. Very beautiful.”

  “But they have music?”

  “She was travelling.”

  “Get an audience?”

  “No. But I stopped to listen. This was student days, there was this girl who … People won’t be booking her for a high school prom any time soon, but I thought … it was something very special.”

  “All the old songs are dying out.”

  “Not all of them.”

  The woman smiled, the expression turning into a grimace of pain, words unspoken: just you look at me, sonny, just you think about what you said. “A girl who?”

  “What? Oh, yes, I was, um … well, I hoped there’d be a relationship, and you know how these things sort of blur, and she thought it was one thing and I never really did say and then she was going out with someone else, but by then we’d booked the plane tickets and … look, I don’t know if I should … I’m not sure I should talk about me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, this is …” An awkward shrug,
taking in the room.

  “You think that because I’m dying, I should talk and you should listen?”

  “If you want.”

  “You talk. I’m tired.”

  The Harbinger of Death hesitated, then tapped the edge of the whiskey glass, held it to her lips again, let her drink, put it down. “Sorry,” he murmured, when she’d swallowed, licked her lips dry. “I’m new to this.”

  “You’re doing fine.”

  “Thank you. I was worried that it would be … What would you like to hear about? I’m interested in music. I thought maybe that when I travelled, I mean, for the work, I’d try and collect music, but not just CDs, I mean, all the music of all the places. I was told that was okay, that I was allowed to preserve … not preserve, that’s not … Are you sure you wouldn’t rather talk? When … when my boss comes …” Again his voice trailed off. He fumbled with the whiskey bottle, was surprised at how much had already been drunk.

  “I know songs,” she mused, as he struggled with the top. “But I don’t think they’re for you to sing. A woman once tried to preserve these things, said it would be a disaster if they died. I thought she was right. I thought that it mattered. Now … it’s only a song. Only that.”

  He looked away, not exactly rebuked, but nonplussed by the moment, and her resolve. To cover the silence, he refilled her glass. The tumbler was thick, clean crystal, with a clouded band at the bottom where the base was ridged like a deadly flower—one of a set. He’d carried all four up the ancient flagstone road from Cusco, even though only two would ever be used, not knowing what he’d do with the remainder but feeling it was somehow wrong to part one from the other. He’d also carried the whiskey, stowed in the side of his pack, and the mule driver who’d showed him the way across the treeless road where sometimes still the pilgrims came dressed in Inca robes and carrying a blackened cross had said, “In these parts, we just make our own,” and looked hungrily at the bottle.

  The Harbinger of Death had answered, “It’s for an old woman who is dying,” and the mule driver had replied, ah, Old Mother Sakinai, yes yes, it was another thirty miles though, and you had to be careful not to miss the turning; it didn’t look like a split in the path, but it was, no help if you get lost. The mule driver did not look at the bottle again.

  They had camped in a stone hut shaped like a beehive, no mortar between the slabs of slate, a hole in the roof for the smoke from the fire to escape, and in the morning the Harbinger of Death had watched the sun burn away the mist from the valley and seen, very faintly in the dry stone-splotched grass, the tracings of shapes and forms where once patterns miles wide had been carved to honour the sun, the moon, the river and the sky. Sometimes, the man with the three surprisingly docile mules said, helicopters came up here, for medical emergencies or filming or something like that, but no cars, not in these parts. And why was the foreigner visiting Mama Sakinai, so far from the tarmacked road?

  “I’m the Harbinger of Death,” he replied. “I’m sort of like the one who goes before.”

  At this the mule driver frowned and sucked on his bottom lip and at last replied, “Surely you should be travelling on a feathered serpent, or at the very least in a four-by-four?”

  “Apparently my employer likes to travel the way the living do. He says it’s good manners to understand what comes before the end.” Having said these words, he played them back in his mind and found they sounded a bit ridiculous. Unable to stop himself, he added, “To be honest, I’ve been doing the job for a week. But … that’s what I was told. That’s what the last Harbinger said.”

  The mule driver found he had very little to give in reply to this, and so on they walked, until the path divided—or rather, until a little spur of dark brown soil peeled away from the stones laid so many centuries ago by the dead peoples of the mountains, and the Harbinger of Death followed it, not quite certain if this was indeed a path used by people or merely the track of a wide and possibly hungry animal, down and down again into a valley where a tiny stream ran between white stones, and where a single house had been built the colour of the dry river bed, timber roof and straw on the porch, a black-eyed dog barking at him as he approached.

  The Harbinger of Death stopped some ten feet from the dog, crouched on his haunches, let it bark and dart around him, demanding who, what, why, another human, here, where no people came except once every two weeks Mama Sakinai’s nephew, and once every three months the travelling district nurse with her heavy bags not heavy enough to cure its mistress.

