The Influence (9 page)

A three-year-old was crying because she couldn’t scratch her arm through the plaster cast when Derek phoned the ward. “The Southport job’s a bugger. I won’t be home until nine at least. Jo says she’ll take Rowan home from school.”

“All right, love,” Alison said as the three-year-old began to cry harder. “Would you like to see what’s wrong?” she suggested to the student nurses who were sharing a surreptitious cigarette in the corridor.

Both of them stared at her. “It’ll be the same as last time,” Libby said. “She’ll have to get used to being here without her mam.”

Alison took her time about replacing the receiver, but couldn’t think of anything to say. A kind of indifference was part of the process you had to go through in order to work as a nurse, growing used to suffering even when it wasn’t yours—if you felt everything the children felt you would be in no state to help them—but Libby and Jasmine seemed less detached than apathetic. She knew that even if they qualified they might well find themselves back on the dole, but how could they be so uncaring? Admittedly the ward sister wasn’t much of a model, trying out her tetchiness and indolence for when she retired in five years, glad to have parents stay with their children so that they could look after other children in the ward. At least the nursing auxiliaries had children themselves and tried to treat the patients like their own, but if Rowan ever had to go into the hospital, Alison hoped the child wouldn’t be in this ward.

You had to take care that the system didn’t infect you with its coldness, that the size of the hospital and the meagreness of its staff didn’t overwhelm you. The ideals you had when you started work gave way to reality, but surely that was preferable to Queenie’s way, withdrawing from the world so as to compliment yourself on preserving your ideals. You mightn’t be able to change the world, but you couldn’t tell how much of the world just doing your best might reach.

One of the auxiliaries was quieting the three-year-old by reading her a story. Alison made her way through the ward, writing on clipboards, holding small hands, listening to confidences, murmuring reassurances. She kept her widest smile for the little boy whose parents had locked him in their flat with a television that had caught fire while they were at the pub. Too many parents treated their children like property, and few neighbors were willing to intervene. The thought of intervention roused the doubt that had been dozing in her mind all day. She was wondering what Lance wanted with her child.

The will didn’t mention Rowan. Perhaps Hermione had misheard him, the way he mumbled in his beard. Alison had only been able to reach his father, and she wished she hadn’t told Richard so much; he’d sounded as if she had confirmed his fears. Surely if Lance had designs on Rowan he would hardly have tried to contact Alison, but what could be so important that he had overcome his shyness?

When the next shift came on, so many children wanted to say goodbye to her that she had to run to the bus station. Perhaps Lance would have left her a message, she thought, but all the messages on the tape were for Derek. The shrunken voices seemed to echo in the house now that her parents had gone home. She mustn’t mind that they’d spent longer with Hermione than with her; Hermione needed them more than she did, just as she needed to feel protective of Alison to distract herself from her own fears: Alison had known that ever since she could remember. They would all be here for Christmas—the house would hardly be sold by then—and perhaps that would help make up to Rowan for not staying. Alison strolled across the road to collect her.

Jo was leafing through mail-order catalogues and watching a soap opera. “I told her she can stay for tea if she likes. Patty’s taken them all on the beach.”

Patty was Jo’s teenage daughter. “I’ll just tell Rowan I’m home,” Alison said, and made for the promenade. Breezes stroked her face and stirred the spiky grass that crowned the dunes, yachts swayed on the marina by the docks and the radar station. She stepped onto the concrete walk beyond the dunes and saw that Jo’s three were the only children in sight on the narrow beach.

She ran down the steps to the sand. The two younger children were nudging Patty and whispering. “Where’s Rowan?” Alison demanded.

Patty turned defiantly, earrings jangling, penciled eyebrows high. “Her friend took her away,” she said.

