‘Your brother and his minder took Sarah away. Because they thought she was Julie. There’s no comparison, is there? Why would he do that?’ The voice rose in anxiety. The crucifix on her rosary beads was curled inside her palm as she shook her head. ‘And … we … we let him do it. God help us.’
Her head was bowed. Imelda murmured to her. She sat back obediently, neck stretched, contemplating the ceiling. There was a red handkerchief in her lap. He was slow to smell the blood. ‘I am so sick of kindness,’ she said.
‘He’s going to come back, the man said they were going to come back. Cannon, we’ve got to go before they come back. Before he realizes – oh, Cannon, we’ve got to go – now.’ Julie’s voice was high with hysteria, shrill, demanding, insistent. ‘NOW.’
‘Shut up,’ Imelda said.
To think, all this time, he had been waiting for this. Waiting to find that Johnny had taken his Julie away; waiting and hoping not, while those who had once believed him had ceased to believe him, so that he himself had grown careless and hopeless, and all he could feel now was relief, because something had happened to show he was right and because Johnny had kidnapped the wrong one. He wanted to snigger at the mistake because it was all Johnny’s fault for refusing to look at Julie’s picture in the first place, refusing ever to meet her, couldn’t look at her face even when he had had her beaten, serve him right. But after the relief, there was speechless rage, and outside that he was only aware of Julie’s hand clawing at his arm, pulling him towards the door and the outside world.
‘The police are coming,’ Imelda ventured comfortingly, as if that would be the answer to everything. ‘I don’t know why you didn’t call them at once.’
‘Because we were waiting for this gentleman,’ Pauline murmured. ‘Well, Cannon? Are you going to go and leave us to explain to them? What shall we say to the officers? We don’t even know where he lives.’
‘He wouldn’t take her there,’ Cannon said quickly. He shuffled his feet. He never did want the police near Johnnyboy; always tried to save him from that. Besides, he would never take her home; never. ‘I don’t suppose they said where they were taking her? Or why?’ A foolish question. He wanted to be gone, out there, anywhere with Julie, even if it was nowhere, running in the dark, and he was finding it difficult to consider anything else while she still pulled at him in panic, even though he knew there was something wrong with his reaction; something abominably selfish.
‘She’ll be all right,’ Julie was screaming. ‘They said they’d bring her back. He promised. Sarah’s always all right – she’s a survivor. Don’t think about Sarah, think about me. Get me away before he comes back for me. She did it for us.’
There was a moment’s silence and her hand dropped from his arm. ‘They’re only taking her for treatment,’ she gabbled. ‘He won’t hurt her as soon as he knows she isn’t yours, why should he? And that’s why she let it happen. To give us time to get away, don’t you see? Come on, Cannon. Come on.’
There were echoes of similar, brisker orders from Sarah. ‘Come on, Cannon.’ Julie was in a rage of cowardice and he could not blame her for it. Treatment; taken away for treatment. Giving us time to escape. He tried to justify it. They won’t hurt her, not really hurt. And if Johnny were to wreak his revenge on Sarah, surely that would spend his forces and be the end of it. There was always a limit to his energies. He wouldn’t do it twice; it was over; the loss of face, the wasted malice would exhaust him; they were free; he knew it; they should go, now, anywhere, and never hear of him again. He thought of his own cowardice and what it had created: Sarah’s portrait, prominently displayed, part of him wanting to say, I told you so, don’t say I didn’t warn you. I told you and you stopped believing me. Let her take the brunt. She would outwit Johnnyboy, with her hands tied behind her back, a woman like that; she was clever with men, a tart. She knew loads of men.
Not men like Johnny. She couldn’t imagine a soul like that any more than sweet, gentle-fingered William could. No-one could. He could feel Pauline’s eyes, gazing at him; her pale face glowing with pain, the voluminous handkerchief red with blood; the fine nose, bloated. What was the worst pain Johnnyboy could envisage to inflict on the woman he perceived as enemy and thief and rival? Going for treatment. He knew where they had taken her and knew in the same breath that no policeman would believe it or act on it soon enough. Julie was clutching him again. Freedom had a price. Somebody else was paying. He kissed her and ran from the room, followed by the sound of her screams. ‘I’ve done everything for you. Everything.’
