“When I knocked on the window he looked up at me. You know I’m a strong man, but I was glad there were two floors between us. Then he fled back to the hall. Afterward I told the girl in charge what had happened. Do you know what she did? Nothing. Oh no, the cat had distracted people’s attention from him or some such nonsense, and he hadn’t done anything really. She wouldn’t admit what he was, you see. She wanted to believe he was just a boy.”
“But what was he?” Clare said, frustrated. “Did anyone know why he was like that?”
“Three people did.” She suppressed a giggle; it was like a banal thriller—perhaps written by Edmund.
“The head,” he said, “and Kelly’s class master, and his grandmother. It was she who told them all about him. One of my colleagues asked the head afterwards what she’d had to say, but he made it clear that was none of their business. As for the class master, he was off a week recovering; no one needed to be told not to question him. He never recovered completely. He used to run away from the sight of blood, and once I had almost to carry him into the school just because he’d seen an expectant mother going by. I’ve no idea what that meant to him. But as for Kelly, I believe he was possessed. Such things do still happen, you know. Science has yet to find a cure for them.”
Perhaps, perhaps, Clare was interrupting. Five to one. “Is Kelly’s class master here now?” she said.
“Dear me, no. He left years ago; he could never teach properly after that. He never trusted the children again, once he knew what Kelly had been hiding. You wanted to question him, did you?”
Question? Did he know why she was here, after all? She snatched at the only thought left in her suddenly dull mind. Records. “I was just thinking how much trouble he must have had filling in Kelly’s record card,” she said.
“Yes indeed. I recall he was very glad to see the record go.”
“Go where?”
“To the Vale School, when Kelly went there, of course.”
“Yes, of course,” Clare said dully. “You wouldn’t have kept any record of him here at all.”
The clock’s hands twitched, a nervous upturned moustache. At least she could leave, knowing she’d teased out all the information to be had. “I think I’ll go down and wait for David,” she said. “It’s too nice to be inside.”
“I imagine he’s on his way up now. That clock is slow. It’s well past one.”
When she grabbed its strap her handbag almost vomited its contents; she knew how it felt. “I’ll catch him on the stairs,” she said. “I must get back to work. To school, I mean. Where I work.” She was at the door when the grey-haired master said, “Odd you should mention Kelly. I bumped into a friend of his grandmother’s only a few weeks ago.”
“Which friend was that?” Don’t sound so eager, don’t waste time, don’t wait, run, it’s past one.
“A woman who would sometimes collect Kelly from school. I’ve no idea of her name. She works in a launderette on Lodge Lane.”
But Clare drove that way to work! “Which, the one on the corner of, of”—oh God, David would open the door in a minute, the door was too thick for her to hear him coming—”of Cedar Grove?”
“No, the one next to the Bingo hall.” He turned toward the window as a motorcycle roared below. “Here’s David now,” he said. “David!” he called.
He was calling, “Your friend is here!” as she ran stumbling downstairs, her heel slipping from a stone edge. A young man appeared in the doorway from the playground, unstudding his crash helmet, as she caught herself back by the railing from the sharp stone edges below. He glanced curiously at her, seemed about to speak—but she was past him and out, across the playground and through the gates with a shouting gasp, almost suffocated by her panic.
Ringo was parked a hundred yards away, on Princes Avenue. She had calmed down by the time she reached the car. She’d done what she had set out to do, and no thanks to Edmund’s patronizing advice. There was something else she could do now, without his approval. She climbed into Ringo, pressing herself determinedly against the hot leather, and drove away.
The Upper Parly Arts Centre was a terraced Georgian house covered with cheerful graffiti, largely red and blue. Clare was fascinated long before she was close enough to be sure what it was. A red and blue front door, red and blue walls beyond the windows: the paint was bright despite the discolouring gusts from passing traffic. But the building seemed empty, hollowed out by echoes. She was leaving when an enormous man on the opposite pavement caught sight of her and shouldered his way pugnaciously through the traffic, brandishing a movie camera like a gun. His bare stomach smacked its stack of fat lips above his trouser belt. “TTG?” he shouted, wheezing. “They’re on location. Church Street.”
