The One Safe Place

by Ramsey Campbell

  "Just cleaning this for you."

  "Out of the window and out of sight, eh? You take after your mam in some ways right enough." Bernard bit off the end of the cigar jerking in his mouth and spat a fingertip without a nail and some blood which Darren had to tell himself was only stained saliva into the ashtray, and clanked his Zippo open and shut, and puffed out smoke and closed his eyes and leaned his head back like an actor advertising cigars; then he squinted through his cloud at Darren. "How much longer are you going to prowl about, lad? Find something to do for the love of Christ, it's like being in a zoo. Put on the telly if you must, if that'll keep you still."

  Darren slung some of his mother's dresses off a chair and hunched his body so that it had to sit down. "You said they won't be on yet."

  Bernard eyed him over the flare of red. "Try not to let all this upset you, lad. That bloody Yank's been taken care of good and proper, any road." He clamped his teeth on the cigar, and his anger came out thick as the smoke. "Putting your da in the paper and making him look like that, the bastard got what was coming to him. Pulling a gun on the boys because he couldn't take his medicine and getting them arrested. What were they supposed to do, I'd like to know?" He glared at Darren, who felt held responsible and unable to think of a safe answer, until at last the cigar lit like a bulb outside a studio. "He should have taken himself and his family back where they came from while he had the chance."

  "Do you think they'll go back now?"

  "They will if they know what's good for them. There's sod all to keep them here. What's it to you anyway, lad?"

  Darren saw the newscast so clearly it might still have been on the television instead of just on the end of the tape with the woman and the dog: the pavement outside the bookshop roped off like a boxing ring with the loser's blood splashed over it, the woman and the boy in his posh school uniform, their eyes leaking as though they were acting the kind of scene he would either laugh at or fast-forward in a film. All at once he realised he'd seen what he needed to see. Bernard was staring at him, and Darren was about to dodge out of the room to control his expression in case it betrayed him when he heard a key in the front door. "Here's mam."

  "Aye, and a pig on the roof."

  By the sound of it she was trying to jiggle the wrong key into the lock. Darren watched Bernard throw his hands about impatiently while the metallic scraping faltered, and keys jangled against the door, and the scraping became more urgent, and at last the door banged open. "What a stink," his mother said at the top of her voice. "Can't he go anywhere without a cigar stuck in his gob? I wouldn't care if it was just a ciggy. When did he go, Darren? Did he want me?"

  "No chance, love."

  Since Bernard was pushing his lips forward along the cigar, making a face like the gargoyle on the church Darren had broken into last year and not found much except to smash, the response was barely audible. "He's in here, mam," Darren yelled.

  "Sneaky sod," his mother said, not low enough, and yelled back, "Tell him to wait. I'm off upstairs."

  "She says—"

  "Shut it, lad. I'm not deaf, even if you are with those things forever stuck on your head."

  Darren told himself he wasn't deaf either, though the world always seemed too quiet when he took off the Walkman. He heard his mother use the toilet in the bathroom, where the door had never shut properly since his father had kicked the bolt off to get to the toilet while Darren was in the shower. He heard his grandfather crying out feebly, "Who's that? They're getting in," and his mother shouting, "It's only me," then having to add "Marie" and "Phil's wife" and "Your son, you useless mong." The toilet flushed, and Darren heard her tapping her way rapidly to her room like two blind men, and then her different footsteps came downstairs. She'd exchanged her high heels for slippers, but was still wearing her short tight red dress and a faceful of makeup. "You look like you've been having a good time," Bernard said.

  "You're joking, aren't you? They might as well have locked me up with Phil for all the fun I've had since they put him away."

  "I reckon someone had some, any road. I hope you made yourself a good few bob."

  "You wouldn't grudge me, would you, Bern? You promised Phil you'd see me right. You don't want him having to bother about that on top of everything else."

  Bernard stared away the threat she intended him to hear and dealt the cigar a tap which made its grey head fall off into the ashtray. "Money short, is it, Marie? I don't see why with Phil having his board and lodging paid for him."

