Twenty-Four Hours

by Margaret Mahy

  “You’re in the Land-of-Smiles,” she said. “Your name’s Ellis Hudson – or that’s what Jackie says, but he’s not very reliable. And all the stuff that fell out of your jacket pocket is in the top drawer of the unit beside your bed. I put it there so that if you flopped around in the night you wouldn’t lose it all over again. And, by the way,” she said, smiling and mimicking him, “your mother said you were quite right not to drive home.”

  “Thanks,” said Ellis huskily, feeling the remains of his smile grow sickly and embarrassed. “Did I ring her?”

  “No, I did,” said Leona. “You were really out of it. But you almost outlasted Jackie, and that’s not easy. I think he’s got your car keys, if you need them.”

  “Did you ring his mother?” asked Ellis.

  “Jackie’s parents don’t worry too much about him these days,” Leona replied. “Sorry! Got to find Shelley. But there’s perpetual coffee in the kitchen.”

  Ellis had been dismissed. Leona walked past him and the rubbish bags, opening doors and peering into rooms as she went. “Shelley!” she called as she retreated. “Shelley! Come on! No hiding!” Ellis wished he could watch her properly … but he was somehow set at a different angle to the world through which Leona was moving so confidently.

  So he walked carefully to the left-hand green door, pushed it open and found himself, not in the kitchen, but in last night’s dining room, staring, yet again, at the complicated spider’s nest of piled tables. And there were the three working tables, placed end to end, stretching out in a more or less conventional fashion. Ellis remembered the crowd he had seen sitting around it when he had first followed Leona and Ursa into this room. He remembered the way the kitchen party had flowed out here when the kitchen suddenly seemed too small to hold them.

  He remembered Pandora with her scarred wrist, and remembered the woman with the purple streak in her hair refusing to be warned about someone called Winston. He remembered Ursa forcing Fox to go to bed, and remembered how the illustrated Phipps had studied him through narrowed eyes. And now he also remembered sitting at that very table hours later, joking, slinging off at Jackie and talking eloquently, while other largely anonymous people listened, smiling as if they recognised the truth and wit of what he was saying.

  Ellis groaned to himself. What they had been recognising, he now understood, was his great drunkenness.

  At the far end of the table Ursa was sitting, a plate in front of her, and a pile of books beside her. From the nearer end of the table Fox looked back over her shoulder, then turned to stare into her globe of crimson glass, smouldering with imprisoned morning-light beside her bowl of half-eaten cereal. Then Ursa looked up, and she too studied him, staring through her dark-rimmed glasses and looking unexpectedly alert for someone contemplating Saturday-morning breakfast after a Friday-night party. She yawned and stretched, pushing her fingers through her brown mane.

  “Wow!” she said. “You look dreadful.”

  Ellis knew it must be true, yet … Pretend to be cool, he told himself. He was, after all, going to be an actor. Practise pretending!

  “I think I look pretty good, really,” he said, running a hand over his newly-bare skull. It bristled softly under his palm, and he was surprised by how warm and friendly it felt.

  “I wasn’t talking about your hair-cut,” Ursa said. “That’s the best bit of you. Pandora’s an artist. She keeps saying so, so it must be true.”

  “You said you wanted to change your life,” Fox cried. “You kept on saying it! And Pandora did a Number One cut around the sides and Number Two at the top.” She dipped her spoon into her breakfast bowl.

  “I thought you’d been sent to bed,” said Ellis, quickly improvising the voice of a stern, older brother – rather well, he thought, for someone who was an only child.

  “I had to get a drink of water,” Fox replied, in a slightly whining voice. “I had to come out here and get it. I couldn’t help hearing you, you were talking so loudly. Shouting!”

  “And Pandora didn’t take much encouraging,” Ursa added. “She’s changed her own life a few times, so she was only too keen to help you change yours. So – hair-cut, great! All you need to do is to improve the face under it.”

  “Leo’s good at improving people,” said Fox, giggling.

  “Shut up, you!” cried Ursa. “He’s got a long way to go before he needs any help from Leo. Coffee?” she asked Ellis.

