Dreams of Leaving (18 page)

‘That's it. And he was only found by the river, wasn't he? Some sense of humour
his
parents must've had.' The policeman's mouth opened wide. His teeth were curiously pale and large, like ice-cubes.

Sense of humour? Peach was thinking. Don't talk to me about sense of humour.

Before the policeman drove on, Peach asked for the address of the police station that had taken the baby into custody. The policeman never thought to question Peach's interest in the case. A fool, Peach thought, and a complacent one at that. But perhaps he was being unfair. After all, the man was on holiday. And he had given Peach his first real lead in thirteen years.

Peach looked up from the file. Lightning bleached the windowpanes a faint cold blue. The thunder had moved away over the hill. He turned that autumn morning over in his head. The blades of grass plated with early frost. Hedgerows rusted by a month of rain. A random shaft of sun bringing out the ginger in Sergeant Caution's two-day growth of beard.

And when he watched that policeman's car disappear round a bend in the main road, how strongly he had felt the temptation to disappear himself. To verify the story. To know the truth about Moses.

Two considerations had held him back. One, his sense of responsibility (imagine a Chief Inspector defecting! the hypocrisy!). And two, the pointlessness of such a move. What good would it do? If the baby had got away, had grown up in the outside world (he would be sixteen now, Peach
calculated), he would have no memories of New Egypt. He might have been born anywhere. Equally, very few of the villagers remembered Moses now, not without being prompted. He had drowned in the river, and that was that. From both points of view the case was closed. There was no foreseeable danger. Better then to forget. Let time and apathy bury the memory. Only he, Peach, would carry the burden of knowing what had really happened.

And George Highness, of course.

George Highness.
Would
he
talk?

Somehow Peach doubted it. The man was private to the point of arrogance, and stubborn with it. Those characteristics would prevent him broadcasting what he had done, would nip any revolutionary instincts in the bud. It would be enough for George Highness to know that he had outsmarted the entire police department of New Egypt. Peach imagined that he must derive enormous satisfaction from that knowledge.

Once again he saw Highness during the closing moments of that funeral in 1956. When he walked over to offer his condolences, Highness had actually
smiled.
No more than a slight puckering at the corners of his mouth, but a smile none the less. The sheer brazen
impertinence
of it. Since then Peach had developed a theory about smiling. Why, only the other day he had delivered a lecture on the subject to a group of new recruits.

‘Now if you see somebody smiling,' he had told them, ‘it can mean one of two things. One, that the person in question is perfectly adjusted to life in the village. Anybody who is that well adjusted should be viewed as a potential threat. Can any of you tell me why?'

Peach's glance had swept along the row of recruits. Not one of the four had anything to offer. A pretty dull bunch. He sighed.

‘The reason is this. The person who is that well adjusted to life in the village is an exception. That person has occupied an extreme position. They are, in that sense, unbalanced, volatile. They are capable, at any moment, of veering to the other extreme, one of despising life in the village, one of plotting to escape from the life they despise – '

Peach had seen the faces of his recruits light up in turn as the point became clear. One or two nodded seriously as if they had known all along and had simply been waiting to have their knowledge confirmed.

‘Now,' Peach went on, ‘who can tell me what the second meaning of a smile might be?'

Again his gaze had moved along a row of blank faces. For God's sake.

Then one of the recruits, Wragge by name, a poor specimen of a youth with a nose that dangled from his face and a pair of close-set colourless eyes, stuck his hand up in the air.

‘Yes, Wragge?'

‘Could it be because they're harbouring a plan to escape, sir?'

Well, well. There was hope yet. Perhaps he was even looking at a future Chief Inspector.
Harbouring,
too. The perfect word to use in that context. Peach had studied Wragge for a moment and tried to widen the gap between those eyes, tried to invest that drooping nose with a bit of dignity, a bit of gristle. If only Wragge looked as intelligent as he obviously was.

‘Excellent, Wragge. That's perfectly correct.'

