The One Safe Place

by Ramsey Campbell

3 Pictures

  They were showing Marshall himself again. His ears stuck out too far, he thought, and his father's smile kept appearing on his face. Several hairs had sprung up on top of his head to greet the world, and he couldn't believe how often he turned to his mother as though to interrupt her with a question like someone half his age; every time he saw himself do so he felt his face grow hotter. Here came the woman who would threaten to split his mother open, at which point Marshall found that though he'd told Mrs. Lewis he didn't mind her playing the tape for the class, he did.

  Why had the program makers left that part in when they'd edited out so much else? Perhaps his face was betraying how he felt, because Mrs. Lewis hit the fast forward button on the control in her hand, so that the mauve-helmeted woman scurried up to his mother and gabbled at her until Marshall squeaked in protest like a mouse in a cartoon, which provoked some titters from the class but which at least was preferable to having his classmates hear what had been said to his mother. The teacher released the button, and Marshall said "—allowed to see movies in America I can't see here."

  "Who lets you see films in America?"

  The presenter hadn't said that so immediately, nor only that, unless Marshall's memory was rewriting the encounter. "The state, I guess," he watched himself say beneath his wagging sprout of hair. "Just because it's rated R doesn't mean you have to be seventeen to see it, but here it's rated eighteen and I'm supposed to wait six years before I can watch it again."

  "No age restrictions on what you can see and read in America. Any comments? Yes, with the glasses, no, the other glasses?"

  "You didn't say there were, were, weren't any restrictions," Tom Bold said from his desk next to Marshall's.

  "I said more stuff, but—"

  "Keep your observations for the end if you will," Mrs. Lewis said in a high quick voice which Marshall gathered was a consequence of being Welsh. He felt that smile twitch his face, as it did whenever he was embarrassed. "How can we stop it?" the capering presenter said.

  "They're scared of nothing any more," a man shouted, his nose appearing to squirm with emotion, thanks to a flaw in the videotape, "we've got to bring back fear."

  "You can't have a society without fear," said a woman with an even less stable nose.

  "We spend our lives being scared," her friend declared. "It's time they did."

  "Kill a few, then they'd be scared."

  "Capital punishment. Is that the answer?" the presenter said, the flaw in the tape causing him to perform an impromptu bellydance. "We'll be back after the break." His place was taken by an ad for South African produce accompanied by a rich dark voice. "Cape fruit," it said, "tastes like—freedom," at which point Mrs. Lewis switched off the tape to a chorus of protests from the class. "None of that, now," she said briskly. "Quite enough to talk about there. Who's got something to say? Travis?"

  She wasn't trying to discomfort him, she was only doing her job. He suspected she wasn't even aware of looking poised to dart at whomever she spoke to or of the way her greenish eyes flashed in her sharp pale uncooked face, impatient for the next victim. "I was only saying I said more than you saw me say," he said.

  "Seemed to me you were given a good chunk of time. Or misrepresentation, is that your complaint?"

  "I guess."

  "Don't be too ready to credit everything you see on the news or read in the papers either," Mrs. Lewis told the class as though bringing to a close a story with a moral. "Away with Travis's grievance now. Let's just see how many of us have experienced violence or know someone who has."

  Marshall folded his arms on the desk-top etched with inky initials, but couldn't prevent his hand being tugged up by the sight of so many raised around him. Mrs. Lewis's head was nodding, pecking at the number of responses. "Nearly the lot of you," she said. "Not you, Lynch? There's lucky. Let's hear from... Flynn."

  Ben Flynn hunched his shoulders so as not to flinch from her pounce. "Last week in pee ee Mr.—"

  "We don't call that violence, anything a teacher does," Mrs. Lewis said with finality. "Travis, you're anxious to talk today. What is it this time?"

  Marshall was keeping his hand up only because he still wasn't entirely sure how these things were done in England and hadn't noticed that the other hands had sunk. "Something that happened to you, we want," the teacher insisted.

  "Not to me, to my dad."

  "Family will do."

  "Some guy nearly made him crash his car and then he chased my dad and pulled a gun on him."

  "A guy is what we put on a bonfire. I expect your father must have thought he was back in America," Mrs. Lewis said, apparently by way of encouraging Marshall. "He wasn't shot, was he?"

