(1989) Dreamer (12 page)

‘It’s all right.’ He studied the triggers for a moment, then inserted the can between them. ‘Only a bit of oil.’

She heard the clunk as he squeezed the can and bit her lip, feeling guilty suddenly.

Domestic bliss. The family all together. Something
she’d never had; one of the few things you could give to a child that mattered. She pulled a couple of newspapers out of a cupboard, and smiled down at him. ‘Slip these underneath.’

He glanced at them. ‘I’ve read them.’

‘Richard,’ she said reproachfully.

‘Look, Mummy!’ Nicky held up the shining stock.

‘That looks wonderful, Tiger. Time for your bath now.’

‘Daddy said we can go shooting tomorrow, coz it’s my birthday.’

‘If you’ve got time. You’re going to have a busy day tomorrow.’

Nicky’s face fell, and he turned to his father. ‘We will have time, Daddy, won’t we?’

Richard smiled. ‘’Course we will. Let’s have a kiss goodnight.’

Sam watched him hug his father, arms around his neck, the simple, total, uncomplicated love of a child. Crazy with love. She’d been crazy with love for Richard too. Loved him, admired him, respected him. For ten years. Until.

‘Will you tell me the story you told me the other night, Mummy? About the man who killed the dragon, and the dragon came back to life?’

‘You want that one again?’

‘Tell it again. Do! Please!’

The man who killed the dragon and lived happily ever after.

Happily ever after, Childhood’s greatest myth.

‘Go and run your bath, Tiger, and Mummy’ll be up.’

Nicky scampered off.

‘He’s exhausting,’ Sam said.

‘’Night, Tiger.’ Richard put the gun barrels down and refilled his whisky glass, wrapping his hand around it,
getting the level exactly to the top of his fourth finger. He took the glass to the tap and ran in some water. ‘You look nice, Bugs,’ he said tenderly. ‘Like that jumper on you.’

She glanced down, to check what she was wearing. ‘Thanks.’

‘I—’ He hesitated, then dug his hand into his corduroy pocket and pulled out a small package. ‘I—’ He blushed – ‘got you a little present.’

‘For me?’

He held it out to her; it had classy foil giftwrap, but clumsily done, and crumpled, with far too much sellotape which she picked away carefully with her nail. Inside there was a small slim leather box that looked old. She looked at Richard uncertainly, and he nodded at her. She lifted the lid and saw an elderly looking Rolex watch, with a slim rectangular face and twin dials.

‘It’s – er – genuine – antique. Thirties. I thought – your retro stuff – go with the image—’

‘It’s the bizz,’ she said, lifting it out. ‘Very trendy. It’s – beautiful.’ She kissed him. ‘it’s lovely.’ She removed her own watch, put it on the table and strapped on the Rolex.

‘You have to wind it, of course.’

‘Yes. Funny, two dials – so you can tell the time in different parts of the world? For early jetsetters?’

‘One’s for the hour hand, the other’s minutes.’

She smiled. ‘Ah.’

‘Should improve your street cred.’

‘Should do.’

‘Like it?’

‘Yes. It’s wonderful – it—’

He sat back down at the table. His eyes were watering. He was crying. ‘I’m sorry, Bugs. I’ve made such a
hash. I – I’ve really—’ He bowed his head slightly and rested it in his hands. ‘I love you, you know, I really love you. I don’t want to lose you.’

She went to him, put her arms round him and held him tight for a moment, cradling his head, and blinking away her own tears of sadness. Sadness for what had happened, for how he felt; sadness that even in her arms part of him felt like a stranger. She stroked his face. ‘It’s a lovely watch. It must have cost a fortune.’

‘I wanted to get you something very special.’

‘You’re spending a lot of money these days.’

He sniffed. ‘’S all right. Into some good deals. Andreas reckons we’ll be fine as long as nothing happens to the Japanese market.’

‘Is it likely to?’

He drew away from her and took a hard pull on his whisky. She stared at him, and thought she could see a faint trace of worry in his face. ‘Is it likely to?’ she repeated gently.

He sniffed again. ‘No.’ But she sensed an element of his usual confidence missing. ‘How long have you been dealing with Andreas?’

He shrugged. ‘’Bout eight or nine months.’

‘He seems to have helped you make a lot of money.’

‘Yah’s a good bloke.’ He flushed slightly.

‘Do you trust him?’

‘Straight as a die.’

‘Is he?’

