The Count of Eleven (19 page)

As soon as he saw Jack, Alston began to laugh. He folded his arms as he walked towards him and went on laughing, a loud dry mechanical noise which sounded like a demonstration of mirth rather than the real thing. To Jack he looked like a life-size doll, the rubbery surface of its face split by a wad of grey stuffing above the mouth. The doll was growing bigger, marching closer, and he couldn’t think how to respond. He swung around to rid himself of the sight of it and the way it shrivelled his mind, and Alston jeered “That’s right, you run. Run or I’ll have the law on you.”

Jack didn’t run, but he walked fast towards the van, groping for his keys, which rattled against the cigarette lighter. “Where’s my luck gone?” he said wildly, dragging the keys out of his pocket as he stumbled alongside the van. He reached up to unlock the door, and Alston shouted “So it was your junk cluttering up my view. I’m afraid I was wrong about you. I’m afraid your daughter’s got a liar for a father, if you’ve even got a daughter.”

“No you aren’t.” The dark lump which Jack’s mind had become seemed to brighten and expand until it filled his skull. Three paces took him to the rear doors, which he unlocked with one hand while he dug in his pocket with the other. “You aren’t afraid yet, but you will be,” he murmured, climbing in. “This’ll make your eyes pop.”

The vehicle shook. Alston had thumped the side. Think I don’t know where you’re skulking? I’m taking your number and giving it to the police,” Alston bellowed, and flung the doors open wide. “What ‘

His face appeared to writhe into a grin, though perhaps that was only an effect of the dancing of the air between him and Jack. “Laugh this off if you can,” Jack said, and came roaring out of the van; or something did.

“Don’t be any longer than you can help,” Julia said, and watched Jack climb into the van. She could tell that he was trying to conceal his relief at having left the house. Perhaps being anywhere near Laura made him blame himself, in which case Julia knew precisely what he was suffering. She felt as though her mind had stopped at the moment when she’d seen Laura lying injured on the bench. As the van reached the far end of the street and turned along Victoria Road she watched as though the sight of Jack’s departure was capable of starting her mind up, but just now she felt as if nothing could.

It hadn’t been just the flickering of the computer screens at the office which had given her a headache, nor Luke Rankin’s antics, though today he had been more nervously active than ever and far less approachable, keeping himself and his computer closeted, not even letting calls from clients past his door. It had only needed Lynne to ask “Had a row with your husband?” for the truth and the tears to spill. Before long Luke had stormed out of his office, demanding “How am I supposed to work with this racket going on?” yanking at his lapels and then at his tie as though his hands were seeking someone to attack.

Lynne had rounded on him. “Mrs. Orchard’s daughter was mugged last night, and she’s still come to work.”

“God. Sorry. Take the rest of the day off with pay or however long you need to take. I can always call you if I’ve a question,” Luke had said, already retreating.

Her tears hadn’t helped; they had simply given her a headache which tasted metallic. All the way home it had grown worse. She’d crawled into bed and buried her face under the duvet, and had wakened a few minutes ago to find that the headache had faded, leaving her skull feeling empty and brittle. When she found herself staring at the trace of fumes which Jack’s van had left in the air as if the sight had something to tell her, she turned back to the house.

Laura limped into the hall to meet her and held onto an upright of the banister. “I’ll be all right, Mummy, if you want to go back to bed. If you like I’ll bring you a cup of something.”

“Don’t you dare pretend I’m the invalid round here, young lady, or I’ll But fierceness, feigned or otherwise, was no use; the spectacle of Laura being brave felt like a corkscrew in Julia’s guts.

“I’m not hurting so much now, I’m more stiff than anything. The doctor said I won’t have any scars, remember. Don’t cry, Mummy,” Laura pleaded, beginning to weep, and that was when the dam broke. They sat on the stairs and held onto each other and sobbed. It seemed to Julia that they did so for almost as long as her mind had been stopped; she couldn’t have imagined that either of them had so much water in her head. When at last their tears began to run dry she discovered that she felt somewhat better, if only for holding Laura and being held, and rather glad that Jack hadn’t been there. She and Laura competed at nose-blowing in the bathroom, Laura performing so gingerly that it brought more tears to Julia’s eyes. “We both need a drink,” Julia said to get herself moving, ‘and I should make some kind of dinner.”