By the time Clare reached the city centre they had finished performing, except for Chris. He was pacing around the stubby concrete tubs of sprouting earth, pretending not to know that his prey, a dozen children, had almost caught up behind him. Crowds of shoppers hurried by, glancing furtively at Chris or refusing to look; a few gazed, fewer smiled. Though Church Street was a shopping precinct now, its roadway paved over and forbidden to traffic by the scattered tubs and a handful of saplings, the crowd still huddled together on the pavements. Only Chris and the children played in the road.
She sat on a bench to watch. The sun had cleared itself a space now; everything was dazzling. She kicked aside pebbles of chewing gum the colour of doll’s flesh, scrawny coins of milk-bottle tops. Today Chris wore a mauve singlet and elaborately patchworked trousers; she could tell he was proud of the pots of ginger hair under his arms. Two shopgirls from Woolworth’s pointed at him, cawing. He didn’t falter; he was wholly engrossed.
She watched his pale intent face. Down a side street, a drill chattered harshly in stone; next to her, the plastic cover of a hotdog stall folded open with a thick gasp of onion. More strongly than in Edmund’s room she felt how young Chris was—whatever his physical age. But now she could see how he’d made this a virtue. She could never play so freely with kids. If these kids weren’t enjoying themselves so much, she thought, some of them would be shoplifting. She wondered if Chris had ever wanted to teach.
The children pounced. Chris was shouting, laughing, collapsing beneath them. She watched his face. Before, she’d thought it strange, a little spectral, with its long pointed nose and chin; now, as he gasped—as flushed and excited as the children—she found it attractive. Its long, clear, simple planes looked sculptured, uncluttered. But beneath the simplicity she was convinced lay depth.
As he heaved himself and clinging children upright, he saw her. At once there was nothing in his face but delight. She couldn’t help feeling it too. “Hey, fantastic,” he said. “I didn’t know you were watching.”
“I only saw the end. I enjoyed it, though. You’ll have to do it for my kids sometime.”
A little girl was tugging at his arm. “Play us a hide and seek,” she pleaded.
“Right. But let’s do that later, okay? You come to Upper Parly later and we’ll play.”
“When shall we go?” she said, hopping impatiently. “In ten minutes?”
“Hey, you want me to starve? You go home and have your tea, then we’ll play.”
Kids! Clare said in code with her smile, and felt needlessly secretive; his smile included the children as well. “It’s fantastic to see you,” he said. “What are you doing downtown?”
“Looking for you.” At once her abdomen felt as if she’d stepped off an edge.
“Yeah? That’s amazing.” He didn’t even seem anxious to know why.
A man was thrusting his way through the crowd, frightening people with his spongy red-and-purple grimacing face, since that was what they seemed to expect him to do; the children fled, squealing. “You know I’m helping Edmund Hall,” Clare said to Chris, to reclaim his attention.
“Right.” He watched the crowd flinch from the man.
“He thinks the man who’s committing these crimes went to the
same school he did. I went to the school today and talked to one of the staff. He was a horrible man, absolutely horrible. He shouldn’t be in charge of a zoo, never mind children. I don’t wonder this boy Christopher Kelly went mad if that’s the kind of thing he had to put up with.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
“Anyway, what I was going to say—this man said he once saw Kelly stalking a cat, really stalking like an animal. So that shows you were right about your cat. I’m sure it must tie in. Dogs don’t eat cats.” All at once she remembered how vulnerable he was; she’d interrupted his enjoyment just to remind him of this. “I was angry with Edmund for saying what he did,” she said, but it sounded like a feeble excuse.
“About my cat? Yeah, well. She’s gone now. Anyway, she was only a cat.”
She was delighted he was taking it so well—though perhaps he had sensed her anxiety and was pretending.
“That’s all I came to tell you,” she said.
“Yeah? You came just to tell me that? That’s really nice. Thank you. Listen, come and eat,” he said.
