Voices in the Dark (36 page)

It was several days before Richard would let Juliette out of his sight. He kept her home from school, and they sat and played cards on the floor of her hotel room while the rain fell outside. ‘Father,’ she said one afternoon after a long time had passed in silence. ‘Have you ever met a boy called Ashley Devere?’

Richard dropped the cards in his hand. ‘What?’ he said.

‘Ashley Devere.’

Richard looked at her for several long seconds. Then he gathered up the cards and said, ‘Tell me what you know about that boy.’

‘Nothing.’

‘You must have heard the name somewhere.’

‘Nowhere. I mean, I can’t remember.’

‘Juliette, tell me.’

She hesitated. ‘He’s a friend of a friend of mine,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’

‘He lives in this city?’

‘Yes.’

‘And why do you think I would know him?’

‘I don’t know, Father. I just wondered.’

Richard put the cards back into their box, went to the window, and glanced down into the street. He did this several times a day, to check that James was still out there on guard. ‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘You are never to speak to that boy, do you hear? You are not to go looking for him, and you are not to speak to him. Ever. Do you hear?’

‘No,’ said Juliette. ‘I don’t hear. Because that’s stupid.’

Richard stared at her as though she had hit him. Then he pushed his glasses up and tried to reach his hand out to her. ‘I’m sorry, Juliette,’ he said. ‘I’ve been on edge lately; I know. It was only this dream.’

‘What dream?’

‘I dreamed about an old acquaintance of mine. It was so real. He was sitting there in the room, talking to me. And ever since then, I can’t help worrying.’

‘You’ve hardly slept in a week,’ said Juliette. ‘Maybe it would do you good, Father.’

‘No,’ said Richard. ‘Not in the middle of all this.’

Juliette knew better than to argue. But that night, sleep got the better of him anyway. He fell asleep over a worn-out book some other guest had left, The Return of the Native, with the pages falling out. He did it suddenly, without
ceremony. His head slumped onto the table, and the book hit the ground with a low thud.

Juliette hesitated for several minutes. Then she whispered, ‘Sorry, Father,’ and opened the window and climbed out. Richard did not wake. Once she was down in the street, she took Ashley Devere’s sketchbook out from her coat and examined it. But she did not know where Forest Park Mansions were, and she had never walked about the city by herself – except for that other night, she had always been with someone else. She remembered a play in Covent Garden, when England was still new to her. She knew how to get there at least, and that was where the boy drew.

Without thinking much about it, she set out that way instead.

On the evenings when there were no tourists, now that autumn was closing in, Ashley sat in the park next to the old church and sketched other things. The park was paved with flat stones, and benches stood by the fence, and a few wind-ruffled pigeons hopped around the benches. He threw them a handful of crisps and bent his head over the sketchbook. He was drawing a ruined house today. He had been drawing for several minutes uninterrupted when someone stopped in front of him. She was a girl his own age, with blonde ringlets and a haughty kind of look. ‘Yes?’ he said.

She held out his sketchbook.

‘What’s that?’ said Ashley, then recognized it.

‘It’s yours,’ she said. ‘So I brought it back.’

Ashley turned over the pages without breathing. He had fully believed that he would never see these pictures again. He glanced up to thank her, but she was already halfway to leaving. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Listen, thank you. You’re the girl
who was there that night, aren’t you? The girl who asked me if I was all right.’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Juliette.’

Juli
ette
was how she said it. Ashley could hear the last two letters in the way she pronounced it, like it was the most important name in the world. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘And I’m Ashley.’

The girl sat down and twisted the sleeve of her coat in her hands, first one way, then the other. ‘How did you know where I would be?’ said Ashley. ‘How did you find me to give the book back?’

‘I heard you say you drew portraits here.’ She hesitated. ‘Who was that man with the gun?’

‘I’ve never met him before in my life,’ said Ashley. ‘I was only looking at the car. I don’t know what that was about.’

The girl went on twisting her coat sleeve. Then she said, ‘I think he was looking for my father.’

‘Why?’ said Ashley. ‘Is your father the man who owns the car?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why do they want to find him?’

Juliette hesitated, and when she spoke, he heard her voice shaking. ‘I don’t know. But it means nothing good.’

‘No,’ said Ashley. ‘Bloody hell.’

Luckily, the girl did not think this inadequate. She gave a half-smile and said, ‘How much for a portrait?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘To you. If you really want one?’

‘Yes.’

It was a strange thing to ask, but he turned over a new
page anyway and studied her face, then tapped the pencil against the spine of the sketchbook, trying to think.

‘I always thought this should have been a garden,’ said the girl after a few minutes had passed.

‘What should?’

‘Covent Garden.’

Ashley smiled at that. ‘You aren’t from round here?’

‘Not originally, but I’ve been here ever since I can remember.’

‘How long?’

‘Since I was five years old.’

Ashley looked up. ‘Can’t you remember before you were five years old?’ he said.

The girl considered it, then shook her head. It seemed to trouble her, not remembering. ‘I’m not from here either,’ said Ashley. ‘And nothing in this city is like its name. I couldn’t understand it when I first came. Half the places sound like magical lands out of some story.’

‘White City,’ said the girl. ‘I’ve never been there, but I always imagined the buildings all made out of white marble, like a palace.’

Ashley shook his head and won a faint smile. The first lines of his sketch were emerging now under his right hand. Half the time his drawings came easier if he did not concentrate. He fixed the girl’s spirit in his mind instead. She was rich enough to have the glossy look of someone who had always been well fed, and she was rich enough to wear impractical shoes and a white coat. She was twisting her sleeve again and rearranging each strand of her hair. Ashley thought if he could make her stop doing that, he might stand a chance of getting this portrait accurate. ‘There are places in America with better names,’ he said.

