‘’Ere, children, help me. If you think I’m not naughty, shout out with me, all right? OH NO I’M NOT!’
‘Oh no you’re not!’ There was a faltering chorus, uncertain, slightly embarrassed.
‘Don’t listen to him!’ shrieked Mrs Punch. ‘Say, “OH YES YOU ARE!”’
She stared at Nicky, sitting there, rapt. He was a nice chap, she thought; he cared, even now; he’d grow up to be a caring person.
‘OH YES YOU ARE!’
She was vaguely conscious of the door opening at the far end of the room.
‘That wasn’t very loud!’
‘OH YES YOU ARE!’
Something wasn’t right.
Something was making her feel very frightened.
‘Come on, louder!’
‘OH YES YOU ARE!’
She saw the smile on his face first, forty feet across the room, the smile of a demon, not a small child. In an instant it was gone, and instead there was a laughing boy, a greedy little boy who has got his way and is happy, for a fleeting moment, until he becomes bored again. He was laughing, laughing to himself, laughing while the blood stopped flowing inside her and was turning to ice.
‘Edgar,’ she said, mouthing the word. ‘Edgar!’ she shouted against the sea of voices that were rooting for Mrs Punch.
‘Edgar!’ she shouted again, against the sea of voices that were now rooting for Mr Punch. ‘Put it down! For God’s sake put it down!’
It couldn’t be loaded. Impossible. Richard was careful. He couldn’t be that foolish.
‘Edgar!’
He stood by the door, staggering under the weight of the shotgun like a drunken miniature gunfighter.
The finger.
Curling in the night.
4.15.
The clock. In the bedroom. When she had woken up.
4.15.
The clock on the mantelpiece.
4.15.
The finger on the trigger.
Oobie, joobie, joobie.
‘
Edgar!
’ She took a step forward.
The gun swept wildly across the backs of the children, up at her, up at the ceiling, then down at the children again.
‘I’m going to shoot pigeons now.’ She heard the words clearly, across the room, through all the noise, as clearly as if he was standing next to her.
The barrel was swinging up towards her.
‘
Edgar, be careful! Put it down!
’
Pointing straight at her.
‘OH NO I’M NOT!’
‘OH YES YOU ARE!’
‘EDGAR PUT IT DOWN.’
She could see straight into them, straight down both barrels, even from here.
‘OH NO I’M NOT!’
Shut up. For God’s sake shut up, you fool. Can’t you see? Haven’t you got peep holes in your damned box?
‘Whack whack, ouch!’
‘You hit me and I’ll hit you.’
‘DOWN, EDGAR, DOWN, PUT IT DOWN.’
‘Oh no you won’t.’
‘Oh yes I will!’
She heard a solitary giggle.
His finger closed around the trigger.
‘EDGAR!’
She stared down desperately at Nicky, tried to walk towards him, to get Nicky out of the way, to stop Edgar.
Whack.
‘Ouch.’
‘Where’s he gone? Where’s he gone?’
‘HE’S BEHIND YOU!’
Mrs Punch spun round. ‘Oh no he isn’t!’
‘OH YES HE IS!’
She spun round again. ‘Oh no he isn’t!’
‘OH YES HE IS!’
Sam saw the spurt of flame from the barrel, and dived for the floor. Saw Edgar catapult backwards; the puzzled look on his face. Saw the gun in slow motion float upwards then drop silently to the ground, slowly, fluttering like a huge feather.
She spun around and saw what looked like snow suspended in the air all around the striped stand. Something hurtled along the floor, rattling loudly, bounced off the skirting board and stopped by her feet. Punch’s head. It lay, grinning at her imbecilically, with one eye and part of its cheek missing.
Then the bang reached her, rippled through her like a shock wave, throwing her sideways, deafening her, like hands clapped over her ears so all she could hear was a faint ringing.
She saw the laughter fall from the faces, like masks that had dropped off. She scanned the room frantically. Nicky sat with his mouth open, holding his lollipop in his hand. She scrambled to her feet and stepped through the motionless children that were frozen like ornaments, and knelt down, flinging her arms around Nicky, hugging him. ‘OK, Tiger! You OK?’
She looked around wildly as he nodded. ‘Richard,’ she said. ‘Richard!’ Conscious of saying the word, but unable to hear it. But he was already there, wading across the room as if someone had pushed the slow button on a video.
She could smell the acrid cordite now. Her ears cleared, and she heard a child sobbing. Nicky was still staring up at the stage, with its ripped-open canopy and the shreds of cloth that were floating down from it, as if he was waiting for Punch to pop back up and grin.
