Ventriloquists (37 page)

‘A whole new guilt to explore,’ said Chris. ‘I’m glad we did some puff, girl,’ he added to Shyleen. ‘I’m not sure I could’ve handled this with a straight head.’

‘Anyway…’ Maggie seemed impatient to continue but Yasser interrupted her.

‘Where are the other places?’ he asked.

‘What other places?’

‘Where we can go to this world you’re talking about. It can’t be just one house, can it? There must be others.’

Maggie looked flustered now. ‘I’m sure you’re right. They’re everywhere. But it’s like following the well-worn path through the woods: some of the doorways will be hidden. Not by vegetation exactly – more because we don’t want to see.’

‘Well
I
want to see,’ Yasser countered. ‘For the last five years I’ve had to put up with my dad’s disapproval with what I’m doing with my life. And now… now that I’m finding lost people, my dad’s proud of me. I’ve got a purpose… even if I haven’t been successful at finding Maggie’s child.’

‘Yet,’ said Shyleen – a supportive comment that arrived as a surprise to Yasser.

He nodded. ‘Yet. So what if we
could
find them all in the place of missing things? Does it have a name, this place?’

Maggie said, ‘I don’t think so – not that I know of, anyway. Once you name a place it can be found, it stops being something you can’t find. My guess is…’ She sighed. ‘…the house’s days as a doorway are numbered. Too many people know about it, and maybe that’s what the explosion was all about in the first place.’

‘What?’ said Shyleen and Yasser.

‘Wow,’ said Chris. ‘My head’s getting battered… You mean it was trying to
destroy
itself?’

Shyleen cocked her head to one side, either because of the coincidence of her sharing a word with Yasser, or because Chris appeared to have reached the solution first.

‘Possible. Or someone was tying to destroy it from within,’ Maggie answered.

‘And why would anyone want to do that?’ Shyleen wanted to know.

‘Some people have no wish to be found.’

When the dust had settled on this sentence for a few seconds, Yasser spoke again.

‘Let’s go into the house,’ he suggested.

4.

By now, the early-morning air was laced with a thin perfume of smoke. The party of four could smell the results of Maggie’s act of arson as they stood in Number 11’s back garden. Although no sirens blared, in the camp’s direction, the sky was smeared faintly with red and orange light: a visual echo of lights or flames.

While Shyleen pointed at a space between some torn-back boards (the space through which Massimo and Bernadette had entered the house), Yasser considered Maggie’s position. She had torched her own home and possibly the homes of others in the camp. She had had no intention of returning, tonight or ever. She had led him to this point; manipulated his interests. She had even made him fall in love with her.

He hated her for this.

Chris shone a torch into the space and asked, ‘Who’s first? Shall we form an orderly queue?’

‘How very English,’ Shyleen joked.

‘We’re not English,’ Yasser told her.

‘We were born in Luton!’

‘Roots, babe!’

‘Well
I’m
not English,’ Maggie added.

‘Christ. I’ll do it myself,’ said Chris, stepping up the opening. He squeezed through, entering the whiff of damp and ruin and trying to cut through the atmosphere with a torchlight that seemed too feeble to be up the the task. He hadn’t been able to find their better torch.

Then he made a mental correction. With the chill inside the house inching into his bones, he waited until everyone had climbed in before sharing his news.

‘We have two torches at home, right?’ he said. ‘This one’s not great, the other one’s much better. But it wasn’t where we always leave it, in the cupboard near the back door.’

‘So?’ This was Maggie.

‘So Bernadette must’ve taken it, and why would she’ve done that? To explore an abandoned house, right? I think she was here. For sure, now.’

Maggie asked, ‘Can you feel her?’

‘
Feel
her?’

‘Her presence; her spirit… Can you feel her?’ she snapped impatiently.

‘…No.’

‘You never did remember who it was she lost, by the way.’

‘Her dog?’

‘Maybe.’

‘…So what happens next?’ Yasser asked.

No one wanted to answer; the silence lasted until a noise from upstairs made them jump. Something had creaked.

Chris put a finger to his lips and Yasser whispered to Maggie, ‘Is that your dad?’

‘How the hell would I know that?’ she whispered back.

‘
Does anyone else feel like children?’ Shyleen added (weirdly for everyone) in a whisper that might have worked as a Shakespearian aside: however, it was much too loud for the surroundings.

