Silent Children (12 page)

"May I ask who told you that?"

"An anonymous call to the paper. My colleague who took it thought the voice was disguised and couldn't tell the age or gender."

"When?"

"Close to midnight, I believe. It was thought best not to trouble you that late."

"And what did your friend say?"

"My colleague? The caller. Just that your house had been broken into and vandalised as a result of its reputation."

" 'The Ames house has been broken into and vandalised as a result of its reputation.' "

"Words to that effect," the reporter said blankly, "yes."

"Well, they were right, and you don't need me to tell you it must have been one of your readers, except of course it might have been more than one."

"Mrs. Ames," the reporter said, though she was looking at Jack, "I really don't think you can blame—"

"Can't I? Watch me." Ian's mother darted into the front room to fetch a copy of the
Advertiser.
"I ought to introduce you, Jack. This is Verity Drew, and here's the kind of thing she writes: MOTHER AND SON TO STAY IN MURDER HOUSE. Mrs. Ames claimed she had overcome her feelings about the house's history of horror, and her thirteen-year-old son agreed with her. 'It's my favourite house' is something else it says I said."

"I assure you I'm not given to misquotation, Mrs. Ames, but if you have any specific complaints you'd care to put in writing to my editor—"

"I'd rather not join your happy band of letter-writers, thanks. I'd just like you to see what someone did, only you can't, can you? It's upstairs."

She would never have made such a remark if she wasn't almost uncontrollably furious. Whatever reaction the journalist might have displayed was precluded by the slam of a door of a car that had parked behind hers. She peered around her chair as a man festooned with camera equipment opened the gate. "Perhaps you'll permit my photographer to view the scene instead."

"He won't be scared to come in? He won't be tainted by his visit? He can wait until I'm dressed." Ian's mother held the lapels of her shaggy white bathrobe together as she padded upstairs, then she leaned over the banisters. "No, someone bring him up if he wants a picture of the doors. I've said enough."

"Let me," Jack called, and climbed the stairs ahead of the photographer. "No need to have me in it," he protested when the camera began to whir and click, and Ian wished he'd gone up instead of Jack, because he wouldn't have minded being shown as the custodian of the graffiti. The photographer scampered downstairs with a rattle of equipment and out of the house, and Verity Drew gazed up at Ian and Jack. "One further matter I'd like to raise," she said.

"Would you care to come in and sit down?" Jack suggested.

"Sitting in the sunlight suits me, thank you. I understand some little girls have been terrorised here recently."

Though she'd turned most of her attention on Ian, it was Jack who said "Did you get another anonymous call?"

"You wouldn't expect us to dismiss anybody's genuine concern just because of how it might be expressed," the reporter informed him, and stared wholly at Ian. "What can you tell me about these little girls?"

"Excuse me, I think at least you'd better wait—"

"It's okay, Jack, I don't mind telling. One was my dad's girlfriend's who got scared when he came in the house, and the other was my friend's little sister. She did come in with me and our lot, then she got scared and ran off."

"Scared of what exactly?"

"We were pretending there was a ghost or something." He was growing increasingly conscious of being heard by Jack. "We never thought there was really," he said, struggling not to lie in case that made Jack more rather than less dissatisfied with him, "and I dunno if she did either."

"You quite enjoyed the game, did you?"

"Suppose."

"Frightening people younger than yourself."

"Hold on, ma'am, don't try to make him into something he isn't. Didn't you ever throw a scare into a younger kid? Sounds as if maybe it got a tad out of hand, but he's sorry for it. I shouldn't think an incident as small as that is worth reporting even in a local paper."

"May I ask why you would want it suppressed, Mr. Lamb?"

"I don't hold with censorship. I couldn't very well when I've written horror books. I just think these guys have been harassed enough."

"Are you suggesting I'm harassing them?"

"If he's not," Ian's mother said, "I am."

She was wearing a T-shirt and shorts, and Ian had to straighten a grin at Jack's admiring glance as she moved between him and the reporter, saying "I apologise for what I said about not being able to handle the stairs."

"I accept your apology," Verity Drew said stiff-faced.

