Now You See Me (16 page)

He flicked me a look like I was stupid. ‘She's cool,' he said.

‘Sure?'

‘She's OK.'

‘Yeah?' I didn't really mind. I was relieved. And pleased to think we had our secrets, Doggo and me and no one else.

Twenty

It's hard to have someone always in your space. You might want to be private. You might have things you need to deal with without another person there. He asked me if I'd fetch him some chips. I should have said yes but I said no. I said
Fetch your own chips
. I mean if he could go to the vet's and go to the pub he could go to the chippie, couldn't he?

Soon as he'd gone, I rolled my sleeve up to look at my arm. The blood had stopped but it was sore, the toilet paper sticking to the scabs. There was plastic left in but I couldn't pick it out, it hurt too much. Not like the clean first hurt, this hurt is dirtier and more like guilt. I washed it and put fresh toilet paper on.

Doggo came back with chips and a pickled egg. I ate a few chips which were cold and tasted of the paper they were wrapped in. He scrubbed his beard with his fist.

‘Here,' he said, looking embarrassed, shoving me something.

‘What?'

‘Happy Birthday.'

It was a silver pendant shaped like a hand with fine-etched lines like the lines on the palm of a hand. I didn't know what to say. ‘Indian,' he said. It still had the price tag on. ‘You might want to take that off,' he said. He grinned and snapped it off with his sharp side teeth. There was no bag or wrapping paper. I think he stole it. I wanted to ask, to tell him off. What a stupid risk that was. But a risk taken for me. His gloved fingers fumbled the nape of my neck as he fastened it.

‘Well ta,' I said.

We held one dog-lead each and he took my arm as we walked along but it was my sore arm and I yelped. ‘What's up?' he said. I said I'd hurt it.

‘How?'

‘Dunno. It's nothing.'

‘Let's see.'

‘No.' I would rather die than have Doggo know what a stupid thing I did.

He had his shades on because we were out in public. I said it made it look obvious that he was disguised, wearing sunglasses at night in the dark. He thought about that for a bit but he kept them on. A police car cruised past and I watched his face but he didn't look any more dodgy than usual. You'd think if someone was lying low they'd stay in all the time, under the bed or crouching behind a sofa, but it isn't like that. People in hiding keep a low profile but that doesn't mean they don't go to the pub or walk in the park just like anybody else. They go about a sort of life. I know all about that myself.

The pub was brown inside and there was folk music going on in the back room where we had to take the dogs. A haystack of a man was whining through his nose with his finger in his ear. But I didn't care. We found a table and the dogs curled up underneath it. Doggo plonked a couple of pints down in front of me. ‘Finished your essay?' he said.

A sip of beer went down the wrong way. He thumped me on the back. When I'd finished choking he kept on. ‘On lighthouses, wasn't it?'

‘Oh
that
,' I said.

‘What kind of stuff? History or what?'

‘Just a kind of general survey,' I said, ‘you know, the meaning of lighthouses in … books and you know art and that.'

‘Sounds interesting,' he said and he was right, it did. Maybe someone really has done it, I don't know. ‘You must be fucking clever.' He stared at me till I could nearly make out his eyes through the dark plastic. I shrugged modestly. ‘At university then?' he said.

‘Yeah, sort of,' I said. ‘Mr Dickens didn't look too great today, did he?'

Doggo drank his beer about ten times faster than me. He got up to get another but I said I'd get it.

I hated standing at the bar, knowing he was watching me, watching the way I stood and the way it took me ages to get served, as if I was invisible. I could just imagine how Mrs Harcourt would deal with it. She'd burst in saying, ‘Excuse me,' in her loud posh voice, pushing in and getting her Campari-soda or whatever before anyone else.

Thinking about Mrs Harcourt reminded me. I'd gone back to the Harcourts'. I wasn't going to but something made me. I let myself in and there was the note on the kitchen table as usual. This time I read it. It said:

Dear Lamb, I'm afraid I'm going to have to terminate our agreement as from today. Please leave your key behind. No wages, which under the circumstances I'm sure you'll understand
.

Myra Harcourt
.

Fuck you
, I wrote at the bottom which was a bit childish so I screwed up the note and chucked it in the bin. I didn't care anyway. I crept upstairs really quietly just in case
he
was tucked up in bed again and he wasn't. It was messy and dark with the curtains drawn. ‘Who's going to pick up all your shit for you now?' I said to the bed.

I went in the
en suite
and had a last bath. I used up all her bath milk and dried myself on three towels. I slapped on half a bottle of body lotion. Then I went. I didn't empty the bath, flush the bog or hang up the towels or anything. I thought about smashing the sentimental Shepherdess but I didn't. I just went, left the key on the table and went.

I wonder what Mr Harcourt told her? Not that I give a flying toss. Don't need that job anyway. Don't need to clean for anyone any more. I'll keep Mr Dickens on but I'd do that whether he paid me or not. I'll keep Mrs Banks on too because she's Doggo's mum but apart from that I'm not doing it any more, anyone else's dirty work. Not for a while, anyway. The Harcourts and the Brown-Withers can get stuffed.

Doggo and I shared a packet of crisps and I tried to eat them in normal big crunches. There should be a law that everyone has to clean their own mess. If everyone did that there would be just one lot of cleaning for each person and that's not too much to ask, is it?

‘Why are you doing that?' Doggo said.

He was looking at the beer-mat I'd shredded up into a million pieces, like a pile of snow. I am always ripping things up without knowing.

‘Dunno,' I said.

We listened to a man play the concertina for a minute then Doggo started going on about gardening.

‘It's ace,' he said, leaning forward so I could feel his warm breath on my ear. ‘Never even thought about gardening and that but I fucking love it. Never even used to notice plants and trees and that but now they're everywhere, know what I mean? I wish …' He looked wistful.

‘What?'

‘Oh fuck it.'

But I know what he was going to say. In another kind of life he'd like to have a garden. To have time to watch a garden grow. I smiled. See I was getting to know him now, to understand. I was wondering if you could count this as a date.

The evening was going fine then someone jolted right into my bad arm and it hurt so much I yelled. I was on the edge of tears. But you should have seen Doggo in action. He leapt up, spilling his beer, and took a step towards the harmless twitching little man who was blurting, ‘Sorry, mate, accident, sorry.'

Doggo raised his fist and went, ‘You watch it, right?'

‘Right, right,' burbled the man. ‘Can I buy you a drink, both of you?' So Doggo let him buy us both another pint. It was the first time anyone's stuck up for me for years and for some reason that nearly set me off crying too, but I was worried that he was drawing attention to himself. Another risk for me.

We smiled at each other. Just looking across the table and smiling straight into each other's faces. It's not often you do that. It was like a sunrise in my chest. The man brought us our drinks.

‘Ta,' Doggo said, not even looking up. Then he said, ‘What about that Sarah then?'

‘What about her?' I said.

‘She's something else, isn't she?'

‘Hmm,' I said. The sun set at once. Did I mention he was
still
wearing the shades. In a pub at night? If I didn't know him I might have thought he was a prat what with the sunglasses and the woolly gloves and a kind of fugitive hunch in his shoulders.

‘She's not a student vet any more,' I said, ‘she's given up. She gave up before she'd hardly started.'

‘She hasn't decided yet,' he said. ‘She were finding it hard-going. If she takes job managing kennels she'll be earning right off. We were discussing it in car.'

Discussing
. That is not a Doggo-type word.
What else were you discussing?
I wanted to say. But didn't.

There was a long silence. ‘Tell me about the murder,' I said. ‘Have you escaped from prison?'

‘Einstein,' he said.

I felt like walking out of there. Sometimes his voice has such a horrid scornful edge. I was losing him again. I didn't know what to do. He downed his beer and got up to get another. Sometimes I hate the way he walks, kind of cocky, like his whole body is swinging from his shoulders. You'd never see a woman walk like that. He sat down with his beer. He hadn't even offered me another drink. Fair enough I'd hardly started mine, but still. He took a long swallow and I watched the bobbing of the Adam's apple in his soft white throat. He said, ‘What about you,
Lamb?'

‘What?'

‘Who are you hiding from?'

My throat went so knotted I couldn't breathe let alone speak.

‘Go on,' he said.

