The Sunlight Pilgrims Read online

  ALSO BY JENNI FAGAN

  The Panopticon

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

  Copyright © 2016 by Jenni Fagan

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Hogarth, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  crownpublishing.com

  HOGARTH is a trademark of the Random House Group Limited, and the H colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Originally published in Great Britain by William Heinemann, a division of Random House Group Limited, London, in 2016.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Fagan, Jenni, author.

  Title: The sunlight pilgrims : a novel / Jenni Fagan.

  Description: First American edition. | New York : Hogarth, [2016]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016002977| ISBN 9780553418873 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780553418880 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Survivalism—Fiction. | GSAFD: Dystopias.

  Classification: LCC PR6106.A33 S86 2016 | DDC 823/.92—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/​2016002977

  ISBN 9780553418873

  ebook ISBN 9780553418880

  Cover design by Tal Goretsky

  Cover photograph by Chris Gordaneer / Gallery Stock

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Jenni Fagan

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part I: November 2020, −6 Degrees

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part II: December 8, 2020, −19 Degrees

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Part III: January 31, 2021, −38 Degrees

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Part IV: Or, The End Has Almost Come, March 19, 2021, −56 Degrees

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  For Boo,

  & Christian Downes

  There are three suns in the sky and it is the last day of autumn—perhaps forever. Sun dogs. Phantom suns. Parhelia. They mark the arrival of the most extreme winter for 200 years. Roads jam with people trying to stock up on fuel, food, water. Some say it is the end of times. Polar caps are melting. Salinity in the ocean is at an all-time low. The North Atlantic Drift is slowing.

  Government scientists say the key word is planet. They take care to remind the media that planets, by nature, are unpredictable. What did we expect? Icicles will grow to the size of narwhal tusks, or the long bony finger of winter herself. There will be frost flowers. Penitentes. Blin drift. Owerblaw. Skirlie. Eighre. Haar-frost. A four-month plummet will conclude with temperatures as low as minus forty or even minus fifty. Even in appropriate layers. Even then. It is inadvisable. Corpses will be found staring into a snowy maelstrom. A van will arrive, lift the frozen ones up, drive them to the city morgue—it takes two weeks to defrost a fully grown man. Environmentalists gather outside embassies while religious leaders claim that their particular God is about to wreak a righteous vengeance for our sins—a prophecy foretold.

  The North Atlantic Drift is cooling and Dylan MacRae has just arrived in Clachan Fells caravan park and there are three suns in the sky.

  That’s how it all begins.

  On Ash Lane, along a row of silver bullet caravans, a blackbird lands on a fence post. His eyes reflect a vast mountain range. Standing at the back of no. 9 looking toward the parhelia are Constance Fairbairn, her child Stella and the Incomer. Neighbors step out onto porches and everyone is unusually quiet, nodding to each other instead of saying hello.

  Stella imagines the brightest sun is for her, the second is for her mother and the last is for clarity, most recently lost. Her mother wants this back in their lives, but the child does not know why she should want it so much when clarity is no ally. It isn’t any kind of a companion at all. Stella stands, arms folded, frowning—right in between her mother and the Incomer, while three suns climb higher in the sky.

  Constance does not see her child in the parhelia. She sees two lost lovers and herself in the middle—reflecting light. Caleb will be in Lisbon from now on and, after this last fight, she will never speak to him again. Alistair is back with his wife. Three suns to herald the beginning of a great storm. How very fleeting—any moment of stability. Constance is weary from matters of the heart but more so from worry for her child.

  Dylan MacRae shades his gaze. He wears a fisherman’s jumper and a deerstalker hat, Chelsea boots, tailored trousers, he is overly tattooed, immodestly bearded—he is clearly taller than a man was ever meant to be. He rolls a cigarette and lights it. His eyes are red-rimmed in this brightness and he is dazed from seeing a woman polish the moon. In all his days. Three suns, seven mountains and so, so close to the sea.

  Dylan looks up at the parhelia and he sees Constance, her child and him.

  There is a curious coruscation to the Incomer’s eyes. The mother stacks wood. The child has two spirits. The entire landscape repaints itself in gold—crags, gorse bushes, the burn, sheep, a glint of waterfalls, fences, stiles, white houses, the bothy and right up there on the seventh sister there is a stag; the train tracks curve around the lower mountains—even the scarecrows appear momentarily cast in metal.

  The blackbird flies away without song.

  The child gazes toward the suns.

  Stella keeps her focus; this way she won’t be blinded but she will not have to look away for some time. She focuses, trying to absorb the suns’ energy deep into her cells so when they descend into the darkest winter for 200 years, in the quietest minutes, when the whole world experiences a total absence of light—she will glow, and glow, and glow.

  Snowflakes cartwheel out of the sky—hundreds, thousands, millions—the three suns fade as caravan doors click shut, all along Ash Lane.