The candy-striped box shook once, then again, then moved several inches to the left. Then it moved again, drunkenly.
Oh God no, she thought.
Then it stopped moving and the Punch and Judy man came out, bewildered, his face sheet white, and staggered around the room with his arms outstretched in front of him. ‘Police,’ he said. ‘Please fetch the police.’ Then he staggered out into the hall.
Richard marched grimly across the room, holding his shotgun in his hand. Another child began to cry, then another.
Sam stood up and rushed out after the Punch and Judy man. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘Police,’ he said. ‘Police! Fetch the police! The police!’ He windmilled his arms.
‘Are you all right?’
He stamped his foot like a child. ‘I want the police!’
‘I’ll – I’ll call them,’ Sam said, backing away slowly. She felt Richard’s cautioning hand on her arm, and he nodded for her to go back into the room.
‘Shall we – play a game – everyone?’ she heard Helen say, as she walked into the sea of shocked faces and the babble of tears, and through to the rear of the room. Edgar was sitting on the floor in the doorway, screaming, and she knelt down.
‘Are you all right?’ she said.
He carried on screaming.
She waited until he subsided. ‘Are you all right?’
‘My arm hurts.’ Then he screamed again. ‘It hurts!’
‘Let me have a look at it.’
He shook his head and she grabbed his arm, furious. ‘Let me see it.’
He looked up at her startled, and stopped screaming.
Sullenly he held it out. She tested it carefully. ‘It’s fine. You’ve just bashed it, that’s all. Maybe that’ll teach you not to play with guns.’
He stayed on the floor and glowered at her, as she walked back into the drawing room, looking down at the children, then again at the ripped canopy. There was a nasty peppered area on the new wallpaper, and she saw the edge of one curtain had also been damaged. She gazed around the rest of the room, at the clock on the mantelpiece. Twenty past four.
Oobie, joobie, joobie.
The pink curling finger.
She closed her eyes for a moment, hoping this too was a dream and that she could wake up and nothing had happened.
‘Musical bumps!’ said Helen. ‘We’ll play musical bumps!’
She opened her eyes. Helen was trying, trying so hard. ‘Musical bumps,’ Sam echoed. ‘Good idea!’ Trying to smile, trying to beam and look cheerful, staring down into the blank numbness and suspicion and fear, and she knew even without the cold silence that greeted her that you couldn’t fool children with a cheery smile. Dragons did not die and people did not live happily ever after. But you had to try, because perhaps, sometimes, life was about trying.
Good idea!’ she repeated. ‘We’ll play musical bumps!’
‘Hi – Vivien, isn’t it? Sorry, Virginia – of course! Look, I’m terribly sorry – Simon’s a bit upset. We’ve had a bit of an . . . nobody’s hurt, it’s all right . . . accident with a – one of the children got hold of my husband’s – but
it’s fine. Really—’ Simon’s mother’s face had gone seasick white. ‘Fine, really. He’s OK – fine—’
Simon shuffled out of the house, his hair limp like his face, holding a silver foil balloon with the words ‘THANKS FOR COMING TO NICKY’S PARTY!’ printed on it in mauve letters, which bobbed above his head as he walked.
I had a dream about it, you know; yes! This is the second time actually. Last time was a little worse – 163 people snuffed it.
Stop looking like that, you snotty cow. I’m not loopy.
I’m not a crank.
So I dreamed it? What did you want me to do? Cancel the party? Sorry Tiger, no more parties. Mummy has nasty dreams?
Anyhow, I didn’t think it was a premonition – precognition – what d’you call it? Seeing-the-future dream because a chunk of plaster came down and hit me on the face. So that’s what I thought had caused the dream. I thought that after the aircraft dream, then Slider in the taxi, I was all spooked up. I just thought – hell – that was a weird dream. The dream book tells you that guns are phalluses – yup, schlonkers, and shooting is sexual aggression.
So I worked it all out . . . you see Richard and I aren’t exactly what you’d call—
Thoughts shovelled through her mind as she walked across Covent Garden. It was a fine, sharp, cold Monday morning, and the fresh air was waking her up. She’d felt too tired to go for her early swim and was regretting it now. Her head was muzzy, sore with tossing in bed through the night watching an endless movie of threatening images: of Punch and guns and Slider grinning and people coming out of doorways and popping out of lift hatches, all wearing black hoods, and
eggshell cracks rippling across ceilings, and roofs coming down, smothering her, burying her in a dark void, burying her and Slider together, him on top of her, with the eyeless socket staring at her, laughing at her.
