Ramsey Campbell - 1976 - The Doll Who Ate His Mother (18 page)

 
          
“Oh,
right. I just thought we should wait for Clare.
And Alice.”

 
          
“Thank
you, Chris,” Alice said. Clare found herself blushing and was bewildered.

 
          
“All
right,” Edmund said, sitting forward sharply. “George says he wants to help.”

 
          
His
amusement had faded. Clare was sure he’d wanted to take George aside and
persuade him.

 
          
His
nose twitched, but behind him the rabbit had won that contest. Clare jammed her
handkerchief into her face and glanced hastily away, toward the goldfish
hanging from their gulping mouths.

 
          
“You
know after the inquest I opened my mouth even wider than usual,” George said.
“I didn’t know they were going to quote me. Well, the other day they sent a
reporter to get me to say Ted had used me against my will. I won’t repeat what
I said to him. But that doesn’t make up for what I said after the inquest.”

 
          
“Still,
it did some good,” Clare said. “Otherwise Chris couldn’t have got in touch with
us.”

 
          
Edmund
made an ambiguous sound. Alice said, “But now he knows you’re after him, the
man you’re hunting.”

 
          
“That
doesn’t matter. He doesn’t know how,” Edmund said. “He’ll assume we’re
following the police. That’s what the police must think themselves; they
haven’t been in touch with me. He won’t see us coming from another direction.”

 
          
“If
I hadn’t opened my mouth he wouldn’t know anything,” George said.

 
          
The
rabbit had been lifting fire-irons off their stand with her teeth, dropping
them on the rug. Now she hopped into Chris’s lap and chattered her teeth,
shoving her nose under his hand to be stroked. “She makes that sound when she’s
happy,” Alice explained. “She’s a funny little thing. Isn’t she, George?” But
she couldn’t get hold of the conversation.

 
          
“You
could be very useful, George,” Edmund said.

 
          
He
and the cat gazed loftily at the rabbit. “You could see what you can get out of
Kelly’s doctor, his grandmother’s doctor. If anyone knows what’s behind this,
he must. You’re the man to find out.”

 
          
“Why
is George the man?” Alice asked.

 
          
“Because he’d be one professional talking to another.
Chris
is no use, too young. Clare might do it, but what he might have to say could be
pretty horrible. As for me, I’d be too busy worrying whether he’d read about
me.”

 
          
“Don’t
you tell people who you are before you question them?”

 
          
“Certainly
I do, Alice. But they haven’t usually been turned against me beforehand.”

 
          
“Then
he’ll feel the same about anyone who’s helping you.”

 
          
“Now,
Alice,” George said. “I’ve offered to help. I’ll feel better if I do.”

 
          
“I
don’t want you to. I wouldn’t feel safe. Suppose this Kelly still has the same
doctor? Suppose he hears you’ve been asking about him?”

 
          
“I
think he’d stay away from that doctor,” Edmund said.

 
          
“But
the doctor might tell his grandmother. Suppose Kelly finds out where we live?”

 
          
“Don’t
be silly,” George said. “How could he?”

 
          
Clare
felt Alice’s despair. Suddenly she knew why Alice had sent the children to the
park: so that the horror couldn’t touch them in any way. Now the horror was
threatening to come closer. So long as it didn’t touch Alice’s home, her
children, it was bearable; but now she couldn’t be certain of keeping it out.

 
          
“I
know how you feel, dear,” George said, “I’ll be careful. I’ll want to be
certain the doctor won’t give us away.”

 
          
Alice
slumped back, closing her eyes wearily.

 
          
“Now,
how do we get you into his surgery?”

 
          
Edmund
said. “You wouldn’t know anyone who might be on his list?”

 
          
“I
know people in the district. There’s an actress friend of my mother’s, and the
fellow who helps me out at the
Newsham
.”

 
          
“You’d
just need to go to the surgery on their behalf, you see. That would be perfect.
Let’s see if we can figure you out an approach once you get in.”

 
          
If
George borrows someone’s medical card, Clare thought, he can be traced through
them. She glimpsed Olivia and Mark in bed, the orange face bobbing at the
window, climbing in. Well, tell George he can be traced!
she
prompted Alice. She glanced round to grimace at her. Exhausted, Alice was
asleep in her chair.

 
          
Clare
was debating whether to make the point herself when George said, “I think I’ve
heard Ruby mention a Dr. Miller. I’ll see. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just
ring the
Newsham
to make sure they’ve no problems.”

 
          
“Don’t
be long. You deserve a treat,” Edmund said, producing and brandishing a
hip-flask of bourbon. “Wake up, Alice,” he called. “You don’t know what you’re
missing.”

 
          
Monday, September 15

 
          
A
woman was emerging from the doctor’s house as George rode up. “Are there many
waiting?” he called.

 
          
“Half
a dozen,” she said, and had to take a wheezing breath. “No, one just—went in.
There’s—five. No, wait a—moment, there’s a woman—with her—son. They might both
be here—for treatment.”

 
          
“Thank
you,” George said when he was sure she’d finished. Five or six, either was
worth a ride around the side streets. Cycling relaxed him. Ten minutes and he’d
be ready for the doctor. He rode away down Boswell Street.

