Healer

by Peter Dickinson

  “I’m cold.”

  She wasn’t complaining, just telling him. Poor kid. The effort of pedalling had kept Barry warm under his rainwear despite the wetness of hands and face and feet. Pinkie had just had to sit.

  “Can’t you think yourself warm?”

  “Me?”

  “I don’t see why not. I mean, if you can…”

  “It isn’t like that.”

  “Okay. Sorry. Pity you can’t walk. We’ll stop at the top of the hill and try and warm you up a bit.”

  “All right.”

  Where the slope eased he lifted her down and made her do knee bends and arm slaps while he felt for biscuits in the basket. They were under trees still, but he could see the faint arch of sky where the woods ended. Despite the leaf cover, it was difficult to find any place where the rain didn’t come through as heavily as if they’d been out in the open. He ate a couple of biscuits while Pinkie slapped obediently in the dark beside him.

  “Better?” he asked.

  “A bit.”

  “On we go then.”

  They wobbled out from under the trees and were gathering speed along a level before Barry realised that something had changed. It had almost stopped raining. What had seemed like rain in the wood had been mostly drips off all those leaves. But now, apart from an occasional spattering, the lamp beam shone clear through onto the glossy black wetness of the road. It made a fantastic difference. A mile or so later, as the road dipped into another valley, he found that he could actually see beyond the reach of the lamp beam. Night was ending. When they climbed out on the far side, he could see the trailing edges of the storm lit faintly grey and pale streaks of the beginnings of daylight in the clearing sky to the south-east.

  “Look at that,” he said. “If we’d started an hour later, we wouldn’t have got wet at all. We’ve been travelling with it.”

  Now that he no longer needed the lights, he switched them off. Steadily the dawn brightened, and as it did, the soaked landscape started to come alive. Anywhere with trees or bushes a racket of birdsong began. In a farmyard a tractor engine clattered. They passed a milk cart by a cottage gate; the milkman’s whistling came from behind the house. Later a small blue van breasted a hill and came toward them. The driver was the first witness all night who could have told anyone which way they’d come, and with luck he hadn’t noticed Pinkie huddled against Barry’s back; a bicyclist slogging along in the wet dawn wasn’t that extraordinary a sight. The later it got, the more likely they were to be seen but the less likely to be noticed.

  And they were making better time, with the rain gone and the road properly visible. Barry pushed his hood back, opened the collar of his cape, and let himself steam as he rode. The steepest valleys were all behind them now. The storm drifted north, leaving a sky that changed from pearly to blue as the sun came up.

  The last two miles were along a main road. More traffic whipped past, spraying out spume. Alton High Street was almost empty. Twenty minutes to spare. He turned into an alley between two shops, where he undid the lashings around Pinkie’s feet and legs and put her back barefoot into her sodden shoes. When he straightened to pedal the last couple of hundred yards to the station, his legs were so feeble that for a moment he thought he couldn’t even stand.

  There was no sign of anything that looked like a police car at the station. He bought their tickets from an unquestioning clerk, wheeled the bike out onto the platform, and put it into the guard’s van of the waiting train. With a basket in each hand and Pinkie beside him he squelched up along the train. Every seat was empty because Alton was the start of that line. They climbed into a pleasant, mild, greenhousy warmth, settled facing each other by the far windows where the sun came in, and ate biscuits and raisins. Pinkie took off her shoes, and Barry balanced them on a window ledge in the sun to begin to dry. Some men with heavy, grumbling voices got in farther down the same carriage. More people, not many, moved along the platform, choosing where to sit. Nine minutes dragged achingly by. Pinkie had fallen asleep before the train started. 6.20.

  At 6.30 Barry took his little radio from a basket and held it to his ear, trying to hear the news bulletin through the clatter of interference from the overhead cables. Trouble in Lebanon. Big CND rally. Test Match pitch under water. Fire in holiday camp. Nothing about a kid missing—too soon. Eight o’clock earliest.

  The train stopped every five minutes or so, and more people got on. An Indian in a turban took the seat next to Pinkie, who stirred but did not wake. Barry had to move the baskets onto the rack to make room for a fat young woman, who then read incredibly slowly through the Sun, page by page, not missing anything. The more people, the better, because it meant Barry and Pinkie became less noticeable.

