Deep Sleep

by Frances Fyfield

  ‘I’m sorry I woke you up so early, Duncan. You look as if you could have done with rather longer.’

  The faces Bailey encountered at around two o’clock in the afternoon were universally haggard, variously flushed and disorientated, the figures sitting in the CID room slumped in degrees of lethargy depending on their party stamina. A few had been wise, gone home long before the end: they were the ones live enough to joke. There were a few red faces and one or two suspicious silences. Detective Constable Perry walked with a pronounced limp: his eyes were swollen, and he had no plans to speak until spoken to, until caught on the wing by bumping into Bailey in the corridor.

  ‘Have a word, Duncan? In my office.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, sir. About you having to take me home and all that. I gather I wasn’t nice to know.’

  ‘About time you gathered that, Duncan. So far you’ve confined the worst effects of your drinking to making an exhibition of yourself in front of your wife. Last night you excelled yourself in front of all your colleagues, well done. Might give you some idea of what a bloody fool you look when you hang around Herringbone Parade of an evening. And how many uniform coppers there are out there dying to arrest you. Still wondering why she doesn’t want to come home?’

  Duncan was in a state of fury, taking in each word, holding himself rigid, looking at the floor between Bailey’s well-shone shoes and his own toneless ones. Then he pulled himself upright, gazed at a spot on the yellow wall past Bailey’s head, and said again, ‘Sir.’ He was like a toy soldier, Bailey thought savagely, and himself like a sergeant major.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, man, never mind, getting pissed and pawing a woman isn’t the worst thing in the world. But you could have got your bloody head kicked in. Why are you limping? Did you fall over once I’d left you?’ Silly question. Duncan would not remember, but Bailey could recall the two of them stumbling at least once on the way upstairs to Duncan’s door, also dropping Duncan while he went through his pockets for the key.

  ‘No, sir. I hurt myself yesterday when I was playing football with my boy.’

  ‘And was that when he gave you that thing I was asking you about so unconscionably early this morning? That wire hat thing?’

  ‘He didn’t give it me, sir. He showed it me, then left it in the back of the car. I told him he shouldn’t collect rubbish. He said it was OK, because it was all clean and wrapped up, but he knows his mother doesn’t like it.’ Duncan was recovering. ‘Tom has a passion for rubbish, sir. He used to bring his mother flowers from the council tip.’ A smile flitted across his face and vanished quickly, the grey cells not yet sufficiently alert to do more than wonder why some silly object, favoured by his eccentric child, was the subject of so many questions. Bailey judged that the instinct of the detective, if instinct was the right word for it, would be the last thing to surface in a still stupefied mind. For the moment he was grateful for that.

  ‘I spoke to your wife. She said the boy told her some other lad had given it to him.’

  Duncan clearly disliked the thought of such chatting. Bailey reflected he was the sort of man who would resent any man speaking to his wife, while reserving to himself the right to behave like a pig towards the wife of another. A common enough double standard, he supposed, not peculiar to policemen.

  ‘No, sir. I’m sure he told me he’d picked it up from the road, outside where they live. I could be wrong. I’m sorry, sir, why do you need to know?’

  ‘Nothing. Never mind. Nothing.’

  Bailey did not know what Tom Perry looked like, but he knew he would be able to detect the mother. Not only from their rare meetings, but also from the photo with the cracked frame on Duncan’s bedside table at home. Kimberley Perry had always been discussed: she had the open face of the streetwise girl next door and the figure of a siren, an effortless sexual draw which she did not seem to realise, a swagger which was not ostentatious but nevertheless drew wolf whistles from building sites. A homely body, not beautiful enough to intimidate or slim enough to model; the sort of woman a man might take home to mother and then to bed; likely to be good-humoured on either occasion and an irresistible combination to any officer on night shift. Bailey himself had noticed her, of course. Since Helen had arrived to save him from cynicism, as well as the succession of affairs which had distinguished his bachelor career after divorce, infidelity had never occurred to Bailey. Other men’s needs were their own affair, but such betrayal of trust struck him as the height of bad manners. Nevertheless, he was not blind, still noticed, watched and admired.

