Calabash Read online

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

  2017 Hydra Ebook Edition

  Copyright © 2000 by Christopher Fowler

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Hydra, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  HYDRA is a registered trademark and the HYDRA colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Originally published in the United Kingdom in a print edition by Warner Books, London, in 2000 and in a digital edition by Transworld Digital, a division of Penguin Random House UK, London, in 2016.

  Ebook ISBN 9780399180460

  Cover illustration: Martin Butterworth

  randomhousebooks.com

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Part One

  Chapter 1: A Visit to the Real World

  Chapter 2: Where the Fears Began

  Chapter 3: A Sense of Inundation

  Chapter 4: Letting the Side Down

  Chapter 5: Anticipation of Arrival

  Chapter 6: Lack of Calibration

  Chapter 7: Persistence of Memory

  Chapter 8: The Searching Scimitar

  Chapter 9: Paying Respect

  Chapter 10: Getting Together, Coming Apart

  Chapter 11: A Shift in the Cosmos

  Chapter 12: A Cause for Jubilation

  Chapter 13: The Criteria for Happiness

  Chapter 14: A Crystal Constellation

  Chapter 15: A Stab at Existentialism

  Chapter 16: No Life Before Now

  Chapter 17: A Quest for Air

  Chapter 18: The Importance of Balance

  Chapter 19: The Benefits of Progress

  Chapter 20: In the Tower of Trezibaba

  Chapter 21: The Necessity of Belonging

  Chapter 22: The Conundrum of Eliya’s Chamber

  Chapter 23: Farewells

  Chapter 24: Midnight in the Burial Vault

  Chapter 25: Winter’s Angel

  Chapter 26: A Means of Communication

  Chapter 27: The Desire to Believe

  Chapter 28: The Fear of Inheritance

  Chapter 29: Sealing the Door

  Chapter 30: The Time for Confrontation

  Part Two

  Chapter 31: Real Time

  Chapter 32: Staying Behind

  Chapter 33: Life’s Little Surprises

  Chapter 34: Sea Change

  Chapter 35: The Electrified Citadel

  Chapter 36: Migrating Kingdoms

  Chapter 37: For Two Worlds

  Chapter 38: Custodian of the Empire

  Chapter 39: Containing the Imagination

  Chapter 40: Breaking Through

  Chapter 41: To Rescue a Princess

  Chapter 42: The Dervish Lodge

  Chapter 43: A Special Occasion

  Chapter 44: The Inner Sanctum

  Chapter 45: Heads

  Chapter 46: The Attack of the Belligeratron

  Chapter 47: Waking Up

  Chapter 48: Through the Crash Barrier

  Chapter 49: Reborn in Dreams

  Chapter 50: My Life

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  By Christopher Fowler

  About the Author

  Introduction

  This coming-of-age novel concerns a clever, lonely teenager who finds himself able to travel between a rundown British seaside town in the 1970s and a fantastical version of ancient Persia, where he is no longer bullied and feels more at home. But the more time he spends in his fantasy life, the more danger he is in of never getting out. Can he find a way to unite his dream-life and reality?

  The book was my Wizard of Oz, and got to the heart of something I’d been trying to express for years, something I’d touched on in my memoir Paperboy—the moment when you wonder if having too much imagination is ceasing to be a good thing and becoming something that holds you back.

  The book’s locale came to me when I looked at the Arabic- and Persian-influenced street architecture of seaside towns like Eastbourne and Brighton. I suddenly thought, This could be ancient Persia if you ignored the hen parties and chip wrappers.

  This was the first time I’d had to create a fantasy world from scratch, populated with strange people loosely modelled on figures in ancient Persian history. I loved the character of Trebunculus, and found that I’d probably been a little bit influenced by Winsor McCay’s extraordinary feat of art Little Nemo, produced at the start of the twentieth century. The Nemo stories are badly written, but they were always about the outrageous visuals.

  I had, of course, presented my publishers with a terrible problem—they must have torn their hair out every time I said I was writing again. In this case, although I had a young protagonist, I wasn’t necessarily writing for a young audience, so Calabash was rightly sold as an adult novel—but readers had trouble labelling it, and as all the world dearly loves a label the book didn’t reach as wide an audience as I’d hoped for.

  However, lots of people seem to have become very fond of the story, which is about healing rifts and learning to grow up. It also presents a seemingly impossible paradox, in this case how to reconcile the different parts of your life, something I’m drawn to over and over. It reflects how I felt about once being a child with all of this imagination, and what I thought about the perils of becoming an adult.

  But I wanted the book to be fun as well, so it also contains a locked-room mystery and plenty of jokes about cultural differences. I love the chapter ‘The Benefits of Progress’, which compares modern civilization to that of an ancient kingdom. Needless to say, the modern world comes up wanting. There’s a warm-hearted streak in the writing which is uncharacteristic of my usual work, so this is a very special touchstone book for me. It was championed by Joanne Harris and others, who helped me to persuade a publisher to take it.

