Sam and Clive stared into the water. The still pond perfectly reflected the overhanging trees and the bushes and bluebells growing near the bank; the skin on the water could almost have been rolled up like a tapestry picture, stolen and taken home. Alice watched them keenly. ‘Does it make you nervous?’
Neither gave her an answer.
‘Well?’
‘Why should it make us nervous?’ said Clive.
‘Sam told me.’
‘Told you what?’
‘You know. And I know he told you he told me.’
‘What’s she on about, Sam?’
‘Dunno.’
A whistle blew. There were cheers. A goal had gone in.
‘She’s on about that time,’ said Sam, ‘when I was pulling her leg.’
‘Oh, that,’ said Clive. ‘Some people believe anything you tell ’em.’
‘I saw Sam’s face that day. I don’t think he was joking.’
‘Sure, Alice.’
‘Anything you say, Alice.’
‘You’re going to have to move it.’
Sam and Clive turned to look at her. The sky was reflected in her sincere and immaculate eyes. She stood up and, leaning her back against a tree trunk, she lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke vertically.
‘You know your trouble, Alice?’ said Sam, pretending to laugh. ‘You can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality. That’s your trouble.’
‘I can help you,’ she said softly. ‘If you’ll let me.’
When the final whistle blew, they strolled over to the football pitch. The players were trooping towards the changing rooms. Terry was shaking hands with the opposition. Clive marched ahead. ‘Did you get a game?’ he demanded within earshot of the team coach, a costive, overweight little man in a cloth cap.
‘Last two minutes,’ said Terry, jogging away with the other players.
‘Two minutes?’ Clive spat in disgust. ‘It’s not worth showering after that!’
‘The lad’s only thirteen years old,’ the coach barked back. ‘These are grown men.’
‘He can run rings round any of your players! He could tactically humiliate all of you! You won’t see a finer talent in Redstone, ever!’ Clive walked away, with Sam and Alice following. The coach stared after them, lip curled in an expression of speechless contempt.
‘What do you know about football?’ smirked Sam.
Clive stopped in his tracks. ‘Nothing. But I believe in Terry. Totally. I believe in my friends, in everything they do. I believe in Terry. I believe in you, Sam. And I believe in you, Alice.’ Clive stalked away in the direction of the changing rooms to look for Terry.
‘Looks like you just got admission to the gang,’ Sam told Alice.
Alice looked uncertain whether she still wanted membership.
‘We’ve got to move the body before the police find it,’ said Clive.
Terry sat on the leather Morris seat, head in hands, hair still wet from his post-match shower. Sam sat on a low bough, legs kicking nervously. Alice had gone home.
‘Maybe it’s better,’ Sam tried weakly, ‘if we don’t touch anything. Say nothing. Know nothing. Keep our heads down.’
‘It’s only a matter of time,’ said Clive, ‘before they find it. Then they’ll go to the Scouts. Then they’ll come to us.’
‘What’s your idea?’ said Terry.
Clive let out a deep sigh. ‘We get a tarpaulin. Wrap it round the body. Carry it back here. Tie some weights to it.’ Then he picked up a rock and tossed it into the middle of the pond. It splashed noisily, dispatching concentric ripples towards the edge of the pond. ‘I reckon it’s pretty deep. And we know there are things in there that eat flesh. Pike and things.’
‘Oh God, oh God!’ moaned Terry.
‘We do it at night,’ Clive continued. ‘Late.’
‘This isn’t going to work,’ Sam whined.
‘Isn’t there anything else we can do?’ moaned Terry.
‘Like what? We can’t bury the thing in the woods. The police dogs will sniff it out. The only other option, as I see it, is to turn ourselves in.’ No one liked that idea. ‘So that’s agreed then?’
‘What about Alice?’ said Sam.
‘Absolutely not.’
‘I’m not sure we can manage on our own. She could help us carry it.’
‘No.’
‘Has she offered to help?’ Terry wanted to know.
‘Yes. She’d be useful. In all sorts of ways. For a start, we’re going to need some explaining to be done.’
