The Daydreamer (9 page)

Peter came to his senses and opened his eyes. The open window filled his vision. He could see the end of an aluminium ladder propped against the window sill, and a hand, an old wrinkled hand, followed by another, groping over the ledge. Peter shrank back into the pillows. He was too terrified to remember his carefully thought-out plans. All he could do was watch. A head and shoulders appeared in the window frame. The face was obscured by a check scarf and a tight black cap. The figure held still for a moment, staring into the room without seeing Peter. Then it began to climb through the window with irritable grunts and murmurs of ‘Blasted stupid thing!’ until it was in and surveying the room, still without noticing Peter who lay so still he must have looked like part of the pattern on the bedspread.

The burglar reached into a pocket, pulled out a pair of black gloves and pulled them on quickly. Then he unwound the scarf and pushed the cap clear of his face. But it wasn’t a he at all. Peter couldn’t help himself. He let out a cry of astonishment. The burglar looked straight at him without surprise.

‘Mrs Goodgame!’ Peter whispered.

She smiled her yellow smile at him and arched her eyebrows. ‘Yes. I saw you there just as I was climbing in. I wondered when you were going to recognise me.’

‘But you were burgled last week …’

She gave him a look, pitying his stupidity.

‘You made it up, so no one would suspect it’s you … ?’

She nodded cheerily. She seemed much happier as a burglar. ‘Now, are you going to let me get on with my work, and keep your mouth shut afterwards. Or am I going to have to kill you?’

Even as she was asking this important question, she was advancing into the room, looking around. ‘Not much here, really. But I will have that.’

She plucked from a shelf a scale model of the Eiffel Tower that Peter had bought in Paris once on a school trip. She slipped it into her pocket.

It was at this moment that Peter remembered his plan. He picked up his camera from the bedside table. ‘Mrs Good- game?’ he said mildly. As she turned from her study of Peter’s toys the flash went off in her face. And then again, flash … flash. Immediately after the third, Peter began rewinding the film.

‘Hey, give me that camera, boy. Straight away.’ Her voice rose to a shriek on these last two words. She stretched out a hand that shook with anger.

Peter slipped the film free. As he handed the camera to her, he leaned over the edge of the bed and rolled the canister of exposed film into the mouse-hole.

‘Boy, what are you doing there? This camera is empty!’

‘That’s right,’ Peter said. ‘The pictures of you are right down there. You’ll never get them out.’

With a creak of knee joints, Mrs Goodgame crouched down and looked. Then with short, ill-tempered gasps she got to her feet. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, absent-mindedly. ‘You’re right. It looks like I will have to kill you after all.’ And with these words she pulled out a gun and pointed it at Peter’s head.

He pressed himself back against the wall. ‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ he said. ‘But if you insist, there’s something you ought to know first. It’s only fair I tell you.’

Mrs Goodgame gave a yellow, humourless smile. ‘Make it quick then.’

Peter spoke quickly. ‘Somewhere in this house is an envelope marked “To be opened in the event of my sudden death”. Inside, it says that in this mouse-hole are pictures of the burglar who is also a murderer. They’ll need a crowbar and a sledgehammer, but I’m sure they’ll take the trouble.’

It took at least a minute for all this information to be digested by Mrs Goodgame, and all the while she kept the gun levelled at Peter’s head. Finally she lowered the gun, but she did not put it away.

‘Very clever,’ she snapped. ‘But you haven’t worked it out very well at all. If I shoot you, the photos will be discovered and I’ll be caught. But if I don’t shoot you, you’ll hand the pictures over to the police and I’ll still be caught. So I might just as well shoot you for the fun of it. And as a punishment for making my life so difficult.’

She released the catch on the gun with a loud click and raised it once more towards Peter. He was scrambling off the bed while trying to hold his hands above his head. It was not easy. He really did not want to be shot. His birthday was only weeks away and he was hoping for a new bike.

‘But Mrs Goodgame,’ he stuttered. ‘I’ve thought about all that. If you’ll promise to stop thieving, and to return all the things you’ve taken, I’ll try and fish the photos out and give them to you. Honest, I will.’

Her eyes narrowed as she considered. ‘Hmm. Getting all this stuff back won’t be easy, you know.’

‘You could go round in the middle of the night, and leave it on people’s doorsteps.’

Mrs Goodgame put her gun away. Peter lowered his arms. ‘You know,’ she said in a wheedling voice, ‘I was hoping to get all the way to the end of the street. Couldn’t I just …’

‘Sorry,’ Peter said. ‘It’s got to stop now. That’s my offer. If you don’t like it, then go ahead and shoot me.’

She turned and seemed to hesitate and for one anxious moment Peter thought she would do just that. But she took out her scarf and wound it over her mouth, and pulled her cap down tight. She crossed to the window and began to climb out.

‘You know, I’ve had an awful lot of fun these past few months. Now I’ll have to go back to shouting at children.’

‘Yes,’ Peter said kindly. ‘You can’t get arrested for that.’ She flashed him one last yellow smile, and then she was gone. Peter heard the creak of her tread on the rungs, and the scrape of the ladder being pulled away from the wall. He sat down on the edge of his bed and put his head in his hands and sighed. That was very very close.

He was still sitting in this position when he heard footsteps thundering up the stairs. The door flew open and his father rushed in and crouched at Peter’s side and took his hand.

‘Thank God you’re all right,’ Thomas Fortune said breathlessly.

‘Yes,’ Peter said. ‘It was very very …’

‘You’ve been up here asleep,’ his father said. ‘That’s just as well. You didn’t hear a thing. He took the TV, and the blanket, and all the soap from the bathroom. Cut a hole in the glass of a side window and undid the screws …’

While his father went on talking, Peter was staring at the mouse-hole. During the days that followed, he was to spend hours on his stomach, searching in that hole with a length of straightened-out wire coat-hanger. Whenever he passed Mrs Goodgame in the street, she pretended not to know him. She never kept her word and returned the stolen goods, and mean- while the burglaries continued right to the end of the street. She would go to jail if he could just find those photographs, so he kept on jiggling and poking with his piece of wire. But he never found that roll of film, and nor did he ever find his model of the Eiffel Tower.

Chapter Six
The Baby

One afternoon in spring, when the kitchen was filled with sun- light, Peter and Kate were told that their Aunt Laura and her baby, Kenneth, would be coming to live for a while. No reason was given, but it was clear from their parents’ solemn looks that not all was well with their aunt.

‘Laura and the baby will take your room, Kate,’ their mother said. ‘You’ll have to move in with Peter.’

Kate nodded bravely.

‘Is that all right with you, Peter?’ his father asked.

Peter shrugged. There didn’t seem to be much choice.

And so it was arranged. In fact, Peter looked forward to Laura’s arrival. She was the youngest of his mother’s many sisters and brothers and he liked her. She was dangerous and fun. He had once watched her at a country fair leap off the top of a two-hundred-foot crane attached to an elastic rope. She had come hurtling out of the sky, and just before she was dashed to pieces on the grass, she had gone shooting up into the air again with a long scream of terror and hilarity.

Kate moved into Peter’s room, bringing her newest game, a box of magic, with a wand and a book of spells. She also brought along a small detachment of thirty dolls. The same day a mountain of baby gear appeared in the house – a cot, a high chair, a playpen, a pram, a buggy, a push-cart, an indoor swing and five large bags of clothes and toys. Peter was suspicious. Surely one small person shouldn’t need this much stuff. Kate, on the other hand, was crazy with excitement. Even on Christmas Eve she had never been this far gone.

The children were allowed to stay up late to greet the visitors. The sleeping baby was carried to the sofa and settled there. Kate knelt by it, as if she were in church, gazing into the infant face and occasionally sighing. Laura sat on the other side of the room and lit a cigarette with trembling hands. Peter could tell at a glance she was in no mood for fun or danger, unless, of course, you counted smoking. She replied to their mother’s gentle remarks and questions with short answers, and turned her head sharply at right angles to blow her smoke into a corner where no one sat.

Over the next few days, they saw very little of Laura and rather a lot of baby Kenneth. Peter marvelled at how one small person could take up so much space. In the hallway were the pram and the buggy, into the living-room were crammed the playpen, the swing, the push-cart and a great scattering of toys, and in the kitchen, the high chair blocked the way to the cupboard where the biscuits were kept.

And Kenneth himself was everywhere. He was one of those babies who are so good at crawling they gain nothing by trying to walk. He lumbered across the carpet at alarming speed, like a military tank.

He was a baby in the bloated style, with a great square jaw supporting a fat damp face of furious pink, with bright, determined eyes, and nostril wings that flared like a sumo wrestler’s whenever he did not immediately get what he wanted.

Kenneth was a grabber. If he saw an object within his reach which he could lift, his hot wet fist would close about it and transfer it to his mouth. It was an appalling habit. He tried to eat the pilot who belonged in the cockpit of the model air- plane Peter was gluing together. Kenneth also bit the wings. He ate Peter’s homework. He chewed the pencils, the ruler and the books. He crawled into the bedroom and tried to munch the camera Peter had been given for his birthday.

‘He’s crazy!’ Peter yelled as he wiped his camera dry and his mother carried Kenneth away. ‘If he could get us in his mouth, he’d eat us all.’

‘It’s only a phase,’ Kate said wisely. ‘We all used to do it.’ This calm, know-everything tone she had adopted since Kenneth’s arrival was also getting on Peter’s nerves. She had copied it from their mother. Surely no one could deny that this baby was awful. Meal times were the worst. Kenneth had a way of turning food into muck. He mashed and squelched it until it dripped like glue, and smeared it over his arms, face, clothes and high chair. The sight turned Peter’s stomach. He had to eat with his eyes closed. And conversation was impossible because the baby yelled at the top of his lungs at almost every spoonful.

The baby had taken over the house. There was not a corner into which his yells, smells and mad hyena laughter and grabbing little hands did not reach. He emptied cupboards and bookcases, tore up newspapers, knocked down lamps and full bottles of milk. No one seemed to mind. In fact, everyone, Peter’s mother, his aunt, his sister and his father, cooed with delight at every fresh outrage.

Things came to a head one late afternoon after school. It was midsummer, but it was raining and cold. Kate lay on her bed reading. Peter was kneeling on the floor. A marble craze was sweeping through the school and he was a keen player. The day before he had won from another boy the finest marble he had ever seen, a Green Gem. It was smaller than most and seemed to shine with its own light. He was using it now, rolling it across the carpet towards the large marmalade marble he always used for target practice. Just as the Green Gem left his hand, Kenneth’s fat bald head appeared round the door. The marble rolled straight towards him, and he barged forward eagerly.

‘Kenneth, no!’ Peter shouted. But too late. The baby scooped up the marble and put it in his mouth. Peter started to scramble across the floor, intending to prise Kenneth’s jaws apart. Then he stopped. It was horribly clear what had happened. The baby sat perfectly still. For a second his eyes bulged and a look of puzzled irritation passed across his face. Then he blinked, and blinked again, and looked at Peter and smiled.