Ramsey Campbell - 1976 - The Doll Who Ate His Mother (11 page)

 
          
“Oh,
I don’t know, Edmund.” All she could see was his small dented
nose,
twitching a little like a sleepy rabbit’s amid the
solemn frowning friendliness of his face. “Not for a while,” she said.

 
          
He
brought her
her
gin and tonic, rocking stormily in
its tumbler. “Oh, come on, Clare,” he said, putting one large hand on her
shoulder. It leaned there, hot and moist as a patch of fever. “You’re not doing
anything tonight,” he said, stooping his face at her.

 
          
She
edged forward on her chair. He tottered sideways to keep hold of her shoulder,
almost overbalancing; his eye had pulled free of his face and was caught in the
lens of his spectacles, blinking in front of
itself
.

 
          
“I’m
very busy tonight. I must straighten up my flat before the school term starts.”
At once, like full stops forbidding him to add to her paragraph, came three
sharp knocks at the door.

 
          
“You
bugger,” Edmund said. He levered himself away from her and strode furiously to
the door.

 
          
Surely
as a writer he ought to appreciate dramatic timing. “What’s your problem?” he demanded.

 
          
At
the end of the hall, beyond the bathroom, a young man’s voice said, “I hear you
want help from the victims of the man you’re hunting.”

 
          
“Oh
yes,” Clare cried. “We do, don’t we.”

 
          
The
young man strode lithely into the room and gazed at her with unconcealed
delight. His shoulder-length fair hair swung against his face; he shook it back
impatiently, gazing at Clare as if she were an unforeseen bonus. “Hello,” he
said. “Who are you?”

 
          
Edmund
appeared from the hall, nose twitching with displeasure. “Her name’s Clare,” he
said.

 
          
“I
didn’t catch your name,” the young man said to her.

 
          
“I’m
Clare. Who are you?”

 
          
“I’m
Chris Barrow.”

 
          
She
felt uncomfortable beneath his gaze, yet not unpleasantly so. Somehow it was
too open and childlike to be embarrassing. His clear-skinned, shaven face
looked very young, late teenage; but that might have to do with the sense of
innocence she felt in him. He’d
strode
into the room
as if nothing bothered him, like a child who has yet to learn
selfconsciousness
. Even his clothes—a wide-sleeved Oriental
shirt, joining his flared trousers snugly at his tight heavy crotch, drawing
her gaze there—seemed part of a little boy’s inoffensive delighted
exhibitionism. His eyes were surrounded by thin silver frames. Nobody had ever
looked at her like that before. When Edmund had said she looked like a
ballerina she hadn’t seen his face; but there was no sign of flattery on Chris
Barrow’s.

 
          
Edmund
gripped the bourbon bottle, staking his claim. “Who told you I need help?” he
demanded.

 
          
“The newspaper that interviewed you.”

 
          
“They
would. What makes you think you can help?”

 
          
“I’m
a victim. Well, my cat was.” His pale gaunt face was flushed now.

 
          
“Your cat?”
Edmund said, snorting mirthlessly. “You’re
joking.”

 
          
“No, why?
They found her in the alley, half eaten. Not far
from where Mrs. Pugh lived.”

 
          
“Strange
I didn’t read about it.”

 
          
“It
was in the paper. I’ve still got the report. I’ll bring it to show you if you
like.”

 
          
“I’m
not that interested.” Edmund rolled the neck of the bottle between his fingers,
as if it were a good cigar. “I can’t offer you a drink,” he said happily. “No
more glasses.”

 
          
“You
can finish mine if you like gin,” Clare said.

 
          
“It’s
okay, I don’t drink.”

 
          
Edmund
stared at him, stretching the silence, clearly hoping he would leave. “What do
you do?” Clare asked Chris.

 
          
“I’m
with TTG. Total Theatre Group.”

 
          
She
could see he thought she was distracting him unnecessarily, but Edmund seemed
determined to ignore him. “What sort of things do you perform?”

 
          
“Street theatre mostly, and in the parks.
Stuff
for kids particularly.”

 
          
“Is
that all?” Edmund said. “Sounds more like a game to me.”

 
          
“Oh,
right. But everything’s a game really, isn’t it?”

 
          
Edmund
stared at that contemptuously.

 
          
“Do
you visit schools?” Clare said.

 
          
“Yeah, sometimes.”

 
          
“Maybe
you could visit mine. I’d like my kids to see some of that kind of theatre. It
would help them, I think.”

 
          
“Oh,
right, yeah. Get in touch with TTG at the Upper
Parly
Arts Centre. Anyway,” he said to Edmund, “I’d better tell you about my cat.”

 
          
“I
don’t think it’s any use to me.”

 
          
“Why not?”
Chris asked. Clare sensed his impatience,
uncomprehending as a child’s.

 
          
“Did
you see the man do it?”

 
          
Chris
gazed at him speechlessly.

 
          
“You
see what I mean,” Edmund said. “You’ve no proof it’s connected with this case.
It’s not worth putting in my book, a dead cat in an alley.”

