Twenty-Four Hours

by Margaret Mahy

  Ursa cried out, “Stop it. For God’s sake, stop it!” as they curved into the corner, halfway, at least, across the white line. Then she clapped her hands over her face.

  But their luck was in. They were the only car rounding that particular corner at that particular moment. The road tilted upwards yet again.

  “Now!” said Jackie.

  Ellis felt light-headed – even crazy – but he could not tell if he were crazy with fear and excitement, or because his hangover had suddenly taken charge, or because of the bombardment of instructions coming from behind.

  “How about no hands?” he cried, taking both hands off the wheel and waggling them in the air.

  “Oh, shit!” exclaimed Jackie, making an impulsive movement, a symbolic half-grab at the wheel across Ellis’s shoulder. Ursa dragged him back. Ellis felt an immediate relaxation that was partly triumph. He had successfully terrified Jackie Cattle.

  And by now he was part of an unreeling story in which he must act, but over which he had no power at all. The burning car navigated a series of gentle S-bends and climbed the last, steep stretch to the hilltop where they would find, Ellis already knew, a parking area and a shop selling post cards and ice cream to tourists. After that, the road would plunge down through a series of hairpin bends towards the sea. But the burning car, its painted flames seeming to blink and shiver, turned left and away from the main road, vanishing between banks of fern and overhanging trees. Scenic Drive, said a yellow road sign, and Ellis also turned left.

  In spite of Ellis’s reckless efforts, the distance between the two cars was stretching out. Up they went and then down, and saw the other car approaching the first of a series of look-out points. A little beyond, trees closed around the road once more. Reserve, said a laconic notice and beside it a second sign held up, not a warning, but a symbol indicating the approach of a dangerous bend.

  A huge shape suddenly lumbered out of the trees. At first glance Ellis thought some science-fiction war machine was charging towards them, but it was an old bus which had been turned into a house on wheels – an eccentric compression of engine and architecture. It was more than a caravan. WIDE LOAD, warned a notice attached to the front bumper bar, rather unnecessarily, for the windowed sides swelled outwards so that it seemed the vehicle must topple on its wheelbase, crushing anyone who happened to be passing. It rushed towards them, not so much straddling as devouring the white line, swallowing it up and, almost at once, excreting it. And it managed to do something that no vehicle so far had done. It intimidated Winston, who chose to skid sideways on to the turning zone beside the look-out point, making way for this monstrous, and probably illegal, vehicle to lumber by. The burning car then attempted to spin around and regain the road, but in the act of turning it skidded sideways towards a fence, beyond which there was nothing but space, a hovering hawk and a view of the city stretching out in the weekend sun. Ellis, horrified, believed Winston’s car would smash right through the fence and tumble away, flashing, spinning, diminishing, to crash at the foot of the hill.

  Now, he was also sweeping towards the look-out point. As he drew into the side of the road, the shadow of the monstrous van eclipsed them briefly, but Ellis was watching the burning car strike the wooden fence a glancing blow, then tilt and roar desperately, but to no avail. It was trapped, its left-hand back wheel stuck in some sort of ditch, and it could not free itself.

  “Yes!” shouted Jackie, thumping Ellis’s shoulder as if Ellis had actually arranged this advantageous disaster.

  But there was no time for Ellis to relax and enjoy his triumph. He braked, turned into the parking zone and drew to a sliding stop, remembering to park in the exit so that even if Winston succeeded in powering his car out of the ditch, it would not be able to escape back to the road.

  There were no congratulations forthcoming for this manoeuvre which had surprised Ellis himself with its apparent skill. When he took his hands from the wheel he found he was shaking, but Leona was already flinging her door open. “Please! Please!” she was saying aloud, but only to the air and, though the car had not quite stopped, she leaped out, staggering forward in a series of uncoordinated, loping steps, before stumbling and falling – first to her knees and then full-length. She was up again, almost at once.

  Winston, a man with tawny, felted dreadlocks, had swung his own door wide and was confronting them, crouching like a mockery of a lion about to spring. Then Jackie was out and sprinting across the turning space with all the enthusiasm of a man longing for action. Ellis, about to follow him, felt the car trickle slowly forwards as if it were haunted by a faint ghost of its previous purpose. He had forgotten to put on the handbrake. Spinning back behind the wheel, he wrenched the brake up. And then, at last, he was out, trying to find a place for himself in the confusion around him.

