Incarnate (35 page)

“Nell.” She added the next name that entered her head. “Nell Swain.”

“Swain by name, eh? Know what swaining is? They told us once at school.” His expression was more of a leer now. “So what’s your friend in for?”

“Drugs,” she said, which seemed relatively common and harmless.

“Fine friends you have. Coon, is he?”

“He’s colored,” she said, trying to think how she could use all this.

“Thought .as much. Does he start them young, your friend? Pushing outside schoolyards, is that his scene?” His sudden fury made him climb red-faced out of the car and slam the door. “I wouldn’t mind a quiet word with him.”

He looked capable of leading her back to the prison. “He doesn’t push, he only uses. He’s been arrested sev eral times, that’s why he’s in here now,” she said, and wondered if that could be enough to get someone locked in Wormwood Scrubs.

“You’ll be telling me next he’s never given you any.”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I did.”

“Truest thing you’ve said,” he agreed, and for a moment she thought he was onto her. “Bet you wouldn’t like to be searched right now.”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

“Turns you on, does it?” He strolled round the car to her. The avenue was deserted now, the oak gates were locked. “Is that why you like hanging round police? You haven’t told me yet why you were following me.”

She had virtually forgotten that question, and wasn’t prepared for it to reappear. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t you? Well, I’ll tell you something. I never forget a face.” His was inches from hers now, but still looked small and pinched. “You were in the pub last night, watching me play darts.”

“What if I was? I live near there.”

“Ah, now she remembers.” He was slapping the car roof lightly; it resounded like a drum. That seemed as much of a threat as the closeness of his face. “Going to apologize?”

“For what?”

“For acting as if you knew better than me. I know when I’m being followed even if you didn’t know you were doing it. Next time don’t act as if you’re right and I’m wrong.” He leaned his head back a little from her and laid one wiry hand on her shoulder. “I never forget a face,” he said as if he were quoting a film, “specially not one that interests me.”

So it hadn’t been an interrogation so much as a flirtation. She suspected that he couldn’t tell the difference any more than she had been able to. “I’ll buy you a drink in the pub next time if you haven’t got yourself locked up by then,” he said, and climbed into the car. “What did you say your name was? Nelly, that’s right. I’ll remember.”

He leaned over to wind up the window. “Just don’t try bringing any of your coon friends to the pub,” he said, his face reddening again. “I don’t know what you can see in them, a clever girl like you. Cut six of them open and I’d be surprised if you found a brain, except maybe one they’d been eating. I’ve known them mistake someone else for their son. And they get stroppy if we say they all look the same to us.”

He was talking about Lenny Bennett’s mother, about the unrecognizable smashed face in the film. She managed to look blank and at the same time angry, which seemed safe and which apparently amused him. “Can’t give you a lift unless I arrest you,” he said with a grin, and drove away.

She was making things happen at last. He would recognize her now, and that was the first step to getting herself invited into his flat. As she started the car she wondered if confronting him with the trophy and filming his guilt were bound to happen once she had dreamed of them unless she prevented them herself. No doubt her dream had exaggerated, as dreams do, but it made her feel powerful, and so did having beguiled Rankin. It was strange and encouraging that she knew his name though she had only heard it in her dreams. She felt sure enough of herself to drive straight to MTV.

Terry Mace wasn’t there, nor was Nell. At least Leon was back at last from filming Paddy Shaw. She found him watching the .rough cut.

His hair was cropped still closer to his head,” which made his face look even chubbier. “I got the film out before they blew the van up,” he said, “and we had no trouble at all filming. The Christmas truce, you see. Filming then was one of my better ideas. Sounds as if I had a better time in Belfast than you were having here.”

“Oh, you heard?”

“Eccles couldn’t wait to tell me. Martin’s in Oxford looking for safe subjects, I suppose.”

“Something like that.”

“That isn’t what we brought him here for. It certainly isn’t what he should be doing. And all this fucking nonsense about having to broadcast a retraction would only stir things up again. Gould must see that by now. I think it’s just a matter of time before they take Martin back. I spoke to him yesterday and he says there’s no way they can have him back without you. You can add to that that if they refuse to take both of you back they can do without me as well.”

