`Look,' he said placatingly, wheedling while postponing the other news, which he knew obscurely to be unpleasant, sensing without fully knowing why, that it would displease Evie more than most, dreading the disclosure. 'Look,' he said again, 'look what I've brought you.' Feeling in his pockets with stubby fingers, putting on the bed between them his small hoard of glittering things, trying to please desperately, giving it all away in one fell swoop.
'These were down my trousers,' he boasted. 'I stitched two pairs of trousers together, see? All these things were right at the bottom, by the hem. They didn't find these…' He faltered on the last words, knowing he had blown it, told it all instead of waiting.
They were sitting in the summerhouse den, Evelyn cross-legged on the mattress, lit by the butane lamp, dark hair falling on her shoulders, ears sparkling like the objects on the bed, which she was sweeping to the floor in a luminous arc. One violent movement of her arm and the diamante bits sprang into the air, hitting ceiling and wall, falling to the earthen floor in a series of uneven sounds. A gesture of contempt to his gesture of giving. Her face was the colour of clay, two red spots and a tight slit of a mouth.
`Who's they, William? What do you mean, they? They what? They when? They where?'
He shifted away from her, cowering, starting to shake. 'They,' he said stupidly. 'Them, I mean.'
`Who's them?'
`Policemen them.'
Oh, shit,' she hissed. 'You got arrested again, you disgusting little berk. '
`Please, ' said William. 'Please, Evelyn, I didn't say anything. Just told them I'd found some things outside a shop. Griffith's shop in Woodford, you know, the one you like. A man stopped me, then a woman came, then -
She leaned towards him and slapped his face very hard. The plain ring on her finger as well as the fingers themselves left an imprint on his face, stigma of a small, remarkably strong hand. William shrieked briefly, a grunting little shriek of pain, louder than the sound of the falling objects, followed by a storm of sobbing. He crouched, knees to chin and head in knees, arms pulling self into self, hiding, hurting, and weeping, making his body as small as possible, shrinking away in despair with her strident voice in his ears penetrating his own enormous sobs.
`What did you say to them, William? What did you say?'
`Nothing, nothing, nothing. Only about the things I had and they found, nothing else.
They didn't ask; I didn't chatter. Like you said. Like that big fat lawyer man said last time. If I said anything else, you said I wouldn't be able to see you, Evie, and I couldn't bear that. Didn't say nothing, nothing, nothing.'
The last was a rising wail. Evelyn began to recover. 'Promise?' she asked. 'Promise, promise, promise?' The din he made was terrific. They might have been heard for miles: they had tested the den for sound, found it safe, but there was still too much noise.
Her head ached. She began to pat his back, a circular motion with the palm of her striking hand but otherwise similar to the action she had used on her father only a few hours before. 'S'all right, William. 'S'all right, really,' repeated again and again in her best there-there voice, 'S'all right.' She was sick of saying it, speaking words like this and patting people, especially now with that monstrous fear stuck in her chest like an arrow bleeding into her lungs, making her gulp for air in the stuffy warmth of these dirty walls. All too much: she was not a grown-up after all.
She pulled his hands from his face, turned his head towards her own, stared at him intently. 'Promise, William?'
Oh, Evie, I did promise before. Please believe me, please.' Broken words from a tear-stained, dirt-stained face.
She did believe. She had to believe, and in the reaction of relief that withdrew the arrow, she crouched behind him and hugged him fiercely, mind in an overdrive of impatience.
Thinking how soon she could go home, plan, write her diary, sleep, maybe enjoy the luxury of crying herself, wondering if her bike, a possession quite secret from William, was still in the bushes where she had left it.
'S'all right. Will, really. Honestly it is. Which shop was it, William? Tell me exactly which shop. It's important. Don't ask why, it just is. Sorry, sorry sorry.' She repeated the word like a litany, until the crying stopped.
I hate them all,' said William finally. 'Hate them, hate them, want to burn them down. I'll show them.'
`Nothing wrong in that,' said Evelyn. 'Tell me which shop.'
Wide awake at three a.m., Helen wished that Branston were somewhere else, a foreign village, the kind she had visited and wanted to visit again, like a Spanish country village, where for all the silence and lack of light at this hour, the darkness seemed alive, a comfort rather than a dismissal. One long street where a dog would bark for a passerby, alerting the next dog in the next house, and the next, suspicious of movement, endlessly protective.
Where sleep thus guarded was an end in itself, not a closing-down against the world as it was here, where all inhabitants were battened in hatches, pretending to sleep, their pets and children as silent as themselves behind double glazing, curtains drawn, blinds at full stretch.
In contrast to the alien barking dogs and palpable breathing of real villages, Helen remembered next her own flat in Islington, a street where sleep was never universal. From her basement at any time of night she could hear traffic, distant trains, and from the other side of the house, footsteps on the pavement, late revellers, early starters, walkers, joggers, products of the night shift and city enterprises, living in a timeless zone. The bonus of the metropolis: constant humanity barring the sensation of loneliness, while in Branston people closed doors on their separate walls, switched a series of switches, and slept like battery hens.
Shuffling the pillow, putting one arm beneath it for comfort, her body turned sideways, she pictured the rooms of her London flat one by one. Did that ancient cooker still work? Would her plants live? Would the tenants have taken down her pictures? Did they tend the jungle of garden? Did children still climb over the wall from the school beyond, a Montessori for vandals who were too young yet to do harm. Her arm ached from lying across it, a dull discomfort provoked further by sharp recall of one terrifying night in her own home, remembering at the same time for how long after that she had clutched Bailey in the twilight hours to mitigate the nightmares, while now she merely clutched the pillow. The shock of her own withdrawal made her shut her eyes, afraid to wake him.
`Helen?' His murmured and sleepy voice, a slight stirring from him, suddenly intensified with the speaking of her name, himself instinctively aware of her wakefulness, guarding her. 'Helen, love, what is it? You're wide awake… Come here, love.' Crossing what had seemed a mile of bed, folding his long arms around her, turning her, pressing her against his prickly chest, kissing her forehead and eyes. 'What is it, darling?' Saying to himself, If you will not come to me, I am still here and I shall not let you go. 'What is it?'
She might have begun to tell him the half of it then in that silent dawn, grateful for his knowledge of her need to be hugged, for his constant reassurance, but as she snuggled into the embrace, ready to speak secrets, he to listen, the phone shrilled. Bailey was on call-out duty, worse than a doctor, a sound in the telephone buzz suggesting shattering relationships and bad news.
He kissed her once, disentangled himself gently, moved out of bed with the lithe speed that always distinguished his passage from sleep to action, answered with a few terse words, including a question: 'Can it wait?' A silence for the explanation. 'I see. It can't wait; fire still burning. I'll be there, fifteen minutes.'
Helen felt the rise of disappointment and loss as sharp as anger, but it was not anger, only sorrow for another opportunity missed, sad in a kind of inevitability. Back to bed with him, only for a second, only for a hug. 'What is it?' she asked in turn.
I'm sorry, darling. One of those fires.'
`Which fires? Oh, I know, you told me. Backs of shops and bus shelters. That one? Why do you have to go?'
`Because I need to see one fresh. I asked Amanda to call if there was another. Will you be all right?'
`Course I'll be all right.' Automatic professional response of a woman who would have said she felt fine in the middle of an amputation. Smiling while her leg was cut off, everything perfectly OK, since that was what the onlooker wanted to hear.
'How many fires have there been?'
