The Immaculate (16 page)

He turned back once, mouthed “Bye” again, then stepped outside, closing the door firmly. The sun was a sheet of brilliant light on his face, blinding him. He shuddered despite the heat and began to stride away from the house, in the direction of Beckford's tiny station. From there he would catch a local two-carriage train to Leeds, and then change to one of the sleek never-ending Inter Cities. Jack had never been to London before; he felt as apprehensive as he had felt on his first day at secondary school when he'd been eleven. But he felt a squirmy kind of excitement, too, and a sense of unreality at the prospect of walking down streets whose names he knew from films or the news or through playing Monopoly with his Aunt. Oxford Street, Carnaby Street, Trafalgar Square, King's Cross. When he boarded the train for Leeds half an hour later, his heart was sprinting, his stomach churning, his mouth dry, but he was determined, too. Whatever happened, there would be no chickening out, no running back home with his tail between his legs.

Sitting in his Mini Cooper, thirty-three-year-old Jack Stone allowed himself a faint smile. He now found it inconceivable that he and that naive eighteen-year-old boy were the same person, and yet the events of that day and the many years that had preceded it still affected him deeply. It was the most intrinsic part of his makeup, that other life, it was the foundation—indeed, the driving force—behind all he had achieved. Even now his throat was dry, his hands clenched too tightly on the steering wheel. He felt his memories sinking, a solid dull mass like a floating tumour. As if his thoughts had conjured it, a signpost rose from the grass verge as he swept over the brow of a hill. Its ominous message was:
BECKFORD
6. Jack followed its pointing finger to the right.

As he neared Beckford and landmarks started to appear, Jack began to feel a vague, almost detached sense of apprehension, as if the water tower looming on his right, the black ruin of a castle, like a jagged stump of tooth, on the hill to his left, were images from a recurring dream. He cleared his throat, which felt lined with sand. The steering wheel felt either slippery with sweat or tacky as flypaper depending on where he put his hands. At each mile a signpost appeared as if some sinister countdown were under way. As his apprehension grew, Jack began to feel as if Beckford were drawing him in. If he tried to turn the wheel now, to head back to London, he felt sure it would not respond; the car would keep moving unerringly forward. So convinced was he of this that he sat rigid in his seat, reluctant to test his theory even by easing the wheel a little to the left or right.

Farmhouses began to appear more frequently in the fields on both sides, squared-off masses of dark stone like the roughly sculpted bodies of vast insects whose legs were the dry-stone walls that separated one crop from the next. Jack crested a hill and suddenly there was Beckford. The most prominent landmark was the slate blade of the church spire jutting from a prickly mass of stone interlaced with the grey threads of streets. Jack could see two areas of green within the grey, like irregularly shaped postage stamps: the park and the allotments that bordered the Stanmores. He saw the railway station, its track stretching away on both sides like a stitched-up scar, and some new houses whose roofs were as red as raw steak. He strained his eyes to see his father's house on the far side, but the dense green mass of woods that rose up beyond the village swallowed the track, concealing the buildings beyond.

“Home sweet home,” he murmured and tried to laugh. He didn't much like the sound he made. All at once he realised that he had stopped the car, that he was holding it on the foot brake in the middle of the road just beyond the brow of the hill. “Not clever,” he told himself, put the car in neutral and released the brake, allowing himself to roll. The panoramic view of Beckford sank behind the first of its buildings. When he reached the flat ground, Jack put the car into second and touched the accelerator.

Driving through the centre of the village was like a dream, like finding himself in one of his memories; it was amazing how little had changed. The Union Jack still flapped above the Connaught like a stubborn reminder of the past, and even many of the storefronts seemed the same. Jack was almost relieved when he passed the glass and plastic facade of a video store, and then a little further on a Chinese takeaway with a garish yellow sign that bore the proud legend, TOP WOK. He almost expected people to turn and stare at him as he drove past, but nobody seemed to pay him the slightest attention.

He felt nervous all over again when he drew near to his aunt's house, and almost drove straight past it until he realised it was hiding behind a mask of ivy. She must have planted that soon after he had left. He remembered her door—now white—being blue, but the leaded window was the same.

