‘Tough.’
‘Come off it, Max.’
‘Get some wellies out of the shed.’
‘What about Felix, why isn’t he coming?’
‘He is,’ said Abbie.
‘Why? What did I do?’ protested Felix.
‘Just go.’
Smutty started to bark, then the monitor began to squawk with the sound of a howling child, then the red light at the top end of the spectrum throbbed as a second voice joined in. Felix sighed and lifted himself out of the dining chair and past Abbie.
‘And bring the brandy bottle,’ said Jed, his eyes peering in through the letter box and his protruding finger pointing to the half-empty bottle of Martell on the sideboard.
Maxine slammed the door.
‘Bloody hell, Max. You could have broken mi nose,’ said the voice on the other side.
It was five to one in the morning - they could see the illuminated church clock from the top of the slide. Jed put a ten-pence piece on its side and let it roll away down the polished aluminium, its milled edge making a hollow, tinny noise that reverberated in the empty playground in front of them. With his back to him, Felix sat on the top rung, looking down the ladder to where Smutty peered up. The dog’s ears twitched at the sound of the money. The coin launched itself into the silence beyond the end of its descent; Smutty bolted after it, sniffing and scratching in the bark drippings on the ground. Jed passed the brandy botttle over his shoulder and Felix took a big gulp. All the heat of the day had disappeared into the wide-open, cloudless night, and the iron handrail and the cast-iron steps under his feet felt abnormally cold, brittle almost, as if one tap with a hammer might shatter the whole structure into smithereens.
“Why do you call him Smutty?” Felix asked, handing the bottle back.
‘When he was a pup he used to put his head up Max’s skin.’
The dog had unearthed a lollipop wrapper or a crisp packet and was holding it down with his front paws, trying to get his head inside.
‘Sorry,’ mumbled Jed.
‘For what?’
‘Talking about kids.’
‘Don’t worry.’
‘You still trying?’
‘Trying too hard if you ask me.’
‘Can’t you go for one of those test-tube babies, then?’
‘No. Costs thousands. But we can try something similar.’
‘A right good fuck - that’s still the best way. Always was.’
‘Tell me about it. Ever do a sperm test?’
‘Nah.’
‘Well, it’s no fun, I can promise you. Don’t know how I managed it. When you’re under all that pressure you don’t feel very… you know.’
‘What?’
‘You know.’
‘What?’
‘Aroused.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Jed. It wasn’t an entirely unsympathetic response, but its main purpose was to dispel the image of Felix’s semi-erect penis and to bring the subject to a close.
‘Who started all this stuff about children anyway? What were we talking about?’
Felix’s memory was beginning to blur with the drink. ‘Don’t know. Cars, wasn’t it? Or was it work?’
‘I hate my job. I wouldn’t mind if it was genuine explosives. Semtex or nitro-glycerine, something with a bit of glamour. But fireworks? Bangers that wouldn’t blow your hat off. Fucking sparklers, for fuck’s sake. They’re so gay. I’d pack it in tomorrow if it wasn’t for…’
He paused and must have heard himself about to launch into his diatribe again. So even though Maxine was at least a mile out of earshot and things were about as bad as they could possibly get, he restricted himself to ‘the family’.
‘What would you rather do?’
He swigged the drink and studied the question for a moment or so, as if it was an actual job that Felix had offered him. ‘Celebrity handyman. Like on those home-improvement programmes.’
‘You hate DIY.’
‘Only because I’m too knackered when I get home from work. But on telly all I’d have to do is swan around with a drill in mi hand and crack a joke every now and again in mi regional accent. Doddle.’ The bottle came back over his shoulder. ‘What about you?’
It was a question Felix had asked himself only the other week after a particularly uncooperative team meeting, so he knew the answer. ‘Well, you know at the airport they have those little buggies for taking people from one gate to another, like golf carts that run up and down the corridors with old fogies and their luggage?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’d like to drive one of them.’
