Light Errant (31 page)

Except that I didn't; a quick scurry of light feet and Janice was there beside me, slipping her arm through mine, once again offering a support that I needed, that I'd never have asked for.

“What is this,” I hissed leakily on the outbreaths, “Succour-a-Wounded-Warrior Week?”

She shook her head. “I used to work for Moncrieff the butcher every holiday. All that blood and bashing, miles better than a paper round.”

“So?”

“So I'm used to hauling sides of beef,” she said, slipping her lithe arm around me now, dragging my slack arm across her shoulders and hanging onto the wrist thereof, hauling me up the last few steps into the lantern.

“More like beef dripping,” I grunted, sliding down a wall of glass and stone to sit on cool wood boards. “Chicken bones. Pork scratchings...”

Janice laughed and settled herself beside me. Like the shooting-gallery, but different: the sun came in over our heads here, made angles of light against machinery and gleaming crystal, made the dust dance but left us in shadow, left me alone. And we were hidden here also from friends' eyes, relatives' eyes, as they were hidden from us, no targets to shoot at. Jamie could snog Laura all he liked, if that was what he was doing; couldn't touch me, up here, turned away. They could both of them poke and worry at her burgeoning soon-to-be-bell-shaped belly, a toll of things to come, but what I didn't see the hurt couldn't give me grief over, not now, not today.

Actually, I thought I was just too dog-weary to be snarling-dog, dog-in-the-manger jealous in my usual urbane and charming fashion.
All passion spent
was how I felt, overdrawn indeed at the angst-bank, sapped and sucked dry. Frankly, I couldn't be bothered to care.

“Aren't we supposed to be watching?” Janice murmured after a minute, though she made no move to do it.

Me, I couldn't be bothered to care about that either. “Nah, that was just an excuse to get you alone,” I said, eyes closed not to watch anything, not needing to look at her.

“Yeah, right,” and now she did move, up and away from me in one swift movement. “What are we watching for, exactly?”

“Boats,” I said. “A Zodiac in particular, they've got one of those at least.”

“What's a Zodiac?”

“Oh. Flat black rubber thing. Like a ring doughnut with a bottom to it, and filled with pricks. Penis on the half-shell. Pork, you'd know about that. Long pig, for roasting,” though I didn't want to roast anyone ever again, not even another cop, I'd cooked too many already. And couldn't think of any other way to keep them off, bar roasting or boiling or simply popping their rubber bubble and letting them sink or swim in the wicked currents around the Island; and didn't want to think about that at all, only that she was making me do it.

“Be serious, Ben. We aren't all magic-users, you know.”

“You don't all need to be. I'm here, aren't I?” In all my reluctance and exhaustion, a most unreliable guard. “And then it'll get dark,”
soon, please God, before anything happens
, “and then it's Jamie's turn, his call, his turn to play God. He can get us all off.”

“Can he? How? He doesn't think so.”

“Playing God. I
said
. Parting of the Red Sea. Walking on the water. Miracle-workers one and all.”

“Ben,” she said, crouching, touching my eyes to make me open them and then staring in from not very far away at all, close enough to see all the way through to the Zodiacs in my head, “what's the
matter
with you? You sound drunk, and I know you're not.”

I knew that also, and regretted it. I'd have liked to be drunk, just then. “Defence mechanism,” I said. “Clever prattle, it's a gear that kicks in sometimes. When I'm tired, when I've been wound up and I'm running down, when it feels like my springs have broken.” Or when I'm nervous, but that I surely wasn't, why would I be? We weren't in any danger now. We could see trouble coming if it came, and I really, really didn't think it would. I thought my little exhibition-piece down at the causeway would have given them all cause to pause, to keep their side of the water.

“All right, love. You sit there and prattle all you like, I'll stand watch. Black boats like doughnuts. Anything else?”

“Oh, any boat that comes close. Or helicopter, I suppose, they've got a helicopter,” but I couldn't see them using it, except to spy out the ground, perhaps. Zodiacs were loud enough, unless they paddled in; what were they going to do with a helicopter, not to attract attention? Paddle that? Or dress it up as a cloud, perhaps, with its own internal hailstorm,
clatter clatter
that somehow never made it down to earth?

