The Count of Eleven (31 page)

“It wished me luck.”

“Well, yes. That’s it exactly.”

“It said if I made thirteen copies it would make it worth my while.”

“Precisely.”

“You think all it takes to get on in the world is sending thirteen copies of a letter.”

“Not all it takes, no, but it helps. And not sending them ‘

“Nothing is for nothing in this world, my friend. Maybe you think it is because you’re paid out of the rates. You should be glad you came. You’ll be going away wiser.”

“I can guess what you did with my letter, then,” Jack said, grasping the lock of the briefcase.

“It went where all the junk mail goes. Some days I believe half a rain-forest lands on my doormat.”

“And if I happened to have brought you another copy in case the first one never reached you ‘

“Then I’d take it off you.”

Jack pulled the briefcase wide. The blow lamp caught the sunlight as though it was impatient to flame, and beneath it Foster gazed up at him, eyebrows high on his creased forehead. “And do what?” Jack said.

“What I’m told. Anything for a quiet life.”

“You’d send copies to your friends or someone?”

“What do I have to do to convince you, pull out my hair?”

Jack shoved a hand into the briefcase and covered the blow lamp to blot out the illusion of flame. “I ought to be honest I’m not being completely unselfish. When you didn’t follow the instructions in the letter the bad luck somehow boomeranged on me and my family. So you’d be well advised to be sure of the people you send your copies to.”

“Well, I never would have known that if you hadn’t told me. Is that mine?” Foster held out his hand as Jack found the appropriate envelope. “Now have you finished scaring the fish?”

“Of course. Excuse me,” Jack said, and handing him the letter, made for the gap in the hedge. The light he had seen in the briefcase seemed to have entered his surroundings, the glossy green leaves of the hedge, the pebbles gleaming through the dust underfoot, the earthy beads of water which fringed splashes at the edge of the path, the patterns swaying and expanding on the surface of the canal. An underwater movement caught his eye, and he stopped to watch a large dappled fish swimming towards Foster. It looked as though a portion of the canal-bed composed of earth and stones had been brought to life by the sunlight and rippling water. “Here comes some of your luck,” he called to the bookseller.

The last word was sucked back into his mouth by a gasp. As he turned he caught Foster in the act of tearing up the letter and depositing the fragments in the hamper. The sunlight seemed to flare up and focus on the seated man. “You shouldn’t have done that,” Jack said regretfully.

Foster didn’t hear him. He didn’t look up until Jack had halved the distance between them, and then he glanced towards Jack to see what was causing the unfamiliar sound. The flame of this blow lamp wasn’t nearly as loud as the blow lamp Jack had returned to Andy Nation, but it still produced a satisfying roar. “What are you Foster demanded, and more shrilly: “Good God, what ‘

Jack let the blow lamp do his talking for him. He need only walk, because the sight of him was twisting the bookseller’s face into a caricature of disbelief struggling with panic. Jack was at least ten strides away from him when the bookseller lurched to his feet and tried to run. Foster’s haste sent the stool skittering into his path. He dodged it wildly, slipped on a patch of moss and sprawled into the canal.

The splash was spectacular. If Jack hadn’t retreated, his trousers would have been soaked. The fish flicked its tail as if in disapproval and swam out of reach with grace that looked positively aloof. As thick ripples collided with the far bank and began to multiply, Foster floundered to the surface about six feet from the edge of the path, spewing water and clawing at his face to clear away locks of hair plastered across his spectacles. “Help,” he screamed, “I can’t swi..’

“Neither can I,” Jack said, but Foster couldn’t have heard him. He must have lost his footing, because his face tilted back in the water, which filled his ears and mouth, drowning his last word. He was going to float, Jack thought, remembering Julia assuring him how easy that was. The sensation obviously terrified Foster, who started to flail his limbs as though he was desperate to touch solid ground with some part of himself. His face canted upright again, streaming and spluttering, and then it sank.

Jack set down the briefcase and the blow lamp on the path. His surge of hilarity at the sight of the Hardyesque pratfall had given way to a sense that he ought to intervene, but how? He couldn’t jump into the canal, and he couldn’t very well run for help; Foster was bound to accuse him of causing his fall. On the other hand, if Foster came close enough for

Jack to haul him out, mightn’t he be sufficiently grateful to return the favour by sending the letters? Jack turned off the blow lamp and waited to see where the distorted agitated lump, which seemed for the moment unable to do more than ruffle the surface of the canal, would bob up.

Apparently Foster couldn’t see where he was going. He was yawing towards the middle of the canal, but to gain the far bank he would have to flounder a good few yards further than to return to the path. What looked like a lungful of bubbles swarmed helplessly to the surface, and Jack wondered if that was the end, though weren’t the drowning supposed to rise three times first? Then, as if the expulsion of breath had lightened him or the agony in his lungs had lent him extra strength, Foster’s head and shoulders wallowed up from the canal, and he made a wild grab for the tip of the fishing-rod.

He missed, but not entirely. Though his other hand was only clutching at the air, it snagged the line. This bent the rod towards him, and he dragged it down until he was able to seize it with both hands. “Help,” he gargled, spitting and retching. “Help!”

He was trying to haul himself along the rod to the bank. The support on the path was wobbling dangerously, but it had caught on an exposed brick at the edge. Jack came to a decision. “Hold on,” he called, “I’ll ‘

As soon as Jack turned towards the rod, Foster began to scream “Murder! Keep him off! Help! Murder!”

“I only want Jack said, and halted. Foster ceased screaming, presumably in order to concentrate on inching hand over hand along the rod, but it was clear that he would recommence his accusations if Jack moved. He would if he ever got out of the canal he would tell people about the blow lamp and so there was nothing Jack could do but wait for the rod to topple into the water.

He watched as the metal support creaked and scraped against the brick. Suddenly it keeled over, and the rod whipped the surface of the canal and immediately sank. Foster plunged forwards, a movement Julia had frequently tried to teach Jack, and managed to plant his fingertips on the margin of the canal.

The effort seemed to have exhausted him. He hung against the bank, his head and shoulders a bedraggled bust exhibited by the canal. Jack imagined his waterlogged body pressing against the slimy bank, but even those sensations must come as a relief, for an expression not entirely unlike triumph flickered in Foster’s eyes. It lasted until Jack began to speak. “I can’t…” Jack mused aloud.

Foster tried and failed to heave himself out of the water. A patch of moss came away in his hand, exuding moisture. His arms were shaking, and his body must be as his feet scrabbled underwater at the slippery bank. Jack continued to pity him until Foster commenced screaming, louder than ever. “Someone help! He’s killing me! Murder!”

“Just as you say,” Jack said, and grabbed the blow lamp Impatience had got the better of him. The hiss of gas sounded like a whisper, wordlessly urging him. The flame spouted from the nozzle, growing invisible almost as soon as it emerged into the open air. He kicked the hamper into the weeds beside the path and stooped towards Foster, whose face had taken on exactly the look of mingled incredulity and panic with which it had originally greeted the sight of the blow lamp If he didn’t believe in it, Jack thought angrily, why had he made so much noise about it? He might have been able to save himself.

Jack was hoping that the nearness of the blow lamp would cause Foster to retreat out of reach of the bank, but the bookseller began to drag himself along the margin, his fingers leaving snail-tracks on the moss. In two strides Jack was above him and aiming the flame at his fingers. Even that didn’t dislodge him from the bank. Instead his fingers started wriggling wildly not unlike the grub on the hook, Jack thought as they hauled him along the edge. It wasn’t clear to Jack what fraction of the wriggling was an illusion produced by the heat of the blow lamp but the spectacle struck him as distressingly pointless; Foster was simply prolonging his own agony. “Have to be cruel to be kind sometimes,” Jack told him, and played the flame directly on his fingers. “Do yourself a favour, for heaven’s sake. No point in hanging on.”

Foster had ceased crying for help as he tried to flee, but had kept emitting a groan like someone struggling to waken from a nightmare. It rose to a shriek as his fingers turned red. They continued to writhe and to try and dig into the soil at the edge of this stretch of the path just like worms, Jack thought, that were searching for holes in which to take refuge until the skin on the back of Foster’s right hand started to smoulder. Then they recoiled, and a convulsion of his whole body sent Foster jack-knifing backwards several feet. “Murder,” he shrieked, ‘murgle, murglub,” and sank.

