The New Uncanny (20 page)

At the far edge of the lawns, the pond glimmered. Three ducks floated among the bright green algae, as still as decoys. A family of fat-bottomed geese waddled by on the muddy bank.

‘They walk like Rosie in her nappy!’ Felix declared, pleased by his powers of observation.

She lowered Rosie to the ground. The fence was as tall as Felix, but there were gaps, covered in chicken wire, between the wooden posts, where children could see through. On the opposite bank a bird-house squatted, the size of a garden shed. A path of duckboards ran from its door through the mud down to the water’s edge.

‘Here, Felix, throw them this bit of muffin. Throw it far.’

He drew his arm back and cast the cakey piece over the fence. It sailed high, then dropped down on the other side, only inches away. The geese padded over quickly, their orange beaks scissoring the air. Felix laughed, hugging his tummy. Rosie turned her face up and grinned, gap-toothed, at Mia.

‘Watch me, Mum!’ Felix flung the next piece into the middle of the gaggle. ‘Bull’s eye!’

The geese honked, and Mia turned at the rumbling of tires in the drive behind. The recovery-truck was pulling up behind their rental car. She lifted Rosie onto her shoulders and reached into her pocket for the other muffin. ‘Here, Felix. You can feed the geese this one. I have to get dressed now and help Dad with the car.’

He nodded without looking up. ‘Goosey goosey gander,’ he sang to the geese, ‘where do you wander?’

He hadn’t learned the rest, as she recalled. His interest had always stopped at the lady’s chamber.

The bloke from the garage was down on his hands and knees. ‘See that?’

Dan got down and peered beneath the car. ‘See what?’

‘No water on the ground. I just poured in half a gallon, but I’m not seeing so much as a slow leak from the rad.’

The dentured couple, now sporting matching yellow shorts, walked by and waved. Mia and Rosie waved back.

‘So there’s no quick-fix, I’m afraid.’ The garage man – Buck, according to his badge – wiped his hands on his overalls. ‘I’ll have to tow her to Friendly’s.’

‘The rental company will collect it. They’re delivering our replacement tomorrow. It just leaves us rather stranded today.’

She shrugged. ‘So no beach.’

Dan smiled apologetically. ‘No beach.’

‘I guess I could walk to that café back up the 6A and get food for the fridge.’

He brushed an eyelash from her cheek. ‘I’ll go.’

Felix came running, as the SUV was hooked and clamped. ‘Where’s our car going?’

‘To the garage, squire. We’ll get a new one tomorrow.’

‘But you said we could play mini-golf.’

‘If you’re good for your mum while I’m out, we
might
spend the afternoon at the pool again.’

‘Yay!’ shouted Felix, punching the air. ‘I want to go to the pool again. Definitely. Except first, I have to tell Mum something.’ He crooked his finger.

She looked at Dan, a smile playing on her lips. Then she bent down.

‘Guess what?’ he whispered in her ear.

‘What?’

He motioned her over to a picnic table. ‘Go away, Rosie! Mum, Rosie can’t listen.’

‘Felix, calm down. She doesn’t know what you’re saying.’

‘The Earl talked to me.’

She sat down on the bench. ‘Where?’

‘When I was feeding the geese. He sounded very cross.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said’ – Felix made his voice deep – ‘“Don’t put your face so close to the fence or…”’

‘Or what?’

‘“Or the geese will PECK out your eyes!”’

‘Felix, is that really what he said?’

He nodded slowly. ‘Really. He scared me.’

‘Well, he shouldn’t have been cross and he shouldn’t have scared you. But were you pressing your face to the chicken wire?’

‘I can’t remember. Do you know what else?’ His hands waggled. ‘I saw something.’

‘What, Felix? Come on. Dad’s waiting for us.’

‘I saw The Earl has no eyes.’

‘Felix.’

‘The geese must have pecked them out.’

‘Now you’re being silly.’

He turned his palms out. ‘Mum, I
saw
them. They’re not alive eyes. And they don’t have a real colour. Glass eyes are no-colour, and they make them in the same factories where they make marbles.’

She nodded, pretending to weigh up the information. ‘Well I didn’t know that.’

‘I know. But now you do.’

She woke again that night, twisted in the sheet. She had a vague sense that she’d cried out – a warning or a threat – in her sleep. If she had, no one else had woken. She reached for Dan, for any bit of him that would orient her in the dark expanse of the bed. She needed water.