"But now we've had enough of you. I don't think there's anything more to be said."

"Well, Mrs. Ames, I must say it's a change for you to want to keep me out of your house. As I recall, last time you and your son did your best to keep me in it."

"Then your memory wants fixing. All I did was try and help you down the step because you seemed to need help."

"You'll forgive my wondering what policy you have as regards the alternatively able where you work."

"Anyone can come into the shop straight off the pavement, can't they, Jack, only you'd call it the sidewalk. As far as employment goes there's just me and my partner Melinda, and we're both, how can I put it, what you see."

"I've seen all I require, thank you," the reporter said, and performed a rapid three-point turn on the path before glancing back. Ian was tempted to run after her and at least push her out of the gate, and he'd taken a step when his mother planted a hand on his chest as she closed the door. "We can't stop her saying whatever she's going to say. Maybe her editor won't let her indulge herself too much."

"She'll get round that. She knows how to say things so you can't prove she did."

"Not like us straightforward Yanks." Observing that his remark made Ian no happier, Jack said "There's one good thing about all this publicity."

"What?"

"Yes, what's that?" Ian's mother said.

"It—it finishes. It ends. Mine surely did for my books. Say, am I the only one that's hungry here? That breakfast smells like it wants to be eaten."

"I think that's the best idea anybody's had this morning."

Ian thought he had a better one that it was time to share. He waited until he and Jack had served his mother breakfast and he was seated in front of his own, his bare feet resting on concrete almost as warm as sunlit earth, and then he said "If she's going to write stuff about us we should have told her who messed up the place."

His mother opened her mouth before she'd quite finished her mouthful. "Why, who do you think it was?"

"Mom, I mean mum, you saw him. You know who it's got to be, don't you, Jack?"

"You mean the guy we saw last night near the restaurant?"

"That's him. Rupe Duke. Did you know it was before I said? You could have told the paper woman. She'd have believed you more than me."

"I only figured he was who you had to mean. I guess I'd need more evidence before I shot my mouth off."

"And there isn't any, is there, Ian? We can't go accusing someone just because of how they looked at us. I'm afraid on that basis it could have been a good few people."

"We don't have any reason to assume that lady would have bought it from an old storyteller like me," Jack said, and loaded his mouth.

"If you wanted to be really helpful, Ian, you could go down to the shops after breakfast and buy something to clean off the paint while I see who'll fix the window, and then I'll go to work."

He took this as a way of dismissing his suspicions, though he thought Jack might have believed him. Once he'd downed his breakfast and offered to wash up, only to have Jack say he would, he pocketed the money his mother gave him and went upstairs to fish some footwear out of the disorder in his room. From the hall he saw Jack and his mother at the sink, standing so close to each other they were bound to touch soon. He grinned and let himself out of the house.

The Homeneeds store occupied most of a block of the main road. An assistant in an overall red as a brick and with bristling orange hair that stopped short an inch above his outsize ears sold him a can of paint remover and a brush. The lumpy plastic carrier practiced bruising Ian's thigh as he emerged into the sunlight, more of which the front of a bus to Pinner threw at him. He closed his eyes to clear them of blindness, and opened them to see Rupe Duke swaggering toward him.

Though the pavement was crowded with shoppers, Ian saw only him. He was wearing more leather than ever, much of it displaying a rash of studs. He held his fists at his sides and jerked his face higher and shaped his mouth into an inverted grin, and stood in Ian's path. "Fixing your house?" he said, so monotonously it was barely a question.

Ian didn't swing the heavy can at the other boy's face or at his crotch, he simply came to a halt. "What's it look like?"

"Something need doing?"

"You should know."

"Who says?"

"I do. You were there."

"Who says I was?"

His eyes were flat, and their dullness hoped to be kindled with violence, but it struck Ian that the question could mean one or more of the neighbours had seen Rupe breaking in. If they'd intended to tell Ian's mother they would have done so by now, and so they must think she wasn't worth telling. "You and me know," he said into Rupe's face, "and I'm going to make you know I do."

