The Kind Folk (18 page)

"Just that he'd started coming home drunk at night."

"About his religion, I mean."

"He didn't have one."

"That's what I thought. It was just something she says he said."

Sophie's pause makes him strain his ears, but the only sound this brings him is another footstep on the bridge. Or is that what he hears? It puts him in mind of a restless insect scrabbling in a crevice, and he lurches towards the bridge. "What?" he has to prompt.

"Let me see if I can get it right. She thought at first he was talking about praying. That's how religion came into it."

Luke has an unobstructed view along the enclosed bridge, and it's deserted. This doesn't reassure him; he has a sense that nothing can any more. "Why does she think he wasn't?" he would very much rather not ask.

"Because he told her it was like a prayer, except it wasn't even that. I'm not being very clear, am I?"

Luke has an unhappy notion that he understands all too well. Remembering where Sophie is brings him closer to panic. He's about to tell her to head for home when she says "He said he thought it was a charm but it turned out to be a trick. Do you know what I think he meant?"

Luke can only hope she's wrong. "What?"

"I think he got it into his head that he had to help Freda and Maurice. He found some kind of spell somewhere and must have thought it worked when you were born. He might have until we all went on the Brittan show, but once he heard the test results he'd have felt tricked, wouldn't he? The sad thing is he's the only one of us who ended up thinking they mattered."

Luke wants to believe all this. He feels as if he's clenching his mind so as to keep hold of Sophie's explanation, but his mind won't shrink to that size any longer; it already contains far too much. He has found nothing that he dares to say by the time Sophie prompts "Do you think?"

"I can't argue," Luke says, feeling false to the core.

"Anyway, shall we make a start? I shouldn't be keeping you when you've so far to come."

That's yet another thing Luke wishes she hadn't brought to his mind. He says goodbye and gazes along the bridge. The boxy enclosure gapes at him while a train at a platform ticks off the empty seconds. He feels as if he's issuing a challenge—an idiotic useless one. Nothing is visible, and nothing responds. He turns away, pocketing the mobile, and tramps to his car. He's desperate to be with Sophie, and yet he falters as he fumbles for his keys. He's wondering how much longer he'll be able to maintain the pretence that appears to be his life.

THE VOICES

"Are you going to try and turn my show into a joke again, Mr Arnold?"

"I don't think you need my help to do that, Mr Brittan."

"You're out on your own there, but let's check. Anybody agree with him?"

"Noooo."

"Maybe you like to think you're one of a kind, do you? I wouldn't have a loyal audience like them if I didn't show people the truth."

"And what do you think I show them?"

"I don't know. What do you think you show them, Mr Arnold?"

"Now you're really sounding like a joke, and you're proving my point as well."

"All you're showing us is that you're nothing like the rest of us. Or am I wrong? Anybody else get his jokes?"

"Noooo."

"He shows us ourselves, don't you, Luke? You're a human mirror."

"Don't say that, Sophie. I'd never use you in my act."

"Now that is a laugh, but do we think he meant to make a joke?"

"Noooo."

"Less of working everybody up, Mr Brittan. This isn't what we came for."

"You want to run things, do you, Maurice? Go on then, tell us why we're here."

"To sort Luke out for good this time, isn't it, Maurice? To make him content with himself."

"That's a fine ambition you've got for your son, Freda. Only that isn't him, remember. We don't know where he is or what happened to him."

"No call to bring him up just now. We're happy with Luke."

"Maybe your son isn't if he watches my show, Maurice. Aren't you at all bothered how he ended up?"

"We'll find out if Luke tracks down his birth parents, Mr Brittan."

"I wouldn't hold your breath for him to do that, Freda. And do call me Jack. We're all the same here, well, nearly all of us."

"Spit it out then, Jack. What are you trying to say about Luke?"

"He's not as eager for the truth as he'd like everyone to think, Maurice. This show's about honesty, and he isn't even being honest with himself."

"You can't say that. You don't know him."

"I can say exactly what I like on my show, Sophie, and my gut feelings never let me down. I'm telling you there's a lot the people he's pretending are his family don't know about him."

"Then how do you, Mr Brittan, Jack?"

"That's what researchers are for, Freda. He shouldn't be here if he doesn't want us finding out the truth."

"So let's be hearing what you think you know if you're not just shooting off your gob."

"I never do that, Maurice. I know him so well I might as well be living inside his head. He saw your brother off for a start. You might want to wonder if he thought Terence knew too much about him."

"This isn't even funny any more. He didn't kill Terry, he tried to save him."

"Did I say anything about killing?"

"Noooo."

"I can't believe anyone would think I'd make an allegation like that on the air. All I said was that he was with your brother at the end."

"You want to be careful how clever you're trying to be. What else are you going to make out about our Luke?"

"You won't like this either, Maurice. He's been disturbing a lot of old people. One was in a home and your boy still kept on at him, and another ended up in hospital because of him."

"I won't believe that. How did Luke put him in hospital?"

"It's just the kind of person you are, isn't it, Luke? And another one was dead but Luke still managed to disturb him."

"I think you're having a joke now, Mr,Jack."

"Look at his face and tell me if he thinks I am. Doesn't want to meet your eyes, does he? And as if harassing old people wasn't bad enough, he's been stalking a nurse."

"Why would you do that, Luke?"

"I can tell you, Freda. I was with him. She said she saw what happened after he was born but then she wouldn't say what it was. I'm sure it wasn't Luke's fault she left where she was living. It was some folk she was supposed to have brought into the house."

"You can understand that, Mr, Jack. He just wants to know where he came from, the same as the rest of us. He's only human."

"No I'm not."

"Don't say things like that to your—Don't say them, that's all. You can see you're upsetting her."

"I thought we were meant to be here for the truth, Maurice."

"That can't be it, Luke. You oughtn't to say such things about yourself. You're just like us."

"That's what I had to be, Freda. That's how I'm made."

"It isn't all there is to you, Luke."

"You're right, Sophie, there's Terence as well. I don't think he was too happy when he realised what I was, though. Maybe he was fascinated to begin with, but then he got scared and tried to tone me down."

"You're telling everyone you've only just found all this out? You've gone through life thinking you were just like the rest of us? Do we think that's the honest truth?"

"Noooo."

"Can't everyone make a bit less noise? You've woken me up."

"Why, it's little Maurice inside me. Do you want to contribute anything, Maurice?"

"Nobody's asked me what I think."

"Well, we're asking you now. You tell your father if there's something you'd like him to know."

"I think he's got to be out of his head, talking to himself like this."

The accusation jerks at Luke's consciousness. He's on some unidentifiable stretch of motorway, speeding along the outer lane at almost ninety miles an hour, with no idea how long he has been unaware of driving. It does indeed feel like having lost his mind. A van twice the height of the Lexus is racing closer behind him, and he tramps on the accelerator. He has travelled several hundred yards without being able to take a breath before he's able to retreat into the middle lane. His heartbeats feel considerably larger than his heart, and his mouth is as dry as the sunlight that has burned the sky clear above the flat green fields flanking the horizonless road. He swings into the inner lane as soon as he can, peering ahead for a signboard that may remind him where he is. When the monotonous landscape eventually produces one, it seems to offer at least a hint of relief. It's a sign for a service area, and he indicates so prematurely that the arrow flashing on the dashboard appears to be urging him to leave the motorway at once.

A lorry brakes ahead of him on the slip road, trailing fumes. They drift into the hedge that separates the route for lorries from the way into the car park, and Luke does his best to ignore the vague stealthy movement among the twigs. He needs a break from driving and from the clamour of his thoughts, which felt as if they were rehearsing his life. He's distracted while manoeuvring the car into a space, by a dog or a child that rears up at the window of the van next to him. He must need a respite even more than he thought, because once he's out of the car he can't see anyone through the grimy window above him. Unless they've dropped to the floor, nobody is in the van.

Low clumps of privet help define the grid of spaces outlined on the concrete. As Luke heads for the block of shops and restaurants he could think he's glimpsing activity in the hedges. At first it puts him in mind of birds, since it appears to be dodging from clump to clump, but it can't be, since it isn't visible in the open, although some of the hedges are at least fifty yards apart. He's seeing twigs behind twigs, that's all, and nobody around him thinks the sight is even worth noticing; quite a few seem more troubled by the look of him. If he's noticeably uneasy, he has yet another reason. He has just realised that the name of the motorway services is somewhere in Terence's journal.

A security guard decorated with a waistcoat the colour of a buttercup is watching the car park from beside the entrance to the block. He scowls at the automatic doors as they glide apart although nobody has approached them. His ruddy weathered face grows neutral as he turns to Luke. "Can I help you, sir?"

"Would you happen to know why this place is called Stonebridge Valley?"

"The valley's there." He nods in the direction of the car park. "They knocked the bridge down," he says. "No loss."

He must be indicating somewhere beyond the perimeter, although all that Luke can see out there are fields and a scrap of moon like the remains or the beginnings of a skull lying low on the horizon. He could fancy that the landscape is an illusion betrayed by its name. He mustn't let that kind of idea into his mind; its bounds already feel unstable, too close to giving way. He stares at the hundreds of parked vehicles and tries to believe there's no more to the place than he sees, but he can't avoid asking "Why do you say that?"

"Too many people went off it."

Luke wonders how deep the unseen valley can be. "Killed themselves, do you mean?"

"Maybe some meant to." The guard frowns at the doors, which have parted again for no visible reason. "Some were supposed to have went across too fast," he says, "and not looked where they were going."

There's no need to assume they were looking behind them. The guard won't know, and Luke doesn't want to. "Thanks," he says and feels as though he's mimicking politeness. As he makes for the doors, which open so readily that he could imagine somebody's ahead of him, he hears the guard tell a mobile phone "The doors are playing up again."

The floor and ceiling of the lobby are tiled white, reminding Luke of a hospital. Beside a Frugonews shop a Frugostop food court is crowded with diners. A girl in a generic overall is clearing tables in the territory of the Frugoburger counter. Someone has spilled sugar across most of the top of a table and drawn in it too, but the girl sweeps the spillage into a bucket before Luke can be sure he recognised the scribbled symbol. Would he prefer to hope it was a misperception, another sign that his mind isn't to be trusted? How much of a danger does that make him on the road? Surely he needs to be more awake, and he hurries around the food court—Frugasia, Frugoveg, Frugofish, Frugitalia—to the Frugoquench counter.

He buys a black coffee and a slice of carrot cake on a Don't Just Drink deal and finds a table by a window overlooking the car park. The vigorously bitter drink reminds him how raw his senses feel, so that he seems to be aware of every crumb of a mouthful of cake. The fluorescent tubes muffled by overhead tiles are the colour of the moon, and the chatter of diners all around him feels like a version of his unstoppable thoughts blurred into incomprehensibility, as if they've swarmed out of his head. Gazing through the window doesn't help; he thinks he keeps glimpsing figures in the parked cars, and whenever he glances at them they aren't where he imagines they were- they've shifted to another vehicle at the edge of his vision, as if overgrown yet scrawny children are forcing him to play a kind of hide and seek. He gulps the coffee and leaves most of the cake, and pushes back his chair with such a screech that diners provide a variety of winces for him to observe. The idea of incorporating their behaviour into his stage act almost makes him let out some kind of a laugh.

He dodges through the crowded lobby to the doorless entrance marked MEN. The long white-tiled room is divided by a double row of cubicles back to back. As he joins the line of intent men at the urinals he could imagine he's enacting one more imitation. It takes him some time to get going—long enough for him to wonder if his neighbours are growing suspicious of him. Can they tell he's an intruder? He's close to uncontrollable laughter, though of a kind that wouldn't amuse even him.

He clamps his teeth together as he succeeds in his task at last. When he heads for the sinks he's confronted by a mirror the length of the wall and as high as the top of his head. Besides the reflection of men washing their hands—some with theatrically masculine robustness, some with careless brevity, several not bothering with soap—the mirror shows the doors of all the cubicles facing this side of the room. Thin red rectangles indicate which doors are bolted. The door directly behind Luke displays a sliver of green, but as he squirts jade soap onto his hand from the bottle with its back against its double under glass, he sees the cubicle is occupied.