Chapter Ten

Dear diary, I like my new school becose everyone is frendly and the teacher is nice and were aloud to write our own things sometimes, like now I can write my diary. Soon our class is going to take assembely and I’ll be a loanly old lady, thats if were still living in the big house…

Rowan bit the end of her pencil. She had nearly written that she hoped they would live there for ever. It must be hard for mummy and daddy as well, to have to move again so soon, but now that the man who owed them so much money was paying up, mightn’t they be able to stay? She missed her friends from Liverpool, but perhaps one of her parents would soon have time to take her in the car to visit them. She drew the house with all its windows lit and ships sailing by under the moon, the way she imagined them when she heard them from her bed, then she coloured in the windows, different colours for different rooms. When she coloured the top floor she thought of sleepwalking up there. Mummy said she must have done that because of all the upset, but in that case, shouldn’t they avoid the upset of moving again? No, that was selfish. Mummy and daddy had enough problems. She ought to help by being grown-up.

After school she went into the schoolyard determined not to let her father even suspect what she was hoping. She needn’t have made the effort; Jo was waiting instead. “Your daddy’s busy, chick. You come home with me and we’ll see if there’s some sweeties.”

“Don’t give her more than me like you did last time,” said Mary, who was in Rowan’s class but who seemed younger than her. Little Paul, who was in the nursery class, said “Sweeties, yum.” He ran ahead on the way home, until Jo smacked him when she’d had enough of running after him. He was still howling when they reached Jo’s, a sound as sad as the For Sale sign outside the big house that looked almost inconsolable to Rowan, like a child so big and ugly nobody would play with it. Jo let the three of them into her house and hung up their schoolbags before herding them into the kitchen. “Now, what have I got for little people who aren’t giving me a headache?”

Paul stopped crying at once, and Mary said “Don’t give her more than me.”

“You can have the most if you like,” Rowan said.

“You’ll neither of you get any if you start arguing.” Jo hurried to the foot of the stairs, her backless sandals flapping. “Patty, just take these on the beach until teatime, will you? They’re squabbling over sweets and giving me a headache.”

Patty stumped reluctantly downstairs, a trace of cigarette smoke looming in her nostrils. “I’m not feeling well, mam, and I’m doing my homework.”

“You can do that later, can’t you? You won’t be out dancing if it’s your time of the month. Just take them for an hour like you used to and see they don’t get into mischief.”

Patty took the bag of sweets from the top of a wall cupboard. “See you all behave yourselves or you’ll get none.”

By now Rowan didn’t want any. She would have liked to walk to the marina and watch the sleepy yachts, but Patty didn’t want to go so far from the house and Paul might have fallen in. Paul and Mary argued about the plastic buckets for a while, and when Mary insisted the red one was hers he kicked her castle down. Rowan offered to take him to the water’s edge and show him how to dig a stream, but Patty said he had to stay near her. Feeling small and unwanted, Rowan wandered away from the others to gaze across the bay.

The Welsh coast was quivering with heat. It seemed to gather itself and surge forward into the swarm of light that was the bay. Rowan often closed her eyes so as to open them and make everything look new, but now she had to close them to keep the light from swarming inside her head. She opened them a crack, and found that she must have been gazing straight at someone and unable to see her for the dazzle: a figure in white.

For a moment that was all she could see, in the midst of a blankness too bright for her eyes. She couldn’t even hear the waves. I don’t like this, she thought, wondering what the heat had done to her now. Then the figure turned to her, and the sound of the waves rushed into her ears, the bay and the sky and the beach flooded back into focus as the girl came toward her across the sand.

It was Vicky, the girl she’d met in Wales. Around her neck and over her dress, which looked exactly like the one she’d worn before, hung an old pair of binoculars. She halted a few steps away from the water, her pale eyes inviting Rowan to go to her, her small mouth smiling. “I promised I’d see you again, didn’t I? I’ve seen you when you didn’t see me. I brought these for you, but I didn’t think you’d be with dirty children. We don’t want them sullying our glasses.”

“I had to come with Patty because my mummy and daddy are at work. I only have to stay near.”

“You’ll see better from the dunes,” Vicky said and, lifting the strap over her head, handed her the binoculars. Rowan was trying to focus them when Paul scampered up. “Me look through those,” he demanded.