  "You try running a house by yourself for a while. Maybe you don't realise the gas and the leccy and the rest of them send people like us the final demand when they've not sent the bill in the first place. We're down here and everyone else wants to keep us here with not enough to live on less we go begging to the social. I lie awake at night trying to figure where the money goes."

  "I wonder," Bernard said, keeping his gaze on her while he converted half an inch of his cigar to smoke and ash. "So you'll be glad of owt that comes your direction, I reckon."

  "Long as it's safe."

  "The idea's meant to be you keep it that way. It better had be even with Phil gone," Bernard said, and Darren wondered whom his tone was intended to menace: maybe everyone outside the family. "The latest lot's in the back. Good job the lad was here to take care of us. Me and Barry will be round again once we've got the best deal."

  "Darren can let you in if I'm not here."

  "Don't you go keeping him off school all the time, Marie. Last thing we want is buggers snooping round any of our houses. Here, give us Phil's keys and I can let myself in whenever I need to."

  "Da gave me them," Darren protested.

  "Aye, well, he must have forgot to tell you to give them to me. Hand them over, lad, don't piss me about. Your mam'll just have to make sure she's here when you come home from school. My mam always was."

  Darren dug a hand into his trousers and clenched his fist around the keys. They felt much solider to him than anything else in the room, and he held onto them until his mother cried, "Give them to your uncle when he tells you. Sometimes I don't know who he thinks he is, Bern. I'll belt him if he doesn't give you them, or you can."

  She was trying to make Bernard think Darren did as she said so that he would have a better opinion of her. Darren stood up, his legs jerky with stiffness, and took his fist out of his pocket as he tramped toward Bernard, who withdrew the cigar from his mouth and raised the red-hot end toward him. Darren advanced until his fist was almost in Bernard's face and he could feel the heat stinging the back of his hand, then he opened his fist and let the keys fall on the seat between Bernard's legs. "That was close, lad," Bernard said as Darren backed away.

  "When you boys have finished playing," Darren's mother said, and Bernard stared at her while he slowly let out smoke, never blinking. "So we'll see you when we see you," she said as though she hadn't made the previous remark.

  Darren saw that Bernard sensed her willing him to leave. As the man replaced the cigar in his mouth so as to adjust his lapels once he'd taken his time about pushing himself to his feet, however, she said, "Are you giving me something to help me be a good mother?"

  Bernard emitted a lingering puff that was only a smell by the time he produced his wallet and picked out some twenty-pound notes. "There may be more when we've shifted the merchandise," he said, then lowered the notes out of her reach. "Make sure you spend some of this on the lad."

  "God's sake, Bernard, why do you think my hand's never out of my purse? Him and his clothes never being right for him and always wanting to go into town because he can't bear to stay in the house and find something to do. And mam, I want a Big Mac and mam, I want a computer I can play more games on and mam, I want another bike because whatever he gets he breaks. They won't give him a free lunch at school even with Phil where he is. When I was his age I had to make do with clothes other people had grown out of, and glad of it too."

  "Those were the days right enough," Bernard said, observing her as
she rubbed her arms and jigged her legs until her knees were in danger of banging together. "It's all this watching telly that's to blame for half of what's happening now, if you ask me. Making kids want the earth."

  The handful of money was still dangling in front of his crotch. He raised that hand and used it to remove the cigar from his mouth and tap a lump of ash into the ashtray. "Try and keep this place and the lad up a bit more, Marie. Give Phil something to come home to."

  "Promise," Darren's mother said, and watched as the hand returned the cigar to his mouth, and held the notes close to the hot end, and then extended them just far enough toward her that she had to take a step to reach them. She stuffed them between her breasts at once, and almost collided with him in the doorway from hurrying to open the front door for him. "Stay out of trouble," she called after him, and shut the door at once. "Nosy twat," she muttered as she almost ran to the back room. "Keep out of here, Darren. And don't you go talking about me to him."

