The Immaculate (37 page)

He sighed, shaking his head. Gail stood up, circled the table and squeezed herself onto his lap. “Poor Jack,” she murmured, putting her arms around him. “It's been quite a year for you. You've had to learn a lot about yourself.”

“Have I?”

“Wouldn't you say so?”

Jack thought about it for a moment. “I suppose so, yes.”

“You don't sound too sure.”

“No, it's just . . . I hadn't really thought about it before, but I suppose . . . yes, I suppose you're right.”

“What would you say you've learnt then?”

“Is this a test?”

“If you like.”

He was silent for a little while. Finally, he said, “I'd never really loved anyone before I met you. That's been hard for me . . . opening up, learning to trust you.”

“And do you trust me now?”

“Yes. Implicitly.”

“And what about your father?”

Jack frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Do you trust him, too?”

“He's dead.”

“I know that.” Gail looked at him as if he were being tiresome. “But do you trust him?”

“I . . . yes. Yes, I do.”

“And do you love him?”

“Yes,” Jack said, surprising himself. “I've found a way to love him, and I think he loves me, too.” He grinned and squeezed her. “Thank you,” he said.

“For what?”

“For teaching me how.”

Gail smiled and squeezed him back. She lowered her face to his and they kissed, the first proper kiss since she'd stepped off the train.

At last she broke away from him gently and sighed.

“What's the matter?”

“Nothing,” she said, but she was staring at him as though trying to memorise his features, a strange expression on her face.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

She ran a hand through her short dark hair, flattening spikes which sprang back after her fingers had passed over them. “Do you remember the first time we met?” she said. “In Alfred's? It was a year ago on Sunday. Did you know that?”

“Yeah. So?”

She sighed, touched the back of his hand with one fingertip. “Such a lot has happened since then,” she said.

She sounded wistful. Jack linked his fingers with hers. “You sound sad. Why's that?”

She shook her head as if it were not important.

“Gail,” he said firmly. “Communication. Trust. Remember?”

“It's just . . .” She waved her free hand in a vague circle. Then all at once she stiffened and raised her head, reminding Jack of a vixen catching a scent on the air. “Listen,” she hissed.

Jack listened, but could hear nothing. When he began to say so, Gail flapped a hand at him.
“Shhh.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, perfectly still, as though posing for photographs. Jack wondered whether this was a ploy by Gail to deflect his question. He was about to speak again when he heard it: a persistent growling sound, so soft and low it was almost inaudible.

“What is it?” he murmured.

Gail looked at him, eyes wide. “I'd say it was the sound of engines, wouldn't you?”

Jack's stomach did a quick flip. “Motorbikes,” he whispered. When she nodded, he said, “Maybe it's the taxi,” but he knew it wasn't. He could tell by the sound.

Gail jumped up and ran to the door that led out into the hall.

“Where are you going?” said Jack.

“To call the police.”

Less than a minute later she was back, face taut. “Now the phone's dead,” she said.

“Oh shit!” Jack placed a hand on his heart, as though afraid it was going to smash its way out of his chest. “What are we going to do?”

Calmly, Gail held out her hand. “Come with me.”

Jack looked up at her, ignoring the offer, as an idea struck him. “We could hide in the attic.”

“They'd find us, Jack.” She straightened her hand and her arm, emphasising the fact that he should take it. “Come with me,” she repeated.

Instinctively Jack took her hand, responding to the authority in her voice. She gave a slight tug and he stood up. “Where are we going?”

“No questions. Just trust me.”

“But you don't—”

“Trust me, okay?” she said firmly.

Jack felt as though he should be the one taking charge. It was his problem, his territory. However, he nodded. “Okay.”

“Come on then.” Gail pulled him to the back door and opened it. Immediately the snarls of myriad engines, though still distant, became louder.

Jack felt an instinctive desire to tug her back into the house, slam and lock the door, but he knew the house was a trap, even though he felt exposed without its solid walls around him. He remembered sleeping under his bed as a child, curled up like a foetus, eyes squeezed tightly shut. He used to believe that if you closed your eyes at night and lay completely still it made you invisible to monsters, impervious to harm.

