"But the boy did."
'A man sitting drinking with his legs in the road told him not to, but he did. His uncle went through another passage and said he'd meet him on the other side. Anyone could have seen something was wrong with the tunnel, because people had dropped needles all over the place except in there. But it looked like it'd just be a minute to walk through, less if you ran. So the boy started to hurry through, only he tried to be quiet because he didn't like how his feet made so much noise he kept thinking someone was following him, except it sounded more like lots of fingers tapping on the bricks behind him. When he managed to be quiet the noise didn't all go away, but he tried to think it was water dripping, because he felt it cold and wet on the top of his head. Then more of it touched the back of his neck, but he didn't want to look round, because the passage was getting darker behind him. He was in the middle of the tunnel when the cold touch landed on his face and made him look."
His uncle's face is barely outlined, but his eyes take on an extra gleam. 'And when he looked.
"He saw why the passage was so dark, with all the arms as thin as his poking out of the bricks. They could grow long enough to reach halfway down the passage and grope around till they found him with their fingers that were as wet as worms. Then he couldn't even see them, because the half of the passage he had to walk through was filling up with arms as well, so many he couldn't see out. And all he could do was what his uncle's story had said, stay absolutely still, because if he tried to run the hands would grab him and drag him through the walls into the earth, and he wouldn't even be able to die of how they did it. So he shut his eyes to be as blind as the things with the arms were, that's if there wasn't just one thing behind the walls. And after he nearly forgot how to breathe the hands stopped pawing at his head as if they were feeling how his brain showed him everything about them, maybe even brought them because he'd learned to see the old things. When he opened his eyes the arms were worming back into the walls, but he felt them all around him right to the end of the passage. And when he went outside he couldn't believe in the daylight any more. It was like a picture someone had put up to hide the dark."
"He could believe in his uncle though, couldn't he? He saw his uncle waiting for him and telling him well done. I hope he knew how much his uncle thought of him."
"Maybe."
"Well, now it's another year."
Uncle Lucian's voice is so low, and his face is so nearly invisible, that Colin isn't sure whether his words are meant to be comforting or to warn the boy that there's more. "Another story," Colin mumbles, inviting it or simply giving in.
"I don't think so any more. I think you're too old for that."
Colin doesn't know in what way he feels abandoned as he whispers "Have we finished?"
"Nothing like. Tomorrow, just go and lie down and look up."
"Where?"
'Anywhere you're by yourself."
Colin feels he is now. "Then what?" he pleads.
"You'll see. I can't begin to tell you. See for yourself."
That makes Colin more nervous than his uncle's stories ever did. He's struggling to think how to persuade his uncle to give him at least a hint when he realises he's alone in the darkness. He lies on his back and stares upwards in case that gets whatever has to happen over with, but all he sees are memories of the places his uncle has made him recall. Downstairs his parents and his aunt are still talking, and he attempts to use their voices to keep him with them, but feels as if they're dragging him down into the moonless dark. Then he's been asleep, because they're shutting their doors close to his. After that, whenever he twitches awake it's a little less dark. As soon as he's able to see he sneaks out of bed to avoid his parents and his aunt. Whatever is imminent, having to lie about where he's going would make his nerves feel even more like rusty wire about to snap.
He's as quick and as quiet in the bathroom as he can be. Once he's dressed he rolls up the quilt to lie on and slips out of the house. In the front garden he thinks moonlight has left a crust on the fallen leaves and the grass. Down the hill a train shakes itself awake while the city mutters in its sleep. He turns away and heads for the open country behind the house.
A few crows jab at the earth with their beaks and sail up as if they mean to peck the icy sky. The ground has turned into a single flattened greenish bone exactly as bright as the low vault of dull cloud. Colin walks until the fields bear the houses out of sight. That's as alone as he's likely to be. Flapping the quilt, he spreads it on the frozen ground. He throws himself on top of it and slaps his hands on it in case that starts whatever's meant to happen. He's already so cold he can't keep still.
At first he thinks that's the only reason he's shivering, and then he notices the sky isn't right. He feels as if all the stories he's had to act out have gathered in his head, or the way they've made him see has. That ability is letting him observe how thin the sky is growing, or perhaps it's leaving him unable not to. Is it also attracting whatever's looming down to peer at him from behind the sky? A shiver is drumming his heels on the ground through the quilt when the sky seems to vanish as though it has been clawed apart above him, and he glimpses as much of a face as there's room for - an eye like a sea black as space with a moon for its pupil. It seems indifferent as death and yet it's watching him. An instant of seeing is all he can take before he twists onto his front and presses his face into the quilt as though it's a magic carpet that will transport him home to bed and, better still, unconsciousness.
He digs his fingers into the quilt until he recognises he can't burrow into the earth. He stops for fear of tearing his aunt's quilt and having to explain. He straightens up in a crouch to retrieve the quilt, which he hugs as he stumbles back across the field with his head down. The sky is pretending that it never faltered, but all the way to the house he's afraid it will part to expose more of a face.
