Silent Children (38 page)

This time it didn't make a noise, but at least one floorboard had creaked when Woollie had sent him to lie on the bed. Even if that didn't rouse the man, the sound might aggravate Charlotte's fears beyond bearing. Ian mimed dropping to all fours so as to creep past the end of the bed. Once he saw that she understood and was controlling her apprehension, he lowered himself onto his hands and knees.

A smell of carpet shampoo caught the back of his throat. He had to swallow fast and hard and dryly before the sensation could provoke a cough. Worse still was his inability to see what Charlotte and their captor were doing. He lumbered forward a pace, then another, and felt a board start to bend under his clenched fists. He shifted his weight to the board ahead of it, which contented itself with a squeak surely too muffled for Woollie to hear, though sufficiently loud to drive out sweat from the bends of Ian's elbows and behind his knees. Another stumbling pace that nearly planted his knees on the loose board, and he had a view along the side of the bed.

Woollie hadn't moved. Yes, he had: the hand that had been fingering the knife was resting palm upward on the stool. Charlotte was craning over the edge of the bed to watch for Ian. As he came in sight her grimace of concern began to slacken, then intensified at the thought of his aim. "Okay," he mouthed. "Nearly there."

Almost an inch of the handle of the knife was protruding from the pocket, which the hand must have dragged down as it slipped onto the stool. Ian drew as much of a breath as he dared, anxious for the smell of shampoo not to lodge in his throat again, and shuffled forward on his knees. He stretched out a hand above Woollie's on the stool, toward the grinning fish on their sunny background. At that moment a phone began to ring.

It wasn't downstairs, it was in Ian's house, and further muffled by the bedroom door. Nevertheless Woollie opened his eyes and saw him.

He shouldn't have known, Jack thought. His father oughtn't to have had any idea where to find him. The last time his father had spoken to him at Leslie's he'd said that he wasn't surprised Jack hadn't visited his mother, but Terence had insisted that the man who'd phoned the Haven hadn't just expected Jack to be there, he'd had to be convinced he wasn't. It made no sense unless Jack's father had spoken to someone else between the two calls. The innocent source had to be Leslie, since she'd picked up on the fact that Jack had phoned her from the Haven. That much he was sure of, because his mother had told him Leslie had called back to warn him to leave Ian alone. Might Leslie have some insight that might lead him to his father even if she didn't realise she had?

It seemed unlikely. It reminded him of the sort of plot development he would find himself considering when a book was going badly—the kind of desperate contrivance he would struggle to elaborate in the hope that a better idea would suggest itself—but as long as it was his only lead, surely he ought to follow it up. Letting himself grow apprehensive that his father might try to call while the line was busy was just a way of putting off the task: it was clear to Jack by now that his father didn't plan to summon him before dark. He grabbed the phone and dialled Leslie's number.

It rang at once, but that was all it did, and the same proved true of the phone at her store. When he'd had enough of the relentless trilling of the bell he reverted to what he did best: pacing the apartment at the end of a tether that was the sound of the twenty-four-hour television news. He let half an hour plod by before he tried Leslie's home number again, but it had the same answer for him. Soon his mother would be home, and the thought of this additional complication made him dial Leslie's number one last time as the hem of the sky began to blacken.

He was pacing back and forth as far as the cord of the phone would stretch when the bell was interrupted halfway through its third pair of rings. "Yes?" Leslie said breathlessly.

She sounded so eager that for an instant he gave into the wish that she could have been expecting him. "Hi," he said.

"Yes, who is it?"

"Sorry. Just Jack Woollie."

"Yes, Jack. Why are you calling?"

He'd assumed her enthusiasm would vanish once she recognised him, but it hadn't flagged yet. "I guess first I want to tell you I haven't been in touch with Ian," he said.

"Oh."

The syllable appeared to mean so much yet conveyed so little to him that he felt bound to add "Because you told me twice not to."

"Did I? Right now I wish you were calling to tell me you had."

