Authors: Ramsey Campbell
"At least that, thanks."
Roger swung his half-closed hands toward him. "You sound like there's more."
"It's my workroom also. I'm hoping to start my new book soon in it."
"You're for using a place for all it's worth, are you?"
"That's about the size of it, sure."
"Are you two going to sit down?" Leslie said, and watched the men lounge against opposite arms of the sofa, planting a block of silence between themselves. She was searching for some not too obviously neutral remark to make when her mother picked up the paper. "May I ask what you make of this, Roger? Don't be shy of stating your opinion."
He spent less time on the text than on the photograph. "Good publicity for you, is it, Mr.—you said your name was Lamb?"
"I don't need it right now, and more to the point, Leslie and your son don't need that kind."
"What kind are you saying it is?" Leslie's mother enquired.
"Gee, I may dig myself deeper into an argument here, but from what I saw of the lady who wrote that and likely picked the photograph, she trades on her condition just like Ian said."
"Well, Ian," Leslie's mother said as his footsteps heavier with luggage reached the hall, "you must be pleased, having a grownup to encourage you."
"I'm glad he knows how that feels," Leslie said.
Roger strewed the newspaper in the no man's land on the sofa and slapped his thighs with some force to stand himself up. "Time for the men to be moving, those of us who've got somewhere else to go."
One of the first doubts she'd had about him concerned how fast he absented himself whenever she and her mother seemed likely to argue. She watched him stretch an arm around Ian's shoulders to steer him out of the room. "Have a good time, Ian," she called along the path, "we'll see you back here for dinner tomorrow," and returned to the front room, where Jack was tidying the newspaper while her mother gazed at the air above him. "I expect you'll want me out of the way too," her mother immediately said.
"Why should you expect that?"
The gaze found Leslie, but seemed unhappy that it had. "I should like us to talk in the very near future."
"What's wrong with now?"
When her mother swung her face toward Jack while holding Leslie with her gaze, he said "If I'm the problem..."
"I don't think you're one at all, Jack."
Her mother's gaze acknowledged him at last. "How would you say Ian and his father were getting on, Mr. Lamb?"
"Pretty well, I'd say. I'd hope."
"I'm glad we have that in common. A child ought to be shaped by both its parents, would you agree?"
"Sounds ideal."
Leslie was reflecting that her father hadn't been allowed much influence, but said "Are you driving at anything, mother?"
"Since you press me, just that it's a pity you didn't feel able to continue living with Ian's father."
"I should have rolled over with my legs in the air when I found out about Hilene, you mean."
"I shouldn't be surprised if he had a similar impression."
She meant now and Jack. Leslie might have laughed if she hadn't been furious. "You make me wonder sometimes if there's anything you wouldn't say to put me down."
"I think that's most unfair, and may I remind you we have an audience."
"All right then, I wonder if you remember half of what you say. You gave me a lecture about everything you thought was wrong with Roger when you met him, and you liked him even less once you found out Ian was on the way when we got married, and when you heard about Hilene you said I should have known, but now suddenly he's the prize I ought to have hung onto."
"I won't utter another word, since everything I say is mistaken." Leslie's mother remained seated, however, until it became evident that she wasn't going to be contradicted, at which point she dug her nails into the arms of the chair to raise herself with such an apparent effort that Jack sprang up and supported her by an elbow. "Thank you," she said so crisply that the words were barely distinguishable as separate, and no more as Leslie saw her to her car, even when Leslie offered "Give my best to dad and look after each other." She doled Leslie a dry pursed wrinkled kiss and readied herself to drive, then she slitted her window. "If I'm permitted to say this," she said, "take care. I don't want you to feel betrayed again."
"Mother..." Leslie wasn't sure what to add to that, and so she only watched the Jaguar purr out of Jericho Close. Her thoughts slowed her down as she returned to the house, and Jack came to find her. "Hey, I'm sorry," he said.
"For what, Jack?"
"For getting you accused of all that stuff."
"What are you assuming isn't true?"
"Well, gee, I—all of it, I should think. Aren't I right?"
"Do you want to be?"
