Holes for Faces (16 page)

David wasn’t sure he wanted to be heard, but he had to be polite and answer. “What happened to granny?”

“People change when they get old, son. You’ll find that out, well, you have. She was still your grandmother really.”

Too much of this was more ominous than reassuring. David was loath to ask how she’d died, and almost to say “I meant where’s she gone.”

“I can’t tell you that, son. All of us are going to have to wait and see.”

Perhaps David’s mother sensed this was the opposite of comforting, for she said “I think it’s like turning into a butterfly, David. Our body’s just the chrysalis we leave behind.”

He had to affect to be happy with that, despite the memory it threatened to revive, because he was afraid he might otherwise hear worse. He apparently convinced his mother, who turned to his grandfather. “I wish I’d seen mummy one last time.”

“She looked like a doll.”

“No, while she was alive.”

“I don’t think you’d have liked it, Jane. Try and remember her how she used to be and I will. You will, won’t you, Davy?”

David didn’t want to imagine the consequences of giving or even thinking the wrong answer. “I’ll try,” he said.

This appeared to be less than was expected of him. He was desperate to change the subject, but all he could think of was how bare the house seemed without its Christmas finery. Rather than say so he enquired “Where do all the decorations go?”

“They’ve gone as well, son. They were always Dora’s.”

David was beginning to feel that nothing was safe to ask or say. He could tell that the adults wanted him to leave them alone to talk. At least they oughtn’t to be arguing, not like his parents used to as soon as he was out of the way, making him think that the low hostile remarks he could never quite hear were blaming him for the trouble with the marriage. At least he wouldn’t be distracted by the buzzing and the insistent light while he tried to sleep or hear. The wind helped blur the voices below him, so that although he gathered that they were agreeing, he only suspected they were discussing him. Were they saying how he’d scared his grandmother to death? “I’m sorry,” he kept whispering like a prayer, which belatedly lulled him to sleep.

A siren wakened him—an ambulance. The pair of notes might have been crying “Davy” through the streets. He wondered if an ambulance had carried off his grandmother. The braying faded into the distance, leaving silence except for the wind. His mother and his grandfather must be in their beds, unless they had decided David was sufficiently grown-up to be left by himself in the house. He hoped not, because the wind sounded like a loose voice repeating his name. The noises on the stairs might be doing so as well, except that they were shuffling footsteps or, as he was able to make out before long, rather less than footsteps. Another sound was approaching. It was indeed a version of his name, pronounced by an exhalation that was just about a voice, by no means entirely like his grandmother’s but too much so. It and the slow determined unformed paces halted outside his room.

He couldn’t cry out for his mother, not because he wouldn’t be a man but for fear of drawing attention to himself. He was offstage, he tried to think. He only had to listen, he needn’t see more than the lurid light that flared across the carpet. Then his visitor set about opening the door.

It made a good deal of locating the doorknob, and attempting to take hold of it, and fumbling to turn it, so that David had far more time than he wanted to imagine what was there. If his grandmother had gone away, had whatever remained come to find him? Was something of her still inside her to move it, or was that a worm? The door shuddered and edged open, admitting a grotesquely festive glow, and David tried to shut his eyes. But he was even more afraid not to see the shape that floundered into the room.

He saw at once that she’d become what she was afraid of. She was draped with a necklace of fairy lights, and two guttering bulbs had taken the place of her eyes. Dim green light spilled like slimy water down her cheeks. She wore a long white dress, if the vague pale mass wasn’t part of her, for her face looked inflated to hollowness, close to bursting. Perhaps that was why her mouth was stretched so wide, but her grin was terrified. He had a sudden dreadful thought that both she and the worm were inside the shape.

It blundered forward and then fell against the door. Either it had very little control of its movements or it intended to trap him in the room. It lurched at him as if it was as helpless as he was, and David sprawled out of bed. He grabbed one of his shoes from the floor and hurled it at the swollen flickering mass. It was only a doll, he thought, because the grin didn’t falter. Perhaps it was less than a doll, since it vanished like a bubble. As his shoe struck the door the room went dark.

