Think Yourself Lucky (17 page)

Perhaps it was just the chill wind that set David's teeth clacking. He managed to control his jaws so as to ask "What was he saying instead?"

"Something about someone else who was, as far as Susan could make out. And then he said—what was it, now? Do you really need me to wrack my brains like this, David?"

"I needn't trouble you with it if I can speak to mother."

"Just wait a moment." The pause was more than long enough for David's father to have handed her the phone, but the next voice that spoke was still his. "I remember now," he said. "She thought he must have been talking about himself this time. As far as she could make out he said someone had been clueless."

A shiver travelled through David's body before finding his mouth. Though it jerked most of the breath out of him he succeeded in asking "Could I have a word with her?"

"Not just now, David."

He felt childish for demanding "Why not?"

"She's lying down upstairs. As I said, there are pressures in this job. She's under quite a few at present. Well, one in particular."

"I'm sorry," David said, not least in case she was worried about Moorcroft. "Can you say what it is?"

"Another difficult client. I do believe some of them are getting more so, unless it's our age creeping up on us." David's father seemed suddenly grateful to talk. "This one makes Mr Moorcroft seem as straightforward as you are, David."

David almost laughed, though it wouldn't have involved mirth. "Who is he? What's his problem?"

"We shouldn't give out names, you know. Still, if we can confide in anyone it's you. We know you won't be doing anything about it. Perhaps he took David's silence for confirmation, because he said "The name's Luther Payne and he lives up to the last part, believe me."

David felt as if he meant to emulate his parents by asking "Does he have any excuse?"

"Susan thinks so. His father's a headmaster and his mother runs the Blackomplishment arts festival. And she put on that exhibition of female Dadaists last year, the Mama show." As David wondered what kind of an excuse any of this was his father said "His parents stayed together till he went to university, and Susan thinks he blames himself for splitting them by growing up. It's her theory that he's trying to reverse that, being adolescent ten years after he should have been. She thinks he was too anxious to conform back then, too eager to impress them."

Trees bowed towards David as if they were intent on the conversation, and the wind brought a rumble of wheels out of the dark. "So what's he doing now?" David said.

"Taking every street drug as soon as it's invented. I very much doubt he knows what he's doing to himself any more. He hasn't had a job since he dropped out of university without finishing his degree. His parents seem to be competing to subsidise him whenever his benefits don't meet his needs."

"Then they should take all the responsibility for him, shouldn't they?"

"That's what I've told Susan, but she feels it's hers since he's her case. The real trouble is he's fixated on her and she blames herself for it. The way I see it, he's rebelling against her as if she's his mother. It's part of acting out his adolescence."

"You still aren't saying what he does."

"Maybe I've already said too much." In a moment David's father resigned himself to adding "He rings her up whenever he's at his worst on whatever he's taken, and half the time that's in the middle of the night. He knows she can't switch her phone off. I won't tell you the language he subjects her to or what he says about her. And when the drug's worn off he calls her again, so full of apologies it's embarrassing. They say that kind of drug isn't addictive, but it seems to me he's addicted to the personality it lets loose."

"Can't she have him stopped from calling?"

"She won't, David. The police know about it, but she'd have to bring a complaint. She won't even let me talk to him when he calls, because she thinks it would undermine their relationship she's built up. She won't admit how much all this is wearing her down."

David could hear it was having the same effect on his father. "Isn't there anything you can do?"

"I wish—" More audibly his father said "No, I mustn't say that. I shouldn't even think it."

"You can say anything to me, dad. You said so."

"She's made it clear I mustn't intervene. If I try she'll want nothing to do with me, and I don't believe she's exaggerating. Between ourselves and nobody else, David, I rather wish it could have been Payne on that escalator."

The admission dismayed David as much as anything he'd heard, and yet he felt as if another part of his mind had a secret response. "Look after her, dad," he urged. "Situations change, don't they? Maybe this one will."

"I'll do my best, and you do the same with your lady."

