The Influence

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by Ramsey Campbell


  Vicky stared at her. More than one slow wave swelled and withdrew on the beach before she moved aside. “I’ll come and find you again soon,” she said.

  Rowan ran across the promenade and down the gritty steps. Her mother was hurrying back from the marina, her face pinched with anxiety. “Mummy, here I am,” Rowan cried. “I was only on the dunes. Patty wouldn’t come with me. I’m sorry.”

  Her mother’s face changed from worried to angry, and then she was simply relieved. “Didn’t you hear me calling you? Don’t ever do that again, Rowan. I thought I could trust you not to go wandering off by yourself.”

  “I was with Vicky,” Rowan protested. “I met her when I was at Hermione’s. We didn’t go far.”

  “Well, I hope she’s more use than Patty. She couldn’t be much less.” Rowan’s mother was gazing doubtfully at the binoculars. “Did she lend you those?”

  “She said I could keep them. They’re old. I’m sure they’re really hers.”

  “All right, lovey, nobody’s accusing her of anything.” Rowan’s mother hugged her with a fierceness that made Rowan realise fully how anxious she had been. “Come on, we’d better get to Jo’s before Patty has her calling the police. You introduce me to your friend on the way.”

  But when they climbed the steps and ran hand in hand to the houses, there was nothing to be seen on the dunes but roaming sand and tufts of grass. “Bring her home another time. It was kind of her to give you those. You’ll have to give her something in return,” Rowan’s mother said, and for a moment, as the sand dragged at her feet, Rowan wondered what Vicky might want from her, hoped that she wouldn’t ask for too much.

  Chapter Eleven

  On Saturday there were two letters on the doormat. One was from Rowan, the kind she often wrote.

  Dear mummy and daddy, I don’t mind where I live so long as Im with you, I want to live with you for ever because I love you most in the wurld and Im glad you let me keep the bincl binnocli binocculers, I hope you meet my new freind soon…

  They gave her a kiss each and sent her to play in her jungle of a back garden while they stared at the other envelope. It was from the bank.

  “You open it,” Derek said. “Maybe you’ll bring us luck.” He watched while Alison turned over the envelope and lifted the corner of the flap with a fingernail, slipped one slim finger under the flap and peeled it back, drew out the single sheet of headed notepaper and unfolded it, turned it the right way up. Maybe the manager had written to let them know their account was in the black at last, Derek tried to think, until Alison’s face went slack and she passed the letter to him. The cheque from the contractor had bounced.

  It felt as if he’d snatched the three thousand pounds out of their hands. Derek saw their plans fade one by one like failing lights: redecorating the house to make it easier to sell, the holiday they might have had at Rowan’s half-term, a car for Alison, whose old car wasn’t worth repairing… The house seemed to bear down on him, a dead weight they would never be rid of, shabby and ugly and unwelcoming. As he tramped along the hall to the phone, creaks and echoes paced him. “Try not to lose your temper,” Alison said.

  Children were fighting, a woman was screaming at them above the babble of a disc jockey loud as a public address. “Yeh,” a voice said.

  “You don’t waste words, eh,” Derek said.

  “Wha?”

  “Is Ken there?”

  “Who wants him?”

  “He’ll know.”

  Whichever of Ken’s sons it was went away and mumbled, then came back. “He isn’t here. Says leave a message.”

  Derek could hear Ken whistling Beatles melodies amid the uproar. “I won’t bother,” he said, and leaned on the phone as he called to Alison. “I’m going over to see him.”

  She came downstairs quickly, folded sheets piled on her arms. “Wouldn’t it be safer to have the lawyer write to him?”

  “Safer and longer, with bugger all at the end of it, probably. Look, I only want to try and make him understand the fix we’re in,” he said, and put his hand over her lips. He could still feel her moist breath on his palm as he hurried out to the car.

