“You won’t have heard from anyone yet.” When I admit as much she says “I didn’t want to disturb you, but I don’t think I can stand it by myself.”
I venture around the bed, and as I take hold of the quilt with my free hand I say “Don’t worry. If you need to talk—”
“It isn’t just that, Gavin. Something’s getting in.”
I almost lose hold of the slippery quilt, but I succeed in throwing it one-handed on the bed. There was nothing under it. “Water, you mean? How bad—”
“Not just water. Worse than that.” My mother has lowered her voice so much that straining my ears seems to attract a rush of static. “It’s here now. It’s downstairs,” she whispers. Even lower, as if she doesn’t want to hear her own words, she says “I thought it was your father.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
NO LONGER ALONE
I wait in the street for the taxi I called on the landline. I want to be sure I don’t miss it, but I’m also glad to be out of my apartment, having failed to convince myself beyond any doubt that the shapeless mark as large as a man on the carpet by the bed was just a shadow. The building opposite is dark, and no matter how often I glance at it to take any watchers off guard, none of the windows shows me anything like a face. The streets are quiet except for a gutter somewhere, which is reminiscing about the latest downpour and anticipating the next one. Eventually a rising wave proves to be the hiss of wheels as a black taxi turns the corner. “Home?” the driver says as I climb in.
“Used to be,” I tell him, and the address.
He says no more while the taxi swerves into Tithebarn Street and heads inland, past Maybrick’s office and the Flashes. It swings away from Deadman’s Lane and speeds uphill towards the ridge. At nearly four in the morning there’s no sign of anyone awake besides us, and I wonder how many dreams surround us. At the end of a side street a lanky shape rears up beyond a garden fence, and I think I hear baying, which falls behind like a hunt that has lost the scent. The thin eager figure has reminded me that the introverted maze of narrow streets the pavement cuts off from the main road is supposed to have been one of Springheel Jack’s playgrounds. Could Thomas de Quincey have seen the creature in a vision? Hardly, since de Quincey died decades earlier. Time can’t work like that except in dreams, however much opium he took in Everton.
As the taxi speeds along the ridge I see my parents’ house but not my mother. The house is surrounded by a sulphurous aura, and I’m afraid it’s on fire until the mist recedes from our approach and grows dark. Only that house is lit—every window. “That’s you, is it?” says the driver.
I could imagine that it’s doing duty in place of the lighthouse that used to stand on the ridge. What might it attract out of the dark? That isn’t how lighthouses are meant to work. When the taxi halts I say “Can you wait while I see what’s happening?”
The driver’s hooded eyes peer at me in the mirror. “Not thinking of hopping it, are you?”
“I’m not that kind.”
His eyes narrow as though the lids are growing heavy with the late hour. “Hop out, then, and let’s know the score.”
The light through the orange curtains flares on the For Sale sign and adds lurid highlights to plants and weeds in the front garden. The bars of the gate gather orange outlines as I step on the path. The clang of the latch brings my mother to the front door so fast that she seems about to flee the house. “Oh, Gavin, I’m sorry for bringing you,” she cries.
“Don’t worry,” I tell her, however inappropriately. She’s wearing her flowered dress again or still. In the dogged light from the hall it looks paler than it should, and so does she. An armchair has been moved from the front room to the foot of the stairs. Presumably she wanted to stay by the old-fashioned phone that my father insisted on buying, which is perched on its rest halfway up the stairs, as far as the cord from the wall stretches. I assume that’s where she retreated to, and I raise my voice. “Where’s the problem?”
“I’m not sure any more. Down here, I think.”
I do my best to stride into the front room as challengingly as I spoke. It and its contents are steeped in tired light; I can’t tell if they’re dusty or just faded. Nobody is to be seen, and the windows are locked. All of this is equally the case with the back room and the kitchen, where the outer door is locked and bolted. “I can’t see how anyone could have got in,” I say, though not entirely with relief.
“It came through somewhere. I heard it, Gavin,” my mother calls. “Maybe it went the same way.”
“What did you hear?”
“I thought it was water at first, but it was too…” After quite a pause she says “Too slithery. That’s how it got.”
How much has my father’s disappearance affected her mind? As gently as possible I say “Has anyone been to look at the roof?”
“I should have called someone, shouldn’t I? You’ve more than enough on your plate.” She seems to need to pause again before saying “It wasn’t that, though.”
“Did you see anything?”
“Something. I told you I thought it was Deryck, but I wasn’t thinking straight. It couldn’t have been him.”
“But what exactly?”
“Just the back of his head. I thought he was squatting. I’d had to go to the bathroom,” she says with a hint of embarrassed defiance. “I was coming down because I’d heard that noise, and there it was in the hall. I even called his name because I thought nobody else could have got in, and then I saw it wasn’t squatting, it was really like that. And then it went away.”
“Where could it have?”
“Maybe there if there’s nowhere else.”
She’s pointing at the cupboard under the stairs. As I make for it she takes a step forward and then retreats. I grab the doorknob, which may not be moist if my hand is, and fling the door open. My mother cries out as an object lurches at me. It’s a spade that my vehemence has disturbed. The cupboard is full of tools and a damp smell, perhaps brought in from the garden. No, there’s a patch of moisture in the darkest corner, and I’m peering at it when a voice demands “What’s up, love?”
The taxi driver has stepped into the hall. Most of his stature must be in his torso, because he’s shorter than his height while he was driving led me to assume. His broad face looks jowly with somnolence, but he keeps a sharp eye on my mother as she says “I thought I’d had a break-in.”
“Did you call the law?”
With more pride than I feel entitled to she says “No, I called my son.”
There’s a hole in the far corner of the cupboard. At first I took it for the wettest section of the patch of damp. It’s no larger than a mouse or something of that girth. I can do without the additional thought, and I slam the door as if this may shut up the idea. “I’d better check upstairs,” I tell my mother.
“I’ll stay with your mam,” says the driver.
What sounds like a handful of water greets me as I reach the top of the stairs. It must have been gathering in a bath tap. My father’s workroom looks even more deserted for being occupied by several plastic buckets, none of which contains enough water to justify their presence. The windows are locked, and the same is true of the bathroom and my parents’ bedroom, where the bed is made as neatly as you could find in a hotel. It’s evident that my mother has been sleeping or attempting to sleep in the chair in the hall. “I’ve been praying I never see anything like it again,” I hear her say. “I don’t like to think it might still be in the house.”
The driver gazes up the stairs at me while addressing her. “Are you living on your own, love?”
“Only since his father’s gone away. Not for much longer, I hope.”
The driver holds out a hand to me. “Do your best, mate.”
I’m sufficiently confused to think he wants to shake my hand until I realise he’s waiting to be paid. “Can you hang on a few minutes?”
“You aren’t going anywhere, are you?”
“He can’t be exp
ected to stay with me,” my mother says. “He’s already got so many things to do.”
“His mam ought to come first. If he isn’t staying maybe he should take you home.”
“You wouldn’t have room, would you, Gavin?”
“It’s more a question of beds.”
“Don’t worry about that. We’ve still got sleeping bags from when we were your age.”
“That’s fixed, then,” the driver informs me. “I’ll wait like you said.”
“Will that be all right, Gavin? You don’t want a silly old woman imposing on you on top of everything else.”
It seems clear that she wants to be contradicted. As I make a tentative attempt the driver says “You’re not, love. I’d have you for my mam.”
“I’ll just get a few things, then,” she tells him as much as me, and hurries to rummage upstairs. When she reappears she’s preceded by a plump object that wriggles out of her embrace before slithering down into the hall as she fails to grip the sleeping bag between her chin and a laden canvas hold-all. “You shouldn’t be carrying all that,” says the driver.