‘
Ssshhh!
’ she was admonished.

Whoever was upstairs was not prepared to loiter; the sounds that followed suggested that he was moving towards the top of the flight.

The group played a game that was diametrically opposed to Sleeping Lions. When the sounds of movement stopped, they moved: they squelched through the water-damaged tufts of carpet, with Chris’s familiarity with the layout of the road’s houses (not to mention his torchlight) having made him the leader of the expedition. When the sounds from above came again, they stopped walking; they froze like sleeping lions. Employed in this tango, they soon arrived at the foot of the stairs, at which point Chris shone the light up the flight.

‘Who’s down there?’ a voice asked from upstairs. Torchlight beamed down.

Just as Yasser acknowledged that it was not the voice of Tommy or of Maggie’s old man, Shyleen called, ‘Police. And you’re trespassing.’

The man’s voice chuckled. ‘I think
you’re
the ones trespassing,’ the man said. ‘I don’t care if you’re the police or the Boy Scouts. Get out of my house.’

His torchlight preceding him, he started to descend the stairs.

5.

The five of them stood in the rank-smelling hallway. ‘But before you go,’ said the man who was older than them all, ‘tell me why you’re here, would you?’

‘You don’t own this house,’ Chris told him. ‘I’ve never seen you before. Mr and Mrs Riley live here.’

‘They
live
here, yes; but I own it. One of my business investments, of which there are many. And I’ll thank you to tell me what you’re doing in my property.’

Shyleen spoke.

‘Do you know what this house is?’

‘Yes I do. It’s fucked is what it is. My experiment backfired, you might say. But you still haven’t answered what I asked you.’

‘We know some people who went over,’ Yasser admitted.

The old man cocked his head slightly. ‘Do you now? And when did this happen?’

‘You mean you know?’

‘Of course I know. I’ve been waiting for this for years, mate.’

‘Waiting for what?’ asked Maggie.

‘For a demand I could exploit,’ the man replied simply. ‘But now I need to get out of here. The damp’s no good for me lungs.’

Shortly after they’d entered the house illegally, then, they were outside in the back garden once more.

‘London’s burning,’ the house owner mentioned in passing. ‘From the gyppo camp, I reckon.’

‘Your orientation is flawless,’ Maggie told him sourly.

He nodded. ‘One of them, are you?’

‘Until recently. It was me who started the fire, ably assisted in my getaway by Yasser.’

As Yasser began to protest (even though she had a point), the man who had now sat on a stone bench next to the shed gave a smile. ‘I can’t say I blame you, girl,’ he said. ‘A filthy race, the gyppos. Filthy.’

‘…I wouldn’t go
that
far,’ Maggie replied.

The man sniffed. ‘A pleasure to watch em burn, you ask me; but each to their own, I suppose. The more camps get ignited the better. Ethnic cleansing. Don’t knock it, I say. It’s not the bad thing the do-gooders would have us believe, you mark my words. The clue is in the word
cleansing.
Do you know: there’s a bird, right, who lives in the mouth of the crocodile, cleaning the fucker’s teeth? Straight up. They tolerate each other because each of em provides a service.’

He rubbed his hands together and changed the subject. ‘A bit cold tonight. No weather for an old man. Especially one who spends half his life alongside rodents – the heat from the vivaria, I mean. You get acclimatised to it. Now…’

The man slapped his knees and stood up again (the others had remained standing throughout, and had grown more confused as he’d waffled on). ‘To business, I suppose – unexpected business, but I’m never one to look an unpredicted gifthorse in the old mush. So this is it. My name’s Benny and I’m prepared to be your guide for the right price each. We go in one by one and I take you across. Then I come back for the next one, though I’d recommend one of you stays put here, until we’re done.’

‘Why’s that?’ asked Yasser. ‘Why does one stay here?’

‘To tell the story if you don’t come back again,’ Benny answered, his words forming steam in front of his mouth. ‘Only make up your mind quickly. I was getting piles sitting on that stone bench, now I’m catching pneumonia.’

Clearly still smarting from the racist slur (and baffled by the connection to the bird and the crocodile), Maggie sounded curt when she asked, ‘What do you call the right price each?’