  He drove through Everton, streets of faded shops and cinemas gone bingo, and up the rubbly hill planted with tower blocks. Beyond Everton was Toxteth, black youths with ghetto blasters strutting through the Victorian streets, white youths in cars cruising for women. The window of the Faradays’ old flat was smashed and patched with cardboard. Ken lived on the far side of Toxteth, in Aigburth, at the end of a street above the Festival Gardens. Down among the gardens of all nations on the Mersey bank, the Festival Hall gleamed dully, a half-buried zeppelin. A wagon wheel leaned beside the glass porch of Ken’s broad pebble-dashed house. Derek rang the bell beneath a carriage lamp and heard voices screaming at the children to shut up.

  Purple velvet curtains stirred at the front window, and then the front door was opened by Ken in an oriental dressing-gown. His round face was trying to look blank. “Hello, Derek. Visiting old haunts? We’re in a bit of a mess in here just now.”

  “I can stand it. You don’t want me having to shout at you through the glass.”

  Ken opened the porch door and came out, smoothing his uncombed hair. “I haven’t forgotten I said we’d do up your house, if that’s what’s up.”

  “Your cheque is, mate.”

  “You haven’t tried to pay it in, have you? Wasn’t it dated the end of next week? My mistake. So much on my mind, you know how it is. Hang on here and I’ll write you another.”

  “We can’t afford to wait, Ken. We need the cash now.”

  “You don’t think I’d be fool enough to keep that much in the house with so many thieves about, do you? Just tell your bank it’s on its way if they get stroppy. What’ll they do, kidnap your kiddie if you don’t cough up?”

  “Your bank’s open on Saturdays. You could get me the cash when you’re dressed.”

  “Can’t do it, pal. Cash flow problems and some of the prats I have to work with, you know how it is. Don’t make a scene, all right? We’re nice people round here, we don’t have rows in the street. Are you going to let me give you a cheque? Then you’ll have to excuse me, I’ve got hungry rabbits.”

  He strode round the side of the house, tying his dressing-gown tighter. Derek caught up with him as he emerged from the kitchen with a drooping lettuce. “I’m not leaving until you pay me the three thousand you owe me,” Derek said, loud enough to make the rabbits flinch in the hutch at the end of the garden.

  “Still after the green stuff? Chew on this if you’re that desperate.” He shoved the lettuce at Derek, who grabbed it instinctively as Ken unbolted the alley door beside the hutch. “Now then, are you going to be reasonable? My boys will do your house next week if you don’t mind them working nights, won’t you, boys?”

  Derek swung round. Ken’s two large sons were behind him. “Yeh,” one said, and the less talkative one nodded. “They’d be out of your way before midnight,” Ken said.

  How could Derek consider letting them into the house when he could see they were ready to menace him? “I want my money,” he said.

  Ken took the lettuce from him and opened the alley door, shaking his head sadly. “Give him what he’s asking for.”

  Derek backed into the alley and knocked over a dustbin. He almost sprawled on his back. The youths snorted at that, but they weren’t smiling as they followed him. As he hauled himself to his feet, his fingers found the neck of a bottle that had rolled out of the dustbin. He smashed the bottle against the alley wall so savagely that Ken’s sons retreated a step. He felt a splinter of glass lodge in the side of his hand like a hint of how fighting them would feel, and it excited him, made him determined to hurt them worse. Then he thought of Rowan, imagined her seeing the state he might be in. He flung the bottle away and turned his back on the youths. They jeered at him and flung rubbish after him as he made himself walk slowly to the car.

  He’d kept his self-respect, but at what c
ost? He’d have to use a lawyer now and pay more for the work on the house. He drove back to Waterloo, growing unhappier with himself and the news he had for Alison. But when he found her, sorting through old photographs in a room on the middle floor, she looked so taken aback that he was afraid to ask what had happened. “Lance killed himself,” she said.

  “Never. When?”

  “Days ago, but Richard only just called my parents. Hermione can tell us more about it when she gets here. You don’t mind her staying overnight, do you? She sounded pretty shaken.”

  “Whatever you think, Ali. No joy at Ken’s, by the way. I could hardly get near him for his family.”

  “We’ll survive until things improve.” She hugged him but only made him feel awkward, as if she were letting him know she realised he hadn’t told the whole truth. He was glad when the phone rang. “It’s a domestic job in Bootle,” he called up to her. “I’ll take Rowan along.”

