‘Could be one of the little girl’s pets,’ said Ezra’s father. ‘She’s got guinea-pigs or something there, hasn’t she?’
‘My dear man,’ replied Simon’s aunt, ‘if you’d seen what Ezra and I had seen,’ and she put a proprietorial arm around Ezra’s waist, ‘you’d know that that creature could not possibly be a guinea-pig.’
‘Anyway, we’d better be going.’ Simon felt it was time to draw speculation to a close. ‘I’ll miss dinner.’
The place where Simon lived at the university served meals three times a day, like an orphanage, and Ezra had noticed before Simon’s anxiety not to miss out on his allotted portion. Ezra pictured him rushing forward with his bowl at the very end of the queue, only to be greeted with an empty ladle by the fat cook standing behind the pot, licking his greasy lips.
Violetta, in the meantime, had come out onto the back verandah, finding it impossible to think properly with the stranger in the house, and her father’s unsettlingly loud and hearty laugh booming out every few minutes. She had avoided the backyard since the coming of the pigs: the way they squeaked, the way they smelt, the way they scuttled. Every time she saw them, she started thinking of statistics relating to the bubonic plague. But restlessness drew her out.
She noticed Ezra and his guests standing by a tall, pear-shaped cactus covered in white fur that Violetta had always thought must have been a kind of fungoid disease. Ezra’s father was a little odd, really—surely planting all those cactuses couldn’t be normal. Flowers were one thing, even ferns, but those rows and rows of succulents, some of them disturbingly large …
The low window of the dining-room was suddenly pushed open. The voices of her father and his mysterious guest were carried out into the dusk.
‘Great sunsets!’ her father was declaring, and even this simple statement was accompanied by a laugh.
‘My God!’ came the unexpected reply. ‘What was that?’ The visitor’s head poked out the window, the blue of his glasses glinting in the half-light. He put his foot up over the low window-sill and hopped out onto the grass. Violetta stared. The stranger looked so crisp and clean in his expensive suit and curving hair, standing there on her damaged, sloping back lawn. Violetta found her eyes focusing on his beautiful glossy shoes with shining buckles, and she remembered a line from a hymn they sang at school: ‘How beautiful are their feet!’
‘Just over here,’ said the man in the blue glasses, gesturing towards the lemon tree.
‘What?’ asked Violetta’s father, who had followed him out nervously.
Geraldine, attracted by the shouting, came out the back door. Ezra raised his eyes towards her, wordless.
‘I don’t know what it was.’ Blue-glasses shook his head. ‘Some sort of animal. White. This big,’ and he moved his hands up and down like someone estimating the size of a fish.
‘That’s what I saw!’ volunteered Simon’s aunt with some excitement from over the fence. ‘They tried to tell me it was a cat.’
The stranger looked nonplussed by the intrusion, but managed a brief smile of acknowledgement. ‘This was not a cat,’ he agreed definitely. ‘This was more like a … I don’t know … a rat.’
Geraldine frowned. Her father was briskly shepherding his visitor back into the dining-room, bribing him with the offer of another drink. Geraldine looked at Ezra, her throat drying.
‘Funny, isn’t it?’ said Ezra’s father. ‘Must be some sort of optical illusion.’
‘Well, not if you both saw it,’ pointed out Simon. ‘Maybe there really is something out there.’
‘You can have collective illusions,’ mentioned Ezra’s father.
‘Can you?’ Simon raised his eyebrows. ‘Even people who’ve never met each other?’
Ezra gestured at Geraldine to come down the other end of the fence. But she turned her back on him and ran down the side path. She would have gone on to the street, but the sight of the green limousine stopped her, and she stood trembling by the camellia tree under Violetta’s window.
She knew what it was. What it had to be. Something white and violent in the garden. What else? Alberta. Alberta was not dead. She was out there, waiting. Waiting for her. Waiting to make trouble. Waiting for disaster, hovering like a vulture in the African desert. There was something bad about that guinea-pig, she had sensed it from the very first time she had looked into those acute, intelligent pink eyes.
The front door opened. Geraldine stiffened behind the tree. Her father was seeing his visitor out. They were murmuring like stage conspirators, too low for her to understand. They did not see her, but looked at the ground, and into each other’s eyes, very briefly. They shook hands. Her father walked with the visitor to his car, which started up as though by remote control as they approached.
After the limousine had sped away, her father stood alone in the dark garden for a moment, his hands in his pockets. Geraldine remained quite still beneath the tree’s branches, watching. Her father uttered a long sigh, like air oozing out of an inflatable toy. He took his hands out of his pockets, and hugged himself. The moon shone on the grass. He shook his head slightly and walked quickly inside the house, slamming the door behind him.
8 · Strangers
Geraldine was nervous. Although nervous wasn’t the right word—that’s what you felt before an injection, or before you had to make a three-minute speech in front of the class on the life cycle of a tadpole. This was much worse.
She slept badly, dreaming about Alberta. She deliberately banished both Alma and her guinea-pig from her conscious daytime mind, only to have her come back at night: Alberta laying down the law about the dirty floor, her homework, her untidy uniform; Alberta sitting in the best chairs in the house, eating all the chocolate out of the fridge; Alberta even sleeping next to her in the bed, pushing her off the pillow. Biting her.
Sometimes Geraldine would wake with the pain of those two front teeth around her finger, her heart beating in shock, sure she must have screamed out loud. Oh, thank God, thank God, thank God, she would whisper. There was no Alberta. She hadn’t crept in through the window noiselessly, scampered over the floor to her bed to attack her. It was just a dream. Quite the silliest sort of dream. Still, she started locking her windows at night, and fastening blankets over them with drawing pins.
What was she going to do? How was she going to tell Alma? She couldn’t imagine recapturing Alberta. How on earth would she do it? Stalk her all night and pounce with a net? Lay a trap of food? It was too ridiculous—like Coyote and Road Runner in those Sunday morning cartoons. Her adversary would never allow herself to be caught. She would always be one step ahead.
It was the same at home. Something was going on. They were plotting something, and it felt like something bad. Her father was acting in an extremely nonchalant manner, which seemed to Geraldine suspicious—she preferred him, or rather, trusted him more when he was morose. Of course she wanted to see him happy, but he had no reason to be happy. He should be depressed. Look at his situation—bankrupt, creditors everywhere, house on the market and no buyers. But he bounced about the house singing ‘Jimmy Crack Corn and I Don’t Care’, and never catching her eye. His already-too-long hair began to grow over his eyes, and he became more remote, more disguised.
He was always on the telephone, like a teenage girl in an American movie. Getting calls, making calls, hanging up on people in anger, ringing them back and apologising. Tuning his guitar, going to the doctor, making cheese sandwiches. And then quite often he would go out in the car, with hardly a word of goodbye. She would hear him come back, very late at night. Even if she was asleep, which was rare lately, the smell of the exhaust would wake her up, and the sharp jerk of the handbrake.
Where did he go? she wondered. Why did her mother never go with him? Her mother sat by herself late at night in the dining-room, elbows resting on the table. Thinking, Geraldine supposed. Praying even. She seemed to be expecting s
omething, waiting for the supervisor to call out ‘Time’s up! Pens down!’ at the end of an exam.
‘Geraldine?’
Geraldine jumped in her seat, as if she were on springs. Jelly beans, which she’d been eating from a glass resting on her lap, scattered all over the living-room floor. She’d been sitting there watching television since she’d got home from school. It was now nearly six o’clock.
‘Sorry, Gerry,’ said Violetta, leaning over to help her pick up the jelly beans. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought you saw me.’
Geraldine had seen Violetta come in, of course. She’d just been shocked by the sound of her voice. Nerves, thought Geraldine.
‘What is it?’
All the jelly beans were now back in the glass, covered with little bits of carpet dust, and not looking especially delicious. She could always wash them, she supposed, but then the colour would run, and the crunchy coating would get soggy. She stared down at them, transfixed by her dilemma.
‘I just asked if Mum or Dad had told you when they’d be back,’ said Violetta, patiently.
