Turquoiselle (6 page)

Andy
turned up the long house–lined road that led away from the shops, and towards
the station. You could get to London in just over half an hour from there. Andy
had done it. But he would not be doing it today. He wanted to go home and watch
the TV horror film he had got from Video Rodeo at the weekend. He might also
play with the golden action figure. He was not sure he was not already too old
for such a toy. At just on eleven it was difficult to judge sometimes. Not that
Andy would have put it in that way.

Starting
up the station road, Andy realised, belatedly, somebody was on his tail.

Cox?
It seemed very unlikely. Without needing hospitalisation, Cox had still been
in a mess.

Andy
set his mind, his ears, his other senses, to suss out who it was that was
moving along, about two garden-wall lengths behind him.

Not
the Law, he was pretty certain of that. The Law would anyway have got hold of him
before this. “Thieving, eh? Think you made it? You didn’t. Right, we need to
have a word.”

Andy
shoved the improvised dialogue out of his brain. He had no real idea what a cop
would say, because Andy had never been apprehended by one, let alone a store
guard, or any of the shop cameras. His improv came from some old film he had seen,
probably, a feature long out of modern date. No, this follower was of another
sort– Abruptly the latening sun cast down a shadow on the nearest stretch of
wall. It looked most like a huge humanesque toad. That was simple then. It was
Heavy.

Heavy,
about Andy’s own age, had arrived at the school when Andy was already often
going missing, and Andy had not seen much of him. But he knew the gist of
Heavy, including why he had been allotted the name. Heavy was ungainly and fat.
But some current policy had, it seemed, said no one must be called
fat
now. They were
heavy
. So, the fat
kid of about eleven years of age got that nickname. Which he seemed not to
mind, barely to notice as mockery and insult.  Whatever his given name was,
which Andy did not know, perhaps Heavy preferred
Heavy
to it.

An
dy
turned
suddenly. He planted himself and glared straight into Heavy’s bulbous eyes.

“
What do you want
?”

“Oh,
just,” said Heavy, and smiled. He was like the specialised Idiot you sometimes saw
in old films too, Charlie Laughton swinging on a bell, or someone.

“Fuck
off,” said Andy.

Heavy
did not grimace or grin. Did not cringe or brace himself. Did nothing let alone
go.

“You
are a fucking cretin,” said Andy.

At
that moment a big ginger cat leapt up on the wall, and Heavy immediately
transferred all his attention to it.

Andy
should have taken the opportunity to move on, but something odd arrested him.
It was Heavy’s
look
, his way of
reaching out and touching the cat – abruptly and weirdly graceful, lavish, full
of – of intelligent concentration and a type of – what? What was it?
Kindness.
.?

Andy
stared, knowing he should go at once.

But
when Heavy moved back round again, smiling and still half watching the cat, as
if it were the most fascinating s
ight
for miles, Andy did
not
go. And when
the cat began to wash itself, Andy remarked, “See, even the cat can’t fucking
stick you. It wants to wash you off
it.”

“Oh,
no,”
said Heavy’s
soft turgid somehow browsing
voice,
“no, they do that when they do like you.
To get your scent in their mouvfs and over them, and taste you and be
remembering.”

“You’ve
got shit for brains,” said Andy. “Who told
that
shit?”

“My
moth–er.” He mispronounced some things, Heavy, curious ways. And he said ‘mother’
as if she were a flying insect:
moth-
ah.

“Your
mother’s a cunt.”

Heavy
looked back at him. He was still quietly smiling, unphased, happy. “She
isn’t
a cund. But she’s
got
a cund. All women
do. Like we have pricks.”

“Go
to hell,” said Andy, lamely, he thought. And took off up the road at a rate of
knots, leaving Heavy far behind – if he had even reckoned to follow – just as
if Heavy were the bully and Andy the weak misfitted coward.

But
he had the stuff from Woolworths. And he had the X–film. And Cox had perhaps
lost a tooth. Not too bad for an hour’s work.

As
a rule a film could not be on the cards. But his mother would be out late
tonight. She was cleaning the big Kirkpatrick house, six in the evening until
about 11 p.m., while the happy owners were off getting rat-arsed. So he could easily
watch the film before she returned. He had taken it the usual way. He had a
modus operandi, (he knew the term for it), for each and all his thefts. All
were slightly, or very, different. His technique here too had never let him
down. Part of the secret was, he had found, in casualness. He could
act
casualness, as
he could act quite a few states of mind and body, had learned this, perhaps, as
he had how to fight dirtily and to effect, watching others.

When
he reached home, a small flat which had been provided for Sara and himself over
an electrical shop, once they had got away, he climbed up the iron staircase
and let himself in. There was a front room and kitchenette facing the street,
a
kit
chenette-sized
bathroom and two rabbit-hutch bedrooms that looked out the other way across
garages to some strips of rear garden, and the rear-ends of houses, and a
church sometimes known locally as St Crudes. Andy opened the bedside cabinet in
his bedroom. It was his private storage area, and as such Sara respected it.
She believed everyone needed secret places, apart from those locked up in their
brains.

A
deep shadow by now was filling the tiny back rooms, which
fac
ed north. Inside
the cupboard was darkness, but to Andy a vague glow seemed to open there, the
longer he gazed in. The upper shelf and the lower, boxlike area, seemed to
shine
with the heaps of booty he had accumulated. Some liquid soap from a cafe
toilet, two library books he had taken unseen and not returned, a glass from some
other café, and a general litter that included a knife and fork from a school
dinner, a watch-strap, safety pins in a container... and so on. Andy slotted today’s
trophies with some care in among these already established items, then sat back
on his heels to review the assembly, the
still–life
he had created, was creating,
would always, presumably create. One day he would run out of room, of course.
But not yet. He piled the bigger and the littler things together with such
cleverness.

Andy
stayed there on the floor, his head slightly to one side, then grew aware of
this mannerism and corrected it. (Mannerisms were not helpful, he had found; at
best they were silly, at worst they could be giveaways.)

The
glow bloomed and floated on the things in the cabinet. They seemed to grow even
paler, and lose individuality, as he stared at them, unblinking. Like a soft
amalgam of some dim darkish snow.

When
he had had enough he shut the door.

He
had left the lipstick and the toffees out, on his bed, (which Sara had made),
for the present-giving. It would not matter too much if Sara saw them
beforehand. They had a purpose and so were
not
secret.

Stealing,
to Andy, had
no
purpose that interested him or that he grasped. It was
what he did, and was good at. Nor had he any interest in, or want of, what he
stole for brief use – an action figure, a film – such things he would return. The
value was never in the stolen article he retained, but in the
act
. Its
skill – and the afterimage. (His skill in taking what he might
like
,
momentarily, to
have was simply incidental.) A private affair indeed.

There was a dead
sparrowhawk on the patio paving when Carver looked out the next morning. He
unlocked the kitchen door went to see.

A
beautiful form, even dead.

The
curved wings, already ossifying, held his eyes some while. Like fanned and
folded greyish palm fronds. And the cruel perfect head. What had brought it
down? A consummate predator, it would grip another bird on the wing, everything
seen to in an instant. But the hunting was done for this one.

Perhaps
someone had poisoned it, some Keeper guarding pheasants for humans alone to
kill.

Presently,
raising the hawk on a shovel, he carried it down the garden and cast it over
the outside wall by the shed. If it was wholesome a fox would take it, not if
it was venomous; they seemed to know.

As
he was turning to go back to the house, he saw old Robby Johnston ambling
crookedly up the lane through the morning trees towards him.

“Hi,
Car. How’re things?”

“OK,
thanks. You?”

“Oh,
not much changes for me.” Johnston stepped off the lane and crookedly ambled up
to the wall. Though partly disabled now, by some never-detailed leg injury,
which had got worse, it looked, in recent days, he had been and still was a
tall, lean man. The ground sloped up just at this point. Standing on the rise
between the tree roots and the scuffle of silver-russet leaves, Johnston raised
his face to the sunshine. “Wind’s fucked off any way,” he remarked, cordially.
He had a handsome face, if creased and lined as if pleated and pressed, and had
kept a strong longish mop of steely hair. Late sixties, Carver surmised. He had
never bothered to check up on Robby J. No doubt the office had. Maybe now
Carver ought to as well.

“Yes.
The wind’s dropped,” Carver agreed. He leaned the spade by a shed door, one of
the ones that did not open.

Johnston
glanced at him. “Your lady all right? Haven’t seen her for a bit.”

“Donna?
Sure. She’s at her mother’s.”

“Oh,
they still like going to mummy’s, don’t they. Funny that. Even sometimes when
they don’t really like mummy that much.” (“I hate her, I always have,” said
Dusa the dead hawk, in Carver’s head, “from seven years of age.”) “In fact,
Car, I’ve been meaning to have a word with you.”

“Sure.”

Johnston
watched light ruffs of cloud blot over the pale, lowish sun. He said, still sky–watching,
“I’ve been seeing someone about, the past couple of nights.”

“Yes?”

“Mmn.
Oh, I know some of them go up and down via the woods, and there’s the odd
nocturnal courtship. Not to mention animal wildlife. But this was a man on his
ownsome. I couldn’t see much of him. No moon round the first time. It was about
2 a.m. I usually have to get up for the old feller about then, he wants the
lav. And I took a look out of the window, as you do, and there’s this tallish bloke,
all in black, out in the woods, between here and the cottage. Thing was, he
wasn’t courting, or pissing, or walking through. He was standing there. Just
standing. I went back to bed in a bit, didn’t stay to watch long. Too old for that
malarkey. Wondered if I’d dreamed it, the next day. But last night he was back
again. About the same time, and the same thing, just there, just stood there. I
couldn’t see which way he was facing, towards your place or mine. I had the
impression his face was covered up as well. A black mask or a black balaclava.
Should have told you, perhaps, the first time. But now it’s happened twice.
What do you think?”

Five

He heard the car
draw up about four in the afternoon. The sound was different, and he recognised
it: a 2000 Chevrolet Monté Carlo SS. Bought about three years ago, second-hand
admittedly, as a present from a then-admirer, it was a rich oiled red and
gleamed, as it always did in sunshine. Maggie’s car. Looking out from the
upstairs window in his ‘playroom’, Carver made sure only Maggie got out of it,
and only Maggie had been in it.

He
locked the ‘playroom’s’ door before going down.

“What lovely
tea, Car. I can do with this. The traffic, honestly. It’s absurd at this time
of day.”

“Yes,
it can be.” He waited, gauging her as he tried his own glass of soda water.

“This
is quite difficult,” said Maggie.

He
waited on.

“It’s
Donna,” she said, and her well-organised prettiness flushed with a sudden,
perhaps hormonal agitation.

“What’s
the matter with Donna?”

“You
don’t sound very concerned,” said Maggie sharply. “I mean, I say ‘it’s Donna’
and you sound – almost bored.”

“No,
I’m not bored. I’m just listening.”

“And
now you sound very
patient
.”

He
waited.

Maggie
drank her tea. At last she put down the mug and said, “I love my daughter, Car.
Of course I love her. But I know sometimes, particularly recently, she can...
exaggerate things. To others, to herself. Do you see? That’s my difficulty.”

“Is
she ill?” Carver asked quietly. It was a much safer response than the one she
might expect:
What
has Donna
exaggerated?

“Oh
– no. No, I think she’s fine–”

Fine
but not pregnant? He wondered, pondered, kept silent, kept waiting.

“No,
she just – I don’t know how to broach this, Car. I simply don’t. It would be a
different matter if I didn’t know you – I mean, we know each other, don’t we?
We have done for a few years. And I’m not such a bad judge of men. Even quiet men,
like you. Even men your young age, Car. And so – oh shit. Well, here goes. She
says,” Maggie put back her artistically styled and blonded head and looked him
fiercely in the eye, “you’ve abused her. You’ve been physically violent.”

He
allowed the surprise to show on his face. (He had been anticipating something
else, some floundering guess Donna had belatedly made, concerning the work he
did. Some notion his ‘office in London’ was not exactly that at all. That his
job involved somewhat more than the ordinary, soulless, time-eating yet well-recompensed
slog he had always implied it was and did. She had never taken excessive
interest in it, and this he encouraged. The long and erratic hours always
irritated, and more recently apparently maddened her, but did not make her
believe, he had supposed, that it was more than corporate overkill and
overtime.)

“Why,”
he said slowly, “does she say that?”

“Well,
fairly obviously, Car,” said fierce-eyed Maggie, angrily, “because she thinks
you
did
.”

He
wished to say,
Has
she shown you any bruises
? He did not say this. He said, “Why
should she think that?”

And
Maggie got up. She shouted at him, the way Donna had if not quite so loudly or
savagely. “Maybe because you
have
?”

“No.”

“Oh,
No. Well. You
would
say that,
wouldn‘t
you.”

“Not
necessarily. If I were that way inclined I might agree, and make some excuse.”

“Is
that what you’re going to do?”

“No,
Maggie. Because I didn’t abuse Donna.”

“She
says you did.”

Now
it was appropriate to say it. “What did I do? What’s the evidence?”

Maggie
flung her arms quite elegantly upward. Her nails were long and faultlessly
painted a soft coppery shade. Then she sat down again. She said, in the hushed
tone of someone speaking of something
un
speakable, “She wouldn’t say and
she wouldn’t show me. She said – the marks had faded. And she was –
ashamed
.”

“Why
ashamed?”

“She
wished she’d hit you back.”

“
I
hit
her
then, she said?”

“She
–
implied
you hit her.”

Carver
looked out of one of the front windows. The Chevrolet sat smartly, glittering,
on the space outside the garage. Across the lane the woods were also at last
beginning to burn up red.

“What
do you want to do, Maggie?”

“I
told her I had to go into Maidstone, and I didn’t say I was coming here. I don’t
know
what
to do. Donna
has been – odd.”

“Did
she tell you she was pregnant?”

Maggie’s
nicely lipsticked mouth dropped open and she stared at him. “
What
? Pregnant –
No
.
Is
she?”

“I’ve
no idea. She told me she thought she might be. She was going to see the doctor,
she said. But I don’t think she has. At least, not yet.”

“But
didn’t you try to
make
her go?”

“No,
Maggie. I didn’t try to
make
her do anything. Just as I didn’t hit or otherwise abuse her.”

“You
sound so – cool, Car. Is that how you feel?”

“I’m
startled, Maggie. Like you, more than you. I don’t know what’s going on.”

“This
is insane.”

“Yes.”

“What
shall I do?” Maggie asked, but not of him. Or he did not think so. “Honestly,
Car, I just don’t know. Look,” she said, seeming to straighten inside her
fashionable jeans, her sleek white jumper, her cared-for skin, “she wants to
stay on with me for a while. That’s all right. We can do things. Maybe be
childish, go to the seaside... Something. I’ll try to get to the bottom of this
pregnancy business. You know, Car, I
don’t
think she is. There’s just – something
missing from that, somehow. She isn’t... like a pregnant woman. But could she
be? Had you been trying?”

“I
didn’t know we were, but maybe she was. If you mean have we been having sex,
then yes. We do have sex. She never expressed the need for a child.”

“But
you wouldn’t – mind? I mean, you’d
like
it if she had a baby?”

Carver
said, “I didn’t suggest it, but yes. It might be good.” Just the proper amount
of cautious interest and agreeability in his voice. A lie. Less than liking the
concept, he was utterly indifferent, and had been when, and since, Donna told
him.

“Well.
We’ll see how it goes. Better keep it at that. For now.”

“And
she doesn’t want to come back here yet,” His voice was entirely neutral.

“I’m
sorry.” Maggie had taken the neutrality as self-controlled disappointment. Or
understandable relief? “I’m sorry, but no, she doesn’t. I’ll keep you posted,
yes?”

“All
right. So long as you can manage.” She could, she was aware she could, and
would. He was quite safe to fake concern.

“You
know you can trust me, Car.”

“Yes.
I know.”

“I’ll
take great care of her. Honestly, don’t worry. It’s just a phase. She
is
my kid, after all, isn’t she?”

“Thank
you, Maggie.”

“And
– the other thing... You didn’t. I apologise. Of course you didn’t. That’s not
you
, Car.”

“No.”

She
stood up.

“I’d
better get off. I’m – well, I’m meeting someone at a little restaurant over
towards the town. It’s OK. Donna’s staying in with the TV, some wine and a
couple of shows she likes and there’s a great takeaway place...”

He
decided abruptly, not having really considered it before, that Maggie too had
become a fraction jaded with Donna.

They
said goodbye at the door and she planted her accustomed light press-kiss on
his right cheek. She smelled of health and hygiene and Chanel No. 5. The
Chevrolet started up immediately, eager to run, and vanished like a red wave
around the bend of the red-leafed lane.