I looked down and saw another beer-mat was in shreds. My fingers were trembling. I tried to take a sip of beer but my lips wouldn't bend the right way. Someone started playing the bagpipes.

‘Christ,' he said flicking his eyes over to the bagpiper and back. He smiled and put his gloves out to cover my hands and keep them still. ‘Come on,' he said. His voice had gone soft and coaxing. I looked up at him. Trying to imagine the dagger or the gun. I could not imagine. There was nothing I could tell him. The moment stretched between us till it broke. He took his hand away. We sat there a bit longer, listening to the dreadful racket. I found I was fingering the silver hand. He saw and smiled. I dropped it.

The music was really getting on my nerves. The company was shit, the smoke was thick, the beer was horrid and even the crisps were stale. I got up. Gordon heaved himself to his feet.

‘We going?' Doggo said.

‘I am,' I said, ‘you do what you like.'

I walked off and he followed. We walked along and after a while he grabbed my hand. It's the first hand, well glove, I've held since I don't know when. We didn't say much. As I walked I was trying to let all the tension go. It was still him, Doggo. And he was still choosing to be with me. He needed to be with me. Nothing had changed. It was him and me against the world.

He had Norma's lead and I had Gordon's and I liked the patient way Gordon plodded along unlike Norma who skips all over the place only not so much when she's poorly. It was like we were a kind of group or even family, all joined together by hands and leads. OK, so there were things about each other we didn't know. There are always things you don't know about other people and most of all about yourself. You don't know what you would do in certain situations. It makes me laugh the way people sound off about how they'd never do
this
or how
that
is so wrong because they simply do not know. But me and Doggo, even though we knew there were no-go areas between us, were still holding hands and I suddenly got a feeling inside which is
happy
and I squeezed his hand but he yelled and yanked it away.

‘Sorry,' I said.

We carried on walking. I didn't know what to say any more. It was misty, the mist thick and fuzzy orange round the street lights. I didn't dare get hold of his hand again and he didn't reach for mine. Him yelling about his hand had reminded me about my bad arm and that whole sickening subject.

‘Sarah's great, isn't she?' he said. Probably just to break the silence. That would have been OK. But then he kept on. ‘I mean it was great of her to try and take Norma to the vet like that.'

‘Yeah.'

He suddenly guffawed, making me jump. ‘You should see the way she drives!'

I laughed grimly.

‘What about asking her to look at your sore arm? If she treats animals she could maybe treat you.'

‘Thanks very much,' I said.

‘Didn't mean it like that,' he said. ‘Fuck it, you're touchy. What's up?'

‘Nothing.' Nobody said another word all the way back to the cellar. I was half thinking of locking him out again. I don't know why he had to bring Sarah up at that moment. And why he had to sound so
tickled
about the way she drives. There's nothing clever about bad driving if you ask me. OK so it was a good idea getting her to look at my arm. I couldn't go to the doctor's because I haven't got one. You probably have to be an official person to have a doctor, with an official name and address. If they saw my arm with the scars and the new wound they would know about me. And I do not want to go back to hospital again. I do not and will not. And there's no need anyway because I'm not getting into that again. It was only that once.

Doggo looked ridiculous in the lamplight with the beard and glasses like someone who'd bought a plastic face from Woolworth's. I couldn't lock him out. We got to the cellar and went in. I locked the door behind us.

I got into bed fast as I could and turned my back on him. He didn't come near me though my heart was beating with a kind of fear wondering if he'd try. But after washing his face and moving about a bit he sat down on the deck chair. He whispered, ‘Are you asleep?' but I didn't answer. It was hard as hell lying so still but after a while I heard him snore and then I could relax.

Twenty-one

But I couldn't sleep properly. I couldn't lie on my arm and Doggo kept snoring and creaking about in the deck chair. Was I sleeping in the same room as a murderer? I was cold in bed so God knows how cold he must have been with only a thin blanket over him. I fell asleep near morning and woke to hear him moving about, making the kind of noise people trying to be quiet make. I pretended to be asleep. Then the key turned and he went out with the dogs. I squinted at my watch, it was before six and not even light. I sat up. But it was OK. His bag was on the floor. I fingered the warm silver hand. I lay back down and slept soundly for an hour or so.