Officer Cutter kept the law when he needed to. At home, he laid the law down because he could. Jenny sensed the time would come when she would become another disappointment to him. She didn’t want to be like her mum, floating around the house like a golden ghost, wondering what to do next apart from look pretty. Aside from Mrs Evans, Jenny knew she was her mum’s only friend. When her dad wasn’t there, they talked. When Jenny was alone, she used his tools. The first time John and Deborah Cutter saw the small crescent shapes of a carpenter’s chisel cut into the top of Jenny’s thigh was the afternoon they identified her body.
‘Come on,’ said Jean. ‘Let’s go and tell Calvin what we think of him. Then we can look after Connor. He’ll need a cuddle in all this cold.’
‘That sounds good,’ said Jenny.
She linked arms with Jean and they glanced back up the street to where Alice still stood in the light of Munson’s waiting for Jonny Raffique.
7
Deborah Cutter took the wheelbarrow leaning against the wall of the house, figuring nobody would be using it tonight, telling herself she’d return it when she was finished. Avoiding the streets, she pushed it along the paths and lanes of the village, through puddles and past bins, until she rounded the back of the fire station. As usual, it was unmanned and unlocked.
In the gloomy chill of the station house, she opened the appliance door and climbed into the cab she had once been fucked in. She took a torch from the shoulder strap of a breathing apparatus set, then searched station cupboards and cubbyholes until she found what she was looking for: a five-gallon jerry can and a length of hose.
She sucked on the end of the tube to draw fuel from the tank. She pushed it into the open can and listened to the hollow metallic splashing, gradually dulling as the container filled. When the diesel gushed over the brim, she pulled the tube out and screwed the lid on, her coated fingers slipping off as it tightened. She pulled her cuff down over her hand to give her enough purchase to finish the job, before dragging the can to the wicket gate in the back door and heaving it out. As she stepped out of the station house and closed the gate behind her, red diesel continued to bleed over the scrubbed tiled floor, coursing through tyre treads and seeping into mortar cracks.
Seven years earlier
Alice Corggie sheltered from the snow beneath the striped canvas awning of Munson’s, backlit by the lights from the shop window and the sparkling glass jars of boiled sweets in rows. She was yearning for Jonny, her new protector. They came from different sides of the town but they both had to walk down Main Street to get to the school.
‘Good morning, Alice,’ said Ed Munson, standing in the door of his shop. He put a partially smoked cigar to his mouth, held his lighter to it and drew.
‘Morning, Mr Munson,’ said Alice.
He opened his mouth and a lazy cloud of blue-grey cigar smoke drifted out. Alice watched it turn and roll in the air until it reached her.
‘I like that smell,’ she said. ‘It’s nice.’
‘Mm, me too.’
‘It reminds me of my dad.’
‘Same cigar right enough.’ He held his cigar out to her, teasing. ‘You want a shot?’
Ed Munson was quick to withdraw the offer when Alice went to take the cigar.
‘You wee bugger.’
She gave him her best roguish smile and a stare of such assured depth that she saw he was almost disarmed.
‘You need to be keeping your eye on me.’
‘So I see,’ he said.
And he did. She could feel him watching as she turned her attention to the street.
‘You see Norrie?’
‘He is so weird,’ said Alice.
‘How so?’
‘Birdwatching?’
‘Boys have hobbies; birdwatching is his.’
‘But he’s obsessed.’
‘No, he’s paying attention to the world about him, Alice. He sees things, notices.’ Ed Munson glanced down at the young girl of Norrie’s dreams. ‘I’d say that was a fine quality, wouldn’t you?’
‘I suppose.’ Alice was distracted, checking the street.
‘So,’ he said, ‘Jean and Jenny making you wait today?’
Alice shook her head. ‘I’m waiting on Jonny.’
Ed Munson drew on his cigar again, holding the flavour for a few seconds before releasing for her to share.
‘Jonny, is it?’
He looked down at her and raised his eyebrows, envious of the boy Raffique. Alice was pleased with his response.
‘Lucky him. He seems a nice boy.’
‘That’s why I chose him.’
‘Oh, you chose him, did you?’
‘Of course.’
‘He didn’t take pity on you?’
‘Mum says you should never pity the pretty because they’ll inherit whoever they choose.’
‘Well, your mum should know. She’s a beauty herself.’
‘The most beautiful woman in the village.’
‘That’s your dad speaking.’
‘And Mum.’
‘And what else does your mum tell you?’
‘That I’ll make grown men wish they were young again.’
She looked up at Ed Munson as he coughed and spluttered over his cigar.
‘Go down the wrong way?’
Munson nodded, wiping his mouth.
‘Want me to pat your back?’
‘No, no thank you,’ he said, recovering. ‘I’m fine. I should be getting back to work.’
‘Okay.’
‘You make sure young Jonny’s good to you, mind.’
‘I will.’
Ed Munson went back inside, to newspapers, cigarettes and sweets.
Juan ‘Jonny’ Raffique was still considered new to the school. He was the most exotic thing Alice had ever seen or could imagine. Black-haired and dark-skinned, he had arrived unannounced one morning with his mother, Tina Louise. As impossible as it seemed to the gawking, pale-skinned class, they had come all the way from America and now lived in the squat three-roomed gatehouse at the entrance of the Struans’ driveway. That Monday, every child had been transfixed. Jonny was an alien deity. Nearly all the girls fell in love with him. (Lucy Magnal didn’t love anybody.) The boys were completely wrong-footed by his appearance and unsure how to react. They splashed around in their combined juices of envy and admiration as his Californian accent turned every word into magic.
Alice fell headlong for Jonny the instant she heard him speak. As he introduced himself, standing at the front of the classroom, the sea-washed syllables of his hometown, Sausalito, swelled from his throat and poured from his mouth as saucealeedo, a gorgeous, sun-drenched liquid. It made her giddy and dizzy, moist and warm. When the teacher told him to take the vacant seat next to Alice, a seat too hot for any other boy, she was rendered inarticulate and clumsy by his words. Jonny Raffique’s voice was Alice’s first sexual experience.
From that moment, Alice Corggie loved Jonny Raffique and didn’t care who knew. She bound her initials with his inside countless naively skewered hearts, on desktops, exercise books and, in one unseen declaration, on the breast flesh sprouting within her blouse: a juvenile tattoo of red and blue biro that would never wash off because she drew it the night before she died. Now she waited outside Munson’s, desperate to show him.
Alice would have been his first victim.
Jonny would have been her only mistake.
8
The boy’s bed was stripped. The arm of a ragged cotton pyjama jacket hung from within the folds of the blankets, sheets and pillowcases pushed into a plastic laundry basket in the corner. The tallboy wardrobe behind the door was all but empty, containing a couple of changes of clothes at most. The wall held one empty picture hook and an old mirror put beyond any practical use by damp. Nugget turned the knob of an old-fa
shioned radio. It was dead. The low wooden shelves at the footboard held no toys and few books. He recognised the books from his own child’s schooling and instinctively picked them up. They were well used; thumbed, folded and worn. Especially the bottle-green hardbacks of the Children’s World Encyclopedia, which Nugget knew contained somewhere within its pages instructions on how to fold a sheet of paper into a boat. When he lifted them to his nose, he was disturbed to find that they still held the smell of the classroom, and the day Norrie died came rushing back. He threw them down.
On the other side of the room, the rolltop writing bureau and its attendant swivel chair shone from regular cleaning. Nugget wheeled the chair out and sat down, resting the mailbag of money on his lap. Expecting the desk to be locked, he was surprised by the easy sliding motion of the shutter as it opened up.
Get the chimney swept.
Buy clothes for the winter.
Make sure you pay the bills.
Apart from a few pencils, a jotter, some drawing pins and a musty smell, all the bureau contained was a collection of these notes, lying on the writing surface, each signed with an S.
We hope you’re looking after yourself.
Make sure you stay well fed.
Are you keeping the house clean?
Your mother says hello.
Until Nugget got to the bottom one, sellotaped to the leather.
Hope to see you soon.
The first one?
‘Hope.’ He sighed and replaced the notes, trying to keep them in their original order. ‘What a fucking word.’
He switched his head torch off and stared across at the bed next to the window.
The icy blue moonlight emphasised the desperate emptiness of the room; without comfort of any form. All the boy did was sleep here. The net curtain wafted away from the broken pane, through which Nugget glimpsed the ghostly school ruins where shy of an hour ago they had buried him.
Bru jumped up onto the bed and lay down.
‘May as well make yourself comfortable,’ Nugget said, pushing away from the bureau and rising from the chair. He shouldered the money as he walked across and sat next to Bru, his back to the window. The dog looked to be taking his advice, relaxing into his usual sleeping position. Nugget stroked the soft dip between the animal’s hackles as he wondered what was behind the white-gloss door across the landing.
‘Stay, boy.’
He turned his torch back on and partially opened the door. He poked his head around as if expecting somebody to be inside. It was empty. The parents’ bedroom. It looked untouched. Although damp, it was spotlessly clean. When Nugget picked the single framed photograph up from the dressing table, he saw it had been dusted. The surfaces and the mirror had been wiped recently. The sheets and cover on the bed were laundered. A seasonal branch of berry-laden holly stuck out of a small vase. He lifted it. It had water in it. The room was a shrine.
‘No fucking way. You really thought they were coming back.’ He hugged the bag of money hard, then sagged into the bed as the boy’s loneliness dawned on him and connected them both. ‘Oh Jesus. You sorry little fucker.’
Looking at the picture of Shep and Rebecca Evans deepened his mood. Delving through the envelopes of money, he retrieved the bottle and drained the contents into his freshly emptied stomach. The whisky dropped through him like molten lead and scorched its way straight to his head. They were young in the picture, smiling as they leaned against their new car. Nice clothes as well, fashionable and fitted. Must have been from the days when they were doing well, before he came along. Then Nugget noticed that it was more than a hug that he was giving her. Shep had his hand on her tummy, which meant that it must have been taken after they’d moved here.
He’d liked Shep the moment they met. Most people had been inclined to. It was obvious that the man had a good streak in him. Unlike many others, Nugget had also liked Rebecca, and would have considered her time well spent had she ever succumbed to any of the advances he’d made when Shep was away on business. He’d made it plain he thought she was too good for this end-of-the-road, nowhere village. Only the child held her back, and, in the eyes of the villagers, proved him wrong. He’d persisted until the accident and the priest had put her well and truly out of bounds.
Nugget leant over to the dressing table. He rummaged through the drawers. Some papers, some photographs, a birth certificate with the boy’s real name on it. In the middle drawer, nothing but the stump of a black eyeliner and a pink handkerchief with an R embroidered into the corner. It was still fragrant. It didn’t belong to this house. He put his nose into the drawer. He could smell her. He was erect again.
He pumped a few pearly dribbles onto the cotton hanky.
He sucked the final drops of whisky from the neck. He didn’t want to leave. He was growing fond of this room. He lay on her pillow as the insanity of the house spun around him. He fell asleep clutching the mailbag.
Seven years earlier
Tina Louise and Jonny Raffique shivered as they opened the door on the morning. Snowflakes fell through the light of the twin gateway lamps outside their new home.
‘You think it will ever stop?’
He shrugged. ‘I kinda like it.’
‘You are a liar,’ she said, ‘and a bad one at that.’
‘Just trying to make it work, Mom.’
‘I know.’
She looked down at him. Handsome as he was, his sallow face and brown eyes were haunted by the fact that they had been forced into flight, across the ocean.
‘We’ll make it work, don’t worry.’
He never let on that the village felt like the end of the world. He felt cold and damp every morning he awoke.
‘How many hours of daylight today, Mom?’
‘Six, I guess, maybe less.’
‘That’s something.’
‘Hey you, be positive.’
She gave him a hug, which he returned.
‘Love you, Mom.’
Jonny Raffique kissed Tina Louise, pulled his hood up and stepped out into the snow. At the gate, he waved to his mom, zipped up his parka so that his face all but disappeared, then hid his hands in the high side-pockets and pulled it tight around his body. It was the thickest, heaviest item of clothing he had ever owned, but it couldn’t keep him warm.
9
Deborah surrendered to the weight of the wheelbarrow. Joints reconnected and her breathing recovered as her heart battered inside the straitjacket of arms bound around herself.
Why was the door open? She stared into the dead boy’s house from the foot of its porch steps. Her lower jaw hung, her lungs pumped, her tongue dried into the base of her mouth. Her hair was lank with grease. Droplets trickled down her spine-line. Did he know nobody would go in, or that he wasn’t coming back? Did he go out there to die? She shuddered, instantly back in the school ruins. The sight of him sticking out of the ground was a white spike in her memory. It was driven in deep, a lightning rod to the root of the pain that tore through time and brought Jenny back to life. Tonight the hurt had been renewed. Deborah was appalled with herself. She had spoken to him: ‘Why are you here?’ But he had made her do it, just by being there. She’d cried, given herself away. He had no right to be there, to look to her for help. It was unfair. It was an unjust union. The horror of it had sheared sense and strength from her mind.
Nervy and jelly-legged, she heaved the can up the steps. It bounced against her shins. Muscles, sinews and ligaments chorused resistance as they were forced back into use. Determination drove her dehydrated body. She was satisfied when she placed the can on the step; sickened as she tasted the smell from inside the house. It reached into her. She sealed her mouth and pinched her nose tight, breathing from her palm as though it held the last remaining scoop of fresh air. Her raggybit pinky nail dug into the pearled blister caused by the hot candle wax of the vigil mass. The
blister tore easily, humour bleeding across knuckles that had whitened as the boy’s skull had been crushed, through the criss-cross diamonds of age etched on unwashed skin.
When she was ready, she opened her eyes and loosened her hand. What she saw confused her. Paper boats, grounded, facing in the same direction, triangles of expectation, queuing to leave. They pointed towards the back window. Moonbeams fell on the leading boats. Deborah saw ascension, escape.
‘Why didn’t you just go?’
She slapped herself.
‘Shame on you, Debbie Cutter.’
Pushing a rat tail of hair into her mouth, she ground the filaments hard between her teeth, refusing to cry again.
Deborah had ended up on the opposite side of the glade from John Cutter, her vigil flame right up to her face, wanting him to see her, to look at her. She couldn’t remember the last time they had spoken, but she could recall every crease of his face. She no longer prayed for her John to return, but she still hoped. He stood back, his face hidden. She had watched his active hands as they worked, wringing – craving use. But instead of John, it was the self-buried boy between them who had looked back and understood. Every ‘no’ she had ever felt screamed through her. She looked beyond him, searching for John. She saw his hands part and was convinced he had seen her, that saving her was the impetus for his steady walk from under the trees, his easy bend to pick up the stray branch, his raising of strong arms and their swift release. She had wanted to cry out, to cheer. He had done it for her. But she was dumbfounded. Her big strong John broke like a dam. She had only seen him cry once before.
They helped him, held him while he wept, kept her away, as though shielding him, keeping infection away from a wound. Even later, when the spade had been pushed towards her, its holder, Sandy Blades, couldn’t look at her.
The Wrong Child Page 6