She went downstairs feeling apprehensive and sick. “Whatever kept you so long?” Mummy said.
“I dropped the bottle, it was so slippery,” Susan said, wishing desperately that they could both stop pretending.
“You should have put it in a bag. Never mind, I‘ll carry it. Come on or we’ll be late.” Mummy strode toward Bayswater Road as if she had no time to glance at anything. Nobody but Susan would have known that, surreptitiously, she was. It seemed she had no more idea where Eve lived than Susan had.
They made their way through the gaps in the banks of cleared snow at the pedestrian crossing. A few cars passed carefully over the sparkling road on the way to Boxing Day parties. Mummy turned the comer by the estate agent’s where she had bought the flat, led Susan up a hill, through a gate, and down steps.
A figure grew on the frosted glass as soon as Mummy rang the bell, and a moment later opened the door. “Happy Christmas, Nell,” she said, “and this elegant young lady must be Susan.”
She had a wide mouth made for smiling, friendly greenish eyes, blond hair cut short the way Susan would have liked to wear hers. “Call me Molly, Susan,” she said, and Susan wondered why she called Mummy Nell. Of course it was another way of saying Helen.
They had turkey with all the trimmings, and quite a lot of wine. Molly talked to Susan at least as much as she talked to Mummy, and both that and the wine made Susan feel years older. Molly talked to her about London, asked her exactly where Wallasey was and what it was like, hoped she’d inherited the reading habit from her mother. “Don’t watch telly just because we work there, if I still do.”
“I don’t read that much.” Mummy said. “It’s cataloguing I enjoy. I like to know everything’s where it should be. I’m really not at all adventurous.”
“I’m not as much as I used to be. Safer for both of us, probably.” Molly was dousing a Christmas pudding in brandy before she passed it through the serving hatch. “You don’t know what we’re talking about, do you, Susan? Life must be one long adventure for you just now.”
Susan nodded, since they were both looking at her.
“You’ve made friends, that’s the main thing,” Molly went on. “You know, it wasn’t until I got trapped here by the weather that I realized how few friends I have in London.”
“I hope I’m one,” Mummy said. “You can always count on me after what you did.”
“I’m sure I can. I don’t mean I’ve no friends, you understand, I’m not complaining. I’d hate to be alone in a big city. No wonder Soho’s what it is, no wonder people are strange.”
“We know someone like that, don’t we, Mummy?”
“I don’t know.” Perhaps Mummy was glancing at the window so as not to look at her. “Do we?”
“Eve, I mean. She’s strange, isn’t she?”
“I really wouldn’t know, Susan. And I’m sure Molly doesn’t want to hear that sort of thing at Christmas.”
But it was Molly who had brought it up. Mummy started talking about something she and Molly had been discussing in the kitchen, some film that was true even though it wasn’t, and Susan felt excluded and resentful until she began to laugh, it was so complicated and incomprehensible. Mummy stared at her as if she were being rude, but Molly began to laugh too.
They were all laughing, though Susan for one had forgotten why, as they cleared the dishes into the kitchen. “Leave them,” Molly said. They sat down breathlessly in the fat firm chairs, and Molly produced a box of chocolates. She shouldn’t, she said, but since it was Christmas … She kept glancing at the window as they talked; perhaps she was expecting someone. Susan willed them not to arrive just yet, for Mummy was saying less and saying that more slowly, nodding and blinking and then she was asleep. “I’ll wash up,” Susan whispered, “if you show me where to put the things.”
“Don’t bother, Susan, I’ve time on my hands just now. Well, that’s very sweet of you.” Susan knew it wasn’t sweet at all; she was simply trying to get as far from Mummy as she could before she started talking. Mummy didn’t want anyone to know about Eve, and that was why Susan had to tell, but it made her feel disloyal and miserable, telling tales about Mummy. When she reached the sink she found she couldn’t talk.
It was Eve she had to talk about, not Mummy, but if she didn’t mention Mummy there was no point in talking. Was this what they meant in stories when they said someone’s lips were sealed? It felt as if the glue that sealed them had got into her mind too. When she managed to open them she found that no words would come out. Then Molly said, “What is it, Susan? Can I help?”
Susan turned quickly to the serving hatch to make sure that Mummy was asleep. The edges of the steps to the street glinted in the dark beyond the window. “Do you think someone can have power over someone else?”
“Of course. Most of us do.”
“I don’t mean just ordinary power,” Susan said, whatever that meant. “I mean being able to make people do things.”
“That’s pretty ordinary too. We all do things because we’re made to, and half the time we don’t realize we are.”
“I don’t,” Susan said defensively, but she didn’t want to get into an argument, she was desperate to make herself clear before Mummy awoke. “I don’t mean things like you mean,” she said, with no idea what those might be. “I mean like making people go to sleep.”
“That’s easy enough to do with sleeping pills.”
Molly was putting away the last of the dishes. “Not with pills,” Susan cried.
“Not with drugs at all? Well then, hypnosis.”
“Is that the same as hypnotism? That’s it, I know it. That’s what she’s doing.”
Molly closed the cupboard and took her by the shoulders to gaze at her. “If you think someone’s doing that to you, Susan, you should tell your mother at once.”
