Silent Children (23 page)

Whatever his father was here for, Ian suspected he was out of luck—was pretty certain, though annoyingly not quite, that he hoped it. He grinned to himself as he shut the door behind him, and didn't bother to lose the grin as he reached the gate. "What's funny?" Charlotte demanded as if it might be her.

"Lots of stuff."

"Didn't think you'd got much to laugh at."

"You don't know dick about me."

She glanced at the house as though she might raise a complaint about his language, then she took hold of his hand. The unexpected gesture seemed so trusting he felt bound to respond. Keeping hold of her small plump sticky hand however much it squirmed became rather a task, but he felt more like the person Jack had shown him he could be. At least he didn't need to talk as she tugged him in the direction of the recreation ground, and he was trying to remember all his ideas for the story so as to write them down later when two women with small dogs panting in their arms turned to observe him across the road. He saw them recognise him and begin to murmur about him above the yapping of the flat-faced dogs. "What do you want to do in the park?" he said so loudly the dogs snarled at him.

"We can play if you aren't rough."

"You can choose."

By the look of the women, that sounded sinister. Maybe that was how people who wrote his kind of story ought to sound. The yapping followed him, and he grinned at the notion that the women were making the noise like a pair of Pekingese werewolves. He would have to remember to carry a notebook so that his ideas didn't escape.

There wasn't much to the park. Some girls were dangling their feet in the river that he would have called a stream, and some boys were playing football using their wadded shirts for goalposts. Down in Willesden, beneath a sky that was nothing but blue, the bells of at least two churches were toppling over one another. Ian had more than finished noticing all this when Charlotte touched his arm and immediately flinched away from him. "What's up with you?" he said, amused so far.

"You're it."

That was how he began to feel, especially once he tired of letting her dodge him when he could have caught her every time. No sooner had he made to tag her than she released a squeal that carried across the park to the women who had let their Pekingese loose on the grass. Had they followed him to keep an eye on him? He hoped they noted that Charlotte also squealed whenever he dodged her, though before he'd had much of a chance she slumped into a sulk. "Not fair. You've got longer legs."

"Can't do much about that unless I chop them off."

The dogs yapped and the women stared as if they'd heard the worst of his suggestion. "Let's sit now," Charlotte pleaded.

"Thought I had to take you for a walk."

"We've had one," she said, then grew a scowl so fierce it pulled her whole face out of shape. "What do you mean had? Who said I need one?"

"It wouldn't have been my mother, would it? She's got no reason to care about you."

He hadn't meant that as an insult, but Charlotte looked vengeful. "Do you know why Roger wanted us to go out really?" she said.

"Looks like you're going to tell."

"You can't stop me. He's talking to your mummy and the horror man about you."

"Dream about it when you dream about my house."

"He is. I heard him say to mummy he was going to."

"Then he's had a big surprise."

Her smugness wobbled. "What kind of surprise?"

The dogs yapped at her shrillness, and Ian said "Let's go. I've had the park."

Charlotte plumped her bottom on the grass at once. "Not going, not till you say what's happening to Roger."

"Then you won't know till you get back to my house," Ian said, pacing away from her. "He said we had to be an hour."

He'd retreated perhaps a hundred yards before she jumped up and bolted after him, crying "I'll come. Tell me. You have to."

Ian said nothing until she was alongside, running intermittently to keep up with him. "What do you think's happening at my house right now?"

"Nothing. You're making it up like the horror man does."

"Keep telling yourself that till we get back, or maybe you want to go on your own and see."

"You said you'd tell," Charlotte wailed, dragging at his arm.

He hadn't, but he was bored with the game. "Do you know where Jack is?"

"Yes." More shrilly: "No." More desperately: "Where?"

"I don't know either. Gone."

She hung onto his arm while smugness settled on her face again. "Good," she said.

"Who says?"

"Roger and my mummy, and I'll bet yours does too. Did she tell him to go away? Roger and my mummy say he's a bad influence."

"Yeah, like they'd know."

