Spies (2002) (15 page)

‘And she screamed!’

‘And he ran away!’

‘He ran into Trewinnick!’

‘He preys on women,’ announces Elizabeth Hardiment, and her words carry authority because she wears glasses.

‘Of course,’ explains Roger Hardiment, who also wears glasses. ‘Because he’s a sexual deviant.’

Eddie laughs and claps his hands.

I glance at Barbara Berrill again. She gives me a solemnly excited look. She’s telling me that she’s resisting the urge to announce to everyone what she knows, and she’s doing it for my sake, because Keith’s my friend and she’s mine.

‘He’s coming out!’ whispers one of the Geest twins, and we all spin round to look at Auntie Dee’s house. It’s not the staring-eyed deviant, of course – it’s the policeman, being shown out of the front door by Auntie Dee. He turns back to say something to her. She nods silently, biting her lip, her ever-smiling face for once pinched and anxious.

‘Oh, no!’ whispers one of the Geest twins. ‘Look at her!’

‘She’s really frightened,’ whispers the other.

‘Because if the man’s come back once,’ explains Elizabeth Hardiment, ‘she knows he’ll come back again.’

‘Sexual deviants always do,’ says Roger Hardiment.

As the policeman comes back to the garden gate and Auntie Dee starts to close the door, she notices us all watching her. She opens it wide again and waves, all smiles as usual.

Dave Avery, Norman Stott, and Roger Hardiment rush forward and stand the policeman’s bicycle upright for him. Everyone watches him, waiting for him to make some pronouncement on the case. He has a thick, gingery moustache which turns down at the ends and gives him an important look, but he says nothing. We all stand back and silently follow as he wheels the bicycle up the street.

‘He’s going to Trewinnick,’ whispers one of the Geest twins.

‘
Are
you?’ the other one asks him boldly.

No answer.

‘Dad’s seen the people who live in there,’ Dave Avery informs him.

‘They’re never there in the day,’ explains Norman Stott.

‘They only go there at night.’

I peer past the evergreens into the overgrown garden with everyone else as we approach. The blackout curtains at the windows are drawn, and the usual melancholy neglect reigns undisturbed.

‘That man’s probably still hiding round the back somewhere,’ whispers one of the Geests.

Barbara Berrill looks at me to see how I react to the possibility of his imminent discovery. All the unease I felt before reawakens.

The policeman walks straight past Trewinnick, though.

Half a dozen fingers point out his mistake. ‘There! No! That one!’

He props his bicycle against the Haywards’ gatepost. Of course.

‘Keith’s house,’ whispers everyone, and they all turn to look at me, because Keith’s my friend, so I have some kind of responsibility for what goes on here. I say nothing, and try not to catch anyone’s eye, but I feel the blood coming to my face.

They all turn back to watch silently as the policeman bangs twice with the heavy knocker.

‘It’s because Mrs Hayward’s Mrs Tracey’s sister,’ explains Elizabeth Hardiment.

‘Yes, or when the man ran into Trewinnick he climbed over the fence, and started to prey on Mrs Hayward instead,’ says Roger Hardiment.

They sneak another look at me. I keep my gaze fixed on the house, but then have to look away when Keith’s mother opens the front door. I don’t want to see what expression she has on her face as the policeman explains why he’s come.

Eventually she stands back, and the policeman scrapes his boots on the scraper, then steps inside and wipes them again on the mat, just as I do. The front door closes. I should do something, I know. I should go and knock on the door and tell the policeman everything I know. But all I do is stand there, gazing at the closed front door with everyone else, trying not to imagine what’s going on beyond it, trying not to be aware of Barbara Berrill looking sideways at me.

Then we all turn and fall back, because someone’s waiting to get past us to the gate. It’s Keith, dismounting from his bicycle on his way home from school, smiling his father’s little thin smile of embarrassment to find his home besieged. We watch in silence as he manoeuvres awkwardly to open the gate and wheel his bicycle in. I should step forward and help him. I should explain what’s going on. I do nothing, though. It’s the Geests who are left to take pity on him.

‘The policeman’s here,’ says one of them. ‘He’s talking to your Mummy.’

‘That peeping Tom was hanging around again last night,’ says the other.

‘He’s a sexual deviant,’ says Roger Hardiment. ‘He’s preying on your mother.’

