Holes for Faces (27 page)

Once the schoolyard was deserted Summers lingered in the shelter, listening for Smart’s cold high voice—straining his ears so hard that he thought he heard it amid the scrape of windblown leaves on gravel. The idea that Smart was still at large in the school made him want to storm into the school and report the swine to the headmistress—to say whatever would get rid of him. To overcome the compulsion he had to retreat out of sight of the school. Long before the final bell he was back in the shelter. He hadn’t counted the cigarette ends, and so he couldn’t tell if they’d multiplied or even whether they’d been rearranged like an aid to a child’s arithmetic. He spied on the schoolyard until he saw Adam, who looked happier than ever. Summers hid his face in the corner while the boys and their football clamoured past, and then he turned back to the school. He watched until the doors finished swinging at last, but there was no sign of Smart in the secretive dusk.

Had he been moved to another school? “So long as you’re safe, Adam,” Summers murmured, but the comment seemed to sum up how little he’d achieved. He was so preoccupied that he nearly tried to let himself into the wrong flat. Of course the number on the door was upside down. He shut his door and tramped along the hall to stare at the advent calendar as if it might inspire him. The shadows of the cardboard markers appeared to deepen the empty compartments, and he was seeing them as trenches when the doorbell rang.

Paul’s expression was oddly constrained. “Well, you’ll be pleased,” he said.

“You’re trusting me with Adam again.”

Paul took a breath but didn’t speak at once. “The teacher you had trouble with,” he said, “you can forget about him.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“He’s no longer with us.” Since Summers didn’t react Paul added “He’s dead.”

“Good heavens,” Summers said, although he hoped those weren’t involved. “When did that come about?”

“He had some kind of stroke when he was driving home yesterday. People saw him lose control and his car went into the front of a bus.”

“That’s unexpected.” Summers did his best to control his face but thought it prudent to admit “I can’t say I’m too distressed.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to be.”

“So I’ll be collecting Adam from school tomorrow, yes?”

Paul made another breath apparent on the way to saying “Let’s leave it for this week, shall we? We’ll sort it out after Christmas.”

“Is it you who doesn’t want me looking after him?” When Paul was silent Summers said “I didn’t know I’d raised you not to stand up for yourself.”

His son paused but said “Mum makes it sound as if you didn’t for yourself at school.”

“Then she’d better know I’ve changed. Just hope you never find out how much, like—”  Summers’ rage was close to robbing him of discretion. “Go home to your family. I’ll leave you all alone till Christmas,” he said and shut the door.

Any qualms he might have suffered over causing Smart’s demise were swallowed by his fury with Elaine and Tina and, yes, Paul. He stalked into the kitchen to bare his teeth at the calendar. “I wish I’d been there,” he said in a voice that wasn’t far from Smart’s. “Did you count the seconds when you saw what was coming? It’d just about sum you up.” Talking wasn’t enough, and he poked a door open at random. “Revenge is sweet, don’t you think? Revenge is a sweet,” he said and shoved the pair of digits he’d uncovered into his mouth.

Perhaps it was too sweet, the chocolate plaque bulging with numbers. He didn’t much care for the taste that filled his mouth once the unexpectedly brittle object crumbled like a lump of ash. As the sweetness immediately grew stale he had the impression that it masked a less palatable flavour. He grabbed a bottle of brandy still half full from last Christmas and poured some into the Greatest Granddad mug Adam had given him. A mouthful seared away part of the tastes, and another did more of the job, but he still felt as if some unpleasant sensation lay in wait for him. Perhaps he was exhausted, both emotionally and by insomnia. He could celebrate the end of Smart with a good night’s sleep.

His nerves didn’t let him. He kept thinking he’d heard a sound, unless he was about to hear one, or was it too stealthy to be audible? He didn’t know how often he’d opened his aching eyes to confront the cluttered darkness before he saw a pair of red eyes staring back at him. They were two of the digits on the bedside clock until one pinched into a single line. It was a minute after midnight, and a day closer to Christmas.

The thought sent him out of bed. While he wouldn’t be putting any of the contents of the calendar anywhere near his mouth, perhaps he could relax once he’d located the date and opened the door. As the fluorescent tube jittered alight he could have imagined he glimpsed a flap staggering upright on the calendar. He peered at the swarm of identically mirthful faces in search of the date. How many of the doors were open? Seven, or there should be, and he prodded them while counting them aloud. However often he added them up there was one more, and it was today’s.

Could he have opened the door and forgotten? Was that a blurred fingerprint on the chocolate? He grabbed the calendar and shook the sweet into the bin. He was tempted to stuff the calendar in as well, if that wouldn’t have felt too much like continuing to fear the teacher. “Do your worst,” he mumbled, still not entirely awake. Throwing the calendar on the table, he sat down to watch.

Before long the lids of some of the compartments began to twitch. It was his debilitated vision or the shaking of the table, if not both. Whenever his head lurched more or less upright, having slid off his fists that were propping it up, he had to force his eyes wide and count the open doors afresh. “Eight,” he kept declaring, even when someone thumped on the wall of the kitchen. “Had enough for one day, have you?” he retorted, though he wasn’t sure to whom. He didn’t notice when the fluorescent glow merged with pallid sunlight, but it seemed to be an excuse for retreating into bed.

It was almost dark by the time he gave up dozing. He had enough food to last until Christmas—enough that he needn’t be troubled by the identical doors on the balcony. He ate some of a bowl of cereal while he glared a raw-eyed challenge at the calendar, and then he listened to a carol concert on the radio—it was many years since he’d heard carollers at his or anybody’s door. The music lulled him almost to sleep until the choir set about amassing the twelve days of Christmas and all that they brought. Even after he switched off the radio, the numbers kept demanding to be totalled in his head.

Well before midnight he was at the kitchen table, where he stood the bedside clock next to the calendar. The digits twitched into various shapes on their way to turning into eyes, which he could have imagined were refusing to blink because they were determined to watch him, even without pupils. At last—it seemed much longer than a minute—the final digit shrank, but nothing else moved. Didn’t that last number look more like an I than a 1? Summers was attempting to ignore it when it crumbled into segments, but he mustn’t feel compelled to count them; he had to catch the calendar opening today’s door, or see whatever happened. He gripped his temples and dug his thumbs into his cheeks, feeling the bones of his skull. His face began to ache, but not enough to keep him alert, though he didn’t know he’d dozed until his head jerked up. “Eight,” he said when at last he thought he was sure of the number. He oughtn’t to start bothering the neighbours again, and there was a way to avoid it—by tearing all the open doors off the calendar. They and the boxy holes they left put him in mind of a vandalised graveyard, an idea that felt capable of shrinking Smart no larger than an insect. “That’s all you are. That’s all you ever were,” Summers muttered as his head drooped.

When had he eaten last? No wonder he was weak. At least he didn’t need to leave the table to find food. He dragged the calendar to him and fumbled a door open. Some instinct must have guided him, since it was the first unopened one—the number of his flat. As he bit the chocolate, the coiled object on the little slab writhed into life. Its tail slithered from between his teeth, and it wormed down his throat as though it had rediscovered its burrow in the earth.

His head wavered up, and he clapped a hand over his mouth. No more doors were open after all—only eight, he was able to believe once he’d counted the gaping compartments several times. The calendar wasn’t as close to him as he’d imagined, and he might have been sure he’d dreamed the grisly incident except for an odd taste in his mouth. Perhaps it was merely stale and sweetish, or was there an underlying earthiness? It sent him to gulp brandy straight from the bottle, and he turned back to the table just in time to glimpse a movement. A lid had been lifted, although it was instantly still.

“Caught you,” Summers cried. It bore today’s date. The prize it had exposed was marked with scratches, as if someone had been clawing at it for want of a better victim. He shook the chocolate into the bin and tore off the date. “Finished for today?” he demanded, but couldn’t interpret the lack of an answer. He was sinking shakily onto the chair when he glanced at the clock. The number beside the blind red eyes was his apartment’s. No, it was upside down with its tail in the air, but it still showed he’d spent the night in front of the calendar.

