Quarter Square (3 page)

“Wow.” Jimmy’s eyes widened. “That’s very cool.”

Min regarded me with something like quiet pride, and I found myself blushing.

Enjoying an evening meal with a group of our friends, I look round the living space of my cousin’s new home. It’s a simple dwelling with a well-swept dirt floor and furnished with the timber pieces I’d made as a wedding gift for him and his wife. Through the window shutters we hear the rumble and tumble of our merchant town coming to the end of its working day. Someone says something funny, and we all laugh. Before our laughter dies away, a massive blow bursts the door off its hinges, and a hideous beast springs into the room. Everyone screams. He is man and wolf at the same time, standing on his hind legs, some five cubits high, with a fury of madness in his bloodshot eyes and saliva splattering from his fangs. He charges at me and rips out my throat.

After breakfast I found a public telephone and arranged for a skip to be delivered outside the theatre the following day. By the time I got back, Min, Andrew and Jimmy had turned up with five other residents of the square and started collecting rubbish from all over the theatre.

They’d brought dozens of candle lanterns, and I saw the main arena properly. It was horseshoe-shaped, with two tiers of boxes on the sidewalls and an orchestra pit full of rubble and junk. I’d estimated the place to be about two hundred years old, and the building materials appeared to confirm this.

The only signs of more recent times were the mid-twentieth-century additions backstage: a fifty-foot steel wall ladder up to the roof space and the flush toilet in my bedroom, which suggested someone had once tried to do something with the building but hadn’t got very far.

Andrew agreed with my theory. “I guess the insiders made it difficult for anyone who ever tried to do anything with the place.”

“Insiders?”

“Haven people.”

“I suppose that makes me an outsider,” I said.

He grinned. “Everyone has to start somewhere.”

I bent to pick up another armful of rubbish to move into the open space at the front of the arena.

Andrew laid a hand lightly on my arm. “Don’t worry, son. You’re doing a good thing here. You’ll be on the inside before you know it.” He winked and bent to pick up a pile of junk.

“Hey,” he called over his shoulder, “we talked things over last night after you left. We agreed to help towards the cost of materials.”

“That’s why there aren’t too many of us here today,” said Jimmy. “We’re having a fundraising push, so they’re after taking advantage of the good weather.”

“Not you, then?” I asked.

“Well, we thought I might be more use to you here. I’ve worked on building sites, so I’m your first labourer. And my arm is nearly better.” He threw me a scruffy salute, grinned and pointed to a huge man who was carrying his weight in sawn timber towards a pile in the centre of the stage. “That’s Big Luke. Good as gold. He’ll be our heavy lifter.”

I wandered backstage and peered up into the shadows. The roof space bothered me. I knew there would be nothing unpleasant or scary up there, but I needed to check it out for my peace of mind. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t thank myself every night as I lay in bed, staring up and imagining things. I stood at the bottom of the ladder and struggled with the idea of climbing it.

Jimmy appeared at my shoulder. “You want me to check the loft?”

I should do this myself. His arm wasn’t completely healed.

“Is your arm okay?”

“It’s fine, honest. Go on. I want to take a look.” He adopted a pirate drawl and a wild-eyed grin. “There might be treasure.”

He was only a kid. I shouldn’t let him do it.

“Would you mind?”

“’Course not. Lend us your torch?” He hooked my lamp over the back of his belt, shinned up the ladder like a monkey, pushed the hinged hatch cover back with a loud bang and hoisted himself into the darkness.

The back of my neck prickled, and a cold damp shiver ran up and down my torso. I’d never experienced one of my nightmares while wide-awake, but blanking out mental images of a wolf savaging Jimmy to death came horribly close to the pounding dread that always accompanied them.

He poked his head into the hatch opening and called down, “Loads of rats up here, but nothing much else.” He coughed. “It’s bloody filthy, mind.”

He came back down, slamming the cover shut behind him. He favoured his injured arm as he neared the bottom rungs of the ladder.

He saw my frown when he reached solid ground. “It’s a bit sore, but we don’t need to bother Flo about it. I’ll rest it up again, and it’ll be fine. Okay?”

“Okay.”

He winked as he handed me the lamp and left me at the foot of the ladder.

I was pathetic. I should have gone up, not tricked a teenager into doing something I was too scared to do myself. Shame burned my cheeks. I closed my eyes and vowed I would never do something like that again. Never. From now on I would face my fears and fight my own battles.

I stepped into my room to grab a long drink of bottled water, swallowed my shame and went back to work.

When we were ready to break for lunch, I realised I hadn’t seen Min for hours. Jimmy said she was working out back in the dressing rooms, and I found her just finishing off my bedroom. She and a middle-aged woman had spent the morning washing the walls and floor in there, and they’d done a far better job than I had when I moved in. The room was spotless.

“You deserve it,” was Min’s only response to my sincere thanks. “Let’s go find some food.”

That evening she came to collect me, filling my bedroom with her delicate scent. “We’re having a party in the garden tonight. Would you like to come?”

Of course I would. When we reached the blank wall in the foyer, I stopped her from snapping her fingers.

“Do you think I could learn how to do that?”

“It’s easy. Once you know the door is here, all you need to do is break the glamour. Click your fingers.”

Yeah, right. Just like that. But I did as she suggested. When I clicked my fingers, my whole hand and forearm tingled with pins and needles, but nothing else occurred. I rubbed my itching fingers and shook my head.

“Try again. This time see the door when you do it.”

I reached my hand out and visualised the magic door. The tingling happened again, and the door appeared.

“Yay.” She opened it. “Now you can come and go anytime you like.”

I thrilled from head to toe when she linked arms with me. We walked in step easily and fitted together as if we’d been doing this all our lives. Her lovely, light scent made me feel fresh and clean.