  “I don’t think I …” Ellis found he was simultaneously longing for coffee and revolted by the thought of it. His stomach heaved violently. Taking a breath, he forced it into submission. “Coffee? OK! Where is it?” he said quickly.

  “Behind the counter,” said Ursa, pointing. Turning, Ellis saw a long, serving counter, behind which lay a series of electric hot plates set in a Formica worktop. Between two of the plates there was a huge coffee-making machine.

  “It’ll be strong,” warned Fox. “Drink water first!”

  A bottle of milk and a bag of brown sugar sat beside the coffee machine. A column of waxed cardboard cups, one inside the other, hung in a holder on the wall. He pulled the bottom one free. The coffee smelled not only strong but slightly burnt. It was as black as pitch. He splashed milk into the cup and shook in sugar from the bag, noting with dismay as he did so that his hand was trembling. Act! he reminded himself. Grab every chance! Practise!

  “What a night!” he said lightly. “I didn’t mean to get so … so carried away.”

  Good timing, he thought. And his voice had sounded as easy and self-mocking as he had intended it to be. The idea of acting was somehow making conversation possible.

  “None of us do, mate,” said Ursa, smiling. “And I speak as one of the ones who carried you! But you’ll be OK by tomorrow. Tomorrow afternoon, that is!”

  “Jackie carried you,” said Fox. “Jackie, Ursa and Phipps!”

  Ellis sat down at the table. The name Phipps reminded him of spirals, and of blue dragons embracing a naked princess.

  “I’ll thank them next time I see them,” he said. He met Ursa’s light-blue eyes and pulled a face. “Sorry!”

  “You really aren’t any trouble, you know,” she said. “It’s not as if you’re going to eat much for breakfast.” At the mere mention of food, Ellis’s stomach heaved again. He was surprised by its on-going resentment. “I suppose you do remember who we are?” Ursa added. “The story so far! Leona, Fox and I are sisters … the Lion, the Fox and the Bear. Our father named us all after storybook beasts. Our birth father, I mean – yesterday’s bad news, dead on the page today. Forget him! It’s our foster father you need to remember – Monty. You met him last night, and later I heard Pandora gossiping about us all, so you probably know more about us than we know ourselves.”

  “Three sisters in a castle in a forest,” chimed in Fox, making a witchy gesture across the glowing glass ball.

  “Yeah! A forest of run-down boarding houses and scruffy flats,” said Ursa. “We’ve a never-ending social life, even if it is a bit on the rough side. That’s why I was really enjoying the Kilmers’ party … but never mind all that, now.”

  “Ursie’s going to be a lawyer,” said Fox, gesturing at the books by Ursa’s elbow. “But I’m going to tell fortunes.”

  The door by which Ellis had come into the kitchen opened and Jackie appeared.

  “Morning all!” he cried, beaming around the room. “Another sunrise in Paradise!” His voice, which had begun strongly, quavered on the word, ‘paradise’.

  “For your information,” said Ursa, “the sun rises at about 6.00 am.”

  “I’m talking about a spiritual sunrise,” said Jackie. “They never take place before 9.30 am.”

  A phone rang somewhere, seeming to scream in terror rather than merely ring. Ellis jumped.

  “Grab that, will you?” said Ursa without moving. “It’s probably someone for Leo.”

  The phone shrilled urgently on and on, while Ellis looked frantically up and down the table and across at empty walls. The
sound seemed to be coming at him from every direction at once. Jackie, helping himself from the coffee machine, turned and pointed downwards, and so at last Ellis found the phone which was squatting on the floor almost between his feet. A long grey cord snaked across the room to a phone-jack low in the wall beside the door which led, Ellis remembered, to the reception area. Bending down, he imagined the top of his head was going to flop open and that what was left of his brain would fall, squelching, on top of the phone. Quickly he snatched up the receiver.

  “Land-of-Smiles Motel,” he said. His voice was so easy and confident that, once again, he felt proud of himself.

  Silence – though Ellis, frowning into the phone, believed he could hear the sound of someone listening back at him from the other end of the line. The deliberate silence was almost a noise in itself.

  “Land-of-Smiles Motel,” he repeated.

  The answer, when it came, was muffled. Ellis guessed at once that the person at the other end of the line was speaking between his fingers.

