‘Well, it’s not raining for one thing.’
‘Incredible.’
I ignored this. I’d promised myself to make more of an effort with him. He was about to walk on. Perhaps I had offended him in some way.
‘Is something the matter?’
‘Obviously not,’ he said, which I thought was an incredibly strange answer, and perhaps implied that I was taking liberties. I couldn’t think how, it wasn’t like we only just met. Perhaps he never gave me permission to shorten his name. It was all I could think of to begin with.
‘Do you mind me calling you Thom?’
His eyes narrowed on me. ‘Why should I? It wouldn’t make much sense to call me Richard or Harry, or’ – he paused momentarily – ‘Mark, or some other insignificant.’
I wondered if the mention of that name Mark was purely coincidental. Then I remembered having seen Thom the night Mark drove me home. At least I thought it was him standing at the window. I barely had time to think more about it. Mrs Evans had caught my attention. She stood at one end of the corridor, near the front desk, beckoning me impatiently by curling her index finger. In this time, Thom made his escape of me.
‘Alex,’ she began as I got to her, ‘I know it’s been a busy day and I said you could work here the rest of it–’
‘But you need me in the shop,’ I said, unable to hide my disappointment. A sort of hope I’d felt drained away. I knew what it meant to be stuck in the shop, in one corner of the house. Isolation. Exclusion. Routine.
‘I’ve so much to do today,’ Mrs Evans continued. ‘The front desk will have to remain unattended.’
‘I need a quick break before I start in the shop,’ I told her, making my way towards the Ladies, genuinely. The toilets were to the southeast of the building. While washing my hands I clocked my tired looking eyes in the mirror. The pinholes shrank back. I felt the weight of the mascara Stacey had given me sitting in my jacket pocket. I pulled it out. It couldn’t hurt to try to liven up my eyes. – It made a small difference, though I wasn’t sure it was worth the trouble.
Just as I came out, I saw Thom through the courtyard windows turning off at the end of the corridor, and heading towards the front door. He was carrying a holdall and laptop bag, and seemed to be in a hurry, so that I had just missed him. I couldn’t help but think that if it weren’t for messing about with the makeup – which seemed to be for nothing anyway – I would have been able to speak to him again today, to perhaps smooth things over.
Eleven
SLIMY UNIVERSE
‘Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.’
– Bernard Shaw
Thom was absent from the Cray a whole week. Daniel said he’d gone to Rochester to check out a collection of Egyptian pottery to exhibit at the Cray.
‘Bloody moody sod!’ He laughed. ‘I’d love an opportunity like that. Then again, so would the wife. She’d make me take her along, and I’d be hard-pressed to get any work done.’
‘He was in a bad mood then?’ I asked.
‘Foul mood is more like it.’
‘About going?’
‘About everything. He’s been putting it off for weeks, and then he said he might send me instead. Suddenly he decides to go out of the blue, and yet remains in a foul mood about it, including about driving there – he hates to drive.’
‘Really?’
‘He only drives when he has to. Otherwise I think he’d just walk everywhere.’ He looked up in thought. ‘I’m sure he once grumbled that it was restricting, or something ridiculous like that.’
I decided to change the subject matter in case I seemed too interested. I asked about Dan’s responsibilities at Richford House. He talked for quite a while about his duties there. Would it be surprising to learn that my attention span on these details gave way a little?
The idea of a whole week felt strangely long. And so it was. Many a month had seemed shorter. Evidently, my plan to make a concerted effort with Thom had somehow backfired. He clearly wasn’t happy with me for whatever reason.
During that particular week, I saw a familiar woman loitering in the Colman Smith Gallery. She was tall – owing to her very high heels – and brunette. She examined the art with an unmoved air, while mindfully straying not ten feet from Thom’s office. Her head regularly tilted to one side, as if to listen for something. Perhaps she had a meeting with Dan and waited for him. I went over to ask.
‘I’m actually here to see Thom,’ she said, looking down her nose at me – though I was at the right height for her to do so. ‘Is he around? He’s always asking me to stop by whenever I’ve the time.’
‘I’m afraid he’s away at the moment.’