‘Absolutely not,’ Clive insisted. ‘I won’t consider it for a moment.’
‘Clive, you’re out-voted,’ said Terry. ‘Tonight. We do it tonight.’
Sam told his mother and father that both Clive’s and Terry’s folks had said it was OK, and that if they refused, he stood to appear childish and could never look his friends in the face again. Clive and Terry used the same line. All three boys produced Alice’s telephone number, since Alice’s mother had offered to reassure anyone with anxieties about the enterprise. Nev and Connie had no telephone, however. Terry’s Aunt Dot and Uncle Charlie had just had one installed, and since both hated using it, they got Linda to telephone for them. A very eloquently spoken lady declaring herself to be Alice’s mother convinced Linda that there was plenty of room at the house for the boys to sleep over at Alice’s birthday party. Linda was sent to tell Connie and Nev that everything was fine.
‘Does she drink?’ Linda whispered to Sam. ‘She sounded half-cut, and it’s only six thirty.’
Eric and Betty Rogers were more obdurate, however, and
for a while it seemed as though Clive was going to have to fall back on the expedient of climbing from his bedroom in the dead of night. But then a well-timed tantrum, blaming all of his misfortunes and misery on the Epstein Foundation and the fact that he’d never been allowed a whiff of normality, unlike Terry and Sam, who were being allowed to stay overnight at Alice’s house, neatly steered his parents round.
‘It’s not as if they’re going to get up to anything at their age,’ Betty reasoned. Eric, having no illusions about what thirteen-year-olds could or couldn’t do, preferred not to answer. Betty, who’d been baking all afternoon, thoughtfully iced a cake with Alice’s name and insisted that Clive take it to Alice’s party.
The whole idea had been Alice’s. After the boys had gone to her house, she’d whisked them up to her bedroom and played loud music while her mother readied her face for a night on the town. Alice knew from experience that June wouldn’t get back until two or three in the morning, rapturous with gin. Any phone calls after six o’clock could be dealt with by Alice’s impersonation while the genuine article soaked in her perfumed bathtub as Vivaldi blasted, with cannons, from the bedroom.
So it was that at eight thirty the three boys arrived at Alice’s house, each toting a sleeping bag and a bottle of Woodpecker cider. Clive in addition sheepishly supplied a large iced cake, Sam a packet of cigarettes and Terry a disconcerting, frozen smile reflecting an admiration for Alice that was growing by the minute.
They played records. They drank the cider and smoked cigarettes. They ate the cake.
At midnight the three boys waited, crouching behind a hedgerow beside a five-bar gate. The gate opened on to the field adjacent to Wistman’s Woods. A large canvas tarpaulin had been pillaged from a nearby building site, where things
had already started to go wrong. While cutting the ropes that lashed the canvas to some building materials Clive had gashed his hand with his penknife. Then the canvas was so incredibly heavy that it took two of them to carry it away. They were grimy and exhausted before they had even entered the woods.
A gibbous moon illuminated the field and the road beside the hedgerow, the kind of moon they didn’t want. A few scudding clouds were not enough to dull its lantern.
‘What if she doesn’t come?’ said Clive, sucking his wound.
‘She’ll be here.’
‘I’ve been wondering about this other body they found in the woods,’ said Clive. ‘The police said it had been there about seven or eight years.’
‘So what?’ Terry said uneasily.
‘Well, I’ve been figuring out how old we were at the time. I figure that person, whoever it was, would have been killed around the period that . . . about the time when . . .’
Clive’s voice trailed off when he saw Terry’s face. Terry’s eyes were closed, and his eyelids fluttered wildly.
‘Shut it!’ Sam hissed. ‘Just shut it!’
A car’s headlights appeared along the road, and they flung themselves full length to the ground until long after it had passed. After some minutes they heard a horse snorting, and Alice appeared in the moonlight, her leather jacket gleaming. She was leading the skewbald mare across the grassy field on the other side of the road. Girl and horse seemed to glide noiselessly through the field. Mist rose from the grass under her feet and beneath the horse’s hooves.
