that mattered.
Michelle preferred the company of small children. The pleasures of tending them had been bred into her by years of baby-sitting her younger sisters. Her responsible attitude reflected the genuine warmth she felt for her young charges. Still, she had never met a child like Daisy. A pretty little thing, thin and blond, with translucent pale skin and large blue eyes that stared flatly and observed everything. At the age of seven, Daisy seemed to have no friends at all. She never returned from school with the other girls in her class, and spent her free time playing alone in her room.
Her brother Tarquin was now eleven and had been packed off to boarding school. Daisy’s parents were hardly ever at the house. The father worked for one of the venerable City banks, and the mother was always organizing charity lunches. It seemed to Michelle that Mrs Whitstable was a modern-day Mrs Jellyby, spending so much time worrying about fund-raising for needy children that she failed to notice how introverted her own offspring had become.
She switched on the kitchen lights, momentarily alarmed as they buzzed and dimmed before returning to their full capacity. As the electric kettle clicked off, Michelle opened the caddy and dropped a teabag – a recent innovation she had only just come to grips with – into her mug. She tuned the radio to a phone-in, and failed to hear the wavering song that sounded from the street beyond.
Daisy rose from the floor of the playroom and listened. The tune was different from the usual one they played. Michelle had told her that it was called ‘Greensleeves’. The new one was much prettier. And fancy him coming around at Christmas! She looked up at the mantelpiece, at the tiny gold christening clock her grandfather had given her. The money bear sat next to it.
“Michelle, can I have an ice cream?” she called, but quite softly, so that Michelle might not hear her. She knew it was too near teatime for her to be allowed one.
Outside, the lilting melody played on. In the summer the van parked at the end of the street, but today it sounded as if it had stopped right outside the front door, as if it had come especially for her.
Daisy ran to the head of the stairs and looked down. The lights were already aglow on the Christmas tree in the hall, and it was growing dark beyond the frosted glass of the front door. She wasn’t allowed out of the front of the house by herself, because of the traffic. But Mummy and Daddy had gone to London, and Michelle was in the kitchen.
It wasn’t fair. She could eat an ice cream and still be hungry for dinner. In the street, the song came to an end. Her mind made up, she raced for the money bear and opened his secret door, releasing coins into her palm. Then she returned the bear to its place, tugged her skirt down, and descended the stairs.
She heard the radio fading down, and crockery being moved about in the kitchen. Michelle was probably foraging for something to eat. No wonder she was so fat. Daisy quietly opened the door and slipped the safety latch on, praying that she would not be too late. The van sat silently at the kerb. It was different from the one that visited in the summer, white instead of blue, and there was no man serving at the window. She walked to the edge of the pavement and looked up, puzzled. From within came a delicious smell of chocolate. Just then, the melody began its warped tape-loop again and the van slowly started to roll out into the street.
“Wait, please. Wait!”
Daisy darted forward with the coins clutched tightly in her hand. The van rolled slowly towards the disused railway arches at the end of the road, its distorted tune tinkling on. Daisy looked back at the house, and the opened front door. It was raining lightly, and there were no customers to be seen. The van driver hadn’t spotted her. Now that she had looked forward to it, she wanted the ice cream more than ever. She ran after the van as it rolled to a stop beneath the darkness of the railway arch, its red taillights glowing.
Daisy could see the driver moving from his seat to the counter window. Perhaps he had seen her after all. Inside the archway the song echoed eerily. Daisy stood beneath the window, her money hand raised in a pale fist. The interior of the van was in darkness. She wanted a Ninety-Nine ice cream cone. How could the man see to fill it properly?
She was about to ask him when he suddenly moved forward in the gloom and leaned down from the window, scooping her up in one swift motion and clamping his hand across her mouth. The counter panel slammed down, sealing the van shut, and the vehicle rolled swiftly away into the darkness of the tunnel beyond.
? Seventy-Seven Clocks ?
20
Tontine
Joseph rose from the bed and placed his hands against the chill glass. It was late now, but night suited the area, and the streets remained almost as busy as they were during daylight hours. Above the boardinghouse, dank underlit clouds glowed like oilskin, brushing across the red brick and slick slate of a hundred rooftop turrets. Joseph’s new room was so small that Jerry could sit at one end of the sickly pink candlewick bedspread and see traffic moving through the rain on the Old Brompton Road.
The room was poorly lit, and made Jerry uneasy. “Can you put another light on?” she asked.
Joseph came to the bed and sat beside her. She could smell shaving soap, and a musky trace of perspiration. “No, let the dark come in.” He ran a finger along the seam of her jean-clad thigh. “There’s nothing in it that can hurt you, Jerry.”
Everyone thought she could just wish away the fear, but rationalizing it had no effect. “It’s not just in my mind,” she explained. “When I look into the night I feel every muscle in my body tighten.”
He brought himself nearer, shadow closing over his face. “Do you feel it now?”
The light on the far wall seemed to be dimming, blurring the pattern of the wallpaper. He kissed her shoulder, her neck, her throat. His body pressed her back against the bed cover, the heat from his chest warming her breasts. She closed her eyes and allowed him to envelop her, his arms sliding around her back, one hand slipping into her tight waistband. They lay on the counterpane with their bodies lightly touching, exploring each others’ mouths, their hands establishing the contours of their arms, their thighs, their stomachs. A warmth spread inside her as his fingers crossed the buttons studding the front of her jeans.
The burr of night traffic buzzed like static beyond the windowpanes. He opened her shirt, kissing the tops of her breasts, moistening her flesh with his tongue, and she allowed her mind to drift. But in its eye she saw the stalking figure in the alleyway, the hunching creature of her nightmares. She opened her eyes. The faulty wall light had gone out completely. It was as if she had suddenly been struck blind.
And shoving down on top of her was a man anxious to devour her body, exposing her breasts, pressing his fingers down towards her sex, stifling her mouth with his.
She pushed him aside with such force that he fell to the floor, cracking his head against the skirting board, pulling down the lamp from the bedside table. She could not hear beyond the pounding of her heart, could not breathe the suffocating air, could not see in the tiny, stifling room. Her only thought was to locate the door and open it.
He found her huddled on the landing, wheezing asthmatically, grimacing as she clutched at her chest with both fists, as though she was trying to suck in the light from the neon strips above her.
“It’s me, isn’t it?” She gave him no answer. “Maybe you can’t handle going out with a black guy.” He should have been angry, but instead he crouched before her, offering his hand. She stared, unable to accept it, knowing that he would only misunderstand. Joseph’s comfortable affinity with the night placed him on the wrong side. He was someone to distrust, not someone to love.
She wasn’t nervous about sex. She didn’t expect the first time to be the best, because her pleasure would be mitigated by apprehension. But as the darkness had deepened, so had her fears. She assumed all lovemaking involved an undertow of dominance and assertion, but inside her nyctophobia she had no authority. In the act itself – of which she had no experience – she had been terrified of losing control. Perhaps Joseph was right, and she had been unnerved by his skin colour. But it was 1973, for God’s sake, what difference did it make that he was
But not to her parents, she thought. Was she subconciously worrying what they might say?
