Enchantment

by Monica Dickens

  Helen put on some music, and Julian slid off his chair and danced in a strange, jerky way, while Helen and Tim drank their wine and gave him applause. Did it mean anything to him? That did not matter. Giving it was the point.

  ‘His hair’s much too long,’ Helen said.

  ‘It’s beautiful.’ The softly curling golden hair hung over the child’s face, as he sat by the cupboard door, opening and shutting it in a dedicated way.

  ‘It wants cutting, but no barber will take him. Do you think you could hold him still while I have a quick chop with the scissors?’

  They sat Julian in a low chair and Tim knelt in front of him, with the boy’s legs between his, and his arms round the taut, suspicious body.

  ‘Once upon a time.’ He would never give up the quest for the grail of Julian’s soul. ‘Once upon a time, there was a prince who didn’t like to have his hair cut.’

  ‘Hair cut.’ Julian did not connect it with himself.

  ‘It grew so long that it was down his back and all down the front of him like a tent, and birds used to nest in it and sing as he moved about.’

  Helen approached from behind, but as soon as the child felt the scissors on his hair, he began to struggle and thrash about.

  ‘It usually takes three of us to do this,’ Helen gasped. Julian screamed and sobbed. Tim had to lay his whole weight on top of him. Helen cut off a bit of Tim’s front hair by mistake, and darted in on Julian’s golden curls where she could.

  It was dangerous, but it was funny. Tim and Helen were laughing through Julian’s howls.

  ‘Done!’ she cried. Tim let the child go, and he leaped away and careered round the room, fluttering his hands and looking beautiful enough, with his pale, rosy-lipped face and bouncing golden curls, to break your heart.

  His joy, if that was what it was, if he could know joy, propelled him into odd, erratic ballet leaps. Into one corner, touch and lick the wall, then spring backwards, land in a crouch, and launch off in another direction, stiff fingers stabbing the air.

  ‘Thanks for helping,’ Helen said in her brisk, practical way. Flushed and dishevelled, his shirt pulled half out of his trousers, Tim put his arms round her and kissed her. Her pale eyes opened wide. Her mouth was still closed when Julian cannoned into their legs and knocked them both off balance against the table.

  It was an unsatisfactory kiss, but it was a kiss. He had tasted her mouth. Their bodies had been pressed together. Afterwards, Tim felt a bit turned on. He had taken her by surprise. He had taken her by storm. At home, he began to think about himself as a conquering chieftain. Not a young man kissing a woman older than him; that was not enough. Great scenes must be played out at higher levels, like Shakespeare.

  After Kathy, he had thought he was through with sex. Had hoped? Had feared? Now it seemed this might not be so after all.

  Witness the dream.

  As he struggled up out of a deep, perturbing sleep, the radio alarm brought him a plummy, self-satisfied man signing off after the news programme. Cripes – eight thirty! Tim sat upright. Hang on, it’s your day off. He sank back as the beloved, burry voice told him, ‘I’m Meery Gordon and I’ll be with you for the rest of the day,’ soothing as a bedside nurse.

  There had been voices in the unfathomable dream, moving water and voices under water.

  Dreams could tell you things, as long as you knew how to interpret them. After coffee and buns, Tim interpreted the dream as a suggestion to follow Mary’s voice. ‘I’ll be with you for the rest of the day’ meant she would be reading news and announcing the programmes.

  He took the radio in the yellow car, and heard her from time to time through the static. While he was back in the flat for a cheese and mustard pickle sandwich, the phone rang, and he turned the radio down low.

  It was his mother, wanting to chat about nothing much. A radio quiz was winding down, and Tim wanted to turn up the sound to hear Mary Gordon with the news, so he said, ‘I’ve got to go, Mum.’

  Quite soon, Valerie called. It was her half day at the play school and she stopped at her mother’s on the way home.

  ‘What’s up, Tim?’

  ‘Nothing, why?’

  ‘Mum was worried about you.’

  Families. You couldn’t move.

  ‘You coming round?’ Val sharpened her voice.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You used to always come round on your day off.’

  ‘I’m busy.’

  ‘Tim, what are you up to? You sound strange.’

