Telling Lies to Alice (26 page)

“Well,” I said carefully, “I think—”

That was when we heard the car.

“What’s that?” Jack jumped up and we stood side by side, listening. The sound was close, and mine’s the last house in the lane, a long way past the others—there was nowhere else for the car to be going. Eustace knew it, too. He rushed at the door, barking. “Get him out of here,” Jack said. The dog growled in protest as I pulled him across the room and into the hall, pushed him into the sitting room, and shut the door on him. When I turned round, Jack was in the kitchen doorway. We stared at each other, listening to the car.

Then the engine stopped. I tried to retreat, but Jack bundled me back into the kitchen, the gun digging into my spine. We stood together, facing the door.

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who is it?”

“I swear, I don’t—”

“Shut up.”

The yard gate dragging across the cobbles. I felt sick. I could hear Jack’s breathing, footsteps coming towards the door—knocking—“Alice?”

A man. Fred Boyle?

More knocking. “Open up!” It wasn’t Fred.

The latch moved. “Don’t!” My shout came out as a whisper.

“For Christ’s sake, woman, you live in the middle of bloody nowhere and you don’t even . . .”
Jeff.
It was Jeff. The door opened wide. I caught an image of him like a snapshot, the tanned, handsome face with the George Best hair, T-shirt, biceps, tight jeans. “What the—”

That was as far as he got.

Jack shot him.

I hadn’t felt Jack move the gun—seen him raise it—
anything
—but there was an explosion of sound and force that filled the room and slammed right through me, rocking me backwards on my feet. Jeff didn’t rock or stagger, he just fell. One moment he was standing in the doorway, the next moment he was flat on his back. For a split second, I looked at Jack. His face was a furious, meaty slab of flesh and his mouth was working, but I couldn’t hear anything, I was in the middle of this world of noise, the room was just full, full of it. Then I got to Jeff, somehow, I don’t know how, I wasn’t thinking, it just happened, and I found myself on my knees beside him, rocking, keening, I don’t know what. . . . The porch light was on and I could see the wound high up in his chest. It wasn’t big, but the blood coming out onto his pale T-shirt was so red, so bright, I’d never seen anything so bright, and my one thought was that I must stop it coming out, keep it inside him . . . I pulled a towel off the rail at the end of the worktop and held it over the place, but I didn’t know whether to put pressure on it or what to do, and it was my fault, mine, he’d come because of me and—

Jeff’s lips were moving. “What is it?”

“Help . . . me . . .”

“Yes . . . yes . . .” I looked round for Jack, but he’d disappeared.

“Ambulance . . .”

“Yes . . . Ambulance . . .”
Get help . . . hospital.
I looked round for the phone—remembered it was smashed—no way to get help. “Sit up, you’ve got to sit up . . .”

“No . . . Ambulance . . .”

“Don’t talk.” Jeff took another breath, and I stared as bright, frothy bubbles of blood came out of his mouth, and then I scrambled up and out into the yard screaming “Help me! Somebody please help me! Call an ambulance!” Even as I was doing it, I knew it was stupid—there aren’t any neighbours near enough, I couldn’t even see any lights, but it was just that I didn’t know what to do and I felt so responsible . . .

I went back inside. It wasn’t bravery—I wasn’t even thinking about Jack—he’d vanished, in any case—only Jeff. I knew he was going to die. Not because of knowing about medicine or first aid—I don’t—but the blood and his face, the look on his face . . . I knew it wouldn’t be long and that even if I managed to get help it would be too late. All I could do was to be with him. I knelt down beside him again. His face had turned grey and his lips were purple, almost blue. There was a noise from his chest, almost like whistling, and he started to cough and splutter, like drowning, drowning from the inside. . . . I wiped the blood with tea towels but there was more and more and it was so red, that’s what you never see on films, how red it is, and I couldn’t do anything, only be there with him and say, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” again and again. I don’t know if he heard me—he never spoke again but his eyes were still open. I got more tea towels and tried to wad them under his head and I took his hand and stroked it and touched his hair and then he was making gurgling noises, and choking like a baby does, but the blood kept coming out of his mouth . . . I don’t know how long, minutes I think, a few minutes, and then—then there was one more breath, a sort of long, wet,
aaaaah
sound, and it was leaving him, the breath—the life—leaving his body, and that was the last, and he was dead.

I didn’t let go of his hand. I knew he couldn’t feel it anymore, but I didn’t want to let go. I stared at his face for a long time. A bit more blood trickled out of his mouth and onto his chin. His eyes were still open—huge, black holes. I bent forwards and brushed the hair off his face with my fingertips. “Jeff, I’m sorry . . . you shouldn’t have come . . . I know, I phoned you, but you shouldn’t . . . it was so kind, you didn’t have to, you didn’t have to come . . . I’m so sorry . . .”

After a while I fetched more tea towels, wetted them under the tap, and tried to clean the blood from his face and neck. Somewhere in the middle of it, it occurred to me about the police—not touching him—evidence—but I couldn’t just leave him, lying on the dirty floor, because . . . well, I’d been married to him, and whatever he’d done to me, when I should never have married him in the first place, I couldn’t just walk away from him, and there wasn’t anybody else . . . and that’s the thing, you don’t know what that’s like, what you’ll do, and he was so handsome, and he looked—even with all those dirty tea towels round his head, the blood and the mess, he still looked . . . I just couldn’t bear to leave him like that.

I wanted to say a prayer, and I started, but then I remembered Jeff hadn’t believed, either, like Lenny, and I thought it wasn’t right because he wouldn’t want it and I’d only be saying it for myself, so I stopped. I closed his eyes, because that didn’t seem right, either, leaving them open, and I got a cushion from the sofa and put it under his head and cleared up all the tea towels and put them in the sink to make it more neat, and then I came back to him and held his hand again and kissed his forehead. I knew it was pointless because he was dead and he couldn’t feel it, but I had to do something and that was all I could think of to do.

Then I heard banging and crashing from the hall and a yelp—Eustace—and then the door was kicked open. “What the hell was he doing here?” Jack shouted at me. I twisted round to look at him. The gun was still in his hand and he was shaking, furious.

“He’s dead,” I said, and turned away.

“What?” I could feel his anger vibrating against my back and head like an electric current, and he was making fidgety, jerky movements as if he didn’t know what to do with himself. I looked down at Jeff, lying in front of me, so solid and still. Life and death, I thought. There’s so little between them. So very little. A movement, a breath. Life and death, and you are in the middle.

Am I next? I thought. Is it me? Is it now? I wasn’t frightened. That was the oddest thing—I ought to have been petrified, but I was calm inside, and silent. Completely silent, and perfectly still.

Jack’s roar made me jump. “What did you say?”

“He’s dead,” I repeated quietly.

“Who is he?”

“Jeff.”

“Who?”

“My husband. Ex-husband.”

“What the fuck was he doing here?”

I didn’t answer.

Jack nudged Jeff’s arm with his foot. “You deal with it,” he said coldly. Then he turned and went back to the sitting room, slamming the door behind him.

The kitchen door was still open. I looked out into the yard, then back at the hall door. Silence. I waited a couple of seconds, holding my breath. . . . Still no sound from the sitting room. I scrambled to my feet, wrenched off my shoes, and ran. Jeff had left his headlights on, lighting up the gateway and the yard, but the lane was pitch dark. The gravel stung my feet and I got a stitch almost immediately, but all I could think of was keeping ahead of Jack long enough to get to my neighbours at the end of the lane . . . half a mile down, but I can do it, I thought, I’ve got to . . . no noise coming from the house, no shouts . . . and if I can just get to the church, the Andersons at the rectory, I can explain, and they’ll phone the police and someone’ll come and I’ll be safe and it’ll be all right, everything’s going to be all right as long as I just keep going—got to keep going, never mind the pain—I could hear my feet, my breathing, my heart, everything, saying,
got-to—got-to—got-to—

A car. There was a car. I heard it, then saw the lights sweeping through the hedge beyond the bend. Fred Boyle, it had to be. Come for Lee. Thank God. I stopped in the middle of the road, clutching my side. The car came round the corner in a blaze of light. Full beam. I raised my arms to wave.

It drove straight towards me. “Fred!” I shouted. The car didn’t slow. He hadn’t seen me. He
must
have seen me. But then why didn’t he—

The car wasn’t slowing, it was accelerating. It wasn’t going to stop.

