His mother had come in behind her, and saw. She squared her shoulders and marched up to the counter. "Be a credit to me," she said to Fowler, and pushed out past the slowest of the pensioners.
She was relinquishing her hold on him at last, he thought. Suzanne had shown her that she had to. Did she think there was already more between him and Suzanne than he secretly hoped there might be? That evening she wanted to know all about his day, but beneath her pride and resignation he sensed her suspicion that he was holding something back.
As the weeks passed, he was: the way Suzanne smiled at him when her bare arm brushed his, her perfume lingering on his skin; the touch of her hair on his face when she leaned down to murmur to him, the warmth of her breath in his ear. Once, at the counter, the back of his hand accidentally touched one of her breasts, and that night he took her faint ambiguous smile to bed with him.
For a while he blamed hairy-eared Ben for his having to fantasize. Ben proved to be second-in-command at the branch. When it became clear that Suzanne preferred Fowler's company to his, he kept them apart as much as he could, giving them work at opposite ends of the library or insinuating himself between them at the counter. But they had to be together sometimes, and then Fowler felt his inability to ask her out almost choking him. Her being two years older surely wasn't insurmountable; only his silence was. Even when he put his hand over his mouth and whispered to the voice to come and help him, there was silence.
Ben was at least indirectly responsible for his hearing the voice again. That Saturday Ben was in charge, and not only sent Fowler to search for misplaced books while Suzanne worked at the counter but left Fowler to run the library while Ben joined Suzanne in the staffroom for the mid-morning break. When they reappeared, Fowler gathered that she'd refused to go over to the pub with Ben for lunch.
Fowler's mother came in about twelve with a packet of sandwiches for him, as usual. Some of her hair was straggling out of the tortoiseshell comb, and one of her stockings was crooked. It dismayed him to see how she was beginning to resemble the pensioners whose second home was the library. She must be lonely now that his father went to the football ground on Saturdays, not that she would admit it to herself. If the librarian were here she would chat to him about how well Fowler was settling in, but she hadn't taken to Ben. She nodded curtly to him and frowned at Suzanne's bare knees, and trudged out, mopping her forehead.
At five to one Ben stationed himself beside the door to bar any last-minute arrivals, and slammed the bolt into the socket as soon as the slowest of the pensioners left, wheezing. "Don't hurry back," Ben muttered, and turned to Suzanne. "Make me a coffee as long as you're having one, there's a good girl. No point in going to the pub if I'll be drinking by myself."
She virtually ignored him. "Would you like one, Fowler?"
"I'll make them," Fowler said, and glimpsed a moue of childish anger on Ben's face. He might be years older than Fowler, but his secret self was younger. Fowler ate his sandwiches, thick unequal chunks of bread between which fatty meat lurked, while he waited for the kettle to boil, and carried the mugs out of the kitchen into the staffroom, a small room with net curtains and three unmatched easy chairs. "I like more milk," Ben complained.
"He knows where it is then, doesn't he, Fowler?"
"I'll put it in," Fowler said.
Ben glared at the mug when Fowler had topped it up with milk, and unfolded the Telegraph so sharply Fowler thought it would tear. Suzanne winked at Fowler and began to talk about a film she and some girlfriends had dared each other to watch, the kind of film Fowler's schoolmates would brave. If Ben weren't there, Fowler thought, this would have been his chance to ask her to see a film with him. Suppose he spoke too low for Ben to hear? He was struggling to open his mouth when Ben let the newspaper drop. "If it's shocking you want, we've got books that would make you sit up."
"I'll keep that in mind."
"I'll show you," he said as if she had contradicted him, and stalked into the library.
Fowler took a deep breath, and then another and another. "I don't suppose you'd, if you aren't, I mean, some night when you—"
Ben came back with two fat books. "Here, read this," he said, and opened one. "This turned a few stomachs."
"I'd rather not, thank you."
"Not afraid of contemporary German literature, are you?" He read her a passage about eels inside a dead horse and someone being sick. "That's more real than your spooks and monsters."
"And more pointless."
