by Helen Smith
‘What’s that?’ I ask Taron. ‘Does the giant have a dog or something?’
As we get closer, I shine the torch and we see that the patch of white is not a drawing, but what resembles a giant sheep. It’s standing immobile, its eyes closed in apparent rapture as a man on a stepladder, his head turned away from us and buried in its soft fleece, makes love to it.
We clutch at each other’s hands and scramble back down the hill, embarrassed and shocked by what we have seen. When we reach the car we’re breathless and giggly.
‘I’m quite prudish about sex so I’ve never even watched a porn movie, let alone seen someone having sex before,’ I tell Taron.
‘Well, I’ve never seen a man doing it with an animal, that’s for sure,’ says Taron.
My heart is pounding and my hands shaking, but I want to get away from the car park as soon as possible before the man realizes we may have witnessed his coupling with the sheep thing. I drive a little way down the road to the cream tea shop and park there to collect my thoughts. If I try and drive before I’ve calmed down, we’ll have a crash.
‘Did you see what I saw?’ I ask Taron. ‘Do you think we were hallucinating?’
‘Maybe.’ She starts giggling and we both laugh really hard for ages. Our laughter goes in waves. When we seem about to compose ourselves, we glance slyly at each other and set ourselves off again. My stomach is hurting and Taron seems actually to be gasping for breath. She opens the car door and stands bending over and making wheezing noises.
‘Come and look at this,’ Taron calls. I start laughing again because I can’t think of any sight that she could want me to look at that would be more surprising than the man on the stepladder, and that sets me off once more. I get out of the car and see that she’s peering into the tea shop’s garden.
‘A wishing well,’ she says. The tea shop is closed, of course, because it’s the middle of the night. We try the garden gate and it isn’t locked so we go inside.
‘How much are you supposed to throw in?’ I ask.
‘Well, if you’re making a wish for the world, the best coin would be a French one because of what’s printed on it—liberté, egalité, fraternité. But as we’re making a private wish it doesn’t matter. Any coin will do.’
‘You know that old Christmas carol, “Joy to the World”? If I was making a wish for the world, that’s what I’d wish for.’
‘Joy to the world? Yeah, that’s nice. But any coin will do for now.’
I find us a ten-pence piece each and we flip the coins up into the air so they spin before falling into the water. We’re quiet and serious as we make our wish.
When we get back to the hotel we’re cold and tired, still stunned by the night’s events. Taron throws her arms around me and kisses me goodnight at the door to my room.
‘Goodnight, Taron,’ I say.
‘Baa,’ she says, and I close the door and laugh for what seems like half an hour before I go to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Finding Phoebe
‘Taron, your mother will freak if we suddenly turn up with a baby, won’t she?’
Taron does a very good job of appearing to think about this for the first time. She widens her eyes and tilts her head to one side for ages.
‘Let’s go and see her and ask for help with destroying the database,’ I suggest, ‘and then slip in the idea about the baby and see how she feels.’
‘The sea is so powerful and magical. Let’s park here tonight and meditate and wait for a vision of where we can find a baby. If nothing happens then let’s go home tomorrow.’
We park close to the pier and wind the windows down to let the salty smell of the sea into the car. Everything is pink, as if we’re trapped in a love bubble. The sand is pink, the sky is pink, there’s a track of pink in the sea as the sun sets. Even the boards and the buildings on the pier are painted in pastel colours. A family walks along the beach away from us. The children are skimming pebbles in the water.
‘Do you remember there was always tar on the sand when we were children?’ I ask Taron. ‘Do you think it’s still there?’
‘I don’t know, I always go abroad on holiday.’
The helter-skelter on the pier looks very tall against the skyline. A shining disco ball marks the entrance to the amusement arcade, catching the last of the fading light in the sky. There’s a Ferris wheel on the very end of the pier, positioned so you will feel as if you are falling into the water as you go round on it. Tiny pricks of electric light run along the edges of the pier and pick out the attractions but the pier is deserted.