Hand in hand, he and Gail slithered over the cobbles of the backyard, ducked beneath a line of damp washing, and then they were leaving the shadow of the house behind and heading towards the darker shadows of the woods.

The flesh between Jack's shoulder blades itched as the two of them plunged over the open ground that lay between Beckford Woods and the back of the house. Somewhere behind him and off to his right the motorbikes were roaring like wild animals. The sky was darkening rapidly now, clouds like silent grey sharks sliding through a sapphire ocean. Yet there was still enough light for Jack to feel acutely vulnerable. The roaring of engines became louder still, and now, underlying it, Jack thought he could hear the sound of raised voices. Unable to resist it, he glanced back. The sight caused his stomach to convulse with shock.

There must have been forty or fifty motorbikes roaring up Daisy Lane towards his father's house. At their head was a battered pickup truck with perhaps a dozen men sitting in the back, holding what looked like thin poles.

Surely, Jack thought, such hatred, such antagonism, could not be solely directed at him? There must have been a hundred people down there, all of whom it appeared wanted a little piece of Jack Stone. The procession, lit by blazing headlamps, made him think of the villagers marching on the Baron's castle in
Frankenstein.

“Why are they doing this?” Jack shouted, his voice ragged.

“Because they're ignorant,” answered Gail. “They don't really know
what
they're doing.”

“I don't understand. I haven't done anything to harm them.”

“Save your breath.
Come on.
”

They stumbled on, Jack's breath catching in his throat like shards of metal. His feet slithered over the mud and grass, and he remained upright only because Gail's footing was sure as a gazelle's, her hand tight around his. Behind them the roaring died little by little as engines were switched off and were superseded by whoops, expletives, the banter of hunting men out for a night's sport.

Jack heard the smashing of glass, cheering and laughter, and then the sound of more glass breaking. “Come out, Stone, you fucking rapist,” someone shouted.

“We're gonna chop your dick off, boy,” someone else yelled heartily, and his words were greeted with cackles of approval.

All at once a voice shouted, “Hey, what's that?”

Jack heard Gail say, “Oh, shit,” and saw weak light meandering across the ground in front of him, picking out little green daggers of grass.

“It's him!” someone shouted. “It's the rapist.”

“And he's got a lass with him.”

“Come on!”

“They've seen us, Jack,” Gail murmured, half-turning, and increased her speed, tightening her grip on his hand.

Jack didn't reply. Adrenaline was flooding his body, spurring him on. Torchlight beams were probing the area around him, fluttering over his skin. The edge of the woods was only a dozen yards away, trees picked out in powdery yellow light, bark the colour of parchment. The trees were like portals to some unknown place; between them was a lumpy shapeless landscape, dark on dark.

A sharp crack reverberated through the air, making Jack flinch, his ears hurt. He thought of when he'd been ten and a paving stone had buckled and snapped right in front of him, expanded by the summer heat. To his astonishment a chunk of bark flew from the tree five yards away, spitting splinters. He didn't realise he was being shot at until he heard a second bang, saw more foliage fly.

He was so shocked by the fact they were actually trying to hit him that he almost stopped dead. Gail wrenched on his arm. “Come on!” she urged. “Keep going!” Jack ran with her, head spinning. He found it difficult to equate what was happening with reality; it seemed fanciful as a scene from a film.

They plunged into the woods, putting a wall of tree trunks between themselves and their pursuers. Jack was running blindly, disorientated by the occasional slitherings of torchlight, the sky flickering between the charcoal scrawls of branches overhead. Once or twice he thought he was going to fall on the uneven ground, but Gail's surefootedness kept him upright and moving. He heard someone shouting behind him and recognised the voice as Patty Bates'.

“Mickey, you take your lot over that way. Stan, you cover the other side. Me n' Ernie and the rest'll go straight through the middle. And be careful with them guns. Don't use 'em unless you're sure, all right?”

