‘My mum calls you Jean.’ Mother was a neighbour and a friend. No, hardly a friend, more someone Jean had known all her life. There wasn’t much time for friendship in Maggie Read’s life; she had Cy and four children and that brother on her hands. As Maggie Edmondstone she had been a pretty girl, now she was plump and quiet, and still only twenty-nine, older than Jean.
‘Jean, I’ve left my bra behind in the baths.’
‘You shouldn’t be wearing a bra.’ Jean cast an eye on her pupil’s skinny frame.
‘I feel really cosy in a bra.’ She scuttled round in front to prevent her teacher getting away. ‘And now I’ve left it behind. Can I go back and get it?’
‘No, certainly not.’ Jean was sharp. No girl was let out unattended these days. Not even Connie Read, who ought to be indestructible if anyone was.
‘I could take Rose Allen with me.’
‘Not even with Rose Allen.’
‘I’d only take two minutes and it’s only Scripture. No one’d notice.’
‘No.’
‘That’s gone for good then,’ said Connie in a resigned voice. ‘Can’t leave a thing behind in that place.’
Jean gave her a gentle push in the direction of her classroom and herself turned towards the staff room. She had a free period.
There was one woman sitting at the table by the window marking exercise books with a huge red pencil. Everyone has to have an outlet somewhere and this red pencil was Madge Cullen’s. At her elbow was a big brown teapot and a tray of cups.
Jean put her hand on the teapot. ‘Cold,’ she said.
‘I’ll make some more.’ Madge did not look up from her work, but went slashing on with her great red weapon.
‘No, don’t bother.’ Jean poured out a tepid tea and drank it thirstily. It wasn’t too bad. She poured another cup and lit a cigarette.
‘Madge,’ she said suddenly. ‘Do you believe in other worlds?’
‘Yes,’ said Madge, and returned to her books.
‘I don’t mean heaven and hell and all that sort of thing. But other suns, other worlds, with other sorts of living beings on them.’
Madge was silent. ‘Yes, I suppose I do. Yes, probably there are.’
Jean looked out of the window, upwards to the sky. ‘All those galaxies, millions of them stretching farther into space than we can ever see, and each of them crowded with suns and planets. There must be people living on some of them.’
‘Mm,’ said Madge, studying the book before her. ‘Horrible thought, isn’t it?’
‘But do you think they can get in touch with us?’
Madge didn’t even bother to answer. She was making little moaning noises of despair over the page she was studying. ‘Oh, naughty girl,’ she was saying, ‘oh you careless girl.’
‘Could they come here and take us away, do you think?’ asked Jean. She said it aloud, but Madge wasn’t listening and she was glad of it. There are some things you want to shout out, but don’t want anyone to hear.
She lowered her eyes from the sky with its teeming worlds to the school playground.
‘What’s Bernard Dodge doing mooching about out there?’ she said.
‘Well, he shouldn’t be,’ said Miss Cullen, hearing at once. ‘He ought to be sitting quietly writing a nature essay on Flies. He’s always where he shouldn’t be.’ She hurried out.
Jean watched her curiously from the window. She rather liked Bernard, who was a shy, brilliantly clever child whom no one could control. Next term he had a place at a school for specially talented children and, in Jean’s opinion, even they would have to watch out. On his form Bernard was hard to match.
She saw him and his teacher stand there talking. They weren’t arguing. No one argued with Bernard. You put your point and he put his and then you found yourself doing what he’d said.
Unsurprised she saw him lead Miss Cullen towards the shed where the boys kept their games equipment. He went in and she waited outside. Bernard came out carrying a bundle which he then gave to her.
Funny, funny, funny, thought Jean. What’s he found?
The telephone rang on Coffin’s desk. He picked it up and listened.
‘What? Right. No, Headmistress, you did quite right. I’ll send someone round. No, wait. I’ll come myself.’
He left a message for Dove, who was out, and hurried round the corner to the school. In the entrance he found a small group made up of Jean Young, Madge Cullen, whom he’d met, and the headmistress, whom he’d known for a long time. He thought they all looked white.
