The Count of Eleven (12 page)

She clearly thought he was making fun of her, though he hadn’t meant to. “Maybe you collectors can shop at the post office in future. Some people like to use stamps to send letters,” she called after him.

“I do myself.” He hadn’t time to argue, and in any case he felt too exhilarated to linger. He ran to the post-box and shoved his cuff back from his watch. As a distant clock began to strike eleven he slipped as thick a wad of envelopes as would comfortably fit through the slot into the box, and sent the two remaining letters after them. As the clock continued striking he closed his eyes and squeezed the clown’s head in his pocket. The chimes ended, but Jack hadn’t opened his eyes when a shout reached him. “The very man I’m looking for.”

The International Experience was on the New Brighton se afront at the far end from the Creep Inn. Beyond the Crazy Golf course the Orchards were met by a chilly breeze which sounded like the edge of the almost invisible waves. The restaurant was less than five minutes away, facing a small unlit fairground where a booth in the shape of a spotted mushroom guarded a roundabout whose cars grinned and rolled their eyes at a miniature roller coaster with a cartoon insect’s face. At the end of a causeway, the battlements of Fort Perch confronted the cranes of Seaforth across the bay under the stars, which were somewhat overwhelmed by the neon sign outside the International Experience. Jack watched his and Julia’s and Laura’s shadows multiplying as the family passed beneath the sign into the car park, and wondered what Jody’s father had in mind for him.

Both of Jody’s parents came to meet the Orchards at the door. Pete Venable told the cashier “They’re guests, on the house’ while Cath took their coats and showed them to a table by the window. “There’s Minotaur Steak if anyone wants to give us their opinion,” she told them. “And there’s Jody’s favourite, Laura, pizza made with Greek cheese.”

“I’ll consume the monster,” Jack said.

Julia ordered Dionysus’ Dinner. Jack’s steak proved to be minced and mixed with herbs and encased in batter. He was entirely in favour of it except for a fragment of bone which caused him to clutch at his mouth and which he had to convince Pete wasn’t sufficient reason to send the meal back to the kitchen. Laura enthused about her pizza, a carnivore’s version of Jody’s favourite. Bouzouki music played from all the corners of the large darkly panelled pillared room. Julia discussed the recipes with Cath Venable as the desserts arrived, and then Pete joined the party. “Looks as if this was just what Jack needed, wouldn’t you say, ladies? When I saw him this morning by the post-box he seemed to need some kind of a push.”

“I think he was giving himself one,” Julia said.

“Well, here’s another.” Pete nourished a piece of paper at them. “Your bill.”

“Ah,” Jack said, wondering if he had managed to misunderstand Pete.

“Don’t worry, you’re not paying it,” Cath laughed, bangles rattling down her bare arm as she patted his shoulder. “We just wanted you to know that when it’s made up at the end of the evening we’ll be putting it in the draw.”

“Which is that?”

“We thought while we’re having our Greek promotion we’d give someone a holiday there. Everyone’s bill goes into the draw, and we’ll announce the winner in a few weeks.”

“Someone should be bowled over. I hope I hope it brings you hordes of customers.”

Pete winked at Cath. “He’s trying not to sound disappointed. He thinks that was the news I told him he’d have to come here for.”

“Wasn’t it?” Jack said.

“Just the stop press. Here’s what could be the big story. Jack, how would you like a job?”

“I don’t know much about restaurants except how to eat in them.”

“We could hire him as a taster,” Pete said with another wink at Cath. “Except it’s a day job you need, isn’t it, Jack? What would you say if I told you Jody’s and Laura’s school is looking for someone like you?”

“I’d be lost for words.”

“Silence goes with the job. The librarian’s had to leave unexpectedly to care for her parents down South, and they’re interviewing candidates a week today.”

“I hadn’t heard.”

“It’s lucky Cath and I are in the PTA. I got you the address for applications,” Pete said, and produced it written on the back of a blank bill. “Fire off a letter to them tomorrow and they’ll have it by Tuesday. I happen to know they were hoping for more applications than they’ve had so far.”

“How many’s that?”

“You’ll be doubling it.”

One and one, Jack thought, seeing the digits side by side. “Thanks, Pete. Your timing couldn’t have been better.”