There were growls of acknowledgement, and then Jack heard the soft sounds of movement expanding, becoming diffuse somewhere behind him. It was like a single vast creature infiltrating the woodland, flexing its dozens of tentacles, reaching out along many paths, wheedling out its prey.

A little further on Jack's foot caught on a root or a tangle of bush and this time he did fall, his wrist twisting as he clung to Gail's hand, sending a bolt of pain through the bone. He went down heavily, crying out. Even before his senses had stabilised, Gail was by his side, tugging him to his feet.

“Come on,” she said, “they'll have heard us.”

Jack scrambled upright. “Where are we going?”

“You'll know when you get there.”

“But how do you—”

“Shh.”
She placed a hand lightly over his mouth and drew him gently behind the trunk of a tree.

They stood there, hugging the shadows, faces pressed to the bark, trying not to breathe too loudly. Jack felt a pulsing against his chest. It seemed to come from the tree rather than himself.

Voices approached, footsteps rustling in the undergrowth. Jack tensed, but Gail's hand on his arm was warning him not to move. The beams of torches danced like fireflies. “It was around here,” someone said.

The sound of footsteps crunched closer. Another voice, sandpaper-rough, a little slurred through drink, said, “Hey, Beano, look here.”

The footsteps came to a halt on the other side of the tree, perhaps five yards from their hiding place. Jack heard one of the men clearing his throat, and he clenched his teeth, sweat dribbling down his face and chest, tickling between his shoulder blades. If he made the slightest sound now, if his stomach rumbled or his bowels decided to void a little gas, then he and Gail would be discovered. Beside him Gail was statue-still; Jack could not even hear her breathing.

“Looks like one of them slipped or something,” the first voice said.

“Maybe they're injured,” gruff-voice replied. “I hope we'll be the ones to find 'em.” He made a quiet gunshot sound with his mouth and chuckled.

His friend laughed along with him. “Hey, maybe they're hiding in the bushes or something, listening to us this very moment.”

“Yeah,” said gruff-voice, and then in a warbling drunken falsetto, “Coo-ee, fuck-face, we're coming to get youuu.”

The two men snorted phlegmy laughter. “Come on,” said the first, “we'd better push on while the trail's hot.”

“While we can smell the shit of their fear,” gruff-voice added with relish.

There was a shuffle of movement, which resolved into footsteps. Walk away, Jack willed, walk away. Torchlight suddenly slithered around the trunk of the tree and across Jack's sleeve. He snatched his arm back just as the two men came level with their hiding place and saw him.

In the split-second that followed, every detail of the men's appearance imprinted itself on Jack's mind. Both wore scuffed and filthy leather jackets and ragged jeans. The first man was thin, perhaps Jack's age, with short, sparse hair and hollow pock-marked cheeks. The man behind him was taller, more bloated. He had a straggly dark beard, wild eyes, a black-and-red bandanna around his head. If he hadn't been wearing a Harley-Davidson T-shirt and a denim waistcoat over his leather jacket he would have looked like a pirate. Both men carried rifles. The bearded one was just starting to grin, revealing a marked lack of front teeth, when Gail flew from behind Jack like a wildcat and slammed into them.

She moved so fast she was almost a blur. Jack saw her hands lash out at the thin man's face, rake down his cheeks, leaving stripes of blood. He cried out and lurched back to escape her, colliding with his companion. Before either of them could recover, Gail pushed the thin man hard in the chest and the two men went down in a heap. Jack felt bewildered at the speed of her attack, amazed by her strength, ashamed of his own lassitude. He saw that she was snatching up one of the rifles the men had dropped and was flinging it into the undergrowth, and he moved forward to do the same.

The two men were clambering to their feet, shouting obscenities, as Jack and Gail fled once more into the woods. It was almost full night now, the black branches above them merging with the starless sky, pockets of darkness, of ever-deepening shadow, filling in the gaps between the trees. Jack's heart was pumping with reaction, his mouth paper-dry. He was terrified of crashing into a tree or plunging into a crevasse masked by darkness, and wondered how Gail could be so confident. She seemed to be leading him somewhere definite, but how could that be? As far as he was aware she had never even been to Beckford before today.