The Count of Eleven (42 page)

“Sorry, are you busy?”

“Just a mite. Didn’t mean to snap at you. Can I help?”

“Are you free just now?”

“The studio’s closed today, if that’s what you mean.”

“All day?”

“I’m afraid so.” She could have told him it was Tommy’s birthday, but that wasn’t his business; besides, she was trying to recall where she’d heard his voice before. “Anything I can do for you?” she said.

There was a pause, and then: “Do you happen to remember speaking to me a few weeks back?”

“I’m trying. Give me a clue.”

“About well, about luck.”

She remembered, and her face grew hot. “You sent me a letter.”

“That was me, yes. I was wondering if you’d let me explain. If you hear me out you might ‘

“If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s men who won’t take no for an answer,” Janys said. “If I hear from you again I’ll be in touch with the police.”

She slammed the receiver onto the cradle and stood breathing hard, eyes shut, until the anger faded from her cheeks. She’d thought door-to-door evangelists were difficult enough to repulse, but this clown was worse. Perhaps he was so persistent because what he was trying to sell made even less sense.

Thinking about him wouldn’t get the cakes made. Janys listened to make sure the phone hadn’t wakened Tommy -she would have been considerably less polite to the caller if she’d thought it had then she hurried into the kitchen. Eggs, margarine, sugar, flour … “Oh, you wretched man,” she cried, instinctively blaming the caller, though of course it wasn’t his fault that she had only enough flour for the birthday cake and none left over to make little ones to go with sandwiches and sausage rolls. Without them there wouldn’t be sufficient for Tommy and his friends from the play group

She tiptoed upstairs and eased his door open. He was sound asleep, his hand flattened by his cheek now. If she wakened him he would be overtired for his party, and experience had taught her that she couldn’t transfer him into the buggy without wakening him. She could be back from the corner shop in five minutes. She blew him a kiss and grabbed her handbag from the post at the end of the banisters, then let herself out of the house.

Apart from a woman wheeling a pramful of free newspapers, the street was deserted. Sunlight massed on Janys’s scalp as she turned the sharp curve a hundred yards or so to the left of her house. Now she could see traffic on the conveyor belt of the main road, less than two minutes’ walk beyond the junction where a street like hers crossed hers. As she ran past the junction, someone was parking a blue van in the cross street, but she barely noticed it; she was busy counting Tommy’s guests again. The roar of traffic overwhelmed the scent of flowers in the front gardens as though one sense was being substituted for another, and then she was at the main road.

Frith’s was on the corner. The window was crowded with sunglasses and toys and baby foods and washing-up bowls and rubber bones and felt-tipped pens and sandals, and there was even more variety inside the shop. Miss Frith, a large-boned woman in a voluminous floral dress, was serving as much conversation as goods to a customer, and her new assistant, a teenager with a round face and a frown that announced she was anxious to please, was finishing serving another. Janys saw packets of flour over the assistant’s shoulder and went to her as the previous customer turned away, examining his change. “Just a packet of flour. No, make that two,” Janys said.

The round-faced girl lifted two packets from the shelf and lowered them carefully onto the counter. “Thank you. Anything else?”

“Not today,” Janys said, digging in her purse for something smaller than a ten-pound note. She had found only a few pence worth of copper when Miss Frith told her customer the amount of the bill and leaned across the counter. “Mrs. Day, could I have a word in just a moment while you’re here?”

“Well, it’s a little Janys began, rummaging in her purse, but Miss Frith had already returned to her customer. The assistant would just have to accept a tenner, Janys thought, and was disentangling it from keys and an emergency tampon when the customer the girl had last served approached the counter. “Excuse me, I don’t think you gave me the right change.”

“Could I just Janys said, but the girl was directing her concerned frown at him. “You gave me a pound for kitchen roll and I gave you eleven pee change,” she said.

“Right, but on the price tag it says eighty-seven pee.”

The girl took the twin pack of kitchen roll and cocked it to one side while cocking her head to the other. “I’ll have to ask,” she said. “Miss Frith.”

“Just a moment now.” Miss Frith recommenced counting change onto her customer’s palm, even more slowly than it took her to pronounce each amount. “Keep your hat on,” she said, which sounded to Janys like a rebuke but which was apparently advice to the customer. “Now, Glenda, what?”

This gentleman gave me a pound for kitchen roll and I gave him eleven pee change because that’s what the rolls cost that I sold yesterday, but he says the tag says eighty-seven pee.”

“Let’s see now,” Miss Frith said, groping for her spectacles among packets of tobacco and cough sweets on a shelf. “Ah, that’s an old tag.”

“Could you take for the flour?” Janys said to the girl.

“I will do,” the assistant said, then trained her frown on the ten-pound note. “We’ll have to wait for Miss Frith. I have to tell her when I give change of a note.”

“Miss Frith,” Janys said, “I really do need ‘

“I won’t be a moment. As soon as I’ve dealt with this.” She lowered her face to the kitchen roll as if to blot out all distractions. “This is last month’s tag. It should have been altered,” she informed the customer. “It was our fault. Strictly speaking we’re within our rights to charge you the current price, but I’ll pay you back the two pee for your trouble.”

“Don’t bother. I just wanted to get things clear.”

“If you’re sure. I don’t want to lose your goodwill.”

Make your minds up for God’s sake, Janys thought. Her scalp felt hotter than when she’d been under the sun. The customer picked up the kitchen rolls and dawdled towards the door as if he was considering accepting the two pence after all, and it wasn’t until he was out of the shop that the assistant said “Ten pounds, Miss Frith.”

“Ten pounds,” Miss Frith agreed, and turned unhurriedly to Janys. “Now, Mrs. Day, I wonder if I could have a word.”

“If it takes no longer than it takes her to give me my change. I’ve left Tommy asleep.”

“Ah, the little angel. How is he?”

“Angelic at the moment, I hope. What did you want?”

“I was wondering when you could fit in a portrait of my little nieces. They’ll be staying with me for a week now it’s the holidays. It’ll be a surprise for their parents, the portrait will, you understand.”

“When would you like?”

“Whenever’s most convenient for you.”

Too late Janys saw that she shouldn’t have restricted their conversation to the time it took the assistant to make change, because the girl would wait until Miss Frith had finished talking. Her head was a jumble of panicky thoughts the number of guests at the party, how much longer she had left him alone than she’d meant to, the fear that his father would take him away, a fear which lingered precisely because it was so irrational. “My diary’s at home,” she said. “Give me a ring in a few minutes.”

“I haven’t a phone, unfortunately.”

“Well then, can’t you Janys said, and interrupted herself for the sake of swiftness. “Shall we say sometime next week?”

“I don’t suppose the week after might be possible?”

“Even better. Monday?”

“Or Tuesday, perhaps?”

“What time?”

“Whenever would suit you.”

About now? Eleven?”

“Eleven.”

“I’ll just write that down so we don’t forget,” Miss Frith said, retrieving her spectacles from the shelf. She found a fractured Biro next to the cash register and crouched behind the counter in search of a notebook. “If I can have my change,” Janys said to the girl.

“I’ll do that now.” But the assistant had to wait until Miss Frith stood up before she had room to sidle to the cash register. She seemed prepared to continue taking her pace from Miss Frith, until Janys stared hard at her own watch. As soon as the girl had handed her the change Janys said “Thanks’ to Miss Frith, who tore out a page bearing the date and time of the portrait session and gave it to Janys, together with a faintly offended look. By now Janys didn’t care. She stuffed the page into her handbag and clasped the packets of flour to her breasts and ran out of the shop.

She wanted to let out a gasp of relief, but the sunlight and the noise and fumes of traffic oppressed her. She ran across the minor crossroads, near which no vehicles were parked now. She was calculating in her head how long it would take her to mix the ingredients, how long to cook the birthday cake, how long Tommy might continue to sleep. All this kept her surroundings at a distance, and so when the roar of traffic didn’t give way to the silence of the empty front gardens but to the murmur of what sounded like a crowd, it didn’t immediately strike her as strange. She was so preoccupied with Tommy’s party that when she turned the corner and saw half a dozen neighbours outside her gate she wondered if they were there because of his birthday. In that first moment she thought she was somehow seeing the light of his birthday candles flickering in the house.

On Friday evening there was nothing left for Jack to do. He was hoping to occupy himself with packing the luggage, but Laura and Julia had already finished that. Last night he had been able to go to bed shortly after dinner, since he had been on the late shift, and he didn’t think he could bear sitting idly at home tonight while he was so on edge. “Do you know what I’d like to do?” he said to Julia.

“What?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping you did.”

“Dad,” Laura said.

“Maybe I do. Why don’t we go out for dinner.”

“I thought we were just having fish and chips for a change,” Julia said.

“Dining out will be more like starting our holiday, and it’ll be a way of thanking Pete and Cath. Let me phone and see if they can fit us in.”

It felt odd not to have to make any more surreptitious calls, but that wasn’t why he was nervous. Why did he feel as though he had forgotten or overlooked something? As soon as Pete Venable offered them a table for seven o’clock Jack wished he could go out for a walk by himself instead. Perhaps whatever he was unable to recall would come to him while he and the family were away. As they walked to the International Experience, towards a sun which the sea wouldn’t douse for hours, he felt as though part of his brain was cut off from him.

He failed to see how any aspect of the Count’s last visit could be troubling him. He’d parked the van in a side road near Janys Day’s house in Old Swan, having phoned her from a call-box on the main road. Her letter-box had been protruding a free newspaper like a rude tongue, but it had looked more like a fuse to him. After ringing her doorbell twice he’d steeped the paper in fuel with the blow lamp and set fire to the paper with his refuelled lighter, then he’d pushed the blazing paper into the house and had watched through the letter-box, which he’d held open with his handkerchief, until he had seen the hall carpet catch fire. He remembered experiencing mostly relief that nobody had answered the bell. Driving away, he’d felt that the simplicity of this visit had been a reward for completing his task.

The International Experience had turned Spanish. “Iced soup if you can’t stand the heat,” Cath Venable said as she gave the Orchards menus. Throughout the meal she kept returning to their table, patting her forehead with a handkerchief, for reassurance that the food wasn’t too spicy, until Jack grew hot and bothered: he could do with fewer references to heat while he was unable to sort out his thoughts. His impatience made him feel ungrateful to Pete and Cath, and so he ensured that he caught them together. “We’ll bring you back a surprise from Crete,” he said. “Thanks for giving us the chance.”

“It was the least we could do,” Pete said.

Jack paid the bill and looked out of the window. Julia and Laura were waiting in the car park. The low sun and its trail on the water were reddening, fire turning into blood. The sight of his family with their backs to him and gazing out to sea gave him a sudden sense of vulnerability, but he couldn’t tell if that related to them or himself. Was he uneasy because now that the Count had finished he had no way of guaranteeing their good luck? Surely it was guaranteed precisely because the Count had finished and there was nothing to go wrong. Julia and Laura continued to gaze at the sun as he came out of the restaurant. “The fire’s dying,” he said.

They strolled home through the cooling light, not saying much. Cars with their headlamps lit or blank passed along the promenade; a few seagulls, autumn ally tinted by the sunset, wheeled above the bay. The dwarf windmill and castle and cottage extended their longest shadows across the Crazy Golf course as though grotesque holes had opened in the earth. On Victoria Road the Bingo parlours were silent, but one arcade was still lively, reels of symbols spinning in the fruit machines, phosphorescent figures scampering about the video screens, a pinball jangling. As the family crossed in front of an empty bus parked outside the Floral Pavilion and stepped into their street, Jack hesitated, all at once sharply convinced that he was close to remembering. He watched Julia and Laura walking towards the van, and then he knew. The blow lamp was in the briefcase, which was still in the back of the van.

The Count would never have overlooked that, but Jack Awkward had. He followed Julia and Laura in case they wondered why he was faltering, then he halted outside the gate. “Forgotten something?” Julia asked.

“Just trying to think. I’ll be in in a minute.”

Saying so used up all the words in his head. He couldn’t leave the blow lamp here while they were away, or he would be unable to relax. As Julia and Laura went up the path he wandered alongside the van, dabbing at it with his fingertips and leaving prints in the grime as though a pretence of incriminating himself might quicken his thoughts. He stared blankly at the rear doors as Julia let herself and Laura into the house. He was writing “Count’ on the left-hand door with his blackened fingertip, having seen that he could do so with eleven strokes if the first letter was drawn like a V turned through ninety degrees, when it occurred to him to wonder how Laura or her mother could be in the front bedroom only seconds after entering the house. He glanced up just in time to see a man dodging across the room towards the door.