While nobody is up yet, Colin senses that his uncle isn't in the house. He tiptoes upstairs to leave the quilt on his bed, and then he sends himself out again. There's no sign of his uncle on the way downhill. Colin dodges onto the path under the trees in case his uncle prefers not to be seen. "Uncle Lucian," he pleads.
"You found me."
He doesn't seem especially pleased, but Colin demands "What did I see?"
"Not much yet. Just as much as your mind could take. It's like our stories, do you understand? Your mind had to tell you a story about what you saw, but in time you won't need it. You'll see what's really there."
"Suppose I don't want to?" Colin blurts. "What's it all for?"
"Would you rather be like my sister and only see what everyone else sees? She was no fun when she was your age, your mother."
"I never had the choice."
"Well, I wouldn't ever have said that to my grandfather. I was nothing but grateful to him."
Though his uncle sounds not merely disappointed but offended, Colin says "Can't I stop now?"
"Everything will know you can see, son. If you don't greet the old things where you find them they'll come to find you."
Colin voices a last hope. "Has it stopped for you?"
"It never will. I'm part of it now. Do you want to see?"
"No."
Presumably Colin's cry offends his uncle, because there's a spidery rustle beyond the trees that conceal the end of the path and then silence. Time passes before Colin dares to venture forward. As he steps from beneath the trees he feels as if the sky has lowered itself towards him like a mask. He's almost blind with resentment of his uncle for making him aware of so much and for leaving him alone, afraid to see even Uncle Lucian. Though it doesn't help, Colin starts kicking the stone with his uncle's name on it and the pair of years ending with this one. When he's exhausted he turns away towards the rest of his life.
Direct Line (2004)
As Sharpe strode into the passage under the railway he heard a woman talking to herself ahead. Since the last of the lights had been vandalised overnight, the tunnel was flooded with darknes
s. He wasn’t about to be daunted by that or by her, even if she was homeless or mad. As he halved the distance to her, the train he’d just left passed overhead as though the July heat had congealed into an elongated clap of thunder, and he glimpsed her clutching at her face. “No,” she cried, high-pitched as her footsteps and their echoes as she fled. An object clattered down the wall to join the rest of the litter. Sharpe was opening his mouth to ask her to retrieve it when he saw it was luminous.
An abandoned hypodermic to which it lent a poisonous green glow distracted him from immediately seeing that it was a mobile phone. Even he recognised that it was expensive, the kind of item his pupils at school boasted about. It weighed less than a tiny skull. When he brought it not too close to his ear, he was greeted by a rush of static that seemed for a moment to be trying to form words. The noise sank into the dark as the phone was extinguished, and he hurried to catch up with its owner. Wastefulness offended him as much as litter.
The tunnel opened onto the road to the school. The road was rowdy with schoolboys, some of whom nudged each other at the sight of him. Had the woman been intimidated by the mass of them? She could have taken refuge in any of dozens of grimy houses split into secretive flats or in one of the alleys strewn with refuse. He was holding up his find as if this might draw her out of hiding when behind him a boy said “Sharpy’s got a mobile now. He can’t say nothing about ours.”
Sharpe swung around to confront the twelve-year-old’s unnecessarily small face, which grew smoothly innocent. “Perhaps you saw the lady this belongs to, Lomax. She ran out of there not a minute ago.”
The boy’s stunted crony Latham peered up from under his brows as though out of a lair. “We thought she must of been raped.”
“We looked for who done it and we seen you.”
“I was attempting to return the property she dropped. I hope you would have done as much.” When this provoked two identical disbelieving stares he said “You were asked to tell me where the lady went.”
“Behind them houses like she couldn’t wait to have a shit,” Lomax said, pointing to the alley Sharpe had just passed.
“No, it was them like she had to piss,” said Latham, indicating an alley beyond the exit from the pedestrian tunnel.
Sharpe hadn’t time to rebuke the vulgarity, whether it was automatic or deliberate. He sidled down the nearer alley, past bulging waist-high plastic bags torn open by animals or kicked asunder by children. Halfway down he met a transverse alley overlooked by the backs of two streets. There was no sign of the woman, but another at an upper window turned her head to keep an offensively suspicious eye on him. When he called “I’ve lost property for someone” it neither assuaged her stare nor attracted the owner. He stowed the mobile inside his jacket as he left the alley, ignoring questions and suggestions about where he’d been and why.
Lomax and Latham were even less eager than usual to reach the school. He caught up with them at the entrance to the schoolyard packed with uproar and furtive misdeeds, those that bothered to be furtive. “Did you give it to her, sir?” Lomax enquired.
“Did she like it, sir?” said Latham.
Their untypical enthusiasm made their meaning clear, but he wasn’t going to waste time on it. “I shouldn’t have expected any sense from the terrible Ls,” he said.
He was entering the school when the bell began to clang. He helped herd the scholars to the assembly hall and joined his colleagues on the stage, from which he fixed his stare on his class near the front of the long hot room. The general restlessness lessened as the headmaster marched to his lectern. Mr Thorn let his gaze roam until there was silence, which turned more inert as he addressed the question of self-sacrifice. Soon he was asking five hundred boys to think of items they could live without. He had just cited mobile phones when one rang.
