The Kind Folk (11 page)

He regrets the outburst at once. He could just have rung her doorbell. He's expecting the loiterers to jeer or otherwise comment, but they don't make a sound. He swings his legs off the bench and is about to make for the house when the curtain in the gable inches back. While he can't see the watcher, he waves as if he has, and the phone goes off in his other hand. Before the mobile can start singing about June he claps it to his ear. "I'm sorry, Mr Arnold," Eunice says almost too low to be heard.

"No need, Eunice. It's all right now." It has to be. "Shall I wait here for you?" Luke says.

"Please don't, Mr Arnold, no."

"Where would you like me to wait? Shall I come over to you?"

"Don't do that, please, no," Eunice mutters urgently, and the curtain edges towards the window frame. "I've said I'm sorry."

She sounds less so than previously. "What for?" Luke is determined to learn.

"I was wrong, Mr Arnold. That's all I can say."

"Wrong about what?"

"I'm afraid I mistook you for someone else."

"It's not the first time that's happened to me," Luke says several times louder than her murmur, "as you know."

"I do, Mr Arnold. I can only ask you to believe I'm sorry if I gave you too much hope."

"I don't know what you've given me yet. I'm not even sure what you're talking about."

"What I said to you this afternoon, I was mistaken. I must have had two other babies in mind."

"At the same hospital? That doesn't say much for the place."

"I think I was thinking of a different hospital."

"Then it doesn't say much for the system, does it?" When Eunice is silent except for an uneven breath Luke demands "So what were you thinking happened to me?"

"Someone must have put another baby's name on you at some stage, Mr Arnold, and yours on the other baby. It almost never happens, but it's been known."

"No." Luke is close to certain she's pretending to misunderstand. "I'm asking," he says, "what you thought when you first got in touch with me."

Eunice works on another breath before whispering "I had it in my head someone swapped you both, whoever the other one was."

"The Arnolds never would have. Whoever did couldn't have wanted me, then."

"Mr Arnold." Eunice sounds unsure, not only of his name. "I told you," she mutters, "it didn't happen."

"If you're saying you're mistaken, how can you know it didn't?"

Luke feels triumphant, though not pleasantly, and apprehensive too. He seems to have robbed Eunice of words, which suggests he has seen through her pretence. He stares at the window, but the sliver of darkness alongside the curtain is as uncommunicative as the phone. "Look, can't we talk face to face?" he says, lowering his voice. "Can't you let me in? I'm not alone down here."

The curtain gapes a few inches and subsides like a nervous blink, and Eunice whispers "I saw them."

The mass of cloud has begun to crumble, wads of it drifting apart to expose a moon that resembles the first line of a sketch on a blackboard. Eunice sounds worse than uneasy, and Luke presumes it's on his behalf. He turns to confront whatever he has to, but the play area is deserted, and so is the park all around him. "All right, they've gone," Luke says, "but just the same—"

"I still can."

She has more of a view of the park than he has. "Where?" he says low.

In a moment he glimpses activity, but it can't be what she means. A shape is just discernible among the leaves in the treetop nearest to her house. If it isn't a bird it's a squirrel, made to appear larger by the surrounding foliage, since the branch on which it's perched would be weighed down considerably more if the creature were that size. Luke is wasting time in trying to identify it when Eunice cries "Go away."

It's almost a scream, and it crosses the park even though the window is shut. Luke snatches the mobile away from his face and holds it not too close to his uninjured ear. "You haven't told me where they are," he persists. "What do you want me to do?"

"Go away."

This time it's a plea in little more than a whisper. Luke isn't sure whom she's addressing, and he has no chance to ask, because the mobile is instantly dead. He could phone her again, but he knows she won't answer, and he can't bring himself to go over to the house. He feels hollow with frustration and guilty for having troubled her so much. He thrusts the mobile into his pocket and is turning back to the path when he hears a sound behind him.