"See, he even made you talk like him. My mummy says he's as bad as the man who put the little girl under the floor."

"That's what she says when she never met him, right? More of her crap." Nevertheless Ian was experiencing more than anger—something akin to a secret delight waiting to be discovered. "What's she think they've got in common, Jack and old Hector?"

"She says the horror man's as bad if not worse because he's"—Charlotte screwed up her face until she managed to produce the phrase—"exploiting the situation."

"Gee, I thought he just wanted to write a book because that's his job."

"He must be as nasty as his books, my mummy says, and that would be the nastiest."

Anger and imminent delight weren't just mixed up in Ian's mind; they seemed to be pressing it smaller, more intense. "It's a good job he isn't here or you'd be scared I'd do stuff you think he'd make me do."

"What?"

"You tell me."

They were at the pinned-back gates onto the North Circular Road. An open lorry piled with bundles of rubbish roared by, trailing scraps of litter and fumes that made Charlotte cough rather than answer. The women with the dogs were watching him across the park. Maybe deep down Charlotte felt like they did about him, and now he saw that the back of her dress was damp where she'd sat on the grass. The stain looked as though it was betraying a fear of him she was doing her best not to acknowledge. "Come on then," he said.

"Where?"

"Wait and see," Ian told her, and immediately knew. Before the plan left no room for any other notions in his mind, he tried to retrieve the ideas he'd neglected to write down. All that was left was the image of Carla under the floor, unable to cry out or move. If his father hadn't burdened him with Charlotte he might have been writing the story at that very moment: he would have been able to hold onto it except for her. The idea seemed to feed his delight that was growing darkly brighter for being hidden. He took Charlotte's hand, which he was pleased to find didn't resist his grasp, and led her out of the park. "We've plenty of time before they start wanting you back," he said.

At least Roger had the grace to look uncomfortable, Leslie saw. He must be assuming or at any rate suspecting that he'd been supplanted by Jack. She wasn't going to be the first to speak. She rubbed the last pane so hard her fingertips tingled and her forearm throbbed, then she turned to leave the dining room. He stepped out of the doorway at once, not just to ensure that she needn't come too close to him but to pick up her bucket. "Where to?" he said.

His broad square face was almost neutral. Less than an inch of the right side of his mouth was hinting at a grin, perhaps a wry acknowledgement of his never having helped like this while they'd been married. "Kitchen, thank you," she told him and strode down the hall, refusing to let the sound of his footsteps behind her waken any memories of him or Jack. She faced the window and drowned his reflection in white froth, then rubbed the glass clean as if that might erase his image. When it only grew clearer she stooped to move the bucket. "Sorry," he said.

"For what?"

"I should have put the paper under."

Perhaps he hadn't brought the
Advertiser
through because he resented carrying its picture of Jack. "It doesn't matter," Leslie said. The wet ring would fade into the concrete, she thought, because she'd yet to have the floor tiled. She had been leaving it bare as a reminder of what the floor had concealed, but how did that help anyone? Sometimes you had to stop remembering so as to get on with your life. She straightened up, feeling as though she'd dropped a burden she hadn't realised she was bearing, and Roger said "Anything else I can do for you?"

She'd delayed talking long enough. She draped the leather over the side of the bucket and sat at the end of a kitchen bench, and indicated that he should sit at the far end of its twin. "We've got rid of the children, so what's it about, Roger?"

He interlocked his fingers and rested his chin between two of them, propping it with his elbows on the table to render his gaze even steadier. "I should think you'd know."

"Let's see if I do."

"It's not like you to be defensive."

"It still isn't, believe me, so don't you be. What's the problem?"

"What else do you think it could be except Ian?"

"Maybe I don't automatically think of him as a problem."

"Maybe you should a bit more than you do, and then he mightn't be in the situation he's in now."

"Playing the big brother, you mean. Trying to come up with ways to keep her quiet, I shouldn't wonder."

