The Portal (11 page)

‘I don't,' said Daniel. ‘And I'm not going to do what she says. She's ugly, and she smells.'

William was shocked. If Daniel had ever said anything like that in front of his father he would have… William thought for a moment. His father would obviously have done something to make sure it never happened again but… he wasn't sure what.

At the time, all William could think of to say was, ‘That's very unfair. Mrs Duggan's working really hard and the least you can do is keep out of her hair until Mum and Dad get back from holiday.'

‘When's that going to be?' said Daniel.

And of course William couldn't answer that.

He did his best to defuse the situation when he could. He tried to make sure he was around at the times Mrs Duggan and Daniel had to be together – like at meals or bedtime – to keep things calm. The evenings were particular danger points. Daniel would be tired and in need of careful handling, but Mrs Duggan didn't seem to know this. She would tell him not to do something, Daniel would do it, Mrs Duggan would shout at him, Daniel would shout back and off they'd go again.

As long as William was around, he could step in and steer one of them out of the room, but sometimes he wasn't there. Sometimes he was busy down at the station, looking after a passenger or the bricks, and it was on one such occasion that the Big Row happened.

William was looking after a passenger called Mrs Wharton, an elderly woman who wrote children's books and wanted to know what sort of stories William had enjoyed when he was smaller. He was telling her about The Very Hungry Caterpillar, when Amy rang down from upstairs and said simply, ‘They're doing it again.'

It was nearly an hour before William could leave and go back upstairs, and by that time he found
Daniel in his bedroom – white, shaking with rage and silent. Somehow, the being silent was worse than if he'd been shouting and screaming.

‘She's taken my skulls,' he said when William asked what had happened. He pointed to the empty shelves. ‘All of them.'

‘Why?' asked William.

It turned out this argument, like most, had begun with something very trivial. Mrs Duggan had told Daniel to pick up a sweet paper, Daniel said he wouldn't because he hadn't dropped it, Mrs Duggan told him to pick it up anyway, and finally things had escalated to the point where she told him that if he didn't she would take his skulls and throw them away. And she had.

William could hardly believe it. ‘Why didn't you just pick it up?' he said.

‘Why should I? I didn't drop it.'

‘Does it matter?'

‘Yes.'

William sighed.

‘I can't stay here,' said Daniel. ‘Not with her. I'm leaving home.'

‘Don't be silly,' said William. ‘Wait here. I'll go and talk to her.'

William found Mrs Duggan sitting on a log behind the barn, twisting and untwisting a length of
barbed wire in her fingers, with Timber sitting beside her.

He had to tell her, William thought. He had to tell her that taking away Daniel's skulls for not picking up a sweet paper didn't make sense. He had to tell her she was supposed to be helping and that, at the moment, she wasn't. That with all the shouting and yelling, she was only making things worse.

He sat on the log beside her, trying to think how to say it, but it wasn't easy to tell someone old enough to be your mother that they were doing it all wrong and, without quite knowing why, he said nothing at all.

In the end, it was Mrs Duggan who spoke first.

‘It was Timber,' she said.

‘What?'

‘That's how I knew about the Portal. It was Timber.' Mrs Duggan put the barbed wire carefully on the log beside her. ‘Week I started work here, I ran over him with a tractor. Rope round his neck got caught in the axle, next thing, squeal, thump, and the back wheel's run over his head.'

‘Oh,' said William, not quite sure where this conversation was going.

‘Your dad heard the screams. Came running out with a medipac. I tell him it's no good, the dog's dead. He tells me to step back and then
takes out this… this Life Support, and he picks up the dog and tells me to follow him inside.'

Mrs Duggan shook her head slowly as if she still found the whole thing hard to believe. ‘Found out after what he'd done. Used his own life energy to keep Timber alive. Took him through the Portal. Got him patched up. Smarter than ever when they brought him back. Done something to his brain.'

She reached out a hand to scratch the top of Timber's head. ‘Dog was all I had, then. Your dad knew that. Never forgotten it.' Mrs Duggan paused a moment before continuing. ‘So when you ask me to help. Course I say yes. Chance to pay back, you see. Chance to say thank you.

‘And I come up here and get it all wrong. Shouting and yelling. Make things worse instead of better. Wanted to help… Owed it to your dad… Wanted to help… Just get it all wrong…'

Mrs Duggan stared at the ground and a tear trickled down her cheek. It was big, like everything with Mrs Duggan, and it splashed on to the ground leaving a puddle the size of a saucer.

William had never heard her put so many words together in one speech – or in one week – and he reached out to put an arm round her. Mrs Duggan was too big for the arm to go all the way round, but he did it anyway.

‘There has to be something we can do,' he said, ‘to make things better.'

‘Too late for that,' said Mrs Duggan gloomily. ‘Daniel's never going to talk to me again.'

‘I'm sure it's not too late,' said William, ‘and you can leave Daniel to me. But I think we'll need to give him the skulls back.'

‘Got them here.' Mrs Duggan pointed to a black plastic bag at her feet.

‘Good.' William took the bag. ‘He can have these when he's apologized, then you two can hug and make up.'

‘Hug?' Mrs Duggan looked rather alarmed.

‘It's all right,' said William. ‘It was a figure of speech.'

Over the next few days, William spent some time explaining to Daniel how important it was to be patient with Mrs Duggan, and a lot of time talking to Mrs Duggan about the things that worked with Daniel and the things that didn't.

‘Notice you never have a problem with him,' said Mrs Duggan gloomily as they stood in the kitchen after lunch one day, watching Daniel and Amy build a bear trap by the outhouse. ‘You tell him to do something, he does it. I tell him and it's like I've asked him to throw himself out of a train.'

There was some truth to this but, thinking about it, William realized it was also true that he tried to avoid
telling
Daniel to do anything – unless it was something like not to use the chainsaw. Daniel was the sort of boy who, if you said he
had
to do something, would immediately want to do the opposite, and shouting at him would only make him want to even more. The trick with Daniel, if you really wanted him to do something, was to get him to agree to it in advance. Once he'd agreed to something, he didn't mind being told when it was time to get on and do it.

‘And it helps, of course,' William added, ‘if you've said nice things to him.'

‘Nice things?' said Mrs Duggan. ‘How do you mean?'

‘Well,' said William, ‘it's like what you do with Amy when you see her in a new outfit. You say “Oh, you look lovely, that really suits you!” That sort of thing.'

‘Can't tell Daniel he looks lovely,' said Mrs Duggan. ‘He doesn't.'

‘No, you wouldn't say anything about him looking nice,' William agreed, ‘but when he does something useful or helpful, you could say thank you and how grateful you were.'

‘He doesn't
do
anything helpful,' said Mrs Duggan. ‘He's no help at all, you know that!'

‘He does things right occasionally,' said William. ‘And when he does, if you say something nice, it means the next time you ask him to do something he'll be more likely to do it. That's how it works.'

‘Is it?' said Mrs Duggan.

‘Yes,' said William. ‘I think it is.'

‘All right,' said Mrs Duggan. ‘I'll give it a try.'

And to be fair, she did. It took a considerable effort, but Mrs Duggan stopped shouting, she tried to find nice things to say to Daniel and she even gave him a hug occasionally, though to be honest neither of them seemed to get a lot of pleasure from it.

And things were better as a result. The house was quieter and calmer, and the rows mostly stopped, but William could not help but notice that Daniel was… different. The brother who could come rushing home with a dead hedgehog to cook, or to dissect the lungs from a mole, seemed to have gone. Instead, there was a Daniel who lay in bed a lot most of the day, watching endless hours of television. Sometimes, not even Amy could get him to move. He was, William suspected, deeply unhappy, but on the two occasions he asked what was wrong, Daniel only shrugged and turned away.