“Stay down,” Jack murmured. “Third time lucky.” He was experiencing a sadness which might have felt like guilt if he hadn’t been certain that he had pursued the only course of action open to him. He began to count aloud. He hadn’t reached eleven when Foster erupted from the canal, at least a foot closer to the bank than when he’d sunk, waving his blistered hand as if he could shake off the pain. His impetus carried him towards Jack, both hands clutching for the edge.

“This is silly,” Jack protested, his voice starting to crack. “You know perfectly well Talking was useless, especially since Foster had lost his spectacles underwater and presumably couldn’t see him. He trained the jet of flame on the largest target within reach, the top of Foster’s head. In a very few seconds the man’s hair hissed and withered, and he was both bald and piebald. During these seconds he emitted an almost inarticulate crescendo of sound “Mmmur’ and Jack had the dismaying impression that he was crying out for his mother. His hands were convulsively slapping the water and keeping him afloat, so that he was unable to move out of range of the flame. His scalp was peeling by the time shock or helplessness or a yearning for the cool water caused him to sink.

Jack took hold of the control of the blow lamp but made himself wait before turning it off. To his distress, some kind of struggle was continuing in the depths of the canal. A cluster of large bubbles spent themselves on the surface, then another bunch rose from between Foster’s legs. Surely that was all, Jack thought, just as Foster’s scalp bobbed above the water. It resembled an old weathered rock rather than anything human. It protruded for several seconds, ripples streaming around it like a replacement for its hair, and finally sank.

Jack turned off the flame and stood listening to the liquid harmony of the canal. Though it sounded like a promise of eternal peace it couldn’t quite assuage his dismay. He dropped the blow lamp into the briefcase and snapped the lock, and shuddered from head to foot, which left him feeling some’ what better. “Horrible. Horrible,” he kept muttering to himself as he strode to the gap in the hedge.

There was nobody in sight on the road or alongside it, though he could hear mowers working on more than one back lawn. He kept his eye on the fishermen through the hedge as he walked to the van, but they all had their backs to him. “Horrible,” he told the clown as he inserted the key in the ignition, and thought of a word which summed up Foster’s demise more accurately. He started the van and drove towards the motorway. “Unnecessary,” he repeated, feeling each time that it had more to tell him. By trying to explain too much to Foster he had only succeeded in confusing the issue. In future he would come straight to the point. It was only fair, and he wanted to be fair.

Janys’ first client of the day was determined to be good with children. When she met him at the front door with Tommy in her arms he immediately said “What’s his name?”

“Tommy.”

He stuck out a hand for Tommy to shake, a hand so large and hairy that she could imagine his pupils at school deriving as many nicknames from it as from his name. “I’m Mr. McGrotty,” he said, challenging his audience to keep a straight face. “Is your name Tommy, Tommy?”

Tommy’s response was to bury his face between his mother’s breasts. “Come on, Tommy Tommy,” she said, ‘you can be the birdie to watch.”

The teacher followed her along the hall and lingered, hands behind his back, to appraise the photographs on the walls. “Are these your work?”

“All mine.”

“Good. They’re good.”

Thank you, kind sir.” She took the repetition as a double compliment, but perhaps he had another intention for it. Once Tommy was deposited in his playpen Mr. McGrotty said “Shall I show Tommy what I’ve brought him?”

“What would that be?”

He was addressing Tommy rather than her, which reminded Janys of how Tommy’s father had behaved before the divorce, playing with Tommy in ways that seemed designed to blot out the child’s awareness of her even when she was in the room. “I’ve brought Tommy a book,” the teacher said. “Books are good, Tommy. Would Tommy like to look?”

At least he wasn’t offering sweets spiked with additives, which had been her ex-husband’s favourite way of simultaneously ant agonising her and making her appear unreasonable to Tommy. He snapped open his battered briefcase and produced a book not much larger than his hand. This is a good book, Tommy. Would Tommy like to look at the book?”

Tommy held onto the side of the playpen and peered at the book with a pained expression that seemed to retort he was already doing so. When that didn’t work he stood on tiptoe and reached for it. “Ook.”