  He ached, body and mind, with tiredness. It was getting on toward his normal bedtime now, and for the last week he had needed to cut down on sleep in order to make all the preparations for the escape—exploring the route, trading the bikes, buying maps and tools and so on, picking up the money Mr. Stott had sent. Everything had demanded a twenty-mile bike ride at least. But in spite of exhaustion, he was too keyed up to sleep. Just as well. Last thing he wanted was for the train to reach Waterloo and all the passengers leave except him and Pinkie, snoozing in their corners. Sure way to get noticed.

  He found himself gazing vaguely at Pinkie. She didn’t have that especially angelic look some kids take on when they’re asleep. Her glasses had slid crooked, and her plain, pale face had somehow closed itself away. It was like the wall of a house that has no windows on the outside; perhaps there’s an inner courtyard with flowers, and a fountain, and a child nursing a kitten, but you don’t know about any of that from the street. He wondered if in order to do what she did, Pinkie needed to be like that. When she gave, she gave enormously. You couldn’t do that without killing yourself, not all the time. You had to have a way of putting the shutters up … Anyway, how long could she go on? Looking at her now, studying her for tiny signs, Barry thought that even in sleep she seemed worn, stretched, thinned.

  Was it all worth her while? Sort of subject for a pub argument: You have this gift; the world needs it; the more you give, the less chance you have of becoming anything except your gift. Must you go on giving? Look at pop stars. A lot of them destroy themselves, giving the fans what they want; drug to keep going, heavier and heavier; and then the overdose. Of course, they’d chosen, it was their own lookout. Pinkie had been chosen, so she was different. Except she’d told him it was all she ever wanted to do. Anyway, she’d chosen old Bear, all that time ago, sneaking up on him in the corridor outside the secretary’s office at Marsden Ash Junior. “You’ve got a nasty head …” Had she somehow known then she was going to need him? Oh, rubbish. But just thinking about that morning was good as a hot breakfast.

  It was, too. Of course, some of the warmth and restfulness and sense of renewal came from the food he’d eaten, the sun, and the cradle-like swaying of the train. But not all. There was an inward glow along his spine and across his shoulder blades, a feeling inside him of fresh reserves being raised, like troops streaming out from his innermost citadel to replace the exhausted, battered, almost defeated armies at the front. Could Pinkie do that, even asleep? Did she have to be there? Could you do it by thinking about her? Could you do it for yourself without using her at all? No. To the last question anyway. Somehow he was sure of that. She’d said she couldn’t think herself warm, hadn’t she?

  He shook his head, looked at his watch, and found he’d missed the seven o’clock news. By miles. He was sure he hadn’t slept, but time had done a curious trick, collapsing almost an hour into a few minutes of sunny brooding. The train must have stopped several times, unnoticed, because it was crowded now. People were standing all down the centre aisle. And outside the windows lay factories and tower blocks and railway sheds and all the sprawl of outer London. The train rattled and snaked its way on. It was 7:23. Mrs. Butterfield
would have found Pinkie’s bed empty just after seven. They’d have worked out by now that Barry was missing, too. Perhaps Freeman was phoning the police at this very moment. Five minutes to Waterloo Station if the train was on time…

  Pinkie woke of her own accord, and he helped her cram her half-dry shoes on over his socks.

  Nobody was waiting at Waterloo. Barry felt very exposed and obvious as they rode the two miles across London to Euston. A policeman was strolling across the main concourse there but barely glanced at them as they lined up for tickets. They bought hot milk and tasteless hamburgers at the cafeteria, and Barry listened to the eight o’clock news. Surely by now … But no. Lebanon, CND, Test Match, fire—nothing. The train north left at 8:58. It was less than half full.