He nodded.

‘Doesn’t sail close to the wind?’

‘No – he’s—’ He hesitated – ‘actually, he’s – ah – quite cautious. He’s a director of a bank. Quite a substantial outfit.’ He scratched the back of his head awkwardly. ‘Why are you—?’

‘I just thought he was a bit odd, that’s all.’

‘The Swiss tend to be a bit cold.’

‘How was the shoot?’ she asked.

‘Good bag.’ He looked relieved that she had changed the subject. ‘Hundred and eighty pheasants. Brought some back. Think I’m going to build a proper game larder.’

She began to turn the winder of her watch carefully, backwards and forwards; it had been years since she’d wound a watch, she realised.

‘You’ve got the Punch and Judy organized, haven’t you, Bugs?’

‘Yes.’

‘What time’s kick-off?’

‘Three o’clock. You’d better get the projector set up. You won’t have much time tomorrow, since you’ve got to fetch your mother.’

‘The old goat.’ He took another large pull on his drink. ‘She’s getting past her sell-by date.’

‘Nicky might say that about you and I one day.’

‘Probably will.’

‘Doesn’t that bother you?’

He shrugged. ‘No.’

She kissed him again on his cheek. ‘I’ll go and tell Nicky his story.’ She went out of the room and closed the door, blew her nose and wiped her own tears away. She climbed the stairs slowly, turning her mind back to the story of the man who killed the dragon and the dragon came back to life, except this time it turned into two dragons, and the man killed both of them and then it turned into four and he killed them too. Killed them dead.

‘Oobie, joobie, joobie! Who’s a naughty girl, then?’

Sam stared at the candy-striped stand; Punch swivelled around in his pointed hat, with his great hooked nose, rapped his baton down hard on his tiny stage and screeched:

‘Naughty, naughty, naughty, naughty. Who’s been a naughty girl, then?’

One of the children shouted out, ‘Nicky’s mummy has!’

Punch swaggered up and down along the stage, repeating to himself, ‘Nicky’s mummy’s been naughty, has she? Nicky’s mummy’s been naughty, has she? We’ll have to see about that, won’t we?’

‘Yeah!’ came the chorus.

‘Ooobie, joobie, joobie, who’s been a naughty girl, then?’ He swivelled and stared directly at Sam, leaning forward over the stage and curling and uncurling his index finger at her; it was a long finger, out of proportion with the size of the puppet, and the action unsettled her.

‘Oobie, joobie, joobie,’ he repeated over and over, curling and uncurling, leaning closer; the children were silent now, sensing an atmosphere. ‘I think she ought to be punished, don’t you, children?’

‘Yeah!’

Punch stood upright and rapped the stage with his baton again. ‘Who thought she was on an aeroplane?’ He cackled with laughter.

Sam smarted with anger, with bafflement.

‘Naughty! Naughty! Naughty!’

The baton came down. Whack, whack, whack. Harder, this time with real menace.

‘Who’s going to have to be punished then?’

‘Nicky’s mummy!’ came the chorus.

Stop this. I want to stop this. Get him out of there. He’s mad.

‘We could beat her with a stick!’ he screeched, then ducked down out of sight. ‘Or we could . . .’

He reappeared.

But now he was wearing a black hood with slits cut into it.

Sam tried to back away, tried pushing herself on the carpet, but she was wedged against something, something hard, soft; the sofa, she realised.

She could see his lips smiling through the hood, then he winked, and his left eyeball shot out, hit the floor and rolled across the carpet, rattled onto the bare floorboards, bouncing against the skirting board and carrying on rolling, rattling like a cannonball.

The children shrieked with laughter.

He lifted something shiny, metallic up over the floor of the stage.

She shivered.

Shotgun.

He raised it up swiftly and aimed at her.

‘
No
!’ she screamed.

She saw the spurts of flame from the barrel and felt a sharp sting on her cheek.

The lights went out, and for a moment she was covered in darkness, sticky, cloying blackness that pressed against her eyes, her ears, forced its way into her mouth. Then a row of red digits appeared above her, and she blinked, startled by their brightness.

0415.

The darkness was becoming tinged with red, as if the light was bleeding into it. She heard a sharp snort beside
her, a gurgling sound and several more snorts. Then Richard’s voice.

‘Wassermarrer?’

She felt a chill breeze. Dream, she thought. Dream.

0416.

