The Serpent's Sting (18 page)

Lying on my bed, I could smell Geraldine's hair, or the soap she used to wash it with, on my pillow. It struck me forcefully that the place she would return to in her distressed state was her room in Fitzgibbon Street. Could I bring myself to cross the park and attempt to gain entry one more time? The prospect was a depressing one, but she'd asked me for help, and I couldn't in good conscience ignore her desperate plea — and it had been desperate. There'd been something terrible in her voice, something that suggested she was in great danger. I didn't have a choice. It was ludicrously risky; so risky, in fact, that I felt unequal to doing it alone. I knocked on Brian's bedroom door, and when he called, ‘Come in,' I discovered him naked, touching his toes, facing away from the door.

‘Most people would have said, “Just a minute please.”'

‘But I knew it was only you.'

‘I need you to get dressed, and come with me to Geraldine's house. She'd have gone there after leaving here. Where else would she go?'

Brian straightened up and looked sceptical.

‘Geraldine's house? Again? That can't be wise.'

‘It wouldn't be if I returned alone. But with two of us, we might get somewhere.'

‘Or it might be twice as unwise.'

‘She was in a drugged state, Brian. She can't have been thinking clearly. All her instincts would direct her to the safety of her room. She'll be there, and I need to talk to her.'

“I suppose that makes a kind of sense.'

‘There's no moon. It's as black as pitch outside. No one will see us.'

Brian dressed quickly and took a torch from a drawer. In a few minutes, we were negotiating the dark paths of Princes Park, and sticking to them. Tumbling into an air-raid trench and breaking a leg wasn't part of my plan. It took just over fifteen minutes to reach Fitzgibbon Street. It was a street that still took the blackout seriously. The local air-raid warden would have been well pleased — not so much as a chink of light escaped from any of the houses. We stood opposite Geraldine's house, and stared through the darkness at its outlines. Further down the street, someone lit a cigarette at a front gate. The match flared with brightness, magnified by the absence of light. A husband banned from smoking indoors? A soldier waiting for his girl to come out of the house? It was a man. The brief glow revealed that much, but he was too far away for us to determine anything else.

‘What if he's watching the house?' Brian said.

‘Then he's a nong for lighting up. Besides, he's too far away to be able to see anything happening at Geraldine's house.'

‘So what do we do now?'

‘The back door is always unlocked. I think the lock must be broken. If you go down the side of the house, you can get to the back door without being seen.'

‘I'm sorry?'

‘I want you to go inside, Brian. Why do you think you're here? I've already done this twice. If I do it again and get caught, the police will lock me up — and I don't have an understudy.'

The end of the cigarette in the distance glowed as the smoker took a drag.

‘I'll go round the back,' Brian said, ‘just to check the place out, but I'm not sure I want to go inside. I mean, if Geraldine is there, what do I say to her?'

‘You have to go inside, Brian. Obviously, if there's anyone in the kitchen, or wandering about in the back yard, you won't make yourself known. Mrs Ferrell is a hair-trigger hysteric, and so is the other boarder. Geraldine's bedroom is at the top of the stairs, next to the bathroom.'

‘What if she starts screaming?'

‘She's not the type. Besides, she's met you. You're not a stranger. If she's there, and conscious, tell her I'm out here and ready to help her. Tell her she's welcome to stay at Mother's house. She'd be safe there.'

‘Well, not safe from Mother.'

‘Will you please stop talking, and find Geraldine?'

Brian crossed Fitzgibbon Street. As far as I could tell, there was no twitch of the curtain. I saw Brian disappear down the side of the house. I was squinting into the darkness and noticed peripherally that the red glow of the cigarette had moved a couple of houses closer. The smoker took a deep drag and flicked the butt into the road, where it sparked as it hit the asphalt before going out. I smelt him, which was when I realised that he'd moved swiftly towards me — so swiftly that the blow to my stomach bent me double before I could see who my assailant was. I saw his shoes, and felt the blow to the back of my head. Before I lost consciousness, my last thought was,
Why do people keep hitting me?

When I woke, I was sitting, propped considerately against the fence of the house opposite Geraldine's house. I was nauseated, and crawled on all fours the couple of feet it took to get to the nature strip, where I was sick. My head was pounding, and I could feel that my hair was sticky with blood. I tried to stand up, but the vertigo made me very queasy, so I sat back down. I had no idea how much time had passed. Who was the smoker? He couldn't possibly have recognised me from where he'd been standing initially, or even from a single house away. Was it random? I felt for my wallet. It was still there. I checked its contents. There'd been £5 in it, and that was still there, along with my identification papers. So it wasn't robbery. And if it wasn't robbery, then it was personal, and if it was personal, it had something to do with Geraldine.

I was suddenly struck with anxiety about Brian. What had I sent him into? I took a deep breath and got to my feet. I was uncertain, and my first few steps were tentative. I crossed the road, and leaned against the gatepost of Geraldine's residence. Despite the throbbing in my head, I strained to hear any sound from within the building. Nothing. Although, was that the sound of furniture falling over? And breaking glass? I moved as quickly as I could up the front steps to the veranda, and tried the front door. To my utter astonishment, it opened, and I stepped into the hallway. The smell of bad cooking and inefficient drains hit me. There were no lights on anywhere in the house. I knew that this was probably the worst place in the world for me to be. What choice did I have, though? Brian may well have been in danger. I was trembling. I'd like to put it down to my body's reaction to being assaulted, but it was certainly at least partly the result of fear.

As I stood there in that dark, malodorous hallway, I thought how ghastly it was. How could Geraldine live here? I'd thought it stale, tired, and unpleasant when I'd first come here with her. Now all its shadows sheltered unknown horrors. The rational part of me knew that my imagination was breaking free of its sensible moorings, but I couldn't rein it in, and when a figure emerged from the kitchen, I gasped and fell back against the front door, slamming it shut with a thunderous, nerve-shattering bang.

‘For fuck's sake, Will! Why don't you let off fireworks to alert the whole of Parkville that we're breaking into someone's house?'

I almost fainted with relief. Fortunately, Brian's obvious annoyance prevented me from giving him a hug — something I'd never done before.

‘Brian.' I couldn't immediately think of anything to add to this.

‘If there'd been anybody here, we'd now be in serious trouble,' he said. ‘We need to leave here. Now.'

Feeling slightly disoriented, and in a state of shock, I allowed Brian to usher me out the front door, into Fitzgibbon Street, and from there to nearby Royal Parade. I thought I was going to be sick again, and I asked Brian to stop for a moment before we crossed into Princes Park. I sat in the gutter, which surprised him, and when I leant forward and put my head in my hands, he noticed that my shirt collar was bloodied.

‘You're bleeding. Why?'

‘The smoker whacked me not long after you'd gone inside. And before you ask, the only part of him I saw were his shoes. He may have been a soldier.'

‘Did he smell of sweaty wool, or cologne?'

‘He smelt of cigarette, although when I think about it, maybe there was something sweetly scented behind it. I saw the bottom of his trousers. They were neatly pressed. Yes. There was a sharp crease. He was an American soldier.'

‘Do you know any American soldiers who'd want to hit you over the head? One of those soldiers who came to lunch went to see you in
Mother Goose
. Was it a delayed, critical response to your acting?'

‘That isn't the least bit amusing, Brian. I may have concussion. He could have killed me.'

‘He was there before us. He must have been watching the house.'

‘The house. Geraldine.' My mind was working sluggishly. ‘What did you find in the house?'

‘The only thing I found was you. There was nobody there, and all the doors were locked — except the bathroom, and there wasn't a body in the bath. I'm assuming there was no one home. There were no lights on, and the house was silent. Why would they be sitting in their rooms in the pitch dark?'

‘The front door was unlocked.'

‘Carelessness? You should report your assault to the police.'

‘Oh, yes, that'd look good. Strachan would love to hear that I'd gone back to Geraldine's house, even after he'd slugged me.'

‘Good point. We'll add it to the list of things we need to solve. We're just getting busier and busier.'

‘I want to go home to bed, Brian. None of this makes any sense, and my head hurts, and my eye hurts.'

‘Well, all right, but just so long as you know that it won't be all right in the morning.'

Brian was correct, of course. It wasn't all right in the morning. My eye was badly, embarrassingly bruised, and my head both ached and stung at the place where the blow had broken the skin. Both Brian and Mother had gone out by the time I came downstairs. I was glad. I didn't want to talk to anybody. I made myself a cup of black tea. I'd trained myself to drink it without milk or sugar, as these items had become expensive and scarce, and they were commandeered by Mother for the purpose of baking cakes for soldiers in distant lands. I'm not sure how thrilled I'd be to open a care package to discover a piece of Mother's flavourless fruitcake. Mother was an excellent cook, but an indifferent baker. The precision required brought out the anarchist in her, and anarchy is the enemy of a fluffy sponge, or a moist fruitcake.

Geraldine's house had, in my mind, assumed an importance beyond being the place where she lived and from which she'd disappeared. That smoking watcher confirmed this. He was an American soldier. The more I thought about it, the more certain of this I was. Might he have been either Anthony Dervian or Harlen Quist? These were the only American soldiers I knew, but I couldn't see how the attack on me could possibly have been personal. After all, it would have been impossible to identify me from where he'd been standing, and his approach had been so swift that the decision to strike me had been made without regard to identity. He'd seen someone outside Geraldine's house, and for him, that was sufficient motive to attack. Why? It occurred to me suddenly, as I gingerly pressed against the discoloured skin below my eye, that the assumption that Geraldine was the cause of these disturbances might be an incorrect one. What if it had nothing to do with her at all, but was rather the result of activities engaged in by either Geraldine's hysterical, fellow boarder or by her equally hysterical landlady — or, indeed, by both of them in concert? We needed to investigate both these women.