The Miracle Inspector (17 page)

Angela, Maureen and Christina had been walking steadily for days now, averaging ten to fifteen miles a day, keeping to the back roads and the quiet country lanes through Berkshire and Wiltshire. Sometimes they were silent. Sometimes Angela sang. Their feet ached. At night they slept all curled up together in the hedgerows, with their two bags as pillows for their three heads, and Maureen’s clothes piled on top of them for warmth. Then when daylight came, they set off again, taking it in turns to carry Christina, or letting her walk.

Whenever they heard the sound of a vehicle approaching, they ducked behind the nearest hedge or a tree and kept out of sight. Usually the vehicle was a big white jeep used by one of the innumerable NGOs and UN Peacekeepers who had shown up after partition, billeted themselves in the grand country house hotels in the most troubled regions, and made it their remit to make recommendations to various committees about how to improve the lives of the local people.

The jeeps were usually going very fast, the occupants accelerating as they approached the bends in the road, hooting their horns almost continually to warn oncoming vehicles to get out of the way. Fortunately, they were too taken up with their own masterful self-importance to look out of the window, notice the walking party hiding in the hedge, and interfere with their progress.

Sometimes Angela and Maureen stopped at a farm and asked to buy a glass of milk for Christina. People were kind. They seemed to have very little money – a large slice of what they earned was levied to pay for the UN presence – but they almost always gave Maureen or Angela a cup of coffee or tea when they called at the door, or a paper bag with half a dozen hard-boiled eggs in it, or a slice of apple pie for the journey. They’d give a glass of milk and some chocolate or an apple to Christina, refusing to take payment for any of it – even sometimes giving them a few coins to buy provisions at the next village. ‘We know what it means to be poor,’ they’d say. ‘Good luck to you.’

They got to the outskirts of a village in Somerset and it was sunny, so they went into a field and lay on the grass in the sun. There were buttercups and cowslips in the field. Birds were singing. A river ran by. Angela took in all of it, considered it, appreciated it. She was truly happy. She sang a few bars of ‘Summertime’ and Maureen lay back on the grass with her eyes closed and listened, and when Angela had finished, she applauded, bringing her hands together about five times, quite slowly and heavily, to make a dry clapping sound. ‘Lovely,’ she said. ‘Really lovely.’

Angela looked over at Christina, lying on the grass. She looked at Maureen. Maureen opened her eyes, made the peak of a cap with the curve of her hand, keeping the sun out of her eyes so she could look at Angela. She smiled.

Angela loved Maureen as a mother, sister, friend, lover – it defied categorisation. She wondered why men and women got married. It was nice to have a man for sex, especially in the early days, and they were still needed for the practicalities of creating children. But women made much better companions. She could imagine living with Maureen and being happy with her for the rest of her life.

Maureen sat up and began talking about Christina and her hopes for the child; that something – some outside stimulus or attendance at school, or the provision of medicine – would unlock her world for her. She talked about her father, a brilliant man and the author of such scientific studies as
Given the Time Taken to Load the Dishwasher, Wouldn’t it be Quicker Just to Wash the Dishes Ourselves
? He had invented a cost-effective, ecological fuel alternative to oil called Maureenozene. But because of vested interests from fuel companies (he’d said) it had not been taken up worldwide. He had encouraged his daughter to study and make her way in the world. She had been bright, able, with a keen sense of justice and had managed to get herself taken on as a trainee reporter with a local TV station when she was only 17 years old. Her father had been one of the early disappeared. Before he was taken, he had transferred to his daughter all the money he had earned from his inventions, and this she carried with her now in a bag in stacks of notes in large denominations – his life savings. Useless anywhere except London.

‘I wonder at what point we have to accept that they’re never coming back? I mean, I suppose your dad would be dead by now anyway,’ Angela said. She was thinking aloud, really, thinking about her own father.

‘He’d only be seventy-seven,’ said Maureen. ‘How old do you think I am?’

They walked up the path into the village to buy a few provisions with some coins they had been given at one of the farms. It was such a peaceful, pretty village, Angela wondered whether they might settle here and find work. Why keep going, inviting trouble by crossing more borders?

While Maureen went to buy, apples, cheese and tomatoes, Angela waited with their bags, looking at the display in the bakery window with Christina. There were pink iced pigs and white mice for sale, birthday cakes with greetings inked on them in chocolate-coloured letters, slabs of strawberry cake, buns, meat pies and sausage rolls. Christina seemed to be particularly interested in the custard slices. Angela joined the queue in the bakery, paid for a loaf of bread – she chose a large bloomer, because of the name. Then, on the way out – it was such a silly thing to do – as they passed the window display, she reached out and snatched a custard slice, and carried on walking. She didn’t think anyone would notice.

‘Hey!’

She didn’t even have to turn around. She knew. She’d blown it. It was a man’s voice, rough, aggressive.

‘Hey!’ he said again. ‘Hey! She took that cake.’

A few of the customers came out of the bakery. Soon they were joined by customers from the other shops, a postman and various stray villagers, a housewife and two children, a local farmer, the man from the solicitor’s office up the road. A few minutes ago, Angela would have said there was no one and nothing around except a few ducks. Now it was like an I-Spy of village life, with more and more people turning up to join the angry mob.

‘That refugee woman. She took the cake.’

‘Aw, leave her alone. It’s for the kid. Can’t you imagine what life’s like for them?’

‘She wanted money, she could go and do a day’s work in the field. There’s crops to pick. Half my potatoes rotted where they lay this year, no one wants to do it. They’re too lazy.’

‘I’m in Eye Tee,’ said Angela.

They ignored her.

‘Search her. See what else she’s stolen.’ This from a very well-presented woman emerging from behind the counter of a knickknack shop. Someone took Angela’s bag.

‘Leave her alone,’ said the housewife. The woman’s two children looked at Angela with such horrified sympathy that she couldn’t bear it. She looked away.

Someone started searching through their bags. She hoped they wouldn’t pat her down, horrible rough men feeling under her armpits and around her waist to see whether she had a half a dozen bath buns or a couple of pork chops tucked away.

Someone found something in one of the bags and held up the incriminating evidence, waving it triumphantly. Such a crowd had gathered, even Angela had to crane her neck to see. The mood turned hostile as soon as people saw it, and she wondered if something had been planted in the bag by the man whose fat hands had delved into its inner pockets and now aired its contents in front of the assembly.

‘Quids,’ said the man. ‘Thousands and thousands of quids.’

There was a groany gasp from the villagers, as if this were a music hall act and the audience had just been given their cue to react.

‘But we can’t use them here,’ said Angela. She was frightened.

‘She’s saving them? Stealing from us and she’s
saving
her own money. What for? A house in France? A yacht on the Solent?’

‘We thought they wouldn’t accept it,’ Angela said. It was so unfair.

‘Course we will,’ said the woman from the bakery, gently. ‘Why wouldn’t we?’

‘Trade restrictions. You see, when we were in Slough–’

‘Ah! Slough.’

‘Look at her nail polish,’ said the woman from the knickknack shop, bitterly. ‘Might have known she’d been to
Slough
.’

‘Stocking up on the latest fashions,’ said the man from the solicitor’s office. He obviously wasn’t acquainted with the latest fashions, as Angela was wearing Maureen’s khaki trousers and a long-sleeved stripy grey top with a teddy bear design embossed on it in pink.

‘They won’t let the likes of us in to Slough,’ said one of the villagers.

‘They don’t approve of country people,’ said another.

‘No. They like the ones with money.’

‘Perhaps she’s a smuggler? All that money. Betraying her own kind.’

Just then, Maureen arrived, pushing her way through the crowd. ‘What seems to be the trouble?’ asked Maureen.

‘Another one!’ said a man.

‘She stands accused of stealing a cream slice.’

‘It was custard,’ said Angela.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Maureen. ‘A misunderstanding. She’s a bit… she’s not very bright.’

Angela blushed. It was an awful betrayal. She’d managed to keep her chin up until then, but Maureen’s words made her dissolve. And standing just in front of Angela, her back against Angela’s thighs, her face towards the crowd as if she would fight any one of them, Christina now began to cry, too.

‘I’m sorry,’ Maureen said again. ‘They’re both a bit simple. I should never have left them.’

The crowd looked at Angela and Christina, both now grizzling, the custard slice still in Angela’s hand, a preposterous trophy for which to risk prison or deportation. Most seemed satisfied with Maureen’s explanation.

‘Perhaps we can settle this?’ said Maureen. ‘Should we be paying a fine?’

Someone took the handfuls of currency they’d found in Angela’s bag and divided it arbitrarily, about half of it for the village, the other half for Maureen. The woman from the bakery shook her head. ‘I don’t want it, duck. Leave them. Let them go on their way.’ She went back inside to her pink pigs, her white mice, her cakes, her cobs and her bloomers.

There was a rumble of dissatisfaction from some sections of the crowd. This had been an entertaining spectacle; they didn’t want it to end. They began to disagree about what should happen next.

‘You should search ’em both,’ one man suggested. ‘And the kid.’

‘Don’t let ’em keep any of the money. It’s got to have been stolen.’

‘Gw’an, get out of here,’ someone else said. ‘Gw’an, thieves!’

‘No, keep hold of them. Turn’m in to immigration.’

Something fell from Angela’s bag and pinged on the ground as they tussled over it. It was the compass. The man from the solicitor’s office bent and picked it up with exaggerated caution, as if he’d never seen a compass before and suspected necromancy.

It was at that point that an unlikely rescuer rode to their aid. A very large woman driving a horse and cart – and this was in a smart village in Somerset, where everyone who wanted a car had access to one – came thundering along at top speed, like the Scarlet Pimpernel arriving to rescue the aristocracy from the gallows.

‘Save yourselves,’ she yelled at Maureen, Angela and Christina, and stopped long enough to haul them in to the cart. As they thundered off again, she shouted, ‘Cock-suckers,’ at the villagers, who were obviously used to it because although they muttered a bit, they soon dispersed.

Lucas was surprised when he opened his eyes and saw who was in his cell. He’d been surprised so often by visitors over the last few days that he shouldn’t have been surprised any more. But he was.

‘Mum?’ he said. ‘Mummy?’ It had been so long since he’d said the word – not since he was a kid – that it seemed childish and out of time. Like asking for his blanky or his bockle or his potty.

‘Hello, beautiful,’ she said. She looked like she was made out of marzipan and Bailey’s Irish Cream.

‘Dad said you ran away.’

‘Did he?’

‘It’s not true, then?’

‘He actually used the word “ran”? He couldn’t have said “walked”?’

She seemed amused. She smelled of the outside, like fresh rain on grass in summertime.

Lucas said, ‘You look like Christmas but you smell like summer.’

She laughed. She said, ‘This place is pretty dire, isn’t it? Are you doing OK?’

‘I’m alright.’

‘Whose clothes are you wearing for goodness’ sake?’

‘I lost some weight since I came in here.’

‘You got a fever?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe don’t come too close.’

‘I thought we could do something with this place. Would you like that?’

‘Blast the doors open, you mean?’

‘I could paint you a doorway, here. You want to help me? You always liked painting when you were a kid.’

‘I’m a bit dizzy now. You mind if I lie here for a bit?’

‘I don’t mind at all.’

‘You prefer Mum or Mummy?’

‘You can call me Anna.’ She saw it wasn’t the answer he wanted. ‘Mummy, then.’

‘You mind if I call you Mum?’

‘Silly thing. You do what you want.’ She looked around, as if she wanted to make sure they were alone. She said, ‘It’s your birthday in a couple of weeks.’

‘Is it? I’ve lost track of time.’

‘Let’s see if we can finish this before then, hey?’

And so she started to paint on the wall. First she drew in the doorway, meticulously shading in the woodwork and the paintwork, so it looked 3D.

Lucas lay back. He felt very weak. It was a rotten situation but he was glad to have his mother here. She was a capable, reassuring woman, still beautiful. He was happy, for her sake, to see that she didn’t seem to have aged a day since she ran, walked or was stolen away, twenty years ago.

‘Mum?’

‘Yes?’

But he didn’t have a question for her. He’d just wanted to say the word. He put his head back on the blanket he was lying on, closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.