Holes for Faces (12 page)

Eventually his parents went to bed. Their silence felt as ominous as the cloud above Vesuvius, and weighed on the dark. Charlie listened for signs that they’d fallen asleep, which might relieve at least some of the foreboding even if it left him by himself, but he didn’t know whether they’d drifted off by the time he did. He dreamed they were at the door again, although when he managed to unchain it and open all the bolts and locks, the faces that poked at him out of his parents’ heads weren’t theirs. He clutched at the pillow to blot out his screams as his jolt awake almost flung him off the bed. The quilt dragged the pillowcase back so that the pillow bulged into his face. The pillow was lumpier than he remembered, and the irregular padding that covered the lumps was unhelpfully thin. Feathers must be spilling out of the pillow to make it feel as though fragments were flaking off. Charlie was pulling his head back, disliking the dry sour taste, when his thumbs dug into the contents of the linen sack—into something hinged, where an object stirred like a worm. In the faint light from the corridor he saw that his bed-mate had widened its withered eyes and bared its mottled teeth.

His shrieks brought Bobby to pound on the door while Bobbie blinked across the corridor. “Just a nightmare,” Charlie’s father said, perhaps with desperate optimism. Charlie’s mother rubbed the boy’s shoulders with more vigour than affection, not looking at his face. There was nothing in his bed or under it, which only made him wonder where the extra guest had gone. His mother shook the pillow when it was clear that she thought it was time he lay down. He almost hoped some unexpected contents would appear for his parents to see.

Even when he held the end of the pillowcase shut with both hands under the quilt he was afraid something would wriggle forth if he slept. Whenever he jerked awake from a few seconds’ forgetful doze he clutched the pillowcase harder. At last it was time for breakfast, where he felt as if Bobby and Bobbie had left early because of him. He took as little from the buffet as he thought he could get away with taking while everyone in the room seemed to be aware of him, but he couldn’t even eat that much. “I expect you’re eager to be home,” his father said, not really as if he believed it himself.

The day was so sunlit Charlie might have thought it was celebrating his departure. The light was pretending there was nowhere anything he dreaded could hide. In the taxi to the airport a face spied on him through the mirror. Knowing that it was the driver didn’t comfort him, any more than the way the women at the check-in desk and the boarding gate scrutinised him. Very eventually he and his parents were allowed to shuffle onto the plane, where he stared at everybody seated further down the cabin until his mother said “Sit down, Charles. That isn’t how you’ve been taught to behave.”

He watched people filing along the aisle to sit behind him and in front of him. The procession was slow enough for a funeral, and made him feel breathlessly trapped. The face that had followed him out of the catacombs could hide anywhere—wherever his parents wouldn’t believe it was. He craned around to peer between the seats at his mother, hoping she’d forgiven him for causing last night’s scene, but she met him with a frown. “Turn round, Charles, please. You’ve shown us up enough.”

“Look out of the window,” his father urged, and Charlie couldn’t let them sense his fear. As he ducked towards the cramped pane a blotch of a face swelled up to meet him—his own. At once he understood everything. His mother kept telling the truth about him, about the face and teeth, and his father didn’t want to say what had made him how he was. The past was indeed part of him. The ground moved began to move before his eyes as the plane headed for the runway, and when he sat back the blurred face retreated into hiding—into him. He closed his eyes in the hope his father wouldn’t make him look again, but it didn’t help him forget. He couldn’t leave behind the horror his parents were bringing home.

As the train arrives at James Street one of the women behind me in the carriage murmurs “They’re talking about us again.”

“What’s somebody saying this time?” her friend protests, but I miss the answer in the midst of a recorded warning not to leave luggage unattended. The amplified voice seems to herd commuters off the underground platform onto the train, and an Asian woman in a headscarf black enough for a funeral takes a seat at the far end of the carriage. Perhaps she’s a lawyer from the courts at the top of James Street, since she’s carrying a briefcase. The voice falls silent as the train heads into the tunnel.

