Trial by Fire

by Frances Fyfield

  She sat down on a bench hidden by a pillar, clutching the coat bag and the overstuffed handbag, from which she extracted the book, reconciled to the world because of the coat, ready to endure the next forty minutes with the help of the printed page, when she heard whispering as diffuse as underwater humming.

  Òh, I'll be late, I'll be so late. They'll be cross. I told you I didn't like the tube: it never works.'

  Òh, shut up, William, shut up. I'll be late, too. It doesn't matter. Nobody's going to hit us, are they? Be sensible, will you? No one will know if we're late. We're often late. You watch out for the train, will you? You might make it come faster.'

  Helen slid to the edge of her seat, craned her neck so as to look behind the pillar, caught a glimpse of William Featherstone at the extreme edge of the platform and only a few feet away, standing with hands in pockets, gazing down the tunnel as if willing a train to emerge. He was completely absorbed, tense with anxiety, looking first at the tunnel, then at the tracks.

  Òh, look, Evie, look: mice, real mice.' A whisper of excitement.

  From behind the wall, where Evelyn squatted against the support, Helen heard a muttered expression of boredom. Her first response was amusement: two children at play, well, well, well. So they had known one another with the familiarity she had imagined; how coincidental to confirm their secret so far from home. The next reflection contained the thought that theirs was private mischief in which she should not intrude. The tube was as good a place for hiding as any; let them be. Helen might have moved away if their next moves had been as innocuous.

  William knelt at the extreme edge of the platform, riveted by the mice who lived below the rails, a phenomenon that had often riveted her own eyes. While he watched, making odd little cooing noises to the mice, his voice echoing slightly in the tunnel entrance, Evelyn stood upright on her plimsolled feet, ran towards him, stopped short of him, turned and paced back to her spot. She did this twice, as if counting the yards between them, the second time retreating farther so that her distance from him was slightly greater. Then ran a third time, as silent and light as a bird, the extra yard allowing extra speed, retreated again, as if satisfied.

  William was quite oblivious, still whispering to the mice. 'Come here, fella. It's not nice down there. I'll take you home. What happens when a train comes? Please climb up here, please.'

  Evelyn was coiled like a spring in a sort of squatting race start, equally unaware of observation; both were utterly concentrated.

  Helen watched, mesmerized, felt on her face the slight breeze that heralded the approach of an engine yet unseen and heard, knew it to be ominous, tightened her grip on her package, watched. She is going to push him; that is what she is going to do, push him over the edge just before the train bursts out of the tunnel. I know that is exactly what she is intending to do. She chose this deserted end of the platform, this distant platform, measured the distance. She planned it all. I know.

  From the tunnel came the rumble of movement, the distant shriek and hiss of brakes, then growing sound. A slight vibration pushed the air forward, blowing strongly in Helen's face as she rose. William heard it, began to stand upright; Evelyn caught his intention in a glance, and was ready to run. Helen ran too, behind William, blocking the path between them, braced herself for the impact, felt Evelyn's tough little body slam into her from behind.

  She stumbled against William as the train crashed into the light, dropped the coat bag.

  The coat half spilled in a flash of blue. William shouted in anger. In an action quite as automatic as her running forward, Helen bent to stuff the coat back into the bag as the train strained to a halt, seeing at the same time from the corner of her eye one pair of jean-clad ankles hurrying away beyond the pillar. She rose, as the carriage doors slid open, to face the puzzled regard of the boy.

  `What you doing? What you think you doing?' Furious, confused, looking around in sudden panic. 'And where's .. . where's. . . ?' The train tick-ticking, breathing impatience.

  People appeared from nowhere, stepping aboard, others, fewer, alighting. `Where's . . .

  Where's . . .?'

  `She's gone, William. Get on the train, quickly. You're late.' Her voice emerged with brisk authority.

  William's look of animal confusion vanished, replaced by a vacant gaze, the clearing features of a boy who has remembered well-rehearsed lines after a moment of panic. 'Who's gone?' he said loudly, jumping on to the train with unnecessary energy. 'Who do you mean?

  Must be mad . .

