Staring At The Light (30 page)

No real pain yet. Only a dull pain like a stiff neck after a night spent in a draught. A pain in the neck; laugh about it.
That was what Cannon had been doing when he came up the stairs, laughing, and that was what he remembered when he opened his
eyes. There was a trick they had practised as children suffering minor wounds, such as grazed knees or cut fingers. They would
concentrate not on something better but something worse. Stare at each other with their almost identical eyes, Johnny and
Cannon, saying over and over again, This does
not
hurt, not
really
hurt, does it? Think of something that
really
hurts … something
really
scary, like the dentist, and this one will go away.

Cannon tried it now; thought of real pain to put this dull ache into perspective. His fingers touched the stickiness of the
canvas; he imagined himself touching the heat of Sarah’s neck, feeling for a pulse, finding it. Those little scars of hers
must have
involved real pain, like the cigarette burn Johnny had once inflicted for fun, sneaking up behind him, stubbing it out on
his bare back. That was real pain, like the dentist Johnny so feared and he no longer did. Johnny always lied about what pain
was. The worst pain was loss and the worst result he could envisage was remaining as he was, beaten into accidental submission
by one of Johnny’s dilapidated houses.
Laugh
about it, go on.
Man who plays with fire since age of four dies under falling beam
. Johnny never used to let houses rot. It was loneliness and despair made him do that. Three years of wilful neglect could
bring down the beams of a house. Cannon thought of the house he had destroyed on Bonfire Night and what a pointless piece
of destruction that had been. As if Johnny would care. All this time he had thought he knew what made Johnny tick, but no
knowledge was complete.

The joists in an attic floor, he remembered, often marked the point in the building process when the contractor ran out of
the best wood. Rot might have made the broken beam lighter. He could not
stay
like this; it was
ridiculous
. He heaved and, like Prometheus unbound, he was, if not free, free enough to raise his torso and shuffle the weight of the
broken rafter down his body and onto his buttocks. Then he lay, twisted to one side, grabbing the portrait with its wooden
stretcher to use as a lever, shoved under the beam, raising it a fraction before the fragile frame of the stretcher snapped
and he slithered his legs free, like someone curling away from a snake, leaving the skin
of his coat. The portion of beam rolled to the floor with a dull thump like a sledge-hammer, bounced and landed on Sarah’s
portrait. He stood uncertainly and gazed at it briefly, looked at the hole in the roof and then back to her. There were notes
from the money stash scattered over the floor, one or two directly across her face. Sarah with ten pounds sterling over her
lips, more on her bosom.

No real pain yet, but he hurt. His shoulders were stiff, his left arm curiously reluctant to move as he tried to use it to
hail the cab. He wanted a drink. The darkness had come down like a curtain at the end of Act Two. Not final, but determined.
A taxi stopped; he flung himself inside.

‘Aren’t you a bit cold, mate?’

Cannon looked at his torn sweater and dusty trousers. The temperature was irrelevant, the question perfectly stupid. ‘What
time is it?’

‘Seven o’clock, near enough. Where to?’

It felt like the middle of the night; still early and the roads full. He felt he had escaped lightly from a stupid accident
and the omens were therefore good; he was smugly pleased with himself, bordering on the euphoric, apart from a monstrous headache,
into which there nudged that memory of happiness. Julie and a baby; the end of rotten houses and the old identity. Singing
to himself softly and tunelessly as the cab rolled along. ‘“Rock-a-bye, baby boy, Go to sleep, son.”’

The door to the convent was open. The ground floor blazed with light so that he was almost shy to go
in, used as he was to its cautious darkness and the single light from Julie beckoning him inside. He should have been here
at least an hour ago and he waited, humbly, for the chastisement of women, only mildly suspicious of the frenzied activity
inside. Into that suspicion there crept the other fear about Julie and how she had come to belong where she did not belong;
a little nag of doubt about her. Sarah would dictate and they would obey. Sarah with the ten-pound note stuck over her mouth
and all the good ideas.