  She was in a hurry to get stoned, Darren knew, but the slam of the door made him feel as Barry and Bernard had affected him: shut out, unwanted, no good to anyone. They'd all be surprised. He went into the front room and switched on the television, though he didn't need to watch it to know what to do. If the court didn't let Dave and Ken off for defending themselves against the gunman, then Darren would take it out of the dead man's kid. Surely the Americans wouldn't go home until the trial was over. He knew whereabouts in Manchester they lived, and now he could find the kid's school. The television had shown him the uniform.

  15 Living

  Susanne was wakened by the sun. She was lying on her side of the double bed, her right arm stretched across the other half. The sun filled her closed eyes with light, and its warmth occupied the emptiness next to her. Her fingertips were remembering how they used to feel when she wakened in the night with Don beside her. They would sleepily trace his stomach, which had owned up to its age when he hadn't remembered to hold it in, and then they might trail down to his thigh, the backs of her fingers tingling as they brushed his hairy crotch, or work their way up his ribcage to splay themselves low on his chest. Sometimes he would place a drowsy hand over hers, and sometimes he would murmur incoherently; a few times he'd pronounced a distinct phrase like a code which would recall a dream, though he never remembered saying anything the next day. Once he'd murmured "Happy sky" and pressed her hand against his diaphragm, and for as long as Susanne lay there with her eyes closed she could hear and feel him—could believe he was somewhere. Then the light in her eyes began to go out, and she couldn't avoid noticing that the sheet between her outstretched arm and the mattress felt clammy and stale and crumpled and, instantly, meaningless. As she drew her hand toward her, her fingers closing on nothingness, she felt as though she was letting go of something which she'd failed to grasp and which might have needed her to make it exist. It was an illusion, she told herself, and if she let it remain in her head it would turn into yet another unbearable torment. She dug her fingers into the mattress and pushed herself up against the damp pillow. Her face rose out of the shaft of light between the curtains and grew cold and slack.

  It was Saturday, and weekends were bad. At least on weekdays she had plenty to think about since she'd sent herself back to work when Marshall had insisted on going back to school. From dreading meeting anyone who didn't know what had happened to Don she'd progressed to dreading meeting anyone who did, but now she accepted that her colleagues and indeed her students would support her if she broke down, which she nearly had several times. She preferred them to counselling, several weeks of which she'd suffered after Marshall had rejected it outright. Even if it was designed to make her feel better eventually, it had made her feel worse for too long; ultimately it had enraged her almost beyond words that the counsellor had taken every attempt she'd made to bring the sessions to an end politely, and then less politely, as evidence that she was really pleading for more. But she couldn't blame counselling for moments like this, when everything around her seemed to die another death: the balcony where she and Don had stood listening to the city on their first night in the house and then taken each other to bed; the twin white wardrobes standing blank-faced as though—she tried again to convince herself how absurd and banal and self-indulgent an idea this was—His and Hers signs had been erased from them; the leafy quilt and matching wallpaper she and Don had chosen together. She found herself thinking the leaves ought to wither, and then starting to watch them with eyes which felt both moist and charred, and that was enough. She pulled her legs from under the quilt and planted her feet on the uncaring carpet. The hem of her nightdress traced her thighs and her knees and the upper part of her calves like a loving hand as she stood up and padded to the door.

  She'd left it ajar in case Marshall needed her during the night, though it had been more than a week since she'd heard him cry out while he was asleep. More than once she'd caught herself almost willing him to do so, because at least having to go to him would have distracted her from her agonised helpless thoughts. If he was sleeping soundly at night now, or at least giving her to understand that when she pussyfooted around the subject, then perhaps she needn't feel callous for occasionally doing so despite herself. She tiptoed across the landing and eased open his bedroom door.