‘Where is he?’
‘I couldn’t say, though I believe its business related.’
She flared her nostrils at me, as if something foul had been smeared under her nose. ‘It’s strange he didn’t tell me. It must have been on short notice. For how long?’
‘I’m not familiar with his diary. Perhaps you could leave your name?’
‘Carla-Louise Stewart,’ she snapped it at me. ‘Thom has all my contact details.’
‘Perhaps you’d prefer to wait for Daniel?’
‘No, he won’t do. Just let Thom know I dropped by. He can give me a call anytime. – And here –’ She held out her hand. I instinctively held out mine. She dropped some rubbish into it.
‘Dispose of this, would you.’ With that, she turned and strutted to the door, as if she was auditioning for the catwalk. Once over the threshold her shoulders dropped and she vanished from my sight.
The moment I had an opportunity to ask Dan about her I did. After having searched the house for him, I gave up and went for a cup of tea. There I found him making one for himself. I cornered him, casually.
‘Dan, do you remember that woman, Carla-Louise?’
‘The brunette with the legs?’
‘Yes, she has two of them.’
‘Ha-ha,’ he voiced, while dropping four or five sugars into his mug.
‘Actually, I only really noticed her four-inch heels.’
‘That’s because you’re a girl.’ He slurped his tea.
‘Does she come here often?’
‘She’s been coming here for about… nearly a year I suppose. She’s rolling in it, drives a merc, deals in antiques. I think she’s after some sort of commemoration for donating to this place and Richford. She always has some enquiry or item to donate – though she’ll only deal with Thom these days. There’s something about him she likes.’
‘Really?’ I contrived a smile. ‘Does he like her?’
‘You know Thom; he’s a bit of a mystery. I’ve been telling him for ages now to ask her out, but he doesn’t say anything about it. For all I know he could have a wife and kids tucked away somewhere. You can never really tell with him. To speak the truth though, he’s been encouraging her lately. The last time she came here, he was all “Stop by anytime”. She giggled like a schoolgirl. So maybe he does like her but is shy or something.’ (I didn’t know Thom as long as Dan had, but shy he was not.) ‘How it makes me think back to the first time she met him, Alex. She looked at him as if he was going to throttle her. Back then, she’d only deal with me. He wasn’t particularly courteous to her either, but something must have changed in the last couple of months. She likes him better now for some reason. You know most people really do mistake him for something else. It took me ages to get used to him and his sense of humour. He must’ve grown on Carla. Yeah, I reckon they’ll probably get together eventually. Hopefully while they’re still young.’
I asked nothing more on this subject. I’d heard enough. I only hoped I wouldn’t have to deal with the brunette again; she was rude. Dan obviously didn’t think so since he was encouraging Thom to date her. Or he didn’t regard it with much importance. I saw how her quasi-tallness and her dark sleek hair, and perhaps her olive complexion, could be eye-catching to the opposite sex. But I was sure Thom could do be
tter.
Stacey hadn’t turned up for work on the Monday either, I found out on Tuesday. Mrs Evans said she had sounded better on the phone and would be in for her next shift. When I saw her at work on the Saturday, she seemed recovered from what she acknowledged was a cold after all. She looked a deal paler than usual. Her plum hair dye had somewhat faded and she’d added blonde streaks to it. We’d arranged to meet for lunch in the staffroom, but I bumped into her in the main entrance hall on the way. I was on the front desk again. I’m sure Mrs Evans knew that I preferred it to the shop, though I felt certain she didn’t consider it when fixing the rota. I mentioned it to Stacey out of curiosity.
‘I told Mrs Evans I didn’t like taking the mail round,’ she confessed with a croaky voice.
I had a feeling this had something to do with Thom, but I wasn’t going to get her started on him. It didn’t surprise me that she could get her own way with Mrs Evans. They were quite alike. I could see how they suited each other in many ways – if only to the degradation of everyone else.
‘I’m so annoyed about missing my drama class on Tuesday!’ she complained as we walked. While she continued getting this off her wheezy chest, I caught a whiff of a familiar scent drifting down the corridor. I’d by now worked out it belonged to Thom, that spicy cologne I smelt so often. More and more it had an effect on me. Stacey inclined her head slightly to observe something behind me. I didn’t turn to look because she immediately changed her tone and the subject with it.
‘So it turns out the ghost isn’t bound to the Cray after all!’ she said with all the subtlety of firing an AK-47 into the air. ‘He got back this morning. He’s just gone into the De Morgan Gallery, and man he looks grumpy!’
I knew he could probably hear her. I didn’t like it when she was like this. I saw an opportunity to give her a piece of my mind.
‘Well, Miss Lloyd,’ I asserted. ‘You’re lucky the germs got hold of you before I did! Mark turned up here last week. I wonder how he knew where to find me!’
‘Did he?’ She looked ready to lie. Seeing my face clearly unconvinced, she huffed and confessed. ‘He got my number off Ben and phoned me. I swear I kept saying he should just call you. He said he did but you wouldn’t answer. He just wanted to apologise in person. Hey, I thought it was a nice idea.’ She shrugged and attempted an innocent smile.
‘Well thanks for telling me,’ I sighed. ‘I suppose it’s all sorted now anyway.’
She misconstrued this.
‘So you’re going to see him again?’
‘No, I don’t like him like that. I made that clear to him last week. I did let him drive me home, only because he lives around the corner from me. I told him straight that we couldn’t be more than friends.’
‘But he’s really nice and he’s fit!’
‘You go out with him then.’ I smiled.
I headed into the staffroom and she followed where she plonked herself down on the sofa. I wanted to eat lunch in the Sunken Garden, despite the extreme fog that had returned to the Cray, strangely enough since Thom had.
‘It’s November!’ she moaned.
‘Oh, come on it’s not that cold out. T-shirt weather!’ I exaggerated. ‘Besides, I don’t want to spend my break sitting in this stuffy room.’
Reluctantly she agreed. I was disappointed to find that the fog was beginning to lift as we made our way round the house. Magpies flittered about in the Rose Garden, combing the haze as they came and went in pairs. We walked to the far end of the river and down the stone steps. Despite hardly any wind, the thinning mist drifted like wraiths through the garden.
‘This fog’s really lifting fast,’ I commented, once we’d sat on a bench to eat.
‘Not fast enough,’ she said with alarm in her tone, and a mouthful of cold turkey sandwich. ‘In fact, I want to go back now; it’s really creeping me out the way it’s moving like ghosts! I feel like we’re being watched!’ she whispered, scaring herself. Once apprehension kicked in, everything else became objects of it, even the few people wandering about.
‘Look there!’ she moaned, nodding towards the belt of trees ahead. ‘There were eyes! I’m certain I saw them watching us! Big dark ones!’
‘Come on then.’ I gave in at last, screwing up my rubbish. The moment I stood up, she became slightly relieved.
As we moved towards the steps, she stopped and stiffened. ‘Did you hear that? I heard something move through those bushes!’
‘Oh, no,’ I teased, unable to help myself, ‘you don’t think that Jack the Ripper actor has found out where you work?’
‘Oh, don’t!’ she wriggled her shoulders as if something ethereal had laid its cold touch to her neck. ‘Don’t say that!’
‘Come on, Stace, it was probably a little bird.’
Then I heard it, and it sounded large – large enough to breathe deeply.
Stacey seemed over it now. ‘I s’pose it could’ve been an animal or something.’
Some thing. Just hearing her say that made me think of the stranger, with his pregnant belly and sickly yellow skin. His huge dark-muddy eyes looked darker in my mind. Was he watching from hidden places in the gardens again? Did he watch us now? I knew it would be the end of Stacey’s job here if I mentioned such a suspicion.
I forgot all of this immediately we came up from the garden. As we turned the hedgerow, a sudden splash and scream came from the other side of the river. I looked over to the Shockers where I saw a little boy’s head go under and then re-break the surface. It bobbed in the grey-green murky water before sinking again. The figure of a robust woman (his mother I presumed) raced along the farther bank towards Westleigh Bridge. She screeched at the top of her lungs, tearing her hair out in panic, while pointing to the bubbles in the water. I was closer than she, though I still had to run fifty feet or so. My heart beat in my throat as I ran to the edge of the bank, judging the distance to the circle of ripples where he’d disappeared. I hurried to remove my coat and shoes. All in a microsecond, with her screams climbing higher and nearer, a million questions raced through my mind. How old was he? Would I hit my head? How deep was it here? I was a good swimmer but never dove off a ledge in my life – how do you dive?
Before I knew it I was flying. Arms stretched before me, my form horizontal. It refused to curve into those estimable arcs, like the Olympic divers I’d seen on TV. I thought you just jumped headfirst and it happened. Wrong! I belly flopped into the freezing cold river, shutting my eyes tight. I knew I’d landed when I felt a hard slap across my entire body in one sweeping assault. Did I take a breath? Too late if I didn’t! I had a job to curve my body and kick my way down at an angle. It wasn’t a fast flowing river but I felt the current. Deeper than it looked, the water was thick with reeds and slime. Such a mixed consistency it felt like I was swimming through runny eggs. I opened my eyes but it made no difference. The water was a murky-green gunk all around me. My arms and fingers outstretched, searching for the boy in a dark slimy universe. Muffled screams still reached my ears through the thick water. I clutched at every reed, pulling at them, feeling for his little body. My feet still kicking never touched the bottom. I began to panic with my oxygen almost gone. I couldn’t find him! I grasped nothing – but something grasped me! It grasped me from behind. A solid arm of muscle roped my waist. Someone pulled me backwards with the tightest hold. Vainly, I struggled to free myself. I needed air – I needed it now! The last pocket of oxygen in my lungs escaped me, and in its place, some of the filthy water entered my mouth. Finally, my hair rushed forward over my face, as the surface sucked me up into the dry world above.
Air! I inhaled a lungful with relief, followed by a spout of coughing while my legs dangled like pendulums. I kicked with such freedom now the weight of the water was gone, and clutched at the unrelenting arm about me. Then it was gone. Someone dropped me inches from the hard grassy bank. Through the wet curtains of hair covering my eyes, I peered to see the boy panting next to me, his clothes slimed in a green-brown substance. I could
smell the foulness of the water freed. His mother was crooning over him and stroking his face. She frequently thanked someone over her shoulder. I turned to look. Thom stood there dripping wet in shirt and jeans; and so very still, he did remind me of the mannequin at the Dungeon. He had a disturbing look of anticipation on his face. He seemed to be scanning the area across the bank, through the willow trees, down the Shockers, back to the boy and straight through me. His expression wasn’t as if he was looking for someone, but rather expecting them.
Stacey stood behind me asking in astonishment if I was okay. I couldn’t pay attention to her at this moment. In an instant, Thom relaxed and began shaking his hair out like a dog. Sprays of river water made it appear like a light mist of rain in the air. He’d pulled us both out together, one under each arm. Not a strand of reed clung to him, as they did to the boy and me.
‘How is he?’ I asked the boy’s mother, who was now pressing him to her chest and rocking him.
‘I think he’s okay,’ she said shakily, combing his hair back. She thanked Thom again, who leant over her, offering to fetch towels. She shook her head decidedly, saying she’d get him straight home.
Thom responded, ‘I was glad to have been walking nearby.’
I must have looked like a half-drowned rat as I shook with cold. My trousers and sweater stuck to my greased skin like a layer of fishy-flesh. This only fuelled my annoyance at Thom for dragging me across the riverbed. Autumn leaves blew about the ground and I felt every bit of that chilling wind.
The mother got up and began stripping her son of his jacket and jumper before wrapping him up in her own coat. His little teeth were a blur with chattering. She picked him up like a ragged doll and carried him away, while scolding him for running off. In this time I turned to Stacey without answering any of her questions. Through clenched teeth I told her to let Mrs Evans know what had happened; that I must go home to shower and change. She hesitated, not wanting to miss whatever might follow, before running off, rather too excitedly to communicate the story.
Halton Cray (Shadows of the World Book 1) Page 10
