The Count of Eleven (40 page)

It was larger than its twin by virtue of an aluminium conservatory protruding from the front. As Jack skirted a line of spectators at the edge of a marked pitch a woman emerged from the house and ran for a bus. The time was almost six o’clock. A few seconds later a man in a white smock stalked along the drive and closed the gates which the woman had left ajar, and Jack was sure that the dentist was alone in the house.

The front door slammed as Jack stepped off the grass, noting that there were no cars in the driveways of either of the dentist’s neighbours. The brass plaque on the gate post blazed like a mirror which a child was using to catch sunlight as Jack lifted the latch of the gate. Shouts of advice from spectators followed him up the drive in which a black Jaguar was parked, and pressing the bell push seemed to produce cheers and applause. Though he didn’t hear a bell, it brought the dentist to the door, yanking it open and then raising his hands behind his head like someone at gunpoint. “Yes?”

“Doctor Globe?”

“Obviously.”

His manner wasn’t nearly as submissive as his gesture had seemed, and in any case he had only been untying his smock. His plump dull face, which was adorned by a beard made for a narrower chin, was pink with a threat of losing his temper. “What can I do for you?” he said in a tone which suggested he hoped it was nothing at all.

“I was wondering if you could give me something for my daughter.”

“My receptionist makes the appointments. She’ll be here in the morning at nine.”

“I meant something to ease the pain.”

The dentist sighed. “How extensive is it?”

“More than one tooth.”

“Then clearly she should take better care of them. I recommend you consult a pharmacist and speak to my receptionist tomorrow.”

Having finished peeling off his smock, he reached out to close the door. “The chemist’s shut,” Jack said.

“I can’t do anything about that, I’m afraid.”

“Can’t you help? Haven’t you got something she could take?”

“Good God, man, this isn’t a dispensary. If I start handing out analgesics, before I know I’ll have all the walking wounded from the ball games trooping up my drive. Didn’t you read my hours on the gate?” He stared at Jack’s dismay, which wasn’t entirely feigned, and gave a louder sigh. “Oh,

come in for a minute while I see what I can find. I really shouldn’t be expected to do this, you know.”

Jack followed him swiftly and closed the door, cutting off the roar of spectators. The hall was wide and very empty apart from a sharp smell of disinfectant which made Jack’s teeth twinge. Globe halted at the foot of the stairs and pointed at the nearest door. “Please wait in there. I’m really not in the business of pain relief.”

Jack heard a child crying behind Globe’s voice, and the smell of disinfectant seemed to fill his head like fuel. “I gathered as much,” he said.

The dentist’s mouth worked disapprovingly, wagging his beard. “We have to believe God made pain. If, of course, you believe in God.”

“Sometimes I have problems believing in myself.”

It wasn’t an especially good joke, the Count thought as he stepped into the waiting-room, where half a dozen hard chairs faced a counter and a low table spread with dog-eared magazines that looked dusty with sunlight through the net curtains. He was impatient with both the joke and the deception. When he heard Globe hurrying downstairs he opened the briefcase on the counter. “These are the best I can do for you,” the dentist said from the hall.

“Don’t be so sure.”

The Count’s voice seemed to come from within the briefcase into which he was gazing. No doubt it was hardly audible outside the room, because Globe said “Pardon me?”

“I don’t know if that’s possible.”

The dentist tramped into the room, shaking the floor. He apparently resented the inconvenience rather than anything he’d heard. “Here you are,” he snapped.

He was proffering the remains of a blister pack of aspirins which he had presumably found in his bathroom, since the tinfoil was pale with talcum powder. “Who left those?” the Count said. “I assume they can’t be yours.”

“I don’t think that’s any of your affair,” Globe said and slid the pack along the counter, the ragged tinfoil of popped blisters scraping the formica. “Now I must ask you to excuse me. Here’s my number if you wish to call tomorrow.”

The Count ignored the tablets and the dentist’s card. “I wish I could. There’s something else you should have done for me.”

“Please.”

It was a dismissal, not an enquiry, but the Count gave him a last chance. “You didn’t know me then,” he said, unfolding the letter and laying it on the counter.

The dentist gaped at him as though unable to believe he was still there, then cocked his head to glance at the letter. The next moment the ridged back of his neck turned red, and he thumped the letter with the side of his fist. “It was you? You sent me this?”

