The Lion Tamer’s Daughter (17 page)

The next three days followed the same pattern—as long as Giovanni was there, companionship and trust. But then, when he vanished into his niche, nights of loneliness and miserable betrayal.

The third night was peculiarly bad. The nonsense invaded his dreams. He was being pursued across empty moorland by men with guns, pretending to be hunters. Somebody shadowy beckoned him into a place of hiding and left him there, but then he saw through a crack in the rock his rescuer talking to the hunters. Later he was riding across the prairie looking for Dad to warn him that the wolves were loose. He saw the spark of the campfire and rode toward it, but his horse was gone and he was trying to run, and Dad was sitting singing by the fire in his cowboy outfit. He had someone with him. Dave crawled at last into the camp and Dad looked up and said, “Who the hell are you?” And Giovanni, sitting beside him, smiled at Dave and pretended not to know him …

He was woken in the middle of another nightmare by something light and chilly pressing against his cheek. He turned his head away but it followed.

A voice whispered “Wake, Dave. Quick!
Presto
!”

His eyelids dragged up. It was barely light. Somebody, Giovanni, was kneeling by the bed.

“Up! Quick!” came the urgent whisper.

Weakly Dave levered himself onto his elbows. Giovanni seized him by the arm as if trying to drag him to his feet, but Dave could barely feel the faint touch through his shirt. Groaning, he rose and stood.

Urgently Giovanni held out his hands for Dave's.

“Give! Give!” he whispered. “Quick!”

Unthinkingly Dave did as he was told. He seemed to have no will at all.

“What's up?” he muttered.

“No time,” said Giovanni. “Give, Dave. Make me strong!”

“Hey …!”

“It is for you. Not me. It is no use for me. Only for you. Dave, give!”

“But why …?”

“No. I cannot tell you. But listen, Dave. I give you back all you give—have given me. I will give all back!”

Dave looked at him. He remembered the night, and the night before and the night before that. Giovanni was gazing at him, urgent, earnest, and still everything that he had been to Dave through all those endless days. No, the nights were nonsense. He would trust the days. He had to.

“All right, if you say so,” he said.

He closed his eyes, bowed his head, and relaxed.

The life flowed from him. He could feel it, a gentle steady movement, out and away through his arms and wrists, and a faint unusual warmth where his palms touched Giovanni's. Elsewhere he felt cold, colder than the early-morning air, a creeping chill that seemed to be rising into him from the floor, the chill of deep earth that has never been touched by the sun.

“Enough,” said Giovanni in a much stronger voice. “Now, help me to dress in your clothes.”

He let go of Dave's hands and stooped to pick up the jeans which Dave had left folded as usual by the bed, but though he managed to heave the waistband a few inches from the floor the weight of the cloth dragged it from his grasp.

“No,” he said. “You must help.”

Dave too found the jeans strangely heavy as he arranged them so that Giovanni could step into the legs. Giovanni was still wearing his slacks, but their cloth seemed insubstantial, hardly there at all, compared to the hard denim. As Dave heaved the jeans up the slacks disappeared into them, became them. He fastened the waistband and zipped the fly. There was no belt—the goons had taken it. Next the sweater. As Giovanni took the weight of it he staggered and almost fell. Dave caught him and eased his arms into the sleeves.

“What about my shoes?” he said. “You'll have to take yours off.”

“No. Wait. Too heavy. Help me. To the wall. Then shoes. And the hood also. Quick! They are coming!”

Dave drew Giovanni's arm round his shoulder and pretty well carried him across the cell. He weighed almost nothing, barely more than the clothes alone. Giovanni faced the wall and with a huge effort raised first one arm and then the other above his shoulders and placed them against the stonework.

“Now the shoes,” he gasped.

Dave fetched them, knelt, placed them on either side of Giovanni's feet, leaned his shoulder against his thigh to help him balance, lifted a foot by the ankle, and with his other hand slid his own shoe under it and crammed the foot back down before Giovanni could fall. Again it was as if Giovanni's shoe didn't exist compared to the sneaker, and the foot, two or three sizes smaller than Dave's, slid in without effort. He crawled round and did the other shoe.