  Leona had flung the back door of the burning car wide open and was kneeling, half-in, half-out, of the back seat. As Ellis registered this, she let out a terrible wail – a wail, Ellis supposed, of grief.

  “Oh, no,” she was crying. “Oh, No! No! No! No! No!” Five ‘No’s like five blows.

  Filled with fear of what he might be about to see, Ellis reached her side. He was aware that Jackie and Winston were rolling over and over in the dust, lashing out at each other, though with what effect he could not tell. He was aware that Mystique, the young woman with the purple streak in her dark hair was leaning across the bonnet of the burning car, shouting abuse at them, and that Ursa, unable to see past Leo, was trying to get a better view into the back of the car by scrambling into the driver’s empty seat. But all Ellis could think of was Leona’s wailing grief. So he touched her shoulder gently and peered with dread past her bright, tangled hair.

  Incongruously, Ursa began to laugh, though it was not a happy sound, while Leona slowly fell to her knees, allowing Ellis, at last, an unimpeded view.

  What he saw was not a child, but a small, grey computer screen, and the square box of the computer itself, wrapped in a yellowish-white baby’s shawl, full of holes and fringed with creamy wool, and then wrapped again, for concealment and perhaps protection, in a red tartan rug.

  And Ellis realised that the mad race through town and up into the hills had been for nothing. It had all been a misunderstanding.

  12.40 pm – Saturday

  Driving smoothly now, Ellis left the hills and headed in the direction of the city centre where they were embraced again by familiar vistas – houses, gardens and the wink of traffic lights. But though Ellis was driving slowly, his progress was not altogether safe for Leona had locked her fingers around his, leaving him only one hand with which to control the steering wheel.

  “I really did think it was Shelley,” Leona said for the third time, leaning back in the seat beside him, eyes closed. “When I saw that fair hair … well, it looked like fair hair, didn’t it …”

  “At least we got the computer back,” interrupted Jackie, lisping because his upper lip was badly swollen.

  “I never once thought of Winston – not as far as stealing my computer was concerned,” Ursa remarked with a sigh. “To tell you the truth, I did wonder about Prince. I thought he might be someone who’d sell us out if he got a good offer.” She looked at Jackie. “Is your lip hurting?”

  “Sensitive of you to ask,” Jackie replied. “Actually, I’m in agony. But, hey! I took him on, didn’t I? Winston, I mean. I thought he’d kill me, but I didn’t hesitate. And neither did Ellis,” he added.

  “Ellis, I’m sorry we all yelled at you back there,” said Ursa. “I mean, you drove like an idiot, but I suppose you were doing your best.”

  “We were bloody lucky, though,” said Jackie. “You broke every rule in the book. Wow! Who’d have thought it – a nice boy like you?”

  Leona’s fingers tightened a little on Ellis’s.

  “I know I drove badly,” he said.

  “Dangerously!” said Jackie. “Get it right. You drove dangerously.”

  “And it was all for nothing,” sai
d Leona in a tranquil voice, though Ellis could see she was weeping silently as she spoke. “We still don’t know where Shelley is, and she’ll be so frightened. And Mystique didn’t even care.”

  Ellis had been stunned by the way the whole confrontation had lost its energy once Winston and Mystique realised they were not going to be called to account for computer theft. Winston and Jackie had immediately moved into a state of truculent neutrality, and Ursa, without further argument, had even been allowed to take back her computer.

  “It’s junk, anyway,” Winston had said.

  And at last, circling through the city, they returned to Moncrieff Street, drawing up almost exactly where they had started from in front of the Land-of-Smiles. As Ellis checked the handbrake, a dark shape danced out into the sunlight, waving both arms, then bounded across to them.

  “He’s rung!” Fox was calling breathlessly as she ran. “Rung twice. Did you find her?”

  “What did he say?” asked Leona urgently.

