Webley obliges, Gilmore flinches, opens his eyes, blinks a few times.
“Now, listen carefully, boys. There’s a heavy snow warning for this afternoon.”
General air of excitement, shifting of feet, grinning.
“Because they say this is likely to be severe, and may affect trains and buses later on, Father Carfax is allowing boys who live beyond Lokswood, Black Harston, Longcreek, and on Corsey Island to go home after this lesson. For the remaining boys there may be a change of classes as some of the teaching staff will have to leave as well. Any questions?”
“What about Fecklesham?”
“Didn’t you hear me, Parker? I said beyond Lokswood. So when did Fecklesham up sticks and move to the other side of Lokswood? Anyone who non intellego where his domus is can come to the hall after next bell for a geography test. I expect to see you there, Parker. Thank you, Mr. Sefton. Do continue.”
The door shuts behind Mr. Lennox. There is a giddiness in the air. The afternoon off. Maybe longer.
“Repeat after me — potero, poteris, poterit …”
As the evening draws in, the snow whirls thickly past the window, catching in the rims of the leaded diamonds. When I clear a misted pane with my fingers, I can barely see a couple of feet beyond the house. Wet soot splatters down the chimney, and although the dining room fills with smoke, the fire is beginning to hiss and snap. In the hall the clock strikes four and the telephone rings.
I dash out of the room and snatch at the receiver.
“Cora?” comes a hissing voice.
“Dad?”
“Can you hear me?”
“Talk louder. The line’s all crackly. Where are you?”
“Doesn’t matter. Weather’s really bad here. The roads are blocked. I’ll try and get back on the train. Are you and Mimi warm enough? Is the boiler going?”
“Just about, but it’s still freezing. We’ll keep the fires lit. I’m doing the dining room right now.”
“There’s more wood in the barn if you need it.”
“Don’t worry. We’ve already brought it in.”
“Good girl. How — how are things with Ange?”
“Please come home …”
“Sorry — got to go.”
The phone goes dead.
“‘Bye,” I say.
At the edge of my eye I see a movement — Ange in the sitting-room doorway, listening.
“Was that your father?”
“The roads are bad. He — he’s going to try and get back on the train.”
“They’ve just said on the news that the trains aren’t running,” Ange says, turning away.
The smoke from the dining room drifts into the hall and hangs there. For a moment it catches in my throat and stings my eyes. I rub the water away with my hand.
The evening wears on. Miraculously, I find a tin of peaches in syrup tucked away in a dark corner of the cupboard. Ange doesn’t want any, so Mimi and I, wrapped together in a blanket in front of the television, eat them slowly one by one while we wait up for Dad, just in case. With each passing chime of the clock, his return seems less and less likely, and I begin to feel heavy with weariness. Ange sits in the armchair with her legs up, twisted around so I can’t see her face. Her sewing box is beside her on the floor, its lid closed.
After ten o’clock Come Dancing starts, although the reception is so poor it looks as if the wind has lifted the ballroom roof off and the dancers are moving about in a snowstorm like the one outside. Mimi’s head droops against my shoulder.
“I’m going to take Mimi up,” I say to Ange with a sigh. “You staying down?”
“I’ll watch this to the end,” she says without turning.
The last thing I do before I get into bed is to push the chair against our bedroom door.
The threads begin to weave together. I take my time, but then time has always been my gift.
I choose my glass-headed pins — red, like fresh blood drops — close the box, leave the room.
I run the sharp points of the pins across the panels, two fine scratched lines as I go upwards, stair by stair.
At the top is the door. I lean in close and listen. They sleep. I hear their gentle breathing. Sleep on — sleep a while longer. This time I will let you wake.
I grip the two pins, move on along the landing, and softly push the door.
I pull open the drawer, move aside her silly garments, and there he is. I lift him out, place him on the hard top of the chest, and take a pin in each hand.
Zillah taught me well, but the Bonesmen taught me better still: gave me bone ash to drink in ale and honey, showed me visions, how to gaze along the length of the spirit thread.