“Will you talk to me?”

“When don’t I?” Julia said, helping her hobble downstairs. “Any requests?”

“Tell me a story from before I was born. Tell me about the first time Dad asked you out.”

Julia poured them both a mug of diet cola and then crouched to rummage in the freezer. If Laura wanted to hear tales she’d liked when she was little, perhaps that was her way of reassuring herself that their life together wouldn’t change. “That was when I was trying to keep up with the computer revolution in the evenings after work,” she said. “When the idea of a home computer still seemed like science fiction to most people. I used to go to the library and read all the latest stuff about computers, and I can’t remember when I first noticed Jack, but I remember starting to hope he’d be on duty when I was there, and pretty soon I was doing my best to be there when he was. What’s so funny?”

“Grown-ups.”

“You’ll be one soon and you can tell me if it’s any different,” Julia said, chopping vegetables. “So of course I always asked him if I needed help, and I don’t need to tell you I was waiting for him to ask me out.”

“Why didn’t you ask him out?”

“I mustn’t have been quite liberated enough. And it got to be a point of pride after a while, that he should do the asking. I remember going home some nights in a temper because he still hadn’t. So I started asking him to bring more and more books to the table where I was working. I don’t know if I was trying to pay him back for not noticing me or if I meant to push him until he’d have to protest probably both. Then I began to wonder if he was playing a joke on me instead of the other way round, and you can’t imagine how furious that made me. Then one night I got caught in a storm on the way to the library and my new shoes were soaked, and I sat at the table with rain trickling down the back of my neck and told myself that if he brought me more books than I’d asked for this time I was going to poke him in the ribs and make him drop the lot. So I saw him staggering towards me with the highest pile of books I’d ever seen, and I really didn’t think I was going to be able to keep my hands off him, and then he came out with his classic pick-up line …”

‘ “Can I get you a towel?” Laura said before Julia could.

“To which the only response seemed to be “As well as all those books?” And we both started laughing, and I realised he was going to drop the pile of books that weren’t for me at all, and he tried to catch them as they went, which was the worst juggling act I’ve ever seen … I don’t know how we managed not to get thrown out of the library that night. But when it closed he walked me to the bus stop with an umbrella that didn’t just open inside out but actually flew off the handle, and he asked me if I’d like to go somewhere else with him when it was dryer, and here we are.”

“Tell me another story,” Laura said, stretching out her leg on the bench.

Julia told her about her birth, at the moment of which the midwife had instructed Jack to wipe her forehead and then cried “Not the baby’s head, you fool, your wife’s‘ … She recalled the rainy morning when a Safeway assistant had wheeled her trolley out to the car park while she’d pushed Laura in the buggy, and she had been loading the boot of the car they used to own when Jack had followed her, convinced that the toddler asleep beneath the rain cover of the buggy he’d been pushing was Laura … “At least we’ve our memories when things get rough,” she said.

“I’ve got you and Daddy, which is better than any old memories.”

“No need to choose between us and them. It’ll be the three of us for a long time yet, I hope,” Julia said, and the phone rang.

She was wiping her hands when Laura swung her foot onto the floor. “I’ll get it,” she said as if she were determined to prove that she could, and limped quickly into the hall. Julia heard her say “Oh, hello,” and then there was a protracted silence, broken only by occasional murmurs from Laura which could mean anything. After some minutes Laura returned to the kitchen. “It’s Dad. I think he wants to speak to you. He sounds a bit peculiar.”

“Drunk, do you mean?”

Laura looked uncertain. “Not like Dad.”

Julia wiped her hands again and went to the phone. As she lifted the receiver it emitted a click which was either the fall of a coin or an indication that the call had been terminated. “Here I am, Jack,” she said. Are you still there?”

There was no response, but also no dialling tone. Her question surely didn’t require any pondering, yet several seconds passed before Jack said “Yes.”

He didn’t sound entirely convinced. “Is it fixed?” Julia said.

“Fixed?”

“Yes, fixed. The van.”

“It didn’t break down. It got me there.”