Something is running down a tree—down several. He can hear claws scrabbling at the bark. The trees are more than stout enough to hide the creatures, but he glimpses a hint of an outline on the tree trunk closest to Eunice's window. It must be a squirrel—it's racing down head first—though its tail is helping it appear to be as elongated as Luke is tall. Presumably the moonlight is making its outline look so pale. In a moment he can't see it, but he hears it and both its fellows reach the ground simultaneously, and then they're gone.

He waits for them to cross the grass, but there's no sign of them. They can only be hiding behind the trees. He does his best to make no sound as he paces towards them, but they aren't where he thought they had to be. When he darts around the middle tree, feeling as if he's performing some moonlit ritual, he's unable to find any of them. The impression of a tall shape seeping into a tree trunk must have been his shadow, however thin it seemed. He's acutely aware of how he may look to anybody in the houses; he wouldn't blame them for calling the police. He already feels ridiculous enough—a comedian forced to perform for no visible audience. He could think this sums up too much of his life, and he tramps back to his car.

GAZER'S HEAD

After the gig in Gazer's Head Luke walks down to the harbour. In the steep narrow crooked streets the tipsy buildings have propped up their antiquity with souvenir shops and seafood restaurants and boutiques. Fishing boats nod and creak at the quayside while yachts wave their masts at the crescent moon. Its light has laid a pallid trail to the horizon, where the ocean leads into a darkness so immense the stars are lost in it. Luke feels as if his thoughts could suffer that fate too.

Tonight's show was in the function room at the town hall. The large solemn darkly panelled room was full, and yet he felt out of place. Some of the audience looked eager to be entertained but initially uncertain of his humour. At least they've heard of Brittan even this far south, not far from the lowest tip of Cornwall, and Luke could imagine that they want him to turn into the man or at any rate a caricature of him. He felt uninvolved with his own performance, more like a spectator, not least because Eunice is still on his mind. Sophie has done her best to persuade him not to worry about little Maurice, and he doesn't think she's trying to convince herself. If they needn't be anxious about their child, there's even less reason for Luke to play a victim's role. Whatever may have happened a lifetime ago at the hospital, it's surely too remote to affect him, and he has no excuse for fretting on his own behalf.

Staring out to sea doesn't help him to understand his encounter with Eunice, and he wanders back to the Atlantic View, three inns combined into a single hotel on the cobbled seafront. His room is centuries younger than the plump stone corridor. Beyond the window the pale thread that extends across the black water looks as though it's reaching out of the void to draw him into the ancient dark. When he returns from the bathroom, which is tiled as white as the moon, he feels unnecessarily like a child taking refuge in bed.

Despite having drawn the thick curtains, he's aware of the moonlight on the ocean. He keeps imagining that a pallid filament has found a gap between the curtains and is creeping across the room in search of him. Whenever he can't resist opening his eyes, the room is still dark. Surely this should help him sleep, but eventually he stumbles to the window and tugs the curtains wide.

No wonder he was so conscious of the moon. Its glow has intensified, so that the outlines of the clouds that hide it at the rim of the world are as sharp and bright as lightning. How is this possible when the moon wasn't even half full? The glow seems fierce enough to part the clouds; a colossal one is lumbering away, and Luke is put in mind of a stone being rolled aside from the vast black mouth of a cave. The image isn't too appealing, and he wishes he could look away from the slow inexorable progress of the cloud. It's revealing more than the segment of the moon, which is dwarfed to the size of a seed floating above an oddly regular bank of cloud that has been exposed at the horizon—a rounded mass the width of the skyline, above which it is continuing to rise. He's able to believe that the hairless whitish cranium is just a cloud until the upper section of the face heaves into view. The eyes are round and white as full moons, but he can't judge their expression, since they're empty of pupils. Perhaps he'll understand, however little he wants to, once the rest of the face becomes visible. Luke isn't the only watcher; several figures are lined up at the edge of the harbour, each of them stretching out a hand towards the apparition. They must sense Luke at the window, because they turn and extend their contorted hands to him. He can't distinguish their faces for the glare of the moon, but he's unnerved by how they turned at exactly the same time with an identical movement. That's among the reasons he lets out a laborious cry that jerks him awake.

He doesn't sleep much after that. At dawn he sees himself in the bathroom mirror, rushing through his morning preparations like a silent comic speeded up in the belief it makes him funnier. He's anxious to be on his way home to Sophie, that's all. In the breakfast room a slim middle-aged waiter with moderately long hair and a dancer's gracefulness ushers him to a table with a view of the harbour. He brings Luke a pot of coffee and watches him grimace, having taken a black gulp. "Oh dear," he says. "Not to your taste?"

"It's fine. Just trying to bring myself back to life before I hit the road."

"Oh dear again," the waiter says and gives his hand a twirl as though he's conducting his response. "Was our bed unkind to you?"

"The bed was fine too." Before Luke can stop himself he adds "My dream wasn't."

"Oh double dear." In case this seems insufficient the waiter flattens the hand against his cheek. "So long as it's behind you now," he says and peers at Luke. "Dear me, was it that horrid?"

"I don't know what the word would be." Luke points at the ocean. "Something was sticking its head up over there," he says. "A giant head."

"Well, I never expected to hear that from a guest. You should have sent me packing," the waiter says as he retreats towards the kitchen. "We don't want you starving as well as exhausted."

He reappears to escort several breakfasters to a table on the far side of the room. Once he has taken their order he departs without glancing at Luke, who is drawn to gaze out at the ocean. The horizon looks thin, capable of supporting the sky only because that's so insubstantial. Beyond it lies the void from which he saw the gigantic pallid face arise. The waiter's remark has brought back the dream and its sense of awful imminence. When the man returns with a rack of toast Luke demands "What did you mean?"

"I wasn't doing my job as guests are entitled to expect, sir."

"You were, and I'm not talking about that. Were you saying someone else has seen what I told you about?"

At first all this brings him is a prolonged look, and he's about to put a sharper version of the question when the waiter says "I expect you came from around here originally, would that be so?"

"Not that I know of."

"Then may I ask where?"

"I wish I knew." Rather than admit this Luke says "What made you think I'm local?"

"You seem to know about Old Stary, that's all."

"I don't," Luke says, but uneasiness makes his voice harsh.

"Perhaps you heard the tale somewhere and guessed it was about Gazer's Head."

"I don't know that either." Another breakfast party has arrived, and he's afraid the waiter will use them as an excuse to move away, but a waitress greets them. "What tale?" Luke takes the chance to ask.

"Just the kind of thing you dreamed of. People used to tell it to their children to put them off daydreaming. They'd say if you looked out there too long Old Stary would look back at you."

Luke glances through the window at a bank of cloud that has started to protrude over the horizon. "What would happen then?" he's less than thoroughly eager to learn.

"What did was bad enough according to my grandmother. So many children started having dreams about him that the parents gave up telling them about him. She used to say it was like a plague that came in the night. She was one of the children, you see."

"Where would a story like that come from?"

"People stay here for the view. They do say you can see further from the headland than anywhere else in Britain."

"I don't see how that explains it."

The waiter fingers his lips as if he's searching for an expression. "My grandmother did say once—

More guests have entered the breakfast room. Luke is about to urge him to continue when the waitress proceeds to deal with them, having sent the waiter quite a look. "Yes," Luke insists, "she said—

"Her grandmother told her there were folk hereabouts who looked out for the old things. They were supposed to be trying to keep them alive or bring them back to life. I expect she might have said you've done it."

Luke finds the suggestion unwelcome if not worse. It makes the nightmare feel like a seed in his brain—the threat of a revelation. "Why would she say that?" he objects. "I had a dream, that's all."

"She believed if you could see the old things you gave them life. That's what the folk she was talking about lived for." The waiter wafts away the notion with his hand and says "It was just a tale, obviously."

Luke can't help thinking of Terence. "What old things?" he says.

"Old Stary for one." The waiter traces the hint of a frown with a fingertip and says "I've never forgotten how she put it."

In case the waiter hasn't made that clear Luke says "How did she?"