He would have been encouraged to hear that if the animation hadn't deserted her voice. "Why," he said, "what..."

"He stayed out overnight and I don't know where he is."

"I guess people do that kind of stuff at his age."

"Did you?"

"You could say I did worse when I wasn't much older. I went to the States and figured out that was where I ought to be. Hey, but I'm sure Ian wouldn't do that."

"You don't think so."

"I don't see how he could have got the idea from me. I never talked to him about it. If I had I'd have done my best to put him off. I know you need each other."

"Jack..."

"I haven't gone anywhere."

"This is hard for me to say, especially just now, but I think I was wrong about you."

"Well, okay. I mean, that's... Wrong how?"

"Ian trusted you, I'm sure he still does, and that should have meant more to me. And I know you never tried to do him anything but good. I'm the one who screwed him up."

"I can't let you say that if you're counting me as a friend or even if you aren't. I saw you doing your best to keep him together."

"And failing. Once is enough if it's bad enough."

"Tell me what's so bad it could cancel all the rest you've done for him."

"I made him feel suspected. That's what his note says."

"Suspected of what?"

"Of doing something to Charlotte, but I know he didn't now it's too—" She found an excuse to interrupt herself that came as an audible relief. "Charlotte, she's Hilene's daughter, that's the woman Roger moved in with. She ran off, Charlotte, the day before yesterday while Ian was meant to be taking her in the park, and she hasn't been seen since."

The cause of the shiver that passed through Jack was surely nothing, he thought, but evidence of the way a writer's mind worked, trying to tidy up reality and force it to make more sense than it did. "How far from your place was she when she took off?" he hardly knew why he asked.

"The far side of the park."

"That's the one with the river in it."

"If you can call it a river. Too shallow to be much of a danger if that's what you had in mind. Anyway," she said, having regained some vigour by the sound of it, "this can't be why you called."

"Well—"

"Before you tell me, let me tell you I wish now I hadn't shown you the door."

"I wish that too."

"If you were phoning to talk about that..."

"I wouldn't have presumed to."

"Still, you see you can. If it's something you'd rather not talk about over the phone..."

"I'd love to see you. I hope I can soon. Only right now I need to stay here and wait for a call."

"You should have told me to stop interrupting."

"You aren't, and I called you, remember. This other business isn't due for hours yet," Jack said, because the sky appeared to be renewing its multicoloured glow. "Keep talking. Sounds like you can use it as much as I can."

"Where have you ended up, Jack?"

"At my mother's. Do you want the number? It isn't in the book."

"I'd like it."

She asked him to repeat it, she read it back to him, and then she said "There's something I don't understand."

"Tell me."

"You said I asked you twice not to contact Ian. When did I?"

"Once when, you know, when I was having to leave, and then you gave my mother the message."

"When I rang last night, you mean?"

"Last night? Is that the only time you spoke with her?"

"Except when she came to find you at my house. I rang in case you'd heard from Ian."

"Jesus."

"Why, what did she say I'd said?"

"That I shouldn't try to reach either of you."

"It was more her assuming that was what I wanted, Jack. She oughtn't to have told you I said it."

"So long as I know the truth now," Jack said, and tried to disentangle one more thread of the confusion that had begun to reveal itself. "I don't suppose anyone tried to call me at your number that you're aware of."

"That's so. Was that why you rang?"

"Originally, but I'm glad we had this chance to talk."

"Me too. I feel as much better as I can just now."

"Shall I get out of the way in case someone else is trying to reach you? You could give me a quick call if you hear any news of Ian, if it's not too late."

"Poor Jack, I've given you my worries. I'll say good-bye, then." In a moment her voice returned, closer to the mouthpiece. "For now," she said.

"You bet," Jack responded, but his thoughts were already elsewhere. He had to put aside whatever he and Leslie might have regained, so that he could attempt to work out the other implications of their talk. He laid down the receiver and kept his hand on the phone in case it was about to ring, but that didn't help him think. He had just let go of it when the street door slammed.

