“Let me make myself absolutely clear. In five minutes I’ll call the police.” His mouth was moving automatically, but his mind was babbling: was the fucker seriously suggesting that Hazel was going with them?
Charlotte reached for whatever the roofer held in his arms and returned to the bedroom. Jonathan took a step forward and, catching the roofer’s eye, stayed put. All the brightly lit shame of the last few minutes came back to him. This man had seen him as no one ever had, save his lovers. But no, Adams was the wrongdoer, he and Charlotte. He scratched his palms. From the bedroom came voices and—was it possible?—laughter.
He glanced over, wondering if the American had heard it too. “I’ve never been very keen on your native land,” he said, “but it does have a certain appeal that if you behaved like this over there, you’d be dead on the floor.”
“Or you would, though I’m totally anti-NRA.”
Jonathan stared at his study door. Why hadn’t he phoned the police while he was alone? It was like the letters about Hazel’s job. He always overlooked something.
Adams intercepted his gaze. “Go right ahead,” he said, waving towards the study. “From our point of view, the sooner the cops get here, the better.”
Before Jonathan could reach the phone, however, the bedroom door opened and, astonishingly, a small black puppy emerged. Charlotte followed, and Hazel, dressed in the clothes she’d worn earlier.
She neither looked nor did not look at him. He didn’t even have the reassuring sense of being ignored. Rather, he had ceased to exist. “Hazel. What’s happening? What’s going on?”
He stepped towards her, arms outstretched. Her face, he could see, was still flushed with lovemaking. One of the buttons of her cardigan was in the wrong hole. “What’s going on?” he repeated. “Hazel, I love you. Talk to me.”
She kept walking towards the top of the stairs, and it was Charlotte who turned to face him. “Mr. Littleton, Jonathan, you don’t seem to understand—”
Reaching to shove the bitch aside, he collided with the roofer. “Hazel, stop, wait,” he shouted, fists whirling, legs kicking, head butting. And she was drawing farther away as she and Charlotte hurried down the stairs. Adams blocked his path. Jonathan hit him in the shoulder, he kicked his shins, yet Adams stood there like a wall. Then, as Jonathan aimed for his diaphragm, the roofer jumped.
Once again Jonathan found himself helpless in his grasp. But just for a second, he thought, the fucker’s bloody terrified, which made no sense at all. “Let me go, you stupid bastard,” he screamed.
A blast of cold air rushed over them. A moment later Charlotte called, “Freddie, we’re set.”
With a jolt, Jonathan was free, sprawled on the landing outside his study.
Adams was going down the stairs, two or three at a time. Jonathan leapt to his feet to rush after him and, halfway down, tripped and nearly tore the bannister out of the post. He’d fallen over the puppy. Launched by the toe of his shoe, the small black animal tumbled down the remaining stairs. He stepped over it and dashed into the street, in time to see a van, ladders on top, turn the corner.
When he came back into the house, Mrs. Craig was seated on the bottom stair, cradling the dog. “I’m afraid it’s dead, poor beast. May it travel safely.” She made a humming sound and raised the small body three times, as if commending it to some unseen being. Then she looked up at Jonathan. “I couldn’t help hearing the noise,” she said, “and the door was open.”
As she went to close it, he leaned against the wall. The cold of the bare plaster pressing through his shirt and pullover was the only sign he was still alive.
Back on the stair Mrs. Craig began to speak. “You know how I hum? Some people find it irritating. I learned it from my mother. She died when I was two and a half. It’s the single most important event in my life, and however hard I try I can’t remember her, not the tiniest thing. Yet I hum like her. I have her hands. I inherited her love of gardening, her inability to keep accounts.” She paused as if to review a much longer list.
“Hazel didn’t really forget,” she went on. “Even though she lost the words, she still had the attitudes, the postures. I felt that today when I was doing her massage. You thought you could win her in the body, but that was always the first place you were going to lose her.”
“Did you call those two?”
“Freddie and his friend? No. I think they just came by on a hunch. Freddie got it into his head that Hazel needed help. That’s all he’s trying to do, believe it or not: help her.”