"I'll speak to her about visiting," David said and was reminded of Dent in hospital. He pocketed the mobile and was turning purposefully towards the dark when a skater hurtled at him, missing him by inches before racing up a slope and down the far side. "Fucking retard," he shouted, not necessarily at David. "Some stupid cunt standing on the path."

"I still am. I don't need to move." This felt more like a threat than anything David had ever previously said, but he didn't want to waste it on the skater. "Luther Payne," he murmured, "I know you can find him," and strode fast out of the dark.

"Why are you listening to that, David?"

He'd hoped the radio was on too low to waken Stephanie. He managed to find an innocent smile before he faced her. "Just for something," he said, "something to do while I'm making us coffee."

"Why the local station? You don't have it on normally."

"Maybe I'm not normal, then."

"I don't know anyone who's more so."

He could tell she was still puzzled, and he'd no sooner made up an explanation than he let it out. "That's why. Listen to the language."

The news bulletin had begun. The guvvament was gunner bring in a bill to help struggaling families, and a minister would be interviewed in the next ow-er. A mum accused of neglecting her chiyuld had been released on police bayil. Fiyer crews were dealing with a blaze at an oyil refinery. A leading athalete would be retiyering from sport next yee-ar. The overnight rayin was moving north to leave a cleyar but cold day for the region... That was the end of the news, and David switched it off before he realised how this might betray why he'd had the radio on. "I didn't know words bothered you so much," Stephanie said. "Maybe you're shaping up to be a writer after all. I'll have to watch my language."

"It's me that ought to. I need to stop my words getting away from me."

The gurgle of the percolator gave him an excuse to turn his back. Once he'd handed Stephanie a mug of coffee he took his to the bathroom. A version of himself came to meet him, though it didn't seem eager to look him in the eye. The shower felt harsh on his skin and yet remote, so that he found it hard to judge what temperature he could bear. He saw off most of a bowl of muesli topped with yoghurt to prevent Stephanie from wondering why he hadn't more of an appetite, which seemed to be somewhere else as well. "You aren't coming downtown with me, are you?" he said.

"Not unless you want me to talk Ms Randall through my dishes."

"You know where I am if you need me," David said and felt as though he was trying to reassure himself.

As he left the house the inert sunless morning fitted its chill to his hands like frozen gloves, to his face like an icy mask, but that wasn't why he shivered. What had he done last night? Had whatever he'd brought about happened yet? Had he made Newless more real? His doubts and fears had caught up with him while he'd lain in bed, afraid to stir in case Stephanie wasn't as asleep as she'd seemed. Could he take back the wish that he'd hardly even put into words? Wouldn't that be like wishing the worst for his mother instead? How could he be less concerned for her than for somebody he would never meet and, by the sound of it, wouldn't care to? How fearful did he need to be when Mick's fate had been so unlike the deranged account on the blog? But he didn't know what he'd set loose or might be responsible for, and the longer he waited to hear, the more nervously uncertain he was growing. Even if it wasn't on the news, his mother might have heard by now. He'd reached the bus stop, and he moved away from the queue to make a call. Surely it wasn't too early, and he only had to tell his mother that his father had left him anxious on her behalf.

She was waiting to answer, or at least her voice was—her detached voice. "Just seeing how you were," he had to say. "Give me a ring if there's any reason." A bus was approaching the stop, where several people had taken his place in the queue, and his sudden rage took him off guard until he controlled himself. He had to stand in the aisle and cling to a chilly pole as the bus lurched and swerved and abruptly halted, often for no reason he could see. The woman seated closest to him had a lapful of bags and a collapsed umbrella that kept poking his thigh. "That's all right," he heard himself keep saying, and wondered what Newless would have said.

People were already hawking magazines and distributing leaflets in the streets. They reminded him of his first encounter with Kinnear and his altercation with the man on the mobility scooter, but he had an uneasy notion that he should remember something else. Perhaps he preferred not to, because he made for work fast enough to leave the thought behind.