Besides, there was nowhere on the Island that I could think of, flat enough to land a chopper on. Nor did I think any of their heroes was going to dangle his way down on a rope, only a thread's thickness from falling and me below. No, I was not expecting trouble.

o0o

Nor was I expecting to sleep, knackered though I was. But that crept up on me as I sat, had me nodding and jerking my heavy head up again, forcing my eyes wide against its lure, not to embarrass myself while Janice paced and gazed all around me; and a minute later I was nodding again, nod and jerk until the jerk was too much to achieve and never mind how much a jerk she thought me, it was so much easier just to let it all slip, to slide down under this cool shadow I sat in, to tumble into darker shadows still.

o0o

No dreams down there, or none that I remembered. Nothing at all until there were voices I seemed to be listening to without understanding, girls' voices in a void. And then a touch, a hand on my cheek and my name spoken, drawing me up again.

Slow memory, where I was and who was with me, or who'd been with me when I left her, when I went away. I opened my eyes and she was there still, Janice smiling at me, close enough to blur; and my head was skewed awkwardly sideways on my shoulder and my mouth was open and the stubble on my chin felt wet where it pressed against my jacket, where I must have been dribbling in my sleep.

Brilliant, Ben.
Even the hypersmart prattle would have been preferable to this, drooling and probably snoring also, while she did what was needful. God, what a picture I must have made, no wonder she was smiling...

I eased my head up against a stab of pain in my twisted neck, grunted, dragged a hand across my chin. “Sorry. Sorry, Jan, I...”

“It's all right. We've got doughnuts.”

“What?” I tried to scramble up, dizzy and stupid still; she laughed, and her hands on my shoulders had no trouble holding me down.

“Not black ones. Doughnuts with jam in. Coffee too, and burgers...”

I stared round wildly, uncomprehending; and saw little cousin Christa standing in the doorway with a tray in her hands, steam rising about her.

o0o

Ordinarily I hate eating just after I've woken up. Dunno how far back that actually goes—way back to baby maybe, something my mother did to me, a good yawn interrupted by a vast choking leaking nipple, who knows?—but I can date it certainly to a well-established antipathy ten years ago. Sunday afternoons, Dad would come banging in from the pub yelling for his lunch; Mum would have everything ready; she'd send Hazel upstairs to fetch me.

Who would be still in bed, still sleeping, hiding from the grisly twin realities of family life and a Sunday teenage hangover. Who would be thumped awake by my darling twin; stood over while I clambered into Saturday night's drinking clothes, the first my bleary eyes could find on the bedroom floor; dragged down to face roasted meats and boiled vegetables in insistent profusion while my mouth still felt as slimed and foul as if I'd been licking fresh cowpats all night, while my head throbbed to the beat of a mistimed diesel and my brain spasmed and flinched inside my skull, while my stomach lurched in counterpoint and sent burning acid reminders up to my gullet. Every Sunday, this; and was it any wonder if I'd picked up a wee phobia about food and the proper times for ingesting it? I liked half an hour at least between dream and diet, though double that was better. And I had to have clean teeth and a damp towel, I had to have scrubbed off the clagginess of sleeping, inside and out...

And that applied to a midday doze as much as a night's virtuous slumber, but it didn't apply today. Janice woke me, showed me food; and oh I was starving, I was there and able for it, I'd have jumped up and snatched the tray from little scared Christa if Jan hadn't been holding me down still.

“You stay there,” she said, “I'll pass you.”

And did: a skinny mean burger in a soggy white bun, lashings of ketchup that wasn't Heinz by a distance, not even a copy of a copy, but did she, did either of those girls hear me complaining? They did not. All they'd have heard if they'd been listening was the tearing and gulping sounds of a predator not equipped for chewing. Christa was listening, maybe. At any rate, she did seem to be watching; Janice was attending to her own appetite. She might have been, oh, say half as hungry as me? Which made her ravenous, lupine, slow only in comparison.