Pete took Cath’s arm to help her up. “We’d better be making our rounds now, and you should tomorrow, like I told you this morning. Have a word with at least one more estate agent before you start dropping your price.”

“You didn’t tell me Pete had said that,” Julia said to Jack shortly after.

“I suppose I was ashamed of not thinking of it without having to be told.”

“Why be ashamed all by yourself?”

“You know me. Brought up not to show my feelings, and I still find it hard sometimes. I never told you, Laura, in case it affected you, but when I was eleven and had to go to secondary school I was in the new class for nearly a fortnight before I said a word except my name. I was afraid that if I opened my mmm, good pudding, I’d start stammering or worse. Then I started being afraid that the school would tell my parents there was something the matter with me, and I was so anxious not to upset them I made myself compete to answer questions even when I knew my answer was monstrously wrong, which was how I got elected as resident clown. That saved my bacon quite a few times ham does, you know. But I remember promising myself I was never going to be as afraid again as I was when I changed schools.”

“I didn’t feel like that,” Laura said. “I like my school.”

“There was no reason for me to be scared either. The trick is to know these things at the time instead of however many years later. So long as you never feel that way,” Jack said, and heard himself trying to restrict her feelings to a level he could cope with, just as his parents had tried to suppress his. “Or if you do,” he added, ‘don’t be afraid to tell us.”

“Are you ever now?” Laura said.

“Of what?”

He meant that to sound like a denial, but it seemed not to be enough for her. “Only of losing you two,” he said at once.

She gave him a smile of mingled reassurance and reproof so like the one with which Julia responded that he had to grin. “Holiday adds up to eleven, you know,” he said and immediately felt as though he’d shared a secret he might have done better to keep to himself.

In the morning he wrote a letter applying for the job of school librarian. He drove into Liscard and posted the letter as a clock finished striking eleven, then he walked past a jangling procession of trolleys outside Safeway to the cluster of estate agencies. There were six on that side of the road. Last time he’d chosen one at random; now he started from its neighbour and walked to the end of the agencies, walked back to the far end, reversed his direction and kept walking until he had counted eleven. He’d returned to the agency at which he had begun counting; he would have ended up there whichever direction he’d followed. Surely that meant something, he thought as the bell above the door announced him.

The younger partner in the firm, a man of about Jack’s age with a blond moustache and a bow tie, ushered him into his office with a gesture that stopped just short of grasping Jack’s arm. “How can I help?”

“Eleven letters,” Jack said aloud, and went on quickly: “I’ve a house for sale that doesn’t seem to be moving. I don’t know if it would be ethical for you to take a look.”

“Two signs can be better than one. Where is it? How much are you asking? Your part of the coast is starting to seem fashionable. Can I come and have a prowl this afternoon?”

“We’ll be there.” Eleven letters again, Jack thought happily, and paused on his way out to inspect photographs of houses. A mile or so upriver from the Orchards’ home was a house ‘reduced for quick sale’ which seemed breathtakingly cheap for its size and its view across the river. He slipped the description into his pocket and drove home.

That afternoon the estate agent went through the house, cocking his head with quick jerky movements which put Jack in mind of a doll, a present decorated with a bow. “I’d say another few thousand could be on the cards for you. If you like I’ll have a word with our friends next door when I get back to the office.”

Once he’d gone Jack produced the description of the house by the river. “Does this look worth a stroll along the prom?”

The couple who owned it, the Woolidges, visited their daughter and her family on Sundays, and so it was Monday when the Orchards viewed it. It was close to the river, near the site of a smugglers’ inn. Large moist trees which were beginning to unfurl their leaves shaded the wide sloping road. Beyond a reluctant wooden gate a path wound between flowerbeds infiltrated by weeds. Jack prised up the door knocker and banged on the front door, which was opened by an old lady in denim overalls. “Did you get your hand stuck under my knocker? We’re all a bit rusty here,” she said.

She and her husband, who leaned on a stick and kept mopping his face with a spectacularly extensive spotted handkerchief, conducted the Orchards through the large rooms and into the spacious back garden. Jack sensed Julia imagining where the furniture would go in the rooms and how she would redecorate. There were four rooms downstairs, four bedrooms up and a capacious bathroom containing a toilet. All of the doors had been stripped down to the wood, and that seemed to Jack like a promise of renewal.

“We wouldn’t be moving if I could still get up the road on two legs,” Mr, Woolidge said when they were all in the kitchen, Jack and Julia sipping muddy bitter tea from chipped mugs while Laura was let off with a glass of shandy. “We’d like it to stay a family house. There are end ugh homes round here for leftovers like me.”

His wife stuck out her tongue loudly at that, and asked Julia “Is anyone after your place?”

“We’ve had enquiries, but nothing definite. We’ve just doubled the advertising.”

“We’ve somewhere waiting for us. We’d like to be well settled in by Christmas.”

“We’re interested, aren’t we?” Julia said. “Will you give us a few weeks?”

The Woolidges exchanged nods. “We’d like someone like yourselves to have it,” Mrs. Woolidge said.

As the Orchards walked down to the promenade Laura said, “Do you think we might be coming to live here?”

She was so obviously trying to be grown-up and not to hope too much that Jack wished he could share his faith with her. He’d just realised that although there were only nine rooms in the house, the front and back doors were also stripped. Eleven identical doors! And today was Easter Monday, the day of promise, the sixteenth of April, one and six and four … “If everything works out, love,” he said.

On Tuesday a middle-aged couple, the Quails, came to view the Orchards’ house, and Jack couldn’t help regarding them as a good omen, though they said they would have to go away and think. On Wednesday he received a letter inviting him to be interviewed at the school on Friday at eleven. On Thursday someone either by the name of, or of a firm called, Profit phoned offering to pay the best price for all the cassettes that had survived the fire, and promised to inspect them on Saturday afternoon. On Friday Jack went to the school.

Since the dilapidated van was hardly the best first impression to give of himself, he walked to the interview. It was Friday the 20th, and “Friday’ and 20 made eleven. Three cars were parked in the schoolyard a Volvo, an Austin, a Volkswagen that looked as though it had been dunked in mud and Jack rather hoped that the latter belonged to his rival for the job. A wind sent some of last year’s leaves chasing through the yard as he let himself into the school, and he thought he heard a clock begin to strike eleven. No, it was a church bell.

The headmistress’ office was at the end of a long corridor smelling of polish and floored with tiles that rattled underfoot. A small man with a shiny cranium across which a few strands of hair appeared to have been pencilled was sitting huddled in a dark suit slightly too big for him on one of two chairs outside the office. “Morning,” Jack said, but it was the school secretary who responded, bustling into the corridor from the outer office and ticking Jack’s name on a clipboard which seemed altogether too large for the situation. “You’re first in, Mr. Orchard. Won’t be long.”

Jack perched on the unoccupied chair and met his rival’s glance across the doorway of the office. The man examined the fingers of his right hand, which were piebald with ink stains and nicotine, and addressed them. “Kids,” he said.

It might have been a question. “I’ve a daughter at the school,” Jack told him.

“You won’t hear a word said against her,” the man said, so disapprovingly that Jack had no idea how to respond. “What about the rest of them?”

“Look on the walls.”

“That’s them on their best behaviour, just for show. They’re on their worst when they go to a library, believe me. What’s the discipline like here?”

“I should ask the headmistress.”

“I mean to, never you fret. Not that I haven’t learned in thirty years of public libraries how to handle them. Give me adults any day, though. Last year I’d have laid odds I wouldn’t be applying for a job like this.”

The secretary opened the door again and raised one eyebrow at Jack, and he was almost certain she was commenting on what she must have overheard as well as signalling Jack to go in. He dug his right hand into his trousers pocket and squeezed the clown’s head as he stood up. “Clown’ added up to thirteen, and so did ‘lucky clown’. It was time to turn ill luck into good, he thought as he reached the inner office.

“And then I realised he was someone else entirely,” the head of the English department was saying.

“I can imagine how you must have felt. It happens to all of us at least once in our lives,” the headmistress said, and stood up to greet Jack. Her ash-blonde hair was cropped close to her head, making her broad face seem rounder. A dark stone at the throat of her blouse flamed red as it caught the light. “Mr. Orchard. We’re very pleased with Laura,” she said.