For once it didn’t belong to any of the boys, though it was set to the remains of a chorus from the Messiah with a disco beat: “Hal-lel-lu-jah, hal-lel-lu-jah, lu-jah, lu-jah, lu-jah ...” As Sharpe glanced along the rank of his colleagues he realised that several were gazing at him. “Excuse me, head,” he murmured, “not mine,” only to demonstrate something like the opposite by retreating into the wings. He snatched out the mobile and thumbed the key that bore an icon of a vertical receiver. He was about to speak when the phone did so in a woman’s voice so impatient it left politeness behind. “Got it?”
Sharpe responded in a whisper, if a loud one. “Yes” was all he said, since it seemed obvious.
“Can you bring it?”
“Where?”
“Usual place.” As he concluded she had less language to her than the worst of his pupils she added “It’s Sue.”
His own terseness was designed to interfere as little as possible with Mr Thorn’s speech. “Where again?”
“What?” Even more suspiciously she asked “Is this Janey?”
“If she’s the lady who owns the phone she dropped it. Perhaps you could—”
“Wrong number. I don’t know any Janey. I’m not Sue either.”
Presumably she had run out of denials. A sound like a wind through a bone replaced her voice. He poked the button inscribed with a supine receiver and was putting the mobile away when it rang again. Mr Thorn faltered irritably in the middle of a word. Sharpe jabbed the first button and hissed “Yes?”
At first he heard nothing but static as the green glow of the mobile isolated him in the dimness. When it spoke, the voice was barely distinguishable from the mass of thin sound, and he had to strain to grasp the words. “Give it back.”
“That’ll be Jane, will it?”
“Give it back.”
The shrill voice was so unsteady it seemed close to dissolving into the static. “You need to tell me where you are,” he said.
“Don’t.”
“How else would you suggest I do as you asked?”
“Give it back.”
“You may collect it this afternoon if you wish,” Sharpe said and quelled the call.
He stayed offstage until Mr Thorn said “Use the day wisely” as usual. The folding seats and then their occupants produced sounds that might have accompanied the collapse of the roof. As Sharpe appended himself to the parade of teachers, the headmaster beckoned him. “Important calls, Kenneth?”
“I think the police may be interested.”
Mr Thorn’s bland chubby face twitched and underscored its receding hairline. “The more that can be resolved internally the better. We don’t want to gain a reputation as a school that has to keep calling the police.”
“It isn’t any of the boys this time. I’ve a strong suspicion this belongs to somebody we’d want to keep away from them.”
“By all means do so at your earliest convenience.”
“I intend to,” Sharpe said and applied some dignity to descending from the stage. He thought of entrusting die phone to Mr Thorn or the school secretary until lunchtime, but suppose either of them answered it and sent the owner into hiding? He hadn’t time to explain the situation when his class was bound for the classroom. He strode in pursuit so fiercely that some of the boys in the corridor lowered their voices or even made way for him.
Too many of his pupils strewn about the classroom looked ready to be amused by him. It was clear that Lomax spoke for them all by enquiring “Did the woman you was chasing want you, sir?”
“Sit down. Sit down. Sit down now.” Once a similar formula quietened them at last Sharpe said “She wants her phone. Who can tell me how to switch it off?”
No other question he had ever asked had brought a fraction of the enthusiasm. When he succeeded in hushing the uproar he gave the mobile to Latham, since the boy and his associate were on the front row. “It’s off, sir,” Latham said, fingering a button.
“Well done, Latham. Let’s see if you can do as well with algebra.”
Apparently the comment sounded like a joke. Sharpe returned the unlit mobile to his pocket and talked through the equations he’d chalked on the board a
fter yesterday’s last class so that he didn’t have to turn his back.
The virtually uniform blankness that confronted him only stiffened when he asked if there was anything that anybody hadn’t understood. “Heads down, then,” he said wearily and watched them duck to their exercise books like cattle to sparse parched grass.
How could they fail to enjoy mathematics? It enshrined truths that had lasted and would last as long as the universe. It gave shape and stability to life, and everything depended on it. If they couldn’t appreciate its beauty, how could they resist its excitement? It was the universal language and a system of belief immune to change. Rather than grow depressed by the sluggish ruminations or the pretence of them all around him, he strolled to look over the shoulder of one of die few budding algebraists. He was watching the solution to an equation appear on the page under small inky fingers—he thought life had no greater satisfaction to offer him—when an insect larger than it had any right to be came to life.
It buzzed silently as it writhed against his chest until he dragged it out to wriggle on his palm. “What have you done to this, Latham?”
“Means someone’s trying to get you,” Latham said over the general laughter.
“They may continue trying,” Sharpe declared and shut the phone inside the teachers’ desk, where it struggled on its back before growing dormant. In his hand it had felt unnaturally vigorous, desperate to move, and the possibility that it might recommence crawling about in the desk distracted him more than the other outbursts of restlessness he had to subdue. If the desk had locked he might have left the mobile there instead of taking it to the staffroom.
The Collected Short Fiction Page 145