  Now Barry dared sleep, dipping in and out of darkness, never sure till he looked at his watch whether he’d been unconscious for seconds or minutes or even hours before some change in the beat of the wheels had broken through to wake him with a false signal of getting there. Fragments of dreams recurred: They had arrived, got down normally, but then things, absurd things but still sinister, had started to happen—Pinkie somehow still on the train as it moved away, or the bike chained with the wrong lock, or policemen waiting on the platform, but why were they wearing swastika arm-bands? Or crossing the moor, and the helicopter hovering lower, and the bike melting away, and the good thick gorse that had seemed to screen them withering to nothing while the drub of the rotor (the drum of the train wheels) closed in…All nonsense, known to be nonsense, even while the dream was running, but repeated over and over, both boring and panicky…

  Barry wasn’t aware of the dreams ending and himself falling into a true, deep slumber, or of the weight against his side as Pinkie came and snuggled there. He’d last seen her curled up on the seat opposite, but she was fast asleep against his side when he was woken by the word “Stafford” on the train intercom. He came to with a panic start and heard the message repeated. Perfect. He shook her shoulder, and she woke blinking.

  “Almost there,” he said. “Good dreams?”

  “I don’t have dreams.”

  “Sometimes wish I didn’t. I don’t know. Listen, this might be the dodgiest place yet. I’m going to give you your ticket. Come through the barrier a bit after me. Try and look as if you belonged with someone else. Okay?”

  But there were still no police, no questions. Pinkie stood guard over the bike while Barry bought food and spare shoes and socks for her; her own were good as dry by now, but it would be stupid to get caught like that again. He walked the bike away from the town centre, leaving her to trail along behind. As soon as the streets were clearer, they mounted and rode, for the first mile or so along a main road but after that off into the lanes, heading north-east towards the hills. This route he’d only been able to plan from a map; there’d been no chance to explore it, but in thirty miles he reckoned he’d be reaching roads he had covered from Marsden Ash.

  The rain had fallen heavily here also, a great wide front moving across England and clearing away to leave a steamy, sodden landscape, blue sky mottled with hummocky white clouds, a strong noon sun. It was hot work hauling along the lanes, even at a gentle pace. At any serious rise he got off and made Pinkie walk, too. There was no hurry. They ate their lunch at the edge of a fresh-reaped field. Flies came out of nowhere and swarmed around. It was a country of stodgy little villages and small fields, with the odd coal tip heaving up. Not pretty like Hampshire or Thursley, not hard and dark like the valleys around Marsden Ash, but friendly and close, in a grubby sort of way. The farms were busy with early harvest. But although it felt a different sort of place from the ones Barry knew, in anything that mattered it was the same. The people here, if they guessed who the young man and the child were at the edge of this field, would…Hey! News! He looked at his watch. Almost one o’clock. He just caught the headlines. New missile system. Preparations for CND rally. Lebanon. Test Match off. Floods in Cumberland. Fall on stock exchange. Nothing about a missing kid and night porter.

  “What’s up?” he muttered.

  “He hasn’t told them.”

  “Why not? He must have. He’d be crazy … He is crazy, I suppose.”

  “He knows you won’t hurt me.”

  “Yeah … yeah, I suppose he does.”

  “And he doesn’t like the wrong people knowing.”

  “Yeah … Listen! There’s more than one kind of wrong people, isn’t there? Did you say anything to Mrs. Butterfield about what he’s been giving you?”

  “You said to.”

  “Right. And she’ll have asked him … Hey! He might decide she’s in it! She asked me to get you away!”

  “Poor Louise.”

  “Don’t you see? One lot of stuff he gave you sounded dead like LSD to me. He’d go to prison for giving that to a kid. If he thinks we’ve got that far, he can’t go to the police!”

  “Louise would tell him.”

  “He won’t believe her. Liars don’t.”

  “He’ll do something. He’s clever.”

  “Yeah. We’ll carry on according to plan, right? Act like everyone’s on the lookout for us.”

  “If you want. I don’t think anything’s going to happen today.”

  “Not if I can help it, it isn’t … Wait a minute. What do you mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Do you know something I don’t?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t mean … Listen, I know things by seeing them, or reading or hearing about them, or working them out from other things I know. That’s the only way I can know anything. But you—you’ve got to accept you’re not an ordinary kid, Pinkie. When you help people get well, you’re in touch with something pretty mysterious, right?”

  “It’s just there.”

  “For you it is. But you don’t understand how it works, do you?”

  “Don’t want to.”

  She was answering stiffly now, unwillingly, but he pushed on.

