The Count of Eleven (21 page)

Laura was limping into the hall when her mother came out of the bathroom, clutching a towel around herself. “Can you see who it is, Laura?”

Laura could distinguish his cap, patterned like a licorice all sort through the frosted glass. “It’s a policeman.”

“See what he wants, love, would you? I’ll be down as soon as I wriggle into something,” her mother said, and tiptoed into the bedroom.

Laura felt reluctant, though she couldn’t have said why: policeman were supposed to be your friends. She used her limp as an excuse to go slowly to the door, and when she inched it open she saw Jackie Pether’s father. For a moment she wanted to laugh. He always affected her that way, his face so resembled a little kid’s drawing, the pale prim mouth a fraction too low on it, the mousy brown eyes an inch too close to the hairline that was hidden by the cap, the small nose stranded between the other features; she couldn’t imagine him arresting anyone. Perhaps he sensed that, because he looked uncomfortable and all the more determined to perform his duty. “Is your father in, Laura?” he said.

“I think he’s asleep.”

His expression set firmer. “Your mother?”

“She’s just getting up. Getting dressed, I mean. She says you’re to come in,” Laura decided, and stepped back as far as the front room.

He glanced along the hall and up the stairs as he trod into the house. Perhaps policemen were trained to scrutinise everywhere they went, but he was suggesting to Laura that there was something she ought to have noticed in the house. “In here?” he said, taking off his cap and pointing into the front room with it as his brownish hair wavered erect like trampled grass.

He picked up the guidebook from the nearest armchair and sat down, dropping the book beside the chair and folding his hands over the cap on his lap. “Shall I get you a drink?” Laura said.

“No thank you.”

She waited for him to add “Not while I’m on duty’, which would make her feel even more as though they were acting out a scene from some old film, but he only stared at his cap and drummed his fingers on its flat crown. It occurred to Laura that he must be especially uncomfortable about the reason for his visit, otherwise surely he would have asked how she was feeling. She stooped to retrieve the guidebook and sucked in a hiss as a pain revived in her side, and was sinking into the other armchair when Mr. Pether said “Jackie was wondering when you’ll be back at school.”

No doubt Jackie meant that more slyly than he made it sound. “Jody brought me some homework,” Laura said.

“And a card from all your friends, I hear.”

He was beginning to annoy Laura, too much so for her to bother being tactful. “And Jackie,” she said.

He either didn’t understand or was pretending not to have heard. He turned his cap over and peered inside it like a magician who’d forgotten a trick, and Laura had had enough of him. She turned the pages of the guidebook, unable to concentrate, until she heard footsteps coming downstairs.

When he saw her mother Mr. Pether’s expression rearranged itself in a way Laura couldn’t grasp. “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Pether. Laura didn’t say,” her mother said. “What can I do for you?”

“Is your husband available?”

“He’s sleeping the sleep of the just. Will I do?”

“So long as you’re present while I take a statement from Laura.”

“Is that all? You sounded as if it was something I don’t know.”

For a second Laura was certain that there was more to his visit. “Would you like a hot cup?” her mother asked him.

“I’ve already refused one, thank you,” he said, and taking out his notebook, turned to Laura. “Your full name is.”

If he was going to do his policeman act she thought he should put on his cap. “Laura Orchard,” she said.

He gave her a look as though he knew better, and she saw that he’d caught her out. “Laura Julia,” she said, feeling obscurely disloyal. “Mummy used to say she’d lent me her name in case I wanted it when I was older.”

He started writing then, using a ballpoint bandaged with adhesive tape. “Do you know your date of birth?”

“Of course I do. Doesn’t Jackie know hers? The second of February nineteen-seventy-eight.”

“Just after midnight or just before,” her mother added,

‘depending on whose watch you believed.”

He frowned at his pen before writing Laura’s date, but that was the whole of his response to her mother. He raised his head then and pointed the pen at Laura’s face as if she might need to be reminded of its appearance. “Tell me in your own words what happened.”