‘I’m frightened of the sea,’ says Taron.
‘I know.’
It gets cold, and we wind the windows back up. We’re both very tired. Perhaps it’s the sea air; we haven’t done much over the last couple of days. Taron smokes a joint, and we start to doze.
The sea is very black. The air is very still. There are almost no ripples on the surface of the water, but I can hear the sea moving and the water washing up on the sand and back again. I stare out at the sea, trying to make out the horizon. I cannot see where the sea ends and the sky begins. The stars are very bright, a shower of electric lights. When I look back at the sea I can see the stars reflected in the water. I didn’t notice them before; I only saw the blackness. I can’t see where the sky ends and the sea begins. Everywhere there is black and the bright lights and the rushing sound of the water on the sand. At the edge of the water I see something drift onto the sand and lodge there, then dislodge and drift back with the water. It looks like a box or a crate. Or a crib. It’s difficult to see because the stars in the blackness are like fireworks and their light distorts everything. I think I see a baby’s hand waving from the box, the features of a little moon face turned towards the stars. We have to save it before it drowns. ‘Taron,’ I shout, ‘Taron, wake up.’ The words strain soundlessly in my throat as I grab at her. My whole face is screwed up as if I’m crying but the tears are trapped in my throat. We wake up together, clutching and scrabbling at each other.
‘Alison,’ says Taron. ‘Did you see it? Did you see the baby?’
‘I think I was dreaming.’ I look out at the sea but there is no box, no shower of stars, no mysterious blackness.
‘We dreamed the baby. We made it come.’
‘But it isn’t here, Taron.’
‘It’s a sign.’
I feel stiff and cramped and disoriented. I think I won’t be able to sleep, but Taron and I drift off again into a dreamless sleep.
I wake up very early as the sun is rising, and it looks as though it will be a lovely day, even though a red sky at morning is the shepherd’s warning. I shuffle out of the car, hunched over and uncomfortable, and hobble down to the pier to stretch my legs. The sea is a long way out. Low tide. What a strange night. It must have been the dope Taron was smoking with the windows shut. I’ll have been high as a kite. My mouth feels very woolly. I’d quite like a cigarette, even though I don’t really smoke much, just when I do drugs or I’m drunk. I’d like to go back to the hotel and have a shower and a pee and pack up and go home.
It’s then that I see her. Tucked up under the pier near the wall. A baby in a box. Our baby.
I stand there for a while until Taron stalks up behind me. She fishes around under the baby’s pink blanket. ‘No note,’ she says, picking up the box with an effort. ‘Let’s call her Phoebe.’
We get back to the hotel and put the baby on the bed in my room. Taron winds a strand of my hair round her finger and tugs hard to loosen it from my head. ‘We should knot red ribbons in her clothes to protect her. Red for life and knots to confuse the devil. We’ll have to use your hair for now as it’s reddish,’ she tells me.
She slips a key into Phoebe’s box, under the blanket, to lock her in this world and stop the fairies from stealing her. I can hardly protest, considering the powerful magic that brought her into the world.
Chapter Twenty-Six: The Abduction
Mrs. Fitzgerald sits i
n her office and waits for Alison to call. Her spectacles are on the desk in front of her and she fiddles with the chain. She has more bad news. On days like this the work gets her down. Mrs. Fitzgerald is fond of Alison. People sometimes say that a younger person they care about is like a son or daughter to them. Mrs. Fitzgerald doesn’t feel like this about Alison. A daughter would be a liability, someone to watch every day for signs of the madness that grips her family. She has never wanted children. Alison is just Alison, a good worker, and she’s fond of her.
‘Alison, I have some bad news about your neighbour, Jeff,’ she begins.
‘But I’ve cleared that up. He’s not involved with Flower, not really. I told you. He’s just been giving him false information.’
‘I know. That’s the problem, Alison. He’s been abducted.’ Alison is numb and speechless on the other end of the line. Mrs. Fitzgerald sighs. ‘I’ll try to locate him and see if we can strike some deal with them, explain his innocence. If we can find a way to free your neighbour, I’ll mobilize all the forces I can spare.’ She doesn’t tell Alison she suspects Jeff is being held by Bird, who is more dangerous than Flower, and who would be menacing Jeff with poisonous snakes if his stash hadn’t been stolen by the police.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Disagreement
I wish she wouldn’t keep calling him my neighbour. It makes our relationship sound so accidental; it doesn’t sound at all as if we’ve chosen to be friends. It lacks poignancy, too. Would the neighbours of John McCarthy have held a vigil?
I’d been feeling pretty guilty that I hadn’t told Mrs. Fitzgerald about photographing Bird and Miss Lester together. It was a kind of betrayal not to even mention the events in Cerne Abbas, which have to be connected to Emphglott because I can’t think of anyone else who’d be breeding giant sheep in the area. Now, it feels as if fate might have had a hand in things. If Mrs. Fitzgerald can’t tell her client what I know, there can be no possibility of a leak to Bird’s organisation and we might be able to save Jeff.
I try my hand at writing a poem for him as I think it’s what he would have wanted, under the circumstances.
GUARDIAN ANGEL
Jeff, more than neighbour
My guardian angel
What’s that rustling
Under your shirt?
Are your wings
Folded there?
Or have you grown hairs on your back
Like the ones on your knuckles?
Like the man turning into a bee
On Tales of the Unexpected
When we were children
I love you anyway
I don’t send it.
I have to get back to London and sort things out. Part of the reason we came here was to flee the danger in London but now I just want to get home, and bugger the danger. I’ll be closer to where things are happening, and I won’t feel so powerless. Also, my emotions are in so much turmoil that I feel the way you feel when you’re sick and you’re like an animal who wants to crawl back to its lair to recover.
Our drive back to London is rather subdued. Taron and I have had a disagreement. We went to Boots to buy baby stuff, and while I was getting vests and bottles and milk formula, Taron shoplifted the nappies. Phoebe is in the back of the car in her box, waving her arms and cooing. Taron has called her mother from a phone box and I’m still waiting for a full debrief. She’s taking so long to tell me, I think I can guess what she’ll say.
‘She doesn’t want the baby, does she?’
‘She doesn’t…she doesn’t think a baby can help her at the moment.’ We exchange very few words because we’re furious with each other, stuck with a stolen baby named after one of Taron’s experiments with reality. I grip the steering wheel with an emotion that is close to violence, and when I think about Jeff, it’s as if she’s to blame for that, too. I should have been suspicious as soon as she mentioned an apprentice for her mother. As soon as she said the word, all I could see was Mickey Mouse and those stupid fucking dancing brooms in Fantasia.
The long drive helps me untangle my feelings. I don’t stop feeling angry, but I realize I should be angry with Bird and Flower about Jeff, not with Taron. It isn’t Taron’s fault that we found Phoebe under such bizarre circumstances. It isn’t Taron’s fault that Jeff has disappeared. In fact, it’s my fault that Taron and her friends have been in danger. By the time we reach Seagram’s offices in the Ark near Hammersmith flyover, I have everything in perspective. It helps that Taron doesn’t speak at all. She’s Anne of a Thousand Days, frivolous and flirty in life but brave on her way to the chopping block.
We stop at the services and attend to Phoebe with a stolen nappy in a cloud of baby powder. The sticky tabs don’t work properly if you get powder or grease on them, but Taron and I are wise to this after previous efforts and we improvise with a roll of cellotape. The thought that perhaps they should use Velcro on nappies makes me think of Jeff, and this makes me miserable.
We stop off at my house. The doorstep is covered in milk bottles because he’s not there. The house is an empty shell because he’s not there. We leave for Taron’s place as soon as we can.
Taron cheers up considerably when we get there, skipping around touching her treasures under cover of showing Phoebe her new home. I feel a hundred years old as I make a cup of tea and call Mrs. Fitzgerald. Taron puts a blanket on the floor and plays with Phoebe, yanking off her sellotape-secure nappy so she can wriggle in the nude. They lie with their heads almost touching and gurgle at each other. Taron seems to be a natural with the baby. I have never even touched one before. The closest I have been to a child of this age is looking at a Benetton ad, and that made me feel sick.