“Mummy won’t listen.” She had to say it now, or all her efforts would be wasted. “She’s doing it to Mummy,” she whispered.
“Who is, Susan?”
“A girl. Mummy met her before we came here to live. She tried to be my friend so she could do it to me as well.” She was forgetting to whisper, for Molly’s expression of polite interest made it clear how unbelievable all this sounded. “She puts Mummy to sleep.”
“I know a few people who do that to me.” Molly’s grin vanished when she saw how it upset Susan. “Why should this girl want to do that?”
All at once Susan knew: because then Eve could make Mummy dream. She didn’t know why Eve should want to, and there was no point in telling Molly, for how could it mean anything to her? “I don’t know,” she said, and went to the serving hatch, though it no longer mattered if Mummy woke up. Behind her Molly said, “I really think you ought to tell your mummy all this and ask her if she’ll—” but Susan cried out. so loudly that it seemed impossible that Mummy didn’t wake. “There she is,” she cried. “That’s her. That’s Eve.”
Eve was at the window, watching Mummy asleep. Susan knew it was Eve, though at first she could see only eyes. As Molly ducked through the hatch to look. Eve’s face seemed to form around the eyes and then was out of sight. A moment later Susan was running down the hall. She snatched open the front door and clambered up the slippery steps.
The night hit her like icy water. All of her was shivering as she peered about for Eve. The street was darker than it should be, there seemed to be windows everywhere above her and an unbearable sense of being watched. But there was Eve turning the corner at Bayswater Road. How could she have got there so quickly on the treacherous slope? By the time Susan reached the corner by holding on to walls all the way down, there was no sign of Eve or of anyone else.
She used the walls to drag herself up the hill to Molly’s, and faltered at the gate, for Mummy was waiting in the doorway. “Get your coat, miss,” she said grimly. “We’re going now.”
She followed Susan to make sure she did as she was told, and Susan had no chance to ask Molly the question she wanted to ask. She could only g
ive Molly a pleading look when Mummy wasn’t watching. “I’m glad I met you, Susan,” Molly said. “Perhaps we can talk again soon.”
Susan was grateful but wished Mummy hadn’t heard, for it had made her suspicious. “What were you saying while I was asleep? Why did you run out like that?” Mummy demanded as they walked through the deserted freezing streets.
“We were just talking about hypnotists,” Susan said, sending Molly her thanks for not mentioning Eve at the window, “and I thought I saw someone from school going by.” She tried not to shiver in case that looked as if she were frightened by lying, but trying made her shiver worse. She could see that Mummy wasn’t satisfied. “We’ll have to do something about you, young lady,” she said, and Susan could only tell herself that the evening had been worth it. At least she was no longer alone with her plight. At least Molly had seen Eve.
23
MOLLY wasn’t sure that she had seen anything. Two days later, as she tried to decipher the instructions for building a video cabinet, she thought that anything she might have seen had been the product of her nerves, jangled by Nell. No wonder Susan had thought she’d glimpsed someone at the window when Nell had kept glancing at it as if she hoped someone would appear. She’d made Molly so nervous that Molly had begun to feel as if the view would have changed if she went to the window. At least she hadn’t seen a face, as Susan apparently had.
She laid the sides and the back of the incoherent cabinet on the carpet, and had to assume the holes had been drilled in the wrong places. No wonder the wordless instructions— arrows pointing out that A should be attached to B before D, all of which looked exactly the same—made even less sense than usual. She ought to be used by now to things that didn’t make sense. She wished that she knew what to do about Susan, instead of simply knowing what ought to be done.
Of course Susan ought to see a child psychiatrist. Molly would have hinted that gently to Nell, except that she felt it was Nell who’d made Susan that way. Perhaps that shouldn’t make a difference, but she hadn’t even told Nell why Susan had run out of the flat. So much for her attempt to brighten Nell’s and Susan’s Christmas—not only had she given herself yet another problem, she had to force herself not to keep glancing at the window.
Sometimes someone was there, of course. So far today there had been the postman, with several belated Christmas cards and two large bills, and one of the secretaries from upstairs had rung the bell just as Molly thought she’d figured out the cabinet. She was awfully sorry to bother Molly if Molly had been doing anything, they were going out and thought Molly wouldn’t mind if they left a note on their bell to say that she would take in anything that came for them, and Molly had had enough. “Would you like me to take in your washing as well? And just give me a shout when you want your arses wiped.” The secretary’s face had frozen into the mask she must use to ward off unwelcome visitors to her boss. “Well, I never. You’d think that at least you could be neighborly at Christmas,” she’d said, and now there were two more people in London whom Molly couldn’t count as friends.
She wouldn’t miss them. Let them plague someone else. All the same, she wondered how many people disliked her without knowing her, what with the newspaper reports and the photograph of her looking furtive, and Private Eye’s gleeful paragraph: “While Marty the Menace spends the festive season in the good ole coonhuntin‘ South of the US of A his personal assistant Molly Wolfe works off her frustration by carrying on the bad work and accusing the police of molesting her. It seems not to have occurred to her to wonder why on earth anyone would want to. Who could have played with the big bad Wolfe? Pigs, maybe …” Anyone who responded to that she wouldn’t have wanted for a friend, and now she saw what was wrong with the instructions, they were printed from right to left. It took her less than five minutes to assemble the base, and she was so intent on fitting the shelves into place first time that she didn’t even glance up to prove to herself that there had been no movement at the window. Only when the doorbell rang did she realize that there had.
