The Influence (31 page)

The whole room did, and the house. They seemed to rot away instantly, letting the dark rush in. It felt like utter blindness, but worse too: it felt like a threat of rottenness you might smell if you even stirred and disturbed the total stillness, rottenness that would come creeping from all sides if you betrayed that you were there. That was yourself, or all of yourself that you’d left behind, outside this oasis of peace that was the nearest you could come to the state of not existing. Was this how Queenie had felt when she hadn’t been able to find her father, or was it why she hadn’t dared to search, to reach into the dark? The question was enough to brighten Alison’s mind and give her back her blinded senses: she wasn’t dead yet, she couldn’t be supported by nothing but darkness. The endless dark withdrew into the old eyes, and the room took shape vaguely in the blackness that was only winter gloom after all.

She thought she knew what to say. “Queenie, that didn’t frighten me either, and you mustn’t let it frighten you. There must be something more than that. Surely you’ve still got the strength to find out what it is.”

“No, I won’t.” The child’s voice shook with wilfulness, or perhaps with secret fear. “Nobody can make me. Just be grateful that things are no worse.”

She meant that Rowan had been able to come back, but she was ignoring how vulnerable Rowan was, far more so than herself, to that waiting dark. In a moment Alison felt ablaze with horror and rage and grief. “Come and take her. You brought her up to be like this,” she cried at the dark in case she might be heard, and flung the locket away from her so violently it shattered the window. Yet when she seized the child she thought at first that she was being almost gentle as her hands closed around the slim soft neck.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Once Jo had given Derek her message she seemed not to know what to do. She trailed after him while he went to tell the deputy headmistress that he had almost finished and was going home for a few minutes, and then she followed him to the car. He slung his toolbox in the trunk and knew instinctively that the engine wouldn’t start at once, not when the day was suddenly so cold under the blackened sky. It might be quicker to hurry along the promenade, and he did.

The low sky squeezed a glow out of the tall pale nursing homes that overlooked the dunes. Many of the rooms were lit, but their light didn’t reach far. Above the huddled dunes the sharp grass looked like scrapes on the dark air. Derek felt as if the dark were mud, especially since Jo was panting to keep up and making him feel bound to slow down for her. “If there’s anything I can do…” she panted.

He had to feel grateful, though the interruption had hardly been worth slowing for. “I don’t know yet, do I,” he said, trying to keep his voice neutral, as if that might make his fears unnecessary. He could see the pebbledashed house ahead, and it looked somehow wrong, a huge rock covered with pebbles and the shells of parasites, upheaved under the black sky. “What do you think you can do?”

“I’ll take Rowan again if you like. Alison was shouting at her after she took her away.”

“You shout at your own sometimes, don’t you?” A sense that she might be leaving as much unsaid as he was made him even more nervous. “You didn’t come and get me just because of that.”

“It sounded as if they were at the top of the house.”

“For Christ’s sake, Jo, if you’ve got something to tell me—” He faltered, the chill of the concrete promenade striking up through his shoes at once. He could see what was wrong with the house—what Jo had left unsaid. “I thought I heard that,” she told him.

One pane of Queenie’s window was broken. Alison and Rowan must be in that room, beyond the window that gaped among the chimneys and stony protrusions like monuments in a graveyard. Under the doused sky the rectangle of window looked black as an upended grave. His rewiring had been no use, he thought in the midst of a larger dismay he was afraid to comprehend. He lurched off the promenade and onto the dunes, towards the house.

Sand fitted itself to his shoes. Where he had to struggle upward, his efforts sank his feet deeper. He dragged himself free with handfuls of grass, tearing blades out by their roots. At last, prickly with sweat and desperation, he reached the solid pavement that seemed to spring him toward the house. He was digging the key into the lock when Jo arrived, red-faced and pressing her chest with one hand, at the gate. The idea of her seeing what was wrong as soon as he did appalled him. “I know where you are if we need you,” he called, almost snarling, and let himself into the house.

He closed the door so carefully behind him that though his ears were ringing with the strain of trying to hear whatever was to be heard, it seemed to make no noise. The house was so stuffed with darkness that all sound was choked. He ventured forward between the walls that unfurled dimly as he passed, and was opening his mouth to shout to Alison, already hearing how enraged his fears would make him sound, when he heard her voice at the top of the house. “Rowan,” she was pleading.