  But as Helen followed, sat next to him, she watched him stretch and peer through the closing doors, scanning the platform as the train moved past, desperately seeking clues, a sight, a glimmer of the paste earrings or the plimsolled feet. Helen's limbs were trembling; so, she noticed, were his. They sat in silence, drowned by the noise of the train until it thundered through the tunnel into empty, floodlit Stratford. Outside Stratford, alongside the graveyard for cars, motion ceased entirely. The lights in the carriage flickered.

  September summer: humid, storm-filled, feeling like winter darkness, an inky daylight black, scarcely relieved in the heavy-breathing train. Even less light in this last of all compartments and no people, either; William and Helen sitting as silent companions, frozen with unease.

  He turned and looked at her with cunning curiosity. 'No one's gone,' he said with conviction. And then, 'I know you. You come in the bar. I know you. And you talk in court.

  You're one of them.' He nodded vigorously; she nodded in turn. Sitting on a train, the two of them, lately prosecutor and defendant. Helen was glad that the resentment of the defendant was less often directed at the prosecutor than towards the policeman who felt the collar, and William was clearly feeling no resentment at all. Feeling nothing, apparently, apart from anxiousness to convince her in words of one syllable that he had been accompanied by no one. No one had gone: he had asked his questions of air.

  `There are mice on the tracks, did you know?' he asked, beaming goodwill.

  `Yes, there are,' said Helen. 'William, how long have you known Evelyn? I know her, too.'

  Èvelyn? Evie . . . Don't know Evelyn. What you mean? No one's gone.

  Èvie, Evelyn. Evelyn Blundell, the girl with the earrings. Your friend.'

  `My friend . . . Yes, my friend. No, she isn't. Which Evie? Don't know her at all. Stop it, that's silly. Stop it.' He muttered in agitation, squirmed, and looked towards the door for escape. The train was obdurately still, locked in a semi-silent signal-failure zone between one civilization and the next, a kind of no-man's-land, while someone was probably calling someone else out of a pub. She patted William's arm to soothe the quivering; she was not a parent after all, not here to cross-examine.

  To her surprise, he seized her hand, held it, examined it. 'Nice,' he said, 'very nice.'

  She felt the first queasy tremor of fear as he parted her fingers and scrutinized them, then saw he confined his attention to a sapphire ring, Helen's only piece of sparkle, Bailey's only gesture of ownership. 'Nice,' said William, twisting to look at her with the familiar vacuous grin, still holding the hand, stroking it now, sighing slightly.

  She smiled back; that action of face seemed prudent while she wished the train would move, which it did, slowly, clack, clack, a peaceful crawl, resigned to reluctant effort.

  William swayed with the carriage, abandoning himself to movement, suddenly relaxed by the motion, reminded of the buses and the soothing sound of his mother's washing machine humming beneath his room. The train exhaled and stopped.

  Ì like girls,' he said, apropos of nothing, and placed a hand on her thigh, hot through her skirt. Helen withdrew slightly, rummaged in her bag, discovered chocolate, and offered him some. 'Oh, goody,' he said. At least he was capable of distraction — not completely.

  William was feeling affectionate, inquisitive with it. He pressed his shoulder against hers, warm through her blouse, hotter to touch than his somewhat grimy hands. He had removed himself from Evie and e
verything else, attached himself to present company. He liked her.

  `

  Do people . . . ' he asked, face contorted with the intellectual effort of formulating a question. `Do all people . . . people as old as you still do it?'

  `Do what, William?' She was slightly fazed by the question, parrying for time without doubting the meaning of his enquiry.

  `Do sex, I mean. I know some people older than you do it. I thought they got tired of it. They don't ever have pictures of them doing it. It must be horrible when you're so old.'

  `Some people,' Helen replied drily, amused by the question despite herself and despite the hot hand on her thigh, which she gently removed, 'even older than me do it all the time.

  But only if they want to. Which means it can't be horrible or they wouldn't do it, would they?'

  The train, having started, slowed again. She felt an overpowering sense of the ridiculous.

  Èven when they're more than forty?'