"Maybe you should read the whole book before you dismiss it like that. The real monsters are the things inside people's heads."
"Some people's."
"Maybe a bit of Pynchon will wake yours up."
The title of this book sounded scientific, but Ben began reading a scene involving a brigadier and his mistress that Fowler would have been ashamed even to have dreamed. "Hey, stop it," Fowler shouted. "She doesn't want to hear that."
"What's it to do with you, son? Remember you're on probation here."
"Neither of us wants to hear it," Suzanne said primly. "If that's your taste, just keep it to yourself."
Ben glared between the two of them, his ears bristling. "Never mind acting the innocent. I've seen you stamp both of these books out for people. Don't you want to admit what you're serving them?" he said as if his lips were hindering his words, and shoved himself out of his chair. "I'm going for a drink, and if you stay here I'll have to lock you in."
"Fine. I like the company," Suzanne said.
They heard him tramp into the library, throw the books onto the shelves, open the door and close it behind him with a crash and an overstated rattle of keys. "Good riddance," Suzanne murmured, and began to leaf through a bicycle repair manual. She glanced up and met Fowler's eyes, and he blurted, "So would you like to go and see one of those films?"
She sighed. "Can't either of you leave me alone?"
Fowler felt his mouth pull his hot face taut. He stared about wildly, but there wasn't a book to be grabbed, nothing to hide him. Suzanne sighed again, more gently. "I'm sorry, Fowler. That was unfair of me. You aren't like him. Let's give it time, shall we?"
Did she mean until he was older? He was already old enough, he thought, but one way to prove it was not to persist. "Thanks. That'd be great," he said, and then he froze. "No she didn't," he said.
"I missed that. What did you say?"
"Nothing, forget it," he stammered, just as the voice repeated, "She led him on."
"Don't be stupid," Fowler muttered, surely too quietly for Suzanne to hear—but she could see that he was speaking. She pulled the hem of her skirt down and blinked at him. "Are you all right, Fowler?"
"Of course I am," he said, with a harshness he meant only for the voice.
"She wanted him to dirty her. See now, she's trying to make you look at her down there by pretending that she doesn't want you to. Don't you know where those legs lead? She's an occasion of sin, Fowler. Turn your eyes away."
"Shut up," Fowler said against his knuckles that were bruising his gums. "See, I'm not looking. Shut up now. Leave me alone."
"I will if you want me to," Suzanne said, not quite evenly. "Perhaps I better had."
He saw her stand up and remember that they were locked in. "You can stay here," he babbled. "I want to get something to read."
He floundered into the library and seized a book from the shelf nearest the counter, something about the subconscious. He flung himself onto a chair behind the counter. "Far enough?" he said through his teeth.
The absence of a response was only a threat of more if he ventured back toward the staffroom, he knew. He sat in the empty library, occasionally shivering from head to foot, until Ben unlocked the outer door. Ben smirked at him and then strode pompously into the staffroom, saying loudly, "I hope there's been no misbehavior I should know about." Suzanne fled into the library without replying, and at once the voice said, "Don't look at her."
After that the day grew steadily more unbearab
le. Whenever Fowler had to stand at the counter with Suzanne, the voice started to harangue him until he could move away. "Occasion of sin, occasion of sin. Don't touch her, you don't know where she's been. Keep back or she'll be smearing you with her dugs, she'll get her smell on you ..." As the time for the afternoon breaks approached, the voice grew positively deranged, piling up images more obscene than the passage Ben had tried to read aloud, and fell silent only when Suzanne insisted on taking her break by herself.
Fowler spent his break in one of the easy chairs, his eyes closed, his head aching like a rotten tooth. When he made himself go back to the counter the voice recommenced at once: "There she is, little harlot, filth on legs ..." Somehow he managed to help serve the growing queues of readers, hating himself for feeling relieved when Ben finished his break and kept sidling between him and Suzanne. At last it was closing time, and he groped his way to the staffroom for his coat and walked more or less straight to the door where Ben was waiting, having already let Suzanne flee them both. "I hope you'll be fitter for work on Monday," Ben warned him.