‘A good question, my dear. Your name is?’

‘Maggie.’

‘My old mother’s name, God bless her and shine her. And your friends?’

‘Yasser.’

‘Nice to meet you, son.’

‘Chris.’

‘Another Chris. I’ve already got a Chris Connors… You wouldn’t be the Chris of Chris-and-Bernadette by any chance?’

‘I would! Yes! You
know
her?’

‘I helped her cross,’ Benny replied, nodding a modest bow. ‘She was with a bloke named Massimo, who I’ve done some work with. It was Mass who booked Connors and Dorman to rob this place blind, but they made a mistake and did
your
house instead. A bit embarrassing, that. For you I’ll do a fifty per cent cut on the price of admission. I can’t say fairer than that. Which just leaves…?’

‘Shyleen.’

‘
A beautiful name. For a beautiful girl… The entrance fee is one hundred pounds each.’ Benny pointed at Chris. ‘Fifty for you.’

Yasser was the first to complain. ‘I haven’t
got
a hundred quid,’ he said.

‘Do you take cards?’ Maggie asked sarcastically.

‘Yeah, I’ve got a credit card franker up me arse. Just swipe it in me bumcrack,’ said Benny. ‘Why don’t you return when you’re ready to play grown-up games, eh? Now if you’ll excuse me and fuck off out me garden…’

‘I’ve got the money,’ Chris told him coolly. ‘I’ve been winning big.’

‘In cash?’

‘Chris…’ said Shyleen.

‘Well
you’re
safely across then,’ said Benny. ‘Why don’t you run home and fetch it before I lose me toes to hypothermia?’

‘No, I mean I can pay for us all,’ Chris clarified.

‘
Chris
,’ Shyleen repeated.

‘This has been, without doubt, one of the weirdest nights of my life, so if it means I have to pay four hundred quid to get us all through it, it’s a price I’m willing to fork out. And not only because I miss Bernadette. I think what you were saying before…’ Chris addressed Maggie. ‘…about us missing someone we’ve lost… isn’t it true? Isn’t this what it’s all about? For better or for worse, we’re all in tonight together, and I definitely won’t be the one volunteering to stay behind.’

Benny rubbed his hands together again. ‘Spoken like a true intra-rationalist,’ he told them all.

6.

No one was prepared to stay behind.

While Chris handed over the money that he’d fetched from his own house (and the other three offered their pledges that they’d pay him back as soon as they returned), he made it clear that he was going first. Dealer’s privilege, he called it. ‘It’s up to you three who follows next.’

‘Why can’t we all go in together?’ Maggie wondered, eyeing Yasser nervously. (Yasser assumed that Maggie had wanted him to chaperone her. He was pleased that he wouldn’t have to, and that the choice had been taken away from him by Benny. The reason for not wanting to go with Maggie was fairly simple. It was not simply the ambivalent emotions that he held for the woman – love and then hate in a rapid shuttle – it was more the grief that he’d catch from Shyleen in due course if he chose Maggie over her.)

‘Why? Well firstly, it’s my gaff, so it’s my rules.’

‘I appreciate that but –‘

‘And
secondly
, four people at once will stretch things too much. It’s risky at the best of times, just in case I haven’t made that clear. Even one at a time puts pressure on the connection. I’d be worried that four at once would snap it all together.’

Maggie nodded. ‘Two by two, then?’

‘Like animals into the Ark?’ Benny chuckled. ‘Listen. You might not think it to look at me, darling – I’ve never worn me wealth on me sleeve or in me clothes for that matter – but I’ve got plenty of money I don’t need.
However.
I didn’t get it by backing down from a decision. And I know what I’m doing, so here’s the newsflash. One by one is what I said. One by one is what I meant.’

‘Okay, okay,’ said Yasser. ‘Benny, you’re holding the cards. One by one’ll be fine… but could you at least tell us what we can expect when we arrive?’

‘I have no idea, son.’

‘No?’

‘No. I’ve never taken the trip, personally. I couldn’t risk it if you paid me – which you have. You see… it’s me rodents. They’re more than pets to me, but even if they were only pets, they’d be helpless without me. At home, you see, they need feeding, temperature control… maintenance, basically. And if I couldn’t come back I’d never forgive meself, knowing they were starving as a result of my negligence.’