The Count of Eleven (23 page)

You could adjust to anything. His encounter with Jeremy Alston and its aftermath seemed as unreal now as the newspaper reports. He remembered everything as though he’d watched it on a screen even his panic as he’d driven away down the deserted coast road, his mind feeling seared and trapped between an urge to drive until the engine ran dry and a yearning to speak to Julia. Underlying both and growing had been a wild astonishment. There was more to him than anyone had suspected, including himself.

He’d done what he had to for the family. It had taken him days to accept that it had worked, days where the minutes had sometimes felt like hours of lying awake in darkness, but now that he was convinced, he thought it would be wholly unreasonable for the family’s good luck to be ruined by his being tracked down by the police. He stood up and distributed the newspapers among the tables and went downstairs to start his new career. What he owed the world now was a good day’s work.

On the night of the presentation at the International Experience Laura spent twenty minutes making up her face and then washed off the make-up. The more she put on, the more it looked as though her face was something to hide. The bruises had mostly faded except for marks which could almost have been traces of face-paint around her eye. She brushed her hair, which didn’t take long since she’d had nearly all of it cut off so that nobody else could use it against her. She adjusted the straps of her party dress and craned over her bare shoulders to see in the mirror that no bruises were visible on them; then she disentangled a denim jacket from the pile of clothes at the end of the bed and slinging it over her shoulder with a finger hooked through the tag, went to find her parents.

They were in the front room, her father turning the pages of a library book by someone called Thorne Smith, her mother pretending to read the local paper. Both of them smiled at Laura, though her mother’s smile seemed to conceal a momentary distress of the kind she’d attempted to hide when Laura had come home with her hair cropped. “Do you think you’ll be all right like that?” her mother said.

“Nobody’s going to be surprised how I look, Mummy, since it was in the paper.”

It was there on the page her mother had folded open: VICTIM OF PROMENADE ASSAULT WINS HOLIDAY. “I didn’t mean that,” her mother said, perhaps too readily. “Are you sure you’ll be warm enough later?”

“In this heat? I should think so,” her father said. “And if it’s cold on the way home we can run and skip and dance.”

“That would be a revelation,” Laura’s mother said, ‘y u dancing.”

“Give me a banana skin and I’ll glide all over the dance floor.”

Laura’s mother stuck out her tongue at him. “If you’re sure you’re ready,” she said to Laura.

Perhaps she didn’t mean ready to be put on show, but Laura thought she did. “I don’t mind if it helps Jody’s parents.”

Laura’s mother took her hand once they were past the gate, her father claimed the other as they reached the se afront and Laura felt as though she was weighing hands, her mother’s cool and slim and determinedly firm, her father’s hot and rough. She let them guide her while she gazed across the bay, where the sun had reached the water. Long bars of cloud stretched parallel to the horizon, their gold fading and blurred as if painted with an almost dry brush, while above them the sky was a mass of folds of copper. The sun flared between the bars, and for a moment a swathe of the bay blazed like oil. Then a line of streetlamps lit up, drawing her attention to the promenade, where cars crowned with the names of driving schools were venturing around the roundabouts, kindling their brake lights. She remembered watching the learners on the last day she’d had her bicycle, and gripped her parents’ hands before she knew she meant to do so. “Never mind,” her father said, ‘it won’t be long before you’re on your wheels again.”

She felt her mother’s fingers flex uneasily. “I’ll be all right, Mummy, really I will. I know where not to go by myself.”

“There shouldn’t be any such places. There weren’t when I was your age.”

“The world has always been more violent than we like to think,” Laura’s father said mildly.

“Maybe, but she oughtn’t to have found that out at her age.”

“Mummy, at least now I know I can defend myself. Jody and some of my other friends were saying we should join a class and learn how to do it properly.”

Her mother kissed her forehead, hard enough to hurt. “I’m proud of you, you know that. I just haven’t caught up with you yet, that’s all.”

“The world isn’t so bad. There are plenty of good people. The man from the insurance turned out to be one, didn’t he? And here are some more waiting for us,” her father said as they crossed the restaurant car park.