“That’s something to be thankful for then, isn’t it? Is it fixed now, or have you got to leave it?”

“No.” She was just about to lose her patience when he said “Not leaving it, no.”

“Well then, are you coming home?”

A wind hooted across his mouthpiece, sounding lonely and chill. He must be phoning from somewhere in the open. “Are you sure you want me to?” he said.

“What are you asking me? We’ve never needed you more than we need you now. We’ve had the kind of talk girls have, if that’s what you’re wondering, but how can you ask a question like that? What’s wrong with you, Jack?”

Silence, then the cold thin wind, and she closed her eyes and controlled herself. “I’m sorry, I’m being incredibly stupid. What’s wrong with you is what happened to Laura. Don’t stay out there brooding about it. We’ve survived everything else by staying together. If I made you feel I needed to be alone with Laura that’s over and done with, I promise.”

“It isn’t your fault,” he said almost piteously. “You haven’t anything to blame yourself for.”

And you certainly haven’t. I’m not blaming you for anything, except for making me feel as though something else has gone wrong. If it has, tell me the worst. Tell me why you called, at any rate.”

“I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“Well, now you have. Wouldn’t you rather have the rest of me as well?”

“You mightn’t want Jack muttered, but the wind blew away the rest of whatever he said.

“I don’t want to have to worry about you, Jack, not on top of everything else. Please just come straight home and then you can say whatever you need to say, all right?”

“But if he said, and the receiver started to moan. His coins had run out. Julia hung up at once in case he called back, and gazed at the wall above the stairs, where a meaningless scrap of sunlight was climbing. “Was he drunk?” Laura said.

“Just upset, I think. Never mind, he’s on his way home,” Julia told her, and walked slowly back to the kitchen. She was pouring Laura another drink when someone knocked hard at the front door.

If it was Jack, he had either driven so fast she didn’t like to think about it or had phoned from so close to home it would have been a joke. When she stepped into the hall she saw two figures silhouetted on the frosted pane of the front door. Perhaps they were house-hunters, but their arrival hard on Jack’s call seemed inexplicably ominous. She sent herself along the hall and took hold of the latch. The door swung inwards, catching on a corner of the doormat, and she had to turn the mat over, raising dust like a residue of ash, before she could open the door wide. She had already seen that her visitors were Jody Venable and her father Pete.

He put a finger to his lips. “Is this a good time?”

“For what, Pete?”

He undoubtedly meant well, but his behaviour didn’t do much for her nerves. When Jody covered her mouth Julia saw that she was carrying an envelope. “If that’s a card for Laura, Jody, she’s awake. Come in and see her if you like.”

“Hi, Jody,” Laura called.

Jody winced at the sight of her, but said “You look like a pirate with an eye-patch. We all bought you a card, our class did.”

“Let’s see,” Laura said and limped into the front room, Jody following. Julia stepped back further, tramping on the corner of the doormat. “Come with me while I get Jody a drink.”

As soon as Pete was in the kitchen his demeanour changed. “I still can’t believe what happened. Have the police been in touch yet? Have they got hold of whoever it was?”

“We know where they live, and we’ve told the police.”

“How many of the swine were there?”

“Three, Laura says.”

“Bloody Christ. Beg pardon,” he said as though he’d belched. “The teacher told the class that Laura had been mugged, but I didn’t think it could be this bad. If it was Jody I’m afraid I’d need locking up or I’d be going round to give them worse than they gave her. It’s a good job Jack doesn’t have a temper. Is he home?”

“Not just now.”

“Any idea when?”

“Soon, I hope.”

“I wouldn’t mind waiting for him.”

“Stay as long as you like.”

The trouble is I can’t. We’re one girl down at the Experience. Shall we give him fifteen minutes?” Pete said, and took Jody her drink.

He waited longer. When Julia carried mugs of coffee for him and herself into the front room he was glancing at his watch. His muffled impatience aggravated her anxiety about Jack. Surely he was coming home, but how far did Jack have to drive? Pete gulped the last of his coffee and thumped the carpet with the mug, and peeled back his cuff again to consult his watch. “What do you think, Jody? Shall we?”

“Aren’t we waiting for Laura’s dad?”