  —Christopher Fowler, 2016

  Part One

  Where lies the land to which the ship would go?

  Far, far ahead is all her seamen know.

  And where the land she travels from? Away,

  Far, far behind, is all that they can say.

  —Arthur Hugh Clough

  Chapter 1

  A Visit to the Real World

  One minute past midnight. Sixty seconds into the new century. His friends are gathered around his hospital bed, joyously liberating cascades of champagne into plastic cups. He lies beneath their outstretched arms, their tumbling streamers, their cheers and toasts, and though he cannot move, he wishes them all the love in the world.

  The century is only new to those who honour the concept of time. The man in the bed draws no pleasure or sorrow from its passing; hours, days, months, years, these arbitrary measurements mean nothing to him. They drift like the snow that passes across the window behind his head. He lies with his arms neatly folded over the counterpane, unmoving but not unmoved, connected to the outside world by a strong and slender thread. He can see and hear, and can sometimes shift his eye line just a little, which is how they know he is still alive. He is a prisoner of his body, but inside his head he is free.

  ‘Here’s to you!’ says Julia, raising her cup within his field of vision. ‘Happy New Year!’ And the others chorus her toast.

  ‘Are you sure he can understand us?’ asks one.

  ‘Of course he can,’ says the nurse, who talks to people as if they are children. ‘He can hear everything you say. It’s not a vegetative state, it’s a com
a, they’re altogether different. His mind is quite undamaged.’ She has seen his test results. Sometimes his EEG line is like a force 8 on a seismograph. On a physical level, though, his neural impulses only allow him to respirate and eliminate. ‘He just can’t move. He doesn’t watch the television, he prefers to be read to; he likes the human contact. We turn him and clean him, and stretch his limbs to prevent muscle wastage, and we feed him from there.’ She sounds very matter-of-fact, almost cheerful, as she points to the bag of her patient’s drip-feed.

  ‘Poor thing,’ says a pretty girl who is new to the group. ‘How long has he had this disease?’ She mouths the last word softly as though it is obscene.

  The nurse thinks for a moment. ‘Oh, it must be nearly…thirty years?’ She looks to her patient’s mother for corroboration. ‘About that. Of course, he could move about in the early days, but the condition has proved to be degenerative.’

  The new girl is somebody’s date. Kay has not seen her here before. She is plainly horrified by the casual acceptance of the situation. ‘He can’t have any quality of life, just lying there. Wouldn’t it be better to—well, you know, let him—that is—turn him off?’

  There is a moment of appalled silence. The girl is quick to realise her mistake and apologises. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—it’s just—he looks so sad lying there.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s sad,’ says the patient’s mother defensively. ‘He doesn’t like being pitied.’

  ‘Oh God, I’ve upset you now.’ The girl is a little drunk, and very embarrassed.

  ‘No, love, I think the only person who’s upset is you. You mustn’t be.’ The older woman takes the girl’s hand in her own and draws her closer to her son’s field of vision. ‘It’s very difficult for some people. I think of him as being asleep. You know when you’re sleeping and somebody talks to you, and you understand what they’re saying? It’s like that.’

  Julia comes forward and touches the girl’s shoulder, speaking softly. ‘Just look into his eyes, and then wish him a Happy New Year.’

  He is so glad that he has come back for this, to hear his mother and see his friends. He will not stay long; the others are waiting for him. He concentrates on the girl for a moment. She is younger than he had first thought. Reluctantly, she bends down and looks into his eyes. Her gaze is tentative at first, then, realising that the others are all watching her, she searches for a sign of life. He tries to send her a message; that everything is all right. A moment later her hand flies to her mouth—‘Oh!’—and she is crying or laughing, maybe both, turning to the others in wonder. Kay has seen this moment of revelation many times before.

  ‘You see?’ they tell her delightedly. ‘You see now?’

  ‘Oh my God!’ she keeps saying, and hugs his mother, and then they are all laughing and crying. His mother turns from the others and her kind face fills his vision. ‘Happy New Year, darling,’ she says. ‘Come back to us again soon.’ He sends her love with his eyes. It is time for him to go, to leave the prison of his dormant flesh and be free once more.

  As he soars away from the merry little room in the hospital block, gaining height above the town, he leaves behind the sounds of celebration. He looks down at the glowing necklace of the promenade, the fireworks blossoming over the snow-swept bones of the pier, and crosses the coastline into phosphorescent darkness, racing low across the midnight sea, as he returns to Calabash.

  Chapter 2

  Where the Fears Began

  ‘See? There’s nothing there.’

  I remember my father pulling the curtain aside to let in the light from the streetlamp, spilling sulphurous yellow beams into the bedroom. ‘Now will you go to sleep?’ I push myself upright and squint into the shadows doubtfully. My father follows my gaze and walks to the wardrobe door. ‘And this,’ he says, shaking the sleeve of the dressing gown that hangs there, ‘is not a witch.’