For a second, I stood frozen in the headlights. Move, my brain ordered.
Move!
I dived sideways and landed by the verge—felt my shoulder slam into the ground, the scorch of the gravel skinning my palm and wrist—caught a glimpse of the underside of the car above me and I half crawled, half rolled down into the black ditch while the car ploughed into the hedge above me and the world was full of the noise of the engine, then a bang and the sound of glass breaking and the trees being ripped apart, grinding and scratching and splintering, and then a thin, high scream, and I thought, it’s screaming, the hedge is
screaming,
and there was a dark kaleidoscope of branches moving above my head, cracking and tearing and twisting, then the car stalled and there was silence and no movement except a single, spinning tyre, a foot away from my head. I heard a groan from the car as it shifted on the bank. It’s going to come down, I thought, land on top of me—I tried to turn round, to crawl out from under it, but the brambles tore at my legs and caught at my hair and I couldn’t get free and the car lurched again and it was starting to tip and I scrabbled for the bank but I couldn’t see, and . . . No! shouted my brain.
No!
Not like this.

The noise came from somewhere above my head. First a creak, then a door slamming. Car door. Car. Car in the ditch.
On top of me, falling—it’s falling on top of me and it’s going to crush me—GET AWAY FROM IT GOT TO GET OUT OF THE DITCH GET OUT—

I groped for the bank—dark, can’t see, got to get the right side for the road, but there’s something against my side, my hip—car, it’s the car—no, wait, not the car, wrong side, this is concrete—hard—barrier—for the drain, big drain—pull myself onto the verge, hands and knees, yes . . . yes . . .

I found myself flat on my face on the verge. Still here. I’m still here. Still alive. Ha, ha.
Run, run, as fast as you can, can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man
. . . .
Oh no. No, no, no, no you can’t catch me
. . . Cold, though. I shouldn’t be so cold. It’s summer. Can’t really remember . . . why I’m here. . . . Can’t have been taking Eustace for a walk. Not in the middle of the night. That would be stupid.

Twigs cracking. I looked up. It was coming from the direction of the car. Damn thing, trying to kill me . . . The Andersons, that’s who I was going to see, because . . . because . . . I’d heard a door, hadn’t I? Car door slamming. Must mean someone getting out. Save me a journey if it’s the Andersons, I thought stupidly. Except he’s the vicar, and they don’t go around trying to run people over.

There was a light underneath the car. Coming from the other side. Torch. I could make out the shape of a big, dark sedan, its bonnet buried in the hedge and its front wheels overhanging the ditch. The light disappeared for a moment, then re-emerged at the back of the car, blinding me. I put a hand up to shield my eyes, but I couldn’t see who was holding the torch.

I got to my knees. Time to go, I thought. Got to see the Andersons. If I could just see them, everything would be all right, I knew it would. Just as long as I arrived. Then I could get it all sorted out in my mind. I’d tell them about the car in the ditch. They ought to know about that. Mr. Anderson was in Bomber Command during the war, before he started being a vicar. A car in a ditch would be no problem for him. Or to Mrs. Anderson. She wears sensible shoes, probably deals with things like this all the time.

The light was hurting my eyes. It was coming nearer. Why couldn’t they turn it off?

It was above me now. Shining straight down. Dazzling. I couldn’t look at it. I ducked my head. The feet were in front of me. Shoes. Pretty. Wedges, with straps. Not Mrs. Anderson’s shoes, I thought. Or her toenails. She wouldn’t paint her toenails red.

“Get up.”

The woman who didn’t have Mrs. Anderson’s feet stood close to me, holding the torch between us, and as I got up I saw her face, illuminated from below in its harsh yellow light. It was sallow and haggard with dark circles under the eyes, as if she’d been ill, framed with wisps of grey, wiry hair. I know you, I thought. You’re the gypsy from the picture book, the one who danced on the hill, only now you’re old. . . .

“You rang me,” she said. “That was stupid. But then you never were very bright, were you?”

“Not really,” I said, and then the world disappeared and took the gypsy with it.

Kitty won’t look at me. I can see her through the car window but she won’t look at me. She knows I’m there but it’s somebody else she wants and that’s why she won’t turn her head. She’s waiting for me to go away, but I can’t, there’s something I’ve got to ask her, it’s important. . . . I can see her long arm bones resting on the steering wheel, the skeleton fingers tapping, the bunny ears bobbing on the skull as she nods up and down—as if she’s listening to music in there, but all I can hear is the fingers—tapping, banging—louder and louder . . .