  “What I’m trying to get at is this. Whatever you’re in touch with—mightn’t it do more than helping you get people well? For instance, mightn’t it tell you things?”

  “What sort of things?”

  “Like knowing nothing’s going to happen today?”

  She frowned and shook her head.

  “You wouldn’t have to know how you knew,” he said. “You’d just know.”

  She picked unhappily at a fray of her jeans. A fly crawled down her cheek. She didn’t seem to notice. Another thought struck him.

  “And you knew about Bear,” he said.

  “It’s just a name.”

  “Do you really think so? It’s important, Pinkie. Important to me.”

  He reached out and took her hand. She didn’t pull it away, but it felt somehow dead in his grip. Nothing happened: no flow, no strange warmth, no sense of being in touch with all the intricate universe. They sat in a warm field on their cycling capes, and flies hazed around them. He let go.

  “Perhaps it’s not my sort of thing,” she said. “It isn’t always.”

  “Last night when we were riding to Alton, it was all right then. In fact, it was terrific. Magic. And that was you.” She looked around the field.

  “Perhaps this isn’t a very good place,” she said.

  “Oh, come off it! You can’t … Sorry, it isn’t your fault, but that’s got to be rubbish.”

  “Thinking doesn’t help.”

  “That’s got to be rubbish, too!” he said—shouted almost.

  She turned her head away, withdrawing into herself.

  “Sorry,” he said again. “Like I said, it’s not your fault.”

  She remained withdrawn. All the exhaustion, all the nervy waiting and action of the last eighteen hours flooded suddenly through him, like a physical event, some unwanted chemical spreading through
his system with the moving bloodstream. Now the twenty-five miles to the cave above Brant seemed an impossible distance, though they had all afternoon and evening to get there. He glanced at Pinkie, still picking at her jeans. Why’d he bothered? he wondered. It was all rubbish. She couldn’t do anything for him, and look what he’d done for her. At the same time he hated himself for the feeling. Suppose she knew about it. Suppose she were to reach out her hand and take his and switch on the flow and make him feel good again—what would that prove? Nothing. Except that Pinkie was able to control him, the way she’d controlled Norah.

  The sourness increased, the feeling of everything having somehow come out wrong. Perhaps it was the effect of tiredness; perhaps the letdown of finding that probably the police were not after them, so most of his effort and precaution hadn’t been needed; perhaps frustration at his failure, after all, to talk to Pinkie about Bear. Or was it frustration? Was it something else? Almost a sense of relief because Pinkie wasn’t going to do anything about Bear?

  Couldn’t do anything about Bear? Why’d he wanted her to anyway? He needed Bear, didn’t he? Bear was his secret friend, his only friend, the only one he could trust. .

  Pinkie turned her head and looked at him.

  “There are places, you see,” she whispered. “He’s right about that.”

  “Who is?”

  “Dad.”

  He snorted to his feet, picked up his cape, and rolled it to put in the basket. Pinkie did the same with hers. They bicycled on towards the hills.

  14

  The pale blue invalid car took an age to climb the lane to Ferriby. Barry watched it, standing back from the rim of the parking lot so that only his head projected over the skyline. At the same time he studied the rest of the lane. One of the reasons he had chosen Ferriby for a meeting place was that he’d be able to see, with plenty of warning, whether anyone was following Mr. Stott up the hill. No sign of that, only the little blue blob threshing slowly up. In his mind’s ear Barry could hear the noisy engine, roaring at the limit of its power to reach ten miles an hour, and Mr. Stott cursing it on. The whole hillside was sharp with dawn light, but the main road in the valley bottom was blurred with thin mist and shadow. The actual point where the lane turned off from the road was concealed by the long bulk of an old mill, with blind and broken windows and a sinister dark stack. There was very little traffic so early, but even so it was difficult to check that everything that disappeared one end of the mill came out the other end. In fact, one dark car did seem to vanish and not emerge, but a police car had come swirling along in the other direction just at that moment, with its flasher blinking and its siren audible even at this distance in the dawn stillness, and naturally he’d been more concerned to see that go the whole way through. He wasn’t especially bothered. It would take even a fast car several minutes to climb the lane, and by that time he’d be well away with Pinkie on the track to Brant. They couldn’t bring a car up there after him.