I lower my eyelids and see the scarred man. I see him and all those things in the great city with her eyes, know those things — the buildings, the lights, the hard streets — as she knows them.
He stands with another man, older and stout, under the sign of the Dancing Dog in a pool of cold light from the lamp over the door. The scarred man is ill at ease, and his eyes dart from side to side under the brim of his snow-speckled hat. This is a place he does not know well. To his left the street bends into a road where one or two gas lamps shed their yellow-green gleam a few feet into the darkness; to his right there is the black tunnel of an alley strewn with long-forgotten rubbish poking out of the dirty snow.
“You’re in this one up to your neck, ’Arry,” the older man whispers. “I’m telling yer, yer’ll not easy get out of this one.”
“Shut up, Frank, and let me think,” the scarred man hisses.
“Too late to be bloody thinking. You should have bloody thought before. You got two nippers an’ all — should have got out before this bloody weather —”
“I said, shut up, Frank. They’re none of your flippin’ business.”
“And everyone knows your missus is in the funny farm —”
“I said shut your bloody —”
“Charlie knows you want to back out. He ain’t pleased, and you’re right on ’is manor.”
“I’ve got to get out of here. Which way’s Whitechapel station?”
The older man screws up his eyes and peers into the alley, sees the beam of a torch, hears the thud of boots.
“I’d leg it quick — scarper!”
I raise my hand.
A young, long-legged man leaps into the lamplight, moves easy like a tumbler. A blade flashes.
The older man cries out, runs away into the darkness, slipping in the snow. The scarred man turns one way, then flips his head the other. He begins to run towards the gas lamps — into the path of a heavy man in a long pale coat with a fur collar and leather gloves, who appears out of nowhere and lunges at his stomach.
I plunge the first pin down into the little manikin, twist it as it goes. Ange imagines she is still sewing.
The scarred man is winded, grunts, thinks it is just a blow. He turns, breathless, into the path of the other —
I thrust deep with the second pin.
— who drives his arm forward, pulls away, turns, and runs off on his long limbs. The heavy, fur-collared man disappears back into the shadows.
The scarred man drops to one knee, then the other, gasps, sees blood drops in the snow, clutches his stomach. The drops become a trickle, then a stream from under his coat. He crawls back up the step where the lamp shines down on him. Under the sign of the Dancing Dog he reaches up, smearing the door with a bloody hand, moans, and drops, his head cracking on the stone step.
His hat rolls off into a heap of slush.
Here they come, the dying lights, floating upwards, first one, then another. More come, then more still, spreading up into the chilly air until they become a glittering throng.
I’ve come to hate the chiming of the clock in the hall, letting me know in the small, lonely hours of the night how much I’m not sleeping. I won’t wind it up when it next runs down.
I can’t help thinking that Dad has got himself into some kind of trouble. It w
as such an odd phone call.
The wind died down shortly after Mimi and I went to bed, and now the early morning is so unusually hushed that I jolt upright when the harsh ring of the telephone reverberates around the wooden panelling.
Dad — I’m thinking of him so intensely, it must be him.
With a glance at Mimi, who sleeps on, but without bothering to throw on my dressing gown, and ignoring the shock of the freezing lino under my feet, I pull the chair away from the door, throw up the latch in excitement, and hurry down the stairs, anxious in case the telephone stops before I reach it.
I rush to pick up the receiver, fumble with the cord, put it to my ear. “Dad? Dad — is it you?”
“Who is this, please?”
It’s a woman’s voice, clipped, efficient.
“Cora — Cora Drumm,” I say.
“I see. Is Mrs. Drumm there?”
“No. No, she isn’t.”
“Who is there, then? Who is looking after you?”
“Um, Ange — Angela — Mrs. Russell.”
“Could you fetch her for me, please?”
“She’s asleep. What is it? Who are you?”
“This is the London Hospital. Please could I speak to Mrs. Russell?”
“Please tell me, please. Is it Dad?”
“I must speak to an adult. Please fetch her.”