“They are here!” whispered Giovanni. “Quick, the hood!
Ciao
, Dave.”

He turned his head and smiled, and Dave understood what was going to happen. I can't do this, he thought, but his lips said “
Ciao
, Giovanni,” and he slid the hood down. Feet sounded on the stairs and he ran for the niche, but as he reached it he turned and hesitated. Giovanni had taken his right hand off the stonework, and slowly, effortfully, like someone moving under water, was crossing himself.

The voice called from beyond the door.

“I'm ready,” he croaked, and scuttled to the darkest corner of the niche.

He crouched there, with his head in his hands and his eyes closed.

The lock rattled and the door grated on stone, but the man's footsteps made no sound on the thick dirt. Dave pressed the balls of his thumbs against his ears, but it was no use. Something struck him like a hammer on the back of the head. Then he was in darkness.

In the darkness he heard voices, sighs, curses, shouts of anger, sobs, groans, pleadings. He knew where they came from. There were others, Giovanni had said. He was not the first, nor Dave only the second, nothing like.

Then he was lying on stone, facedown, with a shaft of pure pain piercing his skull and a terrible empty sickness filling chest and stomach, but he knew where he was and why, and managed not to groan. He lay still. The headache throbbed and dwindled. Cautiously he lifted a hand to the back of his head and felt. Nothing, not even a bruise.

A heavy drumming racket passed close overhead, a helicopter. The sound faded and returned, rose to a roar and died. It had landed. Shouts. A shot, and another. Silently Dave worked himself onto hands and knees and inched toward the corner. Nobody there. The door closed. His sneakers, jeans, and sweater lay spread out beneath the calendar stone like the map of a sprawled body. The head was the hood. He walked over and picked it up. There were two neat round holes in it, on opposite sides, but no blood. Close to, it smelt singed.

He realized that this was why they had made him stand hooded against the wall from the very first day, so that if it ever came to this he would be just waiting there as usual, not suspecting anything, and the man would come in …

What bastards, he thought. What absolute bloody bastards.

He hesitated, picked the clothes up, and put them on. It felt strange, but it would have felt stranger not to. They were cold still, as if no one had worn them since last night.

So Giovanni was gone, not real anymore. Just a memory, an idea. What would have happened, Dave wondered, if I hadn't trusted him, if I hadn't let him persuade me, if it had been me standing by the wall when the man came in? Well, I'd be dead for a start, but Giovanni? He'd be gone too, an idea, a memory, because it had been me keeping him real … So you could say it didn't make any difference to him … All the same, he died for me. I let him die for me.

He stood there thinking about Giovanni until he heard, above the sound of the cicadas, voices moving around on the hillside, calling. He shouted back, but they were too far off, so he went and tried the door. There was no handle inside, and though he managed to work his fingertips in at the edge he couldn't budge it.

The voices came nearer. They were calling his name.

“Dave! Dave Doggony! You there, Dave?”

He shouted again. At first they didn't hear him, but then somebody passed close by. He knew the voice.

“Chris!” he yelled. “Here! It's me, Dave!”

“Dave! Hey! He's here! He's here! Dave, where are you?”

“Here. Under the ground. There's some stairs. You have to crawl in under the bushes. I think the door's locked.”

“Right, we'll find it. Dick! Somebody tell … Dick! Here! This way!”

Voices gathering, shouts, questions, Chris telling them to be quiet. Dad's voice.

“Dave? You OK, fella? Tell me you're OK.”

“I'm fine.”

“Right, we'll soon have you out of there. How …”

But somebody had found the stairs and was rattling uselessly at the lock. There were shouts and orders in Italian. Dad's voice, now at the door.

“It's locked, Dave. Goddam massive padlock. They're fetching a saw. We'll soon have you out of there.”

“I can wait. Is Mum there? Can somebody tell Mum?”

“Chris is calling her up right now.”

A pause. People jostling. Dad's voice again.

“OK, Dave, it's the guy with the saw. No room for two down here, so I'm standing clear. But we did it, Dave! We did it! We won!”