‘What?’
‘They’re really quiet - electric engines - and it’s carpet or lino on the floor. Very smooth. Just press down on the pedal and you’re away. And then sometimes, like when there’s a strike, or in the middle of the night when the place is deserted, I’d just whiz around between the terminals. There’d be five or six of us whizzing around all night, racing and banging into each other. Like the dodgems but very, very smooth. Fantastic.’
The two men had been sitting spine to spine, resting against each other, and Felix suddenly felt the cold on his back as Jed hitched forward and turned around to look at him.
‘I think you’d better give me that bottle back,’ he said.
‘What’s wrong with driving a buggy?’
Jed drained the brandy. ‘You’re a pervert,’ he concluded. He’d lit a cigarette and, with his lips pursed like a trumpeter’s, blew thick grey smoke into the empty bottle and screwed the lid on. Then he said, ‘Hey, if I roll this down the slide, do you think it’ll smash and let the genie out? Smutty, come out of the way, you daft mutt.’
10
‘Chalk?’
‘Apparently.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘No.’
‘Thanks for calling.’
‘I’ve passed it over to PC Lily. She’s your contact now.’
Felix had taken the call downstairs on one of the secretaries’ telephones. Coming out of the lift, he bumped into Marjorie, who was dressed in a dark-blue skirt and jacket with white shoes and a white leather handbag under her arm.
‘You’re looking very smart. Going to Crown Court?’
‘Yes, giving evidence in a trial. Does this outfit look all right? I’ve got a committee meeting at the bowling club later on and won’t have time to get changed.’
Felix said she looked fine and helped her on with her mac before she disappeared into the lift. In the office Neville was looking out of the window. He was stooping slightly, with his hands by his face, and it wasn’t until he turned around to say hello that Felix saw what he was doing.
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a telescope. A refractor, to be precise.’
‘I know it’s a telescope, Neville. But what are you doing with it?’
‘Looking.’
Felix decided to ignore him. One of the techniques he’d learned during his social work diploma was that of extinction. Basically, many forms of antisocial behaviour are ways of seeking attention. To acknowledge the behaviour only rewards the perpetrator and therefore reinforces the problem. At least that was the theory, although with Neville naughtiness was a congenital disease that would never be addressed by psychology. So after ten minutes of watching his colleague peering silently through the long, white tube, Felix’s curiosity finally got the better of him.
‘All right, Neville, why have you got a telescope?’
Without breaking off from his observations, Neville explained that a couple of months ago he’d heard a story on the radio about the popularity of telescopes in Manhattan. But it wasn’t anything to do with astronomy, because the glow of the streetlights made it impossible to see the stars. ‘It’s all about people-watching,’ he explained.
‘I heard that story too. It was about snoopers and Peeping Toms. People in high-rise buildings looking through their neighbours’ windows. It was about spying.’
‘Yeah, th
at was the one,’ said Neville. ‘Hey, did that copper get in touch? He phoned earlier about Little Miss Muffet.’
‘I’ve just spoken to him downstairs.’
‘And?’
Neville left the telescope positioned on its stand and folded his arms, waiting for Felix to tell him the story.
‘Did I tell you they were running tests?’
‘Yes, on the knickers.’
‘Well, it wasn’t what they thought it was. It was chalk.’
‘What kind of chalk?’
‘Don’t know. But you .know what the family business is, don’t you?’
‘Shoplifting?’
‘They do road-marking. Painting white lines on the road. And guess what they do it with?’
‘Paint?’
‘Yes. White paint mixed with chalk. Makes it go further.’
Neville was impressed. ‘You’re a proper little sleuth, aren’t you? Remind me not to play you at Cluedo.’