  “Mumble, mumble … Ursa?”

  “It’s for you,” Ellis called to her, waving the receiver enticingly.

  “Who is it?” she asked, pulling a face.

  A door opened. Leona drifted in, smiling and frowning at the same time.

  “She says, who is it?” Ellis said into the receiver while he stared at Leona. In spite of his hangover he felt a familiar heat flooding through him, and wondered with dismay if he were visibly blushing.

  “Tell her it doesn’t matter who the fuck it is,” said the voice, suddenly sharply distinct. “Get her to the phone right now.”

  Ellis was startled by the violence which came punching out at him through the black receiver.

  “He wants you!” Ellis cried to Ursa.

  “Tell him to leave a number and I’ll ring him back when I’m ready,” Ursa replied casually, for she was not the one taking the impact of that unpleasant voice.

  “She says to leave a number,” said Ellis apprehensively.

  “Does she? Well, ask her if she wants to know where the kid is,” the voice went on, giving the word ‘kid’ a vicious emphasis. “And tell her that if she takes a step – one single step – towards the cops, it’ll be bye-bye-baby.”

  “What?” exclaimed Ellis, unable to believe what he was being told.

  “You heard!” the voice declared. “Think about it! I’ll ring back.” There was a click and the line died.

  “She’s just – disappeared,” Leona was saying, sounding troubled. Ursa sighed and got to her feet.

  “I’ll give you a hand,” she said.

  “Listen …” said Ellis, but too quietly and reasonably to catch their attention.

  “I’ve already looked everywhere,” exclaimed Leona, entirely ignoring him. “I’ve gone through all the rooms.”

  “The guy who just rang …” Ellis began again, but they still talked insistently over him.

  “Come on, Foxie,” Ursa said. “Baby-search! Unless you can tell us where she is from a bit of crystal-gazing.”

  Fox peered into her glass ball. It reflected back at her, spreading an uneven blush across her forehead.

  “Hey!” Ellis shouted. “Listen, won’t you?” Amazingly, this barking voice had an effect. The three sisters turned obediently towards him. “Someone on the phone …” Ellis began, projecting his voice so effectively that it echoed back from the piled tables. “Whoever it was on the phone said to ask you,” Ellis went on, using a quieter voice now, “if you knew where the kid was.”

  Jackie’s mouth, which was open as it prepared itself for the first shock of burnt, black coffee, closed abruptly. He lowered the cup without taking his eyes from Ellis. Fox turned towards her glowing glass, as if a certain lucky gaze might dissolve its surface and allow her to dive into its hot heart. Ursa and Leona spoke together.

  “What guy?” demanded Ursa.

  “He said what?” cried Leona.

  “It was some guy who wanted to speak to you, Ursa, and when you wouldn’t come to the phone he told me to ask you if you knew where the kid was. And then he hung up. Oh, and he did say …”

  Ellis paused.

  “Get on with it!” shouted Ursa irritably. “We can take it.”

  “He said,” Ellis explained, hearing his own voice tight with apprehension, “that if you got in touch with the police, it would be bye-bye-baby.”

  “The glass has gone dark,” intoned Fox, though no one was paying any attention to her.

  “Oh, God!” said Jackie, his fierce exclamation reminding Ellis of his own mother’s voice when their dog came galloping into the kitchen with muddy paws, mere minutes after she had washed the floor.

  “Did he sound drunk?” Ursa asked.

  “Blurry!” said Ellis. “Not drunk. Sort of disguised.”

  “Maori?” asked Ursa. “Pakeha?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ellis. “Neither! Just a voice.”

  “The glass is darker … darker … darker …”

  Though the words were still clear in his head the voice in which they had been uttered was already fading, and every question seemed to make it harder to recall.

  “It has gone totally black,” said Fox, her own voice trembling.

  “Oh, shut up about that bloody glass,” said Ursa. She looked at Jackie. “This isn’t something you’ve set up, is it?”

  “Jackie was here all the time,” Ellis cried, feeling obliged to protest against this implicit accusation. He was not the only person to defend Jackie.

  “You should trust Jackie,” Fox told Ursa, speaking severely, “because you’re going to marry him. I keep telling you that.”