‘Really?’

‘Some of them,’ said Ashley. ‘Like Rifle or Telescope. Eureka. Bumble Bee.’

‘Are those real towns?’

‘What about Truth or Consequences?’

‘There isn’t actually a place called Truth or Consequences?’ He nodded. ‘That’s a poetic name,’ she said. ‘As if you have to tell the truth or suffer the consequences.’

‘I think it means the game. Like Truth or Dare.’

A chill wind troubled the pages of the sketchbook. From her expression, Ashley could tell the girl had never heard of that game. He drew on, glancing up at her face every few seconds.

‘Can I ask you a question?’ she said.

‘Of course.’

‘Those pictures in your book. How did you capture the people’s spirits?’

Ashley looked up, and when he did, he realized that she had been studying his face too. ‘Their spirits?’ he said, and set down his pencil.

‘Yes. That man in the black suit – who is he?’

‘Show me.’

She took the sketchbook and turned over the pages. She had very white fingers, as though she had never washed a plate or swept a floor in all her life. ‘Here,’ she said.

Ashley looked. ‘He’s the man on the door of a club somewhere. I was waiting in the queue, so I drew him.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘I don’t know. I never spoke to him.’

‘But I know things about him just from looking at it,’ said Juliette.

‘Like what?’

‘He wants to be a musician. He has a wife and a child.’ Ashley looked up at her. ‘What is it?’ she said.

‘Nothing. Only that’s what I thought about him too.’

‘How is that possible?’

‘Maybe this sounds strange,’ said Ashley, ‘but I understand about people when I start drawing them.’

Juliette held his gaze for a moment, then looked at her clasped hands. ‘It’s not strange,’ she said. And then: ‘So what do you know about me?’

‘You have a lot of money,’ he said.

‘Not a lot …’

‘No? Then I made a mistake.’

She looked down at her hands. ‘Maybe. But I don’t want that to be the first thing you think about me.’

‘It’s not. It’s just the first thing I see. It’s on the surface, you know?’

‘Tell me what else.’

‘You want to be liked,’ he said, abandoning tact in favour of the truth. ‘You look like you don’t feel safe in this city, which is strange, because you must have been here a long time. You are on your own too much. And something else.’

He looked up at her and frowned, and this time she did not look away. And suddenly he knew what it was. She was like him. In this whole city, with its millions of inhabitants and millions of visitors, someone like him had come up and asked him to draw her portrait, and he could see her soul and he knew.

‘What is it?’ she said. ‘What else?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘That’s all. I should go home.’

The girl took hold of his arm. She did it lightly, as
though afraid of hurting him. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Can I tell you what I see about you?’

Ashley wanted to say no, but his voice had constricted to a whisper. ‘You don’t feel safe in this city either,’ she said, ‘because you don’t feel safe anywhere. You don’t know where you belong. It’s a kind of restlessness. You probably drink and smoke and think you’re very old. I’ve seen other people like you; they come and ask my father for work. He says they are lost people. At first I thought they were just eccentric, but it’s not exactly that. I’m like them, I think, and you are too. You walk about the streets drawing pictures, and that’s your way of searching for another world.’

‘Another world,’ said Ashley. And there in the cheerless dusk, he felt his whole life alter. He had never considered that there might be anyone else like him.

Anna went home to the wrong flat after work. She had done this twice before, and each time she had the same sinking sense like missing a step and then had laughed at herself for being stupid. But as she went back down to the Underground, she thought, I have never been fixed in one place. Sometimes I forget where I am when I wake up in the morning, and when I leave work, I have to think about where to go, because I have never belonged anywhere. She and Ashley were back at Bradley’s now, because they were looking for another flat. In truth, his old house in Forest Park Mansions was the place she thought of as home more than anywhere.

A merciless tiredness came over her on the Underground, but the crowds of people kept her standing. On the escalator, she closed her eyes. She walked the last few streets in a stupor and went up the stairs of the building one at a time.

When she got back, past nine o’clock, Ashley was sitting at the table. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said.

‘Just sitting.’

‘I know. I thought you would be out late as usual.’

‘I’m finished with that.’

She gave him a quick smile, threw her keys on the table, and went to the sink to fill the kettle. But she was too tired to lift it, so she just stood there and watched the pigeons fighting on the wet glass of the roof. ‘Mam?’ said Ashley.

She turned. He looked unlike himself, like he used to look when he was a young boy. ‘Tell me about my father,’ he said.

For the first time in months, Anna considered her son properly, the way she sometimes studied his face when he was sleeping. His features were almost settled now, black eyes like his father’s and a mouth that seemed permanently fixed in defiance.

‘There are things I don’t understand,’ said Ashley. ‘Like why I can make things happen that aren’t possible. And why I believe that this isn’t the real world. Mam, sometimes things come to me out of nowhere. Once I heard music, but it was the middle of the night and everywhere was locked up. And another time I thought I saw …’ He shook his head. ‘I thought I saw people moving out of sight. You know why, don’t you? There’s some reason.’

‘I used to tell you stories,’ she said. ‘You thought they were fairy tales, and you asked me to stop.’

‘Maybe I would believe them now,’ he said quietly.

She turned back to the sink. Rain was falling outside. Whenever it rained, the glass roof beyond the kitchen window thundered and drowned all conversation. Lightning flared in the small square of sky. Anna thought that made
it easier, to speak with her back to him and her voice half covered by the storm.

‘Tell me,’ said Ashley again. And Anna, as well as she knew, told him. In the years of silence, she had perfected the story as she knew it, and that made it easier than it had been before. She told him everything.

‘Are there other people who know about this?’ said Ashley when she had finished.