The Tryst (21 page)

Dave shook his head.

‘No, no, no, no, no,’ he said firmly, pronouncing each negative with great care and weight. ‘No, don’t you worry about that. They won’t find you, old son. They’ll just tear down the whole fucking place with you inside, that’s what they’ll do.’

‘What goes up must come down,’ mused Alex.

‘They’ll just ram that bulldozer at the wall, again and again and again and again,’ Dave went on with mounting enthusiasm, ‘until the whole fucking lot comes down, hundreds and hundreds of tons of it crushing you slowly to a bleeding pulp, your eyes popping out and your balls exploding and the blood gushing out of your ears. Pity we can’t be here to watch.’

Steve’s dash to the door was swift and sudden, but Alex threw himself at the boy’s ankles and dragged him down.

‘A match-winning tackle from the man they said was over the hill,’ he crowed. ‘The old skills still there.’

They put the boot in a few times and then flung Steve back into the bedroom.

‘Let me go!’ the boy pleaded. ‘Just let me run off! You won’t see me no more, I promise. I won’t bother you. Just don’t leave me here alone!’

An internal pain seemed to wrench Dave’s features out of joint. Steve was so unused to seeing any expression at all on that pallid face that it was several moments before he realized that Dave was grinning.

‘But you’re
not
alone!’ he said.

The two stotters burst out laughing. The door slammed behind them and there was a rattling as the wire turned in the lock. Then there was silence, broken only by a murmur of voices outside the house. Steve rushed to the window, but there was nothing to be seen but the vandalized garden, bright in the moonlight. He ran back to the door and pulled and twisted and shook the handle for a uselessly long time. Would the demolition men search the house before starting work? Why would they bother? He could try screaming for help, but would they hear his cries above the roar of their machinery? If only he had a rope, he could smash the window and climb down. For a moment he thought of using electric wiring ripped from the light fixture or from under the floor. But he couldn’t reach the ceiling, and the floorboards in the bedrooms were all intact, owing to the difficulty of access once Dave had shortsightedly demolished the stairs. Which left only the cupboard.

Steve’s first impression on opening the door was that the confined space inside was full of clothes. Since the stotters didn’t go in for extensive wardrobes, he supposed that these must have been left there by the previous occupiers. Remembering an escape film they’d watched one night, he wondered if he could rip the clothes into strips and make them into a rope. Then he noticed the shoes. They were ordinary enough, grubby blue and white trainers worn at the heel. What was unusual was that they were not resting on the floor but hovering in the air several inches above it.

By now the boy’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and it was becoming clear that a lot of what he had taken for clothes was in fact just shadow. The cupboard actually contained only one set of garments, bulked out to look like more. It took a little longer to work out just what it was that was filling out the dirty jeans, pullover and jacket, and supporting the shoes in mid-air. The wire hanger fastened to one of the brass wall-hooks had been twisted so tightly that the chubby face had broken out in blood as though it had been skinned. Despite this, Steve had no difficulty in recognizing Jimmy.

The boy’s second assault on the door left his hands ringing like bells and his throat raw from howling out the forbidden word.

‘Mum! Mum! Help! Let me out, Mum!’

He only stopped when he thought he heard the corpse coming at him from behind, the head like a boiled beetroot and the feet not touching the floor. Before he could look round and make sure, darkness took over the room, setting everything free. Steve panicked. He ran for his life, hitting the wall so hard he saw flashes inside his head. He dropped to the floor, writhing madly about in pain and despair, flailing around with his fists and kicking out with both feet, raging and screaming in the dark.

By the time the moon came out again, the boy had collapsed into a whimpering huddle. He staggered to the window and looked out. The cloud had passed, but there were others about. He strained at the casement without effect: the window was sealed shut with paint. Steve removed one of his shoes and hit the glass repeatedly until it broke and the wind poured in. He cleared away most of the fragments and leaned out. Some way below the window a waste-pipe from the bathroom ran across to the corner of the house. The moonlight made everything curiously two-dimensional and it was difficult to estimate how far below the window the pipe was. But it didn’t really matter. He had to get out of the room before another cloud crossed the moon, and there was no other way.

Steve put his shoe back on again and carefully picked the remaining fragments of glass out of the frame. Then he got on to the window sill, turned over to lie on his stomach and lowered himself out until his chest was resting on the ledge outside. This was the point of no return. If he let himself go any further, he wouldn’t be able to pull himself back in again. He still couldn’t feel the pipe under his feet, but it couldn’t be far. To clinch the matter, the boy reminded himself of what was in that room, allowing himself a mental glimpse inside the cupboard as though he were switching a torch on and off. That was enough. He let himself slip out a bit more, and then a bit more, and then he no longer had a choice. He dropped, hanging full-length from the window frame, the wind flapping his trousers. But his feet, like those of the corpse, were still swinging in mid-air.

He had another brief fit of sobbing and pleading, but it didn’t last long. He had to strain for breath as it was, with his chest stretched tight by his raised arms. Besides, his fingers, already bruised from his assault on the door and now slippery with sweat as well, were gradually losing their grip on the glossy paint. He beat his feet wildly against the wall, trying vainly to find a purchase, but he soon realized how useless it was. There was nothing whatever he could do. When the moment came he was calm and still, although his eyes were screwed tightly shut so that he wouldn’t have to see what was going to happen. Then his fingers let go and he fell. Almost at once he felt a steady pressure on the soles of his shoes. The waste-pipe must have been just below his feet as he hung from the window frame, and because he had not struggled he had been able to keep his balance as he dropped on to it. But he couldn’t continue to do so for long. His arms, still outstretched above his head, were already shaking, and an uncontrollable trembling was breaking out all over his body. The pipe he was standing on was narrow and coated in shiny black paint that felt slippery, and it ran at quite a steep angle from the bathroom outlet to its junction with the downpipe. Gusts of wind tugged and pulled at his clothes. Then everything disappeared again as another cloud covered the moon.

Steve hugged the wall, pressing himself up against it as though it were a warm firm body, and suddenly the memory of what had happened with Tracy came back to him with triumphant force. That had
happened
, he thought. It wasn’t just a story, even though it had started off as one. It was real, it was true. Nothing could alter the fact that he had held Tracy in his arms, that she had kissed him and put her tongue in his ear and he had touched her breasts. The trembling left him, as though by magic, and he was no longer bothered by the darkness. He edged his way up the pipe until he felt his hands touch the ledge outside the bathroom window. This one wouldn’t budge either, so he took off his shoe again, clinging on to the ledge one-handed, then stretched as high as he could and beat the heel against the glass. It had no effect, and when the light returned he saw that the window was made of tough frosted glass. Because he was standing so close to it, he could only hit it feebly. Then a gust of wind caught him off balance and for a moment he seemed to hang in mid-air, sustained by nothing but his fear. Grabbing the ledge again, he renewed his assault on the window. By the time the glass finally cracked he was shaking uncontrollably and mouthing futile pleas. There was no question of removing all the pieces of broken glass this time. He knocked out the largest and sharpest ones, threw his shoe inside and leapt after it. His hands flailed for purchase against the sides of the frame, slashing themselves on the jagged edges. He hung there for a long time, wriggling and twisting. Gradually his spasms moved him forward over the frame until his centre of gravity was once again inside the house. After that it was just a matter of slithering head first to the floor, where he lay sobbing among the fragments of broken glass until he remembered where he was and realized that the stotters might come back if they failed to find anywhere else to spend the night. The house was dark and silent. He negotiated the stairs, pushed back the plywood screen on the back door and left.

It was a shock at first to be back in the familiar streets and find them unchanged, to see cars passing by and people walking their dogs. ‘Don’t you wankers understand where you are yet?’ he felt like screaming at them. ‘Haven’t you realized that there’s only one way out of this place?’ But soon it was his own experience that came to seem bizarre, dubious and exaggerated. Things like that don’t happen, he thought, not really. By the time he reached Paxton Grove, the whole episode had come to seem like one of the stories he made up to tell himself or other people. Then he saw Hazchem striding along the pavement towards him, his arms swinging back and forth like a mad soldier, his lips fixed in the usual rictus.

Steve stepped into the gateway of the house he was passing and looked round for cover. A car with no wheels was parked in the concreted-over front garden, its axles supported on piles of breeze-blocks, and the boy crouched down behind it. It was as well to be cautious, even though he was no longer seriously afraid of Hazchem. He knew now that the man’s mocking grin expressed exactly what he himself had felt as he watched the dozy householders shuffling round the block behind their obese pampered pets. Steve had travelled a long way that evening. Hazchem must have made that journey too, only he had somehow got lost and been unable to find his way back. When he got to the house he would tell the old man all this. He would explain to him that there was really no reason to be afraid. Steve’s cuts were starting to smart badly now, and he had just noticed that his clothes were heavily stained with blood. The rapid tattoo of footsteps suddenly ceased, quite close by. For a moment Steve thought that he’d been spotted and Hazchem was going to come up and ask him if he knew what time it was. Then he heard a door slam, and realized what should have been obvious to him all along. No wonder he’d seen the grinning man around there so many times! The boy straightened up, smiling to himself at the thought of what Ernest Matthews would say when he told him that the man he went in such terror of lived just round the corner, that they were practically neighbours!

The house in Grafton Avenue looked reassuringly the same as ever. Its end wall still towered blindly over the adjacent property as though disdaining to take any notice of what went on there, its deeply bayed front still sought to dominate the street with a pompous pretension that was rather pathetic. Steve pushed open the gate and followed the winding path into the lean-to porch. He didn’t have the slightest doubt that the old man would take him in. He would have to. He needed him.

As he reached the top step, the boy stopped dead. The front door stood wide open and a cold draught streamed past, scattering the familiar smells that usually greeted Steve like eager pets. He stood there for a long time before realizing that further resistance was pointless. Then he let the current carry him forward the way he had to go, over the threshold, into the house.

12

‘Well then, it’s about bloody time you got your act together, isn’t it?’

The slow rhythmic throbbing sound from next door continued. It sounded rather like someone trying to start a car with a flat battery.

‘Because it’s your
responsibility
, that’s why,’ Jenny Wilcox told the phone. ‘This is a stand-up-and-be-counted situation! I’m damned if I’m having my members used as cannon fodder so that you lot can decide whether the battle’s worth fighting or not.’

She slammed the receiver down. For a moment the throbbing sound seemed to have faded, then it returned, peaking and dying as though carried from a distance on gusts of wind. Brushing a few stray crumbs off her leotard, Jenny went over and opened the door to Aileen’s office.

‘Christ, what’s wrong?’

Aileen sat slumped over her desk, head lowered, shoulders trembling. When she lifted her head, her face looked blurred and soft, like pottery which had lost its glaze and was gradually unbaking itself, returning to the damp clay.

‘He waited for her to wake up,’ she murmured.

‘Who?’

‘He just sat there beside the bed, waiting for her to wake up.’

‘Who? Where? When?’