Keith says nothing. For a moment our eyes meet, and I see the eyelids come down in the familiar curtain of contempt. I’ve ceased to be his friend; I’ve become one of the mob. I glance away quickly, and catch Barbara Berrill watching both of us.

‘Why won’t he say anything?’ demands Norman Stott, looking at me, as Keith pushes his bicycle up the path and disappears into the back yard.

‘Because he’s worried about his Mummy,’ says one of the Geests.

‘No, he’s not,’ says Dave Avery. ‘He’s just stuck up.’

They all look at me.

‘He won’t even speak to
you
now!’ says a Geest.

‘Perhaps he’s the peeping Tom,’ says Dave Avery.

‘Or perhaps Stephen is,’ says Norman Stott slyly. Eddie beams trustingly up into my face and tries to take my hand.

I don’t respond to either of them. I concentrate on trying not to imagine Keith putting his bicycle away in the shed … taking his books out of the saddlebag … coming into the hall where his father’s listening without comment while his mother tells the policeman that she hasn’t noticed anything unusual. I refuse to see Keith going red in the face and smiling his father’s smile as they all three turn to look at him …

The front door opens, and Keith’s mother sees the policeman out. She’s wearing a helpful smile. She’s told him that she’ll let the police know at once if she sees anything suspicious.

Keith’s father has gone back to his workbench, Keith has gone up to his playroom. Nothing has been said. Nothing awkward is going to occur.

The children hand the policeman his bicycle and run beside him as he rides slowly away towards the end of the Close. I wait for them to go, then I crawl into the lookout and sit there with my head in my hands. Once again I’ve done nothing. Nothing to help her. Nothing to stop her.

‘It wasn’t Auntie Dee’s boyfriend this time, was it?’ whispers Barbara Berrill. She’s sitting in the observation post watching me, catching at the flap of her purse with her lower lip, making the popper pop and unpop. ‘It was Keith’s Mummy’s boyfriend. Because Keith’s Daddy won’t let her out of his sight. He came to see her.’

I go on fiddling with the same dead twig that I was fiddling with before, breaking it into small pieces. Life’s going round in circles.

‘Mummy got in such a state last night!’ whispers Barbara Berrill. ‘She went out to look for Deirdre, because it was almost dark and Deirdre still hadn’t come home, and she was raving about Daddy not being there to keep us in order and look after us – then suddenly she saw this man, and she thought, “Oh, no!”’

I break the pieces of twig into smaller pieces still.

‘Actually,’ she whispers, ‘I know why Deirdre hadn’t come home.’

I can feel her looking at me, to see if I know as well. Of course I do, though I’m not going to say.

‘She was with your brother somewhere.’

‘I know,’ I say, before I remember I’m not going to.

‘And I know what they were doing,’ she whispers.

‘They smoke cigarettes,’ I say in spite of myself, unable to let her think I don’t know something that she does.

No reply. I glance at her. She’s still looking at me, smiling secretly. She has some extra piece of knowledge that she’s longing to impart.

‘They kiss each other,’ she whispers. ‘Deirdre told me. They smoke cigarettes and then they kiss each other.’

‘I know, I know,’ I say, though I didn’t. But I can perfectly well believe it now I do know. It’s just about what Geoff
would
do.

Barbara holds the blue purse in front of her mouth, still popping and unpopping it, and looking at me over the top of it.

‘Your face has gone all squidgy again,’ she says.

‘No, it hasn’t.’

‘You can’t see.’

She’s still looking at me.

‘Have
you
ever smoked cigarettes?’ she whispers.

‘Loads.’

‘I bet you haven’t.’

‘Yes, I have. Loads and loads.’

She smiles at me, not believing me but pretending to because she wants to talk about it. ‘Is it nice?’

I try to remember what it was actually like when Charlie Avery and I manufactured two cigarettes out of the sodden tobacco from the ends in his parents’ ashtrays. All I can recall is the deliciously forbidden indoor-firework smell of the flaring match. I shrug. ‘Quite nice.’

‘Do you smoke cigarettes in here with Keith?’ she asks. She’s holding up something she’s found on the ground beside her. It’s a cigarette that someone has started to smoke and then stubbed out. I’m too taken aback by the sight to claim the credit for it in time. ‘Somebody else must have been in here, then,’ she says.