  They are quite clear about it. They use short declarative statements. Capital letters. Red ink. Some points are underlined. In summation: they want everything. It is the end. Dylan uses nail scissors to trim the longest stragglers on his beard, he bends over a row of sinks in the ladies’ and splashes water on his face. He has acted out many roles in front of these mirrors: Jedi, Goonie, zombie, vengeful telekinetic teen—a Soho kid growing up in an art-house cinema: he’d lie onstage in his pajamas watching stars glide across the ceiling for hours. His grandmother used to say that they were keepers of a conclave, a place where people came to feel momentarily safe, to remember who they once were—a thing so often ignored (out there) but in here: lights, camera, action!

  Dylan pulls on his jumper and heads for the empty foyer. The ticket stall is musty. A trail of empty
gin glasses leads to his projection booth. He briefly recalls toasting Tom and Jerry, Man Ray, Herzog and Lynch, Besson and Bergman, the girls from the peep show next door, Hansel, Gretel and all of their friends. He picks up the letter again. Even if she had told him, he couldn’t have done anything. The account is empty. There is less than nothing. The deficit has so many figures he quit counting. A pile of unpaid bills are stacked neatly in Vivienne’s vintage sewing box and when he got back from the crematorium he found an envelope containing the deeds for a caravan 578.3 miles away, with a pink Post-it note and her scrawl: Bought for cash—no record in any of our accounts. Mum x.

  What kind of last words are those, exactly?

  He crumples the Post-it note, drops it in the bin. It’s typically Vivienne—his mother: the moirologist, every sentence delivered like a eulogy. The woman wore winkle-pickers all her days and swore the purest form of water was gin; her finger would trail along their huge medical encyclopedia (their family bible) hoping to find a rare, incurable disease, something to penetrate her to the bone and never leave her.

  There was less than six months between one passing and the next.

  Gunn went first.

  Then Vivienne.

  Now he knows something he did not know before—there is a totality to silence.

  It makes his bones ache.

  His body has its habits. It is trained to listen for footsteps on the attic stairs each morning. His eyes stray toward the draining board, expecting to find mismatched mugs. The fridge probably still has sliced lemon in Tupperware boxes for a late-night session on the gin. He fills the kettle up enough for three mugs. A stack of records next to Gunn’s gramophone have still not been put back in their sleeves. Their cigarette ends (or Vivienne’s at least) are still in the ashtray. It’s almost like he had thought if he didn’t tidy the place for long enough they’d come back, out of sheer fucking irritation at him.

  There is an impenetrability to absence.

  He feels slighted, as if some wider trick has been played. Inconclusivity—rattles! He is a child questioning a magician’s trick. Where is the rabbit? Where is her voice? Where is their laughter? How come their voices were here and now they are not? It’s a basic question. Where exactly have they gone? They have made the ultimate disappearing act. Exit stage left—then the curtains of the magician’s tent flounce shut and a CLOSED sign is placed right in front of it so the living cannot follow.

  This is only grief—it will not bring them home.

  He presses his fists into his eyes and swallows down hard. Repossessors will clamp metal shutters over the foyer doors in about ten hours and he will not be here to watch them. No doubt it will only be a matter of months before wealthy city types move into a well-designed property with great original features right in the middle of Soho. They’re doing it to all the businesses that go bust. He picks up a glass, wanting to hurl it with enough force that it could spin all the way through to the future—while the new residents walk around wearing unsubtle signifiers of wealth, the woman (in another room) would just hear a definite clunk one day as her other half took a tumbler to the head and slid perplexed, eyes glazed, down the wall.

  If he is here when the repossessors arrive with cutters.

  It won’t end well.

  Dylan’s footsteps echo in the empty building. He strides along corridors that hold memories from his childhood in each and every nook. It’s all borrowed: bricks; bodies; breathing—it’s all on loan! Eighty years on the planet if you’re lucky; why do they say if you’re lucky? Eighty years and people trying to get permanent bits of stone before they go, as if permanence were a real thing. Everyone has been taken hostage. Bankers and big business are tyrannical demigods. Where is the comeback? There is no comeback because they own the people who have the guns who are there to keep the people (bankers and big business and governments) fucking safe and now they’re saying on the news it is too little, too late. The temperature is plummeting. Four scientists murdered at the Arctic. By whom?

  Vast amounts of fresh water are flooding into the ocean from melting polar caps.

  Environmentalists have been campaigning outside Westminster for weeks.

  Nobody wants to have sex with him (he hasn’t tried, really).

  He can’t be bothered breathing anymore.

  The debt collectors have been to the door twice today. There was a minor scuffle. They said, quite seriously, they’ll take the lot by force if necessary, and they seemed hopeful for that possibility; they quite fancied battering a giant bearded weirdo, just for kicks, perk of the job, a wee added bonus for them. They are gnarly, violent-looking Serbians—if he had a cat they’d likely behead the thing, spike its head on the gates of the city so it could grin at passersby.

  London is not lined with lollipops.

  Businesses are closing—everywhere.