Whose words did he think she was going to use? Presumably he was warning her mother not to interrupt. Laura couldn’t help resenting his insistence that her mother had to be there it made her feel much younger than she was, and besides, what she had to say was bound to upset her mother. At least telling it seemed more like a story which had happened to someone else, and she tried to convey that feeling to her mother. When Laura had finished, Mr. Pether read her what he’d written, not her words but a summary of them. “Is that what you say happened?”

“That is what happened,” her mother said.

He gazed at Laura with ostentatious patience. “Yes,” Laura said.

“It isn’t only what you say, love. There’s a witness.”

“He didn’t see how the incident started,” Mr. Pether said.

“Laura’s just told you how it did. You’re not suggesting anything different, are you? How else do you imagine she could have ended up like this?”

“It isn’t my job to suggest anything, Mrs. Orchard. However, you ought to be aware that there are conflicting stories which can’t be resolved by independent testimony.”

“No, Mr. Pether, there’s a story and there’s the truth, and I should think you know Laura well enough to judge which is which.”

“What I think doesn’t matter, Mrs. Orchard. Because of the lack of evidence the police are unlikely to prosecute.”

“Lack of …” Laura’s mother gestured fiercely at her, then turned on him. “What have those little sods been saying about her?”

He pursed his lips, then apparently thought better of rebuking her language. “They contend that she ran over the youngest boy and trapped his fingers in the wheel. He was taken to the hospital for that, you know.”

“I do know,” Laura’s mother said as if her mouth had stiffened.

“They aren’t claiming she did it deliberately, you understand, only that she panicked. They say that when they tried to get her off the bicycle to free him she must have thought they meant to steal it. They had to defend themselves and their younger brother, and they admit that the situation may have got out of hand.”

“And do you believe them? Don’t you dare tell me it doesn’t matter what you think.”

The point of Mr. Pether’s pen retreated into the barrel with a click, and he slipped the pen into his pocket. “Well, Mrs. Orchard, you must recognise that girls of Laura’s age can be subject to fits of hysteria. I’ve known Jackie lose control.”

Laura’s mother was visibly shaking. “So are you telling me those bastards, bastards, will go unpunished for what they did to Laura?”

Mr. Pether emitted a sound very like the click of the ballpoint. “Unless you prosecute yourself I’m afraid that may be the case, yes,” he said, and raised his eyes heavenwards. He’d heard the thud of bare feet above him. Perhaps roused by her mother’s voice as it grew louder, Laura’s father had got out of bed.

Mr. Pether stood up, a look of blank impenetrable determination settling over his face. “If I could have a quiet word with your husband.”

“Be as quiet as you like,” Laura’s mother retorted.

He frowned while keeping the rest of his face blank. “If I could speak to him alone.”

She called out so loudly that Mr. Pether’s hands jerked towards his ears. “Company, Jack.”

Presumably she didn’t trust herself to say more, but Laura thought she should at least have said it was the police. She listened to her father’s footsteps hesitating overhead he must be putting on a dressing-gown. Then the bedroom door creaked squeakily open and he padded down the stairs.

Laura pushed herself out of her chair and limped to the door just as her father reached the hall. With his unbrushed hair and bare feet he looked vulnerable, and less than awake. “Dad,” she said, ‘it’s ‘

He was gazing past her, and at once he was fully awake. “I can see who it is.”

She had the disconcerting impression that he was doing his best to imitate the policeman’s blank look. “May I have a word with you?” Mr. Pether said.

“I understand. Do you want me to come with you?”

Laura wondered if finding a policeman in the house had thrown him so badly he meant to go out before he was dressed, though Mr. Pether seemed to think her father was having a joke at his expense. “That won’t be necessary,” he said grimly, ‘if we can be left alone.”

Laura’s mother threw him a furious glance. “Come along, Laura. It sounds as though our place is in the kitchen.”

Laura trudged after her as her father stepped into the front room. She wanted to hear what they said, especially since she assumed it would be about her. She closed the door behind her, but not quite, and pretended to shut the kitchen door. The sound of it started the policeman talking. “Well, Mr. Orchard, you seem to know why I’m here. Have you anything to say to me?”

“What would you like me to say?”