  ‘I’m making bombs. Leave me alone, Val.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure. What shall I tell Mum?’

  ‘I’ll come,’ he said heavily.

  Mary Gordon would be leaving Broadcasting House when the late afternoon news programme started. Tim stopped in to see his mother and eat cake on his way to the station, where he locked the radio in the boot, which was the only part of the car that locked, and took a train to London.

  Outside the great main doors of Broadcasting House, a small group of people were waiting: autograph hunters and a woman with a tired child in a pushchair, the people you saw hanging outside places where the famous came and went, as Tim himself had hung about occasionally.

  A man was waiting to see an actress who was being interviewed. ‘Who are you here for?’ he asked Tim. His teeth were bathed in spit. He was too eager, too avid, with glittering eyes.

  ‘I’m meeting Mary Gordon,’ Tim said.

  ‘You mean, you know her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Get away. Why don’t you wait inside?’

  ‘Too hot.’

  The man told his wife. They muttered together over the pushchair, and looked at Tim.

  So when Mary Gordon finally came out, fresh and smiling as if she had not spent all day in a windowless studio, Tim could not just ask for her autograph, as he had planned. He stepped forward and swallowed and said, ‘Hello, Mary.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘hello.’ She turned her full beam on him for a moment, and was gone on slim and nippy legs down Regent Street.

  ‘Oi, oi,’ said the man with the teeth. ‘She don’t want to know, eh?’

  ‘We – we can’t be seen together,’ Tim said, without much hope of being believed.

  He followed Mary at a distance towards Oxford Circus station. Seeing her had been lovely. A look, a smile, ‘Hello’. Quite satisfying.

  If only ordinary love could be so easy! Romantic fantasies were better than reality. And I can break free any time and be myself, he thought, in the crowded actuality of the tube platform, with the wind of the dragon train’s breath preceding it out of the tunnel. This is myself, getting pushed, pushing. A body hanging from one hand, my armpit in the chinaman’s face.

  Who is myself?

  The police had contacted C.P. Games to see whether Tim’s story was true. He might have thought of that, but it was a surprise when the play-by-mail company wrote to him, telling him that he was barred from any more games, since false publicity about incitement to violence was the last thing they needed.

  ‘What about my last payment?’ Tim wrote back. ‘You owe me one pound sixty. And what are you going to do with Blch?’

  ‘He’s in a bad spot anyway,’ Kevin Sills wrote back, enclosing a postal order. ‘He’ll have to be eliminated.’

  He’s mine, you can’t do that, Tim thought, but did not write.

  Blch could never be eliminated from the consciousness of the universe. The wandering minstrel, teller of tales and fearless warlord of the faithful, lived on in Tim.

  It was a restless time, in June. The fair sky beyond the big windows of the second floor, to which customers took colours to match them in daylight, was beckoning and unattainable. Evenings were long and soft, but what to do with them? Tim did not sign himself in on the ushers’ rota sheet at the theatre quite so often. They were doing The Importance of Being Earnest for two weeks, and he did not think it was funny, although Craig was making quite a hit as second lead.

  He asked Tim
about the police, some time after that early morning interview.

  ‘I had to report it,’ Craig said. ‘I hope you understand.’

  ‘Well, it was a bit of a –’

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘They were extremely interested.’

  ‘It didn’t get into the papers,’ Craig said dismissively.

  ‘Most of the true stuff doesn’t.’

  ‘You still play those funny games, Tim?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Evil friars. Dungeons and dragons. Demons … you know why they’re so popular now?’

  Tim shook his head. Since he had been expelled from Domain of the Undead, he didn’t want to talk about it.

  ‘Because the Church doesn’t preach about devils and hell any more. But they’re in us, Tim, they’re in us all, clamouring to get out.’

  Buttercup’s new gears seemed to have given her vitality all over, plus the fact that good old Jack had tinkered with the spark plugs. Tim began to take the car on the motorway again.

  He drove west one evening to investigate downland pubs. Now he did not always have to be the peaceful philosopher stuck in the slow lane, except on hills.