“As you see.”

“You dare to admit it after what I told you?”

“Remind me.”

Globe shoved himself away from the counter, the page fluttering in his wake. “Didn’t I make it clear that I put my trust in God?”

The Count wasn’t sure that this was an entirely convincing rebuttal, but that was hardly his problem. “Then you should look forward to meeting him,” he said as he lifted the blow lamp out of the briefcase and moved between Globe and the door.

As he took out the lighter the dentist’s jaw dropped, and he made a sound as though he was about to be sick. “My God, you’re ‘

“Don’t say it. I don’t like that name,” the Count told him, and turning the blow lamp on, flicked the lighter. He flicked it again, hard, then harder. Nothing emerged from it except a thread of smoke.

The sight of the blow lamp appeared to have paralysed the dentist, but the failure of the lighter released him. He lurched to the window and tore at the net curtains. When they slid only a couple of inches along the wire on which they were strung he banged on the window with the palms of his hands, screaming “Help! The Burner!”

“Help him indeed,” the Count said, shoving the blow lamp into Globe’s face. He didn’t want the dentist making a spectacle of himself at the window, and the curtains might catch fire. The dentist’s face jerked away from the jet of gas, and he floundered towards the door. The low table tripped him. His head thumped the door, slamming it, and he slid down it until his shoulders were resting beneath the doorknob.

He wasn’t quite unconscious, but he seemed not to know where he was; he was trying to shove himself backwards, his heels digging at the carpet, as though he could break through the door. The Count snapped the lighter again without success, then held the nozzle of the blow lamp against the fleshy groove beneath the dentist’s nose. Globe began to flail the air with his hands and heave feebly up and down, his shoulders rubbing audibly against the door. His mouth fell open and gurgled a monotonous tune as his head twisted back and forth, unable to escape the gas. After rather too long in the Count’s opinion, his eyes bulged and glazed over, and his head slumped against the doorknob.

He was still breathing. A bubble swelled from his left nostril, deflated and swelled again, and the Count had to resist the instinct to pick up the letter and use it to wipe Globe’s nose. Instead he flicked the lighter in case the wick had had time to gather fuel, but it emitted only a click. “Matches, where do you keep your matches?” he demanded, and answered for the dentist: “In the kitchen, of course.” “Thank you,” he said and pulled out his handkerchief, not to wipe the dentist’s nose but in order to take hold of the doorknob.

Even a two-handed heave at the knob didn’t shift Globe an inch. The Count had to grasp him by an arm and an equally leaden leg and drag him, his buttocks bumping along the carpet, until he was propped beside the doorframe not far at all, but far enough to make the Count feel sprinkled with hot ash. He blew gas up the dentist’s nose for a few seconds to ensure that Globe would remain unconscious, then he sidled out of the room.

Sunshine through the pane above the front door felt like a cloak on his shoulders as he ventured along the hall, hands down by his sides so as not to risk touching anything he didn’t need to touch the walls that were so palely papered that he could imagine them dazzling Jack, the blond pine banisters whose newness he would have been able to smell if it hadn’t been for the disinfectant in the air. Under the stairs was only a shadow crouching like a large beast, and overhead must be a deserted floor. “Just you and me, Doctor Globe,” he murmured, turning the kitchen doorknob with the handkerchief.

The kitchen was exactly as he’d expected: cold, metallic, as nearly antiseptic as it was possible for a kitchen to be. There wasn’t a speck of dust on the windowsill, nor were there any matches. He scanned the gleaming metal surfaces and the scrubbed pine table for something he could use to carry a flame from the electric stove, then he thought of the letter and strode along the hall, narrowing his eyes at the sunlight. The door to the waiting-room was open just an inch, though he hadn’t pulled it to behind him. When he shoved it with his wrapped hand it didn’t budge.

“Don’t play games with me,” he said. He retreated two paces and drove his shoulder against the door. It shook, and he heard a mumble of vague protest from the other side. “The sooner you let me in, the sooner you won’t feel a thing,” he promised, and launching himself from the far wall, ran at the door. This time his impact dislodged the obstruction, though only long enough for him to stagger into the room before Globe’s head and torso lolled against the door again, the dentist making a blurred sound as if he didn’t want to be roused. “Stay asleep as you are,” the Count said and seizing Globe’s shoulders, hauled him away from the door and rolled him onto his face. He threw the tableful of magazines on top of him and gave them a taste of gas from the blow lamp and was stooping to pick up the letter when, in the room from which the conservatory extended, a woman spoke.