She couldn’t tell him that she didn’t think that would be necessary. “None of this is your fault, Leon. You mustn’t think it is,” she said, and gave his soft cheek a kiss before she made her way home.

She drove past Nell’s, but nobody was there either, though for a moment she thought she had seen a child’s face at the window. It must have been the reflection of a cloud, the way it was changing. Tomorrow she would have to brazen her way into MTV again, to see if she could find out what was wrong at Nell’s and to persuade Terry to be ready when she needed him. She parked several streets away from her flat and walked home down the streaming lumpy hill. She was on the steps when she heard her phone ringing.

It was Mrs. Wallace. “Is Martin there?” she shouted faintly. “I tried the other number.”

“He’s away just now. Shall I give you the number or give him a message?”

“I’d appreciate your doing both, Molly. It’s his father. The doctor says he hasn’t long, maybe just a few days. He wants Martin to come back.”

Molly wasn’t sure if she meant his father or the doctor, but she wouldn’t have dreamed of asking. “I’ll call him straight away,” she promised. But he wasn’t at his Oxford hotel, and the receptionist had no idea when he might be back. Molly left a message for him to call her or his mother. She wished that he weren’t in Oxford; it wasn’t as if she wanted to know what Stuart had to say. She felt as if she’d made Martin go away purely for her own ends, and she couldn’t help dreading the consequences.

34

“
S
USAN
,” Mrs. Fisher said, “will you please stop daydreaming and try to do some work? The holidays are over now, for all of us.” But Susan wasn’t dreaming. At last she knew what she must do about Eve. School and the woman with the cats had helped her realize what she could do.

She ducked her head and tried to work with the other children in her group, and wished Lonnie hadn’t brought his Space Invaders. Mrs. Fisher had set one group of children timing the frequency of spaceships that jittered like insects across the tiny screen while the other groups had to work out the chances of winning. Susan had never been much good with figures (though she was sure that Mummy was spending more on Eve than she could afford), and she could only watch while the others in her group scribbled figures and compared them. Eventually Mrs. Fisher came to her. “What don’t you understand, Susan?”

“None of it, miss.”

“Budge over.” Mrs. Fisher sat on the corner of Susan’s seat and showed her what to do step by step, but Susan couldn’t concentrate. Her eyes kept wandering to the initials “E. V.” carved by the inkwell that she never used. She wouldn’t be able to concentrate until she’d done what she had to do about Eve. Mrs. Fisher leaned over to look into her eyes just as the bell rang for playtime. “What’s wrong, Susan?” Mrs. Fisher said.

She wouldn’t believe what was happening. Susan’s school friends might, but they couldn’t help. There was only one person who could help Susan, and she had to tell that person just enough. “Nothing, miss,” she said and ran out before Mrs. Fisher could stop her, ran downstairs and out of the gates before the teacher on yard duty could demand where she was going.

Frost clung like mold to the roofs of parked cars. She ran grabbing railings that felt soaked and crumbly, she crossed a road and dodged aside from a squashed dead cat, which proved to be a frozen furry newspaper. She was several houses away from the flat when she saw Eve beyond the window.

Susan held onto a gatepost and watched while melting frost trickled down her sleeve. Eve was singing to herself and dancing, pirouetting and writhing her arms. Susan remembered what the woman with the cats had said about the song she’d heard. She tried to focus Eve, who was somehow losing definition even though she was turning more slowly. It must be frost on the window that made her look blurred and pale, so blurred that she no longer looked like a person, a pale blurred shape that seemed to be expanding, filling the window that was writhing too, like the house and the street and the sky where the clouds were exploding outward, impossibly fast. Not only couldn’t Susan hear Eve’s song, she could hear nothing at all except an enormous stealthy shifting.

She shook her head, wrenched herself away, and ran back toward the school. Now she knew Eve was still in the flat, and she was sure that Eve went to no school. She didn’t want to think why.

The bell was ringing for the end of playtime. They all groaned when Mrs. Fisher told them to write what they’d done in the holidays. Estelle had had her first period, and Monica was wearing a bra, but Susan didn’t think they would be writing about those events any more than she was able to mention Eve, or how Mummy was someone she hardly knew all the time now, or how last night, as she’d lain trying not to think, she’d felt as if Mummy had gone away and left her alone with Eve. She wrote a page and a half about how much she’d enjoyed Christmas in London, mile after mile of Christmas, and almost felt as if Eve hadn’t happened after all.

She gobbled lunch in the dining hall, fish fingers and chips of all consistencies, followed by something buried under wobbly custard. She was standing up when Zoe caught her. “Chloe and me and Estelle are going to play table tennis. Come on or there won’t be any tables.”

“Can’t, I’m busy.”

“Aw, go on or we won’t have a proper game. You’re the only one who plays as good as us.” When Susan pushed by, Zoe poked a finger up at her. “Don’t you ever ask us for anything, girl.”

Susan darted through the gates. Boys tried to grab her through the railings as she ran toward Bayswater Road.

She’d forgotten it was early closing day. The post office was closing in ten minutes. At least there wasn’t a queue at the phone booths. Directories were spitted spine up near the booths, and she turned up the directory for “T,” flicked the pages so fast that they almost tore. “Trading,” “Travel,” “Truncheon,” but there was no listing for a truant officer.

She ran to the counter, to a window beyond which a small man with glossy hair and hair cream on his ears was counting stamps. “No change for the phone,” he grumbled without looking up.

“I’ve got change,” Susan said indignantly. “I can’t find the number for the truant officer.”

He frowned at her. “If you were at school you wouldn’t need him, would you? Look under ‘Education.’ And be quick,” he shouted after her.

Education referred her to yet another directory. She found the number as a woman with a bandaged leg limped out from behind the counter and stood with her hand on the bolt of the door. She was clearly expecting Susan to leave, but Susan ran into the nearest booth with her fistful of change and dialed before anyone could stop her. “Education Offices,” a brisk voice said.

Susan shoved in a coin. “Please may I speak to the truant officer?”

“They’re probably at lunch. Hold on.” There was total silence for so long that Susan started repeating, “Hello?” In the glass over the notice above the phone about emergency calls, she could see the woman with the bandaged leg glaring at her. She mouthed into the phone in the hope that would keep the woman away. When a voice said “Truancy” she jumped and almost couldn’t turn her mouthing into speech.

“There’s a girl who never goes to school. Her mother thinks she does.” Susan hardly knew whose she meant, hers or Eve’s. “She’ll have to be sent away, won’t she? She’ll have to go to a school where she can’t get away.”

“That sounds a bit drastic.” The light voice, which might have been a man’s or a woman’s, seemed amused. “How old are you, may we ask?”

“Fourteen.” Susan had anticipated some such question. “My mum, my mumther told me to call you,” she said, squirming at not having been able to say mother, as a girl of fourteen surely would. “She can’t get out of the house.”

The voice sighed. “Well, I suppose we must set the machinery in motion. Just a moment.” It went away for considerably longer than that, until Susan felt as if the coins were melting in her fist. “Will you give me your name first and then your mother’s, and your address.”

Susan almost dropped the sweaty coins. She hadn’t expected that question, she could think of nothing but the truth. She stuffed the coins into her pocket to keep them safe, and gasped, for that had told her what to say. “My money’s running out,” she gabbled. “I’ll tell you the girl’s name first. It’s Eve.”

The voice sounded weary. “Eve what?”

Susan didn’t know. “Eve Verney, I think,” she said, and gave the address.

“All right, I have that. Now your name and address and your mother’s.”

“We live at the same address,” Susan said, not caring how stupid she sounded so long as it wasted time. She couldn’t have sounded stupid enough, for the voice said, “The same address as the one you’ve just given me, you mean?”

“No, as each other.” She was sounding too stupid now, the truant officer might think she was playing a joke and not bother to do anything about Eve, but she couldn’t give their real names and address in case the truant officer got in touch with Mummy before calling round to check on Eve. She stared at the glass where the bandaged woman was limping purposefully forward, she tried to think of something reasonable to say to waste time. She said, “We live across the road,” and then, as if in answer to a prayer she hadn’t been able to put into words, the pips began. “That’s all my money,” she said and dropped the receiver into its cradle, “I’m going now,” she said cheekily to the limping woman and ran back to school. She slipped unnoticed into the schoolyard, and felt as if she were flying. She’d got the better of Eve.