  Which is, after all, very old indeed, Helen reflected with even more amusement. I'll soon be over the hill if forty's the limit. And Bailey's already only a few years on the other side. Bailey would enjoy this conversation, seems to enjoy that which William is discussing, come to that. Hope he doesn't think it's horrible. Shows no sign of it, or waning powers either.

  Must tell him this boy would imagine he is simply doing his duty.

  Òh, yes, even when they're over forty. Or fifty or sixty.' Ùgh,' said William.

  `Why do you ask?' she enquired in calm conversational tones, offering more chocolate.

  `To see if I'm right.'

  Àbout what?'

  Òh, everything.' He waved a limp hand, fell into silence. Perhaps they could talk about something different, but William's mind, master of the non sequitur, remained on its own peculiar tangent.

  `Mrs Blundell liked it,' he remarked, picking up Helen's even tone. 'She liked it a lot, but we thought she was silly.'

  Helen's reactions were suddenly sharper, her body stiller, her voice on the same even keel.

  'Oh, did she now? Well, I told you, a lot of people do like it. I suppose you saw Mrs Blundell in the woods?' A good enough guess, judging from the nodding.

  William was forgetting his lines. 'Yes. Both of us saw her. With Evie's teacher, on a rug he brought. Very, very silly.' He giggled. `She looked horrible. All bare. Evie was very cross. I told her my mummy would never do that, never.' She was silent, waiting for him to continue.

  Ì 'spect Evie was cross because they were our woods,' he added. `She said if her mummy and that teacher went to the woods, they might come up and find the summerhouse.

  Sometimes they passed it. I watched them. They were all silly, like people get after drinking in our place. They came through our garden and out over the field. Evie was furious. "What's she coming here for?" she said. "If she finds us, she'll kill us. You first, me after. No, Dad'll kill me, slowly." Never seen her as cross as that, but she does get very cross. Sometimes.

  "She'll kill us," she said . . .' There his voice faltered in a dim realization of too much spoken.

  `Well,' said Helen, keeping her own voice as untroubled as her throat allowed, 'she didn't find you, so that's all right, isn't it?'

  `Yes. I suppose so,' said William, slightly mollified, still driven to speak. 'But we found her, though.'

  `You? When?' Too late to prevent the give-away sharpness of tone. 'When was that, William?'

  But he was retreating fast, shrinking, remembering stricture and warnings, horrified by his forgetfulness of learned-by-heart promises.

  Òn the ground. You know, dead. Evie fetched me. No, she didn't; I was there. I'm not supposed to say that. Oh, stop it, stop it, stop it.'

  He was squirming in agony, his movements accelerating with the sudden speed of the train, possessed by a pain beyond enduring, electrocuted by the gravity of his own words.

  Then he turned on her in a fury, punched her shoulder with clumsy violence. Placed both heavy paws on her breasts, pressing and kneading with a force that made her wince in pain.

  Paralysed by some dim memory of physical attack, she suppressed the desire to scream and struggle, forced herself into an unnatural stillness.

  Even when he changed his tactics and grabbed both her arms, making odd, biting motions in the direction of her throat, his fingers clawing into her flesh, bruising delicate flesh with savage strength. A fantail of raw prints rose under her skin, and she felt a lacerating pain.

  Ìt's all right, William. Calm down, now. It's all right, don't worry. It doesn't matter what you've said. I wasn't listening at all. It's all right.'

  The words worked like a slow but magic formula as the train drew into Debden. He withdrew his hands; she resisted the almost overpowering temptation to rub where he had touched. William looked at the sliding doors opening to the dark world outside as if contemplating flight, then decided against it. She contemplated it, too, felt his hand stray to her arm, stayed as she was.

  `Hold my hand, William. It's all right.'

  ÒK, then.'

  They pulled away towards Theyden, the prospect of home becoming reality, swaying together in the new enthusiasm of the machinery, pitched and tossed and lurched into the next station. She was beginning to see what the motion did for him, felt faint and sore with the effort of keeping still, decided recklessly to risk one more question.

  `Where's the summerhouse den, William?'

