The Wilful Eye (26 page)

But I was looking at the name on the window.

‘Robbins Books,' I read aloud. ‘Same as the name of the street. I wonder if it's any relation to that Mr Robbins who used to teach us in primary school. He loved reading to us, remember? He loved books.'

‘All teachers love books,' Ivan declared. ‘Or they ought to. Look! There's an ancient copy of
The Coral Island
. Bit tatty. Still I wouldn't mind reading it again.'

‘All the books in this window look tatty,' I said. ‘Hey, come on, Ivan, let's get back to the mall. Brook might be there by now. He'll be mad if we've kept him waiting.'

‘It's him who's kept us waiting, Babe,' Ivan said. ‘It's his fault we're still wandering around in the wilds of the city.'
Exactly,
I thought as we moved back to the brighter lights of Forest Road. ‘I hope he's there. It's so dark – as if all the lights are just there to make other places seem darker.'

We were passing a corner. Another narrow alley opened off the main street . . . dark, dark, dark . . . though off in the distance there were stepping stones of light, and a sort of rhythmic movement as if the shadows were dancing to music only they could hear.

‘Weird!' I agreed. ‘Weird, Babe!' and, as I spoke, that darkness in front of us writhed and seemed to shrink back a bit. Someone took shape and stepped towards us.

‘Hey! Vannie!' the shadow exclaimed – almost shouted. ‘Where've you been all my life?'

He was tall, this newcomer, with a long, sharp nose and hair straggling around a face I felt increasingly sure I knew. And the name ‘Vannie' spoken in that particular voice brought something back to me. I began to remember the school playground and a boy called Dexter Loop . . . Dex. Dangerous Dex. Dex the Devil! But that was ages ago.

‘Dex,' Ivan said, speaking the name just as I was remembering it, and sounding like me, dismayed perhaps, but only slightly. ‘How's it all going, man?'

I now remembered Dexter Loop as the leader of a gang of boys, all of them fierce, and revelling in their ferocity, ferocity that had become like a sort of freedom for them. Taken singly they were just ordinary kids, probably a lot of them from the Woodlands part of town, but when they got together they became a single thing, a different thing, a wild pack, a fierce, churning complex organism, many voices blending to become one voice, looking eagerly for trouble, wanting to create trouble just for the thrill of it, and inventing some trouble-chorus all its own if it couldn't find any to join.

Dexter was dressed in black, which was why he had been so hard to see at first, there in the shadows of that ill-lit alley, but there was a yellow symbol on his chest. I knew I had never seen it before and yet, for all that, I felt I recognised it. He had a supremely confident air about him, as if Woodlands was entirely his territory and he was in charge of everything that happened there.

‘We run this playground,' the school gang would have declared back then. ‘We're the boss! We're the
wolves
.' And back then, in the beginning, they had concentrated their force on lonely or isolated children, of whom Ivan (I suddenly remembered this) was one, calling him ‘Van' and ‘Vannie' and making tooting sounds as he walked by. Of course the voice of the older Dexter had deepened into a man's voice, but for me it was still filled with that unpleasant power of the past. He stood looking from Ivan to me and back again, smiling, perhaps trying to trick us into thinking he was friendly. Yet at the same time he was snarling his old wolf's snarl. Hard to tell which was which looking up into a face like his. And suddenly I found I was able to make out that shape on his T-shirt. It was a human shape standing, legs spread . . . without a head. And I knew at once that Dexter must have become a Headlopper.

‘What are you doing in this part of town?' he was asking. ‘Not your sort of place, is it, now you're a uni-ver-sity student?' he mocked.

‘Last time I checked, anyone could come here,' Ivan replied.

‘Could be risky,' said Dexter. ‘There's a lot of savage animals in this neck of the woods . . . all looking for
prey
. . .'

As he said this he grabbed my arm and wrenched me back into the darkness of the alley and
howled
. . . howled like a mad wolf, pouring out a sound both violent and vicious and lonely, from somewhere deep within him. He jerked me back again, and from somewhere out in Woodlands, from somewhere close to the pub, I thought, other howlings, fainter but just as menacing, sounded in the night air.

