by Stef Penney
I jog along the verge of the main road, but there are too many cars around, dazzling me with their headlamps. One car blares its horn exactly as it goes past—they probably think it’s funny—and I nearly have a heart attack. So I head off down the little narrow road called Swains Lane, which is pretty unused this time of night. There’s a fair old wind stirring the tops of the beeches that arch over the lane and make it into a tunnel, and rain splatters down between them. Under the trees there’s a churning sound everywhere, a roaring, as though the countryside is being stirred by a giant hand. It hides me; it drowns my gasping breaths that are almost sobs. I have to slow to a walk now and again just to get my breath back, but as soon as I have it and my heart has stopped trying to burst out through my ribs, I have to run on.
About halfway down Swains Lane a funny thing happens. I see a parked car at the end of the lane, where it joins the bigger road that leads back toward the industrial estate. There are no lights on inside the car, and there’s no one in it, and yet there are no buildings in sight. I can’t think who would have left their car there on a night like this. Just for the hell of it, as I go past, I put my hand on the door handle and press the trigger. And it opens.
After looking around to check that there’s no one coming, I sit inside for a minute out of the rain and imagine I’m a totally different person who knows totally different things. Who doesn’t know what I know. Who hasn’t got old trainers with holes in, that squelch. Maybe I’m a twenty-five-year-old man with a wife, and I’m about to go home to her. Maybe I’ve been to the races today and won thousands of pounds. I haven’t yet planned what I’m going to do with all the money; that is a pleasure I have to look forward to, along with telling her about my win. The money’s on the seat beside me, a roll of notes snug inside a red rubber band—I’ve seen them, passed from bookie to pocket. How happy she will be. My wife who looks like Katie Williams, with honey-colored hair.
It would be nice to stay in the car—maybe curl up on the backseat, hide under a dry checked blanket, and go to sleep. Maybe wake up hundreds of miles away. Far away, with a new name. But there is no blanket.
I open the glove box. There’s nothing inside but a map, a notebook with some figures in it that don’t seem to mean anything, and a tin of those bullet-hard travel sweets: the sort that have a disk of paper on top of them and are meant to stop you from getting carsick when you’re on a long journey. Suddenly I’m starving, so I cram a handful of the floury sweets into my mouth and put the tin in my pocket. Icing sugar dusts my fingers; water floods my mouth with lemony black-currant sweetness. There’s a windscreen scraper in the door compartment, and I take that as well, just for the hell of it.
Then there’s a strange noise outside. I whip around, heart jammed in my throat, pumping painfully, pins and needles in my feet and hands. I get out of the car and run off, convinced that someone has seen me and will yell at me or is leveling their gun sight on me from the shadows.
But no one runs toward me out of the woods. No one yells. No one shoots. No one is watching.
No one cares.
It doesn’t occur to me to be scared out here. I’m much more scared of going home and looking into Mum’s eyes—or seeing him—than I am of this. But still, I don’t want to take the shortcut through the woods; I don’t think I could find the path in such darkness. Instead, I stick to the road, walking fast but not too fast, and that’s how I come across two more cars that have been left in dark, deserted places.
For some reason that I can’t fathom, I have decided by now that it’s necessary to break into the cars, as a test, and take something—a talisman— from each one. By now I’m kind of imagining that I’m in a fairy tale, where the hero has to have three apparently everyday but really magical objects that, when he is in the greatest danger, will come to his aid and save his life.
I am the hero, I hope, but don’t we all?
I approach the second car not believing there will be no one inside it— probably some sad old snogging couple who won’t give a toss about me— but there isn’t. Again: no one. This door is locked, though. So using my new bad-person skills, I break the quarter-light with a rock, neat as anything. This time all I find is a pair of driving gloves: those ones that old men wear with the leather palms and the string backs with holes in. They’ve been well worn; even in the glove compartment they are rounded, molded around the ghosts of the driver’s hands. They’re soft and greasy, almost worn away at the finger ends, and much too big for me, but still. And as I walk away—no running this time—I feel my chest swell with the power of Getting Away with It. No one sees me. No one hears me. I don’t even have to hurry.