He felt as if Smart had robbed him of all sense of time as well as any confidence about numbers. He would be no fun on Christmas Day if he’d had so little sleep. “You won’t spoil this Christmas as well,” he vowed. Suppose the presents for his family and Tina were ruined somehow? He threw the calendar on its face and pinned it down with a saucepan so heavy that his arms shook. Once he’d returned the clock to the bedside table he fetched the presents from the living-room and lined them up in bed before he joined them.

He had to keep reminding himself that the muffled rustling came from the presents, especially whenever it wakened him after dark. His lurches into consciousness were too reminiscent of the Christmas he’d spent dreading next year’s days with Smart, far too many to count—shivering awake to realise the worst nightmare wasn’t in his sleep. The nights leading up to his retirement had been just as bad, and Smart’s fault too. He saw the eyes blink wide to stare towards him, and managed to name the digits next to them. “One and two, that’s three to you,” he mouthed, and “Happy Christmas” when the right eye narrowed to a slit. He didn’t need to go and look at the calendar; surely he would hear if anything happened. He lay awake listening, and tried not to move in case that disturbed the wrappings of the presents, though why should he fear being heard? It was almost dawn by the time he went to look.

The light in the fluorescent tube buzzed and fluttered like an insect and eventually grew still. Summers used both hands to remove the saucepan and then turned over the calendar. It put him in mind of lifting a slab—one from beneath which something might scuttle or crawl. Nothing else stirred, however. That wasn’t why he let the calendar fall on its back with a hollow flimsy sound. All the numbers on the remaining doors were blurred beyond any possibility of recognition, while the festive faces were no more than blotches with misshapen blobs for eyes. Had age overtaken the calendar? Summers only needed to open today’s door to finish celebrating his triumph. He could open all of them to find it if he had to—but prising one open revealed that the sweet was as unrecognisably deformed as the number on the door. The next was the same, and its neighbour, and he felt as if they were showing how deranged Smart had always been or was now. At last Summers wakened enough to realise that he didn’t have to try every door; today’s was larger. As soon as he located it he dug his fingertip under the lid.

His nail sank into a substance too firm for chocolate but in another way not firm enough, and then the object moved beneath his finger. As he recoiled, the door sprang up, exposing a greyish piebald surface in which a rounded lump bulged. He was trying to grasp the sight when the lump into which he’d poked his finger blinked again and glared at him. Even though it had already begun to wither and grow discoloured, he knew it all too well.

He swept the calendar onto the floor and trampled on it, feeling more than cardboard give way underfoot. He might have been stamping on a mask, but not an empty one. Once it was crushed absolutely flat he watched to be sure that nothing crept from beneath it, not even a stain, and then he retreated to the bedroom.

Suppose he’d set the madness free? He didn’t like to keep the presents so close to the remains of the calendar. In any case it might be wise to set off for his old house—he was afraid it could take him some time to find. At least he hadn’t undressed for bed. He clutched the presents to his chest and hurried onto the balcony, beyond which a greyish light was starting to take hold of the world. He gazed at his door until he succeeded in fixing at least the shape of the number in his mind. “You’re the one with your tail hanging down,” he said.

It was daylight now, however grey, and he did his best to hasten through the streets. He shouldn’t be distracted by trying to count Christmas trees in windows, let alone Christmas lights. Today’s date ought to be enough for him. “Two and five and you’re alive,” he told some children before they fled across the road. He mustn’t frighten anyone. Among the reasons he’d retired had been the fear of needing to resemble Smart so as to teach.

He came to his old road at last, only to feel as if someone had gone ahead of him to jumble all the numbers. He just had to locate his old home, not remember which number it was. He didn’t have to count his way to it, and he was surprised how soon he found the wrought-iron porch. He hugged the presents—one, two and another—as he thumbed the bellpush. “Two and five and you’re alive,” he carolled until the boy ran to open the door. Summers was about to hand him the presents when the boy turned his back. “I don’t know what he wants,” he called. “It’s some old man.”