Shadow Play (28 page)

When he got there, though, after the long walk, he wished he'd bought some booze. He looked up and down and decided he liked the railings in particular. Shining black, a row of spears, including the gate he had discovered before, still to the touch, but movable, with an impressive padlock holding a chain so loosely his thin self could sidle through the gap. The well of the moat was slimy with water. In the shallow pools created by three days' gusty rain, a pigeon bathed, cooing. ‘Shoo,' he said, ‘fuck off, or I'll sing to you,' and as it struggled into flight with the grace of a slow torpedo, Logo felt beset, as he had all day, by the endless desire to laugh. He paddled through puddles underneath the steps to what looked like a grand entrance for trade, down the side. A delivery door, secure as the crown jewels, a window into the basement which was not. He knew all about offices, from having cleaned them. Inside, it was warm as toast.

 

R
ose was sorry in the morning, for having said so much. She woke up with a feeling of emotional indigestion, worse than any hangover she had ever known. A pint of wine hadn't done this to Rose; she had coped with a pint of spirit before now, and last night's ration had gone down like water, but it wasn't right to talk so much and eat another person's food. Not that she hadn't talked to people before about her life; to do so was another clue to sanity, she'd found. But it had always been in dribs and drabs and mainly to strangers, because that was like talking to a wall; they wished you luck and you knew you'd never see them again. Anyway she'd never opened her big mouth as wide as this. Helen and she slept late; Rose had got up in the middle of the night to find all the lights still on, which was comforting, and had gone back to bed in Helen's small and barred spare room, thinking, I could stay here for ever; it even beats the office for safety, but with daylight, it seemed less secure and her own position untenable. She might have gone before Helen was up if she had known how to unlock the door and her sense of shame had not frozen her will, and the boiler hadn't twinked into life and made the place even cosier, so she stayed put.

Helen had woken, coughing like a dead engine, wondering what Rose might think. She didn't know what it was like to be sexually abused, but she did know what it was like to feel violent and she certainly knew the deep dark shame of telling.

‘Christ,' she said, slumping at the kitchen table in a dressing gown which cheered Rose for its sheer age. Will you look at that thing, she was thinking; even her own was better, and she was up and dressed, far too wide awake for comfort, with that guarded look over her face like a visor. ‘Christ,' Helen repeated, ‘I do feel ashamed of myself. Will you promise me, Rose, you'll never repeat to anyone what I told you last night, all that stuff about fancying Dinsdale and my sex life before, during and after Bailey, and about being frightened of the dark? Promise? Blackmail me until the money runs out, could be soon, but don't tell.'

It was a bit of a comic turn with exaggerated gestures; Rose saw through it but smiled, the guarded look retreating. She has an extraordinary face, thought Helen; a face which turns from hunted to haunted to hard and insolent and then into the softest and most vulnerable beauty you ever saw. I wish I had a daughter. Looking at what had happened in the life of this mother's child she thought again, perhaps not. Helen had often felt maternal, but it was mostly applied towards adults.

‘Instant coffee or the real knee-jerk variety? Got both, usually have the latter. We've got things to sort out.'

Rose liked the briskness. It made her meek all over again.

‘We've got to go and get some clothes for you. I meant it about staying here, by the way, don't think I was just being polite, so you need stuff, though you're welcome to mine.'

Rose looked at the dressing gown, like some sort of old carpet.

‘No thanks.'

‘And after that,' Helen went on, ‘I thought we might go and see your adopted gran—'

‘No,' said Rose, panicking. ‘He might be in. He'll see us.'

‘So? I'm big and ugly. I bite people and—'

‘You don't know how he hates me,' Rose said. ‘You really don't.' She was aware now how ridiculous it seemed in the cold light of day to harbour such fantasies of persecution, for which she could produce so little evidence. It was ludicrous to expect anyone else to accept that one small man could loom so large and be everywhere at the same time.

‘All right,' said Helen, ‘we'll drive. Cruise by.' Nobody cruises by in your car, Rose thought, specially not the way you drive it. ‘You can duck down and tell me what to look for.'

That was better. ‘Do you think,' Helen continued, ‘you could speak his name? I mean his surname? You haven't told me that.'