  ‘Don’t close the door all the way!’ I call in panic, as he goes.

  ‘How’s this?’ My father carefully leaves a gap of six inches. It is a nightly ritual. The hall lamps throw a strip of warm light across the racing cars on the eiderdown. ‘You know the trouble with you?’ He taps the side of his head conspiratorially. ‘Imagination. It’s a wonderful thing, but it’s like a tap you can’t turn off. Goodnight now. Go to sleep. Sean will be up soon.’

  I feel sure I will lie rigid with terror until my brother comes to bed, but my eyelids grow heavy, and I drift in uneasy torpor. Every night it is the same.

  I was four years old when the first of the shadow men appeared. The bedroom was always dark, a suffocating absence of light because my mother had grown used to keeping blackout linings in the curtains. Even though the war had ended thirteen years earlier, she had sewn them in because the new streetlamps the council had installed outside the house were harsh and bright compared to the old gas mantles. It was a warm spring night, and rain was pattering gently against the windows. I lay on my back in itchy blue and white striped pyjamas, facing up into the dark, my thin arms stretched out over the Brooklands racers, when I became aware of a figure standing on the left side of my bed, breathing faintly, watching me. I felt sure that if I turned suddenly I would see the man, a tall thin fellow in an enormous turban, a character from one of my picture books.

  Scarcely daring to breathe, I slowly drew my arms beneath the sheet and sank down low until only the top of my head poked out from the blankets, but still the shape loomed over me. I was sure I could feel his sour breath on my hair, my cheek. Finally I howled, and my father came running to the room, flooding it with light and life.

  My head emerged and I looked around, but the atmosphere of the bedroom had changed. It was smaller and safer with the lamp on and my father there, and I knew that even if I dared to look beneath the bed, I would not be able to find the villain from the shadows. I felt foolish for making such a fuss, but my father did not seem angry. He was an understanding man, scruffy and kind and frustratingly vague. At home he always wore an unravelling cardigan of brown wool, baggy corduroy trousers with ridiculous fluff-filled turn-ups, and moth-eaten carpet slippers. He smelled of hops and tobacco, rolled his own cigarettes, and wandered around humming and jingling the change in his pockets, as if he knew that the world outside was an unfriendly place, and that it was his duty to protect his family and keep us safe indoors. There used to be a television commercial which instructed us to ‘get the strength of an insurance policy around you’. It showed a little cartoon man rolling a policy around his family until it became a castle wall, whereupon he would lean over the rampart and knock on the outside to show its strength. I thought of my father as that man. I longed to be as content and sensible as I thought he was, but too many things in the world frightened me. If we walked on the beach, I fretted about the tide racing in and cutting us off. Once I watched my father replacing a fuse-wire, and became worried that when I grew up and left home I would have to sit in darkness, because I had no idea how to mend one.

  I felt sure that the man in the huge turban left the bedroom because my father brought too much rationality with him. When you’re a child, there are some things you get completely wrong. Throughout my early youth, my mother told me that there was nothing to be afraid of, and I longed to believe her, but fear of whatever might hide in the dark kept me from doing so. Childhood fears are the most memorable, even when they’re unfounded, and I was a child capable of unqualified panic.

  My mother had told me there was nothing to be afraid of, but she had been wrong. There was the illness, the deep pain in my chest that kept coming back while the doctors whispered behind my bedroom door. There were the strange emissaries who populated the dark corners of the bedroom, the ones who arrived with bears and bats that vanished when the lights were turned on. And, finally, there was my father, who went away one day and did not come back.

  My mother’s brisk denials were not enough to stop me from being afraid. As the years passed her indulgent smiles faded, and her consolations became warn
ings. ‘It’s time to stop daydreaming,’ she announced on my twelfth birthday, ‘and time to start acting your age.’

  Growing up is a slower process for the imaginative child. I was often sick, and during these periods the passing of a single hour seemed to take forever. Years went by and I matured. But the reach of my mind quickly outstripped the strength of my body. And by the time I was a sickly, skinny kid of sixteen, the year was 1970, and it was clear that something had to change.

  Perhaps what happened to me could have happened to anyone.

  Perhaps it happens to all of us, and some simply forget.

  I did not forget.

  Chapter 3

  A Sense of Inundation

  That first evening in September, as the sun broke from clouds of dull silver, the struts of the ruined pier revealed themselves like the bones of some great forgotten animal. The wind from the sea ruffled my hair, loosening my attention from the book. I lowered the paperback to my lap and refocused on the fibrous sky as I returned to the real world.

  There was a green wooden shelter on the esplanade that could be seen from the pier entrance, and therefore didn’t smell of pee. That was where I usually sat reading. It was easy to lose all sense of time and place sitting there. I stared at the glistening beach and listened to the slow drag of pebbles. Then I returned my attention to the book.