The Touch of Innocents (27 page)

She had tried to make it home, and failed. It had been beyond her, she’d been too impatient, too much in pain. Again. And now the pain was already returning, twisting at her as though being sliced by a blunt knife – no, worse than physical pain, for this was not isolated, could not be cauterized. If she could have, she would long ago have grabbed the iron and burned it out herself.

Her head slumped forward, seeking shelter from the light burning into her brain and the breeze of dank decay that brushed her cheek, too disorientated yet to move from beneath the street lamp, even to identify the noxious fluid which dampened the doorstep around her. She tried to climb back inside herself, hiding from the terror of the world outside yet knowing she would be betrayed once more by the horrors she found within.

Emaciated fingers covered her face. She’d lost a lot of weight this time, more than the times before. Her periods had stopped; a relief. She was having to turn an ever larger number of tricks – no, not tricks, tricks were for whores and she was no whore. She only did what she had to, and even if that meant fucking an ever larger number of punters to find the money she needed, getting pregnant was not part of the plan. Or wouldn’t be, if she had a plan.

And it was getting worse. A squall of December rain hit her and she started shaking again; she knew it was coming back, the battle she couldn’t win. It tore at her, the guilt and the pain ripping her in different directions. She could never work out which tormented her more, but while she couldn’t cure the guilt, she could always submerge the physical pain.
So the guilt could wait. Until tomorrow. Just one more time.

She swallowed with difficulty, the back of her throat felt like cooked liver. She would need to find another man quickly, several men, perhaps. No point in trying to steal from stores any more, they spotted her as soon as she walked through the door. Perhaps she would try going back to her father, but she’d already done that and even he seemed reluctant to give in to her any more, now that he had found out. It would have to be men, and even that was getting more difficult as she trembled and stank and found that they would screw her, any part of her, abuse her and beat her, then leave her in a doorway without paying.

Like this.

It was why she was being forced to take the risk, buying on the street, stuff of unknown quality from people she didn’t know, suffering if it did not work, suffering even more if it worked too well. Like the last fix, when she couldn’t make it back to her own bed.

The last fix. The very last fix …

It would be better
…

She would get herself home, clean herself up, find better punters, just once more, grab the strength to get herself back into shape, confront the guilt, give it all up. Just this one last time, she pleaded.

But it would pursue her, as it had done before, like a hawk. Every breath of wind would be as the beat of the hunter’s wing, every shaft of sunlight the glint of stretching talons, every burst of children’s laughter the screech of triumph from a gorged craw, every dawn bringing anew the agony of being torn alive. Only in darkness, in the corners and crevices of the world, in dark stinking holes and doorways, did she
seem to find respite from her fears, where she could bury herself in a different world.

Her world. A world in which pain was transformed, blotted out. Smack. Where the mind was released to roam free. Smack, Where every flower became a needle and every needle, salvation. Smack. Every vein a river of release and every breath a demand for more, where the hours could be stopped so that time no longer bore down like the lash of thorns.

Smack. Smack.

Where twisted love and memories dark were drowned in numbness. Smack. Where the hate for her father could be transformed into love of all mankind, where tears would be dried and agony end. Smack. Smack. Where she could reach out and be gathered in the gentle arms of a mother so cruelly torn away and regain a childhood so abruptly destroyed.

Smack.

Where nothing, nothing, not life nor death nor time nor Judgement Day nor her father, particularly not her father, would matter ever again.

Smack. Smack. Smack-smack-smack.

‘I don’t want you to go, Izzy. Not without me.’

They were sitting in the American Bar of The Stafford beneath its cross-Atlantic memorabilia, a thematic mayhem of ties, baseball caps, pennants, helmets and stag horns which hung down from the ceiling like ripe grapes from a vine. She had sought refuge in the corner beneath the framed aircraft carriers, feeling in distinct need of a drink – no more than a glass of Chablis, she would need her wits, though it had dawned on her that he never drank alcohol.