Christa might have borne the tray aloft, but Jamie had seen to the loading of it. On that I would have laid whatever fortune I could lay my hands upon. Three burgers each, a pile of doughnuts for afters, chocolate bars and biscuits and a pint of coffee per person. Amazing that wee skinny Christa could even carry so much....

Often I'm slow, just then I was slower in everything but eating. It took me a shocking time to register that there was something odd going on here, that Christa having brought the trough to the pigsty should still be standing there, tray in hands, watching us consume. Waiting for the empties, perhaps? What, cardboard plates and polystyrene beakers? I didn't think so.

She hadn't said a word since I'd woken, and whenever I looked at her she darted her eyes away; but by definition that meant that whenever I
wasn't
looking, she was looking at me. And checking back, the first thing I'd thought about her, I thought she looked scared; and I did still think so.

Not scared of me, surely, not that? Because she'd seen me tear the causeway up? Nah, she'd been around Macallan men all her life. Unless she was scared of us all, constantly, permanently.

But I didn't believe that either, I'd seen her happy enough. As good as it gets, at least, for the female of this particular sub-species.

“Chrissie?”

She jumped, stiffened, somehow seemed to glance up at me even though I was sitting a metre below her eyeline, almost seemed to salute. “Yes, Ben?”

“You lot all right down there, are you? Nice and comfy, lots of food?”

“Yes, we, we're fine, Ben. Benedict.”

“Just Ben, pet. No worries, then, eh?”

“No, no. No worries. We've got Jamie, anyway. Only...”

Only Jamie's no use to you, is he? Not in daylight.
Good for reassurance, sure, sure; he was a man, he was competent, confident, allowed no worries in himself. But that wasn't enough, demonstrably. Not for little Chrissie, maybe not for the others either. I remembered suddenly how scared I'd been last night, how certain of facing death this morning; and these girls hadn't had just the one night of it, they'd had days and nights and weeks. Amazing that any of them could function at all, in the circs. No blame at all if they got antsy when their prime protection wasn't right there among them. And Christa couldn't possibly be eighteen yet, she'd likely never faced anything more dangerous than a smoking joint, and she'd always been a shy wee thing who jumped at shadows if she didn't have a dependable hand to hold...

“What's going to
happen
, Ben?” That was the closest she could get, seemingly, to
I'm shit-scared, Ben, I have been for a terrible long time now and I'm not going to stop just yet, not till I'm home with all my teddy-bears around me.

“I'll tell you what's going to happen, pet lamb. We're going to sit around all afternoon, it'll be boring as shit but never mind, eh? We can talk—you talk to Jamie, he's a good listener,”
you can hold his hand and feel better for it, he's not been painted half as black as I have; and Laura'll be there too, she can talk to you, she'll know what to say where he doesn't
, “and no one's going to hurt us any more, no one's going to come near. And after it gets dark, we yell for help and Jamie leads us home. All right?”

She nodded doubtfully. “I suppose...”
If you say so
was the underlying burden, as it must have been all her life, so used she was to serving Macallan men.

“Trust me, love. Better yet, trust Jamie.”
Trust Laura, she's a doctor.
“We're fine now. Cancel red alert, resume stations. Real life picks up again tomorrow. You seeing anyone at the moment?”

She hesitated, nodded, blushed a little.

“Good. Well, sit down and work out just how many dates he owes you, and just how special the first one needs to be to make up for all of this.” I wasn't going to ask who he was; a cousin for sure, she'd never have the nerve to date outside the family. And she was just the sort of girl most of my cousins would go for: pretty enough and quiet, willing, submissive with it. The sort of girl who'd say ‘obey' and really truly mean it, really
want
to...

She smiled faintly, shook her head.

“No, I mean it. You deserve a treat.”

“Tell him that means he owes you one,” Janice chimed in. “They fall for that, every time.”

Took a little more cajoling, but at last Christa went away not looking scared so much as interested. Big improvement; I thought we deserved applause. Janice thought all the males of my family deserved shooting, Jamie included, and very possibly me too.

“I mean, look at her! That poor wee watery broth of a girl—and they're all like that, except Serena, maybe. They're so
passive
...”