Enchantment (8 page)

‘I'm glad. Bit lonely here, is it?'

Tim shook his head dumbly.

‘Bit hard to make ends meet?' Brian held up a hand. ‘Don't worry about the rent. We trust you. Sit down.' He patted the bed. Panic rose. ‘You're a good boy, Tim, a really nice boy, and I want you to know that if you ever need a friend – well, you've got your new friend and that's fine – but if you ever need someone handy –'

Tim had not sat down. A sledgehammer could not have made him. So Brian put both hands on his knees and stood up.

‘Well, on my way.' He laid a shaggy woollen arm round Tim's shoulders and gave him a one-armed sideways hug.

Stiff as an iron bar, Tim stood still while Brian let himself out and ran down the steps, whistling. Tim remained rigid, his hands at his sides, staring at nothing. Help! he thought. I'd better borrow for the rent till I get my pay cheque. My
God
, he thought. I never knew.

So if Brian … Then was that why he and Jack … But Jack had that woman Janet Fox at work, who … Was he both? Were they both both? ‘Good boy, Tim.' Did he really think that
Harold …?
And so he thought that Tim … But what about the girl friend with the yellow hair? Total confusion.

When he could move again, Tim tiptoed to the door and fastened the chain across.

Better get myself a girl friend. Out of the confusion, that thought
emerged. Well, and why not? Having a car would make it easier. ‘Your car can be transport, music centre, picnic venue, speed, excitement, privacy, bedroom. Get a car – get a girl!'

Frog-princess Lilian was married to a toad, but Gail was unattached, and had been reasonably friendly to Tim of late. They shared a few familiar jokes about Mr D. and Fred and the worst of the customers. That would be something to talk about, for a start.

Tim picked his time. Gail was quite passable, really, if you liked pointed noses with short upper lips pulled up towards them. She smelled clean too, and had a nice little way with customers, jollying the wobblies along towards the decision she had already made for them.

She had high pointed bosoms, like her nose. One day, she came to work in the same sort of pink jumper that Helen Brown had worn at the theatre, but it looked quite different.

‘I was wondering.'

Tim took a deep breath and said it when they came out of Mr D.'s office together, after morning clothes brushing and collar straightening and Orders of the Day: ‘Linens are going to be big this summer. When customers come in looking for cotton prints and nylon dress fabric, it's worth calling their attention to the pastel linens. Demonstrate the crush-proof qualities.' Mr D. made a crumpling movement with his hand, then fixed them with a no-nonsense eye. ‘But be sure it's non-crush before you do that.'

‘I was wondering, Gail – er, Gail.'

‘Use her name often,'
Pocket Pickups
advised, ‘as if you like the sound of it.'

‘You were wondering, Tim – er, Tim?'

‘Yes. I've got a car now, well, it's my sister's, really, but I've got it for six months.'

‘That's nice,' Gail said brightly.

‘Yes. And I was wondering if you – I mean, if you'd like to …'

She did not help him. She stood there outside Mr D.'s office with her head on one side and a slight smile hiding whatever she was thinking.

‘I mean – I know you go out and I'm sure you've got loads of men, but perhaps you'd come – perhaps you'd have the time –'

‘Ten past nine.' She looked through the glass door of the office at the clock on the wall, then back at Tim, with a grin.

‘Don't, Gail. I'm saying, would you like to come for a drive sometime?'

She looked him quickly up and down. She was taller than Tim, and she made it clear that there wasn't far to look.

‘Sorry,' she said shortly.

‘Why not?' Don't blush, don't blush.

‘You must be joking.'

He saw now that it was inevitable she should say that. It was one of those retorts available on a plate for a girl like Gail who could not even find an original remark to hurt you with.

Take off her head at the Tower, Harold. Tim pushed past Gail and walked ahead of her to an early customer at the rack of glazed chintz curtains with triple pleated headings.

‘Can I help you, madam?'

So it would have to be Helen Brown. He had known that all along, and he had nothing against her, except that Val would take all the credit if he asked her out.

He did not know where Helen lived. He only knew that she worked at the Hall School. Something to do with the kitchen. He would go down there and look for her. What time would she come out? He could just see himself hanging about outside the chainlink fence and getting arrested as a child pornographer.

He thought about Helen, imagining her as better than she really was. He had to pretend that she was better than Gail. When he had worked her up into something quite passable, he took courage and asked Valerie where he could find her.

‘I promised I'd lend your friend Helen Brown a book,' he said, when he went round to Val and Colin's place for a Sunday morning coffee. If you telephoned Val, she was always rushing off some
where, or putting a meal on the table, and ringing off before you had said what you wanted.

‘A book?' Her vampire's top teeth had been filed down and pulled back years ago, but she could still make them stick out over her chin when she wanted. ‘You and she talked about books?' Val read books, you see, Val and Colin did. No one read books but them.

‘She was interested in this particular book.'

‘What book is that?'

‘It's – well, it's about poetry.'

‘
Poetry?
Helen Brown? She must have been putting you on. What else did she talk about? Did she talk about her son?'

‘No. Should she have?'

‘Oh no. No,' Val said airily.

In the end, Val gave Helen's address to Tim. She had no phone, but a neighbour took messages. Tim took the neighbour's number, but he could not manage this job as a third-party message.

One evening, he got into his car (it was not ‘Zara's car' any more) and drove across the river to the tall, converted Victorian house where Helen lived in the top flat.

‘It used to be the servants' rooms,' she told Tim, after she had come downstairs to let him in, and he had climbed the four flights behind her, trying not to notice that her thick calves ran down into her feet.

Helen had two bedrooms and a small living-room with shabby furniture and a big laundry basket of toys in the corner. The boy was away at school. The living-room had been painted by Val and Colin with three blue walls and one white one, which they had said was smart, and Helen agreed. The white wall was marked and smudged. It must be quite a small boy. How could he be at boarding school? Helen and Tim actually got themselves sitting down and talking a bit, but he could see that she was fussed about whether she ought to make tea. Her eyebrows were down. Two parallel vertical lines appeared over her nose and stayed there. Her pale lips were set.

‘This is only a flying visit.' Tim stood up. ‘I just wanted to know
– I've got a car now, you see, and I thought it would, I was wondering if you – I thought you might like to come for a drive out to the country at the weekend.'

‘Oh, I would like to.' When she smiled, her eyebrows went back into place and the frown lines smoothed out. ‘It's very nice of you, but I'm afraid I can't, really, because Julian is here at weekends.'

‘Would he like to come too?' They could drive to Hamilton Park, walk around and look at the ducks and swans while the little chap was in the adventure playground.

‘Well, no,' Helen said, ‘not really.'

Amazing! She wants to be with me alone.

‘Some evening, then? Why not tomorrow? It's light till seven.'

‘All right.'

Helen came all the way downstairs to let him out, because the other tenants said that visitors could not be trusted to shut the front door securely.

‘See you tomorrow, then.'

She did not smile. She just stood in the doorway with her legs slightly apart and her feet turned in, and looked at him seriously. While he went down the three cracked marble steps and along the path to the gate, she stayed in the doorway. He did not look back to see this, but he did not hear the heavy panelled door shut.

Pity his car was down the road. She would not see him swing into it. No, not a pity. For another twenty-four hours, she could imagine it as being something grander.

No offence, Buttercup.

The radio had long gone, leaving a rectangular hole down which Zara had stuffed her chocolate wrappings. Tim sang on the way home. As he turned in at the gateway, he remembered why it was so necessary to go out with Helen and for her to come to his flat, if she would. He had temporarily forgotten about Brian. The idea of the outing was important for itself.

He switched off the engine as soon as he felt the little bump of the front tyre that told him it had reached the concrete base of the
stairs. Over the gear lever into the other seat and stealthily out of the passenger door, only half open so it would not scrape the house, and shut it silently. It hadn't locked since Zara had shut her keys inside and one of her friends had jimmied the door with a credit card. Slide under the stairs, leg round the end, and nimbly up to the top. Key in the lock quietly, ease door open.

Hallo there, Tim good boy. Wuff wuff. Where have you been?

Out to see my girl friend, so yah boo.

On the mat was a square envelope from C.P. Games. Tim bowed to it. He went in, shut the door gently, turned on the lights, took off his jacket and pulled the blinds, then went back to pick up the envelope and take out the papers for his next move in
Domain of the Undead
.

While he ate cold baked beans out of the tin, he checked his position and saw that Black Monk was up to no good at all, sublimating his urges like mad by poisoning Grue and slaughtering a harmless band of minor priests invented by a player called Cardinal Carcase.

‘Using the basic codes,' the Games Master had written, ‘show how Blch's followers will react when they meet the gurus and the sightless creatures. If they bargain, what with?'

‘The weather-sayers have said,' Kev added, ‘that flood tides threaten the Drear Lowlands. Forest fires are rife at this season. The mountain passes are still held by the forces of evil. Your next three strategies are crucial.'

Tim's head began to be full of ideas, but he did not start to fill out the forms right away, as he usually did, because he would not be able to work on them tomorrow evening. They would have to wait.

The whole thing was a total disaster. It was raining, for one thing, and another was that when Helen came downstairs to open the door, after taking her time, she looked like herself, instead of how Tim wanted her to look.

She wasn't even ready. ‘Come up, I won't be long,' she said, but Tim muttered, ‘I'll wait outside,' and sat in the car with his lip stuck out.

Helen came out under an umbrella. What had she been doing while he waited? She did not look any better. Her hair was still dry as a digestive biscuit, and she had done nothing to her face. No make-up. Tim had been brought up by Val and Zara to mistrust the naked face. She wore a dark-blue raincoat and broad stubby shoes. Tim would have stayed in the car while she got in, but he had to get out and open the difficult passenger door for her.

‘“Easy does it,”' Helen said when he was back in the car beside her.

‘You what?'

‘The label.' She tapped the back of the AA sticker. ‘I didn't know you were an alcoholic.' Of course, the drunken sailor husband. She would know about that.

‘Good thing I'm not.' Tim was going to take her for a drink and a sandwich at a pub about twenty miles away that he had visited in his guise of sales rep, king of the road.

The Stag was crowded. They had to sit jammed at a corner table, with a man and a woman who belonged to a group at another table, and made a lot of noise and commotion about it. Helen did not want ham or beef, and when her cheese sandwich
came, she took the tomato out of it. Tim did not know her well enough to take it off her plate and put it in his beef sandwich, which had no tomato.

She drank a half pint of bitter so slowly that Tim had two pints, out of nervousness. They talked a bit, if only for the benefit of their noisy table mates. Helen spoke about the school kitchen, where the staff had a different job each week: chips and sausages, vegetables and fruit, pots and pans, dishwashing, serving hatch, out among the barbarities of the dining-room. After six weeks, you went back to frying chips.

Her voice was quiet. It was quite an effort to hear, but when you made the effort, you had to wonder if it was worth it. Tim told her a few things about Webster's, which she knew, because she had once worked there. Even while he was talking, trying to sound amusing, or at least interesting, Tim's mind and heart were yearning back twenty miles to his room under the roof where he would spread out his play-by-mail forms on the table and be himself, as Blch.