∗
The disclosure meeting wasn’t for another hour and a half. Felix caught up with his paperwork and made a few phone calls. Bernard called in to remind him that he still had nine and a half days to take before the end of the leave year. Then Mo stuck her head around the door to ask if he’d be attending the union meeting at the town hall later in the week. Felix said he’d like to but unfortunately he was too busy, and Mo said that was highly ironic because the main item on the agenda was overtime. She also asked him about the annual conference in Bournemouth in the autumn, but he told her he couldn’t make it because of a holiday he’d already booked.
‘Going on a cruise, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘All right for some.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Neville.’
‘I thought you didn’t speak to Neville?’
She mumbled something under her breath as she turned away but Felix didn’t catch it. Before leaving the office he took a closer look at the telescope, a cheap thing from Dixons or Comet probably, perched on a plastic tripod. He put his eye to the lens, thinking he might see Abbie in the precinct. Of course, as soon as he got home he’d tell her, because it wouldn’t be fair not to. On the other hand he didn’t want her to think he was snooping on her, so maybe it would be better to keep quiet… But the telescope was actually locked in position, pointing at what looked like an ordinary field on the far hill, under the monument to those killed in the Crimean War. When Felix lengthened the focus, a small graveyard above a fairly remote church came into view. It was raining lightly. He watched a small party of mourners at a graveside and, further off, a man under a large yellow and blue golfing brolly. When the man swung the umbrella across his shoulders, Felix thought he recognized him. Not by his face, which was blurred and ill-defined, but by his clothes and his stance, and his general demeanour - his relationship with the world and the space he occupied within it. By fiddling again with the lens he confirmed the sighting. It was someone he didn’t expect to see.
Disclosure
The man watches through the minor.
In the room, the girl sits on the floor with her hands over her eyes. The woman sits cross-legged about five feet away from her. They have been silent for some time now. Then the woman says, ‘Tell me if you want to stop, Ruby.’ Although muffed, through the glass her voice is audible to the man behind the mirror. But words aren’t so important here. It has less to do with language, more to do with action. To do with fingers, and legs, and limbs.
‘Shall we try again with the doll?’ asks the woman.
The girl doesn’t take her hands away from her face but appears to be nodding ever so slightly behind them. The woman gets to her feet and walks slowly and calmly towards a trunk, like a toybox, in the far comer of the room. Opening the lid, she reaches in and lifts out a doll. Except it is not a baby doll with a cute face and bald head, but a scaled-down little girl dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. It has hair made from wool. The wool is red. The woman sits the doll on the floor, where it leans against a chair leg. The woman and the girl are very still and quiet, Wee the doll. After more silence, the woman asks the girl, ‘What happens next?’ Her voice is very soothing. Very kind.
The girl’s voice has a scratchy, raw edge. ‘The thing,’ she mutters, through her fingers.
‘What thing?’
‘The thing.’
‘Do you know what the thing is called?’
The girl nods.
‘Do you want to say it?’
The girl shakes her head.
‘Do you want me to say it?’
The girl pauses. Then the girl nods.
‘Is it a spider?’
The girl waits. The girl nods.
‘There are no spiders in this room, Ruby. But could you show me how the spider climbs the waterspout? Could you pretend that your fingers are the spider?’
‘NO.’
The girl has said NO before. She shouted NO and the woman put the woolly-haired doll back in the box. But this time she leaves the doll leaning against the chair and asks, ‘Could I pretend? How about if I pretend with my fingers?’
None of the girl’s face is visible through the mask of her hands. Her head doesn’t move and she remains silent. It isn’t a yes. But it isn’t a no either. It isn’t NO. The woman lifts the doll and lays it down, gently, on its back.
‘Does the spider… does it touch you?’
The girl nods.
‘Where?’
No response.
‘Here?’ inquires the woman, pointing to the doll’s tiny, moulded hand.
The girl shakes her head.
‘What about here?’ she asks, pointing at the blue plastic shoe at the bottom of the doll’s leg.
The girl shakes her head.
‘Show me what happens. Where does it touch you?’
The girl curls the little finger of her right hand into her mouth.
Behind the mirror, the man clicks his pen and makes a note.