  He should: TAKE THE KEYS TO THE BAILIFFS IMMEDIATELY. This is written in RED CAPITAL LETTERS. That’s not going to happen. If they want his family’s home then they can break in. He’s not handing it to them. Banks are doing this up and down the country; any hint of weakness (which they generate by wrecking the economy) and they swoop in, put great big metal shutters right across the doors, do it up and sell it for a profit. They’ll make a bomb. In all truth, he can’t be in this cinema without his mother and grandmother. This was their place. Everywhere he looks another part of him hurts.

  Nobody told him grief would be so physical.

  Adrenaline.

  Sitting down.

  Each muscle aching like he has been beaten from head to toe. Grief is in his marrow. It is in his brain. It has even slowed the way he washes his hands. Dylan enters their only auditorium and presses a button on the wall. Red curtains whirr toward each other, they trail across the stage like a dancer’s ballgown in an old film, and he turns on star lights so they glide across the ceiling. He will leave Cinema 1 like this. It’s only right. For the first time in over sixty years there will not be a MacRae in ownership at 345a Fat Boy Lane, Soho. Babylon (the smallest art-house cinema in all of Europe) will no longer glow from the foyer chandelier as people hurry by in the rain.

  Dylan pulls on socks, boots, grabs a scarf.

  He packs Vivienne’s old suitcase.

  Art-deco ashtrays.

  Clothes.

  Two cinema reels.

  The urns are on the popcorn stand and he tries to fit them into the suitcase but it won’t close. He begins to sweat and rummages behind the counter for a plastic bag but there aren’t any. He yanks open cupboards and the box-office till, he looks in the bin, wrenches open the dishwasher—there is an old ice cream tub and a Tupperware container.

  He takes them out.

  Places the urns on the counter.

  Gunn should go in the ice cream tub. It’s bigger. Not that she is likely to have more ashes but she would be less bothered about being in an ice cream tub than Vivienne. Vivienne would be mighty fucking pissed off about traveling anywhere in an ice cream tub. His grandmother wouldn’t give much of a shit. Dylan wishes (not for the first time today) that he had drunk a little less last night. He picks up one urn, then puts it back down again, beginning slightly to panic. He unscrews Gunn’s urn and tips the ashes into the ice cream tub. Some fall onto the floor and he automatically rubs at them with his boot, then looks up and mouths the word Sorry. He lobs that empty urn into the sink and unscrews the other one. He tips Vivienne into the Tupperware container but it fills to the brim too quickly—he can’t fit all of her ashes in there.

  —Fuck’s sake!

  Dylan slams drawers and finds a spoon and carefully pats his mother’s ashes down until there is a half inch of space on top. They have to fit in. He can’t take her in two different containers. It wouldn’t be right and anyway there’s only popcorn boxes left and they have no lids! His hands are shaky. He is too hungover for this shit. He needs sugar. Coffee. A wank. More sleep. None of these things are going to happen. He pours in the rest of his mother’s ashes and pats them
down, pours the last bit and smoothes them down as well; a cold slick of sweat trickles right down his back as he tries to snap on the lid. He never could get Tupperware container lids on easily. It’s a skill he doesn’t possess.

  —What’s the fucking deal with this bollocks!

  The roaring and shaking his fist and stamping his feet doesn’t help, so he stands on it and the Tupperware lid clicks. He gets a bit of gaffer tape and wraps it around just to make sure. He picks them up. What if he forgets which one is which? He could text himself a note: Grandma’s in the ice cream tub, Mum’s in the sandwich box. Instead he rummages around until he finds a roll of stickers and uses a ballpoint to scrawl Gunn on one, then Vivienne with a smiley face on another. Sometimes he has no idea how he made it to thirty-eight. He is always running late, for a start, as if time is the main problem in his life. It seems pretty much all the things people are supposed to have done by his age have passed him by, while he did nothing but develop an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure cinema and the rudimentary skills of distilling gin.

  That was fine when he was helping to keep the family business afloat.

  It’s unlikely to impress the job center.

  Dylan places the containers side by side. They fit neatly into the suitcase now—it’s not the most elegant way to take his mum and grandma back to their homeland but it will do the job. He places a photograph of Gunn, Vivienne and himself as a baby on top and clicks the suitcase shut. Dylan reassures himself that this must be the worst hangover he has ever had in his life and his brain will return to optimum (average) functioning by tomorrow, or the day after at a push. He has at least twelve hours to be vacant on the megabus journey. That thought is soothing. Although the megabus is no doubt a shit-fest of body odor and claustrophobia and every bit of public transport is overcrowded with people panicking, but not so many will be going north like him. There is a hard knot of muscle in his shoulder. He looks for a piece of A4 paper but there isn’t any in the printer, so he grabs a flyer: Les Français vus par (The French as Seen By…), 13 minutes long, W. Herzog. He writes carefully on the back and takes it out to place in the Upcoming Screenings sign; the bailiffs won’t cover that up with metal boards: