by John Halkin
‘Helen—’
‘I suspected you’d something like that in the picnic box.’
‘They’re dead.’
She shook her head violently. ‘They’re not dead, Matt.’
‘Of course they are.’
‘Not in your mind. You dream about them, don’t you? I know you do. You toss and turn, you moan, sometimes I hear you crying, whimpering like some animal in pain.’ She was still yelling at him, all her pent-up emotions flooding out. ‘I lie awake listening to you, d’you understand? Now you go and do this to me.’
‘Helen, I’d like to tell you about them.’
‘The doctors explained you might be like this but I thought—’ She bit her lip anxiously, attempting to control herself. ‘I’ll have to ring them up, Matt.’
‘Why?’
‘They told me to.’
‘Not before we’ve had a talk.’
‘Don’t you see you’re ill, Matt?’ she pleaded with him. ‘The doctors will help you.’
‘Helen, listen to me!’ He stood with his back to the door, refusing to move till she’d heard him out. Then he told her how he’d gone back to the sewers to take some photographs – ‘And to prove I could, I suppose,’ he admitted – and all that had happened down there. The army of worms massing in every tunnel, what Angus had said, the lot.
Her face was anguished. He went to her, putting his arm around her. ‘What really made you do it?’ she asked. ‘Oh, Matt, they look horrid. Those teeth… the colour like slime… We’ve got to burn them. We can’t risk Jenny seeing them.’
‘But I think they’re lovely!’ Jenny stood in the doorway in her pyjamas. ‘I couldn’t sleep when you two were quarrelling. Are those the worms which ate you? Aren’t they beautiful?’
‘Jenny, don’t touch them!’ Helen cried out.
‘They’re dead,’ Matt repeated wearily. ‘And, Jenny, we weren’t really quarrelling. Your Mummy’s worried, that’s all.’
‘About the worms?’
‘That’s right.’
Helen was looking at them both helplessly. She must have been to bed already, Matt thought; perhaps even slept. Her short blonde hair stuck out untidily at the sides; her dressing-gown clung awkwardly to her figure, making it more obvious that she’d been putting on weight around the hips.
‘Have you developed your pictures yet?’ Jenny asked.
‘Yes. Helen. I thought… well, we need to earn more money and if we can sell the pictures to magazines…’
‘Of dead worms?’ Scorn. Disbelief.
‘They were alive.’
‘But why did you bring these dead ones here?’
It was a logical question. He glanced at Jenny. Her hand, clean from the bath and slightly rosy, was resting on the back of one of the worms. He remembered what she’d said about the crocodile farm and the thought he’d had outside the craft shop.
‘For the skins,’ he said. ‘They could be made into belts or something.’
Helen was unimpressed. ‘That colour? Who’d buy that colour? Like cats’ eyes in the dark.’
Her voice had softened, though. She’d constantly nagged at him over the years to show some business initiative. The TV company, she’d often declared, was merely exploiting him. They paid him a miserable salary and gave all the big reputation-building jobs to other people. It was up to him to make his own way, wasn’t it? Then she’d go on to quote her own father who’d started half a dozen small businesses in his time.
‘I like the colour,’ said Jenny.
‘And it’s high time you were back in bed.’ Helen took refuge in scolding her. She propelled Jenny towards the door. ‘Matt, don’t stay up all night if you can help it.’
She left him with a feeling of emptiness and bewilderment. He’d neither won nor lost, but could he really talk to her now? As for trying to sell the skins, it had been a passing idea, nothing more. Now he’d have to go through the motions at least, if only to avoid being shunted off to a mental home, certified insane.
With a sharp knife he removed the heads of the two worms, then slit them down the belly and began cleaning them out, dumping the guts and bones on an old newspaper. The stench from the gobbets of half-digested meat made him feel sick. As thoroughly as he could, he cleaned the skins, trying to remember what he’d learned a few years ago while working on a short film about taxidermy. It hadn’t been much.
When he went up to bed, Helen was still awake. She lay with the light on, staring up at the ceiling, her eyes red. An open paperback lay on the rug within reach, but he guessed it had only been a pretence at reading. She didn’t even turn her head as he came into the room.
Stooping awkwardly under the low rafters, he got undressed and slipped into bed. No response when he leaned across to kiss her. He switched the light out.
Helen was breathing unevenly. Outside, the breeze quietly rustled among the trees. A dog barked somewhere far away. From the cottage came the occasional creak as it settled down.
He reached out for her, thinking he should make a gesture at least. She rolled over towards him, snuggling into his arms and sobbing unrestrainedly. No point in saying anything. What good could words do? He held her close. Gradually the tears eased; the crisis passed.
She was the one who started to make love, desperately searching in the darkness for his mouth, forcing her tongue between his lips, digging her fingers into him as though trying to unbury something she’d lost.
Gently he caressed her, but she broke impatiently away from him, sat on the edge of the bed and pulled off the nightdress over her head. To see better, she opened the curtains and stood for a few seconds at the window, her full breasts in silhouette against the starlit sky. Then she crawled back to his side of the bed.
For just over a week now he’d been out of hospital; on his first night home they’d attempted to make love, a perfunctory ritual with neither of them very interested. But this was different.
She found his hardened sex, running her spread fingers over it, moving up to his stomach, then down again; up to his ribs, exploring him with her hands, her lips, her tongue, till at last he swung over her, towered above her – her face expectant – and lowered himself into her.
She moaned and clung to him. ‘Matt … Matt…’
And it was more than mere sexual pleasure. He could just see her eyes in the dim light. The barriers which had grown between them, neither knew how, began to dissolve. They recognized each other at last. Turned back the clock, or so it seemed. The old firm…
They had breakfast next morning out in the garden, peeling off their sweaters as the warm sun dissipated the remaining wisps of sea mist. Maybe she was right, Matt was thinking; maybe his mind had become obsessed with sewer worms. And what was so different about them, after all? Nature contained many a threat. Puff adders, rattlesnakes, spitting cobras… Mankind had learned to live with them all.
The quiet was shattered by the splutter of a motorbike approaching through the lane. One final roar announced the rider’s virility before he switched off the engine and came striding through the gate: a boy of about nineteen, swaggering, assertive, with what looked like a knife scar down one cheek.
‘Telegram.’
He handed it over and sauntered off again, revving his engine several times before letting in the clutch and throwing up a shower of dirt in the lane.
‘From Jimmy Case,’ said Matt, showing it to Helen. ‘Wants me to ring him.’
‘If it’s work, tell him you can’t do it. You’re not ready yet.’
‘Depends what it is, doesn’t it?’
They had no phone at the cottage, so he would have to go down to the post office. On the way he would pass the craft shop. No harm in trying, he thought. Without saying anything to Helen or Jenny he went into the shed and wrapped the two rolled-up worm skins in a sheet of old newspaper.
When he came out, Helen was standing by the kitchen door. She had a resigned look on her face.
‘I’ll see if they’re interested,�
�� he called out, tucking the parcel under his arm. ‘Shan’t be long.’
But he didn’t hurry; it wasn’t that sort of day. The sun had already taken the early morning chill off the air and the little fishing town was settling into a slow, lazy rhythm. Swarms of tiny flies hovered above the scattered patches of dog-shit and decaying rubbish in the lane between the houses. He brushed them away from his face. Even the stream seemed subdued.
As he turned into the cobbled street he glimpsed the sea beyond the harbour, dazzling like pure silver.
At the post office he found the telephone occupied by a large, buxom woman who gave the impression she’d settled down for a good long chat. Well, Jimmy could wait. He turned back up the road towards the craft shop.
The string of open sandals was already hanging outside the door and the girl was rearranging the display in the window. She’d a slight sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose, he noticed. Quick eyes with long lashes. Full red lips, without lipstick. Today she was in a plain green dress of some rough folk-weave material, drawn in at the waist by a cord.
A bell tinkled as Matt pushed open the door. She looked round and smiled at him.
‘These things are always untidy!’ she laughed, pushing a wisp of hair back. She wore little cockleshell earrings, but her hands looked practical. ‘Customers never put them back properly. Never buy any, either.’
‘What do they buy?’
‘Oh, sandals mostly. And sun hats.’ She paused, then added disconcertingly. ‘And what can I sell you? A belt? A key-case? Wallet? Look around. Take your time.’
‘I really need some advice.’
A quick expression of disappointment. ‘Oh, if it’s accommodation you need, I’m afraid—’
‘It’s this,’ he interrupted her. He pulled off the newspaper wrapping and unrolled one of the worm skins across the counter. Its colours sparkled with life.
‘Oh! Oh, it’s absolutely gorgeous!’ she exclaimed enthusiastically. ‘But what is it? I’ve never seen anything like it before!’
‘D’you think there might be a sale for this sort of skin? I mean, I imagine you do most of this leather-work yourself?’
‘Mm,’ she nodded. ‘But I wonder how easy this would be to work? It’s some kind of snake, is it?’
‘In a way.’ He unrolled the second skin. ‘Unusual, aren’t they?’
‘Very.’ She picked one up, fingered it, examined it from both sides, then took it to the door to see it in direct sunlight. ‘Not well prepared, are they? Somebody who didn’t know what he was doing.’
‘Me,’ he admitted with a grin. ‘But I’ve three more I haven’t skinned yet. Do them yourself if you’re interested.’
‘How much?’
‘What d’you suggest?’
‘I’d be taking a risk.’
‘I’ve taken a few already, getting them. They’re sewer worms. Heard of them?’
She had. For the first time she seemed to notice his two missing fingers; then she glanced up at his face and suddenly flushed with embarrassment. ‘You’re that cameraman, aren’t you? It was in the local paper – and how you’d bought the old fisherman’s cottage up the hill. I’m sorry, I should’ve recognized you.’ Her face reddened again, as though she’d said the wrong thing.
‘What about the skins?’
‘I’ll be frank. It depends how they turn out. I’ll not know till I’ve tried.’ She hesitated. Then, in a rush, she admitted it’d been a bad summer so far, she couldn’t risk laying out money on them, but if he’d accept a percentage – ‘Twenty-five?’
‘Maybe I’ll shop around a bit.’ He began rolling them up again.
‘There’s nowhere else in Westport.’
‘London?’
‘Make me an offer,’ she invited.
‘Fifty-fifty and no haggling. I get the skins, as many as you need, and you do the rest.’ He remembered the worms’ hard little eyes staring intelligently at him in the sewer; there was something satisfying about the thought of fishing them out one by one to be made into decorative belts or women’s evening purses. ‘Only I’d expect you to peddle them around Harrods and Liberty’s, not only down here.’
For a moment she regarded him pensively; then suddenly she grinned with a flash of white teeth, welcoming the challenge. The tip of her tongue appeared for a tantalizing second. ‘My name’s Fran,’ she introduced herself. ‘Frances Whyte.’
‘It’s agreed, then?’
‘Agreed.’
7
In October that year there was a heat wave. The teachers were on strike in Middlehampton, otherwise Tim and Annie would both have been in school. As it was, they walked disconsolately along the unkempt grass verge running the length of the high wall which surrounded The Cedars and wondered what to do. During the summer holidays there’d been no problem. They’d found a spot where they could get over the wall quite easily; the house was shuttered and closed up; no one had bothered them.
To a stranger’s eye, they might easily have been twins. Tim’s hair was straight, and longer than Annie’s; hers was curly. But they were both ten years old, the same height, dressed in identical blue T-shirts and faded jeans. For as long as they could remember they’d lived next door to each other.
The garden of The Cedars had been ideal for them, with plenty of trees as well as lawns, an orchard and a vegetable patch which an old gardener came in to tend once or twice a week. They’d built a rough shelter for when it rained; stole tomatoes from the greenhouse when they were thirsty; connected up the hosepipe when the sun was too hot and pranced about naked in the spray. Occasionally they’d talked about filling the empty swimming pool, but never risked it.
Now the owner was back.
On the first day of the strike they’d gone over the wall as usual but immediately had to duck down behind some bushes at the sound of voices. When they’d peeped out they’d seen a bronzed, active-looking man in light fawn trousers and a black open-necked shirt practising putting shots on the newly-mown lawn. A brand-new Jaguar, vivid red, reflected the brilliant sunshine glaringly on the drive.
‘Something in the City,’ Tim’s father had said, whatever that meant. ‘Stinking rich. Spends his summers swanning around the Med on a yacht.’
Tim and Annie whispered together hurriedly and decided to beat a retreat, but as they moved he spotted them. In a loud, imperious voice he demanded to know what they thought they were doing, didn’t they realize this was private property, they were trespassing, it would serve them right if he set the dog on them. Tim took a step forward, defending himself hotly, declaring they weren’t harming anything, they weren’t stealing, honestly…
A girl appeared behind the man, inquiringly. She wore a black bikini and long, blonde hair down to her shoulders. Beyond, Tim noticed the unaccustomed sparkle of the water in the filled swimming pool.
‘Darling, let them go. They’ve learned their lesson!’ Her voice was soft with a touch of laughter in it; as she looked at Tim and Annie her lips twitched.
‘Right, but don’t let me catch you here again!’ the man bawled, and he stood watching them as they climbed out the same way they’d come in.
As he remembered it two days later Tim’s lips tightened. They’d known it couldn’t last for ever but the man, whoever he was, had no need to shout at him like that. He stared at the wall. Somewhere on the other side… His foot caught in a tangle of grass and fern; he kicked it free, savagely.
‘We ought to get our own back,’ said Annie, speaking his thoughts. ‘And I know how.’
‘How then?’
‘Biters!’ She added: ‘They’d make ’em jump, and nobody could prove it was us.’
She explained her plan.
Tim’s face lit up with a mischievous grin. ‘That’d show ’em!’ he approved grimly. ‘That’d just show ’em!’
‘Make ’em jump!’ Annie repeated.
They dashed back home, excited, for their wellies and fishing nets. Tim appropriated a large glass jar from
the garden shed; he tied some string around its neck to make a handle.
‘Where are you off to?’ his mother demanded, leaning out of the bedroom window, her face harassed as usual.
‘Out!’ he called back.
They’d first come across the tiny green worms they’d dubbed ‘biters’ one day back in the Easter holidays when they’d had to look after Annie’s younger sister, Joan. That was a bore as usual, specially when she’d insisted on ‘exploring’. They’d decided on the woods beyond the rubbish dump.
The village where they lived was already part suburb, swallowed up by Middlehampton where their fathers worked. In one direction were farms, with miles of cabbages and row upon row of greenhouses; in the other a petrol station with broken, rusting cars in an oil-stained field behind it, and the municipal rubbish dump which they skirted in Indian file.
Then Joan discovered it was more interesting to play in the stream – in reality, little more than a trickle of water at the bottom of a ditch by the side of the dump. She paddled happily for two or three minutes before they’d had to pull her out screaming. Two green biters had attached themselves to her leg, one on the calf and the other lower down on the ankle.
Fortunately her reaction had been immediate, and they were able to pull them off before much damage was done. They’d had no choice but to take her home, wash the wounds and stick Elastoplast over them; they’d also drilled her not to mention the biters in case they got into trouble for letting her go in the ditch. They’d made up some story about her being cut by barbed wire hidden in the long grass.
‘This is where we saw ’em last time,’ Annie announced, staring down into the water. ‘But I can’t see any now.’
It was a fairly clear spot where the water was almost transparent. Farther along the ditch were a couple of rusting tin cans and a twisted bicycle wheel. A slight breeze came from the direction of the rubbish dump, carrying with it an acid smell of ash and decay.
‘There!’ He began to climb down the sloping side of the ditch to get nearer. ‘Hey, they’ve grown bigger. Whoppers!’