“Wait — wait …”
I drop the receiver onto the table, dash upstairs two at a time, and thump on Ange’s bedroom door. “Ange! Ange! Wake up! It’s the hospital!”
A groan comes from the other side. “What? What time is it?”
“Don’t know. It’s the hospital. Please come. I think it’s Dad.”
A thump, shuffling, the padding of slippers crossing the room. The door opens. Ange peers round, a little mascara smudged under her eyes.
“The phone. Please come. They won’t talk to me.”
Bleary-eyed, Ange shuffles down the stairs, tying up the belt of her quilted maroon dressing gown. She picks up the receiver and yawns before she speaks.
“Who is it? Yes, it’s Angela Russell here. What’s happened?”
I stand next to her, biting the edge of my thumbnail.
“Oh, dear.”
A long pause.
“What sort of operation?”
I move from one foot to another.
“Is he conscious?”
Another pause.
“We’re cut off — the snow. Yes, yes. Um, I don’t know. What? The police?”
“Ang —?”
“Ssh, Cora. All right. Phone us back when you have more news. Thank you. Goodbye.” She clicks the receiver back.
“What’s happened? What is it?”
“There’s been an … an accident.”
“What — what sort of accident? The car?” I feel dizzy.
“There was a fight,” says Ange, “outside a pub in Bethnal Green. Flick-knives.”
“Flick-knives? Dad wouldn’t have a flick-knife.”
“He’s been stabbed in two places — the chest and somewhere in the stomach.”
“Oh, Ange … Dad … Could — could he die?”
“They didn’t say.”
“Have the police caught him — the man who did it?”
“They’ll ring us soon as there’s any more news.”
“What — what was Dad doing in Bethnal Green?”
I crumple onto the chair by the table. I am aware of Ange reaching for the pegs by the front door, then feel my school coat around my shoulders. Still I can’t stop shivering.
How can I get to London? Are any buses running? Trains?
“There’s nobody there,” I mumble. “He’ll be all on his own. I’ve got to see him.”
She rubs my shoulder, just where my coat has slipped down — an odd sensation, as if she’s squeezed it that little bit too hard. I stiffen, almost think I feel sharp fingernails pressing into my skin through my pyjamas.
“I’ll just go and get dressed,” she says.
I get up and snatch at her sleeve. “What was the operation? Is he going to be all right?”
“They had to take out his … his spleen or something.”
“What’s his spleen?”
“I don’t know, Cora. Stop asking questions.” Ange starts to climb the stairs.
“Can’t you phone them back?”
“They won’t be able to say any more than they’ve said already.”
I stand there on my numbed feet. “Don’t tell Mimi,” I call after her. “Please don’t tell her.”
Pete, Dennis, Terry, and I are playing Monopoly on the sitting-room rug. Terry only has the Old Kent Road without so much as a house on it, has spent most of the game in Jail, and has used up all his cash to pay rent, mainly to Dennis, and fines to the Bank. On his last go he even had to mortgage the Old Kent Road, and Pete’s just declared him bankrupt.
“What’s bangrupt?” Terry cries.
“Means you’re out, mate,” says Dennis.
Terry’s lower lip wobbles; his eyes well up. “You took all my money,” he wails, pushing Dennis.
“What’s going on?” Mum comes in with a plate of biscuits. “Stop it, you two, or I’m putting these back in the tin. The sooner you’re all back at school the better. It’s ridiculous — I’ve never seen this much snow in November in all my life.”
Mum goes back into the kitchen, and as we all dive for the only custard cream, we are hit by a blast of cold air as the back door opens. I look up, thinking it must be Dad. He’s been out spreading the icy boards of the veranda with ashes from the fire to stop them being so slippery, but it isn’t him. It’s Cora and Mimi. I can hear them taking off their wellingtons while Mum lays out some clean cardboard to stand them on.
“Those blinking ashes,” Mum is muttering. “Before you know it they’ll be trodden in all over the house.”
Dennis has accumulated huge quantities of cash — some of it, I think, from sitting close to the Bank. To prevent a riot breaking out we agree that Dennis is the winner, then start packing the game away in its box.
