Started Early, Took My Dog

by Kate Atkinson

  ‘I’ll escort you to the door, shall I?’ Harry said, sounding like a policeman.

  *

  The Avensis was parked outside. Brian Jackson was leaning against the bonnet, smoking. He raised a cigarette in mute greeting when he saw them.

  ‘Who’s this?’ Harry Reynolds muttered to Tracy when he saw him.

  ‘Nobody,’ Tracy said.

  ‘Well, have a nice life, Superintendent,’ Harry Reynolds said.

  ‘Try my best,’ Tracy said.

  1975: 21 March

  A toddler! Darling little thing, in her pyjamas, fast asleep, wrapped in a dirty old blanket. Had there been an accident of some kind? Ray Strickland was white, he looked as if he’d just witnessed something dreadful.

  ‘Come in, it’s freezing out there,’ Ian said. He led Ray into the living room, sat him down, poured him a huge tumbler of whisky. Ray’s hand was shaking so much that he couldn’t get it to his lips.

  ‘What happened, Strickland?’ Ian asked. He was kneeling beside him, checking the girl to see if she was injured in some way. Kitty felt a rush of pride in her husband’s expertise. ‘Who is she, Ray?’ Ian asked but Ray just shook his head.

  ‘Is she all right?’ Ray asked and Ian nodded and said, ‘As far as I can make out.’ Kitty took the little girl from Ray and wrapped her up in a clean blanket. ‘There, snug as a bug in a rug,’ she said, holding her in her arms. The girl didn’t stir. The solid weight of the child felt so lovely. Imagine if she was yours to keep, to hold like this every day. Kitty Winfield brushed her sleeping daughter’s hair from her face.

  ‘Will you take her?’ Ray said.

  ‘Take her?’ Kitty echoed. ‘For the night?’

  ‘For good.’

  ‘Mine? To keep? For ever?’ Kitty said.

  ‘Ours,’ Ian said.

  *

  A couple of weeks later, over a nice candlelit dinner at home, Ian poured her a glass of wine and said, ‘I’ve been offered a job in New Zealand, I thought it best if I take it.’

  ‘Oh God, yes, darling,’ Kitty said. ‘That’s perfect. We can leave everything behind, start again where no one knows anything about us. You are clever.’

  A plague upon this howling! The wild waters roaring in her head. Tilly had run out of Bluebell Cottage, abuse from Saskia echoing in her ears, got into her car and driven off. She wanted to go home. She needed a train, trains were in stations, the station was in Leeds. Something horrible had happened to Tilly in Leeds but for the life of her she couldn’t remember what it was exactly. Something to do with a child. A child, a poor, poor child. A little black thing in the snow. Her little black baby.

  When she had kissed her lovely Nigerian man at Leicester Square tube station, he said to her, ‘Shall I call for you tonight, perhaps you’d like to go to the cinema, perhaps some supper afterwards?’

  ‘That would be wonderful,’ Tilly said.

  ‘I’ll call for you,’ he said. ‘About seven.’

  She spent the whole day thinking about him, wondering what to wear, how to do her hair. She was absolutely useless in rehearsal but she didn’t care, her heart was skipping. She got home at six, got ready in a terrific rush and then stood at the window looking down at the street, waiting for a glimpse of her handsome new man.

  Was still standing there at eight, at nine. At ten she knew he wasn’t coming. Understood he would never come.

  It was only much later that she learned that he had got lost. He had never written down her address, thought he could easily find his way back to her flat but once he was in Soho he realized he had mistaken her street. He had wandered up and down and all around the houses, looking for some familiar landmark, some reminder of where he had been the night before. He had even tried doors and got short shrift because of his colour, except from some of the ladies who had cards above their doorbells. Nearly midnight when he gave up and went home.

  The next day he tried to track her down again. He had done the rounds of the theatres asking about her and in one someone directed him to Phoebe, about to go into a matinee performance of Pygmalion. He recognized her from the party at the embassy. She told him that yes, she knew Tilly, in fact Tilly was her best friend and had told her all about the previous night’s ‘tryst’, and ‘I am afraid I am the bearer of bad news,’ she said, her hand sincerely on her heart, or where her heart would have been if she had had one. Phoebe went on to inform him that Tilly had realized, in the cold light of day, that she did not want to see him again. It had been a mistake, she had been carried away. ‘You understand?’ Phoebe said. He did. ‘So sorry,’ Phoebe said, ‘that’s the beginners’ call, I must go.’

  ‘I was looking out for your interests,’ Phoebe said, sitting by her bedside in hospital after she had lost the baby. ‘Sometimes you can be rather foolish.’ Silly Tilly. ‘It would only have ended in disaster, Tilly.’

  It had already ended in disaster.

  When she felt stronger she paid a visit to the Nigerian embassy, she had to apologize to him, explain about her treacherous friend. There was a man on reception but what could she say to him? ‘You have someone called John who works here?’ The man on reception looked at her with something like contempt, rather like the nurses on the maternity ward, and said, ‘We have several people working here with that name. I would have to know his surname.’

  What could she do? O, the cry did knock / Against my very heart! She trudged home in the rain, defeated. Perhaps both of them gave up too easily. She had always thought that of Princess Margaret and Captain Townsend. Duty over love. What nonsense. Love should always come first. It wasn’t as if Princess Margaret had been necessary to the country in any way. Quite the opposite.

  Perhaps she wouldn’t have lost her baby if she hadn’t lost his father. Perhaps it was the stress she was under. She had started to buy things, mittens and bootees. She kept one of the little mittens for years, at the bottom of her bag, until it disintegrated. Silly really.

  It was hair-raising on Leeds station, so many people rushing backwards and forwards, their faces grim, everyone running for trains, impatient with each other, with themselves. Jolting and jostling. No manners!

  The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces. It was all make believe, wasn’t it? Reality itself was nothing. Words, everything was made out of words, once you lost the words you lost the world. The howling tempest all around her. At sea in a high wind. The men on the trawlers, their bodies spiralling through the cold icy waters, after their brave little ships were torpedoed. Down, down, down, to the seabed. Those are pearls that were his eyes. Treasure in the deep.

  She had that funny feeling of darkness again, of the curtain of Northern Lights before her eyes. She was on a ship ploughing through the dark waters. All about her was desperation. The spars breaking, the mainmast cracking, the sails hanging in rags. The figurehead of the ship was a naked baby howling in the wind. There were babies everywhere, hanging on to the rigging for dear life, clinging to the sides of the ship as it began to sink into the icy, oily sea. Tilly must save them, she must save them all, but she can’t, she is going down with the ship. Mercy on us! We split, we split!

  And then suddenly there she was, like a ray of light, a port in a storm – the little ‘Twinkle,Twinkle’ girl. On the station platform. Her wings crushed, a poor little butterfly, a bedraggled fairy, flitting amongst the crowd ahead on the walkway above the platforms. Tilly had been given a second opportunity to save her. Someone should do something. Tilly should do something. Be bold, Tilly! Be a bold girl!

  Courtney. The name came unbidden. (Would you just shut the fuck up, Courtney, you’re getting on my tits! ) ‘Courtney,’ Tilly whispered, her voice suddenly hoarse. The girl turned her head and looked at her. ‘Courtney,’ Tilly repeated more confidently this time. She smiled and held out her hand. Courtney walked towards her, put her little hand in Tilly’s old one as if she were obeying invisible instructions. Tilly remembered her dream, the feel of the velvety rabbit’s paw in her hand as they flew. �
�Come with me, darling,’ Tilly said.

  Tracy was clad in Harry Reynolds’s dead wife’s clothes. Marks & Spencer trousers with an elasticated waist and a tunic top decorated with a jungle design that would have allowed her to step into the rainforest and become invisible. No rainforests in Leeds. Courtney, trundling along beside her, had got the better end of the deal, but only just – sporting Ashley’s cast-off denim pedal-pushers and a Peppa Pig top. On top of them she insisted on wearing the rags of her fairy dress. So much for Harry Reynolds’s idea of ‘decent clothes’, they looked like homeless people, but that was OK, no one was interested in homeless people.

  There was an announcement about a ‘through train’, telling people to stand back from the edge of the platform. The platform was swarming – Bank Holiday weekend, Tracy supposed – and she hung on to Courtney’s hand as if the kid was about to be carried off to Kansas. Tracy had once attended an incident where someone had been pushed off a crowded platform beneath a train. Bloke who did it – ordinary bloke, looked a bit like Les Dennis – said he couldn’t help himself. The more he told himself not to shove the bloke standing in front of him, the more he felt impelled to do it. Seemed to think that was a reason, didn’t even plead temporary insanity. Caught on camera, got life, would be out in five years. ‘Keep back from the edge,’ Tracy said to Courtney.

  No idea how it happened. There was a surge in the crowd – maybe they thought that the train was pulling into the station, not pushing its way through, but one second she had hold of the kid, the next she’d slipped from her grasp. Panic clenched Tracy’s chest as she spun round looking for Courtney and came up almost jaw to jaw with Len Lomax.

  It was years since she’d last seen him. Three-piece silk suit, black funeral tie, specs that belonged on a younger man. He must be pushing seventy if he was a day but he looked good on it considering he’d spent the best part of his life smoking and drinking and who knew what else.

  ‘Tracy, long time no see,’ he said as if they were at a garden party.

  ‘Not now, boss,’ she said, scanning the crowded platform for the kid. Over fifteen years since he’d been her boss but the subordination came naturally.

  She spotted Courtney further along the platform, being led away by an old woman. Kid would probably go with anyone. A dog would have more sense. An old woman was a safe pair of hands, wasn’t she? Old women found kids and took them to Lost Property and pressed a sixpence into their hand. (This had happened to an infant Tracy once on York station. She had rather hoped the old woman in question would take her home.) Unless they were evil witches, of course, in which case they took the kid home and fattened it up before putting it in the oven.

  She lost sight of the old woman in the crush, started to hyperventilate. Keep calm. Stay in control. Saw the old woman again and began shoving her way through the crowd but something was tugging at her arm, pulling her back. Not something, someone. Len Lomax again. What was he playing at? He reached out and grabbed hold of her upper arm and she felt the surprising strength of his grip on her bicep. He wouldn’t let go, he was an anchor, dragging her away from the kid, saying, ‘You’re a hard woman to get hold of,Tracy. You and I need to have a little chat.’ Who is the person I should be worried about? she’d asked Brian Jackson. ‘Strickland and his sidekick Lomax,’ he said. Funny but Tracy had always thought of Strickland as Lomax’s sidekick rather than the other way round. ‘They’re trying to keep the lid on the past,’ Brian Jackson said. ‘But the truth will always out.’

  ‘Fuck off and let go of me.’ She tried to twist away but Lomax was holding on hard. ‘Sorry, boss,’ she said and kneed him in the groin.

  ‘Bitch!’ she heard him shout as she dashed off. She had got within breathing distance of the kid when one of the Land Cruiser blokes from the garage suddenly stepped in front of her like a wall. She started to put two and two together, it was a sum that had been a long time coming. The leather-jacket thugs were Lomax’s men. Excons whose path had crossed with his at some point. ‘Key witness,’ Brian Jackson said to her on the drive from Fountains to Leeds. ‘You were there when they broke down that door.’Witness to nothing, she was the last person who was key.

  Tracy didn’t break stride, just punched the Land Cruiser bloke hard in the face and steamed on towards the kid. She caught sight of the other hulking leather-jacket – no surprise there – weaving his way through the throng towards her. Wolves everywhere, closing in. This one was expecting her to dodge out of his reach but instead Taurean Tracy charged straight at him and rammed the hulk out of the way.

  The crowd shrank back from her, nothing like a mad cow on the rampage to clear a space. Courtney spotted Tracy and let go of the old woman’s hand and ran towards her. Tracy snatched her up and clutched her tightly in her arms. Save the kid, save the world. Kid was the world. The world, the whole world and nothing but the world. ‘Can’t breathe,’ Courtney murmured.

  ‘Sorry,’ Tracy said, loosening her grip, looking round for the escalator. No way out, too many people. And here was bloody Len Lomax again, what was wrong with the stupid old bastard? He was spitting mad, he never did like to be thwarted, especially by a woman. ‘I want to fucking talk to you, OK?’ he said.

  He darted forward and tried to seize the kid, started pulling her away from Tracy. Courtney, clamped on to Tracy like a baby koala, screamed her head off and started bashing him with her wand. Like hitting an elephant with a stalk of grass.

  The old woman, wig askew, made a sudden, unexpected lunge at Lomax, more like falling than lunging, and grasped him round the waist. Lomax twisted round so that he was face to face in the old woman’s embrace and for a second they looked like a pair of grappling pensioners at a particularly fraught tea-dance.

  The old woman had sent Len Lomax off balance and the two of them wobbled perilously as he tried to regain equilibrium. There was another, more urgent platform announcement about the through train and a rush of air and noise signalling its approach. There was a collective gasp of horror from those members of the crowd who were close enough to the bumbling old waltzers to see the imminent danger in their dance. People started to yell and shout and a couple of blokes leaped forward and tried, and failed, to pull them back.

  There was a quantum second of silence, counting for nothing in one dimension and stretching to infinity in another. In the balance between triumph and disaster Tracy sensed the inevitability of the outcome.

  Sound returned with a vengeance as the train roared into the station and Tracy watched in disbelief as Len Lomax and the old biddy, still clasped in each other’s arms, both lost their footing and toppled over the edge into the engine’s unforgiving path. Tracy slapped her hand over the kid’s eyes but it was all over in a second. The noise of the train’s shrieking brakes outdid the screams and cries from the people on the platform. It was no longer a through train, it was a stopping one now.

  Turning away, Tracy caught a glimpse of the leather-jackets, resuscitated like a pair of cartoon villains, scrambling away up the escalator. The puppet-master was gone, no need for the puppets to hang around.

  ‘I can’t see,’ Courtney said.

  ‘Sorry,’ Tracy said, removing her hand from the kid’s eyes.

  A pair of railway police were sprinting down the other escalator and into the pandemonium on the platform. Two platforms over, another train was standing patiently. ‘Come on,’Tracy said to the kid. The guard was already blowing the whistle to signal that the doors were about to shut. They stepped on to the train just before its jaws hissed and closed.

  They walked to the far end of the train, took their seats sedately, like any passengers. All the kid had left of the wand was the silver star. She put it in the backpack.

  Tracy found an old freckled banana nestling next to the Maglite in the bottom of her bag. Kid gave the thumbs-up. Made starfish hands out the window.

  For a hallucinogenic moment Tracy thought she saw the Saab driver standing next to Brian Jackson on the platform.

  Go
odbye to Leeds. Good riddance to bad rubbish, Tracy thought. She was never coming back. She was finished with the past. She was an astronaut who’d travelled too far. No return to earth for Tracy. She wasn’t Tracy any more anyway. She was Imogen Brown. She had seventeen friends on Facebook and cash in the bank. And she had the kid to look after. Sleep, eat, protect. Repeat.

  Poor old Tilly with her shaky knees and her dicky hip dancing her last waltz in the arms of a man. A brief encounter on a railway platform. Nothing lasts really. Neither happiness nor despair. Not even life lasts very long. She’d played Laura Jesson once, a pretty dreadful repertory production – the Wolsey in Ipswich, or maybe it was the Theatre Royal in Windsor. It didn’t matter now. At the time she was too young to understand the notion of sacrifice, of what love demanded of a person.

  A bad man who wanted to hurt the ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’ child. For a second she thought she saw her father in his face.

  And then she was rolling, rolling through the air and she thought it will be all right, it’s not far to fall to the tracks, but then the train got in the way. Silly Tilly.

  Our little life is rounded with a sleep. She thought her wig might have fallen off. You didn’t want to be undignified at the end. If only it was somebody else’s story and not mine. Coiling down into the cold water, the big silver fish shoaling around her, escorting her, protecting her, as she sank slowly down on to the seabed. Be not afeard. Her bones already coral. Her eyes as blind as pearls. The rest is silence.

  A Wounded Deer – leaps highest. Crossing on the glassed-in bridge over the tracks, he saw the whole drama play out. He recognized the bizarre cast of players – Vince Collier’s mother, the woman who had stolen his Saab, the little girl, Tweedledum and Tweedledee – in this strange impromptu performance. The only new actor was the old man who fell beneath the train with Vince Collier’s mother. From up here it looked as if she might have pushed him. What was the title of that Mary Gauthier song? ‘Mercy Now’?