‘Darvey,' Rose muttered.

‘It isn't Darvey. I know Darvey isn't your real name. Don't ask me why I know, but I know. You just don't answer to Darvey easily enough. I bet you've got a really silly name, as silly as Dinsdale's. You just want to keep it secret.' She was making toast in that horrible dressing gown, busying herself.

Oh why couldn't she guess? She'd had enough clues.

‘My mother's name,' Rose snapped. ‘She used to call me Rose and her name was Darvey.'

‘Which brings us,' said Helen, pouring coffee, ‘to the vital point. We want to find your mum. We want your father rendered harmless.'

Oh, help me, Rose thought. Could no-one ever understand how her own father could never be rendered thus? And would Helen never see, without actually being told, how it was that the idea of her father being punished or imprisoned was not pleasant either? So what if the talk last night had all been about hatred and fear and hunting, it had still failed to include all the sneaking parts, the dreadful bond of blood which even while fearing him did not want him tortured either and could not abide him covered in bruises. That was what she was afraid to admit.

‘So,' Helen was continuing with the same briskness, ‘I think that means we should go to the police and get the whole thing looked at again. To find out what went on, where your mum went. And report your father.'

‘That means Michael would have to know.' Rose was faltering, looking for the excuse which Helen might find easiest to understand.

‘Not necessarily, and besides, if you're going anywhere with Michael, he'll have to know.'

Rose took one of Helen's cigarettes. They coughed in concert. It didn't do to be too sensible. The nicotine made Rose dizzy, yet cleared her head. ‘I think I want to wait a day or two for that,' she said in her firmest voice so far. ‘Can we clear up the Dinsdale thing first? If I help sort that out, I'll feel I've done something. Feel better. Stronger.'

‘Fine,' said Helen, thinking, Don't push the girl, let her do things her own way. ‘I've been thinking about that too. Dinsdale. We could go to the office, pull every file he's had in the last year, cross index it to drunk drivers, see if we can find a pattern.' The Dinsdale side of things was sad, distressing and guilt creating: she wanted it over and done with. ‘Only I can't work that bloody computer.'

‘I can,' said Rose.

Nothing happened quickly. The car would not start without an hour's persuasion. Another hour was spent collecting two of Rose's teddy bears, a ton of cosmetic equipment and, as an afterthought, more clothes. Then Rose changed her mind, said she did want to drive by the house which had once been her home, feeling suddenly braver. They were silent as they covered the two miles in the unhealthy-sounding car; Rose terrified it would stop and leave them marooned on Dad's territory, but she dared not say, nor even state to herself the reasons for sitting like a stiff wooden soldier. In case she saw Gran hobbling down the street, alive and well. Or saw Mum, as usual with a shopping basket. She wanted Helen to guess, from the address she must have noted half a dozen times, who her father was without her having to say it out loud, and so save Rose feeling so resentful that Helen hadn't worked it out already. But it was a Saturday afternoon, football season. The road was blocked off, the surrounding streets triple parked, nothing moving until the end of the game. Rose heaved a sigh of relief. Now they could go to the office, postpone the issue, and the office was safe.

 

L
ogo squatted down on his haunches in the basement, winded by the warmth, disorientated and aware of the discomfort of the knife which lay inside his torn trouser pocket against his thigh, hooked on to his belt. Margaret's best kitchen knife, useful for cheese. There were footsteps upstairs. He scuttled to a window facing the railings, craned upwards to see if someone was leaving, but no door slammed. The footsteps were so muffled they were almost infinitesimal and as they stopped he thought he could hear the distant murmurings of a television. Football, he guessed: the bastard doorman hypnotised for a couple of hours. He thought of those big arc lights for the winter games, thought how gloomy it was down here with the feeble supply of daylight fading and the railings gleaming wetly above. Logo began to explore. Empty rooms and rooms full of paper, dull little alcoves and meaningless passageways, a distant humming; he liked it a lot. There was a fire-detecting device winking and whirring after twenty steps in one direction and after that he encountered the boiler-room door and wondered how the place seemed to be full of such strange, heavy-breathing animals, but apart from these, quieter than a graveyard. He found a set of narrow stairs and next to that, a lift in the wall for goods, with the shutter doors open. This piece of equipment delighted him in particular. There were a couple of dozen files on the floor of the thing: he threw these to one side and squeezed himself in. Cosy, like the size of his trolley, an excellent hiding place for a little man, if a little cramped. The thought of Margaret fluttered into his mind and then out. He uncurled himself and continued to wander round. Paper, miles of paper, it would make a good fire. He liked the idea of that, but on reflection, decided it was the wrong kind of paper, and he was an expert on rubbish, it wouldn't burn easily.