She slumped inside herself. After the tension she’d felt with Edmund and at St. Joseph’s, Chris was almost too much of a relief. She felt exhausted; she had to sit quickly on the edge of a concrete tub. Maybe food was what she needed.
“I’d love to come,” she said.
The other actors had been packing props into a nearby van; now they came back for Chris. “This is Clare,” he said. “She’s a friend of mine. She teaches. We’re just going to eat. I’ll see you back at Upper Parly.”
“You be sure you do,” an actress said.
“Rehearsals later. Then we’re going to my place to get stoned. Hey, when are we coming up to yours? You never invite us.”
“Yeah, I’ll tell you when. I’m involved in a few things right now.”
When the others had returned to the van, Clare said, “Is that girl chasing you?”
“Kind of, yeah. I mean, she’s all right.
They’re all good people. But I’m particular who I invite up to my flat.”
Clare blocked her answering thought. It was presumptuous; she didn’t know him. Still, she could tell he liked her. “Where shall we eat?” she said, to shut herself up.
“Anywhere. You say.”
“It’s too late for the cheap lunches. There’s the Master Mariner’s. That’s self-service, not expensive.”
“Listen, don’t worry about the price.”
Was he offering to buy her lunch? He mustn’t do that. His acting couldn’t earn him much. She’d argue when the time came to pay, if she needed to. “The Master Mariner’s food is good,” she said.
They headed for a side street; the sun rang blindingly in the metal sign of a corner shop, set with computer type. Off Church Street it was slightly cooler. Clare hurried to keep up with Chris before she realized he was strolling. He was strolling as though he enjoyed it, as though he weren’t forced to slow down for her. Her selfconsciousness faded. When he caught up she began to stroll too.
She gazed in shop windows. She slowed, gazing at a heavy necklace of smooth, richly brown beads, darkly glowing wooden ovals; it hung on the reflection of her African-print dress. “Yeah, that really goes with your dress,” Chris said. “That’s perfect,” and he hurried into the shop.
She was still gazing into the window, waiting for Chris, when a girl lifted the necklace from its hooks. Clare glanced wistfully beyond her and saw Chris holding out his hand for the necklace. Clare thumped the window, shaking her head vehemently. She shoved the doors open, shouldering her way through a wall of rock music as thick as the heat. “No, Chris,” she cried. “No, no, really!”
But he’d stuffed money into the girl’s hand and was placing the necklace around Clare’s neck. “Come on,” he said. “I want to.”
She sensed his frustration. He’d released her from her tensions; she couldn’t bear to cause any in him—besides, she was exhausted. She couldn’t cause a scene. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s beautiful.” At the door she kissed him on the cheek. The convex mirror overhead sucked up their heads from their dwindling bodies.
When they reached Williamson Square, Clare gazed about at the crowd, proud of her necklace; the beads touched her nipples tenderly, like fingertips. Thin trees sprouted from uneven chessboards of grey stone; pigeons nodded rapidly at crumbs among the benches; a man with a trayful of birdsounds warbled liquidly; Punch and Judy squawked at a dog. People were handing out pamphlets beneath the boxy metal walkways, beneath the cantilevered glass-and-concrete cylinder stuck to the side of the Playhouse, which still looked like a music hall. A man was bearing down on Chris and Clare.
Clare clenched inside. He was a Child of God, or something similar. He extended a friendly smile and a pamphlet toward them. She always disliked such encounters—felt rude if she hurried by, didn’t want to get involved in a discussion. But he was looking at Chris. “Stuff that fucking shit back up your arse,” Chris said without breaking his stroll.
She stifled her gasp, of shock or of mirth. “Chris!” she said, but it didn’t sound much like a rebuke. Her ears were throbbing with the surprise. “You’re terrible,” she said.
“Oh, right.” Four hundred feet above their heads a restaurant spun slowly on its pole. She took his arm to steer him toward the corridors of St. John’s Precinct; his forearm was soft and furry beneath her fingers. “We go through here to eat,” she said.
The restaurant was on the second level. As they crossed the balcony above the enclosed market Clare gazed down at the roofless stalls: boxes full of colours—no more full of colours than Chris’s patchwork trousers. “I like your trousers,” she said.
