The Disappeared (21 page)

Someone else was running behind him. Above him the towers stood like two giants who had fought each other to a standstill. There was a buzzing in his ears and his heart was pounding. At the corner of Duke Street, where Italianate villas lined the pavement, he caught sight of her in the distance, fleeing with panic-stricken steps, clutching books beneath one arm, her blond hair streaming behind her and glowing in the light of a street-lamp. How frail and mouse-like she looked, and how fierce the breathing that was approaching from behind.

He turned quickly, his hand raised to avoid the blow. But the man ran past him muttering, his mop of black hair flopping around his swivelling eye. Perhaps he had not noticed Stephen. Perhaps he was too intent on his prey.

Sharon reached the corner that led to the canal. Stephen knew of an alley that joined the towpath where she was bound to pass. It was fully night when he reached the place, and the orange glow of the city on the horizon was the only light in the sky. The back gardens of Victorian houses were fenced off to one side, the weed-choked canal lying black and slimy on the other. There was no sign of Sharon. A chill north wind cut through his cotton jacket. In the gloom he made out the form of a man, walking carefully towards him as though afraid of stumbling into the water. Stephen was between the man and Sharon, defined at last in the role of her protector. He blocked the towpath and stood his ground.

They faced each other in silence. In the gloom the cast of the man's dud eye was no longer visible, and the sharp features above the leather gear gave him the appearance of a gangster, who had tracked his victim to the place of revenge. Stephen was not a coward, but he had made a policy of avoiding physical encounters, arguing to himself that people with brains have a duty to protect them from people without them. All the troubles of the world stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room: so Pascal had written, and Stephen agreed with him. But the thought of Sharon banished the impulse to escape. This man was a special case. This man had appeared in Stephen's life as a mortal enemy, already marked out for death. It was only when Stephen had lashed out with a blow to the face that he saw that the man had a knife.

It was the left eye that swivelled, and Stephen dived to the right of it, hoping to become invisible. The blade swooped through the air above him and dug into the wooden fence where he crouched. Now the man had turned and was looking back at Stephen along the towpath. He had pulled the knife from the wood and was pointing it at Stephen's stomach.

‘You stupid fucker!'

The man stepped forward, withdrew his right arm ready to lunge, and gave a cruel smile. At that moment a scream sounded behind him and he turned. Stephen kicked out at the hand that held the knife and sent it spinning onto the towpath.

‘The fucking bitch!'

The knife had fallen to the man's left, and he was fumbling on the ground with his hand in search of it. Stephen seized it, and cast it out into the canal. Again they were facing each other, and in the distance someone was running. The man lunged at Stephen, who felt tired now as though all his limbs had doubled in weight. He moved as in a dream, with reluctant legs. The man came forward to administer a kick, overshot and stumbled against the fence. The situation struck Stephen as entirely theatrical. He almost laughed at the absurdity of it. If he were to kill this man, it would need better planning. And clearly the man thought the same. He was breathing heavily and supporting himself with one hand on the fence. They stood facing each other in postures of total fatigue.

‘OK,' Stephen said. ‘Enough of this.'

‘Stay out of this, you fucker. I've got plans for that bitch.'

‘Well, as it happens, so have I.'

Stephen walked with heavy legs along the towpath. The man stared after him, not shifting from his station against the fence, his chest heaving within the leather jacket like a bellows. Stephen knew that he had not scored a victory, and that the man really did have plans for Sharon. The important thing was to find her and to get her to speak. Then, but only then, could he take revenge.

He found her wandering by the steps that led to the school road. She walked past him in silence. Her face, caught by the street-lamp on the bridge, was pale and drawn, and although she glanced in his direction as she passed there was no light of recognition in her eyes.

‘Sharon!'

She stopped and stared fixedly in front of her. He walked quietly towards her and took her free arm. She went suddenly limp and leaned against him.

‘I wanted him to kill me,' she said at last. ‘But not you, sir.'

‘If we handle this right, Sharon, he won't kill either of us, and he'll spend a long time in gaol.'