  He was lying with one ear to the pillow, his hair making the most of his inattention, both his hands outside the quilt and half closed as if they were readying themselves for a fight in a dream. Sharon Stone stood over the head of the bed, the foot of which was guarded by a chair laden with two days' worth of clothes. The only book of Marshall's which he hadn't managed to stuff into one of the shelves was propped within arm's reach against his radio cassette player. If he was able to read himself to sleep—if he enjoyed reading a book at all—surely that was a good sign. Susanne hugged herself and watched him, trying to borrow some of his peacefulness. Then his face moved in his sleep, and she gripped her upper arms until they ached, because he was smiling lopsidedly, exactly like Don. She stayed as the expression wavered, faded, retreated into him, some seconds after which she inched the door shut on his dream and closed herself into the bathroom.

  For as long as it took her to hoist her nightdress and hang it on the door she was able to believe that the room hadn't changed significantly; then she remembered why she wished it had. Don's safety razor was still in the bathroom cabinet, because she couldn't bring herself to throw it away. She kept thinking Marshall might want it for his first razor, and would hate her if she didn't leave it for him. Or mightn't he think anything of the kind? It was one of the horde of questions she had yet to ask him. She saw herself in the sliding mirrors of the cabinet, her face which looked closer to the bone, her eyes on their way to being eclipsed by semicircles of darkness, her breasts which no longer had anyone to persuade them they didn't sag even slightly. Her eyes fixed her eyes, and she saw herself considering whether to take out Don's razor and gaze at it until her emotions erupted, just as she would open the wardrobe and gaze at his empty clothes. Instead she dragged herself out of the moment and climbing into the bath, turned on the shower.

  The thin plastic curtain billowed at her, the watery tines raked her back as she stooped to open the hot tap further. British showers always felt enfeebled to her, yet this was making her flinch. As its temperature settled she raised her face into the spray. Though it was drenching her hair and drumming on her eyelids, it couldn't scour her voice out of her mind, the words she could only repeat whenever she thought of them, a litany of what she could have said—ought to have said. "You aren't leaving until you tell me what you haven't told me, Don. You aren't getting past me. I'll lock you in unless you tell me where you're really going. You can't leave our house." She ducked and turned the taps full on, and caught the water in her ears until she had to step back, shaking her head. Her left ear popped, then the right one cleared, and she heard Don's voice. "Hi, Susanne?"

  The clammy curtain tried to mold itself to her as the water rumbled on the fi
breglass of the bath. His voice had sounded real enough to be somewhere beyond the noise and the touch of plastic. Susanne strained her ears for a moment, then she shoved her face into the onslaught of water and rubbed shampoo into her hair, restraining herself from clawing at her scalp. She mustn't start hallucinating, or she would be no good to Marshall. Once she was out of the shower she would dry her hair, following which she could plan next week's teaching in more detail than she already had until Marshall awoke, at which point she would make breakfast for the two of them and find out what he wanted to do with his Saturday, maybe some activity which could involve them both.

  She rinsed her hair and turned off the taps. Water trailed down her spine and over the fibreglass as she fought off the curtain and reached for a bath towel and set about rubbing her hair. She stepped onto the mat, and Don said, "We might like to stay in this country for good."

  She swallowed a breath and felt her wet hair tugging at her scalp. A drop of water gathered on the upper curve of her left ear before running down to the lobe and falling to the mat with a minute plop. The voice had been lower, and outside the room. She let the towel drop to the floor and used both hands to turn the doorknob and edge the door open. As she did so she heard a muffled gabble of rewinding tape. The noise stopped and became Don's almost inaudible voice. "Hi, Susanne?" Then the cassette player was switched off with a click, and the door creaked as she tried to close it soundlessly so that Marshall wouldn't know she'd heard.

  She finished drying herself and went into her bedroom to dress, pulling on faded panties because it no longer seemed to matter what underwear she wore, and jeans and a T-shirt before digging her feet into slippers. When she emerged onto the landing Marshall's door remained shut, and there was silence beyond it. She went down to the kitchen and readied the percolator, and listened to its hissing, a sound which for the moment she could substitute for thoughts. When she heard slow tentative footsteps on the stairs she gazed out at the lawn where a few dead leaves were trying to raise themselves to dance, only to sink back on the grass. She didn't turn when Marshall entered the kitchen; she had no idea how to react or how he would look. At last he said, "Mom?"