Light poured out of the clock like blood into a bath. She heard Richard’s voice again. ‘What the fuck was that?’ Heard the sound of his arm sliding through the bedclothes, a loud clank, the sound of water spilling, ‘Shit’, then the click of the light, which blinded her for a moment.

‘Jesus,’ he said.

He was staring up at the ceiling. Cracks ran out in all directions across it, like veins in an old woman’s hand.

Like glass that had been hit by a bullet. She shivered.

Right above her head, a small chunk of plaster was missing completely. Her cheek was hurting like hell, she realised. Gingerly, she put her finger to her face, and felt the hard, flaky plaster crumble between her fingers as she touched it.

Richard leapt out of bed, horrified. ‘It’s fucking coming down. Get out of here!’ He struggled into his dressing gown and she climbed out of bed too, and pulled her own dressing gown on. The ceiling seemed to be moving, breathing, sagging, cracking more as she looked at it. It looked like eggshell now, like a hard-boiled egg that had been dropped and the shell had cracked all around it.

‘It’s the water that got in after the fucking hurricane,’ Richard said as she followed him out into the corridor. ‘The survey said the roof had been leaking and the loft above our room had damp. The central heating’s drying it out and the joists are warping.’

They ran down the corridor and checked Nicky’s room, and then Helen’s room, snapping their lights on,
saying ‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ then snapping the lights off again and closing the doors.

‘Are their rooms safe, Richard?’

‘They look fine. The roof was badly holed above our room – ours is probably the worst.’

There were no beds in the spare rooms yet, so they lugged sheets and blankets downstairs and made makeshift beds up on the two sofas in the drawing room. Richard stoked up the fire, got it going and piled logs onto it, and she lay on the sofa, snugly wrapped up now, her heart not thumping quite so badly, and watched the leaping flickering flames. Watched them as they slowly faded and died and dawn began to break outside.

The frost scrunched under her feet, and she rubbed her hands together against the icy air. The sun hung low in the sky over the Downs, pale, weak, as if it had been left on all night. The river slid past below her, dark brown, silent, like the fear that was sliding through her.

She touched the graze on her cheek gingerly and looked down at the mark on her finger which had now almost gone. There was a muffled pop, like the bursting of a paper bag, then another; she turned and saw Nicky running flat out across the lawn towards a small grey ball of fluff that was rolling about, flapping.

‘It’s not dead, Daddy! It’s not dead!’

She saw him poke a hand forward nervously, then jump back, watched Richard striding over, gun crooked under his arm. Teaching him to shoot, already. Promised him a gun for his ninth birthday. Guns. Killing things. Hunting. Would the world ever change if children were taught to follow old instincts? Or was it
foolish to ignore them, to try to pretend they no longer existed? Choices. So many choices to make in bringing up a child. So many decisions that could change or forever affect them. Decisions. Who the hell was equipped to make them?

She glanced at her Rolex. It was five past one. ‘Richard,’ she called out, ‘we’d better have lunch.’ She sighed. Her few moments of respite were over. The five minutes she had managed to grab for herself in the midst of the preparations. The rest of the day was going to be chaos. She yawned. Her back ached slightly, but nothing much. It had been OK on the sofa. It would have been even more OK if she could have had another twelve hours of sleep.

Oobie, joobie, joobie
.

The weird taunt echoed in her head, and Punch’s finger curled out towards her, curled, uncurled.

Oobie joobie joobie. The taunt seemed to hang in the air around her, then dissolve.

The whole damned ceiling could have come down.

Did that trigger the dream? she wondered. In that split second that the plaster struck? Was that how dreams worked? Did they all happen in a fraction of a second?

‘Mummy! We shot a pigeon.’

‘Very clever, darling.’ She glanced down at the litter of wrapping paper on the kitchen floor, at the remote controlled car, already with a bit broken off. The BMX was in the garden, lying on its side. ‘Don’t you like your bike?’

His eyes lit up. ‘Yeah!’

‘It’s not going to do it much good lying out in the garden. The grass is wet.’

‘I’m going to use it again this afternoon. I am.’

‘You shouldn’t let it stay wet.’

‘I’ll dry it, I promise.’

‘You won’t.’

‘I will. I promise I will.’

‘Promises are important, Tiger. Never make a promise you can’t keep. OK?’

He looked away. ‘Yes,’ he mouthed silently. ‘Richard!’ she called. ‘Come on, lunch!’ She could hear him on the telephone.