She was crying now, sobs that welled up from the depths of her suffering, and which shook her whole frame as he held her.

‘You dunna know them, sir.'

‘Let's go, Sharon. We're not safe here.'

‘We're no safe anywhere.'

‘That's what we're going to change, Sharon.'

He led her up the steps on to the road. They walked towards the school. Her trembling form beside him filled him with pity and desire. His whole being was given to her now, and what the world said or did had only the faintest voice in his plans. He called for a taxi on his mobile phone, and asked to be picked up outside the school. As they waited by the gates her tormentor appeared, and stood watching from a distance as they climbed into the car.

‘I'm taking you home,' he said, turning to her.

‘Where you are, sir?'

‘Where we both are.'

She gripped his hand silently, while Stephen mentally composed his letter of resignation to the Headmistress of St Catherine's Academy, deciding to place it in her hand next day. A wave of indescribable happiness washed over him. Quite suddenly it was all resolved; he would start life again, far from this place, with Sharon beside him, studying to be the brilliant figure – a professor of literature perhaps – which he knew she must become one day. Together they would wash out the stain of her abuse, bring peace to her soul and justice to her tormentors. And the world would accept them in the end, knowing that he had acted rightly and that there was no alternative to doing what he now must do.

But what exactly must he do? Nothing hasty, nothing that would ruin what he longed for with all his heart. Back in the flat, he looked at her where she sat across from him in the moquette armchair, her hands trembling around a cup of sugary tea, and saw that he should not touch her – not now, not yet. He must win her confidence: not confidence in him, but confidence in herself, in her life, in the hopes that had been so brutally torn from her and trampled upon.

How scruffy and beaten down she appeared, but how lovely too. He told her about her adoptive mother, who had begged him to find another place for her. He indicated, as delicately as he could, that he understood the situation with Bogdan Krupnik. He outlined a plan for her security, and she sat through all of it, trembling and silent until the conclusion, which he announced bashfully, getting up and pretending to look for food in the kitchen. For the time being, he said, and until matters were settled and her safety secure, Sharon was to stay where she was, in the place that she called home. He turned round to find her standing in the doorway, whispering ‘thank you', and then reaching out to touch his lips with the fingers of one hand.

‘Yes,' he continued with a tremor, ‘we can make up a bed for you here on the couch, and I will let your mum know what is happening. Of course you'll need some things and I suppose I must go over to the Angel now to pick them up.'

‘No!' she cried. ‘Not there!'

He looked at her pityingly.

‘But you'll need things for the night, clothes for the morning, your school work…'

‘I'm OK like this.'

Eventually it was agreed that they would go out in search of the things she needed. He left a message on Mrs Williams's phone, saying that he had found Sharon, was looking after her and would let Mrs Williams know when the girl had been re-housed. They took a taxi to the 24-hour Tesco in the city and returned after two hours with pyjamas, a new shirt, tights and underwear, toiletries and a satchel for her schoolwork. He was embarrassed in the shop at first, since he was clearly neither her brother nor her father nor a friend. He didn't even have the standing that Humbert Humbert acquired towards Lolita.

But she was so happy in his company, so crazily involved in the abnormal project of being normal, so full of wonder that the respect she coveted was after all available for purchase and that the man beside her was ready with the cash, that he began to respond to her hilarity. It was only in the taxi back that their mood became more sombre. For she was trembling again, leaning against him, whispering that she ought not to be with him, that they would be discovered, and that both of them might soon be dead.

Getting her through the door of the flat was difficult. She would swing back and try to duck past him onto the stairwell. Eventually she allowed herself to be led to the armchair, and sat quietly as he began to prepare a supper of sausages and peas. Then she got up and came across to watch him. She was like a dog, following every one of his movements, but saying nothing. He offered her a glass of white wine. She drank it with gulps and grimaces, and then looked at him for a long while from blue-grey astonished eyes.

That night Stephen lay sleepless. Occasionally he heard her turning on the couch next door, and once she cried out as though from a nightmare. In the early hours the door of his bedroom opened, and she stood on the threshold watching him. When he rolled over to face her she fled, closing the door. He got up later to find her already dressed, sitting at the living room table reading
The Magic Mountain
. She listened attentively while he explained the book's significance and the significance of Thomas Mann in the literature of Europe.