 
          
The
houses were Siamese twins. One pair shared a shallow porch supported by a thin
stone pillar; the left-hand house was pebble-dashed as far as its half of the
pillar, leaving its twin drab with various faded shades of brick. Some
neighbourly
pairs supported each other with timber struts.
Beyond a crew-cut hedge and dusty curtains, George saw a vase of flowers that
looked as if they’d sat in an attic for years.

 
          
“Tell
the doctor your friend is a friend of Kelly’s grandmother,” Chris had
suggested. “Say his grandmother is anxious about him, you don’t know why. Say
your friend told you and you promised you’d try to help. That way you don’t have
to know anything else, right?”

 
          
It
seemed all right. Ruby Roberts had turned out to be a patient of Dr. Miller’s.
She had been tearfully glad to see George, had talked about his mother for
hours, strengthening his will to help Edmund. She needed more medicine; George
had every reason to visit the surgery. He cycled by the old
Smithdown
Picture Playhouse, a supermarket now; the noses of shopping trolleys nested
inside one another. At least Bill Williams’s projection was improving, he
thought, gazing at the lost cinema. Ten minutes and he’d go into the waiting
room.

 
          
Down
Tunnel Road was Fred Robinson’s old cinema, the Avenue, a bingo hall now. Once
George had leaned forward to watch a film and the front row of the circle had
collapsed beneath him. He rode into the terraced side streets that would take
him that way. But there were no side streets. As if the main road were a film
set, there was nothing behind except a waste of pale clay and grit and odd
bricks, a few scrawled walls, a heap of flame, a cloud of smoke wide as streets
resting almost inertly on the orange clay. Specks gathered on the lenses of
George’s spectacles. He cycled quickly back toward Lodge Lane. The landscape
had made him uneasy, irritable.

 
          
The
stopped clock in the Lodge Lane library tower pretended it was 8:24. George
glanced angrily at his watch, wobbling. At Boswell Street a clown was sketched
on an ice-cream van, wearing the contents of a cornet as a turban. Five
minutes. Children ran out of the baths, thumping each other with rolled wet
towels. A cat sat on a butcher’s slab, ECONOMY O was books, George gathered
from the window display. In the side streets, many houses had tin instead of
windows; it was like one of those horror films where people turn to reveal eyes
full of white makeup. A baby with a red rubber stopper sat in a pushchair
outside a dilapidated house. George swerved around a child’s red boot, a pram
wheel, a clutter of young black footballers. He felt nervous, out of place.

 
          
One
minute. All right, no hurry. Cars were hunting along Lodge Lane, eyes bright in
the evening; children ran in front of them, for a dare. Down the side streets
to his left, a frieze of clouds curled, sharp against a band of orange. In a
window a rabbit hung by its feet from a metal hook, its head wrapped in a
bloody plastic bag.

 
          
For
some reason, that upset him. He almost scraped the doctor’s gateposts. The
house rushed at him, twin windows peering over the downstairs bay, long eyes
above a longer snout. He padlocked his bicycle and hurried through the arch of
the porch into the hall.

 
          
A
woman slammed a filing drawer and turned in the same brisk movement. “Yes, what
is it?” she said, her upswept spectacles glinting pointedly at the clock.

 
          
“I’m
here on behalf of Ruby Roberts.”

 
          
She
nodded once at the medical card; the bits of glass decorating her spectacles
blinked.

 
          
“The usual?
I’ll ask Doctor to write the prescription,” she
said. “Then you needn’t wait.”

 
          
“Ah, no.
If you don’t mind,” George stumbled, “I’d like a
word with him myself.”

 
          
“What
did you want to speak to him about?”

 
          
He’d
recovered. “I’ll tell him that
myself
, thank you,” he
said.

 
          
But
in the waiting room he found that his chest was pounding. He gazed at his
interlocked fingers, forced himself to breathe slowly. Gilbert and Sullivan
chattered cheerily behind him. A bell rang. A man shuffled coughing through a
side door; the hem of his overcoat trailed after him, dragging toffee-papers.
George wished the music would stop babbling, wished that the two small children
wouldn’t clatter among the chairs out of reach of their dull-eyed mother. He
rummaged in a pile of magazines. Ah, the Beano. Biff! Yow!
Oof
!
The bell rang. “Come on, you little buggers,” the woman said, shoving her
children toward the side door. Ruby was a friend of Kelly’s grandmother.
Of Mrs. Kelly?
No, that mightn’t be her name. Thud!
Aargh
! The bell rang. The bell rang. George started. He was
alone in the waiting room. The bell was ringing for him.

 
          
He
strode onstage, as his father had used to describe himself striding—and halted,
taken aback. The doctor’s room, his chair and desk and the rest of the
furniture were enormous. When he saw the flowers beyond the flowered curtains,
George realized that the room was ordinary: it was the doctor who was small.
But he’d lost his poise.

 
          
The
doctor swung round in his swivel chair: sixty years old, or older. The cords of
his neck sprang taut; his bald head shone unwrinkled. “For Ruby Roberts, is
it?” he said, already scribbling.

 
          
“That’s
it.” All George could do while he tried to regain his poise was
speak
. “She asked me to—”

 
          
“Yes,
all right, all right.
Her usual.”
He glanced up
quickly, frowning, as George sat opposite him. “Isn’t that right?”