by Stephen Laws
Mark could see that Chadderton was now trembling with rage. He was clenching and unclenching his fists as he continued: ‘Joyce was the sanest, most stable person I’ve ever known. She knew nothing about the investigation. She had no reason to kill herself, no reason to do what she did . . . It’s as if something knew that I was leading the investigation and got to Joyce because it knew it could get to me . . . I’ve got to find out just what in hell is happening to people on that train. And perhaps you might be able to help me find the answer.’
Mark sipped at his whisky. There was an almost tangible aura of physical and mental pain emanating from Chadderton which he knew only too well. He recognised the agony. ‘All right, Chadderton. I’ll help you as much as I can.’
‘I want you to tell me more. Tell me about everything that’s happened to you. Everything that you’ve felt since the accident.’
‘The dreams have been the worst part.’
‘Dreams . . . ?’
Mark and Chadderton talked of dreams and nightmares.
Three
Philip Gascoyne sat opposite his wife and daughter on the King’s Cross train bound for Newcastle. Grace, his wife, was not speaking to him. They had been late that morning getting to the station because of an unforeseen snarl-up of traffic at Marble Arch, which Grace had blamed entirely on Philip and his lack of organisation. What the hell? Philip had said, they had made the train with five minutes to spare, hadn’t they? But Grace refused to be placated. It was no way to start a holiday. It had spoilt her whole day. And it was all his fault.
Stupid cow.
Philip rustled his Express angrily and tried to read the political comment. Only two lines of newsprint registered in his brain before his thoughts returned to the previous day at work. And to Tellard, the bastard. Philip had been working as a chartered accountant for years before that poseur had been appointed to share his office. Ever since that day, Tellard had been crawling to the Director on every conceivable occasion. Grasping at every opportunity to put himself in favour, totally committed to back-stabbing anyone at all if it was to his advantage. And yesterday, Philip could cheerfully have smashed his fist right into that smug little face.
So you’re off on holiday, old boy? All right for some, eh? Well, I suppose I’ll just have to soldier on till you get back. Don’t worry about the Hobson Account. I’ll take care of it.
The Hobson Account. Philip had taken a special interest in that one and had put a lot of work into it. And God knew what Tellard would do now that he had his hands on it; what slime he would be throwing around; whose ear he would be whispering into; whose good books he would be trying to worm his way into.
God, Andy, I just don’t know how he can leave me with all this. Quite apart from the other work to be done, he’s just up and buggered off on holiday. He’s left me with the Hobson Account too, you know. And that’s a real mess, if ever there was one. Suppose I’ll just have to pull it all together. Christ, some people . . .
Grace had insisted . . . demanded . . . that they go ahead with their holiday. She didn’t give a damn if the Hobson Account was almost at completion stage, you had to have a holiday sometime. Couldn’t he see how selfish he was being? What about the child, Angelina? She was nine years old and really looking forward to her holiday in Bamburgh. What kind of father would let his daughter down like that? So . . . here they were sitting in the King’s Cross train, hurtling towards Newcastle where they could catch a bus to take them on to Bamburgh. For two glorious, rainy weeks looking at the coastline and a bloody castle. Trust Grace to pick on the most miserable time of year possible.
And Tellard would complete the Hobson Account and take the credit for Philip’s eight months of hard work.
Philip looked over the top of his newspaper at Angelina. She was sitting next to the window, pressing her face close up against the glass, distorting and pulling her features.
‘Angel, don’t do that!’
Angelina grudgingly pulled away from the window, mouth pouting, her right cheek rosy from the cold glass. Petulantly, she flipped open a large picture book on her knee and gave it a desultory look. She didn’t like riding on trains. It was boring.
‘I want some pop,’ she said sullenly, without lifting her head.
‘In a little while, Angel. When I’ve finished my paper.’
‘I want it now!’ And the picture book was slammed shut on her lap. ‘Mummy says I can have it now, don’t you, Mummy?’
‘But you’ve just finished some, five minutes ago,’ Philip said through gritted teeth.
