The Price of Love and Other Stories (18 page)

“‘Don’t you like this game?’ he asked me.

“‘No,’ I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. ‘I want to go home.’

“‘Go on, then,’ he said.

“‘What?’

“‘I said go on.’

“‘You don’t mean it.’

“‘Yes, I do. Go.’

“Slowly, without taking my eyes off him, I backed up the grassy bank towards the hole in the railings. Only when I got there, and I had to turn sideways to squeeze through the gap, did I take my eyes off him. As soon as I did, I heard another shot and felt the air move as something zipped by my ear.

“‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he said. ‘Come back.’

“Knowing, deep down, that it had been too good to be true, I slunk back to the canal bank. The man was muttering to himself now, and neither Adrian nor I could make out what he was saying. In a way, that was even more frightening than hearing his words. He was pacing up and down, too, staring at the ground, his gun hanging at his side, but we knew that if either of us made the slightest movement, he would start shooting at us again.

“This went on for some time. I could feel myself sweating, and the wetness down my legs was uncomfortable. Apart from the incomprehensible muttering across the water, everything was still and silent. No birds sang, almost as if they knew this was death’s domain and had got out when they could. Even the cows and sheep were silent, and looked more like animals in a landscape painting than real living creatures. Maybe a barge would come, I prayed. Then he would have to hide his gun, and we would have time to run up to the woods. But no barge came.

“Finally, he paused in his conversation with himself, at least for the time being. ‘You,’ he said to Adrian, gesturing with his gun. ‘You can go now.’

“‘I don’t believe you mean it,’ Adrian said.

“The man pointed the gun right at him. ‘Go. Before I change my mind and shoot you.’

“Adrian scrambled up the grassy bank. I could hear him crying. I had never felt so alone in my life. Inside, I was praying for the man to tell Adrian to come back, the way he had with me. I didn’t want to die alone by the dirty canal. I wanted to go home and see my mum and dad again.

“This time, my prayers were answered.

“‘Come back,’ he said. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

“‘Are you going to shoot us?’ I asked when Adrian once again stood at my side, wiping his eyes on his sleeve.

“‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It depends on what they tell me to do. Just shut up and let me think. Don’t talk unless I ask you to.’

“
They
? What on earth was he talking about? Adrian and I looked at one another, puzzled. There was nobody else around. Who was going to tell him what to do? You have to remember, we were only kids, and we didn’t know anything about insane people hearing voices and all that.

“‘But
why
?’ I asked. ‘Why are you doing this? We haven’t done you any harm.’

“He didn’t say anything, just fired a shot – pop – into the bushes right beside me. It was enough. Then he started talking again, and I think both Adrian and me now had an inkling that he was hearing voices in his head, and that maybe he was having a conversation with the mysterious ‘they’ he had mentioned.

“‘All right,’ he said, the next time he calmed down. He pointed the gun at me. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

“‘Joe.’

“‘Joe. All right, Joe. You can go. What’s your friend’s name?’

“‘Adrian.’

“‘Adrian stays.’

“I stood my ground. ‘You’re not going to let me go,’ I told him. ‘You’ll only do the same as you did before.’

“That made him angry, and he started waving the gun around again. ‘Go!’ he yelled at me. ‘Now! Before I shoot you right here.’

“I went.

“Sure enough, when I got to the hole in the fence, I heard him laugh, a mad, eerie sound that sent a chill through me, despite the heat of the day. ‘You didn’t think I meant it, did you? Come back here, Joe.’

“Somehow, the use of my name, the sound of it from
his
lips, on
his
breath, was worse than anything else. For a moment, I hesitated, then I slipped through the hole in the railings and started running for my life.

“I knew that there was a hollow about thirty feet up the grassy slope, and if I reached it, I would be safe. It was only a quick dash from there to the woods.

“I heard him shout again. ‘Joe, come back here right now!’

“I ran and ran. I heard the dull pop of his revolver and sensed something buzz by my right side and thud into the earth. My heart was pumping for all it was worth, and the muscles in my legs felt fit to burst.

“‘Joe, come back or I’ll shoot Adrian!’ he yelled after me.

“But still I didn’t stop.

“I made it. I made it to the hollow and dived into the dip in the ground that would protect me from any more bullets. I heard just one more popping sound before I made my dash for the woods, and that was it. I was certain it was Adrian.”

Here, Joe paused, as if recounting the narrative had left him as out of breath as outrunning the lunatic’s bullets. From our trench, we could hear more shots in the distance now, and a shell exploded about two hundred yards to the west, lighting up the sky. Farther
away, somewhere behind our lines, a piper played. I handed around my cigarettes and noticed Jack Armstrong in the subdued glow of the match. Face ashen, eyes glazed, lips trembling, the kid was terrified, and it was my guess that he’d freeze when the command came to go over. I’d seen it happen before. Not that I blamed him. I sometimes wondered why we didn’t all react that way. There but for the grace of God … I remembered Harry Parker, who had tried for a Blighty in the foot and ended up losing the entire lower half of his left leg. Then there was Ben Castle, poor, sad Ben, who swore he’d do it himself before the Germans did it to him, and calmly put his gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. So who were the heroes? And why?

“What happened next?” asked Arthur. “Did you run and fetch the police?”

“The police? No,” said Joe. “I don’t really remember what I did. I think I just wandered around in a daze. I couldn’t believe it had happened, you see, that I had been so close to death and escaped.”

“But what about your friend? What about Adrian?” Arthur persisted.

Joe looked right through him, as if he hadn’t even heard the question. “I waited until it was time to return home from school,” he went on, “and that’s exactly what I did – went home. The piss stains on my trousers and underwear had dried by then, and if my mother noticed the next time she did the washing, then she didn’t say anything to me about it. We went on holiday the next day, to stay for a week with my aunt Betty, on the coast near Scarborough. Every day, I scoured my dad’s newspaper when he’d put it aside after breakfast, but I could find no reference to the lunatic with the gun or to a boy being found shot beside the canal. I even started to believe that it had all been a figment of my imagination, that it hadn’t happened at all.”

“But what about Adrian?” Arthur repeated.

“Adrian? I had no idea. That whole week we were with Aunt Betty, I wondered about him. Of course I did. Had the lunatic
really
shot him? But surely, if anything had happened, it would have been
in the papers? Still, I knew I had deserted Adrian. I had dashed off to freedom and hadn’t given him a second thought once I was in the woods.”

“But you must have seen him again,” I said.

“That’s the funny thing,” Joe said. “I did. It was about two days after we got back from our holiday. I saw him in the street. He started walking towards me. I was frightened, because he was a year older than me, and bigger. I thought he was going to beat me up for leaving him behind.”

“What did he do?” Arthur asked.

Joe laughed. “Adrian walked up to me, I braced myself for an assault, and he said, ‘Thank you.’

“I wasn’t certain I’d heard him correctly, so I asked him to repeat what he’d said.

“‘Thank you,’ he said again. ‘That was a very brave thing you did, dodging the bullets like that, risking death.’

“I was stunned. I didn’t know what to say. I must have stood there looking like a complete idiot, with my mouth hanging open.

“‘Had he gone?’ he asked me next.

“‘Who?’ I replied.

“‘You know. The lunatic with the gun. I’ll bet he’d gone when you came back with the police, hadn’t he?’

“Now I understood what Adrian was thinking. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, he’d gone.’

“Adrian nodded. ‘I thought so. Look, I’m sorry,’ he went on. ‘Sorry I didn’t hang around till you got back with them, to help you explain and all. But I was so scared.’

“‘What happened?’ I asked.

“‘Well,’ Adrian said, ‘as soon as you made it to the woods, he ran off down the canal bank. He must have known you’d soon be back with help, and he didn’t want to hang around and get caught. I probably stood there for a few moments to pull myself together, then I headed off in the same direction you did. I just went home as
if I’d been to school, and didn’t say a word to anyone. I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I should have stuck around when you came back with the police.’

“‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘They didn’t believe me. They thought I was just a troublemaker. One of them gave me a clip around the ear and they sent me home. Said if anything like that ever happened again, they’d tell my mom and dad.’

“Adrian managed to laugh at that. I was feeling so relieved, I could have gone on all day making things up. How I went back to try and rescue Adrian by myself and found the man a little further down the bank. How I carried the loose railing like a spear and threw it at him across the canal, piercing him right through the heart. Then, how I weighted his body with stones and dropped it in the water. But I didn’t. It was enough that I was exonerated in Adrian’s eyes. Good enough that I was a
hero
.”

Joe began to laugh, and it sounded so eerie, so
mad
, that it sent shivers up our spines. Jack Armstrong started crying. He wasn’t going anywhere. And Joe was still laughing when the black night inched towards another grey dawn and the orders came down for us to go over the top and take a godforsaken blemish on the map called Passchendaele.

D
azzling sunlight spun off the glass door of Angelo’s when I pulled it open and walked in at eleven that morning, as usual.

“Morning, Mr. Lang,” said Angelo. “What’ll it be?”

“I’ll have a cup of your finest java and one of those iffy-looking crullers, please.”

“Iffy-looking! All our doughnuts are fresh this morning.”

“Sure, Angelo. I’ll take one anyway. How’s business?”

“Can’t complain.”

“Watch the game last night?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Don’t tell me. They lost again, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

Angelo is a diehard Blue Jays fan. He gets depressed when they lose. He’s been depressed a lot this summer.

Angelo looked over my shoulder, out to the street. “Hey, wonders never cease. Looks like you’ve got a customer.”

“Client, Angelo, client. You get customers. I get clients.”

“Whatever. Anyways, this one you’ll want to see.” He whistled lasciviously and sculpted an impossibly voluptuous shape in the air with his hands.

Curious, I took a plastic lid for my coffee and, juggling the cruller in my other hand, tried to make a dignified exit. Could this be it, after all this time? The legendary beautiful blonde of private eye fiction, come to life at last? In
my
office?

I took the stairs two at a time and saw her standing there in the hallway, about to knock on my door. She turned, and I could see an expression of distaste on her face. I couldn’t blame her. She was Holt Renfrew from head to toe, and the place doesn’t get cleaned often. Under the dim glow of a bare sixty-watt bulb, the old linoleum was cracked and veined with years of ground-in dirt.

Angelo’s mimed shape hadn’t been far wrong, if a tad over -generous. She was certainly beautiful, but there was something else. I knew her. Damned if I could remember from where, but I knew her.

She smiled and held out her hand. “Mr. Lang. It’s nice to see you again.”

I gestured her into the office, where she brushed crumbs off the chair with her white-gloved hand before sitting down, crossing her legs and turning her nose up at the view. It’s not great, I know, but it’s cheap. We’re in a strip mall on the Scarborough side of Kingston Road, opposite one of those clapboard hotels where the government houses refugee claimants. I parked my coffee and cruller on the cluttered desk and sat down. Now I knew where I recognized her from, but the name still wouldn’t come.

She peeled off her gloves and gave me another smile. “Susan,” she said, as if sensing my embarrassment. “Susan Caldwell.”

“Of course. Nice to see you again, Susan.”

Susan Caldwell.
She had been one of my students ten years ago, in another life, when I was a teaching assistant at the University of Toronto. Now I remembered. Susan had been notable mostly for
her long blond hair and a rather ill-advised essay on Darwin’s influence on Wordsworth’s
Lyrical Ballads
. The blond hair was still there, along with the dark blue eyes, button nose, long, shapely legs and a nice curve at the hips. Impure thoughts passed through my mind. After all, she was only about five years younger than me, and she wasn’t my student anymore.

“What can I do for you?” I asked.

“I need help.”

“Why choose me?” Nobody else ever does, I might have added, but didn’t.

“I remembered that article about you in the paper a while back.”

Ah, yes, the famous article. When I couldn’t find an academic position after getting my Ph.D. in English, I followed my adolescent fantasy, fuelled by years of Hammett and Chandler, and enrolled in a private investigator’s course. I got the qualification, served my apprenticeship with a large firm, and now I was out on my own. Lang Investigations. It had a ring to it. Anyway, the newspaper had done a feature on me, labelled me “The Ph.D. P I,” and it sort of stuck. Embarrassing, but it brought in a curious client or two, and now here was the lovely Susan Caldwell sitting opposite me.