Barbara resisted his urging and found seats as near the front as possible, so that she would be ready to question the people on stage as soon as they'd finished. Milky blurs coated the whitewashed walls; behind the stage, pockmarks outlined the circle where a dart board had hung. As she sat down her chair creaked sharply, but the usher had time only to glower at her before he flapped away to seat another latecomer.
The quartet on the podium was selling reincarnation. Their accents varied between Scottish and mid-Atlantic; it was impossible to tell where they came from. "All of us are destined to have better lives than this," the younger woman said, but the more Barbara gazed at them the less alive they seemed: they looked manufactured by whatever factory produced families for television series, a freshfaced young man and woman between an older couple, all their instant identical smiles gleaming. Only the grubby elbow of the older woman's robe, which must have brushed against something on her way to the stage, seemed other than calculated.
The audience was gray. Everywhere she looked she saw clothes or hair the color of the stale smoke that half the audience was sucking from ragged cigarettes. They looked like people who worked in dingy offices or in shops in half-derelict streets if they worked at all, people who grew old looking after their parents and who would die unmarried and almost alone in their parents' senile houses. They were here tonight because they were starved for faith, for anything that would explain their lives.
And the quartet was telling them exactly what they wanted to hear, telling them so slickly that nobody had time to think between their claims. "We are all good, but some of us have forgotten," the young man said, and his young wife or sister responded at once: "It's easy to forget. That's the difficulty that God puts in our way so ------------------------------------194
that we have to have faith. But with faith every one of us can remember. We can remember all the good we did in our other lives."
She sensed that Ted was restless, and she was growing impatient too: how could this glib quartet tell her anything about the occult except their own routine? But she mustn't leave without making sure. She felt more than ever that she was being watched. No doubt that was because she was on edge.
The maternal woman was speaking. "Whatever our present lives may be, we have had better lives and will have again. Once you remember those good lives your present sufferings will seem less than a dream." She wavered forward a step, and Barbara realized she was crippled; that must have made her blacken her sleeve. "We can give you the key to those lives," she said.
Now came the sales pitch, Barbara thought, but the older man said, "Yet there is one thing you must remember. You have done bad as well as good in those lives. Every one of your most secret evil thoughts is something you have already done in another life. It isn't wrong to think these thoughts, because they are done and already forgiven. To realize that will help you rise above them."
A train bowled overhead, emerging from Central Station or dawdling in, and gave Barbara the chance to look over her shoulder without seeming paranoid. Nobody was watching her, but someone had been, a large-nosed woman in the back row who had come in after her. Or perhaps the woman had only been gazing at the stage and had glanced away nervously when Barbara turned; most of the audience looked timid, hoping not to be noticed. At any rate, the woman had turned her face aside.
The older man was still speaking gently but firmly, a father who had to communicate unpleasant facts of life. "You can't put those thoughts aside. They will only ------------------------------------195
burrow deeper in you and grow there. That is how corruption begins, when you pretend to yourself that evil has nothing to do with you. That's how you begin to lose control of yourself and what you can do."
This didn't seem quite what the audience wanted or expected--Barbara could tell that some of the listeners were ill at ease, a few of them were muttering--nor did it help her find Angela. It was beginning to remind her of Miss Clarke's psychometer friend, for it was just as unhelpful. When Barbara used the muttering as an excuse to glance back, there was no doubt that the woman with the strawberry nose was watching her, perhaps because Barbara looked out of place. The woman's face turned aside at once, hair trailing over one eye.
"But we all have it in us to do good," the young woman said, to the relief of the audience. "Good cannot be killed. It will always be reborn. None of us is ever beyond redemption unless we give up everything that makes us human. To be human is to be potentially good."
It must be the gaze of the large-nosed woman that made Barbara feel on edge, yet she felt there was something else, something she had just failed to remember. The effort to identify it rasped her nerves. "But the good that is in us can be corrupted," the young man shouted. "We must guard against those who would destroy it. There are always those who have turned their backs on their humanity, on everything they could achieve for good."
All at once Barbara remembered what she had almost forgotten or perhaps couldn't bear to recall. "Even their names?" she said uncontrollably.
"Names?" The young man's reassuring smile wavered; he hadn't been interrupted at rehearsal. "Turned their backs on their names, you mean? Yes, some of them even give up their names, maybe." He was faltering, and the maternal woman took over quickly. "Few of us will meet ------------------------------------196
anything that could corrupt us absolutely," she told the audience, but Barbara could hear only what Miss Clarke's friend had said.
Ted was clasping her hand as if he knew what was wrong, but all her senses seemed overpowered by the psychometer's voice: "Already she has great spiritual power. She must be found before they destroy what she is." The babble on stage had reminded her of this, but it could certainly not reassure her. The psychometer had been right to claim that Angela was still alive, she must have been right about everything. Barbara turned away, unaware that she was pulling her hand out of Ted's, and saw at last that the woman with the strawberry nose had a lopsided face.