“You’re too little, Paul. You might break them,” Rowan said.

He began to howl at once, and Patty limped over, groaning. “He was happy playing and now you’ve upset him. What did you say to him? Where did you get those?”

“My friend gave them to me,” Rowan said angrily, for Patty had made her sound like a thief. “I only said he was too young for them.”

“Which friend?” Patty said, then shrugged off the question impatiently. “Just you let him have a turn. I’ll see he doesn’t wreck them. He’s giving me a headache, do you mind? If you don’t stop tormenting him I’m telling our mam.”

Mary ran to them, pulling at her knickers that had stuck in her bottom. “I want a look too.”

Paul wiped his nose on the back on his hand and the back of his hand on his trousers, and Rowan was painfully ashamed to be seen with him and his sisters. She glanced about for Vicky and saw her watching from the edge of the dunes. She was pointing at the binoculars, nodding for Rowan to give them to Paul. Her smile was so wicked that Rowan hesitated until Mary said “She’s selfish, her, just because she lives in a posh house.”

Rowan lifted the strap over her head, feeling guiltily excited, and hung the binoculars around Paul’s neck. “Get hold of them, can’t you?” Patty shouted when he began to complain about their weight. He looked at his feet through them and almost fell over, scanned the bay and said “Ow” at the light, and then he turned to look at his house. Suddenly he flung the binoculars away from him, so violently that Rowan feared the strap would break, and huddled against Patty. “Give those back,” Rowan cried. “You could have smashed them.”

He almost threw the binoculars at her. “Some girl with a long face frikened me,” he whined. “She made her eyes look horrible.”

Rowan was retreating towards the dunes and trying not to laugh when Patty shouted “You’re not to go up there. My mam said you had to stay with me.”

“No, she didn’t,” Rowan said. “She said not to get into mischief, and I already know not to do that, thank you. I’m only going on the dunes for a better view.”

“You stay where you’re told,” Patty ordered, a cigarette hoarseness tearing at her voice, and came limping after her. Rowan ran up the steps and across the sandy concrete of the promenade, and heard Vicky’s whisper: “Here.”

As Rowan scrambled over the dune to her, Patty reached the top of the steps, her face ugly with discomfort. “They won’t find us,” Vicky said. Rowan crouched down, feeling hot and angry, her heart racing. She heard Patty approaching, yelling threats to make her show herself, and then her ragged voice and the complaints of the younger ones swung away across the dunes. “I said I’d hide you,” Vicky said. “You can trust me.”

Rowan wished she could be just like her, with her spotless white dress, her bare feet sparkling with sand, her long face smooth as marble, her small features that Rowan saw were perfectly symmetrical. She seemed as unlike Patty and the others as it was possible for anyone to be. Patty gave a distant squawk, and then there was silence, not even the sound of the waves. Rowan flashed Vicky a wry smile that meant to say Patty was nothing to do with them, but Vicky gave her an unreceptive look. “You’ll be like that soon enough.”

“I will not,” Rowan said indignantly. “What do you mean?”

Vicky’s face tightened with disgust, and she lowered her voice. “Bleeding.”

“All girls and ladies do that,” Rowan said, feeling unexpectedly superior.

“You won’t be so proud of yourself when it happens to you. You’ll feel sick and filthy and ashamed of yourself. You saw how that girl looked.”

“My mummy says it’s natural, part of growing up.”

“The older people get, the more lies they tell.”

“My mummy doesn’t, so don’t you say she does.”

“Are you sure about that? I saw that your house is for sale. Did she let you think it was your home now?”

“Even if she did, that isn’t lying,” Rowan said, but it felt as if it was.

“And your father promised to buy you a telescope, but you had to wait for me to bring you these instead.”

“How about your father? Does he tell lies too?”

All at once the pale eyes were blank as old coins, and so glaring that Rowan was afraid to speak. She swallowed dryly and touched the binoculars. “Did you really bring these for me?”