Because no one cares.
It dawns on me then: this is the secret they have been keeping from me. All the things that you are supposed to do and not do—why bother? Because no one really gives a toss.
Look at my dad.
I have no idea how long I’ve been out in the rain when I come to the third car. I’m as wet as if I’d jumped in a river; even my underpants are soaked. I’m so cold I can barely feel my hands. I could be made of marble, a moving statue. I raise my marble fist and punch in the side window. It needs a couple of goes before it breaks, but I don’t feel anything. I unlock the door and sit inside. Water drips down my fringe and into my eyes. I can’t feel my ears at all. In the glove compartment I find a porno mag and a flat bottle of whiskey. I think about taking the magazine, but, considering where I’m going, it doesn’t feel right. And maybe the whiskey is too useful, too magical; I should find something else. On the floor there’s another windscreen scraper, but that’s it. I decide to swap this scraper with the one from the first car. This seems incredibly funny—I wonder when they’ll notice that!
There’s nothing else to take, so I open the bottle of whiskey and take a swallow. I don’t taste anything other than a metallic bitterness that seems to have been in my mouth forever, but after a second or two I feel its fiery trail scorch its way down my throat. It’s brilliant—the heat and cold. Lava and ice. I take another swallow, and a second later I retch as it hits my stomach. I lean back in the seat, panting, the insides of my cheeks running with water, until the urge to puke passes off.
So here I am, soaked, dripping, frozen, sitting in the driver’s seat of a Ford Sierra that belongs to God knows who. I’m overwhelmed with tiredness. I don’t know how much farther I have to go. My earlier certainty has been washed away. Suddenly I start laughing silently, sort of shaking uncontrollably. The whole thing is pretty funny, when you think about it, pretty bloody absurd. Is it incest if you do it with your cousin? People at school make jokes about farmers being as thick as pig shit because their parents are related. But maybe that’s not true—and maybe Mum and Ivo is more recent than that, anyway . . . Maybe . . . Maybe not. I take another gulp of whiskey. This time it doesn’t burn so much, and I don’t feel sick anymore. There’s a nugget of warmth deep inside me, and the hard knot inside my chest is slipping, dissolving. The fourth mouthful I barely feel at all.
Rain hammers on the roof of the car—a comforting, monotonous drumroll. It’s been raining since forever. I lean back in my seat, look up at the sky, at the raindrops hurtling through space toward me—it’s like being on the Starship Enterprise, zooming through endless spiraling galaxies, going nowhere.
I break off the shard of broken glass that’s still poking out of the car window, and stare at it. It’s shaped a bit like the mountain on a Toblerone packet, only thinner.
A glass dagger. A true magical object, winking in the dark.
Sometimes you know exactly what to do.
I roll up my left sleeve and press the point of the dagger against my skin. Under it runs the Janko blood—the pure black blood. At least half of me—and maybe all of me. Janko through and through. Diseased, incestuous, cursed. I press harder, watching the dent grow under the point.
Harder—then pull sharply downward.
There is a strange mewing sound.
I open my
mouth wide and watch my own darkness well out of me.
31.
Ray
Slowed by the storm, I don’t arrive at the site until close on midnight. All the trailer lights are blazing away; the rain falls diagonally, the wind whipping the trees into an ecstasy of self-flagellation. Before I’ve even pulled up, Sandra Smith runs toward my car—her blond hair turning flat and dark between her trailer door and mine. Her face is shiny white in my headlights, a mask of fear.
“Where is he? You haven’t found him?”
She’s staring into the backseat. She seems almost hysterical. I can’t see why.
“I don’t know where he is, but he’s got his van . . .”
“What?”
Then Kath and Jimmy are beside her. Jimmy leans in.
“Where’s Ivo?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. He hasn’t come back here?”
Kath pulls the younger woman away from my car. I strain my ears to hear her.
“It’s the detective. He’s not here about JJ. Come on . . .”
“Mr. Smith, what’s going on? Has something happened?”
Jimmy jerks his head to one side, meaning Get out.
“Her boy’s run off. She’s out of her mind with worry.”
“Oh, God, I’m sorry . . . Well, Ivo’s run off, too. He left Christo at the doctor’s. I called your sister-in-law—she’s with him now, in the hospital.”
“Who?”
“Lulu . . . Luella.”
“What’d you get her for?”
“Well . . . she’s the only family member I know with a phone.”
Jimmy stares at me, as though he can’t compute all this information, then starts to lead me to Tene’s trailer.
I wonder if there is a hole somewhere, in the fabric of England, and Jankos are falling through it, one by one.
Now we’re waiting for Ivo to come back. I daren’t go back to London and face Lulu without information of some sort. Tene has been the soul of courtesy, insisting he sit up with me, pouring glasses of whiskey, claiming he won’t sleep until “the boys” return. But he seems confident that they will, and confident, too, that his sister, no matter how estranged, will take care of Christo.
An hour ticks by. Then another. We have run out of things to say. Tene smokes his pipe. The rain hammers on the roof. I can’t imagine how anyone could sleep with such a racket; it’s like being inside a drum. At length Tene asks me if I know any Gypsy stories. I shake my head. If my dad knew any, he kept them to himself. He wanted his sons to be postmen, like him; vacuum cleaner salesmen, like my brother.
“There’s one I’ve been thinking of, my dad used to tell us. Do you want to hear it?”
“Sure.”
Tene clears his throat. His voice drops a couple tones. He looks down, and when he looks up, his face is changed, lit up. Of course, he would be a born storyteller.
“Once, the land far away was ruled by a queen and a king. The queen of the fairies was very beautiful and lived on a mountaintop in a castle made of crystal, and under the mountain lived the king of the demons, who was as evil as the queen was good.
“The king saw the queen’s beautiful face and fell in love with her. He asked for her hand, but she refused. In his anger, the king declared war on the fairies and began to annihilate them. To save her people, the queen agreed to marry him, but she found her husband so disgusting that he had to drug her before he could lay a finger on her. So they had nine children, but they were the most terrible children the world has ever seen, for they caused all the diseases of mankind.
“Their firstborn was Melalo, a two-headed bird who claws his way into men’s hearts and makes them mad and violent; the fourth was a daughter, Tcaridyi, a worm who causes fever; and the eighth was Minceskro, who causes illnesses of the blood. But worst of all was the ninth child, Poreskoro, who was neither male nor female but both, and who spreads the plague. Even the king of the demons was frightened by this child, so he let the queen go at last, and she went into hiding under the mountain, where she sheds her tears, and there she remains to this day.
“And at the end of a story, my dear dad used to say, ‘Now, ask me no more to tell you lies!’ ”
Tene leans back with a husky laugh. The air is hazy with smoke from his pipe. He doesn’t seem to feel the cold, but that might be because he’s swaddled in several layers of mismatched jumpers. I’m freezing: saturated with damp, wind-driven, three a.m. cold.
Tene tries to refill my glass, but I put my hand over it. I still have to drive home, at some stage.
“You see why I thought of it. Minceskro . . . I can’t remember the names of all of them. My dad could, but . . . it’s shocking how you forget. My sisters aren’t interested. And the young ones—they don’t care about the old stories. They only care about pop music and football, gorjio rubbish like that . . .”
The sound of a car engine penetrates the fug. I jump up, as fast as my creaking limbs can propel me, and go to the door. Tene’s face changes— anxiety floods his eyes. He says something like “Go easy on him.”
It’s Ivo’s van. My fury gets me as far as halfway to the driver’s door. Kath, Jimmy, and Sandra are already there, surrounding him. They look furious, too. Jimmy takes his arm and mutters something in a low voice. Ivo looks up once, in my direction, his face haunted. He looks defeated and very young.
“What the hell happened to you?”
As soon as I’ve said it, I realize I’ve blundered. The others turn their faces toward me, shielding Ivo. But he pushes past them. His eyes are hollowed out, exhausted.
“Is Christo . . . ? Is he okay?”
His voice is even hoarser than usual, a shadow of a whisper.
“Okay? I don’t know if that’s the word for it. Gavin gave you his valuable time for nothing—you can’t mess around with people like that. Why should he help you again?”
He makes no reply, just stares at me, pleading.
“Lulu’s taken him to hospital for more tests. Yeah, he’s okay. Probably wondering what happened to you, though. Probably terrified.”
A spasm of anguish crosses his face.
“I . . . couldn’t. I’m sorry. I had to—”
Kath seizes his arm and pulls him roughly toward their trailer.
“Mr. Lovell!”
He turns around; in between the three of them, he looks like a prisoner being dragged away.
“Thank you for what you did for him. It was really nice.”
Then he’s hustled inside and the door slams, leaving me alone.
“Please don’t be too hard on him.”
Tene is at his door, struggling with his chair. I feel a stab of sympathy for him. He is the head of the family in name only; he cannot control them, or even keep up with them—all he can do is apologize.
“We’ll straighten him out. We’ll sort it out, don’t you worry. Don’t go yet . . . Not yet.”
Inside, he offers me more whiskey, trying to smooth things over, atone for the mess his relations are making of their lives. And, consequently, of mine.
“You have to realize, he has grieved so much. I had two brothers, you know. Matty and Istvan. They both died. Istvan when he was a kid, so Ivo didn’t know him, but he knew Matty; he lived till he was thirty.”
Tene wouldn’t imagine Lulu would have told me some of this. I’m not supposed to already know.
“What did they die of ?”
“They both had it. The disease. Istvan was worse than Christo, you see. Didn’t have the strength to grow up. Matty was ill, too, but it wasn’t so bad. He just kept getting infections: pneumonia and so on. He was great. A lovely man.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Then Ivo lost his brothers. Milo and Steven. They died when they were little.”
I nod.
“But we had Christina, and then Ivo. And we thought—Marta and me—we thought, at last, our luck had changed. But Ivo got ill when he was four or five. They were like twins, those two. And then my wife pas
sed—cancer. Two years after that, Christina died.”
“I’m so sorry.”
I whisper it. Too much repetition, and the words begin to sound like an insult.
He doesn’t volunteer anything more. His grief is suddenly present, immediate, in the trailer, as though it happened only yesterday.
“I . . . I really am sorry.”
I feel I have to say it again, but after so many condolences the platitude sticks in my mouth. So many losses—I can’t even begin to imagine what his life has been like. Or any of their lives, come to that.
There is a black-and-white photograph on the wall, in a silver frame. It shows a young dark-haired woman, dressed in the fashion of the early sixties. A solemn, middle-European face, wide cheekbones. She is sitting in front of a photographer’s backdrop—a satin curtain—and two children are pressed up against her. The woman is Tene’s wife, Marta, and the children are Ivo and Christina. The survivors—at that point, anyway. Ivo is smaller than his sister—of course, he’s the younger—and desperately thin, but with a sweet, happy smile. He must be about six—the same age Christo is now. Christina has her arm around him: a fierce older sister, glaring at the camera with her chin tilted up. They are very alike.
Presumably they knew then that Ivo was suffering. They didn’t know how long he would have.
It’s dawn by the time I get home. The message light on my answerphone is blinking, and although I’m too tired to care, I automatically hit the button. I don’t recognize the man’s voice.
“Ray? Mr. Lovell? I’m sorry to ring you at home, but since it’s the weekend . . . I wanted to tell you that . . . Sorry, it’s Rob here. Rob Anderson from Alder View. I think you should come up here again. All the work’s been stopped. They’ve found something on the site. They’ve found human remains.”
32.
St. Luke’s Hospital
For some reason, my right hand stays numb and inert even after the rest of me comes back to life. Naturally, I’m right-handed. I can pick up the right hand with the left, squeeze it, bend the fingers, pinch the skin, but I feel nothing. It’s like handling a glove full of sand.