  The school gates were a mile and a half from Herringbone Parade, and the wind which had dogged the first two weeks of December was still blowing. A small clutch of winter-coated mothers stood gracelessly by the gate, as deferential but eager as those sulky fans outside a theatre waiting for a star who was bound to ignore them. It seemed to Bailey that it was only childless adults who wanted to proclaim their individuality; here, children and parents alike desired nothing more than to be one of the crowd, plead the same backgrounds, the same difficulties, wear the same uniforms to escape envy or scorn, seeking anonymity rather than be noticed. The school matched its scenery: an old-fashioned redbrick school isolated in concrete surroundings, the same vintage as Bailey’s own police station, probably furnished with the same thick radiators and gloss paint, the fabric of it as solid as chipped granite. A school where he imagined he might smell cabbage although he did not doubt that meals catering more to contemporary taste were delivered by the carton. And children, he remembered, never did like cabbage. Cabbage was good when only shown the water, sliced with butter and coriander seed … Bailey was hungry and he had become adept at cooking.

  Cabbage and the cabbage-like mothers, hidden under those coats, distracted him for a minute or more. There were no waiting men, which did not discomfort him, but he could see why it might have worried Duncan, a man too uneasy with women to stand alone with them.

  Then school broke, and it was as if the building were coming apart at the seams with boys and girls shoving out of the main doors, swinging them back deliberately to hit the one behind. The crowd was heralded by one or two and then a great heaving, yelling mass, spilling forth with bravado, dragging coats and bags, and then, having celebrated their own escape, slowed down in the playground, reluctant to leave, shaping into small conspiratorial or sparring groups, full of unintelligible noise. Girls linked arms and walked in whispering pairs, boys circled, swooped, dived and shied away. Bailey could not help the sensation of wonder and jealousy which afflicted him. All that row, that blatant physical perfection not even hidden by the scruffy regularity of school clothes; skinny bodies, fat bodies, blessed with the energy of less than twelve years. His own child might have been thus: he was not contemptuous of the mothers. Found himself looking in that crowd for a girl who might have been his own, instead of looking for Tombo.

  He could not imagine how teachers ever distinguished one child from the other, although each walked or gestured differently, pulled faces and wore their hair in different ways. But row on row, he could not have been sure to pick out his own, or anyone else’s daughter. Bailey shook himself, concentrated on looking for Mrs Perry. He waited, looking shy by the railings like a man waiting for a date, remembering that too. Waited until every drab mother had disappeared with one or two young, the last posse of fighters fled from the playground, the last promise made before the weekend, and the pavement held nothing but echoes.

  Slowly he went into the school building itself. She might have come in here to wait: so might the boy. He found one lone teacher, adjusting a coat in her headlong flight downstairs, comical in her hurry, less than pleased to be stopped.

  ‘You might try the youth club at the back,’ she said. ‘Some of the kids wait there if their mothers are working.’ She had never heard of one Thomas Perry. It was not that kind of school, despite the homely aspect. Watching so closely, he had missed them both.

  ‘Tea?’ he said. ‘Tea, Kim? You must want a n
ice cup of charred char by now. Been at least an hour. I’ll make it.’

  So solicitous today, as if to compensate for yesterday’s bossiness, the thin level of reserve covering all tensions like paper over a crack. Kim had recovered from the sleepiness, but not from the tiredness and a slight feeling of wanting to weep. She had been twice to her diary to look at the date and see if the monthly affliction of hormones could provide a reason if not an excuse, but the dates had blurred a little in front of her eyes after the mid-morning coffee which had been such a welcome respite from tea. Besides, when she had reached the handbag and found inside the paracetamol packet with the message, she forgot why she had broached the handbag in the first place. Always a dangerous thing to do: the market place leather contained lists of recriminations. Letters from Duncan, lurking there, the only proof she had he could write.

