Silent Children (18 page)

Jack straightened up, and the plastic base flew off the table at him. He slammed the receiver into its housing and crouched over it as if that might keep it silent while he struggled to recover. "No. Come on. No," he said, and even tried to laugh.

"And now I expect you're all panting to hear what I thought of your stories," Mr. Cardigan announced, loudly even for him. "I'd stake a month's salary that there are a few boys in this classroom wishing they'd sprayed their armpits a lot harder this morning."

Ian joined in the chorus of dutiful laughter. He wasn't sweating, but he was certainly eager. Mr. Cardigan had told them to write a story about anything they liked so long as it was told in the first person, and Ian was sure the story was his best work, good enough to show both his mother and Jack. He'd imagined Carla's viewpoint so vividly that for whole paragraphs he'd come close to feeling like her, lying bound and gagged beneath the cellar floor that a psychotic serial killer in a mask had nailed down, and utterly unable to respond to her mother's calls in the house overhead. He waited while Mr. Cardigan prolonged the suspense, hooking his thumbs under the gold chain of his steel-grey waistcoat and drumming his fingertips on his tautly buttoned stomach, before he began to fling exercise books off the pile on his desk, and comments after them.

"Very careless, Hobbs." That didn't surprise Ian, since Baz had boasted of smoking two joints in the course of writing his story. "Too slick to be convincing, Sheeney," the teacher declared, presumably unaware that Stu had copied most of the story out of a crime magazine, substituting English names that didn't go with the Chicago location. "Starts off well, Nolan," Mr. Cardigan told Shaun, "so what truncated your inspiration? Was it a girlfriend or just a video?" By now practically the whole class had been dealt with, and Ian couldn't help feeling the teacher was saving the best until last. He was getting ready to allow himself a grin when the lunch-time bell shrilled. "Bayliss. Fong. Choudhury. Davison. Davidson," Mr. Cardigan rattled off, lobbing some of the books the length of the room, then tucked his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets and wagged his fingers upward to indicate the class should rise. "Time for your airing, gentlemen. Do try not to mangle the language too grievously while you compete at being up to date."

A solitary exercise book remained on his desk, and Ian was hurrying forward when the teacher took him to be trying to escape. "Linger, Ames, if you will," he bellowed.

Ian's friends glanced at him with as much sympathy as their age and gender allowed, but he didn't feel in need of it. Once he was the only boy in the room, Mr. Cardigan marched to the door and shut it with almost a slam, then he rubbed his neat moustache between finger and thumb before transferring them to his chin-sized beard. At last, having barely lowered his voice, he said "Have we a touch of the pos?"

That was what Ian heard him say, at any rate, and wondered if he was being asked about his intestinal health. "Sorry, sir?"

"Edgar Allan Poe. Have you been reading that old horror?"

"No, sir."

"Or watching a film of a premature burial, perhaps."

"Didn't know there was one."

Mr. Cardigan frowned at the answer or at the lack of sirring. "Is this story all your own work?"

"Sure is, sir."

"I'm not suggesting it was written by an adult, but I wonder if you were advised by one."

"Like who?"

"I understand you have a writer boarding in your house."

"Jack," Ian said to demonstrate how close they were. "Jack Lamb. Have you heard of him, sir?"

"I should think his reputation is at least as widespread locally as he could wish. Did he have a hand in your composition?"

"He doesn't even know about it yet."

"So I'm to understand this came out of your own head."

Ian felt safe in sounding a little proud, perhaps even a little like a writer. "It did, sir."

The teacher glanced at the last page of the story, where the cellar light became visible through the floorboards only for Carla to see it go out because her eyes and her brain had. "I think you should speak to someone else about this."

"You mean try and get it published, sir?"

"I mean very much the opposite. I should hope your mother would prefer it to be kept as quiet as possible."

"You said we could write anything we liked."

"Within reason, Ames, reason, heaven preserve us. I would never have expected you to exploit a tragedy to prove how horrid you can be."

"It's not about my house," Ian protested, perfectly sincerely. "It's just an idea I got."