She rose to her feet. “I’ll take him, shall I?” she said, lifting the puppy. “That way you won’t have to see Freddie again.” As she opened the door, she gave him a final glance. “I’d suggest an extremely stiff drink.”
Jonathan could not have said how he got from the hall to the living-room, or how long he rested his forehead against the cold windowpane. When he returned with a glass of Scotch, he wandered over to the cheese plant. Suddenly he remembered that snowy night, driving to rescue Hazel, how he’d hit something—a dog or cat—and driven on. And he was right to do so. Every second had counted, if he was to save her. Later, at the hospital, he’d seen the neat, white feet of the dead man. He bent down and poured a dribble of Scotch into the soil around the plant. I like dogs, he thought absurdly. With amazement he saw that the clock on the mantelpiece said twenty past ten; the way he felt, it ought to be two in the morning.
Setting his glass aside, pulling with one hand, steadying the stem with the other, he began to tug the pot towards the door. On the wooden floor of the hall, it was noisier but easier. Outside, on the cement, it made a grinding sound—loud enough, his mother would’ve said, to wake the dead.
He pushed it against the gatepost. Should he fashion a sign: TAKE ME? Surely that was obvious. A couple of leaves were damaged, but basically the plant looked as it had always done: loathsome. He was standing there, amazed by its ugliness, when a figure stopped beside him. The Tourette’s boy.
“Would you like the plant?” he asked. “I’m giving it away.”
“No,” the boy said. “Thank you. It’s too big for …”
The rest of his reply vanished as he bowled off down the pavement. Thirty yards away he stopped and did his little circle dance. If he were a bee, thought Jonathan, that would mean nectar near the hive. Go forage.
And suddenly he was running down the street, his feet thudding on the pavement, and doing what he had longed to do for days, weeks, months: hurting someone. He punched the boy as hard as he could below his backpack. His fist connected in exactly the right place, sinking into the soft mass of the kidney. With a scream, the boy collapsed to the kerb.
chapter 22
They were all sitting in the front of the van, Hazel in the middle, thigh to thigh with Charlotte, and Charlotte herself half off the seat, pressed against the door. When Freddie had jumped in and turned the key, the engine had given a nervous cough before catching. Appalling if it hadn’t, Charlotte thought, to have Jonathan pounding on the doors, threatening to smash the windows. Once, in her father’s pub, she’d seen two men come to blows; the assailant was a regular, and for years afterwards she had summoned his face whenever she needed to enact rage or anger. Now she had a replacement.
None of them spoke as they drove past the school and onto the main road; only the late-night shops and restaurants were still open. For a few seconds, in the bedroom, Charlotte had forgotten herself. She’d been watching Freddie, his fierce, glowing face, and her gaze had drifted to Littleton’s cock only to find, when she looked up, his eyes flicking over her. Unbelievable. After that she resolutely avoided looking at any part of him—disdain was one of her talents—but she couldn’t help noticing that he did have a nice body, which, like his odd smile, made him seem scarier. Poor Hazel.
As they passed a showroom full of plump, shiny new cabs, Freddie let out a whoop and Charlotte found herself saying, “We did it!” Although what they’d done exactly, she wasn’t quite sure.
“How did you know what was happening?” Hazel said.
As Freddie began to explain—they’d come by to leave her a note—Charlotte felt something slippery underfoot. The newspaper. Bollocks. She was about to blurt out the news when Freddie shifted gear and, as Hazel pressed against her even closer, she heard the gasp of her breathing. She needs to be home, Charlotte thought, safe in bed. No point in turning back now. She would take Freddie aside when they reached the flat and tell him, quietly, that they’d left Arkansas behind.
“I can’t thank you enough,” said Hazel. She was leaning forward, clutching the dashboard. “I felt as if I were being smashed into a hundred pieces.”
Charlotte kept expecting her to ask how she and Freddie knew each other, but Hazel seemed to think that was perfectly natural. And in fact, perhaps even more than Mr. Early, she was responsible for bringing them together. Their fairy godmother. She had a vision of the two of them sitting in Freddie’s kitchen, miraculously clean and tidy, and her telling Hazel the whole story, beginning with Mr. Aziz—no, beginning with Walter, or maybe even earlier, going right back to the pub, her ill-matched parents and bossy sister, how her impersonations had made the customers laugh like drains. One New Year’s Eve, her father had set her on top of the bar to act out Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Her Daddy Bear had brought the house down.