‘What have you got? Where did you find it? Where is it?’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ said the headmistress. ‘It may be something or it may be nothing. I couldn’t be sure.’
‘Let me see, then.’
‘Yes. In my room.’ She paused. ‘One of our boys found it. I expect you’ll want to see him?’
‘Later. After I’ve seen what you’ve got.’
Her hand trembled as she opened her door.
‘It’s silly to mind so much. After all, what I’m going to show you isn’t anything human. But sometimes inanimate objects have a character all their own.’
She looked at him pathetically, asking him to say: no, no, things don’t have a life of their own. But when he looked at these he wondered if they didn’t. They were laid out on her table.
There was a child’s handbag of blue plastic, a scarf of blue silk, and a knife.
He looked at them and then at Miss Cullen. She shook her head.
‘I don’t know, but I think Miss Young might know.’ She glanced at Jean Young, who was standing there white-faced. Jean nodded.
‘I don’t know about the scarf,’ she said, ‘but the handbag is Katherine Gable’s. At least I think so. If it is hers you will find her initials inside written in blue ink.’
Handling the bag with a handkerchief Coffin opened it and looked inside. ‘Yes, the initials K. G. are there. Where were these things found?’
The headmistress looked at Miss Cullen.
Miss Cullen cleared her throat. ‘On the shed where we keep the football things,’ she said; her voice came out unexpectedly loud, and she flushed.
‘On the shed?’
‘Yes. On the roof.’
‘And the knife?’
‘Yes, that was there too.’
Coffin turned to Jean Young. She answered his unspoken question. ‘I don’t think it’s Katherine’s. I doubt it. That’s a big knife. A boy’s knife.’
‘It’s a man’s knife,’ said Coffin, picking it up in his handkerchief. Then he corrected himself sadly. His eyes had caught the initials T. B. scratched on one side. ‘No, only a boy’s after all.’ He held it to the light. ‘It’s just possible there might be a print there.’
He felt rotten physically; he wondered if he was going down with something.
Chapter Five
Tony Young
I feel absolutely sick about what has happened to Tom Butt. It wasn’t intended, I’m sure. God, I am sorry. It means more to me than you’d think. I’m glad to get it down on this tape. It’s a sort of way of speaking out silently, if you know what I mean.
Jean came in and told me about it. Of course I knew about Tom disappearing the day before. The whole street was talking about that, and Dave rang me up twice to talk to me about it and see what I thought. I didn’t think much. I just felt sick. Wherever he’d gone it was a removal I didn’t care to dwell upon. But, of course, they are the thoughts you find yourself thinking about most and Tom was hardly out of my thoughts all day.
I didn’t know whether to feel sorry for Tom or exasperation. And that’s the way it always was with him. When he was a kid at school he lived with his old grandmother and as soon as she died he moved into a hostel. His widowed mother had married an Australian and gone out to Sydney to live, leaving him behind. He said he hardly remembered her. When we were at school he’d been plump and spotty, but these last couple of years he’d cleaned himself up and was getting quite presen
table. Taking it all in all, he was part of my life.
Dave thought it was a joke. ‘It’s like science fiction, isn’t it?’ he kept saying. But it was no joke. ‘I wonder how they did it, eh? No one knows that, do they? No one knows and perhaps they’ll never know.’ That was what seemed to impress him most. I could hear admiration oozing out of him. It’s dangerous to get like that.
‘Things have a way of coming out,’ I said sourly. ‘What does Cy think?’
‘Oh, Cy’s not saying anything. But he’s had a quarrel with my sister and he shut himself into his room and sat talking to himself for hours.’
‘Oh well, keep him happy.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I just think life’s better when Cy’s happy than when he’s not.’
Dave didn’t know what to make of that (although what I said had the ring of truth in it), and he put the receiver down. Which was what I wanted; it was his second call that day on this subject. I’d had enough.
And then Jean came in with her news of the penknife and the kid’s clothes turning up in the school playground.
