Influence (11 page)

‘Thank you Miss
Abrahams, you may keep me updated with his progress, if you please,’ Miss
Abrahams nodded and gave Lizzie, what was surely meant to be, a reassuring smile
as she left, but there was far more concern than Lizzie would have hoped for in
that gesture.

‘Now where were we?’
Pallister composed his thoughts as the door closed over. ‘Ah yes, so you see
Elizabeth your behaviour, not just today but throughout your time with us here
at Queen’s has done nothing but vindicate my initial reservations about your
inclusion here. Everything about you screams defiance.’

‘Sir, I really think
you’re being-’

‘Being what
Elizabeth?’ Pallister cut in. ‘Unfair? Inaccurate? Just look at you,’ Pallister
was now on his feet, his hand extended toward the still seated Lizzie, moving
it up and down like some scanning device. ‘You flaunt our rules at every given
opportunity, look at what you’re wearing for God’s sake; it is a slap in the
face of this institution.’ Lizzie looked down, not quite remembering what she
had put on that morning. The uniform was there, but black and red striped
stockings and baseball shoes somewhat offset the regimented look. However she
suspected it was her t-shirt to which he was mostly referring. Lizzie had to
begrudgingly admit it had been a slightly misjudged choice on a day where she
would bring so much attention on herself. The garment in question was a white
shirt with the band “Dinosaur Jr” emblazoned at the top above a black and white
picture of a young girl smoking, it had belonged to Janice but since been
appropriated.

‘It’s just a t-shirt
Mr Pallister. It’s not intended to offend.’

‘And yet it does. And
yet you do. Whilst such petulant infractions do not concern me unduly
Elizabeth, today your actions in assembly cannot, and will not, be swept so
accommodatingly under the rug. Your so called friend Victor, has he not seen
enough violence to fill two lifetimes? And there you are, just when you should
be helping him through his hour of need, launching a cowardly attack in full
view of him and the rest of the school. Have you no respect?

‘Respect?’ Lizzie
spat, she got to her feet. ‘What you saw while you were busy enjoying the sound
of your own voice was half a story Mr Pallister.’

‘SIT… Down
Elizabeth,’ Pallister was about to lose it himself. ‘I will not be spoken to in
such a manner.’ Lizzie sat, red faced, fists clenched. She wanted so badly to
storm out, but she knew she was going to have to take this, that running off
would do nothing to help her here. ‘So, Elizabeth, we have established my
dislike for you and your distain and disrespect for me, and by association, this
school. Fortunately for both of us, that is something we can remedy. You may
have been wondering what it was I was writing when you came into my office
Elizabeth? Allow me to explain. Although it may only be somewhat of an empty
gesture given your stay with us here is about to come to a natural end once your
exams are complete, it gives me great pleasure in presenting you with this.’
Pallister pushed an official looking form at Lizzie. ‘You may enter school
grounds to sit whatever exams you have remaining, or, by prior appointment, to
meet with faculty members if there are extenuating circumstances, but for all
other intents and purposes Elizabeth Dean you are hereby expelled from Queen’s
Grove House. Effective immediately.’

‘Morning
Lizzie, you’re up early. And gees you look like crap, no offence,’ said Janice
handing her a mug of strong looking tea. Lizzie had barely slept. She had turned
the conversation with Pallister over and over in her mind, fantasising about
what she should have said at various parts but hadn’t. A pertinent point here
and a go fuck yourself there would certainly have failed to change the course
of events but it would have left Lizzie, at least, with some sense of
satisfaction. In the early hours of the morning she had slipped in and out of
dream torturing herself with replay after replay often bringing herself to
tears of rage. She must have dropped off somewhere around four she guessed, but
had woken again at the back of six from some nightmare she couldn’t recall.

‘Thanks
Janice; love you too, said Lizzie slumping into a chair at the small kitchen
table. ‘It’s just exams and stuff I guess, I’ll get an early night tonight to
make up for it.’ The dilemma for Lizzie was whether or not to tell Janice about
what had happened. Part of her was embarrassed to tell her aunt that she had
been expelled, like it was some shameful crime, while another part was
desperate to tell her, give her version of events and have someone vindicate
her actions. Most of her though just didn’t want to talk about it at all.

‘Are you in
today? Need a lift?’    

‘Yeah, I am
in today, but not first period,’ Lizzie said lowering her head onto her arm
stretched out on the table in front of her. ‘And they’ve dropped the parent
escort thing, we can head in ourselves from now on,’ she lied. Janice had
started back at work, but only sporadically, determined to be there for Lizzie
where and when she was needed. But she couldn’t now, in good conscience, keep
her from getting back to work, especially since Lizzie knew fine well she would
be missing it like hell.

‘You sure?
I thought the school would have been in touch?’

‘There was
an assembly yesterday to tell everyone.’
The best lies carry an element of
truth,
she thought. She looked up at her aunt from her make-shift pillow.
‘I have a letter somewhere to give you; bottom of my bag most likely. But
listen I really appreciate everything over the past few weeks, you’ve been…
Well you’ve been like mum. Thanks Janice.’ Lizzie’s throat locked up with
sentiment.

‘Hey, my
pleasure hon, really.’ Janice, recognising her fragile state, stroked her
bird’s nest hair and quickly changed the subject. I guess it’s back to work for
me then.’

‘You make
it sound like a chore; you’re fooling no-one Janice.’ Lizzie shot her a wink
over her cup of tea. Janice headed back upstairs leaving Lizzie to figure out
what she was going to do today. She couldn’t really stay in the house as Janice
had a habit of coming home at random times if she decided to work from home.
Since Lizzie didn’t want to lie to her any more than she absolutely had to she
would have to make herself scarce.

She would
head into Oxford, she decided. Take her books with her and get some work done.
Of course Janice would be heading in too and so Lizzie would have to take a
later train, maybe even two trains after the one Janice was aiming to take just
in case, by some dose of bad luck, Janice missed hers and discovered Lizzie on
the platform. After the last few weeks Lizzie had been having it wouldn’t
surprise her.   

Lizzie
arrived at the train station and instantly pulled up the hood of her jacket.
She rarely wore a jacket but it was cold and damp and at least the hood gave
her some cover. She scanned across the chaotic line of people searching out the
possibility of a seriously late Janice but found no trace of her. The train
arrived pleasantly on time and was it was equally pleasant to find it
congestion free. This was the benefit of travelling out-with peak times of
course. The train Lizzie caught was the long route train, although it only took
an extra ten minutes more than the direct line and had the added advantage of
not always having a conductor on board. Lizzie had benefitted from a few free
journeys by taking the slow train. The general rule was that if nobody had
checked your ticket by the time the train called at Tackley, you were home and
dry, and few quid better off.

The warm
carriage and the repeat pattern of the train’s noise had Lizzie looking out of
the window at some blurry middle distance as her eyes and mind relaxed. She
folded her arms over her chest and tried, and failed, to resist sleep.

She woke
with a start, unsure of just how long she had been out, and fearful she had
missed her stop, before remembering Oxford was the end of the line and they
were still moving. She stretched and moved her cold hands to her face in an
attempt to free herself from her drowsy state. The half-filled carriage was
made up of people sitting on their own, reading books or with heads lolled
listening to headphones. Lizzie clocked a ticket inspector making his way into
her carriage, his eyes fixed on his machine slung round his neck. She decided
to increase her chance of a free ride by getting up and moving to the next
carriage and taking a seat at the farthest end.

Lizzie
emerged from the station into a grey but relatively dry late morning. She drew
her headphones from her bag and clicked on her CD player sliding it into her
jacket pocket. She made her way across the road at the bottom of the station’s
steps, drawing her jacket close to her. She was glad she decided to wear it,
today was colder than it had been for a while. She had forgotten exactly what
CD had been in her machine but was happy to recall, as the first song started,
that it was a mix Mags had put together for her. A selection of bands she
thought Lizzie would like and may not have heard of. She was right on both counts
and as the band L7 buzz-sawed through their song “Pretend we’re dead” she
reminded herself to take the time soon to explore each band in the mix more
thoroughly.

Lizzie
walked slowly, watching people pass with preoccupation, wrapped up in their concerns
and errands. She made her way into the city centre where the pedestrianised
system forced a sense of reduced urgency. Lizzie considered going to a coffee
shop rather than her bench, given how cold it was, but decided against it, if
she was going to get some study done she wanted to be somewhere familiar. She
did stop at a café, but only long enough to spend the money she saved from her
free train journey on a sandwich and a large tea. The normally busy central
areas were far quieter today than her previous visit, the temperature and that
time of day between rush hour and lunch conspiring to make a busy city seem
less so.

She found
Jesus College as markedly quieter as the rest of the City. One or two students
made their way from one place to another, but all in all she had the courtyard
and bench to herself. There were no students stretched out on the grass today,
just the occasional pigeon. She took her place on her bench and unpacked her
books and her sandwich. Lizzie’s next exam was maths, and such was her dislike
for the subject she had been putting off her preparations until as late as
possible, however that point had already come and gone. It was incredible, Lizzie
found, just what could become suddenly interesting when you had maths work to
do. TV shows, Janice’s gossip magazines or a slightly discoloured spot on a
blank wall would become mesmerising when the alternative was equations.
However, procrastination was no longer a luxury she could afford, urgency was
beginning to creep in and that itch of guilt was becoming difficult to ignore.
She washed down the sandwich with the tea, now at a temperature that wouldn’t
result in skin grafts, and separated her books only to find her productive
plans halted with the discovery of an interloper lurking in her bag.