He might almost have believed that nothing had been there if he hadn’t heard more than his shoe drop to the floor. When he tore the curtains open he saw fairy lights strewn across the carpet. They weren’t what he was certain he’d heard slithering into some part of the room. All the same, once he’d put on his shoes he trampled the bulbs into fragments, and then he fell to his hands and knees. He was still crawling about the floor when his mother hurried in and peered unhappily at him. “Help me find it,” he pleaded. “We’ve got to kill the worm.”

Fraith did his best to stay amused as long as he could. At the car park into which he wandered almost before realising he had, nobody even knew there was a railway station. Presumably this meant it wasn’t along the road, and he tramped back into the forest, where the rusty colours were starting to lose their appeal. An October wind cold enough for winter met him, and then a muddy couple tugged by two Labradors did. They disagreed over directions while the dogs joined in, and eventually the man tried to send Fraith back to the road. Further down the path that was restless with leaves, the mother of two children about the ages of his daughter’s daughters took pity on him. “Out by yourself today?” she said.

“I very often am. I’m just giving the family a breather.”

“They look after you, do they?”

Fraith wasn’t sure how much of her sympathy was reserved for him. “More like the other way round,” he retorted.

“I know.”

Her tone had turned more soothing, not unlike a nurse’s by a bed. Fraith managed to say only “Can you tell me where the station is?”

“Was that the big place, mummy?” the boy said at once.

“That was a school,” his sister informed him with all the disdain earned by her age or gender.

“There hasn’t been a school for a long time. Be quiet about it.” Since the woman was still gazing at Fraith, he could have thought this was addressed to him. “I’m sure I saw the sign you want,” she said. “Carry on where we’ve come from and I think it’s the next side path.”

“I don’t suppose either of you two saw a train.”

“They haven’t. Not today.” With enough force to be rebuking Fraith the woman added “Just do as I said and you’ll find what you asked for.”

“I hope so.” Fraith could sound like that too. “I need to get back to my daughter,” he said. “She hasn’t anybody else.”

He hoped his return would be as welcome as his decision to go walking by himself had seemed to be. Were there really no walks closer to the house than a train ride away? Perhaps Carla had wanted a few hours by herself with the girls. He was doing all he could to help—enough for two people now her mother wasn’t with them—but perhaps he seemed too interfering. He would ask Carla once the girls were in bed, though she disliked admitting to feelings like those, just as her mother had. Before he knew he meant to speak he said “Have you anyone like me?”

“We had,” the woman said.

“He went to live with all the other granddads,” the boy informed him.

Fraith could do without knowing what this might be a euphemism for. “I won’t be doing that just yet,” he said and strode into the woods.

He must have overlooked the sign she’d mentioned. Though the sun was lying low behind the trees, it wouldn’t be dark for hours. The light transformed foliage into masses of orange flame and spilled between the trees to lend leaves on the path a tinfoil glare. The concrete path wasn’t admitting to its destination; every few hundred yards another curve obscured the way ahead. While he hadn’t counted the bends, it took more of them than he remembered to bring him back to the next junction, where nothing like a signpost was to be seen.

The woman must have mistaken the place, which surely ought to mean the next path wasn’t far. He knew the station wasn’t to the left—he’d come that way earlier—and the trail ahead curved rightwards. He zipped up the last inches of his padded jacket against the wind despite starting to sweat with exertion. “Best feet forward. You’ve a pair each,” he would have said if Carla’s daughters had been with him.

Soon the path straightened out, levelling the sunlight at him. For minutes he was as bad as blind. At last the path strewn with leaves like shards of mirrors veered to the right again, and he blinked his patchy vision clear, to be rewarded by the sight of a junction ahead. Or were those only gaps between the trees on both sides of the track? No, there was a transverse path, but it was entirely unmarked.

He halted at the crossing and stared around him. His skin was as clammy as his mouth was dry, and at first the reverberations of his heart wouldn’t let him think. Where had he gone wrong? He’d set out to follow a circular route from the station, but one of the bridges across the railway had been fenced off, and since then he’d lost the main path. If only Carla had reminded him to take his mobile phone, except that even if he hadn’t left it by his bed he didn’t suppose it would have helped him now. Should he return to the car park while he still knew where it was, in case someone could direct him? He was turning back when he heard voices on the right-hand path.

