Ramsey Campbell - 1976 - The Doll Who Ate His Mother (4 page)

 
          
I’m
quite satisfied with my own cooking, thank you. “I’m afraid I’ll be busy
getting ready for the new class.”

 
          
Dorothy
nodded, sipping. “Did you go back with your parents?”

 
          
“Yes.”
Straight back to Cheltenham after the funeral; her mother had wept all the way
on the train, as if she’d saved up all her feelings during Rob’s life.
Passengers had grabbed the adjoining seats triumphantly,
then
had hastily retreated. Clare’s father had leaned forward at intervals to pat his
wife’s hand; he’d gazed grimly at the rushing landscape.

 
          
“I
stayed for a fortnight,” Clare said. “It took my mother that long to begin to
recover. My father asked me to stay, because he couldn’t cope. She did love
Rob, you see. It just shows, love isn’t the point, it doesn’t mean anything.
It’s what you do that counts. When I was coming back they gave me all sorts of
things—money, a handbag because mine was tatty, a new carving set. I just
wished they’d given more to Rob, more of themselves.” She shook herself: in a
minute she’d have them back at the mortuary again. “What about your parents?”
she said. “Wouldn’t you feel better if you went to live at home for a while?”

 
          
“This
is my home. I love my parents very much, but I won’t live there again. That would
be admitting defeat. Particularly when they’re in the same
town,
that
would make it more of a defeat somehow. “This place is cheap
enough. I’ve got my job, and Bob had quite a lot of insurance, you know—he
bought some as soon as we got married. But I want to make my own way. That’s
why I went back to work as soon as I could. I’ve got to be able to fend for
myself completely. I don’t want looking after.”

 
          
She
was looking steadily at Clare. Clare thought: You’re not implying I need
looking after, are you? Suddenly an idea caught her. All through her visit she
had felt Dorothy preparing tensely for something: her tale of the mortuary, of
course. But had the mortuary anecdote been aimed at her? Had the woman wanted
to upset her in order to comfort her? Was Dorothy looking for someone new to
look after? My God, she thought. The woman is sick. “I must go home and get on
with my work,” she lied, gulping her coffee.

 
          
Dorothy
came down in the lift with her. The silver-grey box sank slowly, slowly; it
smelled of scrubbing. “Do try and come again soon,” Dorothy said.

 
          
“I’ll
have to see.” Through the tiny rectangular window the rough walls of the shaft
drifted up sluggishly, grey-crusted smoke; doors sailed lethargically up,
scratched like the inside of a coffin lid in a film Clare had once switched on
by mistake. She could feel Dorothy wanting her to promise; the wanting filled
the lift oppressively. “The beginning of the school year’s always hectic,” she
said. “I just go home and doze.”

 
          
When
Dorothy made to follow her to the car, she said, “Goodbye, Dorothy. Thank you.”
She watched her stride gracefully back toward the lifts as if she were entering
a hotel foyer. If it keeps her happy, Clare thought, shaking her head sadly.
She was glad she didn’t need illusions. She stumped toward the Reliant as she
imagined a hobbit might walk, to show she didn’t care.

 
          
The
passenger door was new; around the edge of the doorframe someone at the garage
had scrubbed pale a large irregular patch. Aside from the door and the new rear
axle, he was mostly the Ringo she’d had for years. The seat leather burned her
through her thin dress; she rolled down both windows, flapping her arms at the
inert heat. Then she fastened her seat belt and drove home.

 
          
Her
father had paid for the repairs. “Good for you,” he’d said when she admitted
she might continue driving. She’d fought not to take the money he offered, but
he’d stuffed it into her purse. She was still determined it would be only a
loan against the insurance. It had been like taking money for killing Rob.

 
          
Even
when the car was repaired she hadn’t driven. She’d made an excuse and had had
the garage deliver the car. She’d sat in the driver’s seat a few times, beneath
the shifting trees in
Blackburne
Terrace. Each time
her gaze had been drawn to the scrubbed patch; each time she’d left the car
hurriedly. She couldn’t drive that car again.

 
          
A
bus ride had changed her mind. She disliked buses; if she sat upstairs the
stench of stale tobacco smoke clung to her clothes all day, while the lower
deck was often packed full as a lift with nonsmokers. She had been on her way
to visit Dorothy, to get it over with, the day after she’d returned from
Cheltenham; she was rather hoping Dorothy would be out. The driver had been
playing ninepins with the press of passengers in the aisle; the bus swung a
child screaming at the length of his mother’s arm, too far ahead for Clare to
reach. As the bus
laboured
past the lamp standard
Clare had heard the car door chop shut. All at once everything had swelled up
in her like nausea; the cramped ventilation whose breeze came nowhere near her
face, the soft thighs that thumped her shoulder as passengers rocked in the
aisle, the flaw in the window glass that pinched thin everything that passed
before letting go with a jerk, the tobacco smoke trickling down the stairs, the
screaming child, her own sticky body, her helplessness. She’d pulled at the
bell cord as if it were a lifeline and had struggled to the folding doors,
which parted with a gasp of relief. Once home, she’d climbed into Ringo and had
driven for miles. After a few days she’d hardly noticed the scrubbed patch.

 
          
She
was driving past the lamp standard now—at least, she was in that area. From
this side of the reservation she couldn’t be sure, for someone had removed the
bloodstained gravel. Weren’t there darker spots scattered over the reservation
even now? Never mind. It wasn’t good to dwell on such things. But she knew she
had only shrugged it off until next time, for she had to drive this way to
school.