William knew what was wrong, of course. What
Daniel needed – what they all needed – was for his parents to come home and for everything to go back to the way it was supposed to be. But that wasn't going to happen, not for a while, anyway, and in the meantime William had no idea what he could do to help.

The man who did, oddly enough, was General Ghool.

General Ghool came breezing up through the Portal on his way to sort out a civil war on Parris. ‘How's it going here?' he asked as William led him through to the sitting room. ‘Heard anything about your parents yet?'

William told him that there was still no news. It was over two weeks now since the vet had found the bloodstained handbag in the quarry, but William was no nearer knowing the truth of what had happened to his mother and father. Federal Security had sent him two reports since then, but both said simply that no trace of his parents had been found and that the search was continuing.

‘Very curious,' said the General. ‘Are you following up any other lines of enquiry?'

‘When Prince Helmut of Tarkis came through,' said William, ‘he promised to ask a Guardian about it.'

‘Now that's a smart move.' The General nodded approvingly. ‘A Touchstone should give you the answer – and I hope the news is good.' He settled back in his chair and watched as William poured his tea. ‘How's that brother of yours? Recovered from his blood poisoning, I hope?'

‘He's fine,' said William. ‘It's not his blood we're worried about at the moment.'

‘Oh?' The General sipped his tea. ‘What is it this time?'

William wasn't sure if it was polite to bother passengers with personal problems, but the General seemed genuinely interested and he found himself describing how Daniel seemed to have lost his enthusiasm for life, and how he spent most of his time lying in bed.

‘Well, it's understandable,' said General Ghool. ‘He's obviously very worried about his parents.'

‘I know he misses them,' said William, ‘but why should he be worried? He thinks they're on holiday in France.'

‘You haven't told him the truth?'

‘No,' said William. ‘I thought that really would worry him.'

‘Ah!' The General leant back in his chair. ‘If
you'll forgive my saying so, I think that could be the problem.'

‘Could it?'

‘You can't hide something that big,' said the General. ‘Your brother knows there's
something
wrong – he'll have picked up the signals – and if you're not telling him what it is, he'll know it must be something serious. Which must be very frightening for him. And being frightened usually comes out in bad behaviour and depression.'

‘Oh…' William thought about this. ‘So what should I do?'

‘Tell him the truth,' said the General simply. ‘First thing they teach you in the army is never to hide bad news from the troops. Good or bad, you always tell them the truth.'

‘But I can't tell Daniel about the Portal… can I?'

‘I don't see why not,' said the General. ‘You'll need to ask Larry first, of course, and he might want you to use a mind-lock to make sure he doesn't accidentally tell anyone else but… tell him I thought it was important.'

‘Right,' said William. ‘I will.'

‘And when you do tell Daniel, my advice is to keep it simple. Say your mum and dad have gone – you don't know where, but you're still trying to find them – and then ask for his help. Tell him you
and Mrs Duggan can't manage everything on your own and you need him to help out with things.'

‘What sort of things?' asked William.

‘Stuff around the house…' The General waved his hands expansively. ‘Anything at all, really, as long as it's proper work.'

‘He's miserable enough already,' said William. ‘If I tell him Mum and Dad have gone missing and then that he has to help round the house, he'll want to throw himself off a cliff.'

The General smiled. ‘Funnily enough, that's not how it works. If you tell him the family's in trouble and needs his help, he'll
want
to do something – and he'll feel a lot better when he does.'

William was not entirely convinced by this, but said he would try it.

‘And if it was me,' said the General, ‘when I'd done that, I'd go one step further.'

‘Yes?'

‘I'd find something Daniel can do that he knows nobody else can. That's what'll really give him a boost.'

‘He's only eight,' said William. ‘I don't think there is anything like that.'

‘Age has nothing to do with it,' said the General. ‘We all have a special gift and in Daniel's case even I can see what it is.'

William thought about it. The only special gift
of Daniel's he could think of was his capacity to annoy Mrs Duggan to the point of despair.