"Not necessarily," he said, matching her look.
Too much might be happening too fast. "I'd better see to dinner," Leslie said.
He gave her more than enough room to pass, then seemed uncertain where to go. "Need help?"
"Thanks, but let me display my talents."
"Just a fraction of them, you mean."
"Better wait until you've tasted what I'm offering."
"Glad to," he said, and with a swiftness that suggested he found the conversation as perilous as she did, "I'll be upstairs working."
"Bring your work down here if you need more space."
"What you gave me is fine."
Maybe he preferred not to be too close to her just now, she thought as she sprinkled coriander on the ceviche, her best Mexican dish. She'd intended a Mexican dinner to help him feel at home, but now she wondered if her version might have the opposite effect. She put a compact disc of Purcell songs on the player in the dining room, then switched it off before the countertenor's pure sexless voice had sung a second bar, in case the noise interfered with Jack's work. Now and then she heard him pacing as if he were enacting her nervousness, and each bout of pacing ended with a creak of his bed. She set the dining table and thought of lighting a candle, but it wasn't even dusk yet. When the spicy odour of burritos reached her from the kitchen, she went to the foot of the stairs. "It's ready, Jack."
"Then I am," he responded, and ran down eagerly as a boy years younger than Ian. He sat opposite her as she pulled the cork out of a perspiring bottle of Californian Chardonnay and poured him nearly a glassful. She watched while he took a sip and then a forkful of her marinated raw fish. "Any good?" she asked.
"A whole lot better than that, and the wine too. I've never had it before."
"I hear they keep the best for export."
"Not including me," he said, and looked abashed for having invited a compliment until she gave him a frown of amused reproof.
He insisted on clearing away the plates from the first course and carrying the baking dish full of burritos from the oven to the table, not allowing his face to show any pain even when he'd set the dish on the protective mat and snatched off her old worn two-handed oven glove. Once he'd enthused about the main course he set about recounting weekends he'd spent in Ensenada: the pelicans that swooped through the fish market, the hawkers who sold plaster figures of Christ and Elvis at the border, the children crowding around tourists to sell single sticks of chewing gum for pesos and begging for food if you ate at a sidewalk café... She could tell how much their plight affected him, and she felt instantly closer to him, so that she reached for his hand. The last thing she would have wanted to happen then was that the phone should ring.
"Damn." She'd caught Jack's glass with her knuckles and spilled a half inch. "I'll mop up if you'll answer that," she said.
As she returned with a handful of paper towels from the roller above the sink, he was saying "Hello? Someone there?"
She slipped the fat paper under the wet tablecloth. "What are you hearing?"
"Not sure," Jack said, having covered the mouthpiece.
"Is he singing?"
"Is—" Jack began, then addressed the receiver. "Say what? I don't think you want me, you want—Hey, same to you, friend, and good—" With a look that suggested he didn't expect such language from an English phone, he hung up. "He went," he said.
"Any message?"
"He wished me on my way in not so many words. He was just a kid."
"Could it have been a wrong number?"
"I'd say not," Jack said, and took a step toward her. "What did you ask me about singing?"
"It was a call I had before I advertised your room. Whoever it was didn't speak, they just sang. It sounded like a lullaby to me. I suppose it was meant to remind me of the little girl who was murdered, you know, her going to sleep for ever."
"Jesus."
"I didn't get much sleep myself that night, I'll admit."
"Christ. How could... My God."
"It's a good job you didn't take that call if even hearing about it makes you inarticulate for once. Don't let it bother you too much, all right? I've survived."
"Okay. Okay, I will too," he said, and closed both hands around the one she'd extended toward him.
They stood there, she in the doorway and Jack in the hall, for longer than she would normally have held a breath. She didn't want to make a mistake—wanted to be certain whether he was holding onto her for companionship or a need for reassurance or more than either. All the same, she couldn't help being disappointed when he glanced past her at the dining table, until he said "Are we finished there?"
"Would you like dessert?"
"You bet," he said, not by any means slackening his warm firm grasp.
"Are we talking about the same thing?"