"I'd say having to look after someone younger ought to do him good, especially when she cares as much about him as Charlotte does. But no, that wasn't what I meant and you know it. I meant being chucked out of school."

"Why do I get the feeling I'm expected to take all the blame?"

"You aren't, not all of it. I think it's at least as much—"

"Yours for making him feel less wanted than the family you shacked up with?"

"I've done my best to see he doesn't feel that way. I suppose you could have too."

"Believe it or not, I tried to help him understand what you did. For his sake, not yours."

"Thanks. Sorry if I'm not allowed to say that. I won't deny I must be responsible to some extent, but as well as us—"

"There's the Duke boy."

"Hang on, Les. That's going too far, blaming the victim."

"One of the victims. I'm saying this to you, I wouldn't say it to Ian however true I think it is, but don't you think he must have felt like one when something he'd taken care with and was proud of was destroyed before anybody he wanted to read it could read it?"

"I wonder if you're including me in that privileged group."

"I'm not including you or leaving you out. That would have been up to Ian, and I should imagine he'd have liked you to read it if you weren't put off by the idea behind it."

"That's quite a big if by the sound of what you said the story was about, but I don't take that to be the point. Whatever Ian may have written isn't worth a boy's sight."

"I told you on the phone the Duke boy hasn't lost his. We've been through all this, and I can't see why you've come here if you're just going to repeat—"

"There's more that needs saying. No piece of writing, and you can include all your music in that, is worth having if it harms even one person, and that needn't mean physically, it could be psychologically."

"That's an argument I don't think we have to get into. Ian didn't want anyone to be upset. It's not as if he set out to show the Duke boy what he'd written."

"Maybe not, but he'd been encouraged not to care."

At that moment the Tchaikovsky quartet in the front room ended with a flourish, and there was silence except for a whisper like the faintest breath from close to the kitchen floor. Leslie glanced down to identify the source of the noise—bubbles on the surface of the liquid in the bucket giving up their air one by one—and then she met Roger's eyes as if she hadn't looked away. "Who are you accusing?"

"Don't tell me you're going to defend him as well, your friend who seems to have made himself scarce. Did he see me coming?"

"What difference do you think that should have made to him?"

"Doesn't anything? Not even the effect he might have had on Ian?"

"You'd have to ask him that."

"You don't know him so well, then."

"About as well as I found out I knew you."

"Not as well as you'd like."

Roger had to hesitate before he said that, and Leslie almost laughed, though it wouldn't have involved much humour. "Maybe I should have learned by now. One mistake ought to have been enough."

"That's a bit harsh, would you say? You don't think everything we had was a mistake. You aren't suggesting Ian was any kind of one."

"No, not Ian."

"And if we made any mistakes with him we want to be careful not to make any more, don't we?"

"I'd reached that conclusion all by myself."

"Well, good. I just wanted to be sure. You won't hold it against me that I care as much about our son as you do, will you?" When Leslie shook her head and closed her eyes until she'd done so, Roger said "So is Mr. Lamb likely to put in an appearance before the children do?"

"What if he should?"

"You said before I ought to have a word with him."

"You and your tricks, Roger. You could give him lessons on how to play with words. No, he won't be here before the children are, so you've sent them out for nothing."

"I'd hardly call encouraging their relationship nothing, would you?" To break her silence he said "When are you expecting Mr. Lamb?"

"I'm not."

"Look, I'm not going to touch him. I hope at least you know I'm not that sort, so there's no need for you to protect him."

"I don't care what you do, or him either, but if you ever talk to him again it won't be here."

"What's wrong with here?"

"Nothing at all. It's my home and Ian's and nobody else's."

"You mean your Mr. Lamb—"

"Isn't mine and doesn't live here any more."

"I follow." Deciding that it was inadvisable to look sympathetic, Roger restrained himself to pointing all his interwoven fingers at her. "Do you mind if I ask where he's gone?"

"It doesn't matter if I mind, because I've no idea."

"Well, that's—" Whatever Roger might have said was overtaken by a thought. "Presumably Ian hasn't either."