“The thing I don’t get,” Freddie was saying, “is how he thought he could get away with treating you like this.”
“He calls it love,” said Hazel. “You heard him.”
“But”—Charlotte sensed Freddie navigating between delicacy and curiosity—“he must’ve known you didn’t love him.”
“He did and he didn’t. After all, I did and I didn’t. He saved my life—and by some trick of fate, he saved the life he wanted, the one in which I still cared for him and didn’t remember his bad behaviour.”
Charlotte reached behind Hazel and tapped Freddie’s shoulder. When he glanced over, she gave a little shake of the head. “Enough,” she mouthed. He regarded her blankly before turning back to the road.
Time for her to take charge. “What an amazing play this evening would make,” she said. “The ladder, Jonathan out of his mind at being interrupted, the way you took him to task, Hazel. Fantastic. With the right actors, you’d be able to hear a pin drop in the theatre.”
Neither Freddie nor Hazel said a word. She was speculating about possible playwrights when the familiar white building on the corner, a Chinese restaurant offering both karaoke and Elvis nights, came into view. And then Freddie was pulling into a parking space between a butcher’s van and a little Fiat, the same place from which they’d extricated the van a mere two hours ago. He turned off the engine and for a moment none of them moved. Hazel hung on to the dashboard; Freddie sat with his hands on the wheel; Charlotte perched on her shred of seat. She longed to be alone with Freddie, climbing the stairs arm in arm to bed. “Well, here we are,” she said brightly. “Home.”
She scrambled out and reached up to help Hazel. How hot her skin was. Had she been resting her hand on a heating vent, or was she getting a fever? Before she could ask, Freddie exclaimed, “Arkansas! We forgot him.”
“I know.” Charlotte nodded towards Hazel, meaning we have to take care of her first.
But Freddie stood there, scowling over their heads in the direction from which they’d come. If he had looked like that, Charlotte thought, when she rang his doorbell, she would’ve got right back into the taxi and driven off to kingdom come: Ginny, Brian, Cedric, any place but here.
“This is bad,” he said. “I don’t trust Littleton.”
“But what can he do,” said Charlotte, “besides ignore him? Arkansas won’t starve overnight. At least he’s warm and dry. Come, we need to get inside.”
“I have a bad feeling.” Freddie’s gaze returned but not, Charlotte realised, to her. “I know who that man is,” he said. “The man with the suit and the colourless eyes. He’s Littleton’s shadow, his devil shadow.”
Why is he talking to Hazel, Charlotte thought, and so strangely? “Let’s go in,” she said again.
“Yes,” said Hazel. “It just took me a while to recognise him.”
“You poor baby,” said Freddie.
Charlotte looked down to make sure her feet were still touching the pavement, and when she raised her eyes, for a moment, the woman standing beside her was not Hazel but Walter’s blond bimbo.
“Watch out for the bicycles,” said Freddie, ushering them into the dark hall. “My flat’s on the third floor.”
“Second,” Charlotte corrected.
He led the way upstairs. Bringing up the rear she felt rather than saw Hazel’s steps slowing. Half an hour ago, a quarter of an hour ago, she would’ve taken her arm and asked if she was all right. Now, after the exchange in the street, she had to bite her tongue. Hurry up. Hurry up. All she wanted was to be in bed with Freddie. And where the hell was Hazel going to sleep? Why had they brought her here, rather than dropping her off with friends? She’s my employer, Charlotte reminded herself. And in Freddie’s case, not even that.
Inside, pandaemonium reigned. The pups yelped, Agnes barked, Freddie apologised. Charlotte moved towards the kitchen, meaning to quiet the dogs.
“I need to sit down,” Hazel said.
Charlotte turned in time to see her fall to the floor, not the practised pratfall of the actor or the soft droop of a faint but a terrifying keeling over, like a statue toppling from its pedestal. “Oh, my god. What’s the matter?”
“She’s having a seizure.” Freddie was on the floor. He managed to get hold of Hazel’s head and wedge it between his knees. Then he bent forward to take her wrists. “Can you get her legs?”