‘She’s here! She’s done it!’
She stopped at a gate on the other side of the road, fumbling with the latch. The horse tossed its head, its breath a silver plume in the night air. Suddenly another car’s headlamps appeared in the road, speeding towards them. ‘Get back!’ cried Sam. ‘Get back!’
Alice ducked back, tugging sharply at the horse’s reins, trotting it away from the gate. The boys flung themselves on the ground again.
But the car didn’t roar past, as expected. It slowed as it approached, stopped in the middle of the road and then eased into the gateway entrance, its headlamps sweeping across the field, throwing the trees at the edge of Wistman’s Woods into sharp relief. They heard the ratchet of the handbrake applied before the lights dimmed and the engine was switched off. The car had come to a halt on the other side of the hedge, not nine feet away from where the boys lay sprawled.
They kept their heads down for some time. After a few minutes, a whimper issued from inside the car, followed by a deep sigh.
Clive, with the side of his face pressed against the earth, mouthed a blasphemy. It was a courting couple. ‘They could be here for hours.’
‘Depends,’ Terry whispered through gritted teeth.
‘On what?’ Sam was thinking of Alice trying to keep the horse quiet on the other side of the road.
‘On whether she gives out.’
They waited. A little squeal of protest sounded from the car’s interior. Then there was quiet again. Terry got to his knees, prepared to take a squint into the car. ‘Careful,’ said Clive.
‘Careful.’
Terry crawled across the ditch, pushing his head through the hedgerow. The car’s windows were misted with condensation, but there was no mistaking the shape, in the passenger seat, of a woman’s breasts exposed to the moonlight. The driver put his head to the bared breasts, taking a strong erect nipple between his lips. ‘Hey!’ said Terry. ‘Hey!’ Suddenly he stiffened. ‘I don’t believe it!’ he hissed. He pushed his head further into the tangled hedgerow. ‘It’s Linda! Linda and Derek!’
The other two boys scrambled up and pressed their faces into the hedge, close to Terry’s. In an instant, Linda had turned and was vigorously wiping away the condensation from the passenger window. The boys retreated slightly, trying to draw branches across their faces. They froze as she appeared to stare right through them. The muffled conversation from within the car was easily audible.
‘I heard something,’ they could hear Linda saying. ‘Then I thought I saw three horrible, dirty faces in the bushes. Like demons. It was horrible.’ She was still trying to wipe the window.
‘Want me to take a look?’ Derek’s muffled voice offered.
‘No, don’t.’
‘It’s all right. I’ll get out and take a look round.’
‘No. I’m frightened. Let’s go.’
‘Come on!’ Derek made another dive for her nipple.
‘Get off !’ Linda buttoned herself. ‘I want to go.’
‘Shit!’ Amid complaints from Derek, the engine sparked to life. The headlamps blazed and the car reversed out of its parking spot. Tyres screeched as they accelerated away, red tail-lights disappearing down the lane.
They breathed a collective sigh. Then Alice called from the other side of the road.
‘Come on, Alice! It’s clear.’
Alice led the horse to the gate again, but she couldn’t get it open. Sam darted across the road to help her. It was tied with baling twine. ‘I’ll get Clive’s knife.’
‘Forget it,’ said Alice. ‘Get out of the way.’
Though there was no saddle on the horse, Alice leapt up on its back. She trotted the mare several yards away, reined it round and broke into a sprightly canter back towards the gate. Sam scrambled out of the way as the horse launched into the air. He saw five, six, seven horses in a single but staggered image, making a bridge through the air from takeoff to landing-point, in a vision brittle with moonlight. It was
a moment of inspiration, charged with force. They cleared the gate easily, Alice’s hair streaming behind her as they arced through the air. The horse came to a halt just a few paces on the other side of the gate. Alice slipped off its back and led it across the road. Clive and Terry held the second gate open.
Without a word, Alice led the horse to the edge of Wistman’s Woods. The boys fell in behind, hauling the tarpaulin. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘In you go. And don’t be long about it. Remember we’ve got to get back before my mother does.’