Grace had been casting a critical eye over the two outrageously dressed girls sitting across the aisle. They were playing Mah Jong and smoking herbal cigarettes or something. It was disgusting and she thought they ought to be thrown off the train at the next station. At Angelina’s words, she turned sharply back to Philip.
‘Don’t be so selfish, Philip. Get the child something to drink. Can’t you see she’s thirsty?’
‘Yes, Grace.’
Yes, Grace. You bloody cow. I’ll just jump up and run to the cafe car, Grace. Then I’ll bring it back, Grace, open the carriage door if you want, Grace, and jump out.
‘Do you want anything?’ When he spoke, he realised that his voice sounded terse and clipped. Grace didn’t like it when he got angry. It made her angry too and things had a habit of escalating from there.
‘Thank you. A coffee would be nice if you can be bothered,’ she said, in a voice that dripped with undisguised sarcasm.
Philip snapped his paper shut, realising, perhaps for the first time since Angelina had been born, how much his daughter resembled his wife. The same nose and eyes, the same tilt of the head, the selfsame pout when she wanted something that Philip couldn’t provide instantly from thin air. There seemed to be nothing at all of himself in Angelina. Like mother, like daughter. He climbed from his seat, steadying himself as the train swung on a sharp curve, and checked inside his pocket for his wallet.
‘I won’t be long.’ Grace refused to look at him and Angelina had returned to the carriage window. She was licking it. Philip turned sharply and opened the connecting carriage door behind him, feeling Grace’s eyes on his back and sensing her further annoyance that he had booked them onto second-class accommodation for the train ride. A fine way to start a holiday. As he passed into the adjoining carriage he let the door slam with unnecessary violence, eliciting a look of surprise from the elderly couple at his left, then headed for the buffet car.
Lurching from seat to seat down the aisle like a drunk, Philip wondered how much Grace really appreciated him. He was a chartered accountant, for Chrissakes! They had a semi-detached villa, two cars, and Angelina was attending a private school. He slaved his guts out day after day to get all that for Grace. It was all right for her sitting in splendid isolation at home; with nothing to worry about but the arrangements for the next coffee morning. For God’s sake, he even paid a woman to come in and do the housework.
Oh yes, Grace wouldn’t last a day in the kind of environment he had to exist in. Back-stabbing, dog-eat-dog . . . wondering and waiting for the next career-minded bastard to knee you in the balls so that he could get his foot on the first rung of that ladder. And you couldn’t just sit back and let them do it, either. No way! You had to use the same tactics on them before they had a chance to do it to you. It was like a jungle sometimes, full of hidden man-traps concealing long bamboo spikes; and Philip was like an old, wise tiger who knew the game inside out. He had stalked this path many times before and knew every inch of this jungle. And the younger tigers, the newcomers to the jungle, lurked at either side of the path, waiting their chance. Waiting for him to come down lame so that they could take him. And if he played it just right, some of those other tigers would fall into the traps he knew were there. Sometimes, he would even give a little shove. And they’d end up skewered and squealing on those lo
ng, savagely pointed poles. He could wait. Even the really clever ones who avoided the traps would occasionally make a mistake. They would poke their noses out of the undergrowth, sniffing for him, and Phil the Tiger would just take their fucking heads off with one swipe of his claw. Just see if he wouldn’t. You or me, pal. The law of the business jungle. Pity you can’t make your mates see sense; tell them what they’ve got coming if they hassle me. But the young tigers never learned. They just kept coming. Sometimes, the guys in charge of the man-traps would . . . move them around a little . . . put one somewhere concealed, where the day before had been a clearing. So even Phil the Tiger had to watch his step occasionally.
Grace watched him go with a feeling she could only admit to as contempt. She remembered how she had envisaged their life together when they had first married and she realised that she had been cheated. There was no other word for it. In six months, she was pregnant with Angelina. And all her hopes of a career at the building society had flown out of the window. She had been type-cast even then. Grace the Housewife. And it was no use Philip going on about part-time jobs – she had no intention of being a part-time anything. Her life had been screwed up because she had married someone who had seemed to fit the bill at the time but who had turned out grade-one useless. She was the one who had to make the decisions; she was the one who kept them afloat while Philip wittered on about the tough time he was having at work. Tough time? Hah. She knew more about hard times than he could ever guess.