  "No, only the—the person with the gun got away before the police came, and when they only found my dad they thought it was him."

  "With the gun."

  "Right, and when they heard him talk they did."

  "How was that, now?"

  "Because he talks like me. American."

  "I'm sure it couldn't just have been that, Travis, if I know our police. He's not in custody, is he?"

  "He might have been, except the person who called them came to tell them it hadn't been my dad."

  "Might have been's nothing and nowhere. So have they caught the culprit?"

  "They've only just put his description in the paper."

  "Fancy that. Now there's a question worth discussing. Haven't the police to make mistakes like everyone else? Shouldn't people be supporting them instead of trying to show them up? Yes, Wisdom? No, you certainly may not. Heathcote?"

  "My dad's a security guard and he got put in the hospital by four men in a street full of people because nobody did nothing to help him."

  "He must have had plenty of help, then."

  "No, nobody did nothing."

  "That's what I say. You're telling us he got plenty of help."

  "No, miss," Billy Heathcote persisted, and Marshall's frustration with both of them was too much for him to contain. "He means nobody did anything."

  The teacher trained her gaze on him. "I'm well aware of that, Travis."

  "Then why—"

  Her gaze seemed to be poking more words out of him. He manufactured a sneeze to cut them off, but when realism demanded that he bring it to an end she hadn't blinked. Then a bell rang to announce the end of lessons, and he felt as though it was letting him return to his corner at the close of a bout, not that he'd ever been in one. But Mrs. Lewis appeared not to have heard it, and didn't look as if she would take any notice of a referee.

  He was saved by the slam of a desk lid. "In a hurry, are we, Manning?"

  "Miss, rugby practice."

  "You certainly will if you continue to behave like that. And the rest of you will be spending another half an hour in my company unless we have absolute silence. Absolute, Bold, do you understand the word?"

  "Yes, mermiss."

  Marshall was afraid she would take exception to being called some kind of sea creature, but she was busy darting her gaze about in search of potential movement. "For your homework tonight," she said, "I want you to collect at least six examples of crimes from the paper and write how you would deal with them."

  Perhaps she was hoping for groans rather than the few muffled coughs she provoked. "Very well, in rows," she said at last, and scrutinised each as they marched out, so that Marshall didn't quite believe he'd escaped until he was in the corridor.

  Tom Bold caught up with him. "Cow. Would you have to purr put up with that in America?"

  "Never did have," Marshall said, walking fast to leave the incident behind, past the gymnasium booming with footfalls and down the stone steps into the schoolyard full of boys chasing or pummelling each other or huddling together or swinging their schoolbags or dashing for the gates. Every boy was uniformed, the aspect of British school life Marshall had least expected: white shirt, striped tie that wasn't supposed to be removed or even slackened until you were in your own house, grey trousers and socks
which were also required to be grey, black shoes and black blazer which had commenced soaking up the sunlight the moment he emerged from the building. His first sight of all that uniformity had made him feel he'd tricked himself into attending the kind of school George S. would have picked for him, but it was mostly better than that.

  Just now, however, Tom Bold mightn't have agreed. "I mean, though, cur cow. Cur keeping us late for no reason and making me miss my burr bus. My mother worries if I'm her home late."

  "Can't you ring her?"

  "Only got enough to get her home."

  "I'll lend you the money," Marshall offered, and had found a twenty-pence piece like a dime with its rim bevelled septagonal when Billy Heathcote strode up, shrugging at the shoulder straps of his bag to free his brawny arms. "I didn't like that, Travis."

  "Yeah, she was pretty—"

  "Not her, you. You."

  "Anything special about me you want to discuss?"

  "My dad says it's people like you and your dad got him beat up."

  "Where does he get off saying that when he hasn't met either of us?"

  "He wouldn't want to, either. It's like Lewie was saying, people who run down the police."

  "Someone tried to run my dad down with a car."

  Billy Heathcote stared as if he was doing his best to regard that as an insult, then noticed the coin in Marshall's hand. "What's that for? Paying Bold protection?"

  "Just trying to help."

  "We don't need your kind of help round here. Another time don't try and do my talking for me. I can talk for myself. I'm not Burr Burr Bold."