  ‘Tea?’ Pip was saying again. ‘I haven’t forgotten you’re going to meet the little lad from school, plenty of time.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she muttered. The toothpaste stack was perfect: the cosmetics were at long last sorted back into place after two weeks’ interference from teenagers thinking of Christmas parties and asking about special offers. As well they might, she had been thinking grimly as she kept herself deliberately busy and active in the lull spells outside the dispensary: half this stock is reduced. Wonder if he killed Margaret to get his share? The mere thought made her smile: Pip would not hurt a fly. He would wave a stick at it instead and call it names. Horrified, she had tried to check all such thoughts, stung by the fact that her previous admiration for him had grown to contempt in a matter of days, all without rhyme or reason. Ever since he had put his arm round her and shouted at Duncan. The tea arrived. Purple tea. ‘Hibiscus,’ said Pip proudly. ‘To buck you up.’

  ‘I thought it made you sleep.’

  ‘No, no, only soothes the nerves.’ Kim sipped doubtfully.

  The door slammed open and shut, admitting one of the regulars from the building site, a recognisable hypochondriac who called in at least twice a week for a different patent remedy every time. He cantered from entrance to counter, looking worried, muttering, ‘Jesus, it’s cold.’ Then stood indecisively, looking round as if expecting pursuit. ‘Give us some of those yeller ones,’ he croaked. Kim looked at the shelves behind the counter, tea mug in hand, could not quite see what he meant by yellow ones although she was usually quite astute in translating the odder requests.

  ‘No yeller ones? Throat things, then, any kind.’

  ‘You’re in a hurry,’ Kim remarked, pulling down a packet of pastilles, honey and lemon flavour.

  ‘So will you be soon. All of youse. I’m off all right. Them buggers has found a bomb out there, and I’m not waiting to see how big.’ He sped to the door, leaving his change. Kim watched with weary resignation as the toothpaste display toppled. They had their superstitions over there on the site: they were always talking rubbish in that pub. Pip watched her solicitously.

  ‘Kim, you look all in. Why don’t you go home and lie down for half an hour? Look, not a customer in sight.’

  ‘Can’t,’ she mumbled, stifling a yawn. ‘Can’t. I’ve got to go and meet Tombo.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll phone you upstairs, wake you up in time. Go on, finish that tea and go.’ He was gently insistent; so much so she forgot her resentment of his bossiness, thought only of his kindness and got out of the shop without succumbing to the tears which still threatened. The same feeling as yesterday, a not unpleasant drowsiness which turned her hands to sponge and her brain to water. She got as far as the bedroom, took off her overall, and fell on the bed she had not bothered to make. Even the sight of the open drawer, mute witness to last night’s petty burglary, did not disturb her.

  Tom always knew if there was someone to meet him from school or not. He sensed the presence or absence of either parent or dopey Daniel as soon as he crashed beyond the main door to emerge into the playground, jumping over the flattened flowerbeds which adjoined the building to be trampled daily. On the rare occasions Dad was there, he could be spotted immediately, hanging about with sheepish self-consciousness beyond the wire fence which separated school ground from street, Dad always moving like some kind of warden patrolling a compound. On those occasions, Tom would want to grab the nearest boy, or the largest, any of the casual tormentors who picked on him when there was no other unfair game, and shout, Look, there’s my Dad! Point out Duncan’s unshakeable six feet, stolid and official and unaware that he would act as a talisman for days to come. No Dad today. Simply some older geezer, a grandad in Tom’s eyes standing close to the usual clutch of mothers. Such grandads were a joke: they hung round after the girls for reasons not yet fathomed but faintly disgusting.

  Tom’s eyes darted quickly. No Daniel, no Mum. You said you’d come today, Mum; you said, you said … When she was there, as most days, he approached her with diffidence, shuffling his feet and not indicating welcome, but his heart rising in the acute and hidden pleasure of seeing her, delight disguised in nonchalance. Today, obeying the alternative orders for such occasions, he ran past the throng to the bus stop, attached himself vaguely to some unknown woman and child, and embarked safely for Herringbone Parade.

  He never got home. There was a strange sensation about the place, more bustle than usual although there was no market.

  People gathering in the street, talking and gesturing; Mrs Beale in her shop doorway wearing a coat, smiling as she gripped Tom’s arm. ‘’Lo there, Tom. Where’s your shadow, then?’ She meant Daniel, he supposed: Mrs Beale always exaggerated. Then she clamped her hand across her mouth. ‘Oh, sorry, petal,’ she said, looking up the road as she spoke, ‘I forgot, he died, poor lad.’

