Silent Children (26 page)

"So afraid she'd stay out overnight?"

"It was pretty sultry, wasn't it? A good night for sleeping in the open if she found somewhere. Kids have done stranger things, I believe. Or couldn't she have stayed with a friend?"

"Not without Roger and Hilene hearing."

"And he'd have called you if she'd turned up."

"Even Hilene would."

"At least there's one thing to be thankful for."

Leslie could only hope not to be able to see through this latest reason for optimism. "What's that?"

"You don't need to worry about the Woollie man." Apparently feeling this might be ambiguous, Melinda added "The father."

"No, but we don't know how many others there may be like him."

"None that bad, surely."

"I wish I could think so."

"Then think about her probably making her way home right now if she isn't already there and they haven't got round to phoning you. And remember the police are looking for her. They'll have ways to trace people we wouldn't think of."

"Thanks, Mel. Don't say any more, thanks."

Just then a businessman came in, loosening his tie as a preamble to deploring the existence of Birtwistle and Maxwell Davies and seeking tuneful British composers he hadn't heard of. Leslie played him examples of Finzi and Dyson and was able to sell him discs by both, after which the task of locating distributors for a pageful of obscure Eastern European symphonies listed by a customer helped her get through the rest of the afternoon. "You head off home to Ian," Melinda said as the hands of the clock met on the way to closing time. "I'll lock up."

"See you tomorrow, unless—I can't think why I wouldn't see you tomorrow."

"And you know I'm as close as the end of your phone if you need to talk."

Leslie gave her a smile she hoped was only grateful, not expressive of the doubts their conversation had raised, and struggled through the crowds to Oxford Circus. She had to stand and sway and be bumped into nearly all the way to Stonebridge Park, and when she escaped the heat that was coagulating on the train the spacious suburban evening offered little relief. She kept hearing cries of children in the streets—children at play—but that didn't render the sounds less capable of troubling her; they made her retreat from imagining what kind of cry Charlotte might have, or want, to utter.

As soon as she opened the front door she saw Ian beyond the house. The sight of him behind the table at the end of the garden seemed to transform the hall into an optical instrument with the kitchen window for a lens. The unreality passed as she strode toward him. She was at the back door when he looked up from writing. He screwed up his face and shook his head to tell her there was no news of Charlotte, and Leslie wished his wordless answer had been intended for the other question she had to ask. She felt as if the question were driving her forward, off the unyielding concrete onto the soft springy grass. She was halfway along the lawn when his face began to dull in readiness for the interrogation he must have seen bearing down on him, but she didn't speak until she was seated opposite him. "Is there anything else you haven't told me?" she said.

"Hush now, Charlotte," Hector said, and began to sing under his breath.

"Mr. Woollie?"

"He wants you, Mr. Woollie."

"Mr. Woollie, I'm Terence, remember."

"And I'm Hughie, remember too."

"Are you here to get some help, Mr. Woollie?"

Each of them paused before speaking, and left quite a few gaps between words too, presumably as a result of the medication they were on. Their intent faces were waiting for Jack's answer, Terence repeating a smile of encouragement that jerked his oval face and pressed lips high, Hughie maintaining a wide-eyed frown that sent its ridges up his broad balding pinkish skull. Jack glanced around the lounge of the Haven Care Home, but there was little hope of an interruption: several of the residents sitting in assorted chairs around the room bright with nursery colours seemed to want him to respond, and his mother was conversing with a small inaccurately dressed old woman in a voice whose increasing quietness was meant to persuade the listener to reduce her volume to an indoor level. "What kind of help?" Jack said.

"With your book, Mr. Woollie," Terence told him. "Aren't you writing a book?"

"I may be. I may have to."

"About Mr. Woollie?"

"I wish I could," Hughie said. "Write a book. I wish I could put things out of my head like that."

"About Mr. Woollie?"

"That's what I figured. Seemed like I might know stuff about him other writers wouldn't know."

"We do too. That's how we'll help."

"I'm Terence, remember."

