Wilf had turned his back as she’d swung away from her mother. He sat down heavily in the armchair beside the Welsh dresser on which ranks of photographs of Laura as a baby and a toddler and a little girl were drawn up. He tugged at the knees of his jogging pants as he subsided, and dragged a hand across his bristling eyebrows before using it to smooth his graying hair. “Better now?” said Claire in the hope of dislodging his mood.
He raised his lined wide face until his Adam’s apple was almost as prominent as the two knuckles of his chin. “I was serious.”
“Oh, now, Wilf, I really don’t think you can say your feelings are swept under the carpet all that much. But do remember you aren’t the only -”
“About how she dresses, and don’t bother telling me you used to dress that way.”
“I could again if you like.”
“I’m still serious. You were older, old enough your parents couldn’t stop us marrying. Besides which, girls weren’t in the kind of danger they are these days.”
“That’s why we have folk like you patrolling. Most people are as decent as they used to be, and three of them live in this house.”
He lowered his head as if his thoughts had weighed it down, and peered at her beneath his eyebrows. “Never mind hiding in there,” she said with the laugh she had increasingly to use on him. “Instead of thinking whatever you’re thinking, why don’t you start your patrol early if you’re so worried and see her onto the bus.
“By God, you two are alike,” he said, slapping his thighs so hard she winced, and pushed himself to his feet.
“That’s us women for you.”
The front door thumped shut, and Claire expelled a long breath through her nose. If only he wouldn’t disapprove quite so openly and automatically of all that Laura was becoming - “What’s wrong?” she blurted, because he had tramped back in.
“Nothing you’ve spotted.” He played the xylophone of the stripped pine banisters as he climbed the stairs to the parental bedroom. She’d begun to wonder what was taking him so long when he reappeared, drumming his fingernails on his neighbourhood patrol badge, which he’d pinned to his black top over his heart. “Found it in with your baubles,” he said. “Now maybe I’ve some chance of being taken notice of.”
In the photograph he seemed determined to look younger, hence threatening. It still made her want to smile, and to prevent herself she asked “Who’s out there at the moment, do you know?”
“Your friend Mr Gummer for one.”
“No friend of mine. He’d better not come hanging round here if he sees you’re away.”
“You’d hope putting on one of these badges would make him into a pillar,” Wilf said as he let himself out of the house.
Claire followed to close the filigreed gate at the end of their cobbled path after him, and watched him trot along the street of large twinned houses and garages nestling against them. Perhaps she was being unfair, but Duncan Gummer was the kind of person - no, the only person - who made her wish that those who offered to patrol had to be vetted rather than merely to live in the small suburb. Abruptly she wanted him to show himself and loiter outside her house as he often found an excuse to do while he was on patrol: she could tell him she’d sent Wilf away and see how he reacted. She had a vision of his moist lower lip exposing itself, his clasped hands dangling over his stomach, their inverted prayer indicating his crotch. She wriggled her shoulders to shrug off the image and sent herself into the house to finish icing Laura’s cake.
She was halfway through piping the pink letters onto the snow-white disc when she faltered, unable to think how to cross the t of “Happy Birthday” without breaking her script. How had she done it twelve months ago and all the times before? She particularly wanted this cake to be special, because she knew she wouldn’t be decorating many more. Perhaps it was the shrilling of an alarm somewhere beyond the long back garden with its borders illuminated by flowers that was putting her off, a rapid bleeping like an Engaged tone speeded up. She imagined trying to place a call only to meet such a response - a sound that panic seemed to be rendering frantic. Nervousness was gaining control of her hands now that Wilf had aggravated the anxiety she experienced just about whenever Laura left the house.
She’d spent some time in flexing her fingers and laying down the plastic tool again for fear of spoiling the inscription - long enough for the back garden to fill up with the shadow of the house - before she decided to go out and look for him. Laura would be fine at the school disco, and on the bus home with her friends, so long as she’d caught the bus there. Having set the alarm - she needn’t programme the lights to switch themselves on, she would only be out for a few minutes - Claire draped a linen jacket over her shoulders and walked to the end of the road.
The Chung boys were sluicing the family Lancia with buckets of soapy water and a great deal of Cantonese chatter. Several mowers were rehearsing a drowsy chorus against the improvised percussion of at least two pairs of shears. The most intrusive sound, though not the loudest, was the unanswered plea of the alarm. When Claire reached the junction she saw that the convulsive light that accompanied the noise was several hundred yards away along the cross street, close to the pole of the deserted bus stop at the far end, against the baize humps of the golf course. As she saw all this, the alarm gave up. She turned from it and caught sight of Wilf.
He mustn’t have seen her, she thought, because he was striding away. Shrunken by distance, and obviously unaware that his trousers were a little lower than they might be - more like a building worker’s than any outfit of the architect he was - he looked unexpectedly vulnerable. She couldn’t imagine his tackling anyone with more than words, but then members of the patrol weren’t supposed to use force, only to alert the police. She felt a surge of the old affection, however determined he seemed these days to give it no purchase on his stiff exterior, as she cupped her hands about her mouth. “Wilf.”
At first she thought he hadn’t heard her. Two mowers had travelled the length of their lawns before he swung round and marched towards her, his face drawn into a mask of concern. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I hope. I just wanted to know if you saw her onto the bus.”
“She wasn’t there.”
“Are you sure?” Claire couldn’t help asking. “She’d have been in time for it, wouldn’t she?”
“If it came.”
“Don’t say that. How else could she have gone?”
“Maybe she got herself picked up.”
“She’d never have gone in anybody’s car she didn’t know, not Laura.”
“You’d hope not. That’s what I meant, a lift from a friend who was going, their parents, rather.”
The trouble was that none of Laura’s friends would have needed to be driven past the bus stop. Perhaps this had occurred to Wilf, who was staring down the street past Claire. A glance showed her that the streetlamp by the bus stop had acknowledged the growing darkness. The isolated metal flag gleamed like a knife against the secretive mounds of the golf course. “She should be there by now,” Claire said.
“You’d imagine so.”
It was only a turn of phrase, but it made her suspect herself of being less anxious than he felt there was reason to be. “She won’t like it, but she’ll have to put up with it,” she declared.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m going to phone to make sure she’s arrived.”
“That’s - yes, I should.”
“Are you coming to hear? You aren’t due on the street for a few minutes yet.”
“I thought I’d send your favourite man Mr Gummer home early. You’re right, though, I ought to be with you for the peace of mind.”
If he had just the average share, she reflected, she might have more herself. It took her several minutes to reach the phone, as a preamble to doing which she had to walk home not unduly fast and unbutton the alarm, by which time there was surely no point in calling except to assure herself ther
e wasn’t. The phone at the disco went unanswered long enough for Wilf to turn away and rub his face twice; then a girl’s voice younger than Claire was expecting, and backed by music loud enough to distort it, said “Sin Tans.”
“Hello, St Anne’s. This is Laura Maynard’s mother. Could I have a quick word with her?”
“Who? Oh, Lor.” As Claire deduced this wasn’t a mild oath but a version of Laura’s name, the girl said “I’ll just see.”
She was gone at once, presumably laying the receiver down with the mouth toward the music, so that it amplified itself like a dramatic soundtrack in a film. Claire had thought of a question to justify the call and no doubt to annoy Laura - they’d established when she must be home, but not with whom or how - when the girl returned. “Mrs Maynard,” she shouted over an upsurge of the music, “she’s not here yet, her friend Hannah says.”
“You obviously wouldn’t know if her bus happened to run.”
“Yes, Hannah was on it, but it was early at Lor’s stop.”
“I understand,” said Claire, compelled to sound more like a grown-up than she felt. “Could you ask her to ring home the moment she gets there? The moment you see her, I mean.”
“I will, Mrs Maynard.”
“Thanks. You’re very -” The line went dead, and Claire hung up the receiver beside the stairs, next to the oval mirror in which Wilf was raising his hunched head. Two steps like the heaviness of his expression rendered palpable brought him round to face her. “She’s not there, then,” he said.
“Not yet.”
“Not much we can do, is there? Not till she gets home, and then I’ll be having a good few words.”
“Don’t work yourself up till we know what happened. You always assume it’s her fault. I may just nip out to see . . .”
“I can look if you like while you’re waiting for her to call. See what?”
“She’ll speak to the machine if we aren’t here. I know she wouldn’t go across the golf course by herself, but maybe someone she knew went with her if they missed the bus too. If anyone’s still playing I can ask if they saw her. It’s better than sitting at home thinking things there’s no need to think.”
“I’ll come with you, shall I? If there are any golfers they may be miles apart.”
He so visibly welcomed being motivated that she couldn’t have refused him. “You set the lights and everything while I go on ahead,” she told him.
The twilight was quieter, and almost dark. The mowers had gone to bed. Though she could hear no sound of play from the golf course she made for it, having glanced back to see that Wilf was following, far enough behind that she had a moment of hoping a call from Laura had delayed him. By the time he emerged from their street Claire was nearly at the bus stop.
Smaller flags led away from it, starting at the first hole. The clubhouse was nearby, though screened by one of the thick lines of trees that had been grown to complicate the golf. Claire heard the whop of a club across the miles of grass and sandy hollows, and the approach of a bus, reminding her that it was at least an hour since Laura had left the house. “Come on, Wilf,” she urged, and stepped off the concrete onto the turf.
Tines of light from the clubhouse protruded through the trees; one thin beam pricked the corner of her eye. A stroke that sounded muffled by a divot echoed out of the gloom. “I’ll find them,” she called, pointing towards the invisible game, “while you see if anyone at the clubhouse can help. Show them your badge.”
Her last words jerked as she began to jog up a slope towards a copse. Having panted as far as the clump, she glanced at Wilf. “Get a move on,” she exhorted, but her words only made him turn to her. She waved him onward and lurched down the far side of the slope.
Her cry brought Wilf stumbling towards her, halting when she regained her balance. “What now?” he demanded, his nervousness crowding into his voice. “What have you -”
“Nearly fell in a bunker, that’s all,” she said, grateful to have an excuse for even a forced laugh. She took a step which placed the bulk of the copse between her and Wilf and cut off the light from the clubhouse, and looked down.
This time she didn’t cry out. “Wilf,” she said with the suddenly unfamiliar object she used for speech; then she raised her voice until it became part of the agony she was experiencing. “Wilf,” she repeated, and slid down into the bunker.
The slope gave way beneath her feet, and she felt as if the world had done so. The darkness that rose to meet her was the end of the lights of the world. It couldn’t blind her to the sight below her, though her mind was doing its best to think that the figure in the depths of the sandpit wasn’t Laura - was the child of some poor mother who would scream or faint or go mad when she saw. None of this happened, and in a moment Laura was close enough to touch.
She was lying face down in the hollow. Her skirt had been pulled above her waist, and her legs forced so wide that her panties cut into her stockinged legs just above the knees. The patch of sand between her thighs was stained dark red, and the top of her right leg glistened as if a large snail had crawled down it. Her fists were pressed together above her head in a flurry of sand.
Claire fell to her knees, sand grinding against them, and took hold of Laura’s shoulders. She had never known them feel so thin and delicate; she seemed unable to be gentle enough. As Laura’s face reluctantly ceased nestling in the slope, Claire heard the whisper of a breath. It was only sand rustling out of Laura’s hair -more of the sand which filled her nostrils and her gaping mouth and even her open eyes.
Claire was brushing sand out of Laura’s eyelashes, to give herself a moment before the glare of her emotions set about shrivelling her brain - she was remembering Laura at four years old on a day at the seaside, her small sunlit face releasing a tear as Claire dabbed a grain of sand out of her eye - when she heard Wilf above the bunker. “Where are -” he said, then “Oh, you’re - What -”
She shrank into herself while she awaited his reaction. When it came, his wordless roar expressed outrage and grief enough for her as well. She looked up to see him clutching at his heart, and heard cloth tear. He was twisting the badge, digging the pin into his chest. “Don’t,” she pleaded. “That won’t help.”
He wavered at the top of the bunker as if he might fall, then he trudged down the outside of the hollow to slither in and kneel beside her. She felt his arms tremble about her and Laura before gripping them in a hug whose fierceness summed up his helplessness. “Be careful of her,” she hardly knew she said.
“I did it.”
She almost wrenched herself free of him, his words were so ill-chosen. “What are you saying?”
“If I hadn’t made her miss her bus by going on at her . . .”
“Oh, Wilf.” She could think of nothing more to say, because she agreed with him. His arms slackened as though he felt unworthy to hold her and Laura; she couldn’t tell if he was even touching her. One of them would have to get up and fetch someone - he would, because she found she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Laura to grow cold as the night was growing. But there was no need for him to go. Someone was observing them from above the bunker.
The emotion this set off started her eyes burning, and she might have scrambled up the slope to launch herself at the intruder if he hadn’t spoken. “What are you people up to in there? This is private property. Please take your—” His voice faltered as he peered down. “Dear Christ, what’s happened here?” he said, and was irrelevant to her fury - had been as soon as she’d grasped he wasn’t the culprit. Nothing but finding them might bring to an end the blaze of rage which had begun to consume every feeling she would otherwise have had.
The Collected Short Fiction Page 128