He was stepping out of the shade of the shopping precinct into the humid afternoon when the voice came back. Now it seemed to be trying to soothe him, trying until he thought he might scream. "That's right, you go home where you're safe. Go home where you're loved and looked after. There's only one woman for you . . ." It sounded more out of control than ever, less and less able to disguise its feelings and itself.
The football game had emptied the streets. When he reached his bunch of houses, he heard his mother praying for him, a sound so ritualized that he knew the prayers couldn't occupy the whole of her mind. He crept along the terrace, sneaking his key out of his pocket, and inched the front door open.
Silence gathered around him as he eased the door shut behind him. Both the praying and the voice that had urged him home had stopped. Did that mean his mother had heard him? Apparently not, for another prayer began at once: his mother had only paused after an amen. He tiptoed upstairs, growing less sure at every step what he meant to do. How could he suspect her, his own mother, of even thinking what he'd heard? But if it hadn't been her, must it have been himself? He dodged past her bedroom door and peered around the edge.
She was lying on the drab counterpane in the reluctant light from the speckled window, her hair covering the pillow like a rusty stain, her hands clasped on her chest. Except for the movement of her lips, she might have been asleep or worse. She was troubling her rest by praying for him, and his idea of gratitude was to imagine outrageous things about her. He put one hand on the wall to ease himself out of sight and make his way back to the street before she noticed him. He was still gazing at her, his head pounding with guilt, when the voice said, "Why, yes. There I am."
He couldn't mistake its meaning, nor its certainty. He gasped, and shrank back out of sight, praying that his mother hadn't heard him. But her feet thumped the floorboards, and she rushed to the door and threw it open so hard it cracked the wall. "Who's there?" she screamed.
Before Fowler could speak or move, she ran to the top of the stairs. She realized someone was behind her, and swung around, sucking in a breath that rattled in her throat. Just as she saw him, her face lost all color and collapsed inwards, her eyes rolled up. As he lunged to catch hold of her, she fell backwards down the stairs and struck the hall floor with a lifeless thud.
Fowler leapt, sobbing, down to her. He clutched her hands, rubbed her sagging cheeks, made himself press one palm against her breast. Nothing moved except silvery motes of dust in the air. He dug his fingers into her shoulders and began to shake her, until he saw how her head lolled. He was drawing a breath to cry out helplessly when a voice murmured, "Thank you."
Fowler bent to his mother's face and scrutinized her lips. He had recognized her voice, and yet they weren't moving. He was staring so hard at them that his eyes stung, trying to will them to stir, when the voice said, "Don't look for me there. You've set me free."
He staggered to his feet, twisting about like an animal, almost tripping over his mother's corpse. The voice was above him, or behind him, or on his shoulder, or in front of him. "Just let me get my bearings," it said, "and then I'll tell you what to say to people."
Fowler began to retreat up the stairs, unable to think how else to escape, unable to step over the body that blocked the foot of the stairs. He thought of going to the top and flinging himself down as injuriously as he could. "Silly boy," the voice said. "Don't you know I'd never let you do that? You mustn't blame yourself for what happened, and you mustn't think you were tricked either. I didn't realize it was me until after you did."
Fowler halted halfway up the staircase, staring through the murky light at the husk of his mother. He felt as incapable of movement himself. "That's right, you get your breath back," the voice said, and then it grew wheedling with just a hint of imperiousness. "Let's see you smile like you used to. I'm going to look after you properly from now on, the way I used to wish I could. You'll always be my baby. Just think, you've made it so we'll always be together. Surely that's worth a smile."
The Old School (1989)
The house was locked. Dean strolled around the outside for a quarter of an hour, gazing through the tall windows at displays of roped-off rooms, and then he climbed the wide steps to the balcony. A lawn broader than his eyesight offered shrubberies and formal gardens and tree-lined walks. At the edge of the lawn, almost half a mile away, woods blotted out every vestige of the further world.