"And I'm—"

"I got that. You introduced yourselves when I came in."

"No, what he means is, and me too, what we both mean is he's Terence and I'm Hughie that used to help Mr. Woollie. And Vern did, and Chas, and Arthur and the other Arthur, but what we mean is we saw the little finger, didn't we, Terence."

"And then Mr. Woollie took me to the sea because he saw I'd seen. He made out it was a treat for being his best worker, but really and truly he wanted to drown me, only he got drowned himself instead."

"Don't upset Mr. Woollie telling him about Mr. Woollie. Are you upset, Mr. Woollie?"

"I guess so if that's how I look. Just let me say you don't need to call—"

"I've finished about how he got drowned, except how the police asked me about it and when I was telling them about him I said about the finger. Then I had to take them where it was, the house some man gave to a woman and a boy. I don't suppose they liked it so much when they knew he'd given them a little girl under the floor, what do you think, Mr. Woollie?"

"Watch, Terence. Watch out, I mean. Mr. Woollie looks upset again."

"I'm not saying about Mr. Woollie being drowned any more, Mr. Woollie."

"That's okay. No need to watch out for me, I can take the truth. Only if you could stop—"

"Everyone shipshape here? Having a nice chat?"

Jack's mother had succeeded in toning down the rowdy oldster and was standing behind him. The way he felt, he thought at first her concern was all for him. "Sure," he said, mostly to get rid of the questions.

"It's good to chat," said Terence.

"Best to laugh," Hughie said.

"And if you can't laugh—"

Either Terence forgot the rest or Jack's panic at the echo of his father's catchphrase communicated itself to him. He looked confused until Jack's mother said "It's kind of John to come and see us, isn't it?"

"Has he come all the way from America?"

"He's living here now, Terence."

"Here like us?"

"Not here in the Haven. He's staying at my flat till he finds somewhere else if that's what he insists on doing, though he knows he's welcome to stay with me as long as he wants."

"Did you go away to get away from Mr. Woollie, Mr. Woollie?" Hughie said.

"You went to make something of yourself, didn't you, John?"

Jack sensed his mother craved more reassurance than she was admitting. "That's me," he said.

"I'll leave you three to get on, then, while I see that everybody is fit. Just shout me or one of my carers, John, if there's anything you need."

There was plenty, but Jack was growing less and less convinced that he would find it at the Haven. His mother moved away to talk to a crouched man whose face was turning purple over the task of inverting every second page of a large newspaper, and as Jack struggled to dredge more conversation out of himself, Terence said "Did Mr. Woollie ever try to bury you when you were little, Mr. Woollie?"

"Christ, no. Don't you think Mrs., my mother would have gone to the police? And listen, can you call me Jack."

"Mrs. Woollie says you're John."

"Yes, well, I was when I was living with her and my father. Now it's Jack."

"You're living with her again," Hughie objected, "so you ought to be John."

"My father called me that. It was the name of his brother that died when he was little, only my father had a nickname for him. I'd have thought she'd want me to be Jack."

"Maybe she wants you to be you again," Terence said.

"That me is gone. Gone like my father."

"Don't you want to keep any of him, Mr..?"

The way Hughie's question trailed off, he might have been asking all over again what Jack's real name was. "Keep what?" Jack said, he hoped not too harshly. "Keep it how?"

"In you."

"That's where it's got to be," Terence assured him.

Jack shoved himself out of the armchair so violently that both men flinched away from him, a reaction that dismayed him. "Good talking to you," he made himself say.

"We can tell you more about him if you like," Hughie said.

"Maybe another time."

"He gave us work when nobody else would."

"And he gave us treats except the time he wanted to drown me."

It was the way Terence said that, as if it weren't worthy of more than a casual remark, that troubled Jack most of all. He crossed the large room, gaining himself a loose askew smile from one woman and an obscure body movement from another, then stooped to his mother, who was on one knee beside the rearranger of the newspaper, retrieving pages he'd decided were best on the linoleum. "Can I use the phone in the office?" Jack said.

