Secret Story (42 page)

“I might,” Patricia said, then seemed to remember the demands of politeness. “Thank you. I would.”

“Do you think you could just let them know you’re safe and tell them the rest when you’re home?”

She wasn’t sure what the postponement would achieve, but anything that might protect her son had to be worth trying. She was wondering if she’d asked too much when Patricia said “I just want this to be over.”

Kathy didn’t know whether to take that as a threat to her son. It became apparent that Patricia wasn’t sure which number to call. Eventually she settled on one that had to belong to a mobile, and Kathy was belatedly afraid that Patricia was trying to track down her own. She held her breath, and before Patricia spoke it had begun to feel like an exaggerated heartbeat. “Mummy, it’s me,” Patricia said.

Kathy wished her son would speak to her like that. She let the breath go, but found the next one quite as difficult; she was still nervous of how much Patricia might communicate. “I’m not there” sounded potentially dangerous, as did “I didn’t” and “There wasn’t one.” Not until Patricia said “Can I tell you when I see you?” did Kathy start to any extent to relax. “Where are you?” Patricia said. “Can you get away? Could you meet me at home? I’d like to be at home. I’ll see you there.”

She parked the receiver and faced Kathy. “May I ring for a taxi?”

“I already have.”

“Thank you.” After a pause so curt it hardly deserved the name Patricia said “Have you called anyone else?”

“Not yet, no.”

“Someone has to, Kathy.”

“Then please leave it to me. I’ll handle it. I’m his mother.”

Kathy was struggling to look earnest without letting the effort show when she heard a car draw up outside. It couldn’t be the police, she had to remind herself. “I think that’s your cab.”

Patricia held her gaze until the driver honked the horn, and then she said “Where’s my bag? Has Dudley taken that as well?”

“He isn’t a thief, Patricia.” If he’d kept the girl’s mobile, it was surely out of forgetfulness. “I brought it downstairs,” Kathy said and fetched it from the kitchen. “You’d left it on the landing.”

Patricia seemed ready to argue even once she’d checked the contents of the handbag, but a second honk intervened. “You’d better go before the neighbours start complaining,” Kathy said.

Indeed, Brenda Staples was glowering through her front window. Kathy accompanied Patricia to the taxi, both in case she needed support and to shut her in the vehicle. “Drive carefully. She’s a little fragile just now,” she advised the driver.

Perhaps she oughtn’t to have said that, since the look Patricia left her was by no means wholly grateful. Kathy watched the taxi disappear around the corner, and then she turned to confront the neighbouring window. “Only a visitor,” she informed Brenda Staples and retreated into the house.

She had to speak to Dudley. Beyond that she couldn’t think. Trying to do so made her feel surrounded by darkness that the sunlight was unable to dispel. She grabbed the phone in the hall and prodded the digits of Dudley’s number as she ran upstairs to sit at his window. She thought of opening it, but suppose Brenda
Staples overheard Kathy’s side of the call? As she peered through the glass, Dudley’s voice brought the ringing to an end. “Dudley Smith, writer and scriptwriter. Me and Mr Killogram must be busy. Leave us a message.”

“I don’t want to leave a message, I want to speak to you,” Kathy said, trying to fend off too many thoughts. “You aren’t busy. You aren’t so busy you can’t talk to your own mother. Are you there? Are you there, Dudley? I know you’re there.”

None of this brought her a response, not even movement on the hill. However much more she had to say, she couldn’t address it to a recording. As she broke the connection she realised that she needed to establish Patricia didn’t have her mobile. Suppose she had pretended that it wasn’t in her handbag? She could be calling the police—she could have while Kathy was attempting to reach her son. Kathy typed Patricia’s number and squeezed her eyes closed, but had to open them to lessen the darkness. It was still lurking at the edge of her vision when the mobile ceased to ring. Silence was its only message. “Hello?” Kathy said.

She strained her ears as she heard a sound. It was a whisper, but not a voice. It was the rustling of leaves. They were ferns on the hill, she thought so fiercely that she could almost smell them. “I know it’s you, Dudley,” she said. “You can talk now.”

At once she was terrified that she’d made a mistake—that the whisper was a breeze through the window of a taxi and that she’d addressed the remark to Patricia. The darkness was rushing in to render the sunshine irrelevant when Dudley said “Why?”

Kathy had to sigh before she could speak. “Patricia’s gone.”

“Where?” he said, and even more harshly “Did she make you think she had to go to hospital?”

“Home. Never mind her. We need to talk, but not like this.”

“Why, do you think it’s bugged? They can’t catch Mr Killogram that way.”

The possibility hadn’t occurred to her. It felt like another layer of darkness, but surely there hadn’t been time for the line to be tapped. “I want to see your face,” she said.

“You expect me to come back after you agreed with that bitch.”

“How do you know I agreed with her? You weren’t here. You ran off and never gave me an explanation.”

“I didn’t run. If you need an explanation that’s as bad as agreeing with her.”

This was exactly the kind of confrontation she didn’t want to have while she couldn’t see him. “I don’t think you’d better come home,” she said.

“You’re throwing me out because of what that bitch said.”

“Of course I’m not, Dudley. I’m saying you ought to stay clear because I think she may contact the police.”

The phone spat with at least a simulation of mirth. “What’s she going to tell them? She’s got nothing to show them. It’s her word against mine, and she’s the one that’s got a reason to make up a story.”

Kathy found she was able, however feebly, to hope. “What reason, Dudley?”

“She’s a journalist, isn’t she? That’s what they do when they decide they don’t like someone.”

“And what about your stories?” Kathy stared at the blank screen and saw her own dismay gazing back. “What are we going to say about all those dates?” she almost couldn’t add.

“You’ve been looking while I was out of the way, have you? You’re as bad as her.”

“I’m your mother. I need to know.” Kathy was struggling not to believe that his retort was an admission, and pleaded “What would you have said if you’d been here?”

“Try and think. See if you can imagine something for a change.”

“I’m imagining too much. I don’t want to. I’m asking you.”

“You think it’s all evidence, do you?”

“Dudley, what am I supposed to think?”

“Then you’d better destroy it if you want to protect me,” he said and immediately rang off.

“I can’t,” Kathy told the phone in her hand. She stretched out a finger to recall him and establish where they could meet, and then she wondered if Patricia had already contacted the police. Suppose she’d stopped at a phone box or asked the driver to get in touch for her? Suppose the police were on their way to impound the computer? Dudley would never have urged her to do away with his work unless he had a copy somewhere else. “I’ve got to,” she said, no longer to the phone, and jumped up.

She pulled out the leads from the monitor and cradled the computer in her arms. It felt as vulnerable as baby Dudley had—as she thought he might still be under the personality he’d constructed. The notion of injuring it brought darkness crowding around her vision and her mind, but how could she leave it to harm her son? Dropping it might corrupt the documents, but she couldn’t be sure that would erase them. She was almost unaware of sobbing as she carried it into the bathroom and placed it with lingering gentleness in the bath. “I’ve got to,” she repeated and thrust the plug into the hole and turned on the taps.

A few bubbles emerged from the computer as the water closed over it, but it was unable to raise itself. She let the water run until the bath was nearly brimming, because she was unable to see for tears. She knuckled her eyes fiercely and bruised her fingers in twisting the taps shut. Couldn’t she at least keep the printouts of his stories? She didn’t know how accurately the police might be able to date them, the way technology was developing. If Dudley had meant her to spare them he would surely have said so. Nevertheless she found it hard to see once more as she collected the stories from his room and took them into the back garden, where she laid them on top of a handful of parched
weeds. She was halfway through reading the uppermost page, as if she might commit every word of them to memory—it was the opening of “Night Trains Don’t Take You Home”—when she remembered that she had to be quick. She set light to the weeds and the corner of the pages with a kitchen match, and straightened up as the flames raced to erase the lines of print. She turned to see Brenda Staples frowning over the fence at her, and had to dab her eyes vigorously. “Smoke in them,” she explained.

“What are you burning?” her neighbour asked without slackening her frown. “Are they stories of your son’s?”

“Why, Brenda, you do have an imagination. What an idea, really.” Kathy hurried indoors to retrieve the phone and call her son. “Dudley,” she kept saying as his voice recited its message, and as soon as it finished “I’ve done it. You can come back.”

The sole response was an electronic noise somewhere between a sigh and a hiss. Kathy ran upstairs to watch from his window, although she could hardly bear to stay so close to the orphaned computer monitor. Might he answer Patricia’s mobile? Only Patricia’s voice replied. Kathy left her message again and gazed at the overgrown slope, which was as devoid of any activity as the deserted road. She was almost sure that he would still be observing the house to check whether it was indeed safe, but had he picked up her advice? Perhaps he wasn’t answering either phone for fear that would be traceable. In that case he might have stolen away, though surely he couldn’t have gone far since she’d last spoken to him. He mightn’t even have left the hill yet—and at once she realised how she ought to be able to locate him. She couldn’t endure staying in his room when it felt so emptied of him and his stories. She pushed herself away from the desk and ran to grab her handbag from on top of her suitcase in the hall.

She hadn’t time to see if Brenda Staples was watching her
dash down the path. As she sprinted across the road and up the path narrowed by unkempt vegetation, she had a sense of leaving behind far more than her house and the street. If she had to for Dudley’s sake, she would. By the time she reached an open space at the top of the path she was typing his number.

It didn’t matter if he refused to answer. So long as he hadn’t switched the phone off she would be able to hear it if it rang anywhere nearby. She was so anxious for the sound that when the ringing began she had to remember to take the mobile away from her ear. She clasped it between her hands as though it was helping her pray and was convinced that she was hearing his ringtone, however distant or muffled it was. “Dudley?” she called. “I can hear you. Come where I can see you. Didn’t you get my messages?”

Of course other mobiles could play the same tune, and she was suddenly afraid that she’d betrayed his presence on the hill to someone else. Suppose the police were already surrounding her and her son? The possibility felt like a cordon of blackness that was capable of encompassing the blue sky and the white sun. Then the theme from
Halloween
was switched off like an alarm, and Dudley trudged out from behind a clump of bushes to her left. “You’ve done what?” he demanded.

Kathy turned her mobile off and shut it in her bag so as to extend a hand to him. “What you said I should.”

“I didn’t tell you to do anything. Christ, what do you think I said?”

She could have imagined her lips were shrivelling under his gaze; she had to lick them before she was able to operate them. “Your stories.”

That gave him problems with his own mouth, which seemed uncertain which shape to adopt. “What have you done with them,” he said, not even a question.

“You saw what Patricia thought. What do you think the police would?” Like far too much, she was afraid to put it into words. “You’ll have kept copies of your stories somewhere, won’t you?”

“Yes, the ones I printed out. The ones you gave her to read.”

Kathy’s mouth felt smaller than ever and almost immovably stiff. She had managed to say nothing else by the time he said “You’ve destroyed those as well, have you?”

“Dudley, I was trying to protect you. This can’t just be about your stories any more.”

“It can’t, can it? They’re gone. Lost forever. Nobody’s ever going to read them now.” He stared at her until she had to dab her eyes, and then he said “You haven’t protected anything. You’ve destroyed everything I ever was.”

“Don’t say that. You’re still my son, whatever you’ve done.”

“God, are you trying to sound like my dad? You rhyme worse than him. You can both tell people what you think I was like. Thank Christ I won’t be around to hear it,” Dudley said and stalked onto the path up to the ridge.

“Where can you go?” Kathy pleaded. “Who’s going to look after you?”

“Where you won’t be able to follow me. I’ve nothing to live for now my stories are destroyed.”

She could barely see him for the darkness in her head. The sunlight only made it feel more charred, a condition she fancied she could smell. She stumbled after him across the parched slabs of rock. “You can write them again,” she tried to coax him. “You can write more and they’ll be even better.”

“My inspiration’s dead. You’ve killed it.”

This seemed worse than unfair, but she wasn’t anxious to examine it in detail. “You don’t just stop being a writer,” she cried.

“Why not? You did.”

“I didn’t really, did I? I finished that story for you.”

Before she could tell him what she’d realised—that it was still under her pillow—he strode onto the ridge and twisted to stare down at her. “Call that writing? I wouldn’t have even when I was at school.”