‘We never need no sleep, not us, not in the way we used to sleep before we was banged up in here. We just don’t need it. But our heads get worn out from thinking, do you know what I mean? Your brain can’t go on like a fucking washing machine, turning over the same thing again and again and again. You’d go mum and dad if it did. So now and then we have to have a bit of a lie-down and we call that having a “weary”.’
Ada turned back to look at him. She couldn’t decide from his expression if he was being genuinely helpful or lascivious. He slowly raised his hand off her knee, but he didn’t take his eyes off her and he didn’t blink.
‘How long for?’ she asked him.
‘How long do we have a weary for? It all depends, love. It depends on how long we’ve been in here and what kind of a state we’re in – you know, up here.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘Some of these blokes, they’re right nutters. Others, it’s hard to tell. They keep themselves to themselves and you can never work out what’s going on inside of their heads. See that bloke next to the wall there – the one with the glasses and that long grey shirt untucked? Professor Corkscrew they call him, and believe me you don’t want to know why. But I don’t think I’ve heard him say more than ten words the whole time he’s been here, and two of them was “eff off”.’
‘How many men are here altogether? Do you know?’
‘Seventeen, love. I’ve been here long enough to know them all, even though you never see them all at once, simultaneous-like, on account of them all having a weary at different times. But give yourself a year or two, and you’ll get to know them all, too. That bloke with the droopy moustache, that’s Wellie. You want to stay well away from Wellie, he’s a fucking headcase. It’s a good thing there’s no kettles in here. That was Wellie’s favourite trick,in the nick if you crossed him. Boil a kettle of water, mix it up with sugar, and pour it all over your bonce. But – you know – even the nuttiest of nutters have hearts.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘What do you think? It means they have wives and girlfriends – or boyfriends, some of them. They have mums and dads and kids of their own. But they ain’t going to see none of them again, never. Once old Russell was brown bread, at least we was able to go up into the attic and go through our suitcases. All of us had family photos in our luggage, and personal letters, and now we’ve got them back. Mind you, I’m not sure if it doesn’t stick the knife in even harder, having all those photos of somebody you ain’t never going to be able to put your arms round again and reading the letters they’ve sent you over and over until you know every fucking word of them off by heart.’
‘Aren’t there any women here?’
‘No, love. Only you. That’s why I said you should have left well enough alone.’
It had grown so dark now that Ada could barely see him – only the glitter of his eyes. The only light was a faint red-and-green glow behind the stained-glass window at the end of the second bedroom. The door must have been left open, and the landing light was shining along the corridor.
Jaws stood up. ‘You want my advice, love? Take each day as it comes, because you’ve got more days coming to you than you can ever count. You’ll never get any older, so you might as well try to get wiser. I never pretended to be the nicest bloke in the world, and who knows, I might be tempted to take advantage of you, too, because you’re a looker, no mistake about that. But I’m here if you need me.’
Ada sat there in the darkness, breathing her last breath over and over again.
‘So why do they call you Jaws?’ she asked him, and she realised that she was whispering, too.
‘Lots of reasons. One of them is, I don’t never bite off more than what I can chew.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Another one is, my bite is a whole lot worse than my bark.’
He went back to join the rest of the men, who were whispering together in the far corner. She strained her ears to hear if they were whispering about her, but their voices were too sibilant and soft. They sounded like a troop of sad children traipsing their way slowly through heaps of autumn leaves. Whisper, whisper, whisper.
The red-and-green light in the stained-glass bedroom window was suddenly extinguished, so somebody must have closed the door – somebody in that other world from which she had now been cut off. Now she understood how people must feel in that very last moment of brain-consciousness, when they die.
She started to recite some of the Dartmoor poems she knew. If she kept her thoughts varied, and interesting, maybe she wouldn’t succumb to this so-called weary. If there was one thing that Jaws had said to her that had given her a cold crawling feeling of dread, it was ‘I might be tempted to take advantage of you, too’.
26
Katharine was still so shaken that Vicky gave her two of her Unisom and helped her back up to bed. Rob had suggested that both of them should call for a taxi and go to spend the night at the Tavistock House Hotel, but Katharine didn’t want to leave Allhallows Hall in case Martin made some kind of reappearance, and Vicky wanted to stay because she was convinced now that Timmy was still somewhere in the house.
‘She’s fasters,’ said Vicky, when she came back downstairs. Rob and Grace and Portia were sitting around the fire. They had left the television on, but mute. Seeing