  Rowan was behind the house, gazing over the top-heavy privet hedge towards the bay. “You’ll take root if you stand there much longer,” he told her. “Come and see what needs doing to someone’s house.”

  “I’d rather not, daddy. My new friend Vicky may be coming to play with me, and I want to be here in case she does.”

  He wasn’t prepared to feel so rejected. Maybe she thought it wasn’t ladylike to carry his tools any more. There might come a time when he didn’t know her at all. The idea dismayed him, and he had to make himself concentrate on sketching the rewiring for the newlyweds in Bootle. When he returned to Waterloo, Hermione had arrived.

  She was in the front garden, attacking the lawn with shears. “Here I am again, Derek. You’ll be thinking you can’t get rid of me.”

  “Don’t break my heart. You know you’re always welcome.”

  “Am I? I don’t feel it. I don’t mean you, I mean the house.” She glanced at it as if she expected to see someone watching. “What about you? Do you feel welcome?”

  “Rowan does.”

  “I’m not sure I like that either.” She plucked grass off the blades of the shears. “Well, you’ll be thinking your neurotic sister-in-law is as bad as ever.”

  “You need time to get over things, that’s all. The bad bits of your past are dead now, aren’t they? Queenie and now Lance.”

  He thought he’d been too harsh, but she nodded slowly as if to convince herself. “Lance, yes. No mistake about that, he was cut in half by a train. The driver said he looked straight at it and then stepped in front of it. How could anyone do that, Derek?”

  “Maybe he couldn’t stand himself any longer, the shame of it and people knowing.”

  “That’s what his father thinks. But he was coming here, Derek.”

  “So what?” Derek said, feeling obscurely threatened. “He had to be going somewhere.”

  “But why would he come all that way and then do that to himself?”

  “He’d been talking about Rowan, hadn’t he? Maybe when he came that close he couldn’t stand what he was thinking about her.”

  The discussion was making him nervous, the memory of meeting Lance, the sense of Lance’s mind as a dark pit that anyone could fall into if they strayed too near. “You do realise that we’ll never know what he wanted to tell Alison,” Hermione said, and he was about to retort that it didn’t matter when Rowan came round the house.

  “Where’s mummy? Oh, hello,” she said to Derek, “I didn’t know you were back. Please may I go just on the dunes where you can see me, and look for my friend?”

  “Here I am, Rowan.” Alison appeared at the open front door with a scraper and a length of peeled wallpaper. “What’s wrong?”

  She was asking Hermione, who was staring at the child. Hermione cleared her throat nervously. “Did you give her those binoculars?”

  “One of her friends did,” Derek said.

  “You can have a look with them if you like,” Rowan said, and reached behind her neck for the strap.

  “No, no, I just want to see them,” Hermione said hastily. She peered at them, a frown narrowing her eyes. “Perhaps I could just hold them.”

  Her attempt to sound casual made Rowan dubious. “My friend said I could keep them as long as we live here.”

  Derek let out some of his growing impatience. “What’s the problem, Hermione?”

  “They’re hers.” She was speaking to Alison, almost pleading. “I saw them in her room, I’d swear to it. Can’t you see how old they are?”

  “Listen, if someone doesn’t—”

  “She means Queenie, Derek. She did have some binoculars like these. They weren’t in her room when we cleared it. Rowan, love, I won’t be angry if you say you did, but did you take those from the old lady’s room?”

  “I didn’t, mummy,” Rowan said, close to angry tears.

  “She used to sit at the top window with them after her father died,” Hermione told Derek as if that should convince him. “She’d watch his grave for hours.”

  “They’re Vicky’s. Vicky gave them to me,” Rowan cried.

  Hermione clutched Derek’s arm so hard that he gasped. “Who did you say?”

  “Vicky. She’s my new friend. I met her when I was staying with you.”

  “Oh,” Hermione groaned, swaying heavily against Derek.

  He freed his arm and gripped her shoulders and stared into her eyes. “Hermione, you’ll be upsetting the child if you don’t lay off. What’s up with you?”