The party was already well under way, and children were running around. It hadn’t occurred to me there might be families among the insiders. Did they party like this every night?

We headed towards what I thought of as the elders’ campfire. Andrew introduced me to the woman massaging Jimmy’s forearm.

“Meet Flo’s apprentice, Tara. Tara, this is Joe.”

Tara was very zen: mid-twenties, suntanned, lean and strong, sitting cross-legged in a long, flowing skirt and sandals. She raised her head of plum-coloured dreadlocks and welcomed me with a smiling hello that was little more than a breath.

The campfire was bigger, with glowing coals filling a shallow trench two feet wide and ten feet long. A dozen or so people kneeled around it, cooking, and Andrew and Min introduced me to them all.

People welcomed me with varying degrees of warmth, which wasn’t surprising. Inevitably, some would doubt my integrity.

The coldest welcome came from three dancers—Dish, Blue and Sab—the quiet men I’d followed into the square that first night. Someone mentioned they were part of a street act with a Spanish acrobat called Delores. They seemed to prefer their own company.

Delores was friendly, flourishing a bottle of red wine while she practised her heavily accented English on me, and delighted when I recognised her as the spectacular flying dancer from the shopping centre. But her warmth towards me didn’t spread to her partners. They looked right through me and remained silent in my presence.

I hoped things would turn out okay, even with people who treated me with such open suspicion. This was their home. I was just some outsider who’d strolled into their lives, promising rescue. I wanted to be accepted into this community where no one was telling me what to do and how to live. I wanted to belong here, but I had to be patient.

Fliss appeared at my shoulder. “Dance.”

“I don’t dance.”

“You do now.” She dragged me to my feet.

The next hour disappeared in a whirl of dancing. When the music slowed and the cooks called everyone over to the fire, I wore the grin that had been stretching my face all evening.

Beer and wine had been flowing freely while I danced, and the group I returned to was merry and loud. Someone shoved a can of beer in my hand, and someone else handed me a plate of roasted chicken pieces.

“Help yourself to spuds and salad.”

Another fire had been lit apart from the cooking fire, and people sat around it, eating, drinking and talking. Still grinning and sweating, I sat beside Old Flo. Jimmy and Fliss waved to me from the other side of the fire, and Flo nodded once, as if she’d made a decision.

“You’ll do fine.”

Elvis ducked his head in agreement and chuckled away into her ear. They weren’t doing their stare routine on me anymore, and my head stayed clear. Maybe that had been some kind of preparation to wash my memory, in case I’d turned out to be someone they didn’t want around.

As I ate, I studied the people gathered in the garden. I estimated there were about eighty people, twice as many as the previous evening. Quarter Square was more like a secret village than the strange circus troupe I’d thought at first.

Beyond the silhouetted Elizabethan houses, the fiddles and drums and tree lights in the garden, was Plymouth. Outside, there was noise, lights, traffic and all the hustle and bustle and heavy air of a summer evening in the city. Here, there was peace and lightness, music and magic.

High above, on the opposite side of the square, a movement caught my eye. The chimney and ridge tiles of one of the houses shimmered briefly and faded away.

Of course. Everyone was eating or making music or dancing. No one was maintaining the structure and fabric of the place, which Andrew had hinted was an ongoing task. Suddenly it dawned on me that the square would disappear, forever, without their magical repairs.

I found myself looking for Min all evening. Our eyes met frequently, and we smiled at each other every time.

After a while I became aware of a tall young man I hadn’t seen before, who also kept making eye contact with me. His stare wasn’t friendly. He’d arrived at the party later than me, with a teenager in tow.

“That’s Will and Danny,” Flo said. “They’re magicians, been working the streets up in Bristol all week.”

For some reason I couldn’t stop watching Will, although I tried to do it surreptitiously. He was the kind of person I instinctively never liked, supremely self-confident and always smiling with those dark eyes in that predatory way. He was suave, elegant and easy in his own body, with well-groomed good looks. He must have spent hours getting his hair swept back like that and his little pointed beard clipped perfectly.

But the thing that really pissed me off was his manner around Min. He kept touching her, draping his arm across her shoulders or stroking the backs of his fingers against her cheek in a proprietary way, watching me the whole time to make sure I noticed. His message was loud and clear—he was Min’s lover.

Min noticed this silent exchange yet did nothing to deny his message. She didn’t reciprocate his affectionate touches, but neither did she push him away, and she continued to make friendly eye contact with me.

My instinct told me Will’s behaviour was for me alone, that he’d heard about me when he arrived and felt threatened by the quick friendship I’d struck up with Min.

My instinct also told me Min wouldn’t put up with his mauling her if they weren’t intimate.

I was off balance. I had to be honest with myself: the whole thing was making me deeply uncomfortable and jealous as hell. Thoughts of Carole and Tony surfaced, and I pushed them back down.

At some point during the evening Danny sat next to me and started chatting in a friendly way. He was a pleasant young man of eighteen or nineteen, about ten years younger than Will, whom he talked about as if he were some kind of film star.

That irritated me, but I understood hero worship. I remembered feeling exactly the same way about Tony when I was struggling to stay focused long enough to graduate from university, while he’d already joined his family business and was enjoying early success as a young property developer.

Will sat on the other side of Danny. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him lean in to murmur something in Danny’s ear and couldn’t help but notice the stiffening of the boy’s shoulders and the sideways glance he nearly gave me. I ignored what was going on. Will whispered more to the lad, grinned at nothing and went to dance with Min.

Danny didn’t move away immediately, but his attitude towards me turned noticeably cooler. I decided to win him round, not only because I liked him and wanted to be liked, but also to thwart Will’s game.