‘Yes, sir,' she said quietly. ‘But Europe was a place then. There's no places now.'

Getting her to classes was also difficult. To arrive together was out of the question. But she would not go alone. Eventually he ordered a taxi, and put her out of it a hundred yards from the school. The process of soothing and protecting her was demanding and also beautiful. She watched wide-eyed as he made his preparations, submitted to his decisions with gentle reluctance, and then smiled awkwardly when things seemed right. He had two keys to the flat, and he entrusted one of them to Sharon, causing a gasp of protest.

‘What if I lose it, sir?' she cried. ‘What if they get it from me?'

‘But what if you need to get in and I am not there?'

‘Always be there, sir. Please.'

Eventually she accepted the key, dropping it into the bottom of her satchel as she left the taxi.

All day Stephen was in a state of euphoria, and his class on
The Great Gatsby
was a special event, involving a heartfelt analysis of the novel's central character. Stephen portrayed Jay Gatsby as an outsider whose soul only visits the bright parties on Long Island as a spectator, while belonging in the Valley of Ashes, where contrition and penitence are the rule. Stephen himself was Gatsby, concealing what others would condemn as a crime for the sake of a pure and innocent love. His eloquence grew as he watched her from the corner of his eye. She was covering her pages with notes and looking up from time to time, entirely absorbed by what she heard, rescued, for these moments, from the remembered torment of her life.

Soon her rescue would be complete, and he planned it with wild and chaotic scenarios. They would flee together to London. He would borrow money, start again as a writer, support her through her studies; he would watch her as she grew up and vanquished her timidity, confronted her past and her trauma, surrendered to the truth, to the hope that he was offering, and to their life together. Then they would take revenge.

So absorbed was Stephen in those thoughts that he did not get round to writing his letter of resignation. It was a busy day at school in any case, with more trouble from the imams, who were now demanding the dismissal of Mrs Gawthrop, and threatening a mass withdrawal of Muslim pupils if their demands were not met. It was known that Stephen got on well with the Iraqi boys and often discussed the Koran with them, so that the Headmistress asked him to take a special class for the juniors, with the intention of expressing, illustrating and amplifying the official policy of respect towards Islam. And his euphoria grew, as he contrasted the message of the Prophet with the behaviour of those who purported to follow him. Sharon's revenge, when it came, would be entirely personal, and he would show the imagined spectators that the man whom he punished was not only a criminal but also a traitor to his faith.

They left school separately, and by the same arrangement by which they had come. It was too late to make an appointment with Iona Ferguson, so he was obliged to postpone the question of Sharon's lodging. He visited the nearby supermarket, returning to make a meal of salmon and rice. She was curious as to his habits, asking whether he always had such delicious things for tea, and whether he drank wine every day. She anticipated his replies, excitedly describing Stephen's life as she had imagined it, and all the little places where she would be of use to him if he allowed. She especially wanted to write down his classes, and perhaps make a proper book of them.

They sat quietly after supper, he at his desk, she at the table. And later, when she emerged from the bathroom in pyjamas and settled beneath the blankets on the couch, he went across to kiss her on the brow. She moved her face as he did so, and their lips met. Only with the greatest effort did he draw away.

So it was for a week. Each day he set out to write his letter of resignation, but each day something arose to prevent it. Each morning he made the decision to ring Iona Ferguson and each afternoon he revoked it. And each evening he cooked for her and read to her, trying to turn the conversation in the direction he sought. If she would go with him to the police, make the kind of statement that a prosecutor would need from her, and allow him to say what he knew, then everything would be above board and his happiness would be perfect. But each time he approached the topic she veered away in panic. After a while he valued the peace between them so much that he refrained from questioning her. And then the Easter vacation came, and it began to seem as though everything in his life apart from Sharon was unreal. All was beginning to fall away, leaving the two of them as though caught in a spotlight on a wholly darkened stage.