"Then I would strongly recommend your mother takes you to see someone who can rid you of such ideas."

That was preceded by a disbelieving look, which was why Ian insisted "I wouldn't write about my house. Jack is."

"Not an occasion to celebrate." The teacher was shaking the exercise book at him as if that might scatter the words out of it. "Please show this to your mother and inform her I should be happy to discuss it further."

Ian idled back to his desk, giving Mr. Cardigan time to vanish in the direction of the staff room, and then he read the comment that resembled crimson scratches on the page.
Sufficiently well written that one hopes these skills will be put to more wholesome use,
Mr. Cardigan had scribbled, followed by a C in the circle he always drew around his marks, presumably not realising this one looked like the symbol you saw in published books—Jack's, for instance. Ian's resentment of the criticism faded as he thought of Jack; his was the opinion that counted, and Ian felt all the closer to him since they'd let Ian's mother believe that telling her about the book had been purely Jack's choice, nothing to do with his having been found out. She might have over-reacted and asked him to leave, and Ian thought Jack had been afraid she would. Jack owed him a little secrecy, and part of that might cover the teacher's comments.

He was opening his desk to put away the book when he heard Shaun's voice under the open window. "Ian? Has he gone?"

"You'd hear if he hadn't."

"What was he bitching about?"

"Just the stuff I wrote. He thought it was about, you know, Duke's sister."

"Was it?"

"What do you think? I'm not that sick."

"Bring it out and let's have a look."

"See it later," Ian said, and sat down to open the exercise book. He hadn't finished reading the first page when Shaun called "Are you coming out?"

"In a bit." Since not only the teacher but also Shaun had assumed he could have been writing about Harmony Duke, Ian wanted to reassure himself they were wrong: he didn't think his mother would like the story otherwise, and that might be true of Jack as well. Ian hadn't had their house in mind while he was writing; there had been nothing in his head except the story itself. The house was nothing like theirs, it was American and had a cellar, and if Carla was anybody real she was Charlotte, though she used as many American words as he'd been able to fit in. Now that he'd reread the story he could see bits he would like to improve, but he was certain nobody at home would share the teacher's disapproval. He was resolving to ask if he could borrow Jack's word processor so that he would have a copy to be prouder of when someone opened the classroom door.

"I was just checking my homework," Ian began to say, having guessed that the incomer was a teacher, all of whom were devoted to chasing boys out of the school at lunchtime. But the intruder, who came in fast and heeled the door shut, was Rupe Duke.

He took one heavy step forward, swinging his arms like a boxer or a bouncer, and gave his head a vicious jerk that might have been intended to shake some of the dullness out of his eyes and his uncared-for face. "What've you been writing about my sister?"

Ian leaned his fists on the book. "Nothing."

"Not what I heard."

"Shouldn't have been listening then, should you? Better piss off before a teacher comes. You're not allowed in this room."

Duke advanced two steps that Ian thought were even stupider and less impressive than the first. "I want to see."

"Like you wanted to see in my house, right?"

"Maybe."

Ian gripped the sides of the desk. "Here's how it goes, Duke. I'll let you read it if you say you broke into my house."

"You know I did."

"And wrote all that shit on the doors."

"You know it."

Since he'd overheard Ian in the classroom, he must be audible to Ian's friends outside. Ian had witnesses, and felt so pleased with himself that he pushed the book across the desk. "Go on then, read it. It's not about her."

Duke trudged forward and grabbed the book. As he flipped the cover open his face closed around his feelings to ensure not a hint of them escaped, and Ian was taken off guard by a surge of unexpected sympathy. After all, how was Duke supposed to feel when his little sister had been murdered? If Charlotte had been the victim Ian could imagine being more upset than he wanted to admit. His understanding didn't change the fact that Duke had vandalised his house, but at that moment he decided to let adults deal with the other boy. He watched Duke turn the page with a slowness that suggested respect and read to the end. Duke glared at the teacher's comment, and then the glare found Ian. "You cunt. You lousy cunt," Duke said.