Her start of panic made her furious. The figure beyond the frosted glass could hardly be the police, unless they’d taken to wearing red boots in the snow. Besides, the woman was too small, and when Molly opened the door the woman’s head looked even smaller for being tied up in a headscarf. “Molly Wolfe,” she said.
Something about her made Molly apprehensive—not just her peremptory briskness. “Yes?”
“Don’t you remember me? I didn’t think I’d changed that much. I recognized you as soon as I saw your picture in the paper. No? Joyce Churchill. You knew me as just Joyce.”
Molly’s apprehension grew solid in her stomach, though she wasn’t sure why: perhaps all of them from eleven years ago had seen her photograph, but why should that make her feel panicky? “You’ve come about Stuart’s letter,” she said.
“Stuart who?”
Why was she concerned with surnames now? “Stuart Hay. Dr. Kent’s assistant. The people who got us together in Oxford.”
“Don’t talk to me about them. I’ve finished with all that, I’ve found my purpose in life. Of course I haven’t come about them. I’ve come to ask for your help.”
Molly couldn’t stand there with her apprehension looming overhead so darkly it seemed solid. “You’d better come in.”
In the living room Joyce nodded approvingly at the furniture and video recorder and sections of the cabinet. “What can I do for you?” Molly said.
“Remember how we all wanted to change things? I think I have, in my own little way. Maybe I needed that business in Oxford to teach me not to be so ambitious.
What I do, you see, is look after old folk, giving them somewhere to go so they can make friends.”
“That’s worth doing.”
“Yes, it is. Nobody can say different. Nobody except the planners and the people who are too interested in making money. The planners let my day center be demolished, after my husband gave up his own shop to buy it for me. They’re paying compensation, as little as they can get away with. I’d like people to know about that,” she said fiercely, “but first there’s something else. I’ve found an empty property that’s suitable and I’m having to fight one of these hamburger chains to get it. They’re doing everything they can to make it seem they would be more of an asset to the district than a place for the old folk would be. But they’re afraid of public opinion, I’m sure they are.”
“So they should be,” Molly said, and wondered why Joyce was staring so impatiently at her. “So why have you come to me?”
“Because you work for the television, of course.”
“Yes, but not at the moment. I’ve been suspended.”
“I know that. They told me when they gave me your address.” Joyce was growing red-faced with impatience. “You still know who I should speak to, don’t you? Surely you can put in a word for me. I don’t know anyone else who can help.”
“I’ll do my best, Joyce,” Molly said, vowing that once she had put Joyce in touch she would have nothing more to do with her. “Let me make a call and see who’s there.”
Ben wasn’t, thank God, and wouldn’t be until the new year. Tessa Schuman was in charge of news, and sounded wary when she realized who Molly was. “It’s nothing to do with me,” Molly explained, “except that the lady is a friend of mine. Just let me bring her in and the rest is up to you.” She would have sent Joyce if she hadn’t wanted time to talk to her, to ask.
Joyce had overheard her and was wrapping up her head again. “You’re a brick. Look, here’s my number and where I live. If I can ever do anything for you, don’t hesitate to ask.”
The more Molly thought of the possibility of a reunion, the more trapped it made her feel. She closed the front door behind them and dug her mittens out of her coat pocket. “Don’t be offended, Joyce, but I honestly feel we should try to stay apart.”
“Well, of course I wouldn’t dream of imposing on you.”
“You’re offended. Look, it’s nothing
personal. I don’t know why, I just feel none of us should meet.” She was beginning to resent the way Joyce was looking at her as if Joyce never had premonitions herself. “You had a letter from Stuart, didn’t you? Didn’t it make you feel that way?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean. I’ve neither seen nor heard of him in eleven years, and I’ve no wish to.”
“I assumed he’d written to all of us.” What did it mean if he had written only to Molly? She thought of Danny, whose name couldn’t be Swain, remembered his charge that she had made everything happen. She stopped at the corner of Bayswater Road and took the letter out of her bag. “See how it reads,” she said. “Like a form letter.”
Joyce read it quickly and passed it back. Molly was tempted to let it be blown into the muddy slush. Instead she replaced it in her handbag, and then had to hurry after Joyce, who wasn’t waiting. “You see what I mean,” she said hopefully. “So how about it, Joyce? Any aftereffects?”
“I’m afraid not. Reality keeps me too busy to dream.”
Did her briskness disguise nervousness? “Joyce, what do you remember from Oxford?”
“I remember feeling I’d been locked away with nobody to turn to, just like old people who’re locked up in homes because their children can’t be bothered looking after them.”
“Do you remember what you dreamed?”
Joyce stared as if Molly were raving. “Why on earth would I remember a dream I had eleven years ago?”
Incarnate Page 20