A train rumbled overhead like stage thunder on cue, but Barbara was on the train where the lopsided woman had sat next to Angela. This couldn't be the same woman, she looked much more than nine years older, yet as Barbara grabbed Ted's arm, dragging him to his feet as she rose, she could see that the woman was afraid of her. She remembered the fear and loathing in the woman's eyes as she had gazed at Angela, she remembered how Angela had shrunk into herself as if with a premonition, and the nightmare seemed close to fitting together. She stepped into the aisle, and the woman fled into the passage at once.
"That woman," she gasped to Ted. "She's one of them." Perhaps he wondered how she knew, but he followed without speaking. Folding seats clattered behind them, the man in the too-large robe tried to detain them until his robe tripped him and dumped him back in his chair. In the passage the board rocked, fell against the wall. She ran past, knocking it aside.
The deserted street looked flayed by orange light. Beyond it the river and the sky were dark; night gathered like smoke under the bridges. Barbara was just in time to see ------------------------------------197
movement dodging behind one of the left-hand pillars. "Head her off," she cried as she ran across the roadway.
When she reached the pillar there was nothing but a gray bird which flapped away amid a migration of echoes. She ranged desperately about the cage of pillars, peered behind each one, darted back to the main road, along which Ted had halted, at a loss. Her shadow, a stylized hand on an elastic arm, made grabs at the dark.
Eventually she went back to the riverside. Arches dripped sharply, segments of inverted pillars squirmed. Flies that had swarmed from a drifting object tickled her face, but she was too intent to brush them off. To her right, against the low arch of the road bridge, an irregular patch might be the woman's bluish dress.
Barbara crept forward. A train ticked over the railway bridge; rats' tails of light dangled in the water. She would hold onto the woman until Ted came to help, no matter how the woman fought--but pe
rhaps the bluish patch wasn't the woman at all, perhaps it was a stain or a clump of weeds. She had almost reached it before it darted away beneath the arch.
"Over here, Ted!" If Barbara hadn't ducked as she ran, the edge of the low arch would have split her scalp. The riverside walk was darker than the road, but that meant she could see the woman, outlined against distant lights and drowned streaks of light. The walk felt rough as rubble underfoot, and she stumbled more than once. Round-headed dwarfs lined up in her way--bollards which she barely managed to avoid. Nevertheless she was gaining, however hoarse her breathing was.
Suddenly the woman dodged onto the road. Barbara panted after her, skidding on a scrap of lawn that smelled of mowing. The woman raced across into an empty side street which was shiny with orange light. Ted came ------------------------------------198
pounding along Broomielaw and reached the side turning just as Barbara did.
She hadn't time or breath to speak. They ran along the deserted street beneath windows blackened by the light. She could hear the strain in his breathing; he must be as out of condition as she was--but the woman they were chasing had looked much unhealthier, and they were closer to her by the time she dodged to the left.
When Barbara reached the corner she saw the station ahead, its great arched windows bright as a cathedral's. The woman was running under the wide bridge which led the railway lines toward Broomielaw, running through the rugs of light outside a dozen shops. As she ran past a bus queue, faces peered out from behind one another like a high hand at poker, and Barbara thought of crying out to them to stop her. But she no longer had the breath to spare, even supposing she would have been able to convince them to help.
As Barbara passed the queue, her open mouth dragging at her breaths, the woman turned left into Union Street. She glanced back at Barbara, then she seemed to make a final effort. When Barbara arrived, panting jaggedly, at the corner, she thought the woman had managed to lose her. Then, beyond a few scattered window-shoppers, she glimpsed the woman dodging into a doorway between shops.
Ted saw this too, and ran to the opposite pavement, surprisingly fast for his large frame, in order to head her off. He was ahead of the doorway, and running back across the road, as Barbara came up to it. He already looked defeated, and when she reached the doorway she saw why. It wasn't a shop doorway at all. It was a passage that led into the railway station.
As she toiled up the steps into the station she heard a train leaving. At the top of the steps a drunk tried to detain ------------------------------------199
her, but she threw him aside. The station hall was crowded with people, staring up at announcements that hands were removing or placing in windows; it sounded like a theater during an intermission. Hands were withdrawing a placard for the Edinburgh train, and she ran to that barrier. "Did a woman," she gulped at the ticket collector, "just come through here?"
"A woman? Aye, a whole lot of them."
"Just now." He was turning away, and she had to restrain herself from clawing at him. "A woman in a blue dress."
"Aye, blue and green and yellow and rainbow with pink spots. They'd better all have tickets, I can tell you."
It was useless. She could hear trains leaving for other towns, and she couldn't check them all. She slumped and might have fallen if Ted hadn't supported her. There was one last faint chance. "We've got to go back," she said.
But the door under the bridges on Broomielaw was closed and padlocked; the Undying Light had gone. She trudged wordlessly back to the hotel, up the giant sloping steps of the streets. A light rain tingled her face and bare arms, but she was beyond being refreshed. She dared not call the police, she could do nothing except hope that Gerry had found the cult, hope for another phone call eventually. No doubt the cult would move again as soon as the woman reported that Barbara had spotted her.
"Never mind," Ted murmured, taking Barbara's arm. "We'll try and find them in the morning." He was guiding her toward the stairs, and she knew that he meant to help--but now she would have to explain to him why she had chased the woman, which meant that at last she would have to admit to herself all she feared. ------------------------------------200 ------------------------------------201
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Twenty-four
When he was sure that Barbara was asleep Ted went next door to his room and phoned down to make sure she wouldn't be disturbed. He stood at his window and tried to think. Rain was performing a spiky dance in the street; lit windows piled above the Clyde, floated along the dark river toward the sea. The anonymous cheerfulness of his room seemed to hinder his thinking. He went downstairs.
The bored young woman at the desk didn't seem much enlivened when she found that he only wanted her to let him know if Barbara called his room. Eventually a porter took his order for coffee. In the lounge the extinguished television was showing a swollen reflection of armchairs; a faint smell of pipe smoke and talcum powder hovered among the glazed half-empty bookcases, the tables scattered with disintegrating magazines. He sat in an armchair that smelled of tobacco, and thought about Barbara. ------------------------------------202
It looked bad. He could see she realized that herself. Apparently she had felt watched for weeks, and tonight's encounter with the woman under the bridges had convinced her she was right. That might not be entirely paranoid--the lopsided woman must have had reason to flee--but it was trivial, not to say reasonable, compared with the things she imagined about Angela.
They seemed to go all the way back to the kidnapping, to the claims a so-called psychic had made, which surely proved how bad her state of mind was: could this really be the Barbara Waugh who had used to refer to occult books as idiot traps? That Barbara would never have gone anywhere near an outfit like the Undying Light, but now she believed that Angela had psychic powers which the kidnappers were trying to destroy: she had seen her father and talked to him after his death, she had an aura of peace which calmed everyone who came near her. Everyone except the killers, apparently: they were the people with no names, who must believe she was some kind of threat; the lopsided woman was one of them, who had sensed her powers one day as she'd sat next to her on the Victoria line. That was why they had gone to such lengths to steal Angela. The Undying Light had made it clear why the nameless people couldn't simply kill her: the threat to them would only be reborn.
He couldn't tell how much of this Barbara believed, and perhaps she wasn't sure herself. Perhaps she meant only that the cult believed Angela was beyond killing, not that she was. Nevertheless he'd tried to disentangle her thoughts--hearing her husband soon after his death, and believing that Angela had seen him, could be wishful thinking; surely Angela could have pacified people and still have been quite a normal child--until he'd seen that he was making her more tense. He'd had to persuade her to take two of the sleeping pills he sometimes had to use, ------------------------------------203
and then he had needed to reassure her that whatever he'd said, he would help. Of course he would, but how?
When the porter had gone he drank sweet scalding coffee and hoped that would sharpen his mind. He still felt that her search would lead nowhere--one reason he'd come with her was to support her if she gave in to despair-- but perhaps he wasn't as objective as he liked to think. Did he secretly hope that she wouldn't find Angela, that Angela had died nine years ago? Wasn't her childlessness part of her appeal for him? Perhaps, but he was being unfair to himself; he cared about her more deeply than that. If the nameless people really had Angela, if Barbara managed to reclaim her, what would the child be like after nine years? He suspected that Barbara didn't dare wonder.
His logic was growing tangled. There was no need to think along those lines. He was still convinced that Angela was dead and that Barbara was being set up for extortion; certainly that was the simplest explanation. The lopsided woman must have been following her to see if the false trails had softened her up. He only wished he could get his hands on her, on any of the bastards who were doing all
this to Barbara.
And by God, perhaps he could--perhaps there was a way to help, at any rate. He set down his cup with a thud on the tray. Now that they knew what one of her persecutors looked like, they had to tell the police. He would have to persuade Barbara that Angela could come to no harm: either she was dead or, if the nameless people had really stolen her for the reasons Barbara had suggested, they didn't dare kill her. Of course he would put it to her more gently, but she must accept that this was their first real lead.
All at once he felt a great deal more useful. He finished his coffee quickly, then he went to stand for a while beneath the hotel awning. Smells of Greek and Indian food ------------------------------------204
drifted through the rain, window dummies stirred beyond tendrils of rain on their windows, reflections swam by under cars. He was standing there when a porter came to him. "Mrs. Waugh," the porter said.
"Is she awake?" He'd hoped she would sleep until morning. "All right, I'll go up."
"No, it's someone wants to speak to her. You said she wasn't to be disturbed."
It was after midnight. Could this be the girl who was pretending to be Angela? If he could only meet her face-to-face-- But when he answered the phone in the foyer alcove, the girl's voice sounded much too old. "I want to speak to Mrs. Waugh," it said.
"She's asleep. She's had an extremely tiring day. Can I help? I'm with her."
"I can only speak to Mrs. Waugh."
Who would call so late and be so secretive? "My name is Ted Crichton," he said. "Barbara has asked me to speak to anyone who calls while she's asleep." Before he was sure it was wise to go on he said, "Including her daughter."
There was a silence. He'd given away Barbara's secret, and he didn't even know to whom. Then the voice said, "Do you know who I am?"
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