He'd known for years that the house was less than an hour's drive from home. Even better, it was only half an hour from the new town and the school. He could drive here after teaching, when he needed to relax and be taken out of himself. He was gazing at a distant shrubbery, where either mossy statues were hidden in the foliage or the topiary itself was shaped into faces, when the August sun found a gap in the flock of fat white clouds. Sunlight wakened all the drops of rain that still lingered from the afternoon, seeds of rainbows everywhere he looked, and the sight washed away his thoughts.
As he leaned on the parapet, no longer aware of the cold stone through the leather that patched the elbows of his jacket, he heard a sound he would have hoped to have left behind in the new town. Someone was kicking a tin can. He sighed and straightened up, automatically brushing his hair back over as much of his scalp as it would cover these days. Perhaps the tinny footballer was a gardener, and would desist when he saw the place had a visitor.
Dean heard a more determined kick, and the can landed deep in a bush. Three children appeared around the side of the house, two boys and a girl who wore high heels and lipstick so crimson Dean could see it even at that distance. The boy with a black eye poked at the bush with a stick while the other boy, whose pate looked dusty with stubble, danced hyperactively around him. Branches snapped, the can sprang into the air, and the boys jostled after it towards the steps.
The game ended when the hyperactive boy leapt on the can and trod it flat. His friend made a gesture of generalized menace with the stick and chopped twigs off bushes as he went back to demand a share of the girl's cigarette. The children were about eleven years old, Dean saw. He ought to interfere, though he felt as if there were nowhere his job would leave him alone this side of the grave. When he saw the children whisper and glance warily about, not noticing him, before converging on the nearest window, he went down the steps.
The children veered away at once. The girl blinked over her shoulder at him and nudged her companions, who glanced back, whistling tunelessly. The boy with the stick turned first, raising his shoulders like a boxer, and Dean saw that the bruise around his right eye was a birthmark. "Hello, sir," the boy said like a challenge.
They were from the school where Dean taught. He'd seen the boy in the junior schoolyard, thumping children for calling him Spot the Dog. Surely Dean needn't play this scene like a schoolmaster. "Enjoying your holidays?" he said in his best end-of-term voice.
They stared at him as if he'd made an insulti
ngly feeble joke. "They're all right," the girl mumbled, treading on her cigarette.
"So long as you don't enjoy them at other people's expense. Spoiling them for others might mean you'll spoil them for yourselves."
The hyperactive boy jiggled his head as if to a beat only he could hear, the boy with the black eye swung his stick like a rod divining violence, the girl dug her hands into the pockets of her short faded second-hand dress and stared morosely at her budding breasts. "So have you something to do?" Dean said.
"Like what?" said the boy with the stick.
"Surely you know a few games."
"We've nothing to play with," the girl complained.
"Can't you play with yourselves?" Dean said, and had to laugh at his choice of words. At least that prompted the children to laugh out loud too. "If I were you," he said, "I'd be using this place to play hide and seek."
"Why don't you, then?"
"He won't play with us," the boy with the birthmark said with what sounded like bitterness.
If he were in Dean's class Dean wouldn't treat him with undue sympathy, would insist he join in activities like everyone else. "Of course I'll play if you want me to," Dean blurted, and added when they smirked incredulously: "I'm off school too, you know."
"Suppose so," the girl said as if she were humoring him. "You know how to play Blocko, don't you?"
"Remind me."
"Whoever's It has to count fifty and then try and find us, and run back here and shout 'Blocko Tina one two three' if they've seen me, or Burt if it's him, or Jacko if it's him. Watch out with that stick, Jacko, or you'll hit someone."
She had already been addressing the teacher in the same maternal tone. She began to point at each of them in turn as she chanted:
"Girls and boys come out to play, The moon does shine as bright as day. Eeny meeny miney mo, Bone in the wind and it points at you."
"It's sir," Burt shouted, eager to be running. Jacko struck his own thigh several times with the stick while Tina removed her shoes so as to be quicker. Dean covered his eyes and turning to the steps, began to count. "You have to count so we can hear you," Tina told him.
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