 
          
Chris’s
shoulders shifted restlessly. In that moment he seemed to Clare hardly more
than a vulnerable little boy. “She was worth a lot to me,” he said. “I used to
play with her.”

 
          
Edmund
stared at him.
“The people who are helping me have lost
relatives,” he said, “not bloody cats!”

 
          
After
a moment Chris whirled and stalked out, slamming the door; the bottles
chattered on the tray. Edmund poured himself another bourbon, sniggering.
“Bloody prima donna,” he said.

 
          
“Was
it necessary to be so nasty to him?”

 
          
“I’m
sorry, I can’t stand his type. London’s full of them,
poncing
about, pretending to be artists. I doubt he’s ever done a proper day’s work in
his life.”

 
          
“I
still think his story sounded genuine.”

 
          
“Oh,
it was. I wasn’t going to tell him, but I’d read the report he mentioned. I
just couldn’t have stood having him around. Besides,” he raised his voice as
she turned her back on him, “a dead cat could have been anything. A mad dog
might have done it. That area’s full of strays.”

 
          
Clare
gazed down ten
storeys
at the Saturday crowd in
Elliott Street, a swarming
multicoloured
beehive.
Behind her, Edmund said plaintively, “You’re not going to walk out on me as
well, are you?”

 
          
The
cathedrals challenged each other above the roofs: the red sandstone Gothic
tower of the Anglican, the spiky glazed lantern crowning the concrete drum of
the Catholic. “I’ve said I’ll help,” she said without turning. “But you won’t
tell me how.”

 
          
“Well,”
he said. “Are you
back
at school on Monday?”

 
          
“Tuesday.”

 
          
“Then
you’ve got yourself a job. Try to find out the address of Kelly’s mother or
whatever she was. If she’s still alive—she looked pretty old when I saw her.
I’ve tried ringing the Education Offices, but they wouldn’t tell me.
Seemed suspicious.”

 
          
She
moved away from the window, leaving the half-full tumbler behind the curtain.
“I think they’d read about me,” he said. “But the school won’t associate you
with me. You’d better tell them you’re a teacher. Then you ask to consult their
records—”

 
          
“I
know what to do,” she said impatiently, feeling patronized.

 
          
“Fine.
I’ll leave it to you, then.”

 
          
In
the lift, she shrugged off the offers of the menu, angry with herself. Fool.
She’d talked herself into going to lie at a school less than a mile from her
own.

 
          
Monday, September 8

 
          
“Go
all the way up
them
stairs,” the boy said. “The
staffroom’s at the top.”

 
          
Clare
leaned against the railings, trying to fan away some of the still, oppressive
heat. In a minute she would go up. She was from the Vale School in
Aigburth
. A relative of Christopher Kelly’s guardian needed
her address urgently. She didn’t know why. The Education Offices had mislaid
the address, the Vale School didn’t have it; St. Joseph’s was the relative’s
last hope. Since Clare had had to come home this way, the head had delegated
her to fetch the information. They’d felt they ought to send someone
personally; certainly her school, the Vale School, would never give out such
information over the phone.

 
          
Irrationally,
she dreaded meeting someone here from her own school,
Durning
Road Primary.
Nonsense.
The staff would be making the
most of this last day of their holidays. But she couldn’t rid herself of the
dread. If she met them, what could she say?

 
          
She
gazed out through the railings. The sky was overcast; fragments of china blue
were trying to pierce the slow grey wool. Around the school the windows of
derelict terraces were curtained with corrugated tin. Facing her at the end of
a side street, one house had been torn down; four of its hearths still clung to
the next house, black shrines to soot. She could smell houses
smouldering
. Against the dull sky, birds rose and swooped
like black tatters of ash.

 
          
Uniformed
boys were staring at her, this alien creature. Some of them towered above her,
gangling. She felt dwindled. She couldn’t go up those stairs. One of the older
boys swaggered by whistling loudly, to show his friends he could. She
remembered that they were only boys. And she’d let them deter her. She strode
through them to the doorway in the long Victorian building, to the stairs.

 
          
The
stairs were wide black stone. They made her footsteps clank however carefully
she walked, like children shouting a message she’d wanted to keep to a whisper.
She clanked upstairs loudly, defiantly, feeling hemmed in by the railings that
barred children from the stairwell. I must have this address urgently. I’m from
the Vale School. In fact she had just come from there; they’d said they would
need a request on headed notepaper for the information; they had seemed
suspicious.
Round and up and round and up, clank
clank
.
I’m from the Vale School.

 
          
At
the top, a notice on a dauntingly tall door said KNOCK AND WAIT. The door was ajar;
she went in.

 
          
She
thought at first that the staffroom was empty. Nobody sat at the long central
table, which was bare except for a Bible and, lying in a pool of ketchup on a
plate, the chewed stump of a sausage roll. Even the greenish walls seemed deserted.
There was a smell of charred baked beans; saucepans gathered in the sink,
wearing dirty plates. Men, Clare thought angrily. She was angry with herself
for having dared the stairs for nothing.