Now he was here, he realised he had nothing to do and although it was late afternoon, night-time was a long way off. He sat on the edge of the lift, surveyed the stairs to the upper floors, listened to the boiler, ate one bar of chocolate with loud smacking noises, finished it with a sigh and took off his coat. He wanted to sing for this sense of safety and completeness, tinged with excitement: my, my, so Eenie came to work here on Monday, sometimes stayed over, hadn't she done well. But the chocolate made him thirsty, he needed a source of water, some cover in case the present warmth did not persist, and he needed a place to pee. None of that was available on this level as far as he could see, just paper. The stairwell beckoned; the wooden banister felt warm to the touch. He ascended in his best training shoes, silent, still wanting to laugh. There was a game he had in mind. That woman, the one he'd scared on the court rooftop, the one who had let him off the other day, who had the nerve to pity him, she worked in here too, she said. He could find her room if he wanted, use that as a toilet, show her: wipe his bottom on her chair. The stairs went on up to the ground floor, led into a corridor which fanned from the foyer. Behind a closed door facing him, the sound of the television was louder. Full of impudence Logo knocked, ready to run, although it had been a quiet tap; he felt like playing games, but there was no response. He danced a jig where he stood, remembered the desire to urinate, found a door marked ‘Women' and inside there he rationed his own relief, saving it gleefully, and flushed the chain without thinking. Still no response from the TV room. Onwards and upwards, having crossed the foyer and found a grander sweep of stairs, he progressed, walking down each corridor on each floor in turn until finally he was lost. That distressed him, but only a little. Those that are lost shall be found, he told himself, and there, like a message from the New Testament, was another version of the same goods lift, staring him in the face, like home. Logo realised he had gone full circle. He suddenly fancied a ride in that thing, not the big conventional lift which he had also seen, marked ‘Out of order'; all he had to do, surely, was go straight back down, if he wanted, and he'd be back where he had started, and whatever his boldness, he knew he wanted a way out, as well as a warm and quiet place to sleep. He pressed the red button; the lift whined up to join him. Here it was even warmer.

Logo looked into a large room with a grand chair, big desk, very tidy, organised and controlled. Ah yes, looked like hers, the room of a bossy-boots with pretty clothes, full of severe authority and better carpet than outside in the corridor, but it smelt of man, and whatever else Mizz West was, she was certainly not male, better be sure. He giggled, coughed back the ever-present laughter, still wanted to sing. Until, like an echo of his own mild noise which he carried with him as he moved back into the corridor, he heard more laughter, more coughing, a chorus line of sound coming closer. In a moment of panic, he was incapable of discerning the direction of the sound; in one second he thought it came from behind him in the grand room, then from his right, then from his left, but it came towards him up the stairs and he had no notion of where these people might go. He looked wildly for the smallest space to hide, wanted to curl up rather than stay still, spied the goods lift with open jaws, thrust himself inside with his knees to his chin. He pressed the metal shutter half together with the palms of his hands. Neat.

 

‘T
hat doorman ought to be sacked, never mind anyone else,' Helen was raging on the way upstairs, coughing. ‘You have to phone from a call box to get him to open the door, and even then, we might have been anyone. No wonder Dinsdale—'

‘And me,' Rose cut in sharply. ‘And me. He let me stay here on Thursday night, like I said, so don't knock him. Or shop him. I'll have a word if you want. He needs a job like everyone else.' She was somewhat sick of the diatribe which had lasted two flights. The lift was broken. Helen was being a nag. Sometimes she understood, other times she knew sweet nothing about anything and she looked sick. Keep reminding yourself you like her, Rose was thinking as they puffed to the door of the clerks' room, you do really.