She had been twenty-nine when she married. Thirty when she realised that she was pregnant. They hadn’t planned it – but she had still ended up pregnant and, for the life of her, she couldn’t imagine any luck worse than that. In the months to follow, she had found herself forced into the role of Mother by Philip, her family and her friends. By everybody. At times, it seemed as if even her own body had betrayed her. It reminded her of a poem she had read at school.
Instead of the Cross the Albatross
About my neck was hung.
The presence which grew and matured inside her was like an unwanted lodger, using her body, tying her to ‘home’ by invisible but binding chains. A nappy chain. And during those long, long months, she had grown to hate the life inside her. It was Philip’s seed. He had put it there. It was his fault. It had been the creation of a new flesh which bound them both together irrevocably. Perhaps in time, had she not become pregnant, she would have realised what a mistake she had made in marrying him. A divorce would have been relatively simple. But that was before the baby was born. Now she was tied to him by Angelina and, oh God, how she hated him for it.
Perhaps one day, when she’s grown up . . .
Angelina licked at the carriage window, watching as her breath frosted the glass. It was smooth and cool against her cheek and reminded her of that time last Christmas when Julie and Amanda and Ralphie had built the snowman in Amanda’s garden. They had been throwing snowballs and she remembered how the snow had felt when she scooped some of it up and compressed it in her small cupped hands. It was really cold. Colder even than the ice in the freezer back home; colder than the little blobs of ice in the cube tray which Mummy and Daddy used for their drinks, and which stuck to your fingers when you tried to take them out. It felt really good in her hands; even better when she threw it at Julie and it exploded like white cotton wool into the folded-back hood of Julie’s parka.
That was what had started the snowball fight, and soon a disorganised, frenzied pitching of snow had begun at any moving target. Ralphie Goodman was the best thrower of all. He didn’t like the girls, he thought they were soft. They couldn’t run, they couldn’t play football and they were rotten when it came to throwing snowballs. But Ralphie played a lot with the girls all the same. Angelina remembered her Daddy saying once that the Goodman kid would grow up as a real stud or a prancing nancy boy but he was damned if he knew which. Angelina did not understand what the words meant but she supposed that Daddy thought he should spend more time playing football or something. Angelina was sure that Ralphie liked her better than Julie or Amanda or anybody else in their class. She could tell sometimes by the way he looked at her when the girls were playing netball with Miss Samson in the schoolyard. She was bigger than him by about a foot, but that didn’t matter. Mummy was bigger than Daddy and that didn’t matter, did it?
Both the same size in bed.
Now why had she thought of that? She didn’t even know what it meant.
‘It’s all the girls onto all the boys!’ shouted Amanda, and as the girls squealed with delight, the chaotic flurrying of snow changed quickly to a bombardment of Ralphie.
‘Hey, stop it! That’s not fair.’ Ralphie tried to scoop up snow for more ammunition, leaving himself open to attack. Jerking up his hands to his face as a snowball splattered on his temple, he began to back away as the girls zeroed in on him.
Angelina was panting in excitement, flinging snow in uncompressed, disorganised handfuls, feeling an exuberant thrill pulsing in her that was even nicer than the tingling in her fingers. She had never felt like this before. It was tingly . . . yes, tingly, between her legs, and she liked it. Her arms pistoned like miniature windmills, pushing waves of snow at Ralphie’s face so that he couldn’t see.
‘Hey, come on . . .’
Almost without realising what she was doing, Angelina had flung herself at Ralphie and they both collapsed into a drift of cushioning snow. She was lying on top of him, pinioning his wriggling body down under her greater weight, thrusting herself down on him and feeling tingly again.
‘Get up, Angel. I can’t breathe. It’s not fair.’