‘Hey!' I heard Ivan's voice as I struggled furiously. ‘Let her go!' Turning my head towards those fingers gripping my shoulder, I took a chance, a lucky one as it turned out. I sank my teeth into Dexter's hand and bit hard. At the same time Ivan found me there in the darkness of that alley and grabbed my free arm, giving an enormous tug. He almost pulled me free. The three of us, Ivan and I pushing frantically against Dexter, struggled there in that dark Woodlands side street. Howling came from Forest Road, but for now it was still two against one. We broke free and began a stumbling run, not back into Forest Road but down that side street towards those distant stepping stones of light.

‘Brook!' I gasped. ‘We must find Brook!'

‘I wouldn't bank on it,' Ivan grunted. ‘I reckon he knew what he was doing.'

He had voiced my own fears. Brook wouldn't have had a definite plan to do away with me, I thought, just a momentary impulse. Just a gamble with the savage possibilities of a Woodlands night. Worth a try.

Tall buildings seemed to lean over us as if they were responding to Dexter's howling. We reached the place where some of the lower windows flooded the footpath with patches of light, but the upper windows remained tightly closed and dark.

I stumbled as I ran, then stumbled again, kicking against a curb that was almost invisible. I felt sure Ivan was right. I found myself living in a fairytale where anything might be possible. Ivan and me – babes in the wood, deserted, lost. And at that moment a chorus of howling voices – the wolf pack, no less – bayed behind us.

‘Go right! There!' Ivan hissed, panting a little.

Dexter must have waited for his wolf pack – his Headloppers – to join him. We had a bit of a start on them. All the same, when they howled again in a ragged chorus, they sounded confident . . . and not too far behind. We spun off to the right into a very dark side street, blank windows, locked doors, big rubbish tins. Behind us the howling rose again. The pack were not exactly at our heels but were certainly hunting us, sure of themselves, sure of this part of the city, which was so peculiarly their own. We had no right to be in Woodlands by night. Well, we'd been aliens from the beginning, but now we had been given another part to play. Now we were to be prey to a savage pack. Now, as we ran, we were inviting pursuit.

But when it came to running we did rather better than the wolves behind us, possibly because they had been drinking like Dexter, and we were stone cold sober and driven by fear, and fear can give you urgent wings. Still they followed us, shouting and howling. It wasn't that we had done anything challenging, but those wolves wanted fun, and their idea of a good time was fun at our expense. I didn't know if they wanted to beat us up, or rob us, or tear us to bits and leave our bleeding remains scattered around Woodlands, or perhaps all three. I only know that Ivan and I were both immediately sure we must not let the pack catch us. It didn't matter that we were blameless. We were babes in the wood all right, natural prey, and night had fallen in the forest. None of the ordinary city rules applied in Woodlands at night time. Night was a time of ferocity, and surrender to ferocity. Behind us that voice howled once more, and then the whole pack howled too, with slathering excitement.

‘Right!' Ivan cried, and we turned right into a street that I knew must lead us back onto Forest Road. There was enough light for me to see the street sign . . . Robbins Lane.

We had only taken a few steps when Ivan caught my arm and pulled me sideways.

‘It's open,' he gasped. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I turned as he turned, stumbling over my feet . . . I think they were my own feet, but our running was mixed-up . . . they might have been Ivan's.

The lights of Robbins Book Shop shone in my face. (I could even pick out that tattered copy of
The Coral Island
), and, sure enough, the door, which had been tightly shut and marked ‘Closed', was certainly open now. Ivan pulled me sideways once more, and we burst into the shop.

The man standing behind the counter, which was loaded with books and newspapers, was indeed the same Mr Robbins who had once taught us at school.

‘Hide us,' Ivan cried, and once again the howling of the wolf pack sounded outside. ‘They're after us.'

Then a wonderful thing happened. Mr Robbins didn't question us in any way, didn't hesitate. He simply pointed at a deep packing case beside him. I tumbled over into it, and Ivan half-fell on top of me. Mr Robbins immediately began covering us with the newspapers from the pile on his counter.

‘Stay very still,' he said, ‘just to be on the safe side.'