‘You know I can’t take you, Daniel. My husband’s supposed to be sewing mail bags somewhere the other side of the Rockies.’

‘But you don’t know what you’re taking on.’

‘I’ve got a pretty good idea,’ she muttered. Too good an idea, she thought.

‘He’s a Coroner. A man of importance. Of power. He’ll fight ruthlessly if he thinks his position is threatened.’

‘But it’s more than that, isn’t it?’ she responded quietly. ‘I’ve been wondering why on earth a Coroner would get involved in an adoption scam. OK, it seems pretty safe. You run the system yourself, it relies on subjective judgements about suitable parents so you can always be seen to be playing within the written rules.’

‘What if people start asking questions?’

‘Who’s to ask? The kids aren’t in a position to complain. And who would doubt the integrity of the local Coroner? The facade is so drenched in respectability it’s practically perfect. But it’s more than that, has to be. So I’ve been putting two and two together, and it comes out in six figures.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Remember what the nuns at the Mission told us? Maybe twenty babies a year. Say only half of them, less than one a month, were involved in his scam. At twenty-five grand a time. That’s a quarter of a million pounds passing through his fat hands, tax free. A nice little earner, wouldn’t you say?’ She leaned forward. ‘That’s why we have to do this right.’

Her action in bending forward had served only to remind him of his other feelings for her. He looked wistfully into his Virgin Mary. ‘You look stunning. I wish you could stay.’

She had taken considerable care. An hour in the hair salon trying to regain some of the lost style, another hour soaking in suds and highlighting eyes, a dress of bright green which complemented her eyes and was supported by the thinnest straps that left no need to guess at the flawless skin of her shoulders and tops of her breasts, decorated with a trailing scarf of embroidered silk. She was down to a size eight again, cradle fat vanished, melted in the ferocious heat of her pain and fears. She looked good, her best, for Fauld, and hated herself.

‘Why is it,’ he said in a voice soaked in Irish charm, ‘that I want so much to tear every shred of clothing off your body?’

‘What’s the matter, you don’t like the dress?’

‘On a hanger, perhaps.’

‘Trouble is, Danny Blackheart, I know you say that to all the girls.’

‘True, very true,’ he grinned, ‘but I don’t go falling in love with them all, now, do I?’

‘I’m sure you only want me for my money.’

‘You know, my family used to have a lot of money, least by Blackheart Bay standards. Lost it all, so long ago that no one can truly remember why. But my dear mother used to tell me, beware of wealthy women. Their money can disappear, along with their looks. Then you’re left with nothing but misery and might-have-beens. So she told me to stick to women who make you laugh, with their clothes on or off.’ He winked. ‘I don’t know yet what makes you laugh, Izzy, but I’d like to learn. On or off.’

‘I don’t know if I shall ever be able to love you the way you want me to.’

‘I’m a gambler, I’ll take the risk. But if you pick me up, be careful. Don’t ever drop me. If I slip from your hands I’ll probably shatter. I’m a terrible
Humpty Dumpty when it comes to emotions, and there are already far too many cracks in my shell. Another tumble and you’d better call for the omelette oil.’

There it was, the bruising again. Even though covered with a wry smile the words weren’t idle. Unhealed wounds. But from where? Of what sort?

‘I know so very little about you,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve been taking you for granted, haven’t I? Forgive me.’

‘Forgiven. You’ve enough problems, I don’t want to add to them. Just treat me gently.’

‘Even as you tear the clothes from my body?’

‘Especially then.’

‘Soon, Daniel, we’ll have the time for each other. The maiden and the Irish buccaneer, a voyage of discovery. I’d like that very much.’ And meant it.

He raised his tomato juice.

‘Fair winds, Izzy.’