‘The girls have won!’ shouted Julie.
‘Get up. I can’t move!’
‘You can only get up if you say that you love me.’ Squeals of laughter from the other girls.
‘No I won’t! Get off!’
‘Say it or I’ll keep you here forever.’
‘Get off, you cow!’
Cow. That was a word she had heard many times before, when Daddy and Mummy were fighting late at night and she was supposed to be asleep in bed, but was really sitting on the upstairs landing, her fingers entwined around the banisters and straining to hear every word. She didn’t like that word. Seizing a handful of snow, she crushed it down into Ralphie’s face, rubbing it in hard – just like she’d seen that clown on telly, pushing a custard pie into the other clown’s face. Ralphie made a glugging noise and wriggled all the more. That would teach him. The other girls’ squeals of delight built up to a new crescendo, ringing sharply in the crisp winter air. And that made Angelina feel even better.
‘Now-say-you-love-me-or-I-won’t-never-let-you-up-again.’
Ralphie brought one thigh sharply up and rammed it against Angelina’s side, throwing her off balance. As she released her grip on his arms to steady herself, Ralphie pushed hard at her chest. Angelina rolled over into the snow as Ralphie, crusted with white patches that looked like cracked icing from some giant birthday cake, struggled to his feet and wiped his face. Now he was pushing snow into Angelina’s face, holding her long blonde hair with the other hand so that she could not squirm away.
Ralphie’s blow had hurt her and his rough, gloved hand on her face had grazed her lip. It had really hurt her when he used his knee and her lip was stinging now. And she didn’t like the way that Julie and Amanda were laughing, because they were laughing at her. She didn’t like anybody laughing at her. Not ever. Even Ralphie was laughing as he stood back at last and stooped to make a snowball, as did the other girls. Angelina was the new victim as a fresh barrage of snowballs rained down on her.
‘Stop it! Stop it!’
‘You don’t like it when it’s done to you, do you?’ sneered Ralphie. Angelina covered her head with her arms, feeling the muffled thumping of snow against her elbows. The tingly feeling was gone and she hated them all; how she hated that Ralphie Good
man most of all. She hated him more than anything in the whole wide world, and she hated the others for laughing. The bombardment stopped. Ralphie and the two girls were flinging snowballs at each other again. And Angelina knew just what to do. She was going to get even. She would make that Ralphie sorry for what he had done.
She stopped to make a snowball, her fingers clutching at the frozen ground underneath. She dragged them over the earth like a rake until she had hooked a large pebble. Compressing the snow around it, moulding it into the cup of her hands, she stood up again with waves of hate radiating at Ralphie. She took careful aim and threw the snowball at him just as hard as she could. It caught him on the forehead with a loud smacking noise and Ralphie tottered back a couple of steps, snow and ice pattering out of his gloved hands. A blank expression was stamped on his face and then, finally realising what had happened, his hands went to his face. When he looked at them again, the wool of his gloves was dark and sticky. A smudge of blood crept down over his temple. And when Julie began to scream, Ralphie began to scream, too. Scream and scream and scream. And then he turned and began to run furiously back towards home, one hand clasped to his head. He was shouting for his Mummy and Angelina thought: Yes . . . he should play with the boys more often; he should play more football or something. And then, she yelled after the howling figure.
‘It was Amanda, Ralphie. It was Amanda!’
‘I didn’t . . .’
‘Yes, you did. I saw you. And I’m going to tell on you.’
Amanda was crying now. And it made Angelina feel very good.
There was a line at the cafe counter as usual. Philip steadied himself against a carriage window as it slowly inched along, thinking about tigers and man-traps and wondering what Tellard was doing this morning with the Hobson Account.
What a way to start a holiday. He could almost hear Grace’s words in his head now. And he remembered last year, when they had holidayed in Tenerife; it had been exactly the same then. A constant round of moaning, complaining and bickering. Nothing was good enough for her. The flight was too bumpy. The hotel was dingy. There were too many people on the beach.