The Count froze, but only for a moment. “You didn’t tell me there was someone else,” he whispered at the dentist. That wasn’t fair to them.” Then the woman fell silent, and he realised she had been a television announcer, because now he could hear music: dum-de-dum, dum-de-dum, diddkydum, diddkydum the Laurel and Hardy theme. Someone must have switched on the television, however. The Count dodged out of the waiting-room and tiptoed across the hall to close his handkerchief around the doorknob.

He turned it minutely, though not quite minutely enough to prevent it from squeaking, and flung the door open, belatedly realising that he still had nothing with which to light the blow lamp Was sufficient gas left in it to overcome someone else? Whoever was in the room must have heard him approaching and hidden behind one of the obese leather chairs, or the television and its mahogany stand, or in the corner obscured by bookshelves displaying as many saintly figurines as books, or in the conservatory full of vines beyond the French windows. “Here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into,” Oliver Hardy growled, and the Count saw that the television was simply monitoring what the video recorder had switched itself on to record.

“You almost did,” he called, marching across the hall to the Laurel and Hardy tune, and grabbed the letter from the carpet while he mopped his forehead with the handkerchief. “I don’t know about you,” he told Globe, ‘but I’m going to need a holiday after this.” He dropped the blow lamp into the briefcase, which he left at the foot of the stairs, then he screwed the letter into a long spill as he hurried back to the kitchen. He should have switched on the stove, he thought, and then he wouldn’t have needed to wait. He switched on the nearest ring and watched it start to grow dull red, and heard a groan from the waiting-room. “Just wait,” he muttered. “I hope you’ve seen this one before. I wouldn’t want to deny anybody a laugh.”

As soon as the ring appeared to be hot enough he pressed the end of the spill against it, but all this achieved was to turn an inch of paper brown. “Why don’t you do something to help me?” Oliver Hardy pleaded. He counted to eleven slowly, then poked the spill at the ring again, and this time the paper caught fire. “Well, I couldn’t help it,” Stan Laurel wailed, and the Count heard another groan. “Coming now,” he said.

He stuffed his handkerchief into his pocket and walked back along the hall, shielding the flame with his free hand. Globe was sprawled under the magazines in the same position as he had been left, and the Count was relieved to think that the dentist wasn’t conscious after all. He pointed the spill downwards to set more of it alight, then shared its flame with the magazines on Globe’s body before dropping the blazing spill against his nose. “Whoomph,” he agreed with the sound it made then. Averting his eyes and covering his mouth and nose with the handkerchief, he stepped quickly into the hall and picked up the briefcase as he headed for the front door.

A burst of applause and cheering greeted him. “Thank you,” he said. He returned the handkerchief to his pocket, having shut the door and the gate, and lingered at the edge of a football match for a few minutes. He was watching the dentist’s house, but there was no sign of movement beyond the net curtains. “Nearly done,” he murmured as he strolled back to the van.

Halfway through Thursday morning Janys managed to persuade Tommy that he would like a nap. He’d begun the day by demonstrating that a poached egg was no longer his favourite breakfast except for throwing at the kitchen wall, where it had hung for a moment like a picture he might have made of the sun in a cloud. When she’d put him in the playpen he had only wanted to fling his alphabet bricks over the bars and had started to whinge because she wouldn’t keep returning them to him, and as soon as she had picked him up he’d commenced howling and bending himself backwards as he often had as a baby when she was giving him the breast and calling him her little suckling pig. She’d tried leaving him in front of the television, a course she only ever followed as a last resort, but he’d kept playing with the controls until she’d had to trap him in his high chair while she attempted to sort out ingredients for his birthday cake. “You’ll be lucky if you live to see another birthday at this rate,” she’d said after a few minutes of his tantrum in the chair, and had carried him upstairs to his cot despite his protests. Once he was behind bars again he’d tried at once to climb over, and so she’d stroked his hair and sung him a lullaby she used to like her mother to sing to her even when Janys had supposedly been too old for it: