Incarnate (19 page)

She didn’t know how long she stood there, but it felt like hours. Soon her arms were aching, her legs felt as if they would be agony to move. There was the threat of new cramps in her stomach. The pale green walls jerked forward again, and she thought she was falling. Every time the green closed in she was close to forgetting where she was.

Maitland had been watching her patiently, a man who didn’t care for some of the things his job required him to do, but now his eyes were growing blank and indifferent and tired. Perhaps he was thinking of turning the skinhead loose on her. She was searching frantically for words that would make them let her go, trying to think what she hadn’t already said. Suddenly she thought she knew. “It couldn’t have been Martin. You can’t believe he made the film after we came here, he wouldn’t have had time. If he made it before, who told him about those?”

She had turned to point at the letters on the wall. “Keep your hands on your head,” Maitland said.

“Yes, but listen to me.” She turned back, planting her feet further apart so as not to fall, raising her hands to her head, almost clawing at her scalp. “Why should anyone have wanted him to make the film instead of making it themselves? It isn’t as though his name is on it. Besides, he hasn’t been here long enough.”

“Long enough to get you into bed,” the skinhead said. “Mind you, I reckon that’s not saying much.”

She must ignore him, but all she could think of to take her mind off him was Terry Mace. “I suppose it’s just possible that we’re mistaken about your relationship with Wallace,” Maitland said. “Have you had sex since he went back to America?”

She had been closing her eyes to shut out the encroaching green, but now she glared at him. “No.”

“She must be gasping for it,” the skinhead said.

“Indeed.” Maitland was staring at her parted legs. “Miss Wolfe does seem confused about sex. That was something I learned when she was here asking questions to make sure our American friend didn’t miss anything—that she doesn’t know if it would be preferable to be molested by blacks or whites.”

“Must have had plenty of experience, the way she looks.”

It didn’t matter what they said about her, it didn’t matter that her arms and legs were jerking like the walls, that her mouth was stiffening shakily. Maitland was smiling and looking past her, she thought he was about to give the skinhead the nod. If only his wife and children could see him now, she thought, and before she knew she was going to speak she said, “Would you like someone to treat your daughters like this?”

His face darkened, his wide shoulders stirred. “Leave my family out of it.”

“It was you who told me about them.” She’d reached him, she had to go on. “The worst you suspect me of is lying, though I give you my word that I’ve told you the truth. Suppose one of your daughters was accused of lying? Would you want someone to—” Shut up, she screamed inside herself, don’t say another word in case he sees that you know. He was gazing quizzically at her.

“Well?” he said.

But she couldn’t go on. She remembered what he’d said: that his children would be led to think he was a murderer. He wouldn’t fear that unless he had been here the night of Bennett’s death. He’d told her that he hadn’t been, and there was only one reason for him to have lied: Bennett had been killed here after all, the film was true even if it wasn’t genuine. “Well?” he said, impatiently now.

“That’s all,” she said through her stiff, shaky lips. “I’m not a criminal, I’ve told you the truth. Please let me go now. Let me go before you do something you won’t be able to hide.”

His shoulders pushed him away from the door. “Such as what?”

She mustn’t show fear; the appearance of dignity was all she had left. “Such as letting him touch me,” she said, and prayed that would suggest to Maitland that she trusted him.

“I’m afraid you haven’t made a conquest. Randy.” He gazed at her breasts, her aching legs, finally her face. “I take it Wallace will be away for a few days. Perhaps we can give you time to reconsider.”

He was opening the door. As she stumbled forward the skinhead policeman stepped in front of her and shoved her back toward the bunk. She wondered how she could have imagined that Maitland meant to let her go. A stomach cramp made her whole body clench.

When Maitland reached the corridor, he looked back. “That’s all right, Randy. Let her come. She can help us further with our enquiries when she’s had time to think.”

He unlocked the door at the top of the steps and waited for her. As she inched past, scraping her shoulders on the corner of the wall so as not to touch him, he said, “Expect us anytime.”

She hardly noticed the desk sergeant as she stumbled out. The roar of traffic on Bayswater Road seemed not only to deafen but also to blind her. When she came to herself, she was shaking so much that people were watching her. She was closer to her flat than to MTV but she didn’t want to go home, that would be no help. She wished there were more people as she hurried past the police station, on the opposite side of the road. At least her legs weren’t aching so much, and by the time she reached MTV she had almost stopped shaking.

Terry Mace was at the round reception desk. When he saw her and opened his mouth to speak, she said, “You bloody sod.” She left him staring after her as the lift carried her to the ninth floor and Oliver Boycott, MTV’s lawyer. If he wasn’t in his office, she would get his home number. Maitland and his randy crony wouldn’t find her so easy to intimidate once Boycott had been to see them. She could hardly wait to see their faces. She felt almost incandescent with fury, which made her think of Martin. It was a good thing he was in America. God only knew what his temper might have caused him to do if he were here.

17

M
ORE THAN
anything else—more than Mummy’s new dress in its box under Susan’s bed, or trying to guess where Mummy had hidden her presents, or the classroom party next week—the snow made her feel close to Christmas. She took a chair to the window and knelt there, gazing at the endless silent flock of snow beneath the darkly glowing sky. Large flakes thudded like loose snowballs on the window and trickled down the pane, veils glided past the house, veils that grew more solid in the distance until they merged into a sheet of white. She couldn’t follow the patterns that the snow made in the air, she could only let them happen. They made her feel peaceful and outside herself, almost ready to dream. She wondered if she dared. Perhaps when she got the courage to ask Mummy if she dreamed.

The snow was settling. Parked cars rose like cakes, gateposts grew cotton flowers; penguin people with white fronts that they kept slapping to dislodge the snow waddled through the drifts between the cars and the vanishing gardens. White Christmas, Susan thought, and wondered if the snow would stop the trains. Perhaps she wouldn’t mind not going back for Christmas. She had new friends now.

A student postman whose bag looked heaped with snow came trudging along the street trying to find the pavement. He turned in at the gate below her window, and she heard the clank of the letter slot deep in the building. She was pushing herself away from the chair to go down when she saw Eve, clutching her duffel hood around her face as she came up the path, then she was out of sight and the bell was ringing. “It’s Eve, Mummy,” Susan called and ran to let her in.

The prickly mat in front of the door was scattered with envelopes. Susan dragged the door open, shoving the envelopes aside. Eve came huddling in. Snow that felt like a memory of itself brushed Susan’s face while she gazed at the path, at two sets of the postman’s footprints and one of Eve’s. What else was she expecting to see? She closed the door and found Eve sorting the letters onto the shelf above the gas meters. “These are yours,” Eve said, handing them over, “and these are for your mum.” Before Susan could take those as well. Eve ran upstairs.

“Thank you, Eve.” Mummy didn’t sound at all surprised that Eve had brought her the cards.

“I came to see if you wanted a snow fight,” Eve said.

“Why don’t you, Susan, until dinner’s ready? Just make sure you wrap up warm.”

Susan hurried to her room for her coat and hat and mittens. This was the chance she needed, to talk to Eve by herself. She wished the woman with the cats would come out and see Eve, but the landing was deserted. Halfway downstairs Susan said, “Do you go in our flat when I’m not there?”

Eve turned to her as the light went out. “How could I?”

Susan didn’t bother with the time-switch, she knew the stairs by now. “Maybe you’ve got a key.”

“Better ask your mummy.” Eve’s voice seemed distant, though her footsteps were close. “Anyway, why would I want to?”

“To hide from your mummy.”

“Who says I do?”

“The woman who lives on our floor,” she said.

Eve opened the front door, letting in the snow’s twilight and a flurry of snowflakes. She was shaking her head. “You shouldn’t listen to her, she’s crazy.”

“How do you know, if you haven’t been coming in?”

Eve stepped onto the path, from which her footprints and the postman’s were already vanishing. “Because I’ve lived round here longer than you, that’s why.”

Somehow Susan knew Eve was lying. What could that mean? Just then she noticed the comer of an envelope sticking out of Eve’s coat pocket. She was almost sure that pocket had been empty when Eve had come into the house.

The curb had vanished. The toothy track of a single car broke the snow on the road. Snowflakes danced in the cones of light beneath the streetlamps. Eve ducked as Susan flung a snowball, and the envelope emerged a little further. It was slightly too large for her pocket. If it had been there when she had let Eve in, Susan was sure she would have seen it.

Eve dodged away between the cars. In the dreamy hush of the street, the snow squeaked underfoot like icing sugar. Susan followed her, running though it felt like plodding. She had to see the envelope, whether it was addressed to her or Mummy or even perhaps Eve at their address. She realized suddenly that she didn’t know Eve’s last name.

Perhaps she could make Eve slip and fall. She gathered snow from the plump roofs of cars, squeezed it into a ball, and threw it as hard as she could. It thudded against a car’s feathery windscreen. “Hey,” Eve cried, her face glistening with snow from the windscreen, “not so hard.”

Then she ducked, for someone else was throwing snowballs, some children coming from the direction of Westbourne Grove. Her movement pushed the letter half out of her pocket, and Susan was afraid the address might be washed away before she had a chance to look. Perhaps not, for Eve was retreating toward her—but before she came abreast of Susan, she dodged between the cars.

The children were following. Susan threw a token snowball at them and slithered back toward the house, since that was where Eve seemed to be heading. She managed to struggle as far as the gate just as Eve veered toward it. It might be Susan’s only chance. She slipped deliberately and fell.

She was almost too convincing. One hand clawed the snow off the bonnet of the nearest car; she felt rust scraping her fingertips as snow trickled into her sleeve. Her other hand grabbed Eve, tugging at her pocket, at the envelope. Her fingers were so stiff with cold that she couldn’t keep hold of the envelope. It jerked out of Eve’s pocket and fell in the snow at her feet.

The moment seemed to turn into a photograph. A snowball had just thumped the windscreen of the rusty car; thick slabs of snow skated down the glass and piled against the wipers. Eve was watching the children and she hadn’t seen the letter yet. The envelope lay face up, the address was already spreading but still clear. It was addressed to Mummy and had been sent on from Wallasey. As Susan struggled to her feet she stuffed the envelope into her pocket. “I’m going in now.”

“Play a bit longer.”

“I can’t. I heard Mummy calling.”

Eve turned, ignoring a snowball that shattered into white spray and lumps on her duffel hood. “No, you didn’t,” she said.

There was something in her eyes and in her voice that made Susan back away, clutching the envelope in her pocket with one hand while she fumbled for her key with the other. “I did,” she stammered. “Anyway, I’ve hurt my leg.”

She was praying that the children would keep Eve busy as she struggled through the tangle of footprints up the path. She had to hold the key with both hands before it would fit into the lock. She swung round, suddenly expecting Eve to have crept behind her to snatch the envelope back. But there was no sign of her.

Enormous whiteness rushed at Susan as she slammed the door. She couldn’t see where she was going as she ran upstairs. She felt for the lock on the apartment door, shook the key into the slot, and then there was the flat, too green to be blotted out. The afterimages on her eyes were shrinking as Mummy brought in cutlery and table mats. “I was just going to call you,” Mummy said, and then, “What’s wrong?”

“Eve took your letter, Mummy.”

Mummy dumped the handful of cutlery in front of her. “Go on, set the table. What letter?”

“This one.” Mummy was turning away. “Look, Mummy!” Susan cried.

“She put it in your pocket, did she?” Mummy shook her head sadly. “Just give it to me, Susan. No need to look like that if you took it by mistake, I won’t punish you. Just don’t tell fibs.”

She dropped the crumpled letter by the table mat and headed for the kitchen. Susan followed her through the rattling streamers. “She really did take it. She stole it, Mummy.”

The streamers in the kitchen doorway slapped her face as Mummy turned on her. “Susan, why are you being like this? Why should Eve want to do anything of the kind?”

That was what Susan wanted to know. “Well, open it and see.”

“Don’t you speak to me like that, young lady. Don’t you say another word. Get the plates and behave yourself.”

Susan toweled her feet before she put on her slippers, then she carried the plates to the table. Her face was hot with resentment that made her unable to see anything properly. Mummy had never spoken to her like that before, she’d always encouraged her to talk to her like a friend. The streamers sounded as if they were sniggering. Mummy carried in the casserole with her padded oven glove and ladled chicken onto the plates. Susan was cutting her meat up neatly when Mummy said, ‘ ‘Just what have you got against Eve?”