There’s just a solitary track on the loop under Liverpool, where the tunnel shrinks to half its previous width. Lights embedded in the walls flash out of the dark every few seconds like some kind of signal. In about a minute more passengers board at Moorfields; it’s the start of the rush hour. I’m at the nearest doors well before the train pulls into Lime Street, where the Muslim woman alights further down the carriage. As I make to step onto the platform I notice she’s without her briefcase.

“Excuse me,” I call, but she doesn’t seem to hear. Several people look up or around and then lose interest as I dash along the carriage. The case is on the floor by the seat she vacated, and I grab it before struggling between the last of the commuters boarding the train. The woman isn’t on the platform. She could have used the lift, but the escalators are closer, and I sprint for the exit that leads to them.

Is she late for a main line train? By the time I reach the bank of escalators her strides have taken her almost to the top. I’d try and overtake her on the other upward escalator, but it isn’t moving. “Excuse me,” I shout, “you dropped this.”

She turns with one hand on the banister and smiles, though the expression looks a little automatic. I’m hurrying towards her when she sails out of view. The briefcase is so shabby that I might conclude she meant to dump it if it weren’t also heavy with documents. I assume that’s what the contents are, but the lock is jammed; it’s so distorted that someone might already have tried to force it—perhaps she has lost the key. I admit I’m glad to find her waiting beyond the escalator, this side of the ticket barrier. “Oh, thank you,” she says and makes her smile rueful. “I don’t know what I could have been thinking of.”

I’m at least equally ashamed of having thought she might be up to no good. It shows how prejudiced we’ve all grown, how inclined to think in today’s stereotypes. I pass her the briefcase with both hands, and she grasps the scruffy handle as she shows her ticket at the barrier. I flash my pass and am following her along the passage to the escalators that lead up to the main station when my breast pocket emits a series of piercing clanks that put me in mind of a faulty pacemaker.

I read the message on my mobile as the escalator lifts me into the glare of sunlight through the glass roof
.
Have to cance
l
, it says
.
No trai
n
. Beneath the huge cautionary voice of the station there’s the babble of a crowd that’s hurrying to the platforms while at least as many people stream out onto the concourse. The Muslim woman has disappeared among them. I pocket the mobile without sending a response and tramp down the descending escalator. As I display my pass the ticket collector says “You look familiar.”

“I expect there’s plenty more like me.”

I’d say that was as witty as her quip, but she doesn’t bother laughing. She seems to feel it’s her duty to ask “Weren’t you here just now?”

“If you say so.”

“Did you forget something?”

“That’s not me. I thought I was meeting someone but I’m not after all.”

“You want to be sure what’s happening another time.”

The pointless exchange has delayed me so much that as I step on the underground escalator I hear a squeal of wheels—the arrival of the train I meant to catch. I clutch at the unsynchronised banisters and dash down two sinking steps at a time, to reach the platform just as the train sets about shutting its doors. With a leap that leaves me feeling rejuvenated I jam my foot between the nearest pair, which flinch apart, raising an alarm that all the others take up. “I’ve still got it,” I declare as I board the train.

Nobody seems interested. One man lowers his head as though his tweed hat is weighing it down. A younger man is leafing through a cardboard folder full of documents, and a girl is lost in the world of her personal stereo, while a woman in a coat patterned like a chessboard frowns at a Mtogo poster as if she thinks an African restaurant has no right to advertise on the train. I find a seat near the doors as the train heads for Central Station, where it swaps commuters for commuters before following the loop back to James Street. Just one passenger alights there, hurrying behind the crowd on the platform. She’s the Muslim with the briefcase.

She must have used the lift at Lime Street while I was held up at the barrier. I’ve a reason to have caught the first train back, but what’s hers? However prejudiced it makes me feel, I can’t help lurching to my feet and forcing my way onto the platform. She’s already past the nearest exit—she isn’t even on the stairs to which it leads. If I find she’s returning to the courts, where she could perfectly well have left some item, I hope I’ll be cured of making suspicious assumptions. If she sees me I’ll be more embarrassed still. I sprint up the boxed-in stairs and reach the top just in time to see her leaving the enclosed bridge across the underground tracks. She isn’t bound for the outside world. She’s on her way down to the platform for the trains around the loop.