They weren’t speaking English. Like many people in the street these days—sometimes enough to make him feel he was losing his grasp of his own language—the young men were from somewhere in the heart of Europe. They looked friendly enough, and stopped at the junction when Fraith held up a hand. “Did you come by the railway?” he said.

Two of them smiled while their companions frowned, and all four shook their heads. “Railway,” Fraith repeated to the same effect and pumped his arms like pistons while puffing as hard as he could, only to realise that he could have been portraying an exhausted athlete. “Choo choo,” he tried hooting and shoved his fists out hard enough to pummel an opponent. “Choo choo.”

The men gazed at him as if they wondered where he’d been let out from—as Carla’s daughters did too often while he was exerting himself to amuse them. “Station,” he urged, shading his eyes to peer along each path in turn. “Station.”

Three men shrugged. Their companion, the oldest, sketched a cross on himself before kissing his thumb, and Fraith wondered if this was a gesture to greet the deranged. He’d thought of nothing more to say by the time the men turned along the path he had been following. As he hesitated the oldest man looked back and waved him away. “No,” he said and jabbed a finger at the path to Fraith’s left. “Station.”

He pronounced it so deliberately it might have been two separate words. Surely that could be the right path—if the men had passed the railway they would have figured out Fraith’s performance. All the same, as he turned that way he felt as if he were being dragged by his shadow. His heart sounded like a cheap effect in a film, and his mouth was growing parched again. He’d reached a bend that showed him more path and trees with their tips ablaze—his crooked silhouette was jerking along the unkempt verge, putting him in mind of the second hand of a decrepit clock—when he heard another voice.

Though it was blurred, not just by distance, he knew where the woman was. The man’s voice that had greeted the train at the station had been distorted too. “Keep talking,” Fraith urged and tramped faster along the path.

She fell silent at once. He could almost have fancied she was as contrary as Carla’s girls. His shadow was veering around a bend as if in search of the direction by the time she spoke again. As far as he could make out she was publicising a special service, which seemed unlikely to concern him. Straining his ears only turned his heartbeat up, and he did his best to breathe more evenly as the bend showed him another deserted stretch of path. Wasn’t that the red-brick station beyond the furthest trees? He was halfway to it before he could be sure it was a mass of autumn foliage.

He’d seen no other path since meeting the four men, but he’d begun to wonder if he was still right for the station until he heard the voice apparently announcing the first train due and the next ones. The wind threw the words about like a young animal worrying some kind of toy, so that Fraith couldn’t locate the voice. At least he was closer to it. Surely that wasn’t just an effect of the wind.

He’d passed another extended bend before she spoke again—something about the track and a delay. At least that should give him more of a chance to catch the train, but he kept on almost fast enough to lose his footing on the sodden leaves. As the wind flung the words away from him he could have imagined the treetops were groping to retrieve the message, not necessarily on his behalf. All at once a phrase made him falter. Could she just have announced the last train?

It shouldn’t be due for hours yet. There was still enough light to trap his silhouette among the glistening shadows of trees. He made for the voice almost fast enough to leave his breath behind, though not the uneven drumbeat of his heart. Was he hearing about a mail train now—one that carried sacks? Presumably the public was being advised that it didn’t take passengers. Fraith could see the building through the trees at the next bend, at least until he came close enough to realise it wasn’t solid enough. The distant shape wasn’t overgrown with leaves, it was composed of them. He was almost at the bend by the time the voice spoke again. It was behind him.

It was to his left as well, among the trees. As he strained his eyes to find a path he’d overlooked, he heard a rhythmic clatter and a brief high sound. The mail train must be racing through the station, whistling to warn commuters. He’d thought the voice had just mentioned relaying the track, but this couldn’t be affecting the trains. He was facing the sounds now, and he shouldn’t waste any more time looking for a path.