“Mimi’s here, Pam!” Mum calls.
While Pam skips down the hall to collect Mimi, Pete gets up and, without a word, leaves and goes into our bedroom.
I stand up and make for the kitchen, where I find the door about to be shut in my face.
“Cora wants a word with me,” Mum whispers through the crack. “Go away.”
“Oh.”
“It’s all right, Mrs. Jotman,” I hear Cora say. “I — I don’t mind Roger.”
I slip in and Mum closes the door.
Cora looks dreadful — pale, her dark hair damp and messy where she’s pulled off her woolly hat.
“Blimey, how did you get up here in this snow?” I whistle.
“Doesn’t matter, Roger — they’re here, aren’t they?” says Mum. “What is it, dear? Here.” She pulls out a chair and pats it with her hand. Cora sits down.
“It — it’s Dad.” Cora twists and pulls the fingers of her gloves. “He’s — he’s been hurt.”
“Good gracious,” Mum cries, sitting on the chair next to her. “What’s happened?”
“He’s in hospital, the London Hospital on the Mile End Road.” Cora’s eyes are brimming, her mouth trembling. “He — he’s been stabbed —”
“Good Lord!”
“Outside this pub in Bethnal Green — last night. There was this fight — with flick-knives… .”
Mum gasps.
I am so stunned I can’t think of a single thing to say or do.
Cora lowers her face and covers it with her hands, still in their gloves. Mum reaches around Cora’s shoulders and pulls her towards her.
“Can you — can you ring the hospital” — I hear Cora’s muffled voice — “and find out if he’s going to die? They’ve — they’ve had to take something out of him. They wouldn’t speak to me because I’m not old enough, and Ange didn’t ask them properly.”
Mum strokes Cora’s hair. Her finger
s are shaking. “Of course I will, Cora. What’s your dad’s first name?”
“Harry — it’s Harry.”
“All right. I’ll see if I can get the number from the operator. Roger, look after her.”
“Oh, Mrs. Jotman” — Cora looks up, eyes all watery — “I ain’t said nothing to Mimi. Don’t tell her.”
“No — no, I won’t.”
Mum leaves the kitchen, closing the door behind her. I sit down in Mum’s chair next to Cora but am at a complete loss. Words come into my head, but none of them are going to make anything better, so I just sit there uselessly by her side, staring at the same bit of floor she is staring at, the little torn flap in the lino where the crumbs get underneath.
The seconds on the wall clock tick away like heartbeats. I don’t know how long we sit there, Cora wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, me sitting there like an idiot with nothing to say to her. I can hear Mum talking to somebody on the phone but can’t make out the words.
All at once the door flies open.
“What’s everyone so flippin’ miserable about?” cries Dennis, filling up the kitchen with his noise.
“Push off, Dennis,” I say. “Stop sticking your nose in.”
“Only came in for a bit of bread.” He pouts, going for the bin on the dresser.
“Go away, will you?”
“Got every right to be in here as much as you,” he says, lifting the lid off.
“Dennis! You’re not having bread before dinner,” says Mum, coming back in. “Go away.”
“Woo-woo!” he hoots, looking from Cora to me, before dancing sideways like a crab into the hall.
Mum slams the door behind him. “Right, I’m not going to beat about the bush,” she says, kneeling down on the cold floor and taking Cora’s hand. “Your dad’s on the danger list, but he’s in the best possible hands and we must be hopeful. Roger, why on earth didn’t you get Cora a handkerchief? From the basket, over there — not that one, the big one — that’s better.
“The police are involved, obviously, but the hospital wouldn’t tell me anything about that. I got the feeling they were waiting to talk to your dad if … when he comes round from the operation. His spleen’s had to come out.”
“Crikey. What’s a spleen?” I ask.
Mum shoots me a look. “Why don’t you do something useful like put the kettle on, Roger, and stir the stew while you’re there.” She turns back to Cora. “There was a wound to the chest and one of his lungs has collapsed, so they’ve had to draw the air out, or something. The main thing is to stop infection.”
The Mark of Cain Page 25