"Try it. Go ahead, try it now. Don't dare, do you? I'm not some little girl you like scaring." When Ian walked past him, Rupe dodged around him and backed ahead of him, butting his head at him as though to invite the first punch. This wasn't the place, and so Ian was glad to encounter Janet from next door, wheeling a heaped Frugo trolley home and looking to him for help. He saw Rupe fall behind, sending a gob of spit down the side street after him, but he was more aware of the crowd through which Rupe had stayed with him—of all the faces that had seemed to be expecting him to maim Rupe, to live up to the reputation they were creating for him. He'd deal with Rupe all right, but he'd choose the time and place. Even Jack couldn't stop him from doing what so many people expected of him.

"Adele, don't scream or anything. It's me. It's your dad."

"Daddy, how can it be you? You're dead. You've been dead for years."

"Not your real dad. Hush and look closer."

"My God, it's you, Hector. You poor thing, what have they done to you?"

"Wipe your eyes now. No need to feel sorry for me when I've come home. Nobody's had hold of me, don't fret. I did this."

"How could you hurt yourself like that, Hector? How could you bear it?"

"Because I knew I was only doing what I had to, just like always. It was worth it to be safe. None of the neighbours know your father's dead. Once they've got used to him living with you, he'll be able to go out of the house when he wants and lead a normal life."

"You make sure you're careful, Hector. I thought I'd lost you when you fell out of that boat. I don't want to be losing you again."

"I won't be going that far again, promise. Maybe you'll get tired of having me around the house."

"Not as long as I live. You've been too many surprises for me ever to get tired of you."

"I hope this one wasn't too much of a shock, old girl."

"I couldn't ever be shocked by my old Hector."

"Not even when he's this old? An old rag with too much hair and no teeth that nobody but you would want to look at twice, no, make that once. A scarecrow that's got loose, that's prattling away to itself and nobody wants to look it in the eye ..."

He was indeed talking to himself as he limped into Cricklewood. Shoot Up Hill had turned into the Broadway, where a pavement-load of shoppers were doing their best to ignore him while children giggled and pointed at him. "That's all right," he cried, "let's have a laugh," too late to prevent one woman from yanking at her daughter's arm and cuffing her so violently about the head that the little girl's pigtails began to unravel. He jabbed his thinnest fingers deep into his ears, but even when the ears began to blaze with pain he couldn't quite shut out the child's howls, and so he dodged faster through the crowd, his lowered forehead driving at the heat and the wavering fumes of the traffic, his unwashed hair snatching at his cheeks, the rucksack jerking his undernourished shoulders at every step. He had to slow down or he would be home too soon—he would be home before he knew what to say to Adele.

He couldn't believe she would refuse to take him back, but he still owed her an explanation. He'd never given her so much as a hint of the secret tasks he'd had to perform; she'd had enough on her mind with running the Haven. As he turned toward Childs Hill he managed to check his momentum and unplug his ears, whose throbbing had spread to his jaws. He didn't want to feel closed in with his voice, which had recommenced chattering to itself like a senile old man's—it could, since he wasn't one. "Adele?"

"Hector?"

"Don't look like that. I know it must have been a shock when you heard about the children, but I only kept it from you to protect you."

"Like you were trying to protect them."

"That's me. I knew you'd understand."

"I'm not sure I do, Hector. You'll have to help me."

"It started with Biff and how he suffered till he died, and then there was your sister."

"Pamela? What's anything to do with her?"

"It was her got you into caring, for a kickoff, her being a social worker and telling you how much was wrong."

"She affected me right enough, but—"

"You never realised how much she affected me, did you? You had to cover your ears sometimes when she talked about the little ones she saw, but I heard it all. I remember the first one I couldn't stand hearing about, the little boy with cigarette burns all over—"

"Don't say it, Hector. I keep telling her I don't want to know when I can't do anything."

"You see how it still gets to you even though he's at peace. He was my first, and I'm proud he was. You know, I hoped he'd be the only one I'd have to help, but Pamela kept talking about others that were as bad or sounded like they'd end up that way. I just wish the parents, not that most of them were even that, the bad lots that were arrested on suspicion could have stayed locked up after the police found out about me. That's the one thing I do regret."