  Red patches broke out on Tom's face at once. "Less of that," he said, and took a deep breath, "Heathcote."

  "What'd you say, Bold? Nobody heard you."

  "I sir sir—"

  "That's right, you call me sir."

  "I didn't sir—"

  "Well, if you didn't, Bold, I'll let you off this time."

  Tom's face was wholly red with effort and rage now. He shoved Heathcote's chest hard, and Marshall had a sense of being trapped in an invisible tunnel, at the other end of which he'd spoken up for Heathcote in the classroom, or perhaps it led farther back. Where would it end? With Tom going home with a bloody nose and his mother in hysterics? "Wait up, guys," he said, and stepped between them. "Listen, Billy—"

  Heathcote punched him in the collarbone, and Bold grabbed him by the upper arms and heaved him out of the way, which hurt more than the punch had. "Hey, that was me, Tom. I thought you needed to make a call."

  Heathcote projected a laugh. "I can just see Bold trying to fur fur fur fur—"

  Bold ran at him and pushed him over. Heathcote fell as flat on his back on the concrete as his schoolbag would allow, and Marshall heard a crack of plastic in the bag. If that hadn't guaranteed a fight, the gathering circle of boys would have. As Heathcote flung himself upright and dragged at his shoulder straps Bold shook off his own bag, and Marshall left them to it. He was only just out of the circle when he heard the first thumps and grunts followed by shouts of encouragement from the spectators, and all the sounds continued as he walked fast out of the schoolyard.

  He'd reached the end of the railings, opposite a row of houses which resembled a red-brick concertina which had just been squeezed of a note, when he heard a teacher roaring. He thought of going back to explain how the fight had started, but teachers who roared were the same the world over—impervious to explanation. A motorcycle the length of a sports car, with one of his schoolmates perched behind the rider, took off along Bushy Road, snarling like a big cat and leaving a trace of the snarl behind to turn into the protracted drumroll which announced how an airliner was mounting the blue sky, and life was a stream of surprises again, not dammed by the past. Even Mrs. Lewis's homework seemed as though it might be some fun.

  The outpouring of monochrome uniforms from Bushy Road was diluted by the crowd on the main road, except where it pooled at bus stops. A wave of it fell back noisily as a half-empty double-decker bus sped past a stop without slowing. Marshall waited for the red stick figures on a set of traffic lights to turn green and adopt a walking stance while peeping like toy birds, and crossed to a newsagent's. Perhaps because they read so many books, his parents only ever bought a Sunday newspaper, and this late in the week the current issue was lost to the recycling bin outside the nearest Safeway store. Marshall bought a local paper once several Indian children had finished disagreeing over which bubble gum to buy, and walked along the Wilmslow Road.

  Walking home from school instead of having to be driven miles beside the Everglades felt especially British. He inhaled the aromas of Indian restaurants and grocery stores piled with every color of pepper, and resisted the displays of pink and green Indian fudge and sweets shaped like pretzels, though the sight of them filled his mouth with the memory of syrup. He dodged around a group of Muslim women, their hair concealed by white silk scarves, and into Victoria Park.

  Only the stone posts remained of the gates which a book in his father's shop said had barred the lower orders from the Victorian estate after dark, and now they stood at the centre of a broad plot of grass surrounded by a circle of houses which the British called a circus. Marshall dumped his schoolbag on a bench facing the posts and a facsimile of an old toll notice, and unfolded the newspaper.

  MANCHESTER CUSTOMS SEIZE "BIGGEST COCAINE HAUL EVER." SHOOTING OF THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD DRUG-RELATED, SAY POLICE. EIGHTY-SEVEN-YEAR-OLD PENSIONER TIED UP IN OWN FLAT THEN RAPED. "PRISON RIOT WAS INEVITABLE"—GOVERNOR. WIFE KILLS HUSBAND AFTER THREE YEARS OF TORTURE. WIDOW WHOSE HUSBAND DIED IN CUSTODY RECEIVES RECORD AWARD FROM POLICE...

  He'd collected enough material right there, Marshall thought, but he continued turning pages until he reached the story he knew.