It was not a special kind of car, Sarah noticed, as they drove away through the dark streets. Nothing about it designed for the conveyance of prisoners, no extra locks on the doors of a middle-range saloon. She could never remember the makes of cars – disinterest foxed the memory – but she tried to remember details in case she was asked and because it helped her to avoid the present. Blue: the inside of it was blue and the back of Johnnyboy’s head was blackish grey as he drove with quiet precision. Perhaps she could get out if they slowed for a light; he was a careful driver, never exceeding the speed limit. Perhaps she should open her mouth and speak, but all she could have uttered was an instruction to go back and collect the right woman because that was all there was in her mind to say and she did not want to say it, not yet. Not until the convent was full and Julie was protected. Give them an hour. She felt for the handle of the door.
No need for locks. Only the big man, holding her hand like a father in the back seat of the limo taking the bride to church, proud and protective and possessive, his hand large enough to crush the bones of her wrist, the way he could have crushed the kitten. He had spared the kitten; she took some comfort from that and hung on to his final, hurried, whispered words and their suggestion of conscience. Don’t worry, we’ll bring her back, he’d said. She felt the loneliness of the condemned, the fear of the sacrificial victim led towards some altar in the presence of a crowd who applauded the ritual and would not let anyone spoil it. She had never quite understood the existence of evil. The blue upholstery stank of newness.
She could see where she was going: there was no subterfuge about it, no blindfold; no twists and turns. They were soon in the familiar territory of the West End with shoppers still streaming home, and hope rose like a bubble. It was all so ordinary; in a moment, she could step out and join the throng, run across this road and down the next and slip into the side-door of Selfridges to meet Mrs Matthewson, or plunge into the stuffiness of the tube. They had cruised beyond Piccadilly, across Bond Street, pausing at the corner where the Mole lived. Past the house of another lover; there would never be any rescue provided by lovers; there never had been. Lovers were solace, not power; the strongest of emotions, the weakest links. Then they were in William’s territory, the district of doctors: civilized, handsome, full of the promise of a cure. If they passed his house, she could wave at him, scream for help if she had such a thing as a voice left. An hour, and the convent would be safe. Cannon would have got there. Useless in a crisis; better than nothing. Take Julie away, you fool. Take her away. From inside the self-contained vacuum of her life she thought of the people she loved and doubted if any of them would try to help her even if they knew the danger. She doubted it without bitterness. Each to his own life. She had never expected much and she was not sure of what the danger was. Only that it was immense. She made herself small and silent and unobjectionable.
Not only William’s territory but William’s street. She recalled his kindly face with a desperate surge of affection, wanted to see him running along beside the car, tapping on the window, saying, ‘Stop, stop, stop. You’ve made a mistake.’
They stopped.
Early evening, and the city, as far as he could sense, was lingering at the breakpoint between day and night. William would have liked a town crier to patrol this street, telling the hour, every hour, and confirming that all was well. Not that he doubted it as he surveyed the surgery with no more than the usual anxiety,
checking the cleanliness, the detail, taking it in with a pride that no-one else shared. He had dusted the reception area as if it had not been done early in the day and would not be done again, first thing in the morning, by the cleaner. He liked the way he had designed it, so that when one moved from the reception to the surgery there was only another pleasant vista towards the window when the door was open. William mourned the necessity for closed doors. He crossed and looked out. Traffic subdued by double glazing into no more than a distant buzz; lights catching empty windows. In the waiting room, the paintings glowed with their own life.
He always liked the building best when it was empty. Felt like a king in a castle, forgetting he was the mere tenant of a few rooms with his throne undermined by debt.
It was perverse of him to want the place to look comforting for tomorrow’s patient, especially since the patient was not due to arrive until the afternoon, and heaven knows what disturbance there might be in the morning. Nothing arduous; he had checked. This evening would be alone with the journals, thinking time. The elaboration of his preparations for John Smith could mean nothing more than the fact that he was afraid of the man, and he decided that that was not the prime motivation for all this fussiness. The fear was of failure. Not being good enough even to inspire faith.
This is silly talk, William, and you were never any good at communication, he told himself, as he went down to the basement, finding no comfort in the chaos the way he usually did. There was an atmosphere here that he did not trust; the cold from the window, which since last week would not shut, warped by the wet. The place did not feel as if it belonged to him any more, but then, looking at his life, he did not think anything belonged to him. Back upstairs, checking again, suddenly a little bit lonely and wanting to talk, having a chat with the paintings, the way he did sometimes, although he was not usually quite so sober when he resorted to such inanimate company. Wanting Sarah, because Sarah would understand this, but pushing the thought from his mind. Good athletes and, possibly, good dentists should put such feeble need for womankind from mind on the eve of combat. But it wasn’t combat: it was nothing more or less than treatment. They might do nothing tomorrow. No-one was going to give him a medal for this. He wasn’t even sure he was going to get any money.
The phone rang at the desk as he tidied things round it. He interrupted it, reluctant to hear the sound of his pre-recorded voice. ‘Yes?’ he barked.
There was the sound of shuffling and adjustment, a gasp, as if the person phoning expected the anonymity of his recorded voice rather than this distinctly personal, impatient reply. Followed by a sniffing sound, a hawking into a handkerchief, a tremulous sigh and a sob. A patient with a post-operative problem – bound to be one of those. He softened his voice. ‘Yes,’ he murmured, ‘how can I help?’ professional solicitude creeping into his tone like a wheeze.
‘William? Is that you?’ Isabella’s sobbing grew earnest. He could feel himself melting, slightly. Who was it said, ‘Let me not go to death surrounded by wailing women’? Some king who was spoiled for choice. It didn’t strike William as a bad way to go if one had to shuffle off the mortal coil .in any kind of company at all; women rather than men, any time. A wailing woman was one in need and William liked to be needed.
‘Isabella? What’s the matter?’ There, there, there, he wanted to say, but it might sound condescending. He took refuge in a cough, the way he sometimes did when searching for a patient’s name, hoping the spasm would jerk it into memory.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Nothing, nothing, nothing.’ The voice trailed away, leaving behind it William’s unsteady breathing. He flattered himself that her occasional calls to the answer-machine might have been something to do with concern for his health, but this was the first time she had taken the risk of communicating unhappiness. The sound of her distress provoked a series of responses: irritation, grief, concern, foolishness, guilt, and that shameful pitter-patter of the heart which had become his neurotic condition as soon as he heard her voice. Nightmares about Isabella and the children; daydreams that she would come back through the door and beg his forgiveness.
‘I made a mistake, Will, a bad mistake. I misjudged you.’
He had once longed to hear such sentiments, but now they left him disconsolate and strangely annoyed. Why was she the only one who ever diminished him by calling him Will, and why say this now, when he had other things to think about, choosing a time when there was no possibility of his indulging the slightest sense of triumph?
‘Do you think we could try again? I miss you so much.’
Missed him? Such as, shacking up with someone richer while receiving maintenance without gratitude? That was missing someone? All the same, he felt a flush creep up from his neck and over his face and, if it wasn’t quite pleasure he felt, it was a close relation, which he managed to control, as well as the silly smile on his face that made him vaguely embarrassed as if she was there, watching. The pause stretched into half a minute.
‘Will … there’s no-one else, is there? No-one special, I mean …’
No-one. Just Sarah. Mysterious, adorable, dependable Sarah. A tart with heart and morals.
‘Perhaps we should meet and talk about it.’
‘Can we do that soon?’
‘Well, yes. Soon.’