  As he pulled out to pass a large sealed lorry, like a gaol on wheels, he saw the driver’s face in the rear-view mirror, a narrow lantern-jawed face with a Mexican droop moustache, black sideboards and dark eyes with hooded lids, like an eagle.

  Beyond him, Tim moved back to the left, because there was nothing ahead of him to pass. Farther on, the same grey lorry came up from behind and passed him, going much too fast in the middle lane.

  That was how accidents happened: juggernauts steaming along so fast that if they had to brake, they would jackknife, or plough into other cars. Tim was offended by the driver with the grim moustache and hard eyes. Why didn’t the police go after people like that? If they asked Tim, he could tell them how fast the man had been going.

  Several miles along the motorway, down a long hill, he saw flashing blue lights far ahead and a long line of red brake lights. He crawled with them past signs signalling roadworks, and finally came to the crash: two crumpled cars at odd angles, police, scattered orange cones, a smashed guard rail and a red van on its side down a short embankment, with its wheels and obscene underparts facing the road.

  Next morning, the paper that he picked up on his way in to work had a picture of the fatal crash, which was thought to have been caused by traffic going too fast at a roadworks contraflow. The police had issued a press and radio appeal for witnesses to come forward.

  ‘I saw him very clearly, miles back. I saw his face in the side mirror. A grey lorry it was, with no lettering that I could see. Yes, officer, about seven thirty, it would have been, not far from the Bramwell exit, going west. Yes, tremendous pace – seventy-five, eighty – I saw the driver’s face. I’d know him anywhere.’

  ‘Thanks very much, Mr Kendall. You’ve been a great help. Sergeant, this is Mr Timothy Kendall, who has made a statement.’

  ‘Thank you for coming in. If we may trouble you further, we’d like your attendance at an identity parade.’

  A line of five men, no, six. Short men, tall men, two men in anoraks, one in a blue shirt, brown hair, ginger hair, not much hair, a black man. Second from left, the driver’s dark hair receded from his narrow forehead. His mouth was set under the moustache. His flinty eyes looked straight into Tim’s eyes, and pierced a message into his brain, a message so ominous that Tim turned to the uniformed man beside him and said in terror, ‘None of them is the man I saw.’

  After he came out of that waking dream, the man’s face stayed with him. He saw it behind his closed eyes, glimpsed it in a crowd, saw it from a bus, passing him in a bus going the other way. The high, bald forehead, the moustache, the sideboards, the stony eyes.

  The man was a fact. The speeding lorry was a fact, so was the unrelated accident. The rest was fantasy, but there were elements in it that had become just as real. Tim had conjured up one of Craig’s ‘demons in us all’. He was haunted for days by the lorry driver’s face.

  Chapter Nine

  Why be haunted by a mythical lorry driver? H. V. Trotman was there in the flesh.

  One evening when Tim got off the bus, Harold was leaning against the side of the bus shelter. He pushed his bulky body upright and fell into step beside Tim, padding like a bear.

  ‘Nice to see you,’ Tim said hopefully.

  ‘Didn’t think you would? After what you done?’

  ‘I’ve paid you back. What are you talking about?’

  ‘You know what I’m talking about.’

  They had reached the house. Harold went with Tim up the path and passed the bay window, peering into the empty front-room, and followed him up the stairs and into the flat when Tim opened the door.

  ‘Thanks for inviting me in, old son.’ Harold looked round suspiciously, as if he expected an ambush. ‘Going to offer me a beer?’

  ‘Do you want one?’

  ‘No.’ Harold lit a cigarette, turned a chair back to front and sat down with his arms on the back of the chair.

  Tim sat down opposite him. It was like his interview at Webster’s two years ago, when Mr D. had commanded, ‘Give an account of yourself.’

  ‘You.’ Harold pointed a blunt-ended finger. ‘You tried to pin it on me.’

  ‘What are you – what do you mean?’

  ‘The murders. Kev at C.P. Games told me. Tried to pin it on me.’

  ‘How could I?’ Tim sat back, wishing he were smoking himself, so that he could do Elyot nonchalantly tapping off the ash, from Private Lives. ‘That’s ridiculous.’ He could not explain why he had borrowed Black Monk for Barry McCarthy. By this time, he was not sure himself. ‘They got the man who killed all those people. He was dead.’