‘And they were on the roof,’ she said, looking pale. ‘On the roof. Just as if they’d been dropped by a bird.’
‘Anyone round here got a helicopter?’ I asked aloud. The man next door’s got a new car, I know that.’
‘Shut up,’ she said.
‘Who found it all?’
‘A boy called Bernard Dodge. He’s the sort that would.’
‘Don’t hold it against him.’
‘No.’ She pushed her hair back from her forehead in a way she has. ‘No, I don’t really. Pour me a cup of that tea.’
I gave it to her and took some more myself. It was good to taste the hot sweet drink. I had to remember that, whatever had happened to Katherine Gable and Tom Butt and the others, I was still in the body and could enjoy things of this sort. Animals like us have to take our pleasures as we find them. John Plowman was always telling us this, and for the first time it struck me as a dangerous philosophy. It hadn’t been dangerous for old John, whose animal pleasures were clearly of a very restrained and moderate sort. But if someone like Cy had listened to this too much, there was no knowing what he might get up to.
‘Where’s Dad?’
‘Out in the shed with his birds,’ I said.
‘Oh good.’ And she nodded. What she meant was: oh good, he’s safely out of the way and won’t bother us. We tended to be this way about Dad and I’m afraid he begins to notice.
‘Did the policeman tell you about Tom’s knife being there?’ I asked.
‘No, of course not. But I saw it before he came. You know how good my sight is. I could read his initials. Scratched on the back of the knife, but quite easy to read.’ She poured herself some more tea, drank it and then said, ‘You see the significance of the knife? You see what it means?’
‘Oh yes, I see,’ I said. ‘It means that Tom’s disappearance and the children’s, specifically Katherine Gable’s, must have some connection.’
‘It doesn’t sound right, does it?’ said Jean helplessly. ‘I mean it just doesn’t sound right. How can they be the same sort of thing?’
‘There’s all manner of ways.’
‘You’re a strange boy.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Sometimes you act as if you had access to knowledge no one else in the world can ever have. You’re doing it now.’
‘Thanks again.’
‘Was Tom a friend of yours then?’ she asked.
‘Well, I knew him.’
I didn’t go on, just poured some more hot water into the tea-pot and sat there waiting for it to brew itself into a tea of some sort. It was a worrying thought that the disappearance of the children and possibly of Tom too (and here I would have to check) coincided with dates when there had been a UFO sighting.
Some people might say it was possible they had been taken off by kidnappers from outer space.
This was the knowledge that Jean, with her good eyesight, read in my face. It was quite a thought.
It was a thought I handled with considerable reservations.
My trouble was that I associated the girl’s disappearance with those noises I had on my tape. I promised to say more about those noises.
They were cries and little moans.
I made an excuse to Jean and went upstairs and looked at the tape. I didn’t wish to play it. I knew well how it sounded. The beginning of the tape was a perfectly normal recording I had made myself of a concert. Well, it wasn’t everyone’s sort of concert. The music was Stockhausen. To me it sounded Bronze Age, heroic, stirring. The percussion went on for about ten minutes, then these other sounds started coming in. At first superimposed on the other sounds, then taking over entirely.
I was absolutely staggered when I first played the tape back and got what was on it. I could swear that when I put it away having finished recording the Stockhausen piece from the radio it was perfectly normal tape.
I had no memory at all of adding to it.
I knew that if I took the tape round to John Plowman and played it to him he’d be on to it at once and have it marked “sounds coming from out of space” before I could turn round. But God knows the noises sounded human enough to me. I thought they sounded like a child.
I picked up the tape, now neatly re-wound, and looked at it. Then I put it away. I was terrified to play it now in case Tom Butt had somehow got on it.
However, it seemed to me that I was in a very tricky position if you didn’t believe, like John Plowman, in visitors from outer space and that I owed it to myself to be brave.
I played the tape. But Tom Butt had not made his entrance there. Not yet. What was there was unnerving enough, but it didn’t include Tom Butt. I re-wound the tape, my machine running itself twice into trouble as I did so. I’d have to get Dave to repair it, he’s a genius with machines.