She pushed open the Art Deco door and went into the office. She felt disoriented. There were girls all around, on the sofas, on the chairs, and others standing. They had shoulder bags and clutch bags and big leatherette portfolios, and were dressed in battered macs or flak jackets or great puffy coats like eiderdowns wrapped around them over the tops of their jeans and boots; smoking, chewing, hair-tossing girls who looked hopefully at her as if she was a magician that had come to free them from the wicked witch.
Shit. Casting session.
Need that this morning like a hole in the head.
Midnight Sun
.
Kapow!
For-hair-that-comes-alive-after-dark
.
Boom!
Midnight Sun
.
For-people-who-come-alive-after-dark
.
Zap! Biff! Klap-klap-klap!
Midnight Sun
.
Very-special-shampoo-for-very-special-hair
.
Midnight Sun
.
Very special shampoo
.
For very special people
.
‘Morning Lucy. Ken in?’
‘Gosh – ah – yah.’
‘Anyone from the agency here yet?’
‘Gosh – ah – no.’
Lucy looked as though she had been to a children’s tea party, too, and had got ketchup and relish over her face
and in her hair, except it was dye in her hair and make-up on her face, blodged, smudged and much too much.
‘Good weekend?’
Lucy yawned. ‘Yah, Bit heavy.’
Sam glanced around at some of the girls, walked past Ken’s waxwork with its fresh
Daily Mail
and went up the three flights of stairs to his office. She rapped on the door and went in.
It was more like a lair than an office. Clients did not come up here; they were seen down in the basement with the snooker table and screening theatre and the full up-front image. The office under the steeply sloping caves was plain, simple. A comfortable sofa, two easy chairs, the walls covered in framed photographs of awards, of location shots: Ken in action, waving his arms, stabbing a finger, sitting in a chair, reflecting in the shadow of a crane dolly, Ken shaking hands with or issuing orders to a plethora of personalities, mostly minor familiar faces from the commercials on the box, and a few more famous ones, like Orson Welles, Robert Morley, Frank Bruno, John Cleese. The right-hand wall was dominated by a movie poster, a gaudy yellow and green high-tech mish-mash.
‘ADLANTIS! THE LOST WORLD OF THE 20TH CENTURY!’ proclaimed the title.
Ken had nearly lost his house because of that movie. Three years ago, when she’d first joined him, it had been touch and go. Cash flows, projections, interminable meetings with his bank manager that he reported to her, quite openly, afterwards. He’d been bust. Seriously bust. Over two million in the hole. He’d spent it on his dream, on his burning ambition, on his big break into the movie business. He’d put all the money he had and all the money he could borrow, hocked everything, the house and all, for his big break.
Five thousand years after civilisation is wiped off the face of the earth by thermo-nuclear war, primitive life starts up again on the planet earth . . . Centuries later, Ignav Flotum IIIrd, a Borodovian monk on an archaeological dig, discovers an old tin can . . . Convinced this is a time capsule deliberately left behind by another age it is opened in grand ceremony . . . to reveal . . . a television commercial director’s showreel. From this reel a picture of late twentieth-century society is gradually pieced together. They conclude that since most of the movies only run for thirty seconds and the longest for only one minute, the concentration span of twentieth-century man must have been extremely low, thus contributing to his downfall, in spite of the clear socio-economic messages portrayed by these movies.
The movie had never been completed, and Ken had always been slightly evasive about the reasons. Sometimes it was because the leading actor had been a raving egomaniac. Sometimes the weather had been to blame. Sometimes the pressure of the executives from the studio that had partnered him but had never come up with all the dough they had promised. But mostly, she felt, it had never been finished because he had lost heart in it long before the money had ever run out. He promised to show her what there was of it, one day, but she wondered if he ever really would.
At least his house had been saved, his huge Victorian house on the edge of Clapham Common filled with weird objects, things he had collected, suits of armour,
bizarre pictures, a tumbledown miniature Roman temple folly in the garden. He loved the house, had put years of thought and effort into making it something stunning, wild, with a Byzantine bathroom and medieval dining room and Baroque drawing room with a minstrel’s gallery. Crazy, nuts – but stunning. The house had the space to take it without the styles clashing. The furniture was beautiful. It was a fun place. He lived in it on his own, from choice. His divorce had been a long time ago and the wounds had been deep. There were girls around, sure, always someone in tow, some bright young hopeful, more intelligent than the average but kept at a distance, kept at bay, kept out of his heart which was a strictly private place.