  ‘You … tried … to … pin … it … on … me,’ Harold droned. Sometimes he sounded like Gareth and Sean.

  ‘I didn’t. Suppose I had,’ Tim said, avoiding his bloodshot eyes, ‘what do you want me to do about it?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s what I’m going to do.’

  ‘What –’ Tim thought about the royal family, with their necks on the block at the Tower of London. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Ah, that’s the question, old son.’ Harold lifted a finger to the side of his nose. One of the long gingery hairs that grew out of the middle of it waved in the small updraught and curled over the finger. ‘You’ll have to see, won’t you?’

  ‘Please don’t threaten me.’ Tim smiled ingratiatingly, like a puppy on its back, waggling its paws.

  ‘I’m not threatening you, son.’ Harold was a great conversationalist. ‘I’m just telling you.’

  He left in quite an amicable way, so that Tim thought that was the end of that. Just Harold venting his aggressive feelings, to avoid cancer.

  A few days later, Tim stopped Buttercup at a traffic light. A white car drew up beside him. Harold was driving it, looking straight ahead. When the lights changed, he got away fast and cut over in front of Tim, then slowed, so that Tim had to brake, and a woman behind nearly had a heart attack.

  Harold continued to turn up now and again in odd places. Tim took to new routes and new habits to avoid him. Sometimes he saw Harold. Sometimes he only thought he did. Sometimes Harold’s broad, suffused face and the lorry driver’s long pale face were mixed up together in his imaginings.

  Several times, the phone rang, and there was no one there.

  ‘Hello … hello …’ Tim had to answer, because his father was not well (‘Always belittled my cough, now perhaps you’ll believe me’), and it might be his mother.

  Harold disappeared for a time, but then he turned up in Fabrics and Soft Furnishings, wearing clean khaki trousers and a jazzy shirt.

  ‘Yes, sir, can I help you?’ Tim said politely, because Mr D. was near by.

  ‘I’m a customer.’

  ‘What is it you want?’

  ‘You know what I want.’ Anyone could have written Harold’s repetitio
us dialogue for him.

  ‘Look.’ Tim dropped his voice. ‘I’ll get one of the other assistants to help you.’

  ‘I want to see some of that lot there.’ Harold jerked his head at the striped polished cottons, and he and Tim moved over to them.

  ‘Please,’ Tim said, his eyes on Mr D. ‘Don’t do this to me.’

  ‘Got to keep an eye on you, haven’t I? After what you done.’

  ‘Harold,’ Tim said desperately, ‘you’ve got to get this through your head. I haven’t done anything to you.’

  ‘That’s what they all say.’

  ‘You’re paranoid,’ Tim whispered.

  ‘Of course I am,’ Harold said loudly. ‘Oo wouldn’t be? I’ll take three metres of that pink and chocolate stuff there.’

  And he did. The sale was completed normally and he took the striped cotton away. Actually, it would look quite nice on the woman with the violet mouth.

  They were doing Pygmalion at the Boathouse. Craig’s part was Freddy Eynsford Hill. Tim was there every night. He watched the play from the usher’s tip-up seat at the side, and began to have most of Freddy’s lines off by heart. He had always been good at memorizing. At school, when he was quite young, they had been amazed at how much he learned, until they were even more amazed to find that he did not understand what most of it meant.

  ‘I spend most of my nights here. It’s the only place where I’m happy. Dont laugh at me, Miss Doolittle,’ he recited, as he took the long walk home through the quiet streets. If Craig were taken ill, Tim could step in as understudy.

  One night, after he had locked the fire doors and tidied up, he walked across the empty car park with Joan, the other usher, who had left her car in the far corner.

  Joan’s car was there, and another, a white Escort. Harold sat in it. Tim saw his face in the brief flicker of his cigarette lighter.

  ‘I say, Joan,’ Tim said quickly. ‘My ankle’s still bad where I twisted it on the balcony stairs. Do you think you – could you possibly give me a lift home?’

  He got into Joan’s Mini. The engine of the white Escort started.

  ‘Why do you keep looking behind us?’ Joan asked, as she drove him home.