He drew a shaky breath and closed his mouth. She sounded desperate, and he was afraid to learn why, more afraid than he had ever been in his life. He paced to the end of the hall and gazed up, and heard Alison say Rowan’s name again like a prayer. He began to climb, and might have prayed himself if he had dared think what he would be praying not to have happened at the top of the house.

Before he reached that floor he was having to grope over the new plaster, which was so cold and smooth it felt aloof, as if he had no place here. The darkness made his senses more acute, and he heard how Alison’s voice broke as she repeated Rowan’s name. Even if he’d dared to call out now, his throat was too tight to let him speak.

He had to force himself to step into the top corridor. He was terrified to find out why Rowan hadn’t made a sound since he had entered the house. When a board creaked beneath him, he flinched and froze there, one foot raised—and then Alison pleaded “Rowan, come on” beyond the door. However much noise he might have made on his way up, it seemed she would have been too preoccupied to hear. All he could do was pace to the door of Queenie’s room and push it open.

Alison was kneeling on the bare floor near the window. One arm cradled Rowan’s shoulders while she stroked the child’s forehead and peered at her closed eyes in the faint light that seeped out of the sky. Nothing else moved except her hair and Rowan’s as a thin chill breeze whined at the broken window. “Rowan?” she said with a kind of hopeless gentleness, her voice rising and breaking. “Rowan?”

Derek stumbled into the room. “Ali, what—what’s happened?”

He couldn’t quite bring himself to ask what she’d done, but her expression when she looked at him told him that he might as well have asked. Her mouth was trembling wordlessly, her eyes sparkled darkly with tears. He should have taken more care of her and Rowan, he thought numbly: he should have known sooner that things were going wrong between them. When he trudged forward, Alison clutched Rowan to her as if he meant to take the child.

He tried to tell her with his eyes that she could rely on him, not to dodge away from him as he was afraid she meant to, though he felt as if he might begin at any moment to shiver uncontrollably. Everything dismayed him, even the dark at the window; the window seemed more like the mouth of a tunnel. He fell to his knees beside Alison and held out his hands to her. She mustn’t close him out now, that would be worst of all. Surely she would either take his hands or give him the child, and couldn’t she be mistaken in her hopelessness even if she was a nurse?

She didn’t take his hands, but she leaned towards him as if she were giving way under her burden. He’d support her whatever she’d done, he vowed, because he loved her and because it must be his fault too. He wished they had never come to this uncaring house; it had helped cut them off from each other. Then Alison jerked away from him.

“Don’t, Ali,” he pleaded, but she didn’t hear him. She was gazing into Rowan’s face, lifting the child’s head and stroking her hair that shivered in the chill wind. The tunnel whose mouth was the window seemed longer and darker than ever. The pale blur hovering out there must be a bird, like a vulture, he thought agonisingly. He hadn’t time to look, he must get through to Alison, even if it meant acknowledging that the movement she imagined she’d sensed had only been the wind in Rowan’s hair. “Ali,” he murmured, “look at me, love, I’m here,” his body growing tense when her gaze didn’t leave Rowan’s face, which looked more still than sleep. He would have to let out the cry that was gathering inside him, because otherwise he would seize Rowan, anything to break the spell of not admitting the worst. He reached out again, his legs trembling with cramp. “She’s my child too,” he was going to cry out, and he had no idea what would happen when he did.

Then he heard a whisper. “It’s all right,” it said, and he froze despite the pain in his legs. It was Rowan’s voice.

He thought it was only in his head, even when Alison stooped closer to Rowan, cradling her head and kissing her closed eyes, murmuring her name urgently. “Don’t, Ali,” he muttered, desperate to stop her before his heart broke at the sight of her forlorn hope, “can’t you see—” And then Rowan’s eyelids fluttered, and she blinked up at her mother as though she was unable to focus. “I’m all right, mummy,” she said.

Alison reared up, almost dropping the child. She was drawing back, but only to be sure what she was seeing. She gazed at Rowan’s uncertain smile and cloudy eyes, then she hugged her so tight Derek was afraid she would bruise her. “Oh, Rowan,” she said shakily, “Don’t ever make me feel like that again.”

