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Authors: Patrick Flanery
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of the house, even the bathrooms and cupboards, in case of real emergency, but they’re disguised, so the attackers won’t know, and they’re not an eyesore, not red like some are.’
‘Then how should we be able to find them if we panicked?’
‘Ja, well, absolutely nothing to worry about. At least as long as we got rule of law. God knows how long that lasts, though, hey?’
The real emergency , he suggested, was that one might flee in stark terror to the interior of a cupboard and be trapped, quarry awaiting a hunter. But who would get past the wall in the first place? Inside, the house itself was, without question, splendid, and Clare could imagine being happy in it. With space enough for Marie to have a proper administrative area, Clare would be able to remove herself entirely from all external concerns, should she so wish. There was a vast garden, too, and no neighbours to the rear, save the slopes of the mountain and the occasional hikers who followed its trails – and they, it seemed certain, would never attempt to scale her deadly ivy. The trees were tall enough and the wall itself so high that there was no fear of being overlooked, even outside, swimming in the pool, except perhaps by the neighbour on one side. Still, she disliked the idea of paying for her own imprisonment, paying to be watched by a security firm likely as not to turn over its surveillance to a branch of the government, or perhaps even worse, to a corporation that would compile records detailing her daily habits, her food preferences, her alcohol intake, her sleeping and waking, and sell such data to other companies wanting to market their goods to her, goods made by the wives, daughters, and sisters of the petty intruders against whose incursions she would be employing the security firm to protect her. There could be no protection against the currents of history.
Marie was ecstatic. The windows were equipped with remote-controlled metal shutters manufactured by a company called Tribulation; these could be closed at night, entombing them inreinforced steel. There was a special ventilation system with a reserve generator. What would happen in the case of a fire or an electrical failure? Would they ever escape? The alarm could be set to exclude their bedrooms and bathrooms at night, while motion sensors in the rest of the house would respond to something as innocent as a cushion resettling itself on a couch or a spider crawling across the wall.
‘Once the alarm is set,’ the man said, ‘nothing must fall down, nothing must drop, nothing must stir, or you’ll have the guys down here in no time. Guaranteed response is five minutes max, but they’re just around the corner anyway, so it would be more like two for you. Not much can happen in two minutes. You can go to sleep at night feeling nice and secure.’
Clare wondered if the estate agent, blond and fat as he was, knew what could really happen in two minutes. Anything was possible within two minutes, but perhaps with a panic button the two minutes could be rendered inconsequential, the response always already responding, the dogs always slavering for battery-acid blood and orange disinfectant skin. She guessed that the estate agent, let her call him Hannes, had a wife and daughter, and that he had recently had cause to fear for them both on some horrible occasion – and fear, too, what intruders with a will and no conscience, no system of moral principles, might commit.
When she heard it, the price was astounding, although she could easily afford it. Her knowledge had not kept pace with the property market and she was still thinking in rates of nearly five decades past, when she and her husband bought that vulnerable house on Canigou Avenue, her house with a gaping wound in the wall of its master bedroom. She wondered if the estate agent recognized her name. It seemed more likely that he did not read, and would not like what he read if he opened one of her books.
‘You two ladies
‘Then how should we be able to find them if we panicked?’
‘Ja, well, absolutely nothing to worry about. At least as long as we got rule of law. God knows how long that lasts, though, hey?’
The real emergency , he suggested, was that one might flee in stark terror to the interior of a cupboard and be trapped, quarry awaiting a hunter. But who would get past the wall in the first place? Inside, the house itself was, without question, splendid, and Clare could imagine being happy in it. With space enough for Marie to have a proper administrative area, Clare would be able to remove herself entirely from all external concerns, should she so wish. There was a vast garden, too, and no neighbours to the rear, save the slopes of the mountain and the occasional hikers who followed its trails – and they, it seemed certain, would never attempt to scale her deadly ivy. The trees were tall enough and the wall itself so high that there was no fear of being overlooked, even outside, swimming in the pool, except perhaps by the neighbour on one side. Still, she disliked the idea of paying for her own imprisonment, paying to be watched by a security firm likely as not to turn over its surveillance to a branch of the government, or perhaps even worse, to a corporation that would compile records detailing her daily habits, her food preferences, her alcohol intake, her sleeping and waking, and sell such data to other companies wanting to market their goods to her, goods made by the wives, daughters, and sisters of the petty intruders against whose incursions she would be employing the security firm to protect her. There could be no protection against the currents of history.
Marie was ecstatic. The windows were equipped with remote-controlled metal shutters manufactured by a company called Tribulation; these could be closed at night, entombing them inreinforced steel. There was a special ventilation system with a reserve generator. What would happen in the case of a fire or an electrical failure? Would they ever escape? The alarm could be set to exclude their bedrooms and bathrooms at night, while motion sensors in the rest of the house would respond to something as innocent as a cushion resettling itself on a couch or a spider crawling across the wall.
‘Once the alarm is set,’ the man said, ‘nothing must fall down, nothing must drop, nothing must stir, or you’ll have the guys down here in no time. Guaranteed response is five minutes max, but they’re just around the corner anyway, so it would be more like two for you. Not much can happen in two minutes. You can go to sleep at night feeling nice and secure.’
Clare wondered if the estate agent, blond and fat as he was, knew what could really happen in two minutes. Anything was possible within two minutes, but perhaps with a panic button the two minutes could be rendered inconsequential, the response always already responding, the dogs always slavering for battery-acid blood and orange disinfectant skin. She guessed that the estate agent, let her call him Hannes, had a wife and daughter, and that he had recently had cause to fear for them both on some horrible occasion – and fear, too, what intruders with a will and no conscience, no system of moral principles, might commit.
When she heard it, the price was astounding, although she could easily afford it. Her knowledge had not kept pace with the property market and she was still thinking in rates of nearly five decades past, when she and her husband bought that vulnerable house on Canigou Avenue, her house with a gaping wound in the wall of its master bedroom. She wondered if the estate agent recognized her name. It seemed more likely that he did not read, and would not like what he read if he opened one of her books.
‘You two ladies
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