Perhaps he thought she was already home. Perhaps he was as anxious to tell her why he'd phoned her at work as she was eager to know. She left the car in the middle of the roadway and the door ajar as she ran to the gate. When her footsteps didn't make him turn from unlocking the front door, her voice outdid them for sharpness. "Sam."
She saw his shadow on the wooden panels shrink into itself, then bloom larger and paler as he floundered around to face her. "What?" he just about said.
"I don't know. You wanted me."
Was that gentle to the point of inaudibility? He looked as if he either hadn't heard or didn't understand. As she unlatched the gate and swung it wide she said "It was such a good day I went out for f. lunchtime walk. I'm sorry I missed you."
"Doesn't
matter."
"You sorted it out, then, whatever it was."
She would have thought he could take that as a question, but he was turning towards the house. "You aren't cold, are you?" Heather wondered, and went on as he shook his head "You can't be. Wait while I bring in the car."
She hoped he might at least close the gate behind her without being asked, and he did.
She was out of the car before he could retreat into the house. "What was the matter, then?" she said, and when his face tightened "Is it still?"
"Just something dad wanted me to do."
"What kind of something?"
"Get a job."
"I think we'd all like that for you. Are we talking about a specific job?"
"Interview."
"Where?"
"Publishing."
"Well, don't overwork the suspense. How did it go?"
"Didn't."
"Oh dear, Sam, never mind. Did they tell you that or could you be underrating yourself as usual, do you think?"
"I mean I didn't."
"I'm sorry, Sam, you're saying you didn't..."
"Go."
A passing pair of neighbours she knew barely well enough to recognise as such glanced sharply at her when she raised her voice. "Why not?"
Sam jerked his left hand at her. She thought he was trying to ward off the question until she realised that the darkness on his wrist wasn't a shadow cast by nothing she could see, it was the remnant of a message. "I lost the address," he mumbled.
"Where did you get it from?"
"I told you, dad."
He hadn't quite, and his response suggested how confused he was "Couldn't you get it from him again?" Heather more than wanted to know.
"That's why I called you." Sam's voice was growing raw with resentment of her questions or of the admissions he was being forced to make. "I forgot where he works."
"Hartley,
Tracy
and-"
"Harvey. The three adverbs, like you used to say. I know now. I forgot before."
The strolling neighbours glanced back as though in search of evidence that the surviving Prices were no more stable than Lennox had ended up. Nothing like that was wrong with Sam, Heather assured herself, but she'd had enough and a second helping of their scrutiny. "Let's continue inside," she murmured. "Why were you so worried about an interview?"
She assumed it was her interrogation that made him suddenly reluctant to move towards the house. "Who says I was?" he muttered.
"Mustn't that be why you couldn't remember where you were supposed to go?" When he frowned so unhappily his entire face seemed in danger of pinching inward she said "Of course it must. You'd be amazed what I've forgotten when I've too much on my mind. Go ahead, open the door while I unload the car."
She wondered if his limp was troubling him; certainly he took his time over reaching the house. When she followed with her handbag and a carrier of groceries he was edging the door open. He stepped into the hall and switched on the light, only to falter. Wasn't he used to the faint ancient smell that had taken up residence? She didn't want to grow used to it either, but she was about to urge him to move when she saw what he'd seen. Propped against the phone on the hall table was a note in Sylvia's handwriting.
All it said was Gone to mum's, though to begin with Sylvia had written mom's, so that the altered letter resembled an egg almost filling an upturned tube. If Sam's reaction didn't mean he'd wanted his aunt's presence to bring an end to Heather's questions, presumably he was glad she wouldn't hear them, if indeed he was sure which. "
"had you better ring your father?" Heather said. "He may still be at work."
"Why?"
"Why should you ring him? To get the number of the publisher so you can let them know what went wrong."
"I
remember."
"You remember..."
"Everything," Sam said, but closed his eyes and jerked his hands up less in surrender than as though he was about to scratch at the container of his brain.
She took him to be wishing her elsewhere, since he muttered "The publisher."
"Then I'll leave you to talk to them while I put away the shopping The kitchen light had finished flickering to life before she heard him lift the receiver. As she began to unpack the carrier he asked Directory Enquiries for the number of Midas Books. Heather set about rustling plastic and generally making a noise as if she didn't want to overhear what came of his dialling the number. She heard him ask for someone called Fay Sheridan and say "Oh, isn't she?" with some relief and "If you like" with none. Heather spent the long pause guessing that he'd been offered a word with Fay Sheridan's secretary to whom he had to admit "It's Sam Harvey. I was supposed to see her today."