He pulled up at the kerb outside, obscurely glad that the house looked different; it seemed somehow to prove that time had moved on, that things had changed, significantly and irrevocably. He removed his spectacles, got out of the car and turned to close and lock the door. When he turned back, the front door of the house was open and a woman was standing on the front step, arms folded, watching him. She was thin, grey-haired, sombre-faced. Jack smiled at her uncertainly, wondering whether he had got the wrong house after all.

It was only when she smiled back that Jack realised with a shock that the woman was his Aunt Georgina. But she was so thin and old! Her flesh was wrinkled and sagging, as if the aunt he had known had been partially deflated and her hair scattered with dust. He felt a lump rise to his throat—he'd been vaguely aware, of course, that she was now in her mid-seventies, but he hadn't expected this. Last time he had seen her his eyes had filled with tears, and now, for different reasons, the same thing was happening.

“Hello, Jack,” she said, and he was relieved to find her voice was strong and imperious as ever. “How are you?”

“I'm . . . I'm fine, Aunt. . . . Very well,” he struggled to say.

“You've put on weight.”

He laughed. “You've lost some.”

She laughed, too, and immediately Jack felt a surge of love, the intensity of which surprised him. He pushed open the gate, marched up the path and flung his arms around her. “I've missed you,” he told her. “It really is good to see you again. . . .” He wanted to say more but emotion choked his words.

She patted him on the back, turned her head and planted a kiss on his cheek.

“Welcome home, Jack,” she said.

The tabby cat that the boys had just stoned to death belonged to Mrs. Akhurst, Carl Priestley's next door neighbour. Mrs. Akhurst was in her seventies and arthritic, and she doted on her little Georgie.

Sometimes Carl heard her talking to the cat in the backyard as she hung up her washing; because of her hands, hanging up washing was a long and tortuous procedure for the old lady. Some of the things she said made him want to either puke or laugh or both: “How's my little Georgie Porgy Pudding n' Pie?” “Does Georgie want Mummy to get him his dinnums?” “What has my little Georgie been doing today? I hope he hasn't been chasing those nice little birdies again.”

But despite his contempt for the way she spoke to the animal, Carl felt bad about actually killing it. Even the fact that it had not been his idea didn't make him feel any better. As usual, it had been Patty who'd initiated events. It was always Patty who led the lads one step further than most of them were really prepared to go. They were now standing in the bumpy dogshit-covered field that backed the houses along Carl's street, Patty nudging the pathetic little corpse with his foot. The rest of the lads—Guy, Wally, Ossie and himself, were joking around. Carl believed that he was not the only one hiding a sense of shame beneath an outward exhibition of raucous good humour.

The thing was, Mrs. Akhurst was old and lonely and Georgie was—had been—her only friend. And just because Patty was bored, just because Patty was feeling mean (when
wasn't
he feeling mean?) . . . Carl's stomach felt hollow. Shame was too feeble a word for the way he felt.

They were skiving off school as usual. They had decided to come to Carl's house because his parents were out, and because Carl had an awesome collection of dirty books. Carl's father owned Priestley's Newsagent's on Bridgewater Road. Kids were always nicking sweets and magazines, and it was easy for Carl to add to his collection without the slightest suspicion ever falling on him.

They had been sitting at the edge of the field, drinking Coke and goggling at the latest
Penthouse
when the cat slunk into view. Without even thinking about it, simply because it was part of his makeup, Patty picked up a chunk of dark-grey slate that was lying close at hand and flung it in the cat's general direction.

That might have been the end of it if the slate had not struck the cat's hindquarters. Its yowl of pain was music to Patty's ears. Thrusting the
Penthouse
into Ossie's eager hands, he stood up, eyes gleaming in a way that always made Carl feel both scared and excited.

“Fucking bull's eye!” he cried. “Did you see that? What a fucking shot!”

Quickly he began to range about, looking for more missiles. Wally, who was not exactly renowned for his intelligence, said, “What you doin', Patty?”