“Yeah, they’re all right.” He held back the glass door for her. “A girl I used to know made them. She made a lot of my clothes. I lived with her for a while,” he said with no change of tone, as if there were no reason for one. She could tell he wasn’t trying to shock her, and he hadn’t.
Chris scanned the plastic menu above the metal counter. “The fish and chips aren’t bad,” Clare said.
“You mean the large deep-fried fillet of codling and fried potatoes,” he said loudly enough to make heads peer over the edges of booths. Rob had used to trap her in this kind of public spotlight. “Don’t, Chris,” she said, nudging him. In fact her embarrassment was rather delicious; a few people were pointing out her necklace, her dress.
“Anyway, that stuff’s not for me,” he said. “I’ll have a salad. I’m into health foods, strictly vegetarian.”
A woman moped over their glasses of milk, sniffing. Clare tried to push past Chris to the cash desk, but he blocked her way gently. “Come on, I’ll pay,” he said almost impatiently. “I want to give you something. You gave me something, right?” He was loosening the drawstrings of a little leather purse. She hadn’t realized he’d been so pleased to see her. Maybe he had been more upset by Edmund’s attitude than he’d admitted, and therefore more grateful to her.
They sat in a booth of heavy, dark brown wood and red-and-orange deck-chair canvas. “Listen, I wanted to pay,” he said as she frowned a little at her tray. “Really, you came down just to tell me?”
“Well, I felt you ought to know,” she said around a chip. “After the way Edmund treated you. You offered to help, after all. Do you still want to?”
“Yeah, I’d like to.”
“I’d understand if you didn’t. But we might be helping the police as well as Edmund.”
“Right. You think he’d let me?”
“I don’t know.” Now that she had to think about it, she thought not. “If I can make him, I will,” she said.
Below the window, shoppers stumped grumpily up a paralyzed escalator toward the market balcony. Across the road, a marquee said, “Come to Me, all you that labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” Clare remembered the building as a cinema, offering Girls in the Sun and Women by Night, which she’d taken a while to recognize as a double feature.
&nb
sp; When Chris stopped spluttering with laughter at that, he said, “Do you like teaching?”
“Yes, I do. More than anything else that I do.”
“Yeah. That’s really the way to be, right?”
“Yes, it is. You like your job too, don’t you? You like kids.”
“Right. You saw that. I like playing with them.” When he saw her expression sour he said, “Huh, what?”
“I was just thinking of that teacher. He was so horrible. You couldn’t imagine him playing with kids. He really hated them.” Her brow pinched at a memory. “I got one more thing out of him. I was trying to find out where Kelly’s grandmother lives, his guardian—oh yes, Christopher Kelly is the name of the boy we think we’re after. Well, I couldn’t work round to that. But there was a friend of hers who collected him from school sometimes. The teacher told me she works in a launderette.”
“Yeah? Fantastic! Let’s go and talk to her!”
“I haven’t thought what to say yet.”
He’d stuffed the whole of a lettuce leaf into his mouth and was chewing vigorously. “Don’t worry,” he said, his mouth sprouting and retrieving green. “I’ll get the address out of her, if that’s what you want. You watch me.”
He might be more convincing than Clare. But just now all she wanted was to eat her meal leisurely. “All right,” she said, “but not today. You promised to play with those kids.”
“Yeah, right. I can do both. It won’t take long. I just feel right for it now. I mightn’t tomorrow,” he said, casting his cutlery loudly on his plate. “I mean, don’t hurry. I can wait.” He shook his hands impatiently in what she took to be an attempt to calm her. “We’ll go and see her when you’ve finished. Then you’ll be able to tell Edmund I helped, right?”
She could feel his frustration, almost like a threat of violence. She ate slowly, determined to do so; she felt him urging her faster, faster. She laid her knife and fork beside a few chips. “Come on, then,” she said, “I’ve had as much as I want,” unable to bear more.
The doll who ate his mother: a novel of modern terror Page 8
