Chapter Twelve #2
“There’s a system to the speckle.”
“There is a whole system,” James agreed gravely.
Tristan lay back on the rug, the puzzle piece still clutched to his chest, and told the ceiling, “You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met, James.”
Caroline clucked her tongue. “Oh no, darling. That’s not a good thing.”
“No,” Tristan agreed sadly. “Probably not. Bar’s pretty low, to be honest. I did a press tour once with a guy who didn’t know the Titanic was real. He thought James Cameron made the whole thing up.”
Caroline caught James’s eye across the wreckage of the colour piles. She was grinning and so, he discovered, was he.
They stopped being able to work on the puzzle.
Tristan held a fistful of sausage pieces he was no longer trying to place, turning each one over and inspecting it. When Caroline relit the joint and held it down to him, he waved it off, reconsidered, and took another drag.
“The speckles are like constellations,” Tristan said in a breathy stage whisper, turning a piece against the light. “If you really look there’s a whole sky in there.”
Caroline reached over and reclaimed the joint from Tristan before he could set fire to anything. “What’ve you got on this week, Jams?”
“Thursday I’m opening a wind farm off the Norfolk coast.” James pressed a piece into the lower left of the puzzle, and it fitted, which felt like the biggest achievement of his day.
“Largest in Europe, they tell me. I’m to stand beside a turbine and be photographed looking off into the middle distance as though I can see the brighter, greener future of Great Britain and Northern Ireland ahead of me.
Those were Benton’s exact instructions.”
Tristan resurfaced. “Wind farms. They’re good. For the air, and the planet, and the—” He gestured at the room. “The whole situation.”
“The whole situation,” James agreed.
“They kill birds, though.”
James looked up at the escalation. Tristan had abandoned the puzzle pieces and was staring at him, grave as a coroner.
“There are documented concerns about bird strikes,” James acknowledged, “but modern blade designs have reduced the incidence considerably. The Norfolk site uses a slower rotational—”
“They’re like a giant bird blender.” Tristan put his acting to good use and became the bird blender, one flat hand chopping down into the other palm. “The birds are just flying along, having a lovely day, and then it’s feathers everywhere. Total carnage.”
“That isn’t really how it works, Tristan.”
“D’you ever think about the noise?” Tristan leaned in. “When they hit the spinny bits?”
“The turbine blades,” James corrected, because if they were going to talk about killing machines, then they might as well name their component parts correctly.
“Right. Those.” Tristan made a sound with his mouth, wet and percussive, that made James feel mildly queasy.
“And they never see it coming, that’s the tragedy of it.
One minute it’s a nice Thursday, and the next, they’re going through a blender at a hundred miles an hour because the King turned up to cut a ribbon. ”
“I’d like to state, for the record, that I have personally killed no birds.”
“You’re opening the thing, James.” Tristan was gentle about it, but was still implying that James held a deep well of evil within him. “You’re its patron. The seagulls of Norfolk are going to learn your face.”
Caroline put down her piece. “Tristan.”
“I’m just saying. He’s built a whole coastline of death windmills.”
“I haven’t built anything,” James said. “My only role in this is to cut the ribbon with laughably large ceremonial scissors.”
“They’re all out there, spinning away in the dark. Waiting.” Tristan’s voice dropped to a whisper. “For one unsuspecting puffin.”
“Tristan, what the fuck?” Caroline laughed.
“It’s a legitimate environmental concern.”
“It’s the weed is what it is. You need to stop talking about the birds now. Please.”
Tristan plucked the joint out of Caroline’s hand. He took another draw, setting off a little coughing fit. “Greta would have something to say about this. About you, James. Personally.”
The stoned slackness drained out of his face. The accent arrived, clipped, Scandinavian, and vibrating with righteous fury.
“How dare you.” He levelled the joint at James like an indictment. “You have stolen the dreams of the puffins with your spinning blades of death. Entire flocks are being blended, and all you can talk about is the brighter, greener future of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. How dare you?”
James took the joint from between Tristan’s fingers.
“Right.” He got to his feet and hauled Tristan up by the wrist before the man could fight back. “On your feet. We’re getting some air into you before you declare war on the National Grid.”
Tristan came up swaying and pleased. “Are we going outside?”
“We are going outside to get you some air, yes.”
On his way past, James pressed the joint into Caroline’s waiting hand. She waved the pair of them towards the garden door, unbothered.
“Mind the ants out there,” she called after them. “James is not to be trusted near anything that lives.”