There were flitting figures, like a nest of moths disturbed. He pushed past a sister who seemed so pleased to see him she
must have mistaken him for someone else, apologized automatically and crossed into the parlour. There, more of them were huddled
in a posse, clucking like quiet hens, Pauline resisting the attempts of Imelda to hold her hand; Julie curled in a tight,
cold ball into one of the chairs, uncurling and racing towards him with a cry, flinging her arms around him, grabbing at him
and holding on like a limpet. For a full moment, he enjoyed the sensation of public embrace. It seemed years since they had
ever hugged openly with other people watching, but the pleasure and the pride were fleeting. Pauline’s voice cut through like
a whip. Her face showed the presence of tears, as did the face of his wife, but in Pauline’s case, the weeping and the shock
were under control. Her face was altered and aged, the sight of her iron grey crop as startling as if he had seen her naked,
the voice unmistakable.

‘Your brother and his minder took Sarah away.
Because they thought she was Julie. There’s no comparison, is there? Why would he do that?’ The voice rose in anxiety. The
crucifix on her rosary beads was curled inside her palm as she shook her head. ‘And …
we
…
we
let him do it. God help us.’

Her head was bowed. Imelda murmured to her. She sat back obediently, neck stretched, contemplating the ceiling. There was
a red handkerchief in her lap. He was slow to smell the blood. ‘I am so sick of kindness,’ she said.

‘He’s going to come back, the man said they were going to come back. Cannon, we’ve got to go before they come back. Before
he realizes – oh, Cannon, we’ve got to go – now.’ Julie’s voice was high with hysteria, shrill, demanding, insistent. ‘NOW.’

‘Shut up,’ Imelda said.

To think, all this time, he had been waiting for this. Waiting to find that Johnny had taken his Julie away; waiting and hoping
not, while those who had once believed him had ceased to believe him, so that he himself had grown careless and hopeless,
and all he could feel now was relief, because
something
had happened to show he was right and because Johnny had kidnapped the wrong one. He wanted to snigger at the mistake because
it was all Johnny’s fault for refusing to look at Julie’s picture in the first place, refusing ever to meet her, couldn’t
look at her face even when he had had her beaten, serve him right. But after the relief, there was speechless rage, and outside
that he was only aware of Julie’s hand clawing at his arm, pulling him towards the door and the outside world.

‘The police are coming,’ Imelda ventured comfortingly, as if that would be the answer to everything. ‘I don’t know why you
didn’t call them at once.’

‘Because we were waiting for this gentleman,’ Pauline murmured. ‘Well, Cannon? Are you going to go and leave us to explain
to them? What shall we say to the officers? We don’t even know where he lives.’

‘He wouldn’t take her there,’ Cannon said quickly. He shuffled his feet. He never did want the police near Johnnyboy; always
tried to save him from that. Besides, he would never take her home; never. ‘I don’t suppose they said where they were taking
her? Or why?’ A foolish question. He wanted to be gone, out there, anywhere with Julie, even if it was nowhere, running in
the dark, and he was finding it difficult to consider anything else while she still pulled at him in panic, even though he
knew there was something wrong with his reaction; something abominably selfish.

‘She’ll be
all right
,’ Julie was screaming. ‘They said they’d bring her back. He
promised
. Sarah’s always
all right
– she’s a survivor. Don’t think about Sarah, think about
me
. Get me away before he comes back for
me
. She did it for us.’

There was a moment’s silence and her hand dropped from his arm. ‘They’re only taking her for
treatment
,’ she gabbled. ‘He won’t hurt her as soon as he knows she isn’t
yours
, why should he? And that’s why she let it happen. To give us time to get away, don’t you see? Come on, Cannon.
Come on
.’

There were echoes of similar, brisker orders from
Sarah. ‘Come
on
, Cannon.’ Julie was in a rage of cowardice and he could not blame her for it.
Treatment; taken away for treatment
. Giving us time to escape. He tried to justify it. They won’t hurt her, not
really
hurt. And if Johnny were to wreak his revenge on Sarah, surely that would spend his forces and be the end of it. There was
always a limit to his energies. He wouldn’t do it twice; it was over; the loss of face, the wasted malice would exhaust him;
they were free; he knew it; they should go, now, anywhere, and never hear of him again. He thought of his own cowardice and
what it had created: Sarah’s portrait, prominently displayed, part of him wanting to say, I told you so, don’t say I didn’t
warn you. I
told
you and you stopped believing me. Let her take the brunt. She would outwit Johnnyboy, with her hands tied behind her back,
a woman like that; she was clever with men, a
tart
. She knew loads of men.

Not men like Johnny. She couldn’t imagine a soul like that any more than sweet, gentle-fingered William could. No-one could.
He could feel Pauline’s eyes, gazing at him; her pale face glowing with pain, the voluminous handkerchief red with blood;
the fine nose, bloated. What was the worst pain Johnnyboy could envisage to inflict on the woman he perceived as enemy and
thief and rival? Going for
treatment
. He knew where they had taken her and knew in the same breath that no policeman would believe it or act on it soon enough.
Julie was clutching him again. Freedom had a price. Somebody else was paying. He kissed her and ran from the room, followed
by the
sound of her screams. ‘I’ve done everything for you.
Everything
.’

It was not a special kind of car, Sarah noticed, as they drove away through the dark streets. Nothing about it designed for
the conveyance of prisoners, no extra locks on the doors of a middle-range saloon. She could never remember the makes of cars
– disinterest foxed the memory – but she tried to remember details in case she was asked and because it helped her to avoid
the present. Blue: the inside of it was blue and the back of Johnnyboy’s head was blackish grey as he drove with quiet precision.
Perhaps she could get out if they slowed for a light; he was a careful driver, never exceeding the speed limit. Perhaps she
should open her mouth and speak, but all she could have uttered was an instruction to go back and collect the right woman
because that was all there was in her mind to say and she did not want to say it, not yet. Not until the convent was full
and Julie was protected. Give them an hour. She felt for the handle of the door.

No need for locks. Only the big man, holding her hand like a father in the back seat of the limo taking the bride to church,
proud and protective and possessive, his hand large enough to crush the bones of her wrist, the way he could have crushed
the kitten. He had spared the kitten; she took some comfort from that and hung on to his final, hurried, whispered words and
their suggestion of conscience. Don’t worry, we’ll bring her back, he’d said. She felt
the loneliness of the condemned, the fear of the sacrificial victim led towards some altar in the presence of a crowd who
applauded the ritual and would not let anyone spoil it. She had never quite understood the existence of evil. The blue upholstery
stank of newness.

She could see where she was going: there was no subterfuge about it, no blindfold; no twists and turns. They were soon in
the familiar territory of the West End with shoppers still streaming home, and hope rose like a bubble. It was all so ordinary;
in a moment, she could step out and join the throng, run across this road and down the next and slip into the side-door of
Selfridges to meet Mrs Matthewson, or plunge into the stuffiness of the tube. They had cruised beyond Piccadilly, across Bond
Street, pausing at the corner where the Mole lived. Past the house of another lover; there would never be any rescue provided
by lovers; there never had been. Lovers were solace, not power; the strongest of emotions, the weakest links. Then they were
in William’s territory, the district of doctors: civilized, handsome, full of the promise of a cure. If they passed his house,
she could wave at him, scream for help if she had such a thing as a voice left. An hour, and the convent would be safe. Cannon
would have got there. Useless in a crisis; better than nothing. Take Julie away, you fool. Take her away. From inside the
self-contained vacuum of her life she thought of the people she loved and doubted if any of them would try to help her even
if they knew the danger. She doubted it without bitterness. Each to
his own life. She had never expected much and she was not sure of what the danger was. Only that it was immense. She made
herself small and silent and unobjectionable.

Not only William’s territory but William’s street. She recalled his kindly face with a desperate surge of affection, wanted
to see him running along beside the car, tapping on the window, saying, ‘Stop, stop, stop. You’ve made a mistake.’

They stopped.

Early evening, and the city, as far as he could sense, was lingering at the breakpoint between day and night. William would
have liked a town crier to patrol this street, telling the hour, every hour, and confirming that all was well. Not that he
doubted it as he surveyed the surgery with no more than the usual anxiety, checking the cleanliness, the detail, taking it
in with a pride that no-one else shared. He had dusted the reception area as if it had not been done early in the day and
would not be done again, first thing in the morning, by the cleaner. He liked the way he had designed it, so that when one
moved from the reception to the surgery there was only another pleasant vista towards the window when the door was open. William
mourned the necessity for closed doors. He crossed and looked out. Traffic subdued by double glazing into no more than a distant
buzz; lights catching empty windows. In the waiting room, the paintings glowed with their own life.