He saw Wragge's mouth expand a fraction. A smirk of complacency. Peach had decided there and then that he didn't care for Wragge. But he might be useful, of course.

‘When you see somebody smiling they might be dreaming of, or planning, an escape. A smile is a danger sign, a warning, a lead. I cannot impress upon you too strongly that you should treat a smile with the utmost suspicion,' he had concluded. Or almost concluded, because he had then experienced a moment of inspiration – wild, vivid, lateral – the kind of inspiration that made him the kind of Chief Inspector he was. ‘Think of it like this,' he had lowered his voice for effect, ‘somebody smiling is like somebody pointing a gun. They need to be disarmed or they will cause injury, damage, loss of morale. Even, perhaps, loss of life. There are times when I think smiling should be made illegal, but obviously – ' and he had raised a hand in the air, fingertips uppermost like a waiter with an invisible tray, to demonstrate that he was exaggerating to make a point, that he was, in fact, joking. Then he had himself smiled. There had been laughter among the recruits, but it had been serious laughter. The message had hit home.

He leaned back, pushed knuckles into his eyes. He returned to his scrutiny of the file. He turned up a sheaf of loose letters. These were answers to the barrage of enquiries he had unleashed following his encounter with that policeman in October 1969. There was one, for instance, from the policeman's immediate superior:

Dear Chief Inspector Peach,

Thank you for your letter of October 20th. I regret to say that I do not personally recall the case to which you refer since I was only transferred to this constabulary three years ago. However, I have had recourse to our records and I can inform you that a baby was indeed admitted to this police station during June 1956. On June 16th, in fact. The baby was registered under the name Moses George Highness.

It would seem that the Detective Sergeant in charge of the case attempted to locate the baby's parents, but without success. The only lead he had to go on was the name Highness, a name so unusual that he assumed it was
an alias, a bogus name, devised to throw whoever found the child off the scent. Following the failure of these investigations, the baby in question was remitted to an orphanage in Kent, the address of which you will find attached to this letter.

I hope this has been of some help to you, and I trust your research into this most tragic of human problems continues to go well.

Yours sincerely,

Detective Sergeant Hackshaw

This most tragic of human problems.
Peach's own words, lifted from his own letter. He had written as a police officer with a social conscience, a police officer who was working on a book about missing children. Upon receiving this letter from Hackshaw, he had immediately written to the orphanage. He had received the following reply:

Dear Chief Inspector Peach,

It is not our custom to supply information regarding the children in our charge; however, in this case, given your official position and your serious interest, I have taken it upon myself to waive the regulations. Moses was admitted to the Rose Hill Orphanage on June 29th 1956. I myself personally supervised the admission. He spent nine years with us – nine very happy years, I believe – and on June 1st 1965 was adopted by a couple with whom he had formed an extremely satisfactory relationship during the year previous.

Mr and Mrs Pole, formerly of 14 Chester Row, Maidstone, Kent, have now moved to Leicester. I regret to say that I do not have their new address. However, with all the resources at your disposal, I am sure that you will be able to trace them without too much trouble.

Yours sincerely,

Beatrice Hood

A third far briefer letter from a sergeant in Leicester confirmed the information supplied by Mrs Hood. The Poles had moved to the outskirts of the city, a green suburb. The sergeant had been kind enough to provide Peach with the address. And there Peach had let the matter rest.

He lay back in his chair and listened to the rain. Three years had passed since then. Three passive years.

His eyes were drawn to the corner of his office. There, propped up on a shelf, stood the toy dog, visible only as a ghostly patch of white in the shadows. Some remote ray of light had caught the black and orange glass of its left eye, so it seemed to be winking at him, mocking him. Balancing on three legs, it lifted its fourth and urinated on his career. And yet he
couldn't bring himself to throw it out. It was the only piece of evidence he had. It was a symbol of progress – what little he had made.

At least he was one up on George Highness, though. There was some solace in that. At least he knew Moses was alive. Highness could only
hope
he was. Perhaps he would be able to torture Highness with that knowledge. Yes, he might just be able to make the bastard squirm a little. To think that the fate of the village should have rested in that man's hands. It was monstrous.
Monstrous.
Highness would pay for that. Unquestionably he would pay.