Heather busied herself with putting groceries away, but couldn't pretend she was making as much noise as she might have. When Sam said "I got lost" she willed him not to ruin his chances by owning up to all his forgetfulness. Pauses that her busyness was unable to rob c threat were followed by his saying "It got rubbed out" and "I couldn't remember any of it" and
"It's all right, I should call her." With rather more animation than any of this had involved he said "Goodbye."
By now Heather had run out of items to unpack and was stark through the window. The reflection of the kitchen didn't quite disguise the appearance above the fence of the tangled scalp of a vast unseen head-of the treetops. She waited for Sam's footsteps to succeed the clatter of the receiver; she was hoping they would make for her rather than limp upstairs. When they stayed put and mum she called "How long did she have to wait for you?"
"I didn't say I'd be there. It wasn't definite."
"Let's hope she gives you another chance, then." Having waited for a reply, Heather pulled the door wide. Sam had picked up Sylvia's note and was staring at it. "Is something else wrong?" Heather said.
He must have begun to crumple the note, which unfolded like a misshapen blossom as he opened his hand. "What's his name," he said.
Despite its flatness, she assumed this was a question. "Natty, you mean?"
"Why would I mean that?" he said with a fierceness that took her aback. "We don't even know what it is."
"A boy or a girl, you mean." Her confusion made her ask "So is it the other parent you're wondering about?"
"Other, right. Mr. Other." Presumably amusement was the reason Sam bared his teeth.
"Are you expecting to meet him?" he demanded more than said.
"Somehow I don't think we will."
"What would you do if you did?"
"Welcome him if Sylvie does."
"You think you would," Sam said with undisguised disbelief. "You'd do that."
She couldn't have predicted his reaction; he sounded more like a father than a nephew.
"Why, how would you deal with him?" she said.
"Christ knows how I'll have to."
"You won't, Sam. I'm sure he isn't going to turn up. Between ourselves, and we won't let it out of the family, will we, I don't even think he knows he's a father."
"Won't let it out of the family." When Sam had finished lingering over the repetition he said
"Suppose he's realised?"
"I don't see how h
e can. He and Sylvie aren't in any kind of touch."
Sam's lips twitched and continued to grimace as he said "Don't you want to know his name at least?"
"Not if she doesn't want us to. It's my impression she'd rather forget him." As she spoke, Heather had an idea that explained altogether too much: could the father have been a patient at the hospital where Sylvia had shared a room with Merilee? Surely that couldn't affect Sylvia's child. It was partly to drive away the fear that Heather declared "The baby's all that matters. We don't need to know an more to look after it and its, let's say his for now, his mother."
She hoped Sam wouldn't disagree with that. She was less than reassured when the question that slowly opened his mouth proved to be "What have you forgotten?"
"I wouldn't remember, would I?" When the sally fell short of him and did little for her, she said "What are you trying to remind me of?
"You said outside you'd forgotten stuff too. How do you know you don't remember what it was?"
"I meant while I was a student, round about your age, come to think. Maybe it's something that runs in the family, we go a little strange when we're that age."
None of this appeared to hearten him. She was wondering whether she should try to take any of it back when she heard footsteps behind him. She saw him move his arm, which looked not much less stiff than a branch, to let Sylvia's note drift like a dead leaf onto the hall table.
Though he didn't turn until the key had finished scraping in the lock and the front door had swung inward, she couldn't read his mask of a face. As his aunt leaned her swollen body against the door to shut it, he twisted swiftly around. "We were just talking about you," he said.
Sylvia raised her eyebrows slightly and the corners of her mouth. The expression made her look as her childhood self had looked- dreamily assured that all was well and ready to anticipate better-but her words were older, even second-hand.
"Nothing bad, I hope."
"Maybe I don't know what is," said Sam.
"Nothing to do with any of us, can we say?"
He shrugged or writhed his shoulders, and Heather tried to put a stop to his embarrassment. "We were talking about our happy event," she told Sylvia. "What we really want to know is how you feel."
"Like I expect I'm supposed to."
"Well, good. Is it?"
"Like we could be seeing the one we're all waiting for any day now."
"He'll be a few months yet, Sylvie, or she will."
"Time doesn't seem to mean too much any more. Maybe that's because it doesn't to him."
With an affectionate laugh at the extravagance of that idea Heather said "You know he's a him or you want him to be?"
"Even these days I don't think we get a choice."
"It's just that we were wondering before."
"Were you, Sam?" Sylvia raised her eyebrows further while leaving her mouth as it was, and rested her hands on either side of her protruding burden as though to offer it to him. "What do you need to know?"