I feel a kind of vertigo. I’ve lost any grip I ever had on the world. Strangers are coming into our special place, and whispering and pleading and telling secrets and smoking cigarettes, and I’ve no control over any of it.

Barbara inspects the cigarette. ‘It’s a cork tip,’ she says. She puts it between her lips and pretends to smoke it, giggling.

‘You’ll get germs!’ I cry, shocked. ‘You don’t know where it’s been!’

She takes it out of her mouth and languorously blows an imaginary smoke ring. ‘I can guess,’ she says. She blows another smoke ring.

It takes me a moment to guess what her guess is. I gaze at her, still more disturbed. What – Geoff and Deirdre? In the dark? Smoking? And kissing each other? In
here
?

‘I bet it was,’ she says. ‘Have you got any matches?’

I don’t rise to this, at any rate. She’s only asking because she knows I haven’t.

She nods at the padlocked trunk. ‘What about in your secret box thing?’

I hesitate for an instant as I suddenly remember the candle stub and the matches to light it, then shake my head. My instant of hesitation was too long, though.

‘Come on,’ she says. ‘He won’t know.’

She leans across me and tries the padlock. My lap’s full of the weight and softness of her, and the movements of her body as she pulls the padlock back and forth. The blue purse has come to rest on top of my hand. I can feel the bobbliness of the leather and the shininess of the popper against my skin, and the wetness on the edge of the flap where she was catching it against her lip.

‘Where’s the key?’ she demands. I say nothing. She turns her head and looks up at me, her head mockingly upside down, her hair falling in her eyes. ‘Or doesn’t he let you have the key?’

My sense of vertigo returns. There’s no firm ground anywhere. I roll sideways under her and get the key out from under the hidden stone. I hear the soft, smooth sounds as she turns it in the lock that Keith keeps so carefully oiled. She lifts the lid and gazes at the contents.

‘These are all your secret things?’ she says. She picks up various items, still lying in my lap. I watch her helplessly. The enormity of my crime is almost too much to comprehend. First I let a stranger into our private place – and now I let her see our most private possessions. How has this happened?

‘Are these pretend bullets?’

‘No, they’re real ones.’

‘Why have you got an old sock in here?’

I take it away from her and throw it back. ‘We need it for something special.’

She takes out the carving knife. ‘What’s this for?’

‘It’s a bayonet.’

‘A
bayonet
?’ She cautiously feels the edges. ‘You mean for sticking into people?’

Yes, and for administering the oath to reveal nothing of all this to any living soul, and for cutting my throat if I break the oath, so help me God and hope to die. I say nothing more.

‘The handle’s come off,’ she says. ‘It looks more like a carving knife to me.’

It looks more like a carving knife to me, too. I take it away from her and put it carefully back in the trunk. She sits up and shows me what she’s found in its place – the box of matches. She strikes one, and I feel the thrilling prickle of the firework fumes in my nose. She puts the cigarette back in her mouth, and cautiously advances the bent and blackened end into the flame. Her face glows in the flickering light. Two tiny images of fire dance in the darkness of her narrowed eyes.

Suddenly she drops the match and snatches the cigarette out of her mouth, choking and coughing. ‘Ugh!’ she cries, looking at it in astonishment. ‘It’s absolutely beastly!’

I hold out my hand. ‘Let me have a go.’

She ignores me. With infinite precaution she puts the cigarette back into her mouth and tries again. Again she chokes and coughs, and gets the smoke in her eyes as well. This time she blindly hands the cigarette to me, and presses her eyes against the backs of her hands.

I put the cigarette into my mouth. The cork tip is moist from her lips, like the flap of her purse. Very carefully I suck in a little smoke. I feel the presence of it inside my mouth, as if it were something solid. She takes her hands away from her eyes and watches me, weeping and blinking. I hold the smoke in my mouth for a few moments, careful not to get it into my throat. It tastes of importance and of being grown up. I lift my head, as I’ve seen Geoff do, and blow the smoke out again. I sigh with satisfaction.

She takes the cigarette back. ‘How do you do it?’ she asks humbly.

‘You just have to get used to it.’

She screws up her eyes and takes another little puff.

‘Now blow it out,’ I instruct her. She blows the smoke out, and jerks her head back to keep her eyes away from it.

She hands me the cigarette, and watches as I take another little mouthful.

‘Do you feel all right?’ she asks. ‘It’s supposed to make you feel sick.’