The flooring was cold beneath her feet, as cold as if it had been laid directly onto damp earth. She checked Felix, then Rosie, in their beds. Without turning on the bathroom light, she filled a paper cup. Then she slipped on her flip-flops, slid through the doors, and nearly cried at the relief of fresh air.

The night was starlit. Not a breath of a breeze moved in the trees. To the east, the sky was beginning to glow wanly. A few lonely birds called. She guessed it had to be four, maybe five, in the morning. She pulled her kimono close. A short stroll and she’d feel better.

She turned left, starting off down the long drive towards the road, but a sudden image of The Earl and his wife, asleep in separate beds, their arms folded stiffly across their chests, made her turn back. She’d go the other way, as far as the pool.

On the front lawn, the rows of empty picnic tables looked strange, expectant, in the night. The hammock sagged between the two sumac trees. The stink of a skunk caught in her throat. As she passed a blue Chrysler in the car park, she smiled at its glow-in-the-dark bumper sticker. ‘Make LOVE to Your Lawn. Trust Dave Vernon & Co For All Your Lawn Care Needs.’ Outside Room 16, four shiny bikes stood propped against the wall – new arrivals, she guessed – while in Room 23, the last room in the strip, the blue light of a TV seeped through the curtains.

She raised her chin and closed her eyes to catch a scent. Sweet peas.

Suddenly she was sitting again with her aunt in her conservatory. She was admiring the profusion of sweet peas Patricia had cut for the table, and her aunt was saying, ‘Here. Take them. Take them with you to the airport. You won’t be so sad about leaving.’ And she shuddered again at the thought of life with a Felix-shaped hole.

She squinted into the distance. There was something… She wasn’t imagining it. A light was coming from the pool. Not the floodlight that shone until 10 p.m. A yellow glow.

At the corner of the chain-link fence, she stopped short. The Earl’s dog was trotting restlessly back and forth along the pool’s sundeck. Three brass lanterns shone at equal intervals along the edge of the deep end. For a moment, in the lantern-light, the pool looked like a deep, dark hole.

Then she saw him.

‘Jesus.’

At the nearest edge, almost bumping the wall, The Earl floated lifelessly, his broad muscled back slack and white in the water; his face, immersed; his arms and legs, dangling from his torso.

Jesus Jesus Jesus.

She started to run – the door was propped open with a bucket – she’d have to haul him over to the stairs in the shallow end – and yell till someone, anyone, came. Could she still remember how to give the kiss of life? Then she was at Reception again, telling him about Aunt Patricia; he was looking away, closing the registration book and straightening his pen on the desk as a cold surge of emotion mainlined to her core. Her heart juddered, and she was running, running for the door to the pool –
oh God
– when she heard a loud splash. She pivoted on her heels and pressed her face to the fence.

The Earl had come to life. In one smooth motion, he’d flipped himself over onto his back and had pushed off from the side. He floated, spread-eagled and inert, at the centre of the pool.

The morning was humid again – eighty degrees by nine o’clock. The replacement car didn’t arrive by ten, as promised. After the third call, Dan started shouting down the phone. ‘Look, does a family funeral mean nothing to you people?’

The chamber-maid, a girl of about seventeen, knocked on the door. Dan asked if she would come back later. ‘Better still, just give us a miss today. Our towels are fine.’ The service started at one. It was nearly noon. Mia pulled her black skirt from her case, but her black ruffled blouse was nowhere. She ran the motel iron over Dan’s trousers, noticing only too late the ugly yellow residue it spat over the pockets. ‘You’ll just have to keep your jacket closed all afternoon.’

‘In this heat?’

She gave Rosie her bottle and asked Dan to take the kids outside so she could get their clothes together: Rosie’s blue silk dress from Monsoon, Felix’s jacket, shirt, belt and long shorts. But in a few minutes, he was back with their daughter in his arms. His jaw looked tight; his mouth was flat-lining. ‘She dropped her bottle. It smashed in the car park.’

She sucked in her lip and continued to search for Felix’s good shoes. Dan disappeared outside to ask the chamber-maid for a dustpan and brush. Car doors slammed in the car park. Felix came running in, shirtless, bare-footed and breathless. ‘Mum, mum! Our car’s here!’

She ran outside, holding one of the sought-after shoes. A canary-yellow saloon car waited by Reception. Perfect for a funeral cortege to a cemetery.

What next?

Dan signed the paperwork, then brushed past her, his head bowed, his thoughts in lock-down mode. He returned swinging a car-seat from either arm, and started strapping them into place.