The foyer was crowded. Airline crew and piles of leather baggage. A Japanese businessman gesticulating at two bored women, over-dressed and under-age, chewing gum. A fat St Nicholas leading a small choir of siliconized reindeer women whose dress struck a peculiarly unbiblical note. Scatterings of artificial snow. Christmas spirit laid on with a plastic trowel.

He was there, waiting for her, wrapped in smiles and a well-cut mohair suit. As he advanced to greet her the eyes behind the steel-rimmed spectacles were like magnets, clinging tenaciously to her breasts. They never made her ankles, nor her own eyes until he was almost beside her. In spite of the hotel’s extravagant overheating, she shivered.

He offered banal compliments and a strong trace of men’s perfume, leading her by the arm through
the confusion of revellers and scurrying concierge staff, away from the protection of numbers, into the lift. The crush forced them closer together, the difficulties and doubts crowding in, corrupting her confidence; already she felt dirty, soiled by association and the simple act of standing next to this man. Yet each passing floor, she reminded herself, led closer to Paulette, to Bella. She hoped.

They were not headed for the rooftop restaurant as she supposed; at the twenty-third floor he led her out and produced a key.

‘I have retained a suite,’ he explained. ‘More privacy.’

Of course.

The view was spectacular, overlooking Buckingham Palace, the Royal Standard snapping in the glow of floodlights while the brake lights of London’s nightlife danced around the Palace perimeter like a river of volcanic fire. The elevated panorama distorted perspectives, reducing the world they had just left to pygmy proportions, its associations and laws shrunken, discarded. He had chosen the territory where the gods peer down from the clouds and mock. Hunting territory.

He took her coat and she could feel him pause, ponder, his breath upon her shoulder; she felt her skin quiver. A table was set for two in the bay of the window. She knew what he wanted, but not when: before, after eating? Both perhaps?

He opened champagne and spilled it, standing above her to serve and gaze down upon the curves of her body.

It had started with the
hors d’oeuvres
. He had probed and she had revealed the pieces of her carefully prepared story, like Penelope weaving her tapestry, deceiving, for love, and he had made
encouraging noises while rejecting all attempts by her to discover more about his own operations. To her every question he responded by pouring more wine. ‘You are the adoptive parent, not me. I am of no interest.’ But he drank deeply, his temples beginning to glow, intently, and small pieces of his resistance flaked away like scales from a rotting fish. She discovered he was unmarried, had never been married, parents ardent Baptists, hence Gideon. Hints of an overly starched childhood. Two years of his twenties in Riyadh as the contracts executive for a Saudi ports project. Constant reference to his physical pursuits, most of which seemed to be dated, hints that he was/had been a marathon man. Undue emphasis on his stamina. Innuendo. He was turning out to be a slug.

He poured and drank, and his eyes grew more bloodshot as the evening progressed, the high forehead beginning to melt, a line of sweat appearing above his upper lip. The carefully trimmed hair was starting to dampen and sag, the fires stoking inside. He opened a third bottle but she declined, covering the crystal with her hand.

‘Enough. I must keep sufficient wits to finish your questions before I have any more to drink,’ she insisted.

‘Questions? I think I’m done. You’ve told me all I need to know, Fiona.’

‘And do I pass? Will you be able to help me?’

His tongue seemed to have thickened, getting in the way of some of his words. ‘I believe I can. On certain conditions.’

‘A baby? New born, no more than six months. That’s possible?’

‘Difficult. Easier with an older child. But possible.’

‘How soon?’

He chuckled defensively. ‘You’re remorseless.’

‘No. Determined. As you know.’

‘I’ll have to make some enquiries. Let you know.’

‘Look, for twenty-five grand I don’t expect to be kept hanging around London like a call-girl on a street corner. Babies don’t suddenly appear with the stork, they arrive pretty much when expected. So I’m asking. When is the next one expected?’

‘Feisty, I like that,’ he nodded. ‘But, my dear, you’re not the only parent looking to adopt such a child. There are others.’

‘You must have some idea,’ she protested.