The saw started to whine into steel. The racket filled the cell. Dave backed away, knelt, and scrabbled in the dirt beneath the calendar stone for his nail. He eased it out, moved on into the niche, and scuffed around with his shoes till he found a crack between two flagstones. He jabbed at the crack with the nail till he had made a short, deep slot, then lifted the gold chain from round his neck, undid the clasp, and slid the little cross free. Carefully he poked it down into the slot and smeared dirt back over to hide it.

I don't believe in any of this, he thought, but I bet Giovanni does.

He rose and stood with his head bowed.

“Holy Mother of God,” he whispered. “I pray for the soul of Giovanni. I don't know his name, but you do. Take care of him, please. Amen.”

There was a lull in the sawing, some problem, mutterings in Italian. Outside he heard Dad's voice again, bellowing to someone that they'd won. No, he thought, we didn't. It was Giovanni who'd won. He won it for us, because he'd lost it for himself, long, long ago.

T
HE
L
ION
T
AMER
'
S
D
AUGHTER

Before all this happened I'd have told you there wasn't anything special about Melly, apart from her being a bit dopy sometimes, and maybe the business with the yellow dog, but that was a once-off.

I don't know that we'd have picked each other for friends if our mums hadn't been friends too. They'd got to know each other waiting for us outside junior school, and found we lived only a couple of streets apart, so they took turns collecting both of us. Then Melly's mum, Janice, got the chance of a full-time job and my mum, who just worked mornings, said she'd take care of Melly till Janice got home. That way we saw a lot of each other and got used to each other being around, a bit as if we'd been brother and sister, I suppose. We were both only children, and Melly's parents had split up.

We went on together from Ashley Junior to Ashley High. Sometimes we were in the same classes, sometimes not. We each had our own lot of friends and we didn't hang about together at school, but we'd help each other out over anything we needed and Melly came home after school with me most days, long after it would have been all right for her to have her own key and go back to her own house.

My mum and dad were crazy about sailing, and ever since I could remember, Friday nights, they'd load me and the cats and themselves into the van and drive half the night to a little cottage we had at Penmaenan, in Wales, where they kept their boat. (We weren't rich people, mind you. The cottage was pretty primitive, and the boat was all they ever spent money on.) Sundays it was back in the van and all the way home to Coventry. Holidays were always sailing too, as much time off as they could get from their work.

It took them a while to get it that I wasn't that keen on sailing, even on fine days, and I loathed it when it was cold and wet. So some weekends they'd ask Melly along and she and I'd hang around at the cottage and Mrs. Pugh next door would keep an eye on us while they went out in the boat. Other times I'd stay back in Coventry at Melly's place. So all in all, you could say I knew her pretty well. But if you'd asked me to give you a list of my friends, I'd have started off telling you the three or four other boys I mostly hung around with, and then maybe I'd have said “and Melly, of course.” Or maybe I'd have forgotten. Same with her, I should think.

We didn't have fights, that I remember. We were just easy with each other, and that's about it.

When I say Melly was sometimes a bit dopy, I don't mean she was stupid or silly. Most of the time she was ordinary, bright but not brilliant, better than plain but not pretty, with black hair and a bit of a foreign look, Italian or something. She was a chatterbox, and hung out with a gang of girls who were that way too, and when they got going it was like a flock of geese squawking away. You'd hear them coming round from the gym, fifty or sixty it sounded like, cackling and shrieking, but when they got to the corner you'd see it was just five or six of them, all talking at once and rolling their eyes and shrugging and waving their arms around. Body language, it's called.

But every now and then Melly would go dreamy and far away, and you'd pretty well have to pinch her to bring her back, and she'd still be sort of dazed as if she'd only just got out of bed, and grumpy too, which wasn't like her. It happened enough for one of the teachers to get the idea she might be on drugs. There were some kids at Ashley High who took drugs, but we knew who they were, and my lot didn't have much to do with them. Nor Melly either. She was too careful for that sort of thing.

The stuff with the yellow dog happened when we were a bit younger. One of Melly's crowd, Karen, had just had a birthday and she'd been given a puppy, and her mum had brought it along so she could walk it home. Melly and I and one or two others tagged along. Mum wasn't picking us up that day and we were supposed to go straight home, but Karen's wasn't far out of our way and the puppy was a beagle and dead cute.