I wonder how old Phoebe is. I don’t think she’s newborn because she’s quite pink and filled-out looking, not wrinkly like very tiny babies. On the other hand, she doesn’t have any teeth. I consult the baby-care book Taron bought in the service station bookstore and conclude that Phoebe is probably between three and six months. We have weighed her on Taron’s bathroom scales by weighing Taron first, then weighing Taron with Phoebe in her arms and subtracting the first number from the second one. Although Taron assures me her German electronic scales are very accurate, I think the results are inconclusive because she appears to be leaning to one side when she’s alone on the scales, so I’m sure she’s found a way of fixing it so she appears lighter than she is. Can Taron really weigh less than nine stone? Can a baby that small be as much as fourteen pounds?
Phoebe is really very beautiful. I know that all parents are supposed to think their babies are beautiful, but does this rule apply even if you find one and keep it? She has a very fine dusting of blonde hair on her head, as soft as feathers. Her eyes are blue, her feet long and thin, with tiny purple creases in them. We talk a lot about her feet because we see so much of them as she lies on her back and kicks at us. The muscles in her calves are like jelly. The only imperfection is that the tip of her little finger on her right hand is missing from the first joint. I can’t think of anything she’d need it for but Taron is ahead of me. ‘She won’t be able to type,’ she says sadly. ‘She’ll never be able to get a job as a secretary and marry her boss.’ I can’t be sure whether or not she thinks this is a good thing as I know she has a very romantic view of marriage.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Jeff in Captivity
Bird is rowing Jeff along the Thames. Jeff’s wrists are bound in front of him with brown sticky tape. He sits in the prow of the boat facing Bird.
Bird rows silently, a loaded pistol resting on the bench between his legs. Looking at Jeff’s pale, oval face, long hair and gentle expression, face tilted away from the water, Bird thinks about the painting of the Lady of Shalott in the Tate Gallery.
Dick is eating a yoghurt. When he was a child he thought that yoghurts tasted of sick, and he finds it difficult to shake off the associations now. He eats them because his girlfriend buys them for him and he loves her and doesn’t want to hurt her feelings. When he finishes the yoghurt, he
telephones Mrs. Fitzgerald.
‘Alison’s friend is in a secret chamber under the Thames at Vauxhall.’
‘Who’s got him, MI6?’
‘No, the government security forces have got soundproofed cells in the area but he isn’t in one of those. Bird’s got him—’
‘So it is Bird. Do you know where, exactly?’
‘Some underground property he uses for interrogation rooms. With that location he’s able to mislead people into believing he’s connected to the nearby government offices.’
‘I know. He’s set up his organization in much the same way that people set up language schools and call them Oxford College…I’ll have to tell Alison about Jeff.’
‘I doubt this is more than a frightener. I think he’s taken Jeff as insurance against Alison discovering what Emphglott are doing at their test site. I also suspect Bird has access to information from within your organization, Mrs. Fitzgerald, and that’s why he knows where Alison is and why he’s so fearful of her.’
‘That can’t be possible. Alison and I are the only people who know about this project. I’ve kept Alison informed on a strictly need-to-know basis. She knows nothing about you.’
‘I wouldn’t worry too much. Information leaks from everywhere. After all, that’s why I’m able to tell you what Bird’s up to. For your own peace of mind, perhaps you should review who has access to your files. Perhaps there’s someone whom you haven’t actually told about the project, but who’s managed to find out by going through your papers.’ Dick tries to handle this carefully. He knows Mrs. Fitzgerald will be upset by the accusation. The motto of her agency is ‘discretion assured.’ The nasty taste in his mouth is as much due to the unpleasantness caused by upsetting Mrs. Fitzgerald as it is to the flavour of the yoghurt that lingers there.