The Tryst

Green and get something simple for tonight. By the time she got back it was dark. She half-expected to see Douglas’s Volvo outside, but there was no sign of it. She got out of the Mini and started across the street, glancing up at the house. Aileen had never reconciled herself to the appearance of the place, quite unlike its neighbours, with fake Gothic doors and windows. The pointed arches and elaborate stone dressings, together with the slated roof and the black-painted trim, gave the place a look of hypocritical religiosity. The nearest street-lamp was some distance away, and largely screened by a large plane tree, but there was an almost full moon that night, as Aileen could have predicted from her recent insomnia. Its light silvered the path and the scrap of lawn, rendering them distinct but seemingly insubstantial.

Douglas Macklin regularly reminded his wife of her shortcomings, which included not giving the number when she answered the phone, not sheathing food in plastic before putting it in the fridge, leaving lights on and taps running, muddling his socks with hers in the wash, and slamming the front door so hard that it bounced open again. Since she had already been ticked off once that evening, Aileen was relieved that he had not come home while she was out, because when she reached the door she discovered that it was indeed open. She could just hear him say, ‘It does rather tend to undermine the value of having a sophisticated timing device to deter burglars if you’re going to leave the front door standing wide open, you know.’ This final exaggeration was designed to lure her into protesting that the door was not wide open, only a crack. ‘Oh, I see!’ Douglas would then reply, pulling out the sixteen-foot sarcasm stop. ‘Well, that’s all right, then, isn’t it? Perfectly safe!’

She pushed her way into the hall, set the bag of groceries down and groped for the light switch. It never ceased to surprise her that things in the dark remained where they were supposed to be, as though without the compulsion of the light they might go wandering about like untethered animals. The switch didn’t work, however. Aileen flicked the lever back and forth several times, but no light appeared. Then a sudden rush of sound in the darkness at her feet startled her as the bag of shopping subsided. The bulb must have gone, she thought. Unless in turning off the automatic timer she had somehow disturbed the rest of the circuits in the house. She stood there wondering what to do, listening to the murmurs of the night. A moment ago all had seemed dead quiet, but now she discovered that what she had taken for silence was in fact a patchwork of noises: the murmur of traffic from the main road, the fridge whining in the kitchen, the gurgles of the central heating, the rustle of her breath, her rapid heartbeats. And then, somewhere upstairs, a sound that made her skin crawl.

This time she knew that it was not the water pipes. The cry was brief and not repeated, but even in that instant it was piercingly familiar. To her amazement and horror, she found herself turning towards the stairs, putting her foot on the worn patch in the centre of the lowest step. As she moved upwards like a sleep-walker, the dimness of the hallway gradually closed up until it was wholly dark. Beyond the local clamour of the stairs and her thumping heart, all seemed silent, crouched and waiting. She was well aware that what she was doing was absolute madness, but she had no choice.

She continued to climb, one hand held out in front of her, until her groping foot could feel no further step. She could now see nothing, but knew she must be standing on the landing. Gradually her breath grew steadier and she felt her body relax. The reality of the sound she had heard began to grow abstract and doubtful. It must have been the pipes, she thought. What else could it have been? There was no baby in the house. Then a door opened and the accumulated darkness gathered itself up and rushed her. She was gripped by a terror so great that she could do nothing but stand there, trembling and ready to vomit, as it went barging past, sending her reeling backwards down the stairs, head over heels in a gradual graceless slither.

When she sat up, the front door was fully open and the hallway calmly illuminated by the moonlight. She crawled over to the phone and punched the numbered buttons. Only when Douglas came on the line, inquiring rather curtly what she wanted, only then, absurdly enough, did she begin to scream.

8

Steve looked forward to his shopping expeditions for the old man. Apart from his trips to the OOD S ORE, they provided his only chance to take part in the real business of life, the thing that made sense of it all. Until then he’d been a mere spectator, wandering through the covered mall where the shops spilt out on to the promenade and the goods were heaped up in seemingly wanton profusion. It looked as though there was more than enough for everyone, as though you could just help yourself, but of course these free and easy manners were only a tease. The gorgeous hordes of goodies had their pimps, big ugly toughs in cheapo uniforms with spluttering walkie-talkies who sized up the punters’ spending power at a glance. If you looked too lingeringly at the merchandise or fondled it with too much feeling, without having what it took to take it home, then they moved in fast.

Nevertheless, the boy sometimes used to risk loading up a trolley with items, pretending to think long and hard about some, chucking others carelessly in, just like the shoppers whose mannerisms he had studied. The prices were already familiar to him. The stotters never missed an episode of the television show where people won things by knowing how much they cost. ‘Stupid cow!’ Jimmy would jeer. ‘Three hundred and ninety-nine quid? Up my arse!’ But when the trolley was full Steve had to abandon it and slip away empty- handed, so it was poor fun compared to the real thing. Besides, interpreting the old man’s lists involved a satisfying degree of responsibility. The instructions ranged from the nebulous (‘Vegetables. Fruit?’) to the pedantic (‘Steak and kidney pudding, not pie — Fray Bentos if possible, otherwise a small one only’). This kept Steve on his toes, and he prided himself on being able to account for every penny he spent.

But there was another and deeper reason for the boy’s satisfaction. Ever since the time when his collection of snapshot memories had been taken, he had been surrounded by people whose job was to look after him. However kind they were, he could never forget that they were paid to care. They fed and clothed and sheltered him because doing so provided their own food, clothes and shelter. They were really caring for themselves, not him at all. Of course there might be something else there, something real, but you could never prove it. Sometimes the other boys tried to do so by acting impossible, smashing the place up or trying to kill themselves, but what good was that? If the social workers and house parents continued to accept you however badly you behaved, it just proved how badly they needed the money. Steve felt sorry for these official minders, their lives made a misery by little shits like him. He wouldn’t have done their job, not for anything.

What had attracted him to the stotters was that they’d taken him on of their own free will. At the same time he knew it had really been a freak, a whim which had briefly flared in the darkness of Jimmy’s brain and which he’d imposed on the others in a fit of pique. Besides, they never allowed Steve to forget that he was dependent on them, a household pet who would be abandoned the moment they lost interest in him. With the old man it was different. The old man needed him. Again, there were moments when Steve wondered if perhaps there was more to it than that, love or whatever it was called. But the boy knew that you couldn’t build on anything as vague and feeble as that. Need was the stuff, need you could count on. He still didn’t understand what created Ernest Matthews’s need, why he couldn’t just go out and do things for himself like everyone else. Presumably it had something to do with the man Steve had nicknamed Hazchem. The story the old man was telling him would make all that clear. In any case, it wasn’t important. All that mattered was the need itself. It was as real as money: warm and smelling of people, of their dirt and their weakness. And Steve had a pocketful of it!

Friday being pay-day, all the tills at the checkout were busy. The trolleys lined up one behind the other, piled high with sliced white, washing powder, baked beans, ice cream, dog food and toilet rolls. Stunned-looking men with tattooed biceps and soft tummies stood awkwardly beside women in whose faces beauty came and went like the picture on a poorly tuned television set. Both sexes looked prematurely old, exhausted and bewildered, casualties of some routine disaster. Around their legs children clung and stumbled, their faces smudged with bruises, red with tears, cuts below their eyes.

Some one pushed Steve roughly from behind.

‘Fuck you doing here?’

It was Dave and wee Alex, with a trolley full of cans of lager. Dave gave the boy an even more meaningful punch.

‘Asked you a question, wanker!’

‘Shopping,’ Steve said.

Dave pawed through the contents of his basket.