‘Damn it!’

‘What?’

‘Felix’s won’t lock on.’

She couldn’t bear to know any more. ‘I’ll get Rosie dressed.’

Felix trailed after her. ‘Mum, mum, I don’t want to stay at The Earl’s by myself!’

Her head started to throb. ‘Felix, don’t be silly. When have we ever left you somewhere by yourself? You’re coming to Aunt Patricia’s funeral.’

He punched the air. ‘Yay!’ But still, he trotted behind her, his tiny breasts shaking. ‘Will the police arrest me if I’m not in my seat?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘they will arrest Daddy.’

He started to howl.

‘Felix! I was only–’

She turned. His eyes streamed. He was clutching his foot.

‘Move your hand, sweetheart.’

Blood gushed from the sole.

His face was turning purply-red with the pain.

She scooped him up in her arms and started to run for the room. ‘It’s okay, bunny rabbit. Mummy’s got you. It’s okay.’

Glass from Rosie’s bottle. Why hadn’t she or Dan told him to put his shoes on?

‘Oh, my poor love. Sssh now. Sssh… Mummy’s here.’ She was stumbling toward their room, struggling to carry him as he writhed.

‘Mia!’ Dan caught them up, put Rosie down and took Felix in his arms. ‘Run to the office and get their First Aid kit.’

Felix screamed louder.

‘What about Rosie?’

‘Into the playpen.’

She looked into her son’s swollen face and, for a breathless moment, was almost knocked back by its red-eyed fury. At moments like this, when he raged, the dread always came back: he knows, he remembers.
Somehow
he knows.

She sprinted, her blood-smeared kimono flapping behind her. At the reception desk, she shouted into the room behind. ‘Hello...? Hello!’ She would have pounded the bell on the desk if there’d been one.

The Earl appeared, his face wearing its trademark mask of neutrality. He laid his hands firmly on the desk. It was hard to believe that this was the same body she’d seen, slack and heavy, in the pool only hours ago. ‘It’s my son,’ she breathed. ‘He stepped on a piece of glass. He’s bleeding quite badly. Do you have a First Aid kit?’

The Earl nodded, almost imperceptibly, and walked back into his living quarters.

She waited. She paced. Minutes passed. ‘Hello!’ she tried, bitterness getting the better of her voice. Had she been waiting here for a quarter of an hour or did it only feel that long? What if Felix needed stitches?

The Earl’s wife appeared at the desk. The rims of her eyes were red. ‘Here now,’ she started. ‘You’re welcome to these.’ She laid a small half-empty bottle of antiseptic on the desk, along with sterile wipes and two large plasters.

‘Thanks.’ Mia grabbed the meagre offerings and flew out the door.

In their room, Felix was curled, foetally, on his bed. In the absence of drugs, Dan had switched on the telly.

‘Look, squire! Here’s Mum.’ But Felix only blinked at the television set. Dan turned to her, lowering his voice. ‘Where
were
you?’

‘They took forever to find this much.’ She showed him the supplies.

‘It’s okay. I managed to get the glass out with the tweezers from your make-up bag. I sterilised them in whiskey. It was a big piece, but the bleeding’s stopped.’

‘Thank God.’

‘He was very good. I told him how sorry I was about missing that piece of glass.’

She glanced at her son’s pale face. ‘You and Daddy make a good team, don’t you, Felix?’

On the pillows, he nodded, without looking at her.

‘You were very brave. I’m proud of you, bunny rabbit.’

Dan murmured in her ear. ‘It’s twenty to one.’

‘Right.’ She sucked in her lip. ‘Let Mummy look at that poor old foot.’

Without taking his eyes away from Scooby Doo, Felix stuck his leg in the air and rotated his ankle to display his wound. He was feeling better.

‘Now, sweetheart. Do you want to stay here with Dad while Rosie and I go to Aunt Patricia’s funeral? Or do you want to come with us too?’ She could hear herself, subtly manipulating her wounded child, and she cringed inwardly.

Felix turned and grimaced at Rosie in her playpen. ‘I’m going too.’

‘Hooray! Mummy will put a plaster on your foot and get you dressed. Then we’ll drive there in our new car.’

Dan muttered under his breath: ‘Minus a car-seat.’

She looked at him and shrugged.

‘You can sit on my lap just this once, okay, Felix? I, for one, would love a cuddle.’

‘Yay,’ he muttered. But he did not turn to her with his just-for-her smile. His small fist did not punch the air.