Andrea was filing brochures in the racks while Helen counted out foreign money customers had ordered. Bill and Emily were fixing holiday photographs to the wall behind the counter. David had forgotten that idea of Andrea's, and he could have thought her glance was convicting him of having let the firm down. When he returned from the staffroom, however, she said "I've had the list for the promotion."

"From Steph, you mean. Did she tell you about her manager?"

"All I've had from her are her ideas for food."

David found he had been hoping not to need to say "He died."

"Dear me." After a pause possibly intended to denote respect Andrea said "How will that affect the restaurant?"

"She doesn't know yet. If we'll be advertising it I expect that'll help."

"I'll need to speak to head office about that," Andrea said, having loosed a pointed cough. "They may not want to be associated with a business that's in trouble."

"Maybe Steph won't want to be involved if we don't push her and the restaurant."

"I hope she won't let us down after she undertook to help. It wouldn't reflect too well on you either, David."

He sensed how all his colleagues were pretending to be unaware of Andrea. It felt like a denial of animosity, so oppressive that it seemed to steal his breath. At least some customers had arrived to end the discussion, and he tried to concentrate on dealing with them. When he was able to retreat to the staffroom he checked the Newless blog, but the last posting was the one he'd previously read. Once again he felt there was something he ought to remember—and then he thought of the street preacher and Norville from the council. Might their inclusion in the blog imply they were in danger? He couldn't say when he had so little sense of how it worked.

The question and everything it revived in his mind brought him close to panic. As soon as Andrea sent him for lunch he grabbed his coat and hurried downhill, feeling watched. A childish sketch of a man blazed red to halt him at the foot of the hill, and he could hardly wait for its sibling to shine green before he dashed across the road. He was disconcerted to be able to recognise a voice somewhere ahead. It led him straight to the preacher, who was surrounded by a few spectators in the midst of the uninterested crowd. "Every one of us is a sinner," the man was assuring all those within earshot, "and the worst is he who says he has not sinned."

As David ventured closer the evangelist's discontented gaze found him. "Every one of us has sinned in thought, word and deed," he said like a greeting, and David felt provoked to argue, even if not aloud. He'd had none of the thoughts on the Newless blog, and he'd never used some of the words it did. He certainly hadn't committed any of the deeds it gloated over; in fact, he was here to forestall another of their kind. He took a step forward and held out a hand to the preacher, "Excuse me...

"Only the Almighty may do that, my friend. Confess your sins to Him and pray for forgiveness."

The preacher had signified the sacred pronoun with a wheeze, and David struggled not to wonder how that might sound to someone else. "Could I have a word?"

"You may have God's. His is the only word that matters in this world or the next,"

David advanced another step in the hope this would make him seem less like a heckler. "Don't think I'm being rude, but can you stop that for a moment? I need to talk to you."

"It is God we need to talk to, you and I and everybody on this earth. I am nothing but the way He spreads His word."

"Oh, for—" David barely managed to cut the phrase short. "When do you stop?" he said, which wasn't too deft either. "I mean, when do you take a break?"

"God takes no breaks, my friend, and none of us should from devoting our lives to His word."

"Look, just listen to me for your own sake. Try and hear what I'm actually saying. I—"

"The only word we need hear for our own sake is God's."

"Don't you know how unbearable you're being?" This seemed to reach the preacher—he pressed his thin lips paler, multiplying wrinkles on his greyish face—and David took the cue. "I wanted to tell you I think you've annoyed someone," he said, "and they could be dangerous."

"Anyone who is annoyed by God's word should examine their conscience."

"I don't know if he's got one." David's head was throbbing with frustration. "I'm telling you to watch out for him," he said.

"We should all watch out, my friend. Watch out for the traps God's adversary sets for us." The preacher had regained his poise and dealt himself some more as well. "How shall I know him?" he said as if he scarcely cared.

The question almost robbed David of words. "You will if you see him," he tried saying, "only then it might be too late."