‘I didn’t know they’d gone anywhere,’ replied Geraldine, surprised. ‘I thought Dad was in bed.’
‘Well, they’re not home,’ said Violetta. ‘And I was thinking of going out myself. I was going to meet Marcus in town.’
Marcus. The thought of Marcus almost made Geraldine feel normal again, and took her mind off the jelly beans. Imagine voluntarily meeting Marcus anywhere.
‘He wants me to help him buy a present for his mother’s birthday,’ added Violetta. ‘I don’t know why he thinks I could be of any use. I hardly know her.’
‘It’s Mum’s birthday soon, too,’ said Geraldine, changing the channel with the remote-control switch.
‘I know,’ sighed Violetta. ‘It’s actually on the same day. Marcus was so excited when I told him. He thinks it means we’re made for each other.’
Oh yeah, thought Geraldine. ‘Do you ever kiss him?’ she asked absently, changing the channel again. Most of the programs at this time of day involved a lot of kissing, so it naturally came to mind.
‘Well, not exactly.’ Violetta sighed again, more deeply this time. ‘He doesn’t seem to want to.’
This did not surprise Geraldine. If anything, she was relieved.
‘I won’t be long,’ said Violetta, getting up. ‘I don’t think so, anyway. Tell Mum and Dad where I’ve gone, won’t you.’
Geraldine heard Violetta push their thick wooden front door shut after her. It always reminded her of a castle, their door, with its wide, impressive dark-brown beams, and its round black handle and circular knocker. She switched off the television and lay back on the sofa with a sigh, her blue stockinged, shoeless feet up on the armrest. She preferred to be alone. She could close her eyes, pull a cushion over her head and try to stop her brain from spinning. Strands of her mother’s long fair hair were spread across the fabric of the sofa.
Stretching out her legs, Geraldine knocked a toy off the coffee-table in front of her. She leant down lazily to pick it up. It was a teddy that played the drums, the cymbals and a trumpet—a one-bear-band, she supposed you might call it. It was a wind-up toy—her father didn’t like batteries or things that plugged in. He liked keys and clockwork mechanisms; things that you could take apart and fix with a screwdriver, without calling upon the higher powers of electricity or the microchip. She wound the bear up and set it on the table, watching it wiggle from side to side as it belted out Brahms’ Lullaby.
When it stopped, she wound it up again. And again. And again. It was surprising, really, that she heard the knock at the door at all. But it was a remarkably loud knock. Firm and determined.
She should not, of course, have opened the door, being alone in the house. These were her parents’ repeated instructions. But, Geraldine objected, what if whoever knocked tried one of the side doors which were always unlocked, and actually came into the house and found her sitting there, frozen still, as if no one were at home? Or what if it were robbers, just knocking to make sure the house was empty before breaking in and then when they found her they’d murder her?
In any case, either because she was feeling nervous in general, or because her mother had forgotten to remind her not to open the door, had not even told her she was going out, Geraldine automatically got up from the sofa and went to open it. She switched the silver lock and tugged the door back over the carpet.
Two men stood there, one standing slightly behind the other. The one in front spoke first.
‘Hello there! Dad home?’ Geraldine noticed their dark grey suits and their brown shoes. She shook her head.
‘Mum?’
Geraldine noticed their blue shirts, their clean-shaven cheeks. ‘Just me,’ she said.
‘Just you,’ repeated the man.
‘Any idea when they’ll be back?’ said the other man, smiling at her, rather kindly, she thought.
‘I don’t know,’ said Geraldine. ‘I don’t know where they went.’
‘Go together, did they?’ asked the second man, but the first one made a cautioning gesture to him with his hand.
Geraldine shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.
The two men looked at each other. ‘Right then,’ said the first one. ‘We might come back another time.’
They started to back out, away from her, still smiling. Geraldine frowned. Perhaps she should ask if they had a message, or what they wanted, but some instinct stopped her. Some feeling that she would prefer not to know.
The front gate clicked shut, and Geraldine stood still in the doorway. She could not see past the fence from where she stood, but she could hear them, talking and opening their car door. She waited to hear them start up the engine and drive away, but nothing happened. There was no grinding of the ignition, no changing of gears like the drawing in of a painful breath as the car pulled away. Not a sound.
They weren’t going anywhere, it seemed. Were they going to sit out there and wait until her father and mother came home? Didn’t they believe her? Maybe they were just looking at a map, smoking a cigarette, trying to fasten a stiff seat-belt. Or were they waiting to hear her close the door, just as she was waiting for them to leave? Geraldine felt faint and cold.
Suddenly she jumped, for at least the second time that day. She saw Ezra, sitting on the step of his own front garden, looking over at her curiously. It was like seeing a painting suddenly wink at you, or a statue move its hand. She felt as white as he looked. Ordinarily, she might make a face at him, turn around and slam the door, but something in his dark eyes, some trace of unexpected sympathy, stopped her. She had scarcely spoken to him since the guinea-pig incident, but now she stood at the open door and willed him to say something.
He was eating an orange, very carefully, without spilling a drop of juice. He swallowed a segment, and mouthed at her as if to say, ‘Who are they?’
Geraldine shrugged. She walked over to the wire barrier between the two houses.
‘They want my mum and dad,’ she said. ‘But they’re out.’
Ezra ate another segment of orange, spitting the pips carefully into his hand, as if they were the tiny eggs of some precious animal. ‘I’ve seen them before,’ he said.
Geraldine grimaced. ‘Where?’
‘At your house,’ said Ezra. ‘They knocked on the door but no one answered. Yesterday afternoon.’
Wednesday afternoon. Her recorder practice.
‘Your parents were home, I think,’ Ezra went on. ‘But they didn’t answer. Maybe you shouldn’t have opened the door. Maybe your parents don’t want to see them.’
‘Oh maybe, maybe, maybe!’ snapped Geraldine. ‘You remind me of a … a tortoise!’ she said ridiculously, but there was something in his long neck, his round eyes, his malevolent persistence.
‘I don’t see why,’ replied Ezra calmly. ‘I’m just
telling you. Why don’t you ask your mother?’ He stood up, slipping the orange pips into his pocket. But she didn’t want him to leave. She disliked him, but she didn’t want him to go away.
‘They’re still out there,’ she said, urgently. ‘What do they want?’ She couldn’t bear to go back alone to that empty house, with those two suited strangers sitting outside. She turned to Ezra and said, ‘Can I come over for a while?’
Ezra was taken aback, and unwilling, but, ‘All right,’ he said. ‘If you want.’
Pulling herself over the fence, Geraldine followed him up the steps to his front door, half as solid as their own, and with no ornate door knocker, but it seemed to Geraldine she would be twice as secure behind it than at home. She looked back to glimpse the edge of the grey car parked next to the footpath. It sat there, like a dead spider on the laundry floor, motionless until someone bent down to sweep it away. She would stay at Ezra’s until it was gone, she decided. Or until somebody else came home.
9 · Simon
Violetta was spending a rather unsettling evening with Marcus in the bookshop. Of course, Marcus was never what you would call relaxing company, but in shops he was worse than ever. Violetta had a humble attitude to shopping. She would scurry in, peer furtively around for what she wanted, hurry over to pay for it and slip out as quickly as she could, hoping she hadn’t caused anyone any trouble. But for Marcus, going shopping was one of life’s great social adventures.
This was particularly trying to Violetta in a bookshop, which had for her some of the hallowed atmosphere of a library. Marcus had other ideas. They made their way out of the cold city down an escalator, into a big, modern bookshop, well-lit and brightly coloured.
‘I’m looking for something on embroidered rugs,’ he announced in such an enormous and forceful voice that several people lurking in the aisles of paperbacks glanced up in shock, as if he had demanded a pornographic magazine. Violetta was still in her school uniform, but Marcus had changed into a white shirt and black trousers, hitched up with bicycle clips, revealing orange socks. He might well look like the kind of person, thought Violetta, who has an unashamed interest in the seamier side of life.
The White Guinea Pig Page 6