  MANCHESTER BOOKSELLER THREATENED WITH GUN. Mr. Donald Travis, formerly of Florida, was threatened with a handgun in Fallowfield last Friday during an altercation about driving... Police have issued the following description of the assailant: about 6 feet tall, heavily built, unshaven, bloodshot eyes, sallow complexion, partly shaven head... The drawing of him was even uglier, a cartoon for everyone to hate on sight, glaring at Marshall like an outlaw trapped by a Wanted poster in an Italian Western. Marshall folded the paper so that anyone he met would see it, and ducked one shoulder through a strap of his bag to walk home.

  Presumably Victoria Park became Fallowfield where the grounds of houses turned into mere gardens and the houses split amoeba-like into pairs. Trees mopped the sidewalks with shadows as a breeze ruffled the upstanding hairs at the back of his head, reminding him to tame them once he arrived home. He turned right by a house the same colours as his uniform, and right again where a large russet dog of several breeds started to bark as it threw itself against a jangling gate. "Only me, Loper," Marshall said, and patted its smooth head as Mrs. Satterthwaite, who designed costumes for the theater, called the dog into the porch.

  Two hundred yards around the corner the street came to a dead end, and one of the white houses which ended it was home. A magpie like a fragment of a piebald house was perched on the second-floor railings, first floor if you were British, but as Marshall approached it clattered into the sky, leaving the street deserted except for several large cars lazing in the sunlight. He unlatched the gate and went up the jigsaw of a path between the flower beds where he and his parents had each put in one new plant, though his seemed determined to keep its flowers to itself. He was resting the newspaper and his schoolbag against the oak door while he inserted the first of his keys when he heard a car door slam behind him. "Hey, lad," a man said, closer to him than the slam had sounded. "Yes, you. Hey, you, lad."

  Marshall turned the key in the mortise lock as he looked over his shoulder. A man was gripping the gate with both hands and pressing his stomach against it. Below his red eyes his face was a mass of stubble and spreading flesh. "Can I help you?" Marshall said as he thought his parents would have.

  The man jabbed a fist at Marshall and stuck a finger ou
t of it. "What the fuck you think you're doing with that?"

  Was he accusing Marshall of having his keys? He sounded drunk, in which case he shouldn't have been driving the black Peugeot which was parked outside the house. Marshall glanced away from him in order to insert the Yale key, and came face to face with the identikit picture which he appeared to be posting on the door. "That's right, take a fucking good look," the man shouted. "Don't you tell me that's me."

  The key scraped across the circular plate of the lock and dug into the wood. Surely someone would want to know what was going on, the man was making so much noise and taking so much time about it. "I'll have him for saying I look like that," he shouted ponderously, and Marshall heard the gate clang against the garden wall. "Donald Fucking Travis Booksell. When's he home?"

  He wasn't close enough yet to prevent Marshall from unlocking the door if he did so at once. That wasn't his hand on the nape of Marshall's neck, only nerves. Marshall forced himself to slow down for the second it took him to locate the slot in the plate and slide in the key before withdrawing it the fraction of an inch that would allow it to turn without a struggle. It turned, and the newspaper face grimaced with the crumpling of the page as he shoved at the door with it, and felt breath stirring the hairs on the back of his neck. "Get in, lad, don't muck about," the man muttered. "We'll wait for him."

  The door yielded less than a foot and stuck, wedged by the day's mail. Marshall could slam it, dodge around the man, cry for help)—except that as he pulled the door toward him, fingers dug into his shoulder and a fist like a veined knobbly hammer was thrust into the gap between door and frame. "Don't fuck with me, lad, less you want a kicking," the man said, and used Marshall to shove the door wide.

  The vestibule was more spacious than two phone booths, but now it felt small and dark. The impact with his knees and right shoulder seemed to have knocked his mind out of his body, because all he could think was that he was somewhere else, this wasn't happening to him. A line from a movie began to repeat itself in his head: "If you have to defend yourself, make sure there's no comeback." He found himself trying to identify the film as the fingers continued to dig into the junction of his neck and left shoulder. Then the man let go and nudged Marshall forward with his torso and kicked the door behind them before stooping to rummage through the mail. "Leave them alone," Marshall protested in a voice which trailed off in panic.