  ‘What?’ said Tom, stupidly.

  ‘Your Daniel. Yesterday, I heard. When I was at the doctor’s. Oh look!’

  Tom looked. There were four policemen moving slowly down the Parade, sweeping people before them with gentle insistence. A motley crowd of people, some of them carrying bags.

  ‘We’ve all got to go, Tom,’ Mrs Beale explained, her voice high with excitement. ‘We’ve got to lock up and go. They’ve found a bomb left over from the war in those foundations they’ve been digging. All that time, fancy, lying there. Like being a kid again, this, being evacuated.’

  ‘What did you say about Daniel?’

  ‘Now don’t you be worrying about him. Didn’t your mum tell you? Come on, love, you’d best get a move on. You come along with us. I bet your mum’s already gone, they started that end.’ She put a possessive hand on his shoulder, then let go to adjust her coat, enjoying the situation.

  Tom slid away and watched. The elderly of Herringbone Parade seemed to agree with Mrs Beale about the fun of the situation. There was cackling laughter, no sign of anxiety and a quite uncustomary obedience to the young constables led by an Inspector whom they addressed as ‘Son’, and who seemed to fulfil the role of Pied Piper, leading them away as they emerged and followed, clutching clothes, and, sometimes, cats. The Inspector was enjoying himself too. He raised his megaphone.

  ‘This street to the church hall in Ash Grove, please. All to the church hall. Transport is arriving for non-walkers. There is an unexploded bomb on the building site: I repeat, an unexploded bomb on the site.’

  Tom wanted his mother, trod delicately between those moving in the opposite direction until his arm was grabbed yet again. ‘Where you going, my lad?’

  Born to respect this particular uniform, Tom answered deferentially. ‘My mum, in the chemist up there …’

  ‘No she won’t be, sonny. She’ll have gone to the hall. We started down that end, you’ll find her later, promise. Come along now.’ So Tom pretended to come along, the bile of fear combining with the burn of panic and deliberate rebellion. At the end of the row of shops, he slipped like a fish from a net and ran into the service road. There were more people there, descending from flats into cars, darkness adding to an orderly confusion. He was not going to go anywhere, not he. Not wit
h Mrs Beale and the kids from the Parade, not without Mum or, at worst, Daniel. Not Daniel: he had hardly comprehended what Mrs Beale had said, but knew it was true, and added to the fear was a leaden weight of guilt, pictures in his mind of Daniel moaning in a huddle. His fault, all his fault, a weight to carry with all this sense of betrayal, and where was Mum? Ducking cleverly from one back yard to the next, shying away from the dark bins, it became clear he would never reach his flat before being collected again, but he found, in the end, that fear of the herd subsumed the fears of these secret places and it was not so difficult to hide. He slid down behind one of the containers he had always envisaged as a coffin, pressed his face against the grubby cold plastic, and settled, heart thumping, to wait for the street to empty.

  It was later than normal closing time, but the shops still blazed. Christmas. Decorations suitable for Regent Street’s gracious curve, where Helen sat on the top deck of a red bus, frozen by words. She sat with thirty others, kings of the castle surveying thronged pavements and top windows, contemptuous of crowds and the unaffordable riches of Garrods windows. Hamleys for toys, Aquascutum, Austin Reed for clothes, Liberty for luxuries. A million pieces of china glowed in the crescent while feathered angels twinkled above. I hate this consumer society, Hazel had said. This bloody fixation with shops and goodies. Hate it, although I concede it’s an improvement on the war which formed me. And all my dead contemporaries. I was a boy at the end of it, with a son, lucky me. But himself and the wife met a runaway bus when they were out with the ration books, and they brought him home to me on a door. Chloroform, I used then to dull the pain because he was nearly dead and I had some there: ether I used after, for myself. Not for frolics, for oblivion: I’ve been seeking it ever since. One learns, of course, that there is no such thing. Not even after six years of ritualised conflict in a war and forty-five years’ fighting ever since to make a society sick to death. So young you are, you don’t know: despair’s the real bit. You don’t know: you only think you do, you seekers after truth. I’m sorry about your case. You’ll find someone else.’