"I believe so," he said, and leaned forward.
Their mouths met and simultaneously opened. Their tongues found each other. She disengaged her hand and gripped his shoulders and pressed herself against him, feeling him swell. When after some time she opened her eyes, she saw a bedroom light up beyond the back fence, presumably signalling that someone was about to appear. "I think we'd better continue elsewhere," she murmured.
"Sure enough," he said, but didn't presume to admit knowing what she meant until she led him upstairs.
The doors were pale where the graffiti had been scrubbed off, but the irregular patches and what they meant had lost their power to anger her. She patted Jack's chest to stay him on the landing while she drew her bedroom curtains, then felt ashamed of having been secretive about him. She atoned for it by pulling him into the room and undressing him almost as swiftly as he undressed her. He was impressively ready for her, and her body let her know how delighted it was, so that she had to restrain herself in order to take from the back of the drawer of the table that had accompanied the bed from her previous house the half-empty pocket of Roger's condoms she'd kept meaning for months to throw out. "Marital leftovers," she explained.
Perhaps Jack thought that might include some disparaging reference to herself, because he held her gaze with his and stroked her face. She pushed him gently back and sheathed him, then straddled him and lowered herself onto him. The sensation of being entered streamed up her arched spine and out of her uptilted face in a long soft gasp. She felt as if the whole of her was being renewed, forgotten aspects of herself revived. She moved slowly and luxuriously around him until he drew her to him and rolled her over in his embrace. Then they were panting in the rhythm they'd discovered they shared, and when it reached its peak the explosion of pleasure spread to the roots of the nails she was trying not to dig too hard into his shoulders. "Well, gee," he said when he'd regained his breath, and settled his mouth over hers.
"Mm," said Leslie, agreeing with and appreciating him. In time they would have to return to the larger world, but she was in no hurry to leave the drowsy contentment of their embrace. She felt grateful to Melinda for having had the notice in their window, to Ian for leaving her and Jack alone, even to Roger for having taken Ian. She rested her cheek on Jack's chest and listened to the calming of his heartbeat, and enjoyed her growing sense of him. She was sure that in some way—maybe it was part of his being a writer who could no longer write what he liked—he needed caring for.
"Daddy," Jonquil sobbed, and two tears crimson with the sunset streamed out of her eyes, but he saw that she was giving him the best smile she could manage with her fangs. He tried to raise himself to her, but the heads of the nails her brother had driven through his hands felt larger than his palms. As his feet shoved helplessly at the oak table, his legs began to jerk as if he was trying to sire an invisible child in the air, a child that would be his salvation. He saw Jonquil lift the lump hammer and the sharpened
"Ian, why are you looking like that?"
"Because I'm reading. I've nearly finished."
"Mummy wants you to take me down to the river to see the boats."
"Let me finish this, then. I'm on the last page."
a child that would be his salvation. He saw Jonquil lift the lump hammer and the sharpened piece of wood. Behind her the sunset was creeping out of the cellar window, driven out by darkness. "Do it, for God's
"Is it by the man who's living in your house?"
"What? Yeah, him. Let me read the end."
"My mummy says he writes nasty books. She says—"
"Sure. Okay. Tell me when I've finished."
driven out by darkness. "Do it, for God's sake," he moaned, arching his back to offer his chest to the stake.
He felt the point dig between his ribs and break the skin. The pain was sharp and warm, as if the wound was letting the last of the sunlight into him. He saw Jonquil steadying the stake with one hand while she struggled to hoist the hammer above her head. "You can do it," he cried through his clenched fangs, and saw the last thin beam of sunlight
"My mummy says if you read nasty things you'll end up nasty too."
"She talks a lot of crap sometimes. Just shut up and let me read."
"Mummy, mummy," Charlotte cried and ran into the house.
"Piss off and good riddance," Ian murmured to himself. He sat forward, having heightened the recliner a notch, away from all her things on the back lawn of the house on Richmond Hill—her swing, her climbing frame, her Wendy house, her swing-ball dangling from its pole. He'd played with her on or in them all that morning, and now he wanted to finish Jack's book.