The Count of Eleven (32 page)

“Correct, book. If Tommy says book he shall look at the book.”

“Oo.”

“Who? Tommy shall. Tommy is a good boy who can say book.”

“I think you might have to make another appointment for that,” Janys intervened. “The nurse says we’re doing pretty well for two years old.”

“Is Tommy two? Two is a good age to be. Can Tommy say two?”

Tommy could, but was bored with having the book waved at him. He sat down with an abruptness that left him undecided whether to cry or laugh, then began to throw his alphabet bricks about instead. “Is Tommy going to spell a word for me?” Mr. McGrotty said.

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

“Look, Tommy,” the teacher persisted, virtually ignoring Janys. “There is a word. Tommy has made a word. That word is am. A,” he pronounced as though Janys had dug him in the ribs, a tempting notion. “Mmmm,” he said like a diner expressing pleasure, just as Tommy kicked the bricks away.

“Thank you for the lesson, Mr. McGrotty. Now I wonder if we should

‘

“Shall I put the book here for Tommy to look at?” Mr. McGrotty said, balancing it on the corner of the playpen. The instant he moved away, Tommy staggered to his feet and grabbed the book. That’s a good boy. Books are good for you,” the teacher said.

“You were saying you wanted me to shoot you with a prop.”

Janys wouldn’t normally have put it that way, but she was distracted by the prospect of his continuing to talk in the accents and vocabulary of a reading scheme even when he was addressing her. “Did I say so?” he said.

“You said you were bringing something you wanted in the picture.”

“So I did.” He dug in his bag again. “Here it is. This is it,” he said.

“That’s right, your diploma, you said. Ah, it’s under glass.”

“Will that make for difficulty?”

She was so relieved to hear him use a word of more than two syllables that she might have promised almost anything. “I just need to light it right,” she said, feeling as if she was performing the reading scheme now. “Don’t worry, I can cope.”

She sat him in the sitters’ chair and waited while he posed with the framed educational diploma on his lap, then she adjusted the lights so that they weren’t reflected by the glass. To make her sitters smile she often asked them to look at Tommy, which nearly always worked, but she didn’t think she could bear to have Mr. McGrotty notice that Tommy was holding the book, which contained pictures of a circus and a few words in large print, upside down. She directed the teacher to look at the lens, and when he’d composed his face into the expression he apparently favoured, one that suggested that he felt he had received no more than he deserved, Janys took half a dozen quick shots with the Pentax, the last of which he spoiled by waving at her. “No, no. I don’t want that many,” he protested.

“I’m giving you a range to choose from. How many, would you like?”

“Just the one. Wasn’t that understood?”

“I’m sure you made yourself clear. Let me just try a couple more angles.” She photographed him slightly in profile from both sides, then placed the camera next to the pile of scrap paper on her desk. “All done,” she said.

“When may I view them?”

“I’ll put them in the post to you tomorrow. Is whichever you choose for your wall?”

“My mother lives down south,” he said briskly, lowering the diploma into his bag. “Shall I leave Tommy the book?”

“That’s very kind of you.”

He wasn’t talking to her. “Is the book good, Tommy? Is it a good book?” he said, and made to turn it the right way up. As soon as his outsize hand reached for it, Tommy began to howl. “Don’t cry, Tommy,” the teacher said, recoiling. “No need to cry. Boys don’t cry.”

“Oh, I think they should,” Janys said, giving Tommy a wink that stopped him. “What do we say to Mr. McGrotty for the book? What do we say?”

“Tar’s something sticky on the road. You mean thank you, don’t you,” she said and ushered the teacher, who was continuing to look uncomfortable, to the front door. “Where have you taught?” she couldn’t resist asking.

“Nowhere as yet.”

“Good luck,” she said, and having watched him to the gate, went back to Tommy, who was grinning at a picture of a clown. She released the laughter she had been suppressing until Mr. McGrotty couldn’t hear, and Tommy joined in. He didn’t know what she was laughing at, but she looked forward to telling him when he was older.

She copied the details of an appointment she’d scribbled on the back of a letter just before the teacher had arrived, then she made to drop the page into the bin, since it offered no more space. Instead she turned it over to remind herself of what it said. “Turn ill luck into good, Tommy, that’s today’s free offer, except it means sending thirteen letters, so it isn’t so free after all.”

She was rambling. Surely there was only one place for the letter; she didn’t understand why she was hesitating. She didn’t really believe in luck, except the kind she’d earned for Tommy and herself, but deep down she must be superstitious after all, or she wouldn’t still be holding the letter. She supposed she ought to thank it for showing her herself. She held it up for Tommy to see. “What do you say we should do with it? Try our luck, or is it for the bin?”

Tommy dropped the book and trotting to the bars, held out his hands for the letter. Behind him the clown in the open book grinned at him. “Is it a joke, do you think?” Janys said, handing Tommy the letter.

He blinked at it, turned it over and gazed at her hasty scrawl, turned it over again. Holding it by the two top corners, he gave Janys a look which asked so eloquently whether he was allowed to commit wickedness that she laughed. “Trust your instincts.”

He frowned at her, then began gravely to tear the letter into ragged strips which fell to the carpet outside the bars. When he’d finished he smiled at the pieces. “Bin,” he said.

‘ I won’t argue.” Janys collected the strips and threw them in. “Bin indeed. That’s the safest thing to do with rubbish.”

Jack shook hands with a laughing man who immediately burst into flame. The heat fused their hands together, and Jack’s arm was on fire. The lack of any sensation frightened him, so that he did his best to cry out, though it felt as if he was attempting to use someone else’s voice. The feeble groans sounded familiar, and he thought he would rather not remember where he’d heard them. He sucked in a breath which sent a sharp pain through his teeth, and darkness extinguished the flames.

Julia gave a sleepy murmur of protest and turned away from him. He gazed at the ceiling until the dark wiped out the memory of the dream, except for a trace which felt as though a charred mote had lodged in his brain. It had only been a nightmare, and he was safe at home. All the same, he seemed to spend a considerable time alone in the dark before he fell asleep.

He didn’t dream again, but neither did he sleep well. At some point he was vaguely aware of movements in the house. The next he knew, Julia was standing by the bed. “Jack, are you there?”

“Of course I am,” he said, blinking his cindery eyes at the sunlight. “What do you mean? What’s wrong?”

“Only that soon it’ll be time for you to go to work.”

When he peered at the bedside clock he saw it was nearly eleven. “Why did you let me sleep?”

“I thought you might appreciate it. You’ve been seeming ‘

“What?”

Her expression made her face look heavier. “Less unfriendly than you’re being now, at any rate.”

By the time he regained some control of his words she was on her way downstairs. Stumbling into the bathroom with the mug of coffee she had brought him, he clambered into the bath. He stayed under the shower until the water had cleansed him of at least some of the grubby feeling left behind by his restless night, though the inside of his head still felt charred, then he dressed and went down to Julia.

She was reading a computer journal in the front room. “I can’t be expected to know what you’re doing if you don’t tell me,” she said without looking up.

“There’s nothing to tell, Julia.”

“Or if you’d rather not be in the house while I am.”

“What on earth makes you say that? You know perfectly well ‘

“I’m not sure what I know, Jack, the way you’ve been behaving recently.”

“You were going to tell me what way that was.”

She dropped the journal, open at a page of calculations which were incomprehensible to him, and met his eyes. “For weeks you’ve kept seeming as if you’d rather be away from us than here, as if you’re getting ready to leave.”

“Oh, now, Julia ‘

She held up a hand to ward him off. “Don’t try and smother me. Just stay where you are and talk.”

“I don’t know what to say. I can’t understand where you got the idea. If you’ve been worrying like that I wish you’d told me sooner.”

“It’s my fault, you mean.”

“I don’t mean anything of the kind. Look, what exactly have you been imagining? Do you think there’s someone else?”

“Is there?”

“Who else would have me?”

She gave him a hint of a smile. “That’s supposed to be my line, not yours.”

“About me, I hope you mean.”

“But of course.” She raised her hand again to forestall him. “I still keep feeling you’d rather be off on some adventure when you’re with us.”

“You’re not still thinking of that night I went out for a drink with someone I used to work with.”

“Suppose I am?”

“I told you at the time I thought they might have been able to help you find a job. Anyway, if your interview at the college went as well as you say, it doesn’t matter. So that was one of my adventures. Tell me another.”

“I told you it was just a feeling.”

