The Missing World (37 page)

And suddenly he was running down the street, his feet thudding on the pavement, and doing what he had longed to do for days, weeks, months: hurting someone. He punched the boy as hard as he could below his backpack. His fist connected in exactly the right place, sinking into the soft mass of the kidney. With a scream, the boy collapsed to the kerb.

chapter 22

They were all sitting in the front of the van, Hazel in the middle, thigh to thigh with Charlotte, and Charlotte herself half off the seat, pressed against the door. When Freddie had jumped in and turned the key, the engine had given a nervous cough before catching. Appalling if it hadn’t, Charlotte thought, to have Jonathan pounding on the doors, threatening to smash the windows. Once, in her father’s pub, she’d seen two men come to blows; the assailant was a regular, and for years afterwards she had summoned his face whenever she needed to enact rage or anger. Now she had a replacement.

None of them spoke as they drove past the school and onto the main road; only the late-night shops and restaurants were still open. For a few seconds, in the bedroom, Charlotte had forgotten herself. She’d been watching Freddie, his fierce, glowing face, and her gaze had drifted to Littleton’s cock only to find, when she looked up, his eyes flicking over her. Unbelievable. After that she resolutely avoided looking at any part of him—disdain was one of her talents—but she couldn’t help noticing that he did have a nice body, which, like his odd smile, made him seem scarier. Poor Hazel.

As they passed a showroom full of plump, shiny new cabs, Freddie let out a whoop and Charlotte found herself saying, “We did it!” Although what they’d done exactly, she wasn’t quite sure.

“How did you know what was happening?” Hazel said.

As Freddie began to explain—they’d come by to leave her a note—Charlotte felt something slippery underfoot. The newspaper. Bollocks. She was about to blurt out the news when Freddie shifted gear and, as Hazel pressed against her even closer, she heard the gasp of her breathing. She needs to be home, Charlotte thought, safe in bed. No point in turning back now. She would take Freddie aside when they reached the flat and tell him, quietly, that they’d left Arkansas behind.

“I can’t thank you enough,” said Hazel. She was leaning forward, clutching the dashboard. “I felt as if I were being smashed into a hundred pieces.”

Charlotte kept expecting her to ask how she and Freddie knew each other, but Hazel seemed to think that was perfectly natural. And in fact, perhaps even more than Mr. Early, she was responsible for bringing them together. Their fairy godmother. She had a vision of the two of them sitting in Freddie’s kitchen, miraculously clean and tidy, and her telling Hazel the whole story, beginning with Mr. Aziz—no, beginning with Walter, or maybe even earlier, going right back to the pub, her ill-matched parents and bossy sister, how her impersonations had made the customers laugh like drains. One New Year’s Eve, her father had set her on top of the bar to act out Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Her Daddy Bear had brought the house down.

“The thing I don’t get,” Freddie was saying, “is how he thought he could get away with treating you like this.”

“He calls it love,” said Hazel. “You heard him.”

“But”—Charlotte sensed Freddie navigating between
delicacy and curiosity—“he must’ve known you didn’t love him.”

“He did and he didn’t. After all, I did and I didn’t. He saved my life—and by some trick of fate, he saved the life he wanted, the one in which I still cared for him and didn’t remember his bad behaviour.”

Charlotte reached behind Hazel and tapped Freddie’s shoulder. When he glanced over, she gave a little shake of the head. “Enough,” she mouthed. He regarded her blankly before turning back to the road.

Time for her to take charge. “What an amazing play this evening would make,” she said. “The ladder, Jonathan out of his mind at being interrupted, the way you took him to task, Hazel. Fantastic. With the right actors, you’d be able to hear a pin drop in the theatre.”

Neither Freddie nor Hazel said a word. She was speculating about possible playwrights when the familiar white building on the corner, a Chinese restaurant offering both karaoke and Elvis nights, came into view. And then Freddie was pulling into a parking space between a butcher’s van and a little Fiat, the same place from which they’d extricated the van a mere two hours ago. He turned off the engine and for a moment none of them moved. Hazel hung on to the dashboard; Freddie sat with his hands on the wheel; Charlotte perched on her shred of seat. She longed to be alone with Freddie, climbing the stairs arm in arm to bed. “Well, here we are,” she said brightly. “Home.”

She scrambled out and reached up to help Hazel. How hot her skin was. Had she been resting her hand on a heating vent, or was she getting a fever? Before she could ask, Freddie exclaimed, “Arkansas! We forgot him.”

“I know.” Charlotte nodded towards Hazel, meaning we have to take care of her first.

But Freddie stood there, scowling over their heads in the direction from which they’d come. If he had looked like that, Charlotte thought, when she rang his doorbell, she would’ve got right back into the taxi and driven off to kingdom come: Ginny, Brian, Cedric, any place but here.

“This is bad,” he said. “I don’t trust Littleton.”

“But what can he do,” said Charlotte, “besides ignore him? Arkansas won’t starve overnight. At least he’s warm and dry. Come, we need to get inside.”

“I have a bad feeling.” Freddie’s gaze returned but not, Charlotte realised, to her. “I know who that man is,” he said. “The man with the suit and the colourless eyes. He’s Littleton’s shadow, his devil shadow.”

Why is he talking to Hazel, Charlotte thought, and so strangely? “Let’s go in,” she said again.

“Yes,” said Hazel. “It just took me a while to recognise him.”

“You poor baby,” said Freddie.

Charlotte looked down to make sure her feet were still touching the pavement, and when she raised her eyes, for a moment, the woman standing beside her was not Hazel but Walter’s blond bimbo.

“Watch out for the bicycles,” said Freddie, ushering them into the dark hall. “My flat’s on the third floor.”

“Second,” Charlotte corrected.

He led the way upstairs. Bringing up the rear she felt rather than saw Hazel’s steps slowing. Half an hour ago, a quarter of an hour ago, she would’ve taken her arm and asked if she was all right. Now, after the exchange in the street, she had to bite her tongue. Hurry up. Hurry up. All she wanted was to be in bed with Freddie. And where the hell was Hazel going to sleep? Why had they brought her here, rather than dropping her off
with friends? She’s my employer, Charlotte reminded herself. And in Freddie’s case, not even that.

Inside, pandaemonium reigned. The pups yelped, Agnes barked, Freddie apologised. Charlotte moved towards the kitchen, meaning to quiet the dogs.

“I need to sit down,” Hazel said.

Charlotte turned in time to see her fall to the floor, not the practised pratfall of the actor or the soft droop of a faint but a terrifying keeling over, like a statue toppling from its pedestal. “Oh, my god. What’s the matter?”

“She’s having a seizure.” Freddie was on the floor. He managed to get hold of Hazel’s head and wedge it between his knees. Then he bent forward to take her wrists. “Can you get her legs?”

But Charlotte couldn’t. The spastic jerking, the frothing of the mouth, the eyes rolling back, the weird sounds—it was unbearable. “I’m sorry,” she said. “My head’s killing me.”

In the kitchen, the dogs were going wild. She scooped up the nearest puppy and held it while she filled the kettle, doing her best to ignore Agnes’s barking, the cries of the other two pups, the terrible noises coming from the hall, the pounding of Hazel’s heels, and, amidst this din, Freddie’s voice: “Baby, you’re safe now. Just relax. Hush. Let it go.”

How calm he was, she thought, all that practice at Lourdes.

“Who will pay?” Hazel cried. “Who will pay?”

Charlotte found the teapot and a box of Typhoo. “First heat the pot,” she said to the puppy. “A teaspoon each and one for the pot. The water should be almost but not quite boiling so as not to bruise the leaves. Pour swiftly before the oxygen is boiled away.”

“Hazel, sweetheart, you’re safe now. I’ll take care of you.”

Sweetheart
. Suddenly Charlotte was back at Mr. Littleton’s, in the bedroom, seeing what she’d failed to notice at the time—Freddie
with his far-from-colourless eyes fixed on Hazel in an expression full of yearning. The pounding was slowing, growing weaker.

“Allow to steep for five minutes. Pour milk into clean cups, add tea. Whenever possible use porcelain—”

“Charlotte.” Freddie stood in the doorway. “What’s your sister’s number?”

“My sister’s number?”

“Yes, the nurse.”

The man who had referred to her black bags as luggage, who had pressed his forehead to hers, who had said “I’m so sorry,” had disappeared. Like opening a favourite book and finding every page blank. I must say exactly the right thing, Charlotte thought, but she had no idea what that might be. A shrill squeal made her look down at the puppy writhing in her grip.

“Charlotte, for Pete’s sake. Tell me the number. I need to know whether to phone an ambulance, or take Hazel to the hospital.”

“It’s awfully late to ring Bernadette. She’s on early shifts this week. We can call—”

Freddie’s hand rose, not exactly a threat but a reminder that such possibilities existed in the world. Before she knew what she was doing, she repeated Bernie’s number and he was gone.

“Ms. Granger,” she heard as she dumped the puppy back in the pen, “your patient Hazel Ransome just had a seizure.… No, this isn’t Mr. Littleton.… She seems calm now, as if she were in a deep sleep.”

Whatever he said next was lost in the gush of water as Charlotte rinsed the mugs. Moving on to their plates from last night, she realised she’d forgotten his admonition to set the puppies down on all four legs. She stacked the plates in the rack
and then, rubbing her hands on her coat, stepped over to the table. Next to the peanut butter and the Chardonnay, Freddie had emptied the pockets of his work clothes: a handkerchief, three ten-pound notes, and a pile of change. Charlotte took the money, even the coppers, and slipped the Chardonnay back into her bag.

In the hall, Hazel lay unconscious and Freddie was bent over the phone, writing down whatever Bernadette was saying. He didn’t look up as Charlotte stepped past him and Hazel. Fortunately her body wasn’t blocking the door. Down the dark stairs and out into the dark street. Now what? No moon tonight. No valley of lost things. She looked at the house number, and at the corner stopped to check the name of the street. There, she would be able to reclaim her luggage, tomorrow or the next day. She passed the Chinese restaurant.
I must, I must …
Who should she telephone first?

Bernadette had clearly been asleep, but once she grasped the situation became reassuringly efficient. “Keep her warm and make sure she can’t hurt herself,” she instructed. “Where is she now?”

“On my floor,” he’d said, looking down to where Hazel’s head lay a few inches from his feet. Saliva flecked her chin.

“I’m afraid I missed your name.”

He considered mentioning their one meeting, but introduced himself only as a friend of Hazel’s. Was there anything else he should be doing?

“Cover her with a blanket,” Bernadette said, then listed Hazel’s medicines. “Try to make sure she takes them in the morning. You may find,” she added, “that she wakes up disoriented, but that should pass in a few hours.”

He replaced the receiver and knelt down. With her arms
flung wide, her legs outstretched, Hazel occupied most of the hall. Not for a moment, even to the most casual observer, could she have passed for dead. She was breathing heavily, right on the edge of snoring: little volleys, a pause, then another volley. Though she seemed comfortable on the floor, no way he’d leave her there. He squeezed her hand and, after a few seconds, unmistakably, she squeezed back.

Only then, as he moved to make the bed ready, did it dawn on him that Charlotte was gone. While he was writing down the names of Hazel’s pills, she had crossed the hall, opened the door, stepped through it, closed the door. Seeing the unmade bed, he remembered her bending over him.
Look how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid.…
I fucked her, he thought. He tried, as he smoothed out the bottom sheet, to tell himself she had left of her own volition, popped out for more Lucozade. Who was he kidding? He’d done what everyone else had done, what he never intended to do: driven her away. For a moment he wondered if he should phone Mr. Early, then he understood: so long as she didn’t show up on his doorstep, Mr. Early wouldn’t give a toss.

“Please, Hazel,” he whispered, “wake up soon.”

She showed no signs of doing so, however, as he carefully carried her to the bed. After removing her shoes, he climbed in beside her, fully dressed, and endeavoured to put his arms around her—he wanted to begin at once, telling her everything—but Hazel tossed and moaned. Her elbow hit him on the side of the head. “Don’t, Jonathan,” she exclaimed. “Stop it!” and he was forced to retreat.

Was that his mother calling?
Frederick Lewis. Get in here!
What was this blue thing? In the dim light, the hardness of the floor and his relationship to it, became apparent. He had spent the
night beside the bed, using a blue T-shirt as a pillow. Cautiously he pulled himself up and peered over the edge of the mattress.

Empty.

In the kitchen, Hazel had taken over where Charlotte left off, washing dishes at the sink. “Good morning,” she said. “I hope I didn’t disturb you.”

Freddie shook his head. Her hair was damp and her face, when she turned to greet him, had lost its brittle flush. She was wearing one of his sweatshirts. “How are you feeling?” he managed.

“A little shaky. I had a seizure, didn’t I? I hope it wasn’t too awful. I could feel it coming, but there was nothing I could do. Then your damn dogs woke me up.”

“Damn?” he said stupidly.