It was his mother. He heard her tramping up the hollow stairs and her weary key scratching at the lock. She leaned against the door to shut it, deflating her cheeks with a long loud puff, before trudging to dump herself and her bag on the sofa as though she was too fatigued to locate her own chair. Nevertheless she said "Have you had something to eat?"

"Not yet."

"We'll have something brought in, shall we? The Chinky by the station does if you ask. Are you feeling like a dear?"

"What kind?"

"The kind who'd bring his poor old fagged-out mum a cup of tea."

Jack paced into the kitchen yet again and dangled tea bags in two mugs. He was resting his hand on the electric kettle while it lost its chill, and watching colours withdraw almost imperceptibly from the sky, when his mother called "What have you been doing today?"

"I'll tell you when I'm there."

He felt the metal achieve body temperature like someone assumed to be dead who was reviving. Soon it was nearly unbearable to touch, then more than nearly, and then it lost itself in contemplation for minutes before emitting a sneeze of steam. Jack splashed the water into the mugs and arranged them together with a half-full carton of milk on a tray like a framed photograph of children at play in a fifties schoolyard, a photograph tipped onto its back to turn their faces upward. "What did you say you'd been up to?" his mother said as he bore it into the main room.

He watched her add milk to her tea and fish the bag almost to the surface only to return it to drowning. When she looked inquisitively at him he said "I just got through speaking to Leslie Ames."

His mother's face stiffened and squeezed its lips outward, rather as they used to invite a kiss when he'd been a child. She stared at her mug and began to jerk the string of the tea bag as though teasing it with the notion of rescue. "Are you going to tell me what Mrs. Ames said?"

She was trying so hard to make him feel guilty he almost laughed. "She says she didn't speak to you yesterday when you said she did."

"Who are you going to believe, a woman you hardly know or your own mother?"

"Whoever's telling the truth."

She hauled the bag out of the muddy liquid and dropped it on the tray, where it lost shape in the midst of an expanding stain, then fed herself a sip from the mug. "That's made too strong," she said, and as if this were part of the same complaint "Perhaps someday you'll know what it's like to have a child turn on you after you've done your best for them."

"You aren't saying you were lying on my behalf."

"I won't, then."

"How were you? How was it supposed to help me?"

"Do you want more of the kind of publicity you got while you were, while you were staying with her? That won't do your career any good, John."

"That's—Hold on. It was Ian you'd spoken to when you told me Leslie called, wasn't it?"

"And if it was?"

"Let's stop fencing. What did he want, did he say?"

"I've absolutely no idea. Presumably to speak to you. Perhaps he missed having a man about the house. I know how that feels myself."

"So what did you tell him?"

"I said I didn't think his mother would want him speaking to you after she'd turned you out. And as long as what she says is so important to you I may tell you she didn't contradict me when I spoke to her last night."

"You won't like me asking this, but what did it have to do with you whether I talked to him?"

"Oh, John, for heaven's sake. Try and think straight. You've the intelligence. He's just a boy. If you'd spun him that tale about your father not being dead there's no knowing who he might have told, and you just tell me if you can what good that could have done you."

Jack wished he'd never tried to persuade her that his father was alive, not by any means the only thing he'd said or done recently that he yearned to take back. His defeat must have looked like the end of the conversation, because his mother stood up. "I'm going to make a fresh one," she announced, picking up her mug, "and while I am perhaps you can get some use out of the phone."

"How do you mean?"

"Call the Chinky," she said with an incredulous glance at him. "The menu's in the drawer of the phone table. I hope you're starving. I am."

It showed how trapped by pressure his thoughts were when for as long as he'd taken to ask the question he'd been unable to think what the answer could be. He seemed to have spent the last half hour in learning nothing useful, in confusing himself further and worsening the prospect of speaking to his father while his mother was in earshot. Surely now she couldn't suspect his father wasn't dead. One wrong word from her for his father to overhear—one hint that she knew about him, even if she didn't... Jack's imagination was so eager to foresee the worst that he found himself wishing he'd never inflamed it by writing books.