"Anyone special?"

"An agent who was interested in my stuff."

In fact Jack had no intention of contacting the agent, who had sounded likely to forget his enthusiasm as soon as he'd sobered up. Jack withdrew into the hall, which had been more spacious before his father had built an enclosed staircase for the safety of the residents and an office just inside the entrance. His father, his father... Jack hardly knew why he'd come to the Haven today—perhaps to judge how the men employed by his father had survived the experience, perhaps to discover what they thought of Jack—but it was one more failure to take action. He closed himself in the boxy office twice the size of the cloakroom it had once been and sat behind the desk.

He had to warn Leslie about his father, no matter whether it was an excuse to delay informing the police or a step in that direction. He hoisted a directory off the pile by the desk and leafed through the pages, which smelled hot with the sunlight through the netted window, until he found the number of Classical Discount. It was busy. It was engaged.

It was again after he'd given it most of a minute not to be, and after more than another minute's wait too. He cut off the rapid high-pitched nervous tone and dialled Leslie's home number. Ian ought to make certain she called back. This time the phone did ring: it rang and rang until a woman's officious voice told him to try later and immediately repeated itself. Jack quelled the repetition and was waiting to redial when his mother stepped into the office to hang a clipboard on a hook. "In business?" she said.

Jack let the receiver slump into place. "No. No luck."

"You'll have some soon, I can feel it. I expect these agents are out most of the time seeing editors and publishers and whatever else they do."

"I guess some are."

"Try not to worry. Worry never made anything come." She pushed a scattering of official forms together on the desk and perched in the space she'd cleared. "Do what you can and be patient and the best that can happen will happen," she said.

"So I remember you saying when I was a kid. Mom, I mean mother ..."

"I used to be mummy. Some of the people I care for think I still am."

"I figured that. Listen, I was going to say ..."

"Say it then, John. Mother's listening."

He'd tried to leave himself no choice, but he still had to force it. "That wasn't an agent I was trying to call just now."

"Never mind, John. I know you'll have one soon if you need one." Even more forgivingly, she said "I knew it wasn't when you told me. I haven't stopped knowing you just because you went away. Parents don't, you see."

That ought to be his cue, but instead it silenced him as she said "You were always making up stories, pretty well as soon as you could talk. I'd have been surprised if you'd stopped."

"What kind of stories?"

"All kinds about who you were or who you were going to be. I remember you went to see a Roy Rogers once and you were a cowboy for weeks. Lawman John, you were, and me and you know who were supposed to own a ranch. What was the name if it? Hush while I think. The Crazy, the Crazy—I've got it, the Crazy Bull."

Jack had opened his mouth more than once during all this. The further the conversation strayed from the subject he was determined to leave himself no chance to avoid, the harder it would be to broach. "Could have been. Must have been if you say so," he gabbled. "Anyway, about the call I tried to make..."

"Don't tell me if you didn't want me to know."

"I do. I need you to." He took a breath that sounded too loud between the close walls, and said "It was about my father."

"What about him, John?"

"He isn't dead."

The breath Jack held while he awaited her reaction emphasised how dry his mouth had grown. He wasn't prepared to have her frown reprovingly and say "That's cruel."

"Cruel. You mean..."

"Maybe I don't know you as well as I wanted to think."

"I'm still not clear ..."

"That's not the kind of story I was saying you used to tell. You made up things I liked to hear. Save it for your book if you really have to, though I hope you won't, but I'd have expected you to have enough tact not to try it out on your own mother."

"I'm sorry if you're upset. I mean, of course you'd have to be, but—"

"I'm not upset, I'm disappointed. I'd convinced myself I'd brought you up better than that."

"To tell the truth."

"You always did except when you were telling stories we knew were stories."

"I still am."

"All right if that's how you meant it, but can we be done with it? You were right, it does upset me. It isn't necessary, and it brings back too much I'm having to live with."

"Okay, I shouldn't have bothered you with it. I didn't think enough."