Art Pact 50


Character is the choices you make in the dark. That's what they said, what my parents said. I can't imagine them ever in the dark. When I cycled home from the woods in the middle of the winter I would see the house from miles away, every light blazing, a beacon drawing me in to normalcy, the mundane routines of family life: breakfast, lunch, dinner, all at the same time every day - lunch and breakfast my mother's work, dinner that of my father except on special occasions. I always stopped when I saw it, the first moment that I could glimpse a spark or shard of brightness through the dark wall of trees, put my right foot down (always my right foot) and propped myself up to examine that evidence of my family. It was easy in the woods, in the darkness of the winter evenings, to forget that there was anything other than shadows and trees and the cracking sound of wood settling, but that first glimmer of light brought me back to myself.

Now, in the house, there is no true darkness. The glow of LEDs in every room, throwing blue or red or orange shadows from the devices on standby. In the hallways there are sodium rectangles thrown against the walls opposite the windows, in the bathrooms mirrors reflect what little light the other rooms provide, so far from a midnight black the house is full of colour and contrast. I make my way silently through it, throwing my own sharp shadows on the walls and floor.

Deprived of darkness, I do not know what I am making of myself through my choices. I step over the supine partygoers. I expect at every moment to stumble across a late-drinking klatch of survivors, but it seems that the celebration achieved such apocalyptic levels of consumption that there is not a single attendee left conscious. The floors and stairs are strewn with bodies in various poses. I step over a girl in a long beige dress. Her hand is still clasped around a glass with a few millimetres of red wine trapped in the side - a lot of the rest of the contents seem to be in the cotton fabric at her front. I lean down to put my nose a few inches from her leg, and the smell of alcohol is overpowering - although underneath it I can detect a faint miasma of vomit coming from further up the landing. I stand the glass up, take the girl's head carefully between my hands and twist - slowly, slowly, until I can set it down again arranged more comfortably. She does not wake, but hopefully I have mitigated some potential neck ache.

On the landing where the staircase twists around to make its way up to the first set of bedrooms another girl - younger, the source of the vomit smell. She is too young to be here, I think, one of the people invited by my assistants. I will have to have words with them. I rearrange her into a more comfortable sitting position and scribble out a small note: DO NOT COME HERE AGAIN. I AM NOT ANGRY WITH YOU, BUT DO NOT COME HERE AGAIN - which I tuck into her hand, making a little fist of her fingers around the paper. She makes a little whimpering noise, but does not wake.

Now, in the corridor leading to the bedrooms, I begin to search the pockets of the inebriated, and the bags that are scattered around the floor among them. There are twenty-eight partygoers here. Everyone has a phone, of course, and I take them, carefully memorising which phone goes with which person. Seven fingers have wedding rings on, and of those three of the owners are wrapped in sleepy embraces with other people - two with each other, one with a woman with no ring, and - I examine her finger closely - no band of tanned or smooth skin to indicate that one is normally there. I collect all the rings, arrange them in a line on the floor at the head of the stairs, photograph the collection and return them all to their owners. As a little prank, however, I put them all back on the ring finger of the opposite hand.

At the end of the corridor is a broom-cupboard. I slip into it, tenderly edging aside a middle-aged man in a pizza-stained T-shirt so that I can open the door. Safely inside I operate the secret catch and feel the panel move around. There are two ways I could go from here, and this choice I do make in the dark. Upwards. There is work to be done.

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