I hear a train approaching, and her running down to meet it. I can’t see her as I dash down the steps, and she isn’t on the platform scattered with commuters. I’m opposite the last carriage of the train. I could try to reach the driver or attract their attention, but what would I say? All I know is that if the woman plans to abandon the briefcase again, we should all be safe until she’s well away from it. The thought sends me onto the train.

This time I don’t trigger the alarm, and the train moves off at once. The carriage is crowded, but I can see every head, and there’s no sign of a headscarf. Suppose she’s so fanatical that she would take it off to be less obvious? I struggle through the crowd, peering at every face and at the floor beside and between and especially under the seats. All the people in the aisle would make a briefcase easier to hide, but it seems the woman wasn’t in this carriage, or at least she hasn’t left the case here. I haul open the door between the carriages, to see a man leaning against the next door. He’s so bulky that he blocks the view into the other carriage, and he doesn’t budge when I knock on the window. I make to shove the door at him, and then I’m overwhelmed by a blaze of light. It isn’t an explosion, even if my innards wince. The train has emerged from the tunnel.

We’re at Moorfields. The doors open to the platform, but I’m nowhere near any of them. When I push at the one between the carriages the man with his wide flabby shoulders against it doesn’t shift an inch. More people squeeze onto the train, and I’m near to panicking. As it moves off I crane back to stare through a window at the platform. A woman is striding fast along a passage to the escalators. She’s the headscarved Mohammedan, and she doesn’t have her briefcase.

My guts clench like a helpless fist, and a sour taste surges into my mouth. Until this moment I can’t really have believed my own suspicions—I might as well have been enacting a scene from a cheap thriller based on the news. As the tunnel closes around the carriage I kick the connecting door and pound on it with both fists. When the hulking man turns his big stupid head to stare at me I flash my pass, too quickly for him to take issue with it. “Let me through,” I shout and mime as well.

Even he must realise we all need to be concerned about security, though he makes it clear that he’s doing me a favour by stepping aside. I brush past him and shoulder my way through the swaying crowd. The lights on the walls of the tunnel are hurtling towards me like the future. There’s a bag of shopping between two seats, and there’s another carrier bag on the floor, but where’s the briefcase? Is it even in this carriage? How much distance may the woman want to put between herself and the case, or how little? I’m nearly at the first set of doors, and I’m shamefully tempted to make my escape, but we’re still in the tunnel. The train lurches as if it has been derailed, and its hollow roar seems to grow louder. I seize the metal pole above the partition that separates the seats from the crowded space in front of a pair of doors. The carriage steadies, and as I grasp there was no explosion I see a briefcase on the floor, almost hidden by the legs of passengers. “Sir,” I say urgently, “is that your case?”

The man who’s closest to it glances down and then just as indifferently at my face. “Nothing to do with me.”

His neighbours shake their heads, and I stoop to retrieve the case. I recognise it at once—recognise the warped lock, which I’m beginning to think might have been deliberately forced out of shape so that nobody can open it. I close my fist around the ragged handle and lift the case.

At once light flares all around me. I’m back at Lime Street. All along the carriage matrix signs spell it out, and a woman’s amplified voice pronounces the words for anyone who can’t read. As I make for the doors I’m frantically trying to decide where to take the briefcase. The train is coasting to a halt, and I’m still trapped by all the bodies pressing close around me, when someone taps me on the shoulder hard enough for a knock on a door. “That yours?” a man says in my ear.

“It isn’t,” I declare and struggle around to face him. He’s a cleaner in a yellow jerkin. Usually the cleaners don’t collect the rubbish from the trains during the rush hour, and his appearance is as unexpected as it’s reassuring—even the Union Jack badge just visible on the lapel of his jacket. “It was left before,” I murmur for only him to hear. “I think—”