I’ve already slung the sleeping bag out of her way and am hurrying to relieve her of her burden. As I carry it downstairs she brings the phone to the hall table and hesitates. “Where’s some paper? I’ll leave him a note.”
“You stay exactly where you are, love.”
The driver returns from the taxi with a pad of Dockside Cabs receipts and hands one to my mother along with a stubby ballpoint. She lays the paper on the table blank side up and regards it for some seconds before writing Gone to Gavin’s. If you’re here, please call. We just want to know you’re safe. She adds half a dozen crosses that resemble stitches in the page and pins it down with the receiver she has taken off the hook. “He’ll have to call you if he can’t get through here, won’t he?”
While I mumble in agreement the driver grabs the sleeping bag as if he’s determined to give her no chance to change her mind. I linger in the doorway with the hold-all while she switches off the lights. As she shuts the front door, something stirs in the dark hall. I’m reminded of the flutter of a bat in a cave, but the pale object that waves like an underwater leaf is her note, enlivened by a gust of wind. She watches it subside and pulls the door shut, launching herself along the path. “Let’s go if we’re going,” she says.
The driver has unrolled the sleeping bag across the back seat. He bows my mother into the taxi, where she almost slides off the quilted bag before securing herself with the seat belt. She greets the mishap with a laugh that sounds anxious for company, and the driver obliges. I do my best while inadvertently imitating the incident as the taxi swings away from the dark house.
West Derby Road shows a distant hint of dawn above Tuebrook, but we leave the glow beyond the ridge. We’re in sight of the central library when my mother gasps. “What will Lucy think of another woman in your flat?”
“If I see her I’ll ask.”
“Oh dear, aren’t things right there either? Will I make them worse?”
“I shouldn’t think so. It’s not important just now.”
She looks ready to argue, but instead says “I’ll make it my business not to get in your way. Just try and carry on as if I’m not there.”
“Ought to be glad he’ll have his mam looking after him,” says the driver.
Perhaps she feels bound to suggest how. “I’ll be able to answer your phone if anyone calls while you’re doing your tours.”
“That’s if I am. The city’s had enough of me, or the man who decides has, anyway. He thinks I’m bringing it into disrepute.”
“How dare he say that? I’ve never heard such, I won’t say the word. What’s his name?”
“No point in worrying about him as well. There’s nothing we can do about him.”
“Don’t be so sure,” my mother says, but nothing more as the flyover takes us into Dale Street. The headlamp beams glint in flooded gutters beside the deserted pavements and send shadows fleeing into the old dark lanes. In Trident Street the beams sweep a shadow away from the basement entrance or under the metal door. “You’re home,” says the driver.
While I pay him and retrieve the hold-all, my mother releases herself and the bag. By the time I unlock the lobby door and prop it open with the hold-all, the driver has taken the bag and ushered my mother to the threshold. “Want me to come in?” he asks her.
“He’ll look after me.”
“See you do,” he says and, having handed me the bag, pushes the hold-all into the lobby to shut the door behind me and my mother.
She insists on carrying the hold-all upstairs, but drops it as I switch the hall light on. “Oh, Gavin,” she says. “Are you feeling invaded?”
“Not at all.”
She’s gazing at the material lined up along the hall beyond the umbrellas, and tramps heavily forward to crouch in front of a page. “What happened to this?” she says in dismay.
“We didn’t manage to save those in time.”
I’m afraid she may ask about the computer, but she heads for the main room. Once she has finished staring into the cartons she says “Can I see Deryck’s message?”
She stares at this too as if she hopes it will grow clearer. “Why has he typed it like that? It looks like some kind of code. Was he trying to tell us something? Why would he have to do it like that?”
Imjm nokay jim hdere. “I should think he was just in a hurry,” I say, though this isn’t as reassuring as I would prefer.
“He must be all right really, mustn’t he, or he wouldn’t have sent it at all.” Perhaps as a further attempt to be positive she says “Shall I make us a cup of tea?”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing if I can get some sleep.”
