Page 17 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
“James?” she screeched again, but he didn’t respond. Magda stared, waiting for James to sit up, perhaps clasping a wound, but he did not. He lay still, horribly motionless.
“Oh, he’s dead,” the man said, with the certainty of someone who knew his business. He walked around the top of the table, moving to her side of the room. In a split-second decision Magda scooped up the parcel of red tissue and held it against her chest as she backed away, throwing a quick regretful glance at James where he lay, already grievinghim, missing thepossibilityof what might have been. “Where are you going, love?” the man asked, almost mocking her. His accent seemed suddenly more defined, something about the vowels making her think he definitely was Welsh.
“You killed him,” Magda wailed, struggling to comprehend that truth. “He was no threat to you. And you killed him for no reason!” She glanced behind her, knowing the only place to go was onto the balcony, knowing that she had a way out that the man couldn’t foresee, if only she could get there.
“I’ll kill you just as easily,” the man countered, matching her step for step. “So give me that,” he hissed, gesticulating with the gun at the fistful of red tissue in Magda’s hand.
Magda backed through the door and out into the warm, dark night, moving across the balcony until the glass barrier bumped against her back.
“Hand it over,” the man said, stepping out into the night, “and I won’t kill you. I don’t need to kill you. You’re just making me do it.”
Magda smiled grimly, an expression of anger rather than amusement, and this time when she spoke her voice trembled with the weight of the fear and fury she felt, like rails vibrating beneath a speeding train. “Why do men like you always blame other people for your own choices?”
She glanced behind her and then down to the chair against the balustrade next to her, considering possibilities, questioning herself about what she was about to do. She saw Victoria Harbour and Hong Kong Island beyond. It all seemed so far away.
The man lifted the gun as she faced him again, the barrel pointing directly at Magda.
“Last chance. Give. Now.”
Magda shook her head. “I am a member of the Society of Unknowable Objects,” she said, not caring what rules she might be breaking. “Do you really think I wouldn’t be prepared for all eventualities?”
She saw the man’s eyes narrow, but before he could do anything else Magda turned and stepped up onto the chair and then tipped herself over the barrier and out into the dark night sky, more than eighty floors above the ground.
The First Freedom of Magda Sparks
If to fly is to be free, Magda Sparks had been truly free for the first time in her life at the age of eight. In the remote Highlands in the northwest of Scotland, on a grey summer day, Magda had hung in the air, gazing at the vast, empty brown-green hills and the metallic-silver loch that pooled in the valley like mercury. The wind had had sharp edges as it whistled past, but Magda hadn’t cared.
“See, Magda!” her mother had shouted to her. “I told you that you could fly!”
Magda had giggled and flapped her arms like a bird, her orange hair tousled by the wind. Just then the sun had punched through the quilt of grey clouds and a beam of light had stretched to the ground, throwing glitter onto the surface of the loch in the distance. It had been a beautiful moment.
Magda had been on holiday with her mother, spending a week in a small, whitewashed cottage at the end of a single-track road, vast sweeping hills and empty valleys as the backdrop. It had been a week of walks in the sunshine and wind, of board games and books in the evening. They had cooked in the kitchen and then eaten together at the table next to the window, the wild, beautiful world just outside. At night the firehad been lit and Magda had fallen asleep on the couch, her head in her mother’s lap, watching the flames as Imelda had read to her.
All of these moments of the holiday were memories Magda held on to as an adult, mementos from a magical time. But it was the day that she had flown that Magda clung to most of all, because she had felt truly free for the first time in her life.
Of course, she couldn’t fly, not really. Her mother had been hoisting her heavenwards, calling to her from below, her own eyes scrunched up against the wind. That was what Magda knew, even though her memory sometimes played tricks on her, sometimes showing Imelda’s face next to Magda’s as she flew, rather than below her, as if someone were holding thembothup to the sky and they were flying together in the wilderness.
***
It wasn’t until Magda’s mother died, a few short months after Magda’s twenty-fourth birthday, that she had learned the truth about that memory of her first-ever flight.
“I have a letter for you,” Frank Simpson said to her, sitting in the armchair next to her in the front room of the house on Norfolk Road, the house that had been Imelda’s but that was now hers. It was the day of the funeral, the tail end of the wake, and most of the many guests had already departed, rooms of black-suited people emptying out as the day turned to night, the house becoming quiet and sombre.
“A letter?” Magda asked, peering at him. She was in a daze, she knew. Her mind was not processing things properly. It was like thinking underwater. She had been this way ever since she had received the awful news of what had happened to her mother. “What letter?”
Frank reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and removed an envelope, placing it on the side table between them. “It is a letter for you, from your mother,” he said, his voice quiet, like he was talking in a library. “It tells you things you need to know.”
“What things?” Magda asked.
Frank tapped the letter. “It’s all in here,” he replied. “Read it andcome speak to me once you’ve digested it.” He cast his eyes around the room, where the last remaining mourners gathered in corners, while a couple of Magda’s friends tidied up in the kitchen, clattering crockery and quietly closing cupboard doors. “Let all of this settle first. The letter...” He tapped it again. “It’s a lot to take in. When you read it, just keep in mind that your mother received a letter like this once too. As did I. You will have lots of questions and I am happy to answer them.”
She gazed at him dumbly, irritated by his enigmatic words but unable to muster the energy to quiz him further.
Then Frank stood up and leaned over to hug her.
“Your mother was very proud of you, Sparks, always remember that.” He pulled on his trilby. “I’ll be off, then,” he said, nodding once. “But we’ll speak soon.”
It was a while before Magda forced herself to read the letter, not because she had forgotten about it, but because it felt like the last time that she would have any contact with her mother. She put it off again and again, cherishing the idea that there were still words and thoughts from Imelda somewhere in the world, a consciousness still hanging in the atmosphere. As soon as Magda opened the letter, as soon as the thoughts became real, her mother would be gone forever.