‘What happens next?’
‘Climbs the waterspout.’
‘The spider?’
The girl nods.
The woman thinks. Then, hooking her thumbs together, she walks her eight fingers across the cheeks of the doll and along its shoulder. ‘This way?’
The girl shakes her head. Her face is still covered but she is watching. Through the gaps between her fingers she stares at the pink, fleshy spider as it makes its way back to the doll’s mouth, then sets off slowly towards the opposite shoulder.
‘This way?’
The girl shakes her head.
The spider abseils the chin of the doll and crosses the border between the smooth plastic neck and the stitched collar of the T-shirt.
‘This way?’
The girl nods.
‘Further?’
She nods again.
The spider stops at the press-stud that fastens the dark-blue jeans around the doll’s waist. But this time the word ‘Further’ comes from the scratchy voice of the girl, followed by the word, ‘Inside.’
‘Down here?’
The girl nods.
Under the denim, the spider crawls along, downwards. Then stops.
The woman asks, ‘What happens next?’
The girl, after a while, answers. ‘Down comes the rain.’
‘And washes the spider out?’
The girl nods.
‘Back to where?’
The girl curls her little finger inside her mouth again.
‘To here?’
The girl nods.
‘And then what happens?’
Silence. Stillness. The girl The woman. The doll.
‘Ruby, what happens next?’
From behind her hands. Mumbled. ‘Out comes the sunshine, dries up all the rain. Then…’
‘He climbs the spout again?’
‘Yes.’
‘Like this?’
The eight-fingered spider makes its way down the doll’s T-shirt and towards the top of the jeans again.
‘Stop now,’ sa
ys the girl.
‘I just want to ask…’
‘STOP NOW, I SAID.’
The red-haired girl jumps to her feet, drags the red-haired doll across the room, throw it into the trunk, slams the lid and sits on it.
The woman unlocks her thumbs and the spider disappears in her hands. She looks towards the mirror.
Behind the mirror the man dicks his pen and makes a note.
11
Rosales. Meaning what? Derived from rose? From red?
Before Felix sat his O Levels he constructed an elaborate revision timetable from an A2 sheet of graph paper and magic markers in several vivid colours, one for each subject. It took him at least two days to put together. The wording couldn’t just be written with any old biro, it had to be stencilled using a fine-tip cartography pen. A professional draughtsman would have been happy with the hatching and shading which indicated rest breaks and lunch hours. It was, of course, a displacement activity, something to keep him from the actual task, just like the diagram in front of him now, with its arrows and vectors and curvy lines. He’d started it at half past nine, as soon as he’d arrived at the office. It was now twelve forty-five. Three and a quarter hours. He had also made several raids on the stationery cupboard on the ground floor for various writing implements and other useful items, such as a pencil sharpener, a protractor and a sheet of self-adhesive green dots. He blew the pencil shavings from the paper and then let his eyes follow several different routes from the top of the page to the bottom.
It reminded him of something else from his past, a game called bagatelle. It had belonged to his father, a kind of Stone Age pinball machine consisting of a green wooden board with dozens of nails sticking out. A ball-bearing was fired from a spring-loaded handle in the bottom comer which made its way up then back down the board, pinging from one nail to another. Sometimes it found its way into a pocket or slot worth fifty or a hundred points, and deft use of the firing mechanism could result in a score of a thousand points or more. But usually the ball-bearing trundled from nail to nail, then plopped into the trough at the bottom, which indicated failure.
Felix looked again at his diagram. It began with the heading ‘Mother’s maiden name’, then traced various lines of inquiry and avenues of investigation as they criss-crossed down the page. Several routes terminated at the word ‘Deceased’. When he’d finally satisfied himself that every possibility had been taken into account, he picked up the phone. Neville was right - Felix would have made a good detective. A ‘sleuth’, hadn’t he said? He had an analytical mind. But thoroughness was one thing and time-wasting was another.
The White Stuff Page 10