“Shall I tell you what I think?” When she didn’t answer he said “I think you’ll stop feeling like that about me when you get another job.”

“It isn’t about you, it’s …” She grimaced at herself. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe you’re right and it is my fault.”

“It isn’t at all.” He knelt down beside her and took her hand. “Let me show you there’s nobody else.”

She kissed him briefly and stood up. “Later, when Laura’s asleep.”

He would have hated himself for lying so glibly to Julia if it hadn’t been for her sake. He was glad she didn’t want to make love now; he would have time to get rid of at least one task. Maybe then he wouldn’t feel so nervously eager to be out of the house. Oversleeping had thrown him, as had their talk, so that when she said “Were you meaning to go somewhere?” he said the first thing that occurred to him. “I was going to see if we had anything in the library for Laura’s history project.”

It didn’t sound very convincing to him, but perhaps Julia wanted to believe him. “Don’t let me stop you,” she said.

He made himself eat a bowl of cereal in order not to seem too eager. He counted one hundred and twenty-one while brushing his teeth. “Just make sure you come home,” Julia told him at the front door.

“What could stop me?” he said, thinking where to go on his way to work.

The noonday sun blazed into his face as he unlocked the van. The interior was even hotter than the street, and he rolled both windows down before driving off. The journey uphill smelled of heat and petrol fumes. He parked just out of sight of the Evanses’ house and mopped his forehead with his handkerchief before opening the back of the van.

His burden felt unexpectedly heavy. It must be the heat, he thought as he waited to cross the road. When a learner driver slowed the traffic down, Jack ran across and up the steps of the police station.

The counter was unstaffed. A trill of the enquiry bell brought a policewoman out of the inner room. “Is Constable Pether in?” Jack said, feeling as though he was asking if Pether could come out to play.

“Who shall I say?”

“The Count of Eleven,” Jack heard himself announce, though he wasn’t sure which of his selves would do so. “Jack Orchard,” he said.

She went back into the room and closed the door, and shortly Pether appeared beyond its glass panel. He glanced at Jack and said something to the policewoman, who gave Jack a glance of guarded appraisal. Jack was about to raise his hands above the counter and deposit his burden when Pether emerged from the room. “Headline news, I see,” he said.

“Who is?”

Pether came to the counter and extended a hand. Jack thought he meant to grab him, but Pether was pointing at him. “News to me,” Jack said, unable to think past the joke.

“Wait there a moment.”

When Pether moved, Jack was sure he was about to come round the counter, but the policeman stepped back into the room. Disconcertingly, Jack didn’t know how the prospect of being detained had made him feel, and his unsureness kept him standing there until Pether reappeared, holding that week’s local newspaper, which he folded open about halfway through before dropping it on the counter. “Not you so much as your family,” he said.

TEA COSY TERROR STRIKES AGAIN … BUDGIES LEFT TO STARVE TO DEATH …

CRASH MAN SPAT … BIN MEN ESCAPE IN CHAINSAW ATTACK TERROR … DOG’S

LEGS TIED UP AND THEN THROWN OUT … BLACK MARKET TRADE IN PARROTS

SPELLS MISERY FOR PET SHOP… CAR CRASH DRIVER

TRAPPED BY LEGS … At last Jack found the item, a paragraph at the bottom of the page, beneath the headline NEW BRIGHT ON GIRL’S COURAGE REWARDED BY MYSTERY BENEFACTOR. “How did this get out?” he demanded.

“I believe Laura told her classmates.”

“Doesn’t the paper have to ask permission to print her name?”

“I hardly think so, particularly if the story’s true. Besides, most children of her age like to be the centre of attention.”

“That’s not the point,” Jack said, growing less sure what was, though he knew he didn’t like the sense that part of the family’s life had got out of control. He lifted the boots and stamped them on the counter. “Anyway, there’s another promise kept.”

Pether stared at them. “You’re giving me these for my father?”

“If you think that’s a fair exchange,” Jack managed not to ay, nor Unless you’re standing in your bare feet.” “I’ll take them to him if you like,” he said. “I just wanted you to know I don’t forget.”

“He isn’t much of a boot man.” Nevertheless Pether picked up the boots. “He hasn’t been too well this week. I’ll deliver them and see what he says. Was that all?”