Howling again. Then voices, puzzled but urgent.

‘Where—?'

‘Where have they . . .?'

‘Must have run in here!'

Through the thin wood of the packing case I could hear scuffling in the doorway and those pursuing voices, unintelligible, but definitely threatening.

‘Now, what can I do for you lads?' asked Mr Robbins in a crisp, confident voice, a voice that reminded me so clearly of the voice he had used in the schoolroom all those years back. He seemed to be totally without fear. ‘Is there any particular book you're interested in?'

‘Books?' cried Dexter. ‘No way.'

‘We were after a couple of kids . . . pickpockets,' said another voice. ‘They ran this way.'

You could tell from the sounds that the wolves had burst through the door and were already searching the shop for us. I heard books falling, heard footsteps that I could tell were venturing behind the counter. Someone kicked the side of the packing case.

‘There's no one here but me,' said Mr Robbins. ‘You can see that, Dexter. For goodness sake get your pack out of here, and let me get on with my work.'

It was strange how authoritative his voice was. It was a voice that expected to be obeyed . . . not fierce, not challenging exactly, just commanding – and commanding in an odd, mild way. Mr Robbins had had years of practice.

‘They must have come in here,' said Dexter, trying to establish his own authority.

‘I have told you . . . I am on my own and working hard,' said Mr Robbins. ‘Please leave me alone to pick up those books you've knocked over, unless you'd like to do it for me?'

Lying tangled and screwed-up under the newspapers, somehow locked into Ivan in a knot I hoped would never come untied, I felt the weight of the books Mr Robbins was putting on the newspapers on top of us. And then I heard, from somewhere in the distance, yet another wolf howl, fainter but unmistakeable.

‘Hey! Jake's found them!' shouted Dexter.

‘Sounds like it!' cried someone else. There was a scrimmage of feet, the sound of several men trying to get through the door at the same time, and then silence.

‘They've gone,' said Mr Robbins, his voice gentle but still authoritative. ‘But stay where you are for just for a few more moments.'

We heard footsteps, a scrabbling sound, and a key being turned in a lock. The light changed, what we could see of it. One light – perhaps the one at the front of the shop, the one that had been lighting the window – had been turned off.

‘You can get out now, but do it carefully,' Mr Robbins said. ‘They could come past again at any moment. You were lucky you had a good lead on them. Lucky in a lot of ways. They would have looked in the packing case if they hadn't been distracted.'

He pointed to a door at the back of the shop. ‘Go through there. I'll be with you in a moment, and we'll have a cup of tea.'

At the back of the bookshop was another smaller room with a door that led out to a yard at the back of the shop. Ivan and I sat in that small room, sat in an anxious way, while Mr Robbins pottered around in the bookshop. Then he came in and looked over at us seriously.

‘A cup of tea? Or perhaps not,' he said. ‘You look as if you need to be safe at home. If you go out of the back door there, you'll see my car. Go out to it quietly – it's locked of course, but here's the key – slide into the back seat and keep your heads down. Those so-called wolves could still be stalking you. Give me a minute or two to close up the shop and I'll drive you home.'

‘Don't they . . . don't the wolves ever bother you?' asked Ivan.

Mr Robbins laughed a little. ‘I've worked here a long time,' he said. ‘I've got a lot of friends, some of them even tougher than the wolves. And most wolves know I have a gun – a licensed gun – under the counter. All the same, you be careful getting into that car.'

‘Come on, Babe!' I said to Ivan.

‘I'll go first, Babe,' he replied. ‘You can be my rearguard.'

We did what Mr Robbins had told us to do, breathing hard, slid out the back door of his shop, found the car (no trouble at all) and scrambled into it. A short time later he joined us, and drove us down Forest Road, now almost empty, and up the hill, back up out of the woods.

‘It's been quite a night,' I said to Mr Robbins. ‘Lucky for us you were still open.'

‘It's mostly safe during the day . . . well, safe enough,' Mr Robbins said. ‘But night – well, at night it becomes a different place.'

‘I'll come back again in the daylight,' Ivan promised. ‘I'll get that copy of
The Coral Island
you've got in the window. Don't sell it to anyone else, will you?'