“Don’t worry, mummy, I never will,” Rowan promised, and the two of them burst out laughing and weeping as they clung to each other. They seemed hardly to notice when Derek struggled to his feet, rubbing his thighs. He couldn’t help resenting having been made to suffer such anxiety for apparently no reason—or were they trying to convince him there hadn’t been one? A movement at the window drew his gaze there, just as the pale watching shape dwindled out of sight down the tunnel that he could see now was the sunless sky. He’d never known a bird to be so swift, but the broken window was more important than a bird, and needed explaining. “Is someone going to tell me what’s been happening?” he demanded.

The two of them looked up at him. Rowan got to her feet as if she had to remember how, stretching out her hand until he helped her up. She closed her eyes and nestled against him. She hadn’t for months, he realised, and felt she was thinking that too. “It was Vicky,” she said slowly. “She’s gone now. She won’t come back.”

He stared at Alison as she wavered to her feet. “What was?”

“The window,” Rowan told him. “She broke it when mummy said I mustn’t see her again, and then she pushed me over so hard I bumped my head, and then she ran away.”

He was still waiting for Alison to speak. “I don’t get any of this,” he said. “Jo came to tell me you’d got Rowan. We couldn’t understand why you’d come home from work.”

She glanced at Rowan, and an understanding that he couldn’t grasp seemed to flash between them before she looked at him. “I saw Vicky hanging round near here when I was on my way to the hospital. I knew she’d be trying to approach Rowan again, which I don’t think you’d have wanted either, and so I came back.” Her voice was almost steady now, and so was the plea in her eyes. “Besides, it was time to have it out with Rowan about her.”

“And while we were talking Vicky came and wouldn’t go until mummy made her,” Rowan said. “She was why I’ve been so nasty all these weeks. She kept being with me and you never knew. There’s just me now, though. You still love me, don’t you?”

“Of course we do, babe.” Yet he felt that questions he should ask were slipping away from him in the dimness. “Where does the little bitch live?”

“I can’t tell you, daddy. I never knew. I’ll tell you if ever I see her again, but I’m sure I won’t.” She lifted her face and gave him a wide-eyed look he couldn’t glance away from. “Aren’t you going to cuddle mummy as well?”

Questions squirmed in his head, but they seemed shameful now she was gazing at him. He took a long breath and gave up. If Rowan trusted her mother as she obviously did, how could he do otherwise? He reached for Alison almost blindly. “Come here, Ali, if you can still put up with me. I don’t know what went wrong with us.”

“Vicky did,” Alison said fiercely and, leaning against him as if she were near to fainting, put her arms around him and Rowan. They stayed like that long enough for a knife-edge of blue sky to lever up the lid of cloud across the bay. As the room began to lighten he looked down at Rowan, and was still searching for an injury when she glanced up at him. “Daddy, will you let me come and watch you work again sometimes? I won’t be in any danger really, will I?”

More than anything else, that made him feel she was herself again. “I wouldn’t ever let you or mummy be.”

“You’ll have another job to do when you’ve finished at the school,” Alison said unevenly, hugging them tighter than ever. “I’m afraid the lights on this floor have gone up the spout again.” She shuddered, and at first he didn’t realise she was laughing, so helplessly she had to struggle to make a sound. The sky opened above the sea, and Rowan started giggling too. The afternoon light seemed to reach for them, and Derek relinquished the last of his unanswered questions. Without the least idea why or any need to know, he began to laugh until he cried.

Epilogue

They moved on a Saturday in May. Rowan went to the edge of the dunes for a last look while the men were loading the furniture into the van. Shoals of sunlight basked on the rippling water beneath the cloudless sky. Wales stretched along half the horizon, a green serpent scaly with cottages. Ships seemed to sail past only inches from the dunes, and their names felt like voyages to her:
Tamathal
,
Knud Tholstrup
,
Essi Silje
,
Atlantic Compass
… A Russian ship with several of the letters in its name turned backwards glided by, and she remembered the endless night in Wales, when she had been unable to read anything. She hurried back to her mother and father, away from the whisper of sea and windblown sand.