Secret Story (18 page)

It was clear that she’d chosen the long way to the station. The weathered path of slippery plates of rock led to a pinewood in which she kept hearing twigs snap and pine cones crunch beneath the tread of an otherwise silent walker somewhere close. When she emerged into a field of rank grass bordered by a dense stretch of pines she was hoping the other might stray into view, but the noises stayed among the trees. Beyond the field a rubbly track brought her to a section of the Smiths’ road alongside an abandoned churchyard. This struck her as such a cliché that as she marched past it and down a side road she grew furious with herself for even noticing the clinks of stone or glass or both that seemed to pace her under cover of the high wall.

Behind the graveyard a broad road sloped down towards the station. There was still a main road to be followed to a five-way junction surrounding a church. By the time she took the route that led past a chain-link cage jangling with football to the station she’d had more than enough of the heat that her nerves and the speed they’d urged on her had stoked up. At least her train was almost due. Alone on the platform, she calmed her
breath and sighed aloud, and then she had nothing to distract her from the station entrance that yawned at her back. Nobody could have crept so close that she wouldn’t have heard them, and yet as the train drew into the station she couldn’t help retreating a step. She stalked in a fury to the nearest doors and glared through the windows as she made for a seat with its back to the wall. Of course she hadn’t glimpsed anyone dodging out of sight beyond the exit to the street, but what if she had? The doors shut and the train set off, and she deliberately looked away from the platform. “End of story,” she said.

When the dawn made the tips of the highest branches on the hillside flare like matches, Dudley lurched out of bed. The edge of the quilt captured his feet, and as a toenail scraped the slippery fabric he almost fell across the chair in front of his desk. He might have screamed at the hindrance if that wouldn’t have been likely to waken his mother. He kicked the quilt away so hard that the nail on his big toe twinged, and then he switched on the computer. He had to write. It was all the more urgent now that he’d found he couldn’t produce a new story for the magazine until he had dislodged Shell Garridge from his head.

How much more was going to be her fault? If she hadn’t stolen his place in the magazine his story would have been published by now, before anybody could prevent it. She was to blame for the night he’d just had, and so was Patricia Martingale. Not only had she added to the pressure in his brain, she had also
made him waste more of the evening by tracking her all the way to the station from the hill. Sometimes simply tracking and imagining what could happen was enough, but this had left him so frustrated that once he’d watched the train bear her out of reach, he had dashed home to try and write, only to be waylaid by his mother. Did he think Patricia had enjoyed herself? Would he like to invite her again? She was a nice intelligent girl, wasn’t she? Had they discovered anything in common besides the magazine? At last, having muttered noncommittally in response to these questions and several more, he’d escaped to his room, where he’d found that the interrogation had robbed him of the impulse to write. He’d watched a disc of Vincent’s films in the hope that they might revive his genius, whether by making him eager to contribute to the collaboration or merely helping him relax. He’d felt less than revived by the documentary about Lez and the Keks, a mop-headed female Beatles tribute band, and the award-winning short film in which a young black prostitute had dreams or perhaps more than dreams of acting as a costumed vigilante. At least the latter had left him impatient to encourage Vincent to film a more realistic story—one of Dudley’s—but that had brought him nothing but a brittle headache. He couldn’t think of a single tale that didn’t involve Shell.

He’d thrown himself on the bed at last and dragged the quilt over him, only to continue straining his brain. Whenever sleep succeeded in closing over him, his mind clawed its way back to the surface. He didn’t know how often he’d returned to an idea before he had accepted that it was the solitary answer: if he couldn’t write for publication as long as Shell was wedged in his brain, he would have to write about her first. Nobody could ever read the story if he didn’t print it out; perhaps he wouldn’t even keep it once it was finished. The computer awoke as sunlight inched like syrup down the trees, and he tried to blink grittiness out of his eyes while he waited to start typing.

“Murdered by the Mersey”, “Mumbling by the Mersey”, “Mumbling in the Mersey” . . . “Put Down for Good”. Each title brought more of a grin to his lips, and his choice of a name for her stretched them so wide that they stung almost as much as his eyes.

“You’d think a pack of men was weeing out there,” Mish shouted, peering at the rain that slashed at the pub window. “They can’t even do that proper, can they, girls? Have to do it standing up like the dogs they all are. Like they can’t bear to sit down for a moment because they’re too anxious to get some more lager in them or go and look at some porn or kick a ball about or whatever else is the poor little pathetic best they can do. Weeing’s all they’d better use their peepees for when they’re anywhere near us. And even that’s an insult. Next time any of us find a man weeing on a wall I reckon we should chop their peepees off.”

She was still shouting at the window. She hoped anybody outside in the storm could hear her and the women laughing. She had a gulp of her pint of lager, because women were allowed to drink pints now and it wasn’t the same as when a man did, and

As Dudley’s finger loitered on the final key, the word extended itself to the tune of half a dozen consonants before he snatched his hand away. His mother had come out of her bedroom. Of course she knew not to invade his room without permission, but if she heard him typing she might ask to see, and he could do without the distraction of having to respond. He didn’t realise that her very presence upstairs was distracting until he heard the noises she started to make in the bathroom. Perhaps the dialogue he’d put in Mish’s mouth had left him unduly sensitive, but he had to bung his ears with his fingers to ward off the
sounds and the images they threatened to conjure up. He barely heard Kathy reopen the bathroom door, and then he had to keep uselessly still while she plodded down stair after stair. Once he heard her carpeted footsteps grow flatter on the kitchen linoleum he swept away the proliferating letters and did his best to type more quietly as well as faster.

shouted, “Any men listening? You’d better keep your hands over your peepees if you are. Not you behind the bar, you’re safe because you’re our slave for tonight. Just do everything we tell you and you’ll leave in one piece. Any other men, this is Mish Mash talking to you, specially if you’re hiding outside. Come in and face us if you dare. It’ll be you that ends up weeing yourself.”

Some of the women looked puzzled by now. Maybe they thought she’d had too much to drink, even if she was a woman. “Keep on laughing. It’s still funny,” she snarled at them and started to shout again. “There’s a man you’d all hate even more than the rest of them if you read his stories. Don’t worry, I’ve got them stopped so nobody can ever read them. Only I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s hanging round outside because I did. If he is I hope he drowns out there. I expect he feels like someone’s weeeeee

“Dudley?” his mother called again from further up the stairs. “Are you out of bed yet?”

“Yes for the second time. Yes,” Dudley yelled and had to wipe the screen.

“Will you be long? Your breakfast’s on its way.”

“Trying to write.”

“Sorry, pardon? I can’t understand you if you mumble.”

“I don’t. Mish Mash does,” Dudley said, and also through his teeth but several times as loud “Trying. To. Write.”

“When do you think you may be finished for now?”

She was almost as bad, or perhaps not even almost, as Shell. She’d driven the end of the sentence out of his aching head. All he could see was the way the spellcheck had underlined his last protracted but incomplete word in jagged red like a bloody saw. He almost didn’t save the document before he closed the computer down and hurled his chair backwards against the bed. “Now I can’t write,” he bellowed. “Happy now?”

“Oh, don’t say that. You know the last thing I’d want is to stop you. I haven’t really, have I?”

“I’ve stopped. I’m going to the bathroom.”

He didn’t move until she returned to the kitchen with all the slowness of a mourner at a funeral, and then he sprinted across the landing to bolt himself in. He was hoping he could think now that he was alone, but his body wouldn’t let him. A cramp kept tweaking his stomach as he performed the task Kathy used to call sitting on his throne and doing what royalty did. Brushing his teeth only let him see himself grimace and foam at the mouth. When he stepped into the bath, his skin felt so nervously taut with his efforts to recapture Mish’s thoughts that he couldn’t judge the temperature of the shower. He flinched away from being nearly scalded, but the icy onslaught that followed was no use to him either. He towelled any portions of him that had ended up wet, and sprayed each armpit twice with deodorant before hurrying back to his room, where he glowered at the blank screen as he dressed for the office. His scowl failed to squeeze out any thoughts. He’d meant breakfast to come as a reward for his work, but now its aromas were yet another distraction, and eventually sent him flouncing downstairs. “Are you all right now?” his mother asked at once.

“Don’t put my eggs next to my beans or I’ve told you, I won’t eat them.” Not until he was satisfied that the items were barred
by sausages and bacon from ever touching did he say “I won’t be writing any more.”

“Before you go to work, you mean. Your other work. I’m sure you’ll write when you come home.”

“You carry on being sure, then. That’s all that matters.”

“You know that isn’t true. You are. Would you like me to ring and say you’re ill?”

“No use. Too late now. I can’t write.”

“You mustn’t keep saying that, Dudley. You wouldn’t like it to get stuck in your head, would you?” She waved her fork at him above the small breakfast she’d kept for herself. “You’ll be writing your new story for the magazine,” she apparently felt he ought to be informed. “Can you tell me anything about it yet?”

Dudley stuffed his mouth with half a sausage in the hope that her question would have atrophied by the time he finished chewing, but the appeal lingered in her eyes. “No,” he said as he took another mouthful.

“Are you afraid you mightn’t write it if you told someone the story first, even me? You mustn’t let that happen, certainly. I don’t suppose I could read what you’ve written so far.”

“I don’t either.”

“I only want to help. I don’t want to feel like a hindrance.” Having waited in vain for a response, she said “Are you going to be killing off another girl?”

“Mr Killogram will be if that’s what you mean.”

“You haven’t run out of girls, then.”

That felt uncomfortably pointed and all the more disconcerting because he couldn’t tell why it bothered him. “He never will. There’s plenty,” he said.

“You think you can still see things from their point of view.”

“Obviously I can,” Dudley said, but his mind was mocking him with his inability to finish Mish’s sentence, repeating “wee wee
wee” like a pig in a childish rhyme. “What’s hard about that?” he demanded.

“Nothing if you say not, only if you get stuck I just had an idea. If you find you’re having trouble coming up with a new female viewpoint I might be able to do something about it.”

All at once he wondered whether his conviction that he had to write about Shell before he could move on was simply an excuse, a way to postpone knowing what he had to do. He had no idea why Kathy was gazing at him. “What?” he cried.

“Maybe I could try and write a bit of it with you if you liked.”

“You mean on my computer? My computer in my room?”

“If you’ll let me. Whatever’s best for you.”

“Being left alone is. Being left absolutely one hundred per cent alone.”

“I know that’s how you can feel when you’re writing, but it doesn’t mean you have to.” For the moments she had to spend on a token mouthful of egg she appeared to have capitulated, but then she said “You’re collaborating with your film director, after all.”

“You’re supposed to be leaving me alone.” As he backed his chair away from the table, the screech of pine on linoleum felt like the voice of his nerves. “Now I’ve got to go to work,” he complained.

“You aren’t late yet. Have a bit more to eat.” When he picked up his knife and fork and dropped them on his plate, their handles sinking into the leguminous morass, she said “Have some of your orange juice at least. Start the day healthy.”

He seized the glass and emptied it into his mouth. He hadn’t finished swallowing when acid rose to mix with the drink. He rushed to the front door and lurched off the path barely in time to spill the mouthful behind the overgrown rockery. As he straightened up he saw Brenda Staples, one of the elderly sisters who lived in the next house, pinioned in her downstairs window by
handfuls of the curtains she was opening. Rage at the contempt she was daring to exhibit sent him down the path. Before he stopped digging his fingernails into the gate, Kathy followed him. “You could try and write in your lunch hour, couldn’t you?” she wanted to reassure him or herself or both. “And maybe in your breaks as well.”

“No,” Dudley said, “no,” and repeated it all the way to the street that led downhill. He imagined his colleagues reading his story over his shoulder, even finding an excuse to pursue him into the staffroom. He wished he had let Kathy tell Mrs Wimbourne that something was wrong with him, although there certainly was not. Perhaps he could pretend there was so as to be sent home from work.

“Wee, wee, wee . . .” His mind had rediscovered this theme now. Crossing the road to be out of earshot of early shoppers at the supermarket, he began to chant it in a voice he hoped was sufficiently idiotic to shame it into leaving him. “Weeing on his head,” he gasped with sudden inspiration. “She wanted him to feel someone was weeing on his head, the stupid unimaginative vindictive bitch.” The trouble was that he felt like that, or at least as though senselessness was falling drop by sluggish drop into his skull, dousing any thoughts he almost had. Surely that was the fault of his lack of sleep. He just needed something to waken him.