  He gazed at her blankly. 'In the summerhouse, of course. Daddy was going to make it into a bar. Only the summerhouse,' he repeated, as if it was obvious. The noise of engine and track was a duet of such force that they had to raise their voices. He looked at her with sly affection, pushing his face towards her. 'You're nice,' he said. 'Nicer than Evelyn's mum.' The same hand had moved back to her thigh, squeezing above the knee, fingers spreading in exploration. She removed it again. Ten minutes at most before Branston: she wanted to make him forget all he had said as well as the movement of the train, cast about her thoughts in desperate search for words. Finally, out of the blue, a question emerged.

  `What did you buy today, William?'

  He sat upright. 'Nothing, I didn't buy anything for me. Not allowed today. You did, though,'

  he added, pointing at the fallen-to-floor coat bag.

  `Yes, I did. I bought a coat.'

  Òh, I love shops, I really do. Will you show me? Please?'

  In the bucking carriage, he released her and she released the coat from tissue paper, showed it to an admiring audience of one. William stroked the cloth, grinned at it, tickled the collar like a cat's ears, murmured compliments while she gabbled a little description, words only words, of how she had come to buy it. He folded the coat back into the bag, insisting, 'No, this way: you're doing it wrong. Got to be careful, see? Nice thing, very nice.' Just in time for the single light of Branston and a mutual falling off the train, he carrying the coat, which he immediately handed back, albeit with reluctance.

  Beyond the unmanned station, William examined his unused ticket, puzzled Life on the buses was different. 'Here,' he said, 'you can have this,' proffering it to her — his version, she understood, of a gift.

  `Why, thank you, William. See you soon.' Then in a rush of sudden pity for his look of misery, as well as a desire to walk home unaccompanied, she added, 'You can tell them you came back with me, if you like. Say I asked you, if they go on about your being late.'

  William's straight face widened into the vacant grin; they smiled in conspiracy. 'Goody,' he said, smiling and waving, embarrassed at parting. 'Bye, then.'

  `Bye.'

  She staggered uphill with deliberation. Her thigh tingled from his touch; on her upper arms the purple marks were forming that would show tomorrow over the bones of another possible statistic. `Woman raped and attacked between Debden and Theyden,'

  The stuff of the local paper, the thought of it inducing a mild and comic hysteria. Not a woman with a coat, though. Ridiculous thinking: coats were meant to lend warmth,
not protection; perhaps the mere existence of this one had lent her confidence. She was surprised to find herself giggling. One way to downplay this whole episode to Bailey: Darling, I bought this very expensive coat and avoided being attacked on the train because I didn't want to damage it. Or, having this new, very expensive coat enabled me to cope. Take your choice.

  Or, darling, I want to talk to you about William Featherstone and someone who seemed for a moment to want to kill him. He and Evelyn Blundell — they're conspirators.

  They found her mother, and William is violent enough to have killed her. He's been schooled into silence, but he's like a dummy without a ventriloquist until the action slips. What are you going to do about it? And while we're at it, what are you going to do about us, Bailey, you rat? Can we leave this improving place, please, where people do these things to their children? I'm sorry to disappoint you, but my spiritual home is Oxford Street and north London with all the Cypriots, and drunken Irish, the blaggers and the dirt.

  I'm frightened here as I never was there, more frightened now than I was on the train, which is extremely frightened, as it happens. I'm also ashamed. I have fingerprints all over me; please let me in. Her own fingers had lost their sixth sense for finding the keys. To avoid William, she had walked from the station, forgetting the simple fact of her car in the carpark.

  She was cold, it was dark, she was wet from the drizzle she had failed to notice on the train, and she was still preparing a smile.

  She dared not look at the time, expected it was well after nine. Dear God, the civility of London was a long way off. Life here was far too complicated.

  Bailey wrenched open the door of 15 Invaders Court, feeling and looking savage, his face blank with fury. The smile fell: Bailey's rage, whatever the degree or cause of that rare anger, was difficult to handle.

  `Hello,' she said stupidly, and pushed damp hair out of one eye. He saw the scar on her forehead, implicit with dreadful memory. She remembered, quite irrelevantly, that the coat on her arm might be soaked.