“What's it fucking look like, arsehole? We're gonna have a competition. It's called Splattering the Cat's Brains.”

Wally sniggered. The battalion of yellow-tipped spots that had claimed his face as its territory did not make him the most attractive fifteen-year-old in Beckford, but he looked even uglier when he laughed.

Ossie was holding the
Penthouse
up close to his face, as if believing he could somehow slip through the glossy two-dimensional barrier and wallow in the soft, scented reality of naked female flesh. Guy, a squat, broad-shouldered troll of a boy, was picking his nose and secretly flicking the boogers at the back of Wally's head.

Carl recognised the cat at once. Amused as he was by the way it had yowled and leaped into the air, he didn't really want things to go much further.

“Aw, that's boring,” he said. “Let's go to the rec and play football.”

“We will,” said Patty. “After we've done this. Come on, you lot, help us look for some more bricks.”

The boys did as Patty asked, Carl half-heartedly. He wished the stupid cat would just piss off, but it was frolicking about in the long grass, amusing itself, its recent pain forgotten.

A few minutes later the boys had accrued a fair pile of missiles. This field had been intended as a play area for the local children, but it was so full of shit and glass and stones and rubbish that no one ever played on it; it was safer kicking a ball about on the street.

Patty picked up a scarred chunk of house-brick. “Right,” he said, “I'll go first.”

“What's the rules?” asked Wally.

Patty gave him a pitying look. “To hit the fucking thing,” he said sarcastically.

“Why?” asked Ossie. He had tossed the
Penthouse
into the long grass and was hoping Carl would forget about it. He wanted to come back for it later.

Patty rolled his eyes. “ 'Cos it's a laugh,” he said. “Fucking hell. Talk about brain dead.” He drew back his arm and lobbed the brick. It missed the cat by a good three feet. Georgie's head snapped up, ears pricked and alert. Carl urged the cat to flee, but it had been mollycoddled all its life and seemed not to recognise the prospect of danger. After a few seconds it began prowling through the grass again, hunting or playing or whatever it was up to.

For the next ten minutes or so, the boys hurled missiles without success, Carl throwing deliberately wide each time. As the pile of missiles sank lower and lower, Patty became more and more irate.

Finally, Guy said, “This is a fucking waste of time. Come on, Patty, let's play darts instead.”

The boys had their own special version of darts. They would catch an insect, normally either a spider or a crane fly, sellotape it by its legs to the dart board, and then try to impale it.

“Fuck off,” Patty snarled. “I'm gonna get that fucking cat if it's the last thing I do.”

“What's the point?” said Ossie. A moment later he was blinking in pained surprise, as Patty whirled and shoved him so forcefully that he sat down hard on the grass.

Patty turned back and pointed at something in the long grass. “Here, Guy,” he said, “give us that.”

Grinning at Ossie, who was scowling and rubbing his chest, Guy picked up the object and passed it to Patty.

Patty hefted the object in his hand, nodded in satisfaction. It was a rusty length of car exhaust. “Stay here,” he said and began to creep towards the cat. He moved carefully, slowly, half hunched over, reminding Carl of the aboriginal hunter in a film he'd seen about two kids in the desert. He couldn't remember all that much about the film, except that the girl had swum naked in a lake and he'd been able to see her pubic hair.

Not that Patty needed to tread carefully, Carl thought. Georgie the cat was so trusting that if Patty had marched up playing a trumpet the stupid animal would probably have just curled itself around his legs, demanding to be stroked. When Patty was right over the cat, he grinned savagely back at the boys, then raised the length of rusty metal above his head. Carl wanted to shout for him to stop but he bit his lip. When the blow fell, Carl closed his eyes. He couldn't close his ears, though. His stomach lurched at the cat's screech of pain.

“That should slow it down a bit,” Patty said, lolloping back toward them. It did. It slowed Georgie down to crawling pace. A couple of minutes later the cat's wails of agony were silenced for good.

“Hey, lads,” Patty called now from across the field, “come and have a look at this. You can see its intestines.”