"Yeah, well, that's your opinion. Give my homework back."

"No fucking chance," Duke said, and retreated around a desk.

"It's got nothing to do with you. Give it back."

"You're not doing that to my sister. You can have your book all right."

Ian grasped the threat at once, too late. Before he could retrieve the book, Duke had flapped it open and torn out the story. He let the book fall and ripped the pages swiftly in half, in quarters, eighths, sixteenths. "There's your book," he said, "and you can have this when I've finished."

The slab was pressing Ian's mind small. He felt as though everything he'd put into the story, his hopes for it and his sense that he could be someone better than he'd taken himself for, had raised the weight high only to have it drop back into place. His story was beyond rescuing, and what he saw himself doing seemed pointless, but so did refraining from it—only the rage that turned his mouth dry as paper seemed real. He snatched up the book and used it to slash Duke across the face.

The boy stumbled backward, scattering fragments of paper as his hands leapt to his face and he collided with a desk. Before Ian could see how badly he was injured—surely less than the muffled sound behind his hands was claiming—an assortment of footsteps in the corridor reached the classroom. Shaun was first in, followed by Stu and Baz. "Did you hear him?" Ian demanded. "Did you all hear what he said?"

"Said when?" Shaun asked as if he didn't want to know, and stared at Duke. "Shit, what have you done to him?"

"Just hit him. He'll live. But listen, you heard him say he broke into my house, right?"

"No."

"You must have. You heard me and Cardy before."

"We heard it was Duke in here. That's why we came, in case he needed sorting. Look at him, Ian, it looks like you've—"

Ian turned away from him, from the pointlessness he seemed to be embodying. Could Ian really have handed Duke his story to destroy and gained nothing by it? "You heard Duke say he was in my house, didn't you, Baz?" he pleaded. "Stu, you did."

Both of them shook their heads. He couldn't reassure himself they hadn't understood, even though they were gazing in dismay at Duke. "We'd say if we had," Stu said, and grimaced as if he found it hard to swallow. "But Christ, look what you've done. You've blinded him."

When the phone rang Jack's hand clenched on the coffee mug. He managed to relax his fingers, which felt capable of shattering the stout baked clay. He was sitting at the end of the back garden in the hope that strong black coffee and the open air might help him think. Neither had, and he'd barely sampled the coffee, which had only intensified the ache that was his absence of thoughts. It had taken him minutes of staring at the phone to realise the call might be traceable, but when he'd dialled 1471 a recorded voice had told him with more cheerfulness than seemed appropriate that the caller had withheld their number. He'd retreated upstairs to switch off the word processor, on whose screen the words
Child Killer
and
The Man Who Buried Children
and
Silenced Cries
had appeared to brighten before they were extinguished, leaving marks on his eyes. The words seemed both entirely beside the point—at least the effort he'd put into manufacturing the phrases did—and inescapably relevant. He was trying to clear them out of his mind, which was using them to fend off things he was afraid to think or feel or remember or admit were possible, when the phone rang.

It repeated itself twice before he set down the mug with a clunk that spilled tepid liquid over the back of his hand. The sensation felt as if someone had licked him. As the phone shrilled again he swung his legs off the bench and sprinted up the garden, towards pairs of sunlit façades that might have been standing together to cast him and his secrets out. He had to deal with the call, even if it was the one he was afraid of—especially if it was that call.

The kitchen floor felt ominously harsh after the softness of the lawn. He was halfway along the hall before he ceased to feel he was still running over concrete, as though his sense of what had been hidden beneath that surface was pursuing him. The phone fell silent, and he closed a fist around the receiver, willing the bell just to have paused between rings. "Hello?" he gasped, and with the rest of the breath his lungs could spare "Hello?"

"All right, John, no need to panic. Only me. Had time to think?"

Jack wasn't as prepared as he had convinced himself he was. He sat quickly on the stairs and moved the base of the phone to his lap, and felt as if he were cradling a toy for comfort. "About what?"

"Nothing if you don't need to. I just reckoned you might want time to get used to having your old dad when you thought you'd lost him."