It rang at once, but that was all it did, and the same proved true of the phone at her store. When he'd had enough of the relentless trilling of the bell he reverted to what he did best: pacing the apartment at the end of a tether that was the sound of the twenty-four-hour television news. He let half an hour plod by before he tried Leslie's home number again, but it had the same answer for him. Soon his mother would be home, and the thought of this additional complication made him dial Leslie's number one last time as the hem of the sky began to blacken.
He was pacing back and forth as far as the cord of the phone would stretch when the bell was interrupted halfway through its third pair of rings. "Yes?" Leslie said breathlessly.
She sounded so eager that for an instant he gave into the wish that she could have been expecting him. "Hi," he said.
"Yes, who is it?"
"Sorry. Just Jack Woollie."
"Yes, Jack. Why are you calling?"
He'd assumed her enthusiasm would vanish once she recognised him, but it hadn't flagged yet. "I guess first I want to tell you I haven't been in touch with Ian," he said.
"Oh."
The syllable appeared to mean so much yet conveyed so little to him that he felt bound to add "Because you told me twice not to."
"Did I? Right now I wish you were calling to tell me you had."
He would have been encouraged to hear that if the animation hadn't deserted her voice. "Why," he said, "what..."
"He stayed out overnight and I don't know where he is."
"I guess people do that kind of stuff at his age."
"Did you?"
"You could say I did worse when I wasn't much older. I went to the States and figured out that was where I ought to be. Hey, but I'm sure Ian wouldn't do that."
"You don't think so."
"I don't see how he could have got the idea from me. I never talked to him about it. If I had I'd have done my best to put him off. I know you need each other."
"Jack..."
"I haven't gone anywhere."
"This is hard for me to say, especially just now, but I think I was wrong about you."
"Well, okay. I mean, that's... Wrong how?"
"Ian trusted you, I'm sure he still does, and that should have meant more to me. And I know you never tried to do him anything but good. I'm the one who screwed him up."
"I can't let you say that if you're counting me as a friend or even if you aren't. I saw you doing your best to keep him together."
"And failing. Once is enough if it's bad enough."
"Tell me what's so bad it could cancel all the rest you've done for him."
"I made him feel suspected. That's what his note says."
"Suspected of what?"
"Of doing something to Charlotte, but I know he didn't now it's too—" She found an excuse to interrupt herself that came as an audible relief. "Charlotte, she's Hilene's daughter, that's the woman Roger moved in with. She ran off, Charlotte, the day before yesterday while Ian was meant to be taking her in the park, and she hasn't been seen since."
The cause of the shiver that passed through Jack was surely nothing, he thought, but evidence of the way a writer's mind worked, trying to tidy up reality and force it to make more sense than it did. "How far from your place was she when she took off?" he hardly knew why he asked.
"The far side of the park."
"That's the one with the river in it."
"If you can call it a river. Too shallow to be much of a danger if that's what you had in mind. Anyway," she said, having regained some vigour by the sound of it, "this can't be why you called."
"Well—"
"Before you tell me, let me tell you I wish now I hadn't shown you the door."
"I wish that too."
"If you were phoning to talk about that..."
"I wouldn't have presumed to."
"Still, you see you can. If it's something you'd rather not talk about over the phone..."
"I'd love to see you. I hope I can soon. Only right now I need to stay here and wait for a call."
"You should have told me to stop interrupting."
"You aren't, and I called you, remember. This other business isn't due for hours yet," Jack said, because the sky appeared to be renewing its multicoloured glow. "Keep talking. Sounds like you can use it as much as I can."
"Where have you ended up, Jack?"
"At my mother's. Do you want the number? It isn't in the book."
"I'd like it."
She asked him to repeat it, she read it back to him, and then she said "There's something I don't understand."
"Tell me."
"You said I asked you twice not to contact Ian. When did I?"
"Once when, you know, when I was having to leave, and then you gave my mother the message."
"When I rang last night, you mean?"
"Last night? Is that the only time you spoke with her?"
"Except when she came to find you at my house. I rang in case you'd heard from Ian."
"Jesus."
"Why, what did she say I'd said?"
"That I shouldn't try to reach either of you."
"It was more her assuming that was what I wanted, Jack. She oughtn't to have told you I said it."
"So long as I know the truth now," Jack said, and tried to disentangle one more thread of the confusion that had begun to reveal itself. "I don't suppose anyone tried to call me at your number that you're aware of."
"That's so. Was that why you rang?"
"Originally, but I'm glad we had this chance to talk."
"Me too. I feel as much better as I can just now."
"Shall I get out of the way in case someone else is trying to reach you? You could give me a quick call if you hear any news of Ian, if it's not too late."
"Poor Jack, I've given you my worries. I'll say good-bye, then." In a moment her voice returned, closer to the mouthpiece. "For now," she said.
"You bet," Jack responded, but his thoughts were already elsewhere. He had to put aside whatever he and Leslie might have regained, so that he could attempt to work out the other implications of their talk. He laid down the receiver and kept his hand on the phone in case it was about to ring, but that didn't help him think. He had just let go of it when the street door slammed.
It was his mother. He heard her tramping up the hollow stairs and her weary key scratching at the lock. She leaned against the door to shut it, deflating her cheeks with a long loud puff, before trudging to dump herself and her bag on the sofa as though she was too fatigued to locate her own chair. Nevertheless she said "Have you had something to eat?"
"Not yet."
"We'll have something brought in, shall we? The Chinky by the station does if you ask. Are you feeling like a dear?"
"What kind?"
"The kind who'd bring his poor old fagged-out mum a cup of tea."
Jack paced into the kitchen yet again and dangled tea bags in two mugs. He was resting his hand on the electric kettle while it lost its chill, and watching colours withdraw almost imperceptibly from the sky, when his mother called "What have you been doing today?"
"I'll tell you when I'm there."
He felt the metal achieve body temperature like someone assumed to be dead who was reviving. Soon it was nearly unbearable to touch, then more than nearly, and then it lost itself in contemplation for minutes before emitting a sneeze of steam. Jack splashed the water into the mugs and arranged them together with a half-full carton of milk on a tray like a framed photograph of children at play in a fifties schoolyard, a photograph tipped onto its back to turn their faces upward. "What did you say you'd been up to?" his mother said as he bore it into the main room.
He watched her add milk to her tea and fish the bag almost to the surface only to return it to drowning. When she looked inquisitively at him he said "I just got through speaking to Leslie Ames."
His mother's face stiffened and squeezed its lips outward, rather as they used to invite a kiss when he'd been a child. She s
tared at her mug and began to jerk the string of the tea bag as though teasing it with the notion of rescue. "Are you going to tell me what Mrs. Ames said?"
She was trying so hard to make him feel guilty he almost laughed. "She says she didn't speak to you yesterday when you said she did."
"Who are you going to believe, a woman you hardly know or your own mother?"
"Whoever's telling the truth."
She hauled the bag out of the muddy liquid and dropped it on the tray, where it lost shape in the midst of an expanding stain, then fed herself a sip from the mug. "That's made too strong," she said, and as if this were part of the same complaint "Perhaps someday you'll know what it's like to have a child turn on you after you've done your best for them."
"You aren't saying you were lying on my behalf."
"I won't, then."
"How were you? How was it supposed to help me?"
"Do you want more of the kind of publicity you got while you were, while you were staying with her? That won't do your career any good, John."
"That's—Hold on. It was Ian you'd spoken to when you told me Leslie called, wasn't it?"
"And if it was?"
"Let's stop fencing. What did he want, did he say?"
"I've absolutely no idea. Presumably to speak to you. Perhaps he missed having a man about the house. I know how that feels myself."
"So what did you tell him?"
"I said I didn't think his mother would want him speaking to you after she'd turned you out. And as long as what she says is so important to you I may tell you she didn't contradict me when I spoke to her last night."
"You won't like me asking this, but what did it have to do with you whether I talked to him?"
"Oh, John, for heaven's sake. Try and think straight. You've the intelligence. He's just a boy. If you'd spun him that tale about your father not being dead there's no knowing who he might have told, and you just tell me if you can what good that could have done you."
Jack wished he'd never tried to persuade her that his father was alive, not by any means the only thing he'd said or done recently that he yearned to take back. His defeat must have looked like the end of the conversation, because his mother stood up. "I'm going to make a fresh one," she announced, picking up her mug, "and while I am perhaps you can get some use out of the phone."
"How do you mean?"
"Call the Chinky," she said with an incredulous glance at him. "The menu's in the drawer of the phone table. I hope you're starving. I am."
It showed how trapped by pressure his thoughts were when for as long as he'd taken to ask the question he'd been unable to think what the answer could be. He seemed to have spent the last half hour in learning nothing useful, in confusing himself further and worsening the prospect of speaking to his father while his mother was in earshot. Surely now she couldn't suspect his father wasn't dead. One wrong word from her for his father to overhear—one hint that she knew about him, even if she didn't... Jack's imagination was so eager to foresee the worst that he found himself wishing he'd never inflamed it by writing books.
FORTY-SEVEN
"What are you playing at now, son? What's the game?"
Ian felt as if he'd left his breath somewhere in front of him. The hand that had been reaching for the knife had darted to the floor and helped push him backward a stumbling pace, but he didn't know if he'd been swift enough for Woollie not to have glimpsed his intention, and Woollie's expression wasn't telling. The toothless mouth lolled in a grin that looked near to idiotic, the eyes might have been watching a dream. Next door the phone continued to ring, interrupting Ian's thoughts as they struggled to put themselves together. He could find nothing to say except the truth, and suddenly he didn't care—but Charlotte, who was gazing in paralysed dismay at him over the edge of the bed, opened her mouth with such an effort he heard her lips part. "He's being a horse."
As Woollie's head jerked sideways his gaze stuck to Ian. "What's that, love?"
"He was being a horse pulling the coach."
"What are you babbling on about? Not talking in your sleep, are you? My eyes aren't past it yet, and I can't see any coach."
"The one you said was coming to get us."
"That'll be coming all right. It better had for everyone's sake." Woollie's gaze twitched closer to the surface and turned to her. "He was trying to entertain you, are you saying?"
"He was funny."
"That so, son? Were you putting on a show?"
Ian didn't respond until Woollie's raw gaze swam round to him, and then he made himself nod. As the phone in his house fell silent he realised he was moving his head not unlike a horse's, and succeeded in producing a whispered neigh followed by one somewhat louder. "All right, no need to carry on," Woollie said, and slid his hand off the stool to pat the knife as if he'd only now remembered it was there. "What are we going to do with him, love?"
"Don't know," Charlotte mumbled, and her arms shrank against her sides. "Nothing," she begged.
"Can't do that, can we? We'll have to do something with a horse that's got itself into a bedroom."
Both the mattress and the loose board emitted creaks as Ian rested his hands on the end of the bed and shoved himself to his feet. "Too late," Woollie muttered. "He doesn't want anyone thinking he's a horse any more."
He might have been addressing the room rather than his captives. When his gaze acknowledged them it alighted none too favourably on Charlotte. "Have you finished, love?"
"What?" she hardly more than mouthed.
"The sleepy children," Woollie said with little patience, jabbing a finger at the album on the bed. "Have you done with them?"
"Yes."
Ian understood why that sounded so much like a prayer, and could only hope Woollie hadn't noticed. The man thrust out a hand for the album, but Charlotte pressed her arms harder against her sides. As Woollie's mouth began to droop into a clown's exaggerated grimace, Ian grabbed the album and paced around the bed to plant it in the outstretched hand. He was on the point of doing so when he grew intensely aware of being close enough to struggle with their captor—to launch all his weight at Woollie and knock him off the stool before he could pull out the knife, and keep him clear of Charlotte long enough for her to escape. But the stool would be in the way of the door, and probably their struggle would be too, and all he would achieve would be to infuriate Woollie and terrify Charlotte. Or was he simply finding excuses not to take the risk, not to put himself in danger of being cut or stabbed? As he tried to draw enough of a stealthy breath to lend his bravery some oxygen, Woollie stretched his forefinger along the blade and raised the handle far enough to grasp. Ian had lost any chance to surprise him. He dropped the album on the man's intimidating palm with a slap that smelled of earthy leather, and backed away feeling hopelessly useless, trapped under the slab in his mind. "That didn't work, did it, son?" Woollie said.
Ian had a nightmarish sense of being unable to conceal any of his thoughts. "What?" he tried to say as if he didn't know.
"What do you reckon we're talking about? Your story and nothing else."
"Which story?" Ian had to ask.
"The one that was going to put your playmate to sleep."
The realisation that he'd strayed close to betraying himself even though Woollie hadn't been suspicious of him caused Ian to sway against the bedroom wall. Sleeplessness was catching up with him, sneaking nightmares in among his thoughts. He watched uneasily as Woollie laid the album in his lap beside the eager knife and gazed at one or the other of them. "So what's the plan now?" Woollie said.
It was only to save Charlotte from feeling expected to respond that Ian mumbled "Don't have one."
"Not good for much but telling stories, are you? You take after someone else we know." Woollie squeezed his eyes and mouth shut, possibly intending to mime slumber but looking more like a displeased corpse, then his eyes came out of hiding to check that Ian hadn't dared to move. "Tell you what you do. Give your playmate a cuddle and see if tha
t helps her go off."
Charlotte's unhappy gaze followed Ian as he retreated to the far side of the bed. He guessed she would rather he placed himself between her and their captor, but he wanted to be able to watch the man. He swung his legs onto the rumpled quilt and lowered his head to the misshapen wrinkled pillow, his skin crawling with the stifled heat of the unventilated room. He stretched one tentative embarrassed hand toward Charlotte, and she turned to face him, hunching up her shoulders at Woollie's presence behind her. As Ian's hand settled over the small of her back, Woollie said "That's more like it. That's how the babes should be. Shut those eyes now and I'll sing you to sleep."
A shudder passed through Charlotte, then her body grew so stiff that Ian found himself stroking her back. "Don't worry," he murmured, all that he could think of to risk saying, by no means enough in itself.
"You can listen to him for once, love. Those eyes aren't shut, are they? I'll know if they're not. Yours as well, son. Set your playmate a good example for once."
"We'll be okay," Ian whispered, and rubbed her spine harder. Her thin dress began to ride up, and she tugged it down furiously and sent him a scowl he might have expected from someone his age or even older. When he moderated his touch she let down her eyelids as though acknowledging his thoughtfulness and, with a final nervous blink at him, squashed them shut. That was Ian's cue to close his own until her face was no more than a glimmer and their captor's shape a flickery silhouette. He continued to massage the taut ridged wire of her spine, which felt in danger of snapping with tension, as Woollie began to sing.
"Now I lay you down to sleep,
Close your eyes good night.
Angels come your soul to keep.
Close your eyes good night..."
Ian wasn't confident of being able to stand much of this himself, especially while he was aware how it appalled Charlotte. No sooner had Woollie croaked the lullaby in an almost tuneless murmur than he recommenced, and Ian grew desperate for a way to soothe her. As her eyelids shivered, unwilling to imprison her with whatever she might be seeing in her own dark, his hand found the nape of her neck and began to manipulate it gently as he remembered his mother once treating his when he'd been nightmarish with a fever. Her shoulders worked, suggesting that they wanted to dislodge his clasp, and then, despite the drone of yet another repetition of the lullaby, they started to relax. Her eyelids slackened into restfulness, her forehead became smooth, her breathing adopted the rhythm of his fingers on her neck. When her body curled toward him he knew she was asleep.
Silent Children Page 30