Robe’s
journal stared up at her from the bench, she had forgotten completely she had
put it in her bag, in fact she couldn’t really recall putting it in there at
all, but then she was tired and it was as likely a place to have put it as
anywhere. Lizzie gathered her other books, placed them by one arm of the bench
creating a pillow from them. She swung her legs up and lay back, noting as she
did that she fit perfectly between the arm rests of the bench. She opened the
journal randomly somewhere in the middle and found both pages facing her full
of neat handwritten text. Each line was filled, without a single space to mark
the start or end of any particular word or sentence. She flicked back a few
pages and then forward to find that this form of writing covered six pages in
total. She returned to the start of the text to see if she could decipher it.
She could make out the first five words or so. She read:
Tuesday school was
a bore
; before getting lost. She flicked on to the pages she had read at
Vic’s house in what appeared to be some foreign language. She tried to dissect
the sections of automatic writing but she couldn’t put enough of Robe’s words
together to make anything seem coherent. All of it was such a muddle, despite
the tidy penmanship, and she had no idea what the reason for it could be,
perhaps just Robe exercising his mind. There were scratchings of pictures that
were also hard to make out and some technical looking diagrams on one page but
again she had no idea what they were of. She turned back to the pages she had
started with, the text with no spaces, and tried to get a little further. Her
eyes kept unfocussing though and middle distance was calling again. She should
sit up and concentrate harder, she thought, she should but this was a
comfortable spot. She laid the journal on her chest, to give her eyes a rest;
just for a minute. Maybe just another minute.

She stood there in that
cave, the boys flanking her. Robe with his pungent but strangely comforting
aroma and Vic waving a flaming torch around the place.

‘Have you
lost something?’ asked Lizzie becoming irritated by the blazing flame swinging
in front of her eyes.

‘The way
out of course,’ said Vic whipping the flame to and fro.

‘But it’s
your cave,’ Lizzie reminded him. ‘The cave in your story isn’t it?’

‘It’s
changed Liz, the exit should be here, but it’s shifted somehow,’ Lizzie looked
over at Robe who had left her side and was searching in the dark. The walls of
the cave seemed less than solid, they shimmered like velvet.

‘We should
stick together, if we get lost in here- Vic are you listening? Don’t wander off
you’ve got the only light.’ The torch swung past her face blinding her for a
moment. She looked again for Robe and couldn’t make him out against the dark.

‘I’m here
Liz.’ Came his voice close to her ear but he remained invisible against the
black. She felt his fingers lock around her own as he took her hand; something
ran down his fingers into hers, warm and tacky, and dripped loudly to the floor
of the cave. Vic had disappeared off down a passageway leaving her in total
darkness.

‘I’ve found
the way out,’ he called, ‘it’s been here all along.’

‘I can’t
see it. Robe, I can’t see you,’ his hand was gone leaving hers smeared with
blood she could not see.

‘Just reach
out. Trust me it’s there,’ came his voice, growing fainter. Lizzie’s heart beat
faster now.

The
darkness grew heavy and thick, it resisted her. She tentatively pushed out an
arm she couldn’t see through treacle air.

Slowly.

Her fingers
touched nothing.

‘A little
farther Liz,’ said Robe his voice louder now.

‘Just
another step,’ he said louder still.

‘THERE!’

Something
grabbed Lizzie’s arm and pulled her forward so violently she was launched off
her feet.

‘No,’ she
yelled, springing to a seated position. A figure stood over her, their hand
fleeing back from her arm.

‘God, I’m
sorry. I didn’t realise you were actually asleep,’ a petrified looking Void
stood hands up as if under arrest. Two larger looming shapes stood behind him
slowly coming into focus. She removed her headphones, the CD long since finished.

‘Hi, Fr… eh…
Void.’ She said straightening her glasses and suddenly recognising the two
impossibly tall boys standing behind him as the same two ghouls he had been
with when they had last met. ‘Do you make a habit of going around scaring the
shit out of people you barely know?’ she said with false anger.

‘Tell me’
he returned, ‘do you make a habit of sleeping on park benches like a flea
infested tramp?’ a smile escaped Lizzie.

‘Fair
enough,’ she said straightening herself out. She looked over Void’s shoulder at
his friends, sparking Void into introductions.

‘Sorry,
this is Dale and Todd, guys this is Lizzie,’ she looked over offering a small
wave. They returned an impressively synchronized nod, their faces were sullen
masks. The two boys, perhaps nineteen or twenty, reminded her a little of Vic
and Robe but a pantomime version of them. As tall as the Adam boys were they
were decidedly ordinary in stature next to these two. They both wore black
trench coats, and eye make up in the same hue, they looked like doormen from a
Satanic nightclub. The easiest way to tell them apart was the hair. Again both
black of course but one of them, Dale or Todd, wore his hair half way down his
back while the other, Dale or Todd, wore his short, shaved in at one side.