From where she stood just inside the kitchen Laura could hear every word. Her mother had sat down with her back to her and was breathing slow and hard. After a couple of breaths she looked over her shoulder, dabbing at her eyes. “Laura,” she said as though she was addressing someone half Laura’s age, ‘sit down.”

She was turning her anger on Laura, which was unfair. “Perhaps you should tell me about the fire,” Laura heard the policeman say. “I want to hear,” she whispered, blinking back tears.

Her mother seemed to focus on her. “All right, we’ll listen,” she murmured, and cocked her head towards the door.

“The fire,” the policeman was saying, ‘and more to the point, your victim.”

“How is he?” Laura’s father said.

“As well as can be expected. No better for your behaviour afterwards.”

“My ‘

“It could be described as harassment, Mr. Orchard.”

There was a silence that seemed to express Laura’s bewilderment and her mother’s. “Is that bad?” her father said.

“When someone of that age is the victim it most certainly is. Making a fool of him in public is no joke.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“I should hope not. I understand he was led to believe you would buy him a new pair of shoes.”

Laura’s mother goggled at her with a mixture of incredulity and comprehension. “You may well look taken aback, Mr. Orchard,” the policeman said. “Perhaps you were hoping that had been forgotten, but my father isn’t as confused as you may have assumed.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“You surprise me. Well?”

“What do you have in mind?”

Mr. Pether paused before responding. “I believe a thorough apology would be in order, and you might think a pair of shoes would be as well. Of course you must be guided by your conscience.”

“If that’s what it takes.”

There was another protracted silence, then Laura heard the policeman tramp into the hall. “Mr. Pether’s father lost a shoe during the fire at the shop,” Laura’s mother mouthed at her.

She was obviously angered by what she saw as the policeman’s unjust attitude, but the news came as a relief to Laura, It must have been Jackie Pether’s grandfather who had been hopping about with one shoe on, not her own father at all. She heard the front door open, and her mother shoved the bench away from the table and went swiftly into the hall. “Excuse me, Mr. Pether, but I couldn’t help overhearing. You ought to realise it was partly your father who caused the fire at the shop.”

Laura’s father gave her a smile so radiant he might have been trying to suppress it until the policeman was out of the way. “Let it go, Julia. I don’t mind sorting things out with the old man. The more people I can bring good fortune to the happier I’ll be.”

Mr. Pether closed the gate and looked back. “I’ll look forward to hearing that you’ve done what’s necessary.”

Laura’s mother glared after him. “You shouldn’t have let him go, Jack. I don’t know how he dared accuse you after he’d just told us that the police won’t touch the boys who hurt Laura.”

“Won’t they? Well, I don’t suppose we can do much about that. Maybe bad luck will catch up with the Evanses, or maybe they behave that way because they aren’t as lucky as us.”

Laura’s mother looked stubborn, unwilling to be placated. “If that’s the best the law can do …”

“Forget the law. We don’t need it,” he said, so like a criminal that Laura giggled. For a moment he looked bemused, then he laughed, nudging Julia, widening his eyes and mouth until he resembled a clown. “That’s it, Laura,” he said. “We won’t go far wrong if we can laugh.”

When the doorbell rang on Monday morning Jack was alone in the house. It was Laura’s first day back at school, and Julia was at work. As he shaved he gazed at himself in the bathroom mirror. This was the face of a man about to start a new job, and he thought it looked pretty impressive: alert, ready for anything. He was pleased to discover he’d forgotten none of the classification numbers which he would find on the spines of books. He played with them while the cool wet metal slid over his throat, and was surprised to realise that he couldn’t think of even one that added up to either eleven or thirteen. Then the doorbell rang, and he dabbed shaving cream off the unshaven half of his face and went to see who was there.

It couldn’t be the police they had already visited the house, in the shape of Pether but the man on the front path had the look of some kind of official. He was gripping a clipboard under one arm and tapping his small even teeth with the blunt end of a pencil as he peered at the bedroom window. “Double glazing,” Jack guessed aloud.

The man took his time over lowering his gaze and then said “Mr. Orchard.”

“I was last time I looked,” Jack said, and assumed he knew why the man seemed bothered by his face. “The chin? Just call me Two-Face. Safety in numbers, I always say.”