 
          
Christ
leaned out from the church beyond the reservation. She’d never liked that
Christ; he looked famished, poised to leap on anyone who came too close to the
wall. Now she liked him even less. He should have saved Rob. But she knew she
was trying to shift the blame. Rob’s death had been her fault, of course.

 
          
Her
parents hadn’t blamed her. Her father had blamed Rob for talking to her while
she was driving. Dorothy hadn’t mentioned the accident at all; she’d kept
gazing at Clare with a large, warm, forgiving expression, sympathetic,
encouraging, until Clare could have screamed. All of them made her feel
more guilty
. They refused to blame her only because they
didn’t know what had happened. She was so guilty she had lied to the police.

 
          
She’d
said the brakes had been working before the crash. She’d blamed Rob, for
grabbing the wheel. At the inquest, when she stepped down from the witness box
once she’d sworn that the statement they’d read out was hers, her face had been
burning. The kindly, quiet-voiced coroner had told the jury that she wasn’t
allowed to answer any other questions, lest she incriminate herself. She was
sure then that everyone knew she was guilty. None of the policemen in the court
would look at her. She knew they were biding their time to prosecute.

 
          
But
she hadn’t heard from them yet. Either they were waiting for her to assume
they’d forgotten, or they hoped her guilt would build up until she was eager to
betray herself; then they’d pounce. They knew that she started guiltily when
the doorbell rang, that she peered fearfully downstairs whenever the new
postman fumbled at the letter slot. She only wished they would get it over
with. She couldn’t bear much longer the sense of having wronged Rob.

 
          
She
coasted into
Blackburne
Place, past the Byzantine
church of St. Philip
Neri
, humpy with tiny domes.
Behind her in Catharine Street the orange lamps were dormant. She steered the
car into
Blackburne
Terrace. Shade gathered softly
beneath the house-high trees; the dimming trunks sailed slowly past her.
Beyond the tree nearest her front door stood a man.

 
          
He
had halted near the stone pillars, staring back toward her car. He was staring
at the car itself. He was walking toward it. He reached it as, struggling in
vague
panic,
she managed to open her door.

 
          
“Miss
Clare
Frayn
?” he said. “I wonder if I can have a word
with
you?
”

 
          
He
must have been six feet tall. He was broad as well, big-boned. He towered above
the car; the pale blue of his suit seemed to fill the whole of her window. His
hand closed on the door handle. Red hair sprang up as his wrist emerged from
his sleeve; red hair sprouted from his fingers. She could imagine him winning a
wrestling match with the power of that arm alone. For a moment she thought he
was going to trap her in the car. Then he was opening the door for her.

 
          
“I’m
sorry. Did I startle you?” he said. “I didn’t mean to.”

 
          
Perhaps
he wasn’t a policeman, after all. She snatched the key from the ignition and
hurried toward her front door, fumbling with the key ring. She heard him slam
the car door tight.
The key.
Not that one, fool.

 
          
With
two strides he was beside her on the stone steps of the shadowy porch. “You are
Miss
Frayn
, aren’t you?”

 
          
The key.
Got it.
She was angry with
herself for having left Ringo at his mercy. “What if I am?”

 
          
“I’d
like to talk to you.”

 
          
“That
depends very much on the subject, I’m afraid.”

 
          
“Well,
of course it does. But look, are you all right? You seem worried.”

 
          
“I’m
perfectly all right, thank you. What exactly do you want?”

 
          
“I
was wondering if you would help me. I’m a writer.”

 
          
She
turned to examine him. His face was large, well-fed, blue-eyed, wide-mouthed,
bespectacled
. He looked earnest and hopeful, though behind
that she thought he was faintly amused. The bridge of his disproportionately
small nose was dented, as if someone had once broken through his guard. Beneath
the neat, discreetly fashionable suit he wore a mauve shirt and tie; the tie
was fastened with a tiny platinum dagger, and the shirt bore a motif of minute
pistols. He was about thirty. He didn’t look like a writer to her, but what did
writers look like? “Here’s my card,” he said.

 
          
Against
the glossy white, the black embossed letters said EDMUND HALL: RESEARCHER AND
WRITER, and an address outside London, in Surrey. “Why should I be able to help
you?” she said.

 
          
He
glanced toward an open ground-floor window beside the porch. “Would you mind if
we talked inside?” he said.

 
          
It
was her landlord’s window. She had her flat cheap, as a
favour
to her father. If the landlord heard her helping a writer he might think she
could afford to pay more. “All right,” she said.
“If it
doesn’t take too long.
I have a lot of work to do.”

 
          
“I’ll
keep it brief,” he said. His large voice boomed dully in the hall, among the
filigreed mirrors, the vases of flowers. “Are you working tomorrow?”

 
          
“Not
until next week. I’m a teacher.”

 
          
“Yes,
of course,” he said gratefully, as if she’d helped him.

 
          
She
was acutely conscious of him behind her on the stairs. No doubt as a writer he
was noting everything about her. Well, she could walk gracefully if she tried.
She climbed the stairs lightly; she strode across the landing straight-backed,
with poise. “Do you teach your kids ballet?” Edmund Hall asked.

 
          
“No.
Movement and drama, we do.”

 
          
“Did
you go to ballet lessons when you were a kid?”