The way through the trees wasn’t as straightforward as he hoped. The forest was humpy with mounds of earth much taller than he was. None of the trails leading over or between them looked manmade, even inadvertently. The first route he followed brought him into a muddy hollow full of stagnant pools disguised by leaves, and he was on his knees by the time he clambered out of it. After that he did his best to stay on the mounds, no matter how treacherous they proved to be. Would they never let him glimpse the station? He might have thought its voice was mocking his progress, not least since it had grown even less comprehensible. Perhaps the bits of it that reached him on the wind were talking about prices and the next train, but what had it said about some form of support? “Doesn’t matter,” Fraith panted, “just don’t shut up,” and almost lost his balance on a scree of leaves as he laboured up a slope. He grabbed a scaly tree-trunk to haul himself onto the top of the mound, and a soggy lump of bark crumbled in his grasp. He sucked in a breath so as to release it, letting out a sound he would have preferred not to make. He could see where he’d been hearing from, and it had no connection with the railway. The building obscured by trees was a school.

The main building was long and wide and red. Two wings extended from it to enclose a schoolyard, beyond which distant figures stood around the edges of a field, watching others run. At once a great deal made sense. It was a sports day, nothing to do with support. The voice had been talking about prizes, not prices—about a sack race and a relay, and announcing the winners in numerical order.

For an irrational moment Fraith was tempted to retreat to the main path. He’d already begun to feel like a child lost in a maze, and besides, he had loathed sports at school. “Don’t blubber, Blubber,” the gym master took delight in saying, though Fraith hadn’t been especially overweight and had never let anyone see him weep. Only sweat had trickled down his face, not to mention down the rest of him, as he’d panted to the finish in everybody else’s wake, urged on by the teacher’s ironic cheers that too many spectators had emulated. They surely weren’t allowed to treat children like that now, even in a school as remote as this one. If the way Carla’s girls behaved was any indication, there were no longer many rules at all.

Someone at the school would be able to direct him to the railway, and he slithered down the mound. Now he couldn’t see the building, but the announcer—no doubt the games mistress—was still audible with some words about the head. If the organiser of the games was anything like Carla, the competitors would be having an easy time. She could very well be firmer with his grandchildren, but perhaps she thought he’d been too strict with her at their age.

He wasn’t going to risk the shortest route to the school—he couldn’t afford a broken bone or even a sprain just now, if ever—and so he settled for the least hazardous. From the top of a mound the school blocked his view of the playing field. The next time it rose into sight, only the roof was visible above the high thick hedge that boxed the grounds in. He had to find his way around a copse webbed with ivy before he was able to reach the hedge.

A track led beside it, or at least a penumbra of mud that fringed the shadow of the forest. The hedge was several times Fraith’s height and at least twice as thick as the width of his rotund stomach. It was far too thoroughly entangled for even the smallest child to squeeze through, and not just full of vicious thorns but bristling with them. Surely nothing like it would be allowed on school property these days, and he wondered how long ago it had been planted to have grown so much.

Since he couldn’t see the school gates, he made his way along the soggy track towards the field. The windows he glimpsed through the hedge were as dark as the depths of the woods. Either the woman with the microphone hadn’t often used one or her shrillness was distorting the transmission. Perhaps she was pretending to be excited, because Fraith couldn’t see much to inspire her as he came in sight of the field.

The sack race was over. Several man-sized bags were propped against the schoolyard wall. Fraith’s head was swimming with exertion, and he might have imagined that the contestants had stayed in their sacks, which were jerking with the wind. In fact  the bags couldn’t have been used in the race—they must be full of rubbish, given how stained they were. He was glad to see that the sports day wasn’t too rigorously organised; some of the young spectators on the far side of the field were playing a game of their own, throwing a ragged rugby ball or baseball to one another. Perhaps the amplified voice had grown shrill in a bid to reclaim their attention for the official event, such as it was. Fraith could see just one runner on the field, dashing along a track composed of muddy footprints in the not especially neat grass. Whatever kind of competition this might be, Fraith hadn’t time to wait for it to finish. “Excuse me,” he shouted through the widest gap—thinner than his thumb—he could find in the hedge. “Can you help?”