  “You’ll want to learn how to deal with dogs,” the last Harbinger had said as he shadowed her on her final trips. “Ask any postman.”

  Charlie had nodded earnestly, but in all honesty he wasn’t bothered by dogs anyway. He liked most animals, and found that if he didn’t make a fuss, most animals didn’t seem to mind him. So finally, having grown bored of barking, the dog settled down, its chin on its paws, and the Harbinger waited a little while longer, and when all was settled save the whispering of the wind over the treeless ground and the trickling of the stream, he went to Mama Sakinai’s door, knocked thrice and said, “Mama Sakinai? My name is Charlie, I’m the Harbinger of Death. I’ve brought some whiskey.”

  Chapter 3

  In a land of forests …

  … in a land of rain …

  There had been an aptitude test.

  Reading, writing, general knowledge.

  Q1 Rank these countries in order of population, from most populated to least.

  Q2 Who is the director of the United Nations?

  Q3 Name five countries that were previously British colonies in the period 1890–1945.

  Q4 “Man is no more than the sum of his experience and his capacity to express these experiences to fellow man.” Discuss. (500 words.)

  And so on.

  Charlie did better at it than he’d expected, not knowing what he should have studied in advance.

  There weren’t any other candidates in the room as he answered the questions. Most of the time it was a classroom for students learning to teach English as a foreign language. On one wall was a cartoon poster explaining how adverbs worked. An overhead projector had been left on, and whined irritatingly. He finished with twenty minutes to spare, and wondered if it would be rude to just walk out before the time was done.

  There weren’t any other candidates in the reception room for the psychiatrist either, as he sat, toes together, heels sticking out a little to the sides, waiting for his interview.

  “Associations. I say a word, you say the first thing that comes to your mind.”

  “Really? Isn’t that a little—”

  “Home.”

  “Family?”

  “Child.”

  “Happy.”

  “Sky.”

  “Blue.”

  “Sea.”

  “Blue.”

  “Travel.”

  “Adventure.”

  “Work.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Rest.”

  “Sleep.”

  “Dreams.”

  “Flying.”

  “Nightmares.”

  “Falling.”

  “Love.”

  “Music.”

  “People.”

  “… People. Sorry, that’s just the first thing that …”

  “Death.”

  “Life.”

  “Life.”

  “Living.”

  When he got the job, the first thing he did was phone his mum, who was very proud. It wasn’t what she’d ever imagined him doing, of course, not really, but it came with a pension and a good starting salary, and if it made him happy …

  The second thing he did was try and find his Unique Taxpayer Reference, as without it the office in Milton Keynes said they couldn’t register him for PAYE at the appropriate tax level.

  Chapter 4

  And the world had turned.

  … in a land of mountains …

  … in the land of the vulture and
the soaring eagle …

  … the Harbinger of Death ordered another coffee from the café across the street from his Cusco hotel, and looked down at the black-eyed, black-eared dog that had followed him out of the mountains, and sighed and said, “It’s not about what I want, honestly, but there’s no way you’re getting through customs.”

  The dog stared up at him, sitting stiff and patient on its haunches, no collar round its neck, ungroomed but well fed. It had followed him from Mama Sakinai’s cabin without a sound, waited in the pouring rain outside the stone hut where he slept, until at last, guilt at its condition had made Charlie push open the wooden door to let it inside, where it had sat a few feet off from him without a whimper, to follow after him as he walked back down the ancient way to the city.

  “Look,” he had said, first in English, then in cautious Spanish, not knowing Mama Sakinai’s favoured tongue. “Your mistress isn’t dead.” He’d stopped himself before adding “yet.” Somehow the word felt unclean.

  The dog had kept on following, and the next night, as they lay together by the ancient path, Charlie thought he heard a figure pass in the dark, bone feet on ancient stone, heading deeper into the mountains, following the paths carved by the dead, walked by the living. And he had shuddered, and rolled over tight, and the dog had pressed its warm body against his, and neither had slept until the moon was below the horizon.

  The next day he’d come to Cusco, and wasted the best part of a day when he should have been sorting transportation trying to find a home for the persistent animal. He finally succeeded by chance, bequeathing it to a car repairman and his teenage daughter, she already dressed in mechanic’s blues over her football shirt, face coated in grease, who at one look at the dog had exclaimed, “I got your ear!” and grabbed its ear, and it had pulled free, to which she had laughed, “I got your tail!” and grabbed its tail, and it had pulled that away, at which point she got its ear again, then tail, then ear, then tail, then …

  … until the pair of them were rolling on the ground, panting with delight.

  “Who did the animal belong to?” asked her somewhat more circumspect father, as he and the Harbinger of Death watched them play.