“You’re right, we should while we’re able. You snuggle into bed.”
I’ve followed her with the bags, but I wonder “Where will you—”
“I’ll be fine in here. I’m not too old to make myself comfortable on the couch. The bed isn’t just yours, is it? You have it and don’t worry about me.”
Even when I grasp that she’s thinking of Lucinda I’m reminded of the intruder that had to be a dream. It makes me grateful not to be alone in the apartment, even though I feel inhibited in the bathroom. I run the tap into the sink while I use the toilet, and then I reward myself with several mouthfuls of water. “Good night,” my mother calls as I head for my room. “Try and sleep.”
The quilt is too flat to be hiding anything, and I refuse to look under the bed. I switch off the light and shut my eyes to intensify the dimness while I do my best not to listen to my mother in the bathroom. I’m drowsing when I hear her in the main room. I think she’s on the phone until I remember that both are on my bedside table. Who’s she talking to? Eventually I deduce from her tone that she’s reading aloud. She must be looking at my father’s research, but I can’t distinguish a word. Her voice seems so blurred that she might be talking in her sleep.
Chapter Twenty-nine
ON THE AIR
It’s daylight, and my mother is still talking. I have the impression that her voice took some time to waken me. Perhaps she hasn’t slept at all. Has she been reading my father’s research in the hope of deducing where he is? I’ve yet to distinguish a word, and I wonder if she’s trying to decipher the items in the hall. Suppose the blurring that has overtaken them spreads to her brain? I can’t be quite awake if I imagine that it could. I raise my head and strain my ears, and then I hear my name.
She isn’t calling me, she’s talking about me. The landline receiver is gone from the bedside table, but the mobile is next to the clock, which shows me that it’s early afternoon. I hop none too efficiently into yesterday’s trousers and pull a Liverghoul T-shirt over my head. I haven’t time to choose a less contentious item—I want to hear what she’s saying, and to whom. Easing the door open, I pad along the hall.
My mother is on the couch beside the sleeping bag, which is propped up like a companion without much of a shape.
She strikes her lips with a finger and covers the mouthpiece of the phone. “I’m going on the radio.”
“What are you—”
“Don’t distract me, Gavin,” she says and ducks her head as if the phone has dragged it down. “I’m on now. Will you be able to hear?”
“If you put it on loudspeaker.”
“Can you?”
As she hands me the phone I’m tempted to take the call or even cut it off. I switch the receiver to its hands-free mode in time to hear a presenter say “Gillian? We seem to have lost Gillian from the city centre. It’s all quiet on the Gillian front.”
“I’m here,” my mother cries.
“You sound a bit remote.”
“Is this better?” she says and, before I can warn her, presses the receiver against her ear.
Even with the side of her face in the way I hear the presenter. “We’ve got you now.”
“No need to shout,” she says. “And I’m not from the city centre, I’m in Everton.”
“I’m sure you know best where you are.” In much the same indulgent tone he says “I believe you want to talk about tours of the city.”
“I most certainly do. The ones Gavin Meadows gives.”
“They’re the criminal tours, aren’t they? I don’t mean criminal in the sense of—”
“Maybe the city would like you to think they are. They’re trying to stop them.”
“Who’s doing that, Gillian?”
“What’s his name, Gavin?”
I was anxious for a chance to intervene, but now I’m less willing to speak. “It doesn’t matter,” I have to say. “He thinks he’s responsible for the image of the city.”
“He can’t be more than you are. Maybe he’s jealous because nobody knows who he is.”
Before I can decide how to reply the presenter says “Is that Gavin Meadows? What are you saying the problem is with your tours?”
“He’s isn’t saying there’s one because I don’t believe there are any,” my mother interrupts. “This man who spends his time criticising the people who do the real work, what was he trying to say, Gavin?”
Creatures of the Pool Page 17