  “Nothing,” said Fox. “I answered once, and Monty answered once, and both times whoever it was hung up without saying anything. It must have been him though, because …”

  But before she could finish her tale they all heard the phone in the lobby give two shrill cries, pause, and then cry again and again. Leona, in the act of opening her door, pulled her fingers away from Ellis’s and took off, leaping towards the Land-of-Smiles.

  “Leo!” called Ursa despairingly. “Wait! Let me!” Then she ran too, with Fox at her heels. But Leona reached the front door well ahead of her sisters. Jackie looked at Ellis and rolled his eyes. The phone fell silent.

  “Might be nothing,” said Jackie, but not as if he believed it. “I’ll jump every time I hear the phone for the rest of my life.” They walked, side by side, to the front door of the Land-of-Smiles and found Leona in the act of putting the receiver down.

  “Was it him?” asked Ursa.

  “What did he say?” cried Fox.

  “He just said, ‘Welcome home’!” said Leona in her new, eerily tranquil voice. “It was all he would say. He said it about three times.”

  “Leo, darling Leo,” said Ursa. “Don’t panic. That’s what he wants, whoever he is. And listen! I think we’ll just have to get the police.”

  Leona’s eyes flew wide open.

  “No!” she cried. “He said, ‘Welcome home’. He knew we’d just driven in. Don’t you see? He’s watching us from somewhere close.” She spun around staring wildly, as if any of the watching windows that circled the Land-of-Smiles might hide an enemy. “If he saw a police car arrive …”

  Ellis heard the breath rip in Leona’s throat.

  “No police!” she screamed at them. Then she turned and, suddenly ungainly, stumbled around the counter to disappear into the dining room. Ursa followed her, while Ellis, watching them, believed he could still feel Leona’s fingers twist against his palm even though she was no longer holding his hand. He stared at the door, closing behind her.

  “Uh-oh!” said Fox. Ellis found she was looking at him as if he were a man of crystal, trouble visibly seething in his heart. “You’ve got that look.”

  “What look?” asked Ellis absently. But she merely shook her head, which wouldn’t have worried him except that, glancing over at Jackie, he saw in his expression something of the same apprehension that he had just heard in Fox’s voice.

  “Hey, Foxie, just run and check on Leona, and then report back,” said Jackie casually. Ellis expected her to argue, but she moved off without a word.

  “You know, you could cut off home,” Jackie said. His usual tough-clown expression had changed into something softer and, possibly, sadder. “You need a break.”

  “So do you,” said Ellis.

  “Yes, but you’re worse than me. I don’t think you’ve had anything like the practice at scruffy living that I’ve had.”

  While parking the car in front of the Land-of-Smiles once again, Ellis had certainly thought rather longingly of home and had planned, once again, to ring his mother and reassure her. However, Jackie’s suggestion that he might actually like to go home felt like an abrupt dismissal. Defiance freshened him up. He stared back at Jackie without saying anything. Jackie looked him up and down as if he were reading a page.

  “OK, but you be careful, that’s all,” he said.

  “Careful of what?” asked Ellis. To his fury he felt himself blushing for the second time that day.

  “Look,” said Jackie, “everyone in this house is a bit of a deadbeat. No! Scratch that!” He waved his hands, apparently erasing something written in the air before him. “Everyone in this house is a bit – not mad, not bad – damaged. We’re like that computer of Ursa’s – which I notice she’s left in your car, simply asking to have it nicked all over again. We do a few funny things, but they’re not – I mean we’re not just …” Overtaken by a rare confusion, Jackie stared into space as he groped for the right word, “… picturesque,” he said at last. “And it’s not really anyone’s fault, either. It’s the fault of the world.”

  “What are you on about?” asked Ellis wearily.

  “I’m not too sure,” said Jackie. “I feel a bit responsible for you, I suppose. Oh, God!” he groaned. “It’s happening. I’ve done my best, but it’s happening.”

  “What’s happening?” cried Ellis

  “I’m becoming mature!” exclaimed Jackie with loathing.

  “If it’s so crazy, why do you hang around here?” asked Ellis, and as he said this, it occurred to him that Jackie might want to keep Leona and Ursa for himself.

  “Good question,” said Jackie. “Well, I’m not totally at ease with the world. My family dumped on me – well, half-dumped on me when I was a kid and then, later, I dumped on them …”

  He broke off. “It’s all so boring!” he cried. “I’ll tell you sometime when we’ve got a whole day to spare and I can run on and on, making excuses for everyone. Anyhow, by now I’m at home here. And, also, I’ve got a bit of a thing going for Ursa,” he added carelessly.

  “Ursa!” exclaimed Ellis doubtfully. Though he had already guessed this, he found it hard to believe that anyone could choose Ursa when Leona was around.

  “You surprised?” asked Jackie. “Take it from me, she’s ten times as sexy as Leona. Of course, we drive each other up the wall. Oh, God!” he cried again. “I set out to exploit you and now, here I am, trying to look after you. Talk about revenge!”

  “You are beginning to sound like a school counsellor,” said Ellis rather meanly, and Jackie let out a howl.

  “I’d never sink as low as that!” he cried.

  “What do you think they ought to do?” asked Ellis quickly, hoping to change the subject. “About Shelley, I mean.”

  “They should go to the cops!” declared Jackie without hesitation. “Just like I think in …” he broke off. “What’s that thing you think in?”

  “Dunno!” said Ellis, lost yet again. Jackie’s face brightened.

  “Retrospect!” he exclaimed. “I think, in retrospect, we should have phoned them at once, and that you should have kept to the lawful side of the road during our big chase, and so on and so forth. But there you are. I was screaming at you to go faster, and you were already doing just that. Which brings me back to Leo.” He took a breath.

  “Ages ago something happened to Leo and Ursa and to Fox … and they’ll never get over it. They’ve sort of grown around it, but it’s part of them forever. And it makes them risky. No! Wipe that! Not so much risky, more unpredictable, but unpredictable is a bit dangerous, isn’t it? Look, it’s not my story, but maybe I’d better tell you …”

  At that moment the door to the dining room opened and Monty came towards them, holding the big glass beaker which usually sat on the coffee machine.

  “I’ve cleaned out those disgusting dregs,” he said. “We’ll start all over again, shall we? Anyone want coffee?”

  “Both of us do,” declared Jackie.

  “The thing is,” said Mont
y, “we’re out of coffee, and I haven’t got any money, and it’s Saturday.”

  “Are you asking me?” cried Jackie, and Monty smiled, shaking his head.

  “Oh, no! I’d never make a mistake like that,” he said simply, and looked at Ellis who took the money from his pocket and passed a ten dollar note across to Monty, who passed it on to Jackie.

  “See what I mean?” said Jackie, pushing the money into his own pocket. “You’d better shoot off home before we eat you to the bone.”

  “I’m too much part of the story now,” Ellis replied. “I’ve got to know how it ends.”

  “I’ll ring and tell you how it ends,” offered Jackie. Then he gave a noisy sigh. “But you won’t go. I can see you’re too hooked. Well, at least I tried.”

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” he added, turning to Monty, “and then we’ll have that cup of coffee.” He left them.

  “I’d better finish my cleaning,” Monty said. “At least I can be useful in the kitchen. Do excuse me.”

  It was the first time since stepping out of Room 9 that morning that Ellis had found himself alone. He walked into the bleak dining room and saw Monty vanishing into the kitchen, but he did not follow him. Instead, he slumped down at the table, burying his face in his hands. He wasn’t thinking or feeling anything at all, though a streaming jumble of words and images spun through his head, and he let this jumble flow with its own senseless rhythm without once trying to give it any shape or form.

  The phone rang once more. It was amazing how this ordinary sound now had the power to chill him. It rang twice, and then stopped, so Ellis knew that it had been answered somewhere in the Land-of-Smiles. Then he heard Leona’s voice murmuring in the reception area. Almost against his will, but unable to help himself, Ellis crossed the room and opened the door.

  Leona was standing there, not so much hunched over the phone, as wrapped around it, folding it into herself as if anything that might be said into it was too deeply personal to be shared.

  Ellis could not make out what was being said, but he could certainly hear the sound of a voice crackling and hissing at the other end of the line. And then, faint and far away on the same line, he heard a distant thread of sound – a wail, unmistakably the cry of a child, and Leona began once again that silent weeping with which he was already familiar. Ellis took the receiver from her, and words became distinct.