His shoulders moved again, convulsively. "Nothing," Heather would have predicted as his answer, and it was.
"Then we're together on that. I've got his name, and that's all I want."
She hadn't finished speaking when Heather realised she had somehow failed to be aware that they, Sam in particular, were well-nigh trapping Sylvia in the hall with the faint ancient smell that seemed almost to have been attracted by their conversation. "One thing I do know," she said, "is you might like to sit down if you're anything like I was."
She thought she was going to have to ask Sam to move, sine something-no doubt his embarrassment she'd failed to banish appeared to have paralysed him. Then he limped aside as if his restless shoulders were operating the rest of him, and Sylvia plodded into the front room to lower herself onto an armchair. Sam was taking his discomfort upstairs when she said "We'll have something to look forward to tomorrow."
Sam's hand clenched on the banister, and it was left to Heather to ask "What?"
"Mom, I keep telling myself I should call her mum now I'm back where I came from, she's going to show us the videos she's made. We're all invited."
"Then we'll all be there, won't we, Sam?"
Before Sam could perform more than a pair of nods that seemed to force out a double mumble of resignation, the phone rang. Heather saw his knuckles whiten on the banister, and he kept his back to her as she picked up the receiver.
"Hello?" she said with a tentativeness that felt like timidity on his behalf.
"Is the new bookman home yet?"
"Hello, Terry," she said, as much for Sam's benefit as his. "He is bi he isn't."
"That doesn't sound like you, Heather. Do you feel like making yourself clearer if it isn't too late in the day?"
"He didn't get as far as the interview."
Terry emitted a sound that could have passed for either a gasp or sigh before he demanded "Who stopped him?"
"Nobody that I'm aware of. He forgot where he was going. It can happen."
"Not to me. How could he forget something that important, for heaven's sake?"
"Too much pressure, do you think?"
"What pressure? He wasn't under any."
Sam had turned to gaze blank-faced not quite at her. "You can't say that," she said.
"I thought I just did. Is he there for me to speak to?"
"I'll see," Heather said as neutrally as she could manage.
She was holding the receiver towards Sam and miming a disinterested question when she heard Terry complain "It isn't always the man's fault, you know." She couldn't help thinking, however unreasonably, that he'd saved the comment until he thought she was unable to hear. "I didn't know I suggested it was," she said, having snatched the receiver back to her face. "I imagined you'd think he was taking after me as usual, and perhaps you'd even be right in this instance."
"I'm that more often than you'd like to admit."
It felt as though one of the arguments they'd succeeded in avoiding while they were together had grown harsher for being stored up. She thought Sam meant to rescue them from any more of it by limping downstairs and reaching for the phone. "It's me," he said, sounding less than entirely convinced.
Heather withdrew into the front room, where Sylvia whispered "So where did he end up?"
"I didn't ask."
Sylvia sat back as though to let the occupant of her midriff join her in overhearing Sam.
"Just what mum said," he confessed. "I never got to London...
If it's anyone's fault it's mine, all right?... I called when I got home but she'd gone... I will next week if you think I should... I've said I will...
Mum?"
The receiver hit the table with a clunk. By the time Heather retrieved it Sam was limping doggedly to his room. His door closed as she said "What now?"
"I won't pretend I'm happy."
"Nobody's asking you," said Heather, and was tempted to pause before continuing, "to pretend. You don't think Sam is, surely."
"Happy or pretending?"
"Either."
"I wouldn't mind you seeming more concerned."
"I don't need to perform it to be it, and I hope you didn't overdo to him."
"I went to quite a lot of trouble to set that interview up."
"I'm sorry if you think it was all for nothing."
"No, it was all for Sam." - The argument and its pointlessness were starting to exhaust her so much that she almost didn't care who won. "Shall we let him work out for himself? We'll speak again sometime," she said without leaving a gap for an answer, and planted the receiver on its hook. When her silence didn't entice Sam onto the landing she made with some purposefulness for the front room.
Sylvia was so deep in her armchair she looked crushed into very little by her belly. "The main thing is he's home now, right?" she said.
"I suppose it must be," Heather said and shut the door. "I'll start dinner in a minute."
"Gosh, that's from the past."
"What is, Sylvie?"
>
"The way you're looking now."
"Which is..."
"Like a sister who wants to stand in for our mum and dad."
"I don't think I'm that ambitious, but can I ask you a question you don't have to answer if you don't want to, though I'd really like it you did?"
"I don't see how I can say no yet."
"How did you meet Natty's father?"
Darkest Part of the Woods Page 25
