Blenheim Orchard by Tim Pears

Author:Tim Pears
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2007-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

10

The Pitt Rivers Museum

Monday 7 July

‘It won’t be open,’ Akhmed said, a little out of breath. Every half-dozen strides or so Blaise began to edge ahead of him, and he had to trot three or four quick steps to catch up with her. Whenever he did so the books in his black plastic rucksack jiggled against his back.

‘Museums are always closed on Mondays,’ Akhmed gasped. ‘Everyone knows that.’

Blaise walked at a medium pace. The warmth and movement made her skin bristle and tingle, the outer reaches of her body fully inhabited and grateful to be so. Each footstep on this hot afternoon took her further away from school. She’d begun skipping dull lessons when her senses disengaged like cogs inside her head, and she’d lose herself for stretches of time in the sight of the sun decoding a prism of colour on the white wall. She never used to dream so much at school. A sign of age, perhaps; she was growing old.

It had also made a difference that she’d stopped using her bike: she felt less visible on foot. For walking had become both the means of escape and the reason for it. Blaise slipped out of school so that she could go for a stroll. For the articulation of her joints, the stretching of her muscles; breath in her lungs, thought in her head.

‘Why are you walking so fast?’ Akhmed demanded. ‘It’s either open or closed. Going quicker’s not going to make any difference.’

She used to go to the Wasteland. Now she and Akhmed ambled along Charlbury Road, through the north Oxford conservation area of large, detached houses and their spacious, tousled gardens. It was eerily quiet. There was no traffic here.

‘Who lives in these houses?’ Blaise wondered.

‘Rich people,’ Akhmed said. He looked around. ‘Where’ve they all gone?’

‘Nowhere,’ Blaise murmured. The whole area seemed abandoned. She felt like she was passing through some emergency they’d read about in the news tomorrow. Some upper-class catastrophe.

‘You’re right,’ Akhmed nodded, judiciously, as if it were his confirmation that made it so. ‘See, they’ve all got cars parked in the driveways.’ He frowned. ‘Maybe they’re asleep.’ Perhaps the wealthy too said prayers at odd hours of the night like his pious brother, and needed to catch up in the afternoon.

Blaise walked the deserted streets, past the still houses. This silence could feed you, she thought. If you had money this is what you’d do, you’d buy a big house with a big garden where you could be quiet, surrounded by other people who chose the same thing.

Akhmed skipped quickly to catch up with her. ‘You know what’s crazy,’ he said, ‘is that it’s English I’m missing. English. I mean, I wouldn’t mind dodging geography, either.’

His momentum had taken Akhmed a few feet beyond Blaise by the time he registered that she’d stopped still. He turned to find her glaring at him.

‘I told you you didn’t need to come,’ Blaise said, and set off again. ‘Didn’t I?’ she asked as she passed him.

Akhmed

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