The Tryst

told me.’

Aileen held the wild eyes with her own, trying to decode this jumble of words.

‘Mr Matthews told you this man would leave you alone as long as you were in hospital?’

The boy nodded. Aileen tried to hide her satisfaction as the last piece of the puzzle dropped into place.

‘Now listen, Steven, there’s something else which you must know. When the crime was discovered, the police tried to trace Mr Matthews’s relatives. It turned out that he hadn’t got any, but in the process they found out quite a lot about him. When he was young, a long long time ago, Ernest Matthews was a soldier. There was a big war and lots of people were killed. Mr Matthews was badly wounded. It wasn’t his body that was hurt but his mind. He was suffering from what’s called battle fatigue. Shell-shock, they used to call it. You see, when things get too bad, too horrible and frightening, then after a while human beings break down and get ill. One of the things that happens is that they imagine that people are threatening them, trying to kill them. They go on thinking that even after the danger is over, when they’re perfectly safe and surrounded by people who care for them. That’s what happened to Ernest Matthews. He must have been very ill indeed, because he was sent to a special hospital and stayed there for almost twenty years.’

‘But I seen him!’ the boy cried. ‘I told you what he looked like, didn’t I? And I told him too, and he said that was him, the man that was after him!’

‘But we can’t believe everything Mr Matthews told you, Steven. You didn’t know that at the time, of course. He was older than you, so you naturally believed what he said. Perhaps he even believed it himself. Perhaps he really did still think that someone was threatening his life. Or perhaps that was just a story that was no longer real to him, which he told you so that you would keep on going to visit him. Perhaps he was afraid that you might get bored going to see an ordinary old man, so he tried to make himself more interesting. We’ll never know the answer to that. What we do know is that what happened had nothing whatever to do with any story he may have told you. Mr Matthews was killed by a violent and unpredictable youth called Dave who had already murdered his friend Jimmy and had nothing to lose by killing again, particularly since he thought that the old man had a lot of money hidden in the house which he could use to get away. That’s who killed Mr Matthews, Steven, not some character from a story. I think you know that. It’s difficult for you to admit it, even to yourself. But one day, perhaps quite soon, you’ll realize that there is no reason for you to feel guilty. Because that’s the problem, isn’t it? You feel guilty. If it hadn’t been for you, Dave and Alex would never have heard about Mr Matthews and so he would still be alive. That’s what you think, isn’t it? It’s almost as though you killed the old man yourself.’

This, she thought, is to proper psychiatric practice what an amputation with a handsaw and a tot of rum is to modern surgery. But there was no time, no money, and a queue of mutilated psyches bleeding to death at the hospital gate.

‘But of course that’s all nonsense! You never harmed the old man. On the contrary, you were his friend, you helped him. Even if you did tell the others where he lived, you couldn’t possibly have known what they were going to do, could you? It had nothing whatever to do with you.’

The boy had resumed his unnatural stillness, locking himself away somewhere deep inside where he thought he could never be traced. Aileen shifted her grip on his arm, patting his wrist lightly.

‘Let me tell you a little story, Steven. One day I was driving home from work when a cat suddenly ran out across the road in front of me. I tried to avoid it, but there was a car coming the other way. I heard a noise under the car and felt a bump. When I stopped and got out, the cat was dead.’

She moved a little closer to the boy, secure in her control of the situation, her mastery of the requisite skills.

‘I felt awful, just terrible! I’ve always loved cats more than any other animal and yet I’d just killed one. It was such a horrible shock that it took me ages to realize that it wasn’t my fault. There was absolutely nothing I could have done to prevent it. It took a long, long time to accept that, but in the end I managed to come to terms with it and stopped blaming myself uselessly.’

She tugged at the inert body beside her, trying without success to draw his eyes back to her.

‘Now, of course, the shock you suffered was very much worse than mine, but one day the same thing will happen to you, too. It may take a long time, but one day you’ll realize that it’s all over. The past is dead, Steven. It’s over and done with, finished. We can’t reach it and it can’t reach us. All we can do is to try and forget and think about today and tomorrow instead. Now I know that being here has helped you, and that’s why I’ve arranged for you to go on coming every day, even though you’ll be leaving this afternoon to go to a new home which Mrs Haynes has — ’

‘You’re putting me out?’

The boy’s face had gone to pieces again, all his composure fled at the notion of being expelled from his hard-won sanctuary.

‘No, not at all,’ Aileen speciously assured him. ‘You’ll be brought back here every morning and you’ll spend the whole day doing all the things you’ve been doing up to now. The only thing that’s going to change is that you won’t actually sleep here any more.’

Steven stared at her bleakly. ‘I can’t stay?’

‘No, Steven. You can’t stay.’

It was better that he should be quite clear about that, she thought. It would only make matters worse if he were allowed to harbour false hopes.

‘And you mustn’t think of pretending to set fire to your new home, either,’ she added, ‘or they’ll just hand you over to the police.’

After a long pause, a small bent smile appeared on the boy’s lips, the first that Aileen had ever seen there. It startled her, because it was the absolute image of the way Raymond used to smile when he was about to say or do something mischievous.

‘I’ll have to be brave little Stevie, then,’ he remarked. Encouraged and relieved at this response, Aileen smiled too.

‘That’s right,’ she said warmly. ‘Try to be brave. I know how it’s hard, but — ’

‘Do you think I’ll get in the papers?’

‘The papers?’

She was lost.

‘For being brave. They often used to have brave kids, the papers did. Brave means they’re going to die. Like when they get the wrong disease or something, and there’s no room at the hospital.’

Aileen gripped the boy’s arm tightly.

‘Steven, you must stop dramatizing like this! It’s absurb to compare yourself with someone suffering from a fatal illness. You are not going to die, I promise you that. Certainly you’re to be pitied, certainly you need care and attention. But no one wants to harm you, no one wishes you anything but good.’

The professional in Aileen recognized that the moment had come to terminate the interview. There was nothing more she could achieve for the moment. It was time for Steven to start the long hard work of facing the facts. Recovery from a serious delusion state is a rather like coming off heavy drink or drugs. Deprived of the flash romance and sinister glitter of your fantasies, life looks pretty dull and drab at first. It’s terrible to believe that everyone is out to get you, but that way at least you’re the centre of attention. It can be almost more terrible to have to accept that most people simply don’t give a damn one way or the other. Meanwhile she had her own life to get on with. Friday afternoons were always particularly fraught: not only was it the moment when the things she had been putting off all week finally caught up with her, but there was also a large helping of bureaucratic roughage in the form of interdepartmental seminars, meetings of consultative review bodies and the like, which tested her boredom threshold to the limit. Nevertheless, regarded as occupational therapy the afternoon was a complete success, for Aileen thought no more about Steven Bradley until she was back in her office preparing to go home, and then it was only to congratulate herself on a job well done. Only that morning she had felt reality slipping away from her like the sand sucked out from under your feet by the waves on a beach. ‘Here I go,’ she’d thought. It had seemed so easy and restful to give in and stop trying to make sense of things. But she hadn’t. That was a victory to celebrate, a success to reinforce. Perhaps she should treat herself to a concert or an evening at the theatre. When she got home, she’d check the paper and see what was on.

She was half-way out of the door when Mrs Haynes phoned.

‘You haven’t seen Steven, have you?’

The social worker sounded breathless.