He was staring at the door, not even half listening to her. A crucial conversation in the history of his life, and he could not pay attention, because there was someone outside, knocking against the door so hard it vibrated. He had the ridiculous thought that it was her on the other side, only pretending to talk from a distance.
‘Like now?’ Isabella was saying plaintively. ‘Oh, darling, I’m so unhappy …’
‘Soon.’
He was slamming down the receiver, not quite believing that he had actually done that and choked her off. He watched, with his fingers still touching the lifeline of the phone, as the door opened abruptly.
John Smith first, smart and unsmiling, Sarah next, and the fat man who had gone through the records bringing up the rear. John took the key from behind the desk, locked the door behind himself and gave the key to the fat man. It was a heavy door, like the separate door to the surgery, guarding against crazies in a misguided search for drugs even in these respectable quarters. The presence of all three in the small area by the desk was at first astounding then immediately claustrophobic. John’s aftershave was oppressive and the silence was overwhelming. William gave his indecisive, nervous cough before he spoke, sounding officious. ‘Mr Smith, you’ve got the time wrong. You’re due here tomorrow. Not today. Tomorrow.’
John Smith sighed, spoke softly, shaking his head at the error of such blithe assumptions. ‘Oh, no, it was always going to be today. Tomorrow’s too close to Christmas.’ He ushered Sarah forward, without touching her. She was held by the fat man’s meaty paw on her neck, making her stoop under his weight, preventing her eyes from meeting his. ‘And this’, he was still murmuring, ‘is the patient. Bring her in.’
‘Sarah … what are you doing?’
‘Julie,’ she said. ‘My name is Julie Smith.’
She was propelled past William’s stupefied face into the surgery. The fat man hesitated on the threshold for a second, disoriented by the absence of the chair in his immediate line of vision, then saw it round the corner. It was low to the ground in this resting state, easy to shove her into it. Following, watching with increasing agitation, making small, inarticulate squawks of protest, what puzzled William most was her calm lack of resistance, as if she had already learned the futility of it. She was not easily coerced – that much he knew; she was as stubborn as a mule, and it followed that there was some form of conspiracy between them. A joke, a trick, a mystery designed to make him look a fool, like a strippergram victim at a party, all of them knowing about it except himself. Then the fat man, with the efficiency of a policeman in a second-rate film, produced a piece of tape and attached her wrists to the supports at the side of the chair, so unlikely and deft
a set of movements that William could not believe it, even though he was beginning to perceive the sickness of the joke. The fat man found a scalpel out of a drawer to cut the tape. They had been here before. She lay as still and uncomfortably posed as a plastic mannequin in a shop window. Only the abundance of curling red hair, spilling over the back of the chair, showed her to be real.
‘A woman’s crowning glory,’ John Smith was saying dreamily. ‘Her hair. They can seduce a man with hair like that. The smile’s more important, don’t you think?’ He was locking the surgery door, putting the key in his top pocket. ‘Cannon was always a sucker for a smile,’ he went on, ‘because of the reaction to his own. Must have dreamed of a smile like hers.’ He paused, remembering something, his face sad. The figure in the chair remained immobile; William could see that only her fingers moved restlessly, as if trying to signal, looking for something to clasp. John Smith seemed to remember where he was and his purpose, looked at William directly and spoke with the authoritative patience of a teacher to a recalcitrant child.
‘And it was that smile which hooked him,’ he went on, ‘stole him from me. My lover, my heart, my flesh and blood, my soul, my reason for anything. And then you, Mr Dentist, you did the rest. You gave him his film-star teeth, so that when he looked in the mirror he didn’t see me any more. Made him think he was different from me. Kid himself he was no longer part of us. And how can I live without him? Answer me that, will you? I rot inside, is what happens. I rot away, like my houses.’ He was shouting by now, wagging his finger, coming closer, so the spittle landed on William’s face. Then he controlled himself, became calmer. ‘No, I can’t blame you for that. Such a conscientious fellow you are. But it does seem fair you should share the punishment. Don’t get me wrong … I’m not asking much …’
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