Hands folded on his desk, Peach schemed for a while.

Then the phone rang.

He lifted the receiver. ‘Peach.'

‘I'm sorry to disturb you, dear – '

It was Peach's wife.

‘Hilda. What is it?'

‘It's just that it's getting very late. I was worried about you.'

Peach glanced at his watch. Good Christ, it was almost one o'clock. He hadn't realised.

‘I'm sorry, Hilda. I had no idea it was so late. I'll be home in a few minutes.'

‘I'll have some supper ready for you.'

His dear wife. ‘Thank you, Hilda. I'll be there very soon.'

He replaced the receiver. Locking up his office, he walked out into the rain.

*

At the age of forty-five, George Highness already slept as old men do. He went to bed early, usually at around ten. He took a glass of water with him for the night and a Thermos of weak tea for the morning.

By five he was always awake again. Then he would doze with the radio on, floating halfway between consciousness and dreams. The voices of the news announcers, turned to the lowest volume, muttered distantly, drowsily, like traffic or waves. At seven he poured himself a cup of tea, and sipped it noisily, as privacy allows you to, his head propped on a heap of pillows. Sometimes he reached for his electric razor and, holding a circular mirror in his left hand, trimmed his beard.

Then he could delay no longer, even though the day offered him nothing. He levered his thin legs out of the bed and on to the floor. The opening moments of this routine never varied. On with his dressing-gown and slippers, across the landing, and into the lavatory.

On this particular morning, perhaps because of the storm that had kept him awake for half the night, he was still asleep when the phone rang in his bedroom at eight-thirty. The sound reached down into his dream like an excavator's mechanical arm and scooped him out of the rubble of his subconscious. He rolled over groaning, pulled the phone towards his ear.

‘Hello?'

‘Could I speak to Mr Highness, please?'

George thought he could place the voice. A man's voice – alert, efficient, nasal. If he had been asked to put a smell to it, he would have said toothpaste. The name eluded him, however.

‘Speaking.'

‘This is Doctor Frost from the Belmont Home. I'm sorry to be calling you so early – '

Frost. Of course. ‘That's all right, doctor. I – '

‘I'm afraid I have some rather bad news for you, Mr Highness. It's about your wife – ' The doctor paused.

Like one of those puzzles, George thought. Fill in the missing words. He had already guessed the answer, but he said nothing. He closed his eyes and saw blue crosses in the darkness. He listened to the doctor's hygienic silence. He had always suspected Frost of being a coward.

Eventually: ‘She died at seven o'clock this morning.'

George opened his eyes again. The room a watercolour in grey. A coating of dust on the lampshade above his head. Through the window, the elm tree and a triangle of glassy sky. He turned on to his side and drew his knees towards his chest.

‘Mr Highness?'

‘Yes.'

‘Somebody will be contacting you later today. About the forms. I'm sorry, Mr Highness.'

Doctor Frost hung up.

George could see him now, a pink man in a white coat. Those sparse white hairs, how obscene they looked against his raw pink skull. His quick prim steps as he strutted down the hospital corridor. Congratulating himself, no doubt. An unpleasant task, successfully accomplished. On with the day.

And Alice –

And Alice, worth five or ten of him, lying in a drawer somewhere, her mouth ajar, her eyes transfixed –

George pushed his face into the pillow. His love, dormant these twelve years, rose in his throat, acidic, scalding. He tried to swallow, couldn't. He closed his eyes again, curled up. His last thought before falling into a deep
sleep concerned the telephone. He would disconnect it. He had only had it installed in the first place so he could speak to her, or be there if she needed him. Now there was nobody to speak to any more. Cut it off. Complete the isolation.

Its brash nagging woke him again just after ten. The medical secretary from the Belmont. Wanting to know whether Mr Highness would collect the death certificates in person or whether she should post them.