Jody ran to open the door for them, and several people came to meet them: not only Jody’s parents but a red-faced young man wearing a suit whose lapels were each almost as wide as his head, and a dumpy photographer bearing his stomach and the snout of his camera several inches before him. “Is this the lucky girl?” the photographer boomed in a Father Christmas voice.

“Let them take their coats off at least,” Jody’s mother said, and having handed the garments to Jody to hang up, ushered the Orchards to a table by the window. “We didn’t realise the paper was going to pick up the story about Laura,” she murmured. “If you’d rather we gave the prize to you or Jack, Julia, you know we’ll understand.” “Can’t I be given it?” Laura pleaded.

“Whatever the three of you want, love. Only the reporter would like to talk to whoever it is.” “I don’t mind. I like talking.”

The grown-ups exchanged smiles like a code you learned when you were older, but Laura didn’t mind that either. She ordered Montezuma’s Secret from the menu which Jody’s father brought her, then she gazed out at the huge electric fire on the horizon, bars of cloud fading from red to grey before merging with the night. She would have watched longer if the photographer and the reporter with the chestful of lapels hadn’t come to the table. “Forget I’m here, doll. I’ll just be shooting candids,” the photographer said.

Laura glanced at her father in case he was about to make a joke, but his expression said so eloquently that he was suppressing one that she had to cover her mouth while the reporter asked his first question, or rather several of them. “How did you feel when you heard you’d won? Were you excited? Couldn’t you wait to tell your friends?”

All his questions came in bunches, and pretty soon she had the knack of interrupting before he told her what he expected her to say. Ten minutes later he left her, saying “Thanks, sorry, enjoy’ as the waitress brought the first course, and for the rest of the meal Laura might simply have been dining out, except for the way diners at neighbouring tables kept smiling at her or raising glasses of wine in her honour. By the time the waitress brought the Orchards coffee Laura felt full and rather sleepy. She had to rouse herself when Jody’s father loitered near the table. “Anything you’d like to put you in the mood?” he asked her. “An after-dinner mint? Another drink?”

“Just the toilet.”

“I don’t think Pete can bring you that,” her father said and ducked as if she might throw something at him.

When Laura emerged from the toilet cubicle she lingered in front of the mirror, feeling like an actress in a dressing-room, before she advanced into the restaurant. Now the diners were an audience. Jody’s father was standing by the cashier’s chest-high booth, and Jody’s mother had come to meet Laura. “Just hang on here while Pete does his spiel.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, if I can have your attention,” he called.

The blurred murmur which filled the restaurant subsided as though the sound was being turned down. A few stubborn conversations persisted at reduced volume, in the smoking area half a dozen flames sprang up to be applied to cigarettes, and then everyone seemed to be ready. “I’ll be brief,” Jody’s father said.

Laura wanted to giggle, because that was all he said. A party of latecomers had entered the restaurant. He seemed to be prepared to wait while they were seated, until Jody’s mother gestured impatiently at him on Laura’s behalf and he nodded at a waitress to detain the party of four inside the entrance for the duration of his speech. “I know some of you here tonight were here when we made the draw for the first of our holiday competitions to celebrate the cuisine we were currently offering,” he said, and took a hasty breath, ‘but because of circumstances the winners weren’t able to be with us that evening. I’d now like to present the prize which we hope will be the first of many we’ll be presenting to our customers. If I can ask you to give this young lady your biggest hand.”

Laura found herself smirking in an effort to keep her face straight, both because of the image his turn of phrase and her father’s expression conjured up and because she felt more nervous than she had expected. She stepped between the tables as the diners clapped, and reached Jody’s father as the applause drizzled into silence. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, ‘the lucky ‘

His mouth stayed open. The leader of the party by the door was shouting “She doesn’t deserve it. These do if anyone does.”

The woman pushed past the waitress, her sons following. In the subdued light she appeared to be wearing an overcoat checked like a chessboard, but no doubt it was the coat she had worn at the hospital. She stopped well short of Laura, hands on hips, and butted her head at her, almost shaking a comb loose. “That’s her who told lies to the paper. She’s no victim, she’s a maniac. Just look what she did to my three who were walking along minding their own business.

The youngest boy cringed behind her while his brothers lurched forwards with a kind of crippled swagger, and Laura’s stomach writhed. She wanted to run, but at once she vowed she wouldn’t let them see how she felt, not them or anyone like them, not now or ever. Jody’s father and two waitresses moved to block their path as Laura’s parents hurried to her. “I’m sorry,” Jody’s father said to Mrs. Evans, “I’ll have to ask you to ‘

Her voice overwhelmed his. “Another of her little gang, are you? Look at all the people she needs to protect her, the poor defenceless mite, I don’t think. Only the police don’t think she is, do they? At least they’ve a bit of fairness to them, they don’t pick on a woman just because she’s a widow trying to bring up three growing lads on her own. If they’d believed half of what that little liar told them they’d have thrown us all in jail.”

The diners had begun to murmur. Some of them had obviously identified her sons from the newspaper report and were passing the message to their companions. Before Mrs. Evans had finished, quite a few diners were jeering at her. Laura heard shouts of “Chuck them out’ and “Call the police.” A matronly woman in a low-cut black dress who had patted Laura’s arm as she’d gone to claim her prize shied the remains of a potato at Mrs. Evans’ head. When her sons swung menacingly towards the woman at least four men rose to their feet, clenching their fists; one knocked a bottle off his table with a thud and stared at it as though considering it for a weapon. Either the lights had begun to flare and fuse or there was a storm overhead, but it was the flash of the photographer’s camera. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Jody’s father pleaded, ‘if I can just ask you ‘

Laura’s parents were trying to steer her back to their table. “Look, she wants to go for me now,” Mrs. Evans screeched. “Just you keep her on her leash or I’ll have the law on you. Don’t think I can’t afford it, either. I went to see the citizens’ advice and they said there’s a lawyer who’ll take my case if I want to prosecute you for what you did to my boys who are all I’ve got to look after me in this life.”

By now several tablefuls of diners were stamping their feet or booing through their cupped hands so as to drown her voice, but that only made her raise it. Some people picked up scraps of food as if they might fling them at her, and one customer clad in a bulging waistcoat seemed to be considering going up to her and emptying over her the jug of water he was holding. The camera flashed like a storm which had yet to release its violence, illuminating the grimaces of diners, and Laura wanted to weep at the change which had overtaken her evening. Instead she struggled free of her parents and stayed where she was, folding her shaky arms.

Mrs. Evans surveyed the diners with pigheaded dignity until the uproar died down somewhat. “I’ve said my say,” she declared, and as the boos and stamping recommenced, dragged her elder sons towards the exit as the youngest darted out of it, letting the door swing back at her. She shoved the two boys out and glared at the Orchards. “Enjoy your prize if your consciences will let you,” she said, and stalked out.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen,” Jody’s father said with a weak smile, ‘how can I follow that? The lucky winners, Laura Orchard and her parents.”

The cheers and applause were deafening. Everyone had changed again, thought Laura. The photographer took several quick shots of her and her parents flanked by Jody’s while Laura held the envelope aloft, then he and the reporter ran after the Evanses, who were just leaving the car park as two waitresses made sure they did. As the murmur of the restaurant took over from the applause, Laura and her parents returned to their table. “It’s all right, Mummy,” Laura said.

Her mother was kneading her forehead and staring out of the window. She found Laura’s hand and squeezed it and then looked at her. “It will be all right. We’ll make sure it is. We’ll never forget this holiday,” she promised.

“You bet your life,” Laura’s father said, and Laura had heard what she wanted to hear. The behaviour of the diners had upset her even more than the intrusion; it had felt as though violence and madness could flare up in anyone before you realised it was there. Not quite anyone, she reassured herself: not her friends, and especially not her parents she had as good as heard them say so. At least they would never change. Their future was safe.

Patrons of New Brighton’s International Experience restaurant on Friday night saw more of a show than they bargained for.

As 12-year-old New Brighton girl Laura Orchard stood up to receive her prize of a holiday in a competition run by Pete and Cath Venable, owners of the restaurant, she was accused by Hilda Evans of Liscard of attacking her three sons, Glint, Lee and Eli.