  “Kill first! Marry afterwards,” Ursa replied.

  “Wait till you’re asked,” said Jackie indignantly “I’m not going to throw myself away on a lawyer. And thanks for your vote of confidence, incidentally. You obviously think I’d hurt a baby. Great!”

  “Sorry,” mumbled Ursa. “I know you wouldn’t, really. It’s just that … Oh, well, sorry! Sorry!”

  “This is mad,” cried Leona. “David will be here to collect me at any moment, but I can’t go to work, can I? Not with Shelley missing.”

  “I might be violent at times,” Jackie went on, ignoring Leona and glaring at Ursa, “but I’m never, ever spiteful.”

  There was the sound of a distant door opening. Someone had come into the reception room. Ellis found himself filled with superstitious alarm. He imagined a second door opening to reveal something terrible – a skeleton in a police uniform, say, holding the body of a fair-haired child in its arms.

  Leona sighed.

  “That’ll be David!” she said. “But I can’t go to work. Not until I know Shelley’s safe.”

  “It’s Saturday,” said Ellis.

  “No closed season for Leona’s work,” said Jackie. “It just keeps on keeping on, doesn’t it, Leo? Always new clients, and none of them can wait.”

  But the door was opening and in came a shortish, rather jolly-looking man wearing a dark suit and a silver-grey tie. His neatness and cleanness, his slightly pudgy softness looked utterly out of place in the Land-of-Smiles dining room. All the same, judging from the confident manner in which he walked in, Ellis realised that he must know this room well.

  “Ready?” he asked Leona, smiling.

  “Oh, David,” she said. “It’s awful. I can’t!”

  “Another crisis?” His voice was gentle and half-joking.

  “A bad one!” Leona cried. “Not funny! No way funny!” She caught his arm and pulled him towards the door that opened on to the rubbish bags. “Come out here and I’ll tell you.”

  But she left the door open, so Ellis was able to watch her talking rapidly and waving her hands, becoming more and more agitated as she did so. He thought about the tottering child he had seen the night before and remembered the way Leona’s face had dissolved with tenderness as she had swept the child up, cuddling her close.

  “Is Shelley Leona’s baby?” he asked t
entatively.

  “She’s a kid who was dumped on us. Her mother, Mystique, stayed here during the last bit of her pregnancy, and Shelley was born three rooms further on from where you were last night. But Mystique took off almost at once, and by now Shelley counts as ours. Leona’s crazy about her. We all are.”

  “Get the cops,” begged Fox. “Tell them to creep over the back fence and …”

  “Cops don’t creep? said Jackie. “They charge – like wounded bulls.”

  “You’re prejudiced,” said Ursa.

  Fox looked over at Ellis. “Jackie was busted last year,” she said. “He was growing marijuana, and …”

  But Ellis, still staring through the partly-open door, was watching David put his arms around Leona, though, as far as he could tell, the embrace was nothing more than kind and brotherly.

  “Someone must have seen something,” said Jackie. “I mean, Shelley always gets up with Leona, eats some sort of breakfast mush and so on. But there are other people around all the time.”

  “Not on a Saturday morning after a Friday-night party,” Ursa replied. “You wouldn’t know. You’re never up until mid-morning, anyway.”

  “Look! Whoever took her has to be someone from inside the Land-of-Smiles,” said Jackie. He paused. Ellis could see him running possibilities through his head, as if he were shuffling imaginary cards. “It has to be someone who knows our ways.”

  “The glass says to ask Jason,” announced Fox.

  To Ellis’s surprise, both Jackie and Ursa straightened, looked at each other and then at Fox, rather as if she had made a sensible suggestion.

  “Could be worth checking out,” said Jackie. “Jason’s a real know-all. And he’s suspended from school again, isn’t he? I saw him sitting on the cemetery wall last night as we drove in.”

  “I saw him sneaking past Norah Prendergast,” said Ursa, confusing Ellis entirely.

  She frowned. “He sometimes nips in here and checks our rubbish bags. I suppose he could have seen someone coming or going. Could be worth running him to ground and asking a few questions.”

  Leona was coming back into the dining room, David close behind her.

  “She’s taking time off work,” said David. “No great problem today. We’re not busy at the moment.”