  “It’s all right, Derek, I’ll look after her.” Alison put an arm round her sister. “It’s just one of those coincidences, Hermione.”

  “What kind of coincidence?” Derek demanded.

  Alison glanced at Rowan and scowled at him. “It’s just a coincidence,” she repeated more forcefully. “She’s thinking of Queenie, that’s all. We only called her Queenie because grandfather used to call her his queen. She was christened Victoria.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The silence seemed to stretch the air until Rowan’s ears throbbed. The shriek of a seagull felt as if the air were tearing. Derek muttered under his breath, and then Hermione pulled away from mummy. “Rowan,” she said in a voice that meant to sound disinterested, “what’s your new friend like?”

  “She’s nice. I can tell she reads a lot and likes old things. She always tells the truth, and she’s awfully clean. Her daddy brought her up, but now she doesn’t know where he is.”

  Everything she said appeared to upset Hermione further. “And you say you met her near my house?” Hermione whispered.

  “On the beach when I went with granddad. But she said she lived near here.”

  “Very near,” Hermione said, and swallowed. “Rowan, will you promise me something?”

  “What?”

  “Just for me, will you promise not to play with this girl you call Vicky?”

  “Do us a favour, Hermione,” Derek interrupted. “She’s got few enough friends round here yet without you losing her one.”

  “Just until we’ve had a chance to meet her, then. What about the children who live across the road?”

  “Mary and Paul? I don’t like them any more. They’re never clean. They’d sully me.”

  “That’s her,” Hermione wailed. “That’s one of her words. My God, you sound just like her.”

  Rowan suddenly felt as wicked as Vicky had looked when Paul wanted the binoculars—wicked enough to get her own back on Hermione for making mummy accuse her of lying. She remembered one of Queenie’s words. “They’re such paltry children,” she said.

  Perhaps she’d gone too far. Hermione’s face began to shake. “They’re just words out of the books she reads, Hermione,” Derek insisted. “And maybe from the old girl before she died.”

  “She’s at an age when she picks things up,” Alison said. “Better get used to it, Hermione. She may be worse when she’s a teenager.”

  “It isn’t just that, can’t you see? She might be Queenie standing there in front of us. For God’s sake hold onto her while you still can
.”

  “I don’t need you to tell me what’s best for my child and her mind,” Derek snapped.

  “She’s my child too,” Alison said.

  “I never said she wasn’t. I hope that means you’ll take no notice of your sister’s crazy talk.”

  He turned away as if he’d said too much. Rowan was ashamed of having caused the trouble, of making them talk about her as if she weren’t there. “I’m sorry, Auntie, I was only teasing you. Daddy’s right, those words are in my books.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” her father said. “Clear off then, but stay where we can see you.”

  Hermione offered nervously to go with her until mummy said there was no need. Rowan ran onto the dunes. If she was becoming more like Queenie, what was wrong with that? If Vicky was like Queenie too, except less daunting, perhaps Rowan had been drawn to that in her. Talking to her ought to dispel any doubts Rowan had, though she wasn’t sure what she would ask. But there was no sign of Vicky on the dunes or on the beach.

  When Rowan went home, the grown-ups were being polite to one another. At dinner, even the most neutral remark to her felt as if it were directed at another of the grown-ups. She was glad when it was bedtime, even when they came up one by one to give her kisses that felt like unspoken words.

  On Sunday Hermione seemed determined to be sensible: she dug the garden fiercely all morning and then proposed to see what could be cleared from the top floor. She strode upstairs as if she had never been afraid to do so.

  Her bravado didn’t last for long. She obviously disliked the shapes that squatted in the room next to Queenie’s, hands on knees under the dustsheets. Soon all the chairs were uncovered except for the one that looked as if someone were sitting quite still beneath the sheet. The seated shape was only cushions—rotten, by the smell. When Hermione tried to move a chair, the fabric gave way and her fingers sank into the spongy greyness that filled the arms. “You’ll clear this floor out soon, won’t you,” she pleaded. “The sooner it’s livable, the sooner you can get away from here.”

 

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