I like a rational explanation for things. It may not be easy to find, but I like to think it’s there. Certain facts had to be explained. First, the coincidence of the dates of a UFO sighting with the days the last two children had disappeared. Secondly, the coincidence of Tom’s knife turning up with Katy Gable’s possessions. Then there were these strange voices, which sounded like a child’s (or children) on my tape. I didn’t remember putting them there, but you could hear them. And that was what I didn’t like. Looking at these things rationally it seemed to me that I had to study our Club, that I ought to dig into it really hard.
The first opportunity for digging came a few days later with our weekly Club meeting on Tuesday. It seemed an opportunity, tape, for taking you along and letting you get to know a few voices, but the chance to use you didn’t arise. This is all from memory. But I’ve got a pretty good memory.
Judith, my ex-girl friend, was waiting outside for me that evening when I set off. At least, I deduced she was waiting because she spoke to me. Also, I don’t suppose she was sitting in her car outside our house just to catch a glimpse of our lovely front garden.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Hello.’ I didn’t like to make it too enthusiastic although I was quite pleased to see her again.
‘I was just passing and I saw you come out.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Yes, it is just so. Don’t think I was looking for you. I was just visiting an actress friend of mine who lives near here; she’s married to a policeman.’
‘Poor thing,’ I said. I knew who she meant, of course. There’s only one policeman round here married to an actress. I wish we had more of them; they make an interesting breed.
‘Can I give you a lift?’
‘You won’t like where I’m going.’ We had quarrelled, you see, about my activities in the Club. Judith didn’t approve of such things. She said they made her flesh crawl, although hers was lovely flesh, crawling or otherwise. She’s a beautiful girl.
‘I’m trying to protect you from your future,’ she said, opening the door of the car. I got in. I simply
couldn’t resist an opportunity to sit in it. I closed my eyes and pretended it was mine. ‘If you don’t watch out, if you keep going around with people like them, then you’re going to end up a creepy old man.’
‘That’s a long way off yet,’ I said comfortably.
‘Then a creepy young one.’
I opened my eyes. ‘Don’t you think there must be something in me that agrees with what they’re doing and wants to join in?’ I asked seriously.
‘That’s where I get stuck,’ she said. ‘Every, every time. Want to get out and walk?’
‘No.’ So she drove on, her face looking sad. I felt sad myself.
‘Give me time, Judith,’ I said. ‘Let me get this thing worked out. You never know. I might turn out to be a boy who is changing.’
She had driven me almost to John Plowman’s door, but she stopped short of it. She didn’t want to drive right up and I knew it.
‘Well, don’t change everything.’ She was watching me get out of the car. ‘Leave me behind something to know you by.’
I bent forward and kissed her cheek. ‘When you drive away my heart goes with you,’ I said.
I watched her drive away. She was a most beautiful girl and I certainly had lost my heart to that car.
Esther Glasgow was arriving just as I was and followed me up the path to John’s front door. Behind her came Cy. John Plowman’s wife opened the door and we all went into his sitting-room where John and a couple of other members were already waiting. Seeing them all together so soon after meeting Judith I saw them with her eyes and wondered why I stuck with them. But immediately I knew they’d never achieve anything without me and I must stay with them. A boy likes to feel he’s needed.
‘How’s Miss Jones?’ I asked John. Not having had any sort of communication from Miss Jones, either from this world or the next, I had naturally wondered.
‘Oh yes, I have an announcement to make.’ He cleared his throat and went and stood in front of the fireplace where he always stood to take charge of a meeting. ‘Friends,’ he began. He always called us friends. I think it was a hangover from some other group he must have led, probably something with a more religious flavour. ‘Friends, you will be glad to know that our friend Eliza Jones has taken her operation and has stood it well.’ He made it sound like an examination Miss Jones had been sitting and had satisfactorily passed. ‘We have hopes of a good recovery.’
Coffin's Dark Number Page 5