But Charlotte couldn’t. The spastic jerking, the frothing of the mouth, the eyes rolling back, the weird sounds—it was unbearable. “I’m sorry,” she said. “My head’s killing me.”
In the kitchen, the dogs were going wild. She scooped up the nearest puppy and held it while she filled the kettle, doing her best to ignore Agnes’s barking, the cries of the other two pups, the terrible noises coming from the hall, the pounding of Hazel’s heels, and, amidst this din, Freddie’s voice: “Baby, you’re safe now. Just relax. Hush. Let it go.”
How calm he was, she thought, all that practice at Lourdes.
“Who will pay?” Hazel cried. “Who will pay?”
Charlotte found the teapot and a box of Typhoo. “First heat the pot,” she said to the puppy. “A teaspoon each and one for the pot. The water should be almost but not quite boiling so as not to bruise the leaves. Pour swiftly before the oxygen is boiled away.”
“Hazel, sweetheart, you’re safe now. I’ll take care of you.”
Sweetheart. Suddenly Charlotte was back at Mr. Littleton’s, in the bedroom, seeing what she’d failed to notice at the time—Freddie with his far-from-colourless eyes fixed on Hazel in an expression full of yearning. The pounding was slowing, growing weaker.
“Allow to steep for five minutes. Pour milk into clean cups, add tea. Whenever possible use porcelain—”
“Charlotte.” Freddie stood in the doorway. “What’s your sister’s number?”
“My sister’s number?”
“Yes, the nurse.”
The man who had referred to her black bags as luggage, who had pressed his forehead to hers, who had said “I’m so sorry,” had disappeared. Like opening a favourite book and finding every page blank. I must say exactly the right thing, Charlotte thought, but she had no idea what that might be. A shrill squeal made her look down at the puppy writhing in her grip.
“Charlotte, for Pete’s sake. Tell me the number. I need to know whether to phone an ambulance, or take Hazel to the hospital.”
“It’s awfully late to ring Bernadette. She’s on early shifts this week. We can call—”
Freddie’s hand rose, not exactly a threat but a reminder that such possibilities existed in the world. Before she knew what she was doing, she repeated Bernie’s nu
mber and he was gone.
“Ms. Granger,” she heard as she dumped the puppy back in the pen, “your patient Hazel Ransome just had a seizure.… No, this isn’t Mr. Littleton.… She seems calm now, as if she were in a deep sleep.”
Whatever he said next was lost in the gush of water as Charlotte rinsed the mugs. Moving on to their plates from last night, she realised she’d forgotten his admonition to set the puppies down on all four legs. She stacked the plates in the rack and then, rubbing her hands on her coat, stepped over to the table. Next to the peanut butter and the Chardonnay, Freddie had emptied the pockets of his work clothes: a handkerchief, three ten-pound notes, and a pile of change. Charlotte took the money, even the coppers, and slipped the Chardonnay back into her bag.
In the hall, Hazel lay unconscious and Freddie was bent over the phone, writing down whatever Bernadette was saying. He didn’t look up as Charlotte stepped past him and Hazel. Fortunately her body wasn’t blocking the door. Down the dark stairs and out into the dark street. Now what? No moon tonight. No valley of lost things. She looked at the house number, and at the corner stopped to check the name of the street. There, she would be able to reclaim her luggage, tomorrow or the next day. She passed the Chinese restaurant. I must, I must … Who should she telephone first?
Bernadette had clearly been asleep, but once she grasped the situation became reassuringly efficient. “Keep her warm and make sure she can’t hurt herself,” she instructed. “Where is she now?”
“On my floor,” he’d said, looking down to where Hazel’s head lay a few inches from his feet. Saliva flecked her chin.
“I’m afraid I missed your name.”
He considered mentioning their one meeting, but introduced himself only as a friend of Hazel’s. Was there anything else he should be doing?
“Cover her with a blanket,” Bernadette said, then listed Hazel’s medicines. “Try to make sure she takes them in the morning. You may find,” she added, “that she wakes up disoriented, but that should pass in a few hours.”
The Missing World Page 29