The Overnight (23 page)

"Let's see," says Slater, and sits next to Wilf before he can think of shutting the book. "Thought as much. Will you tell her, Lowell, or shall I?"

His mouth sags wide as if this is his best joke, and Wilf can think of only one response. "I'm buying this," he informs whoever ought to know as he rips a handful of pages out of the novel and stuffs them in Slater's mouth.

He wishes he'd thought of such a retort years ago, but it's worth having waited to see his enemy's eyes bulge with shock. Either that or Wilf's vehemence sends Slater over backwards. As he and the chair thump the floor Wilf follows him down and kneels on his chest. "Want the rest?" Wilf enquires with a smile he thinks Woody might be proud of. "My pleasure. Swallow this."

He's surrounded by noises—gasps from women, Connie repeating his name increasingly loud and sharp, the men in the armchairs grunting with laughter or approval—but he's mostly aware of a choked sodden mumble, Slater's stopped-up words. He has even less to say for himself now than Wilf used to have in class, which is so satisfying that Wilf doesn't immediately relent when Woody's voice rushes out of the staffroom exit. "Stop that," he shouts more than once on the way to stooping close enough to confront Wilf with saliva glistening within his smile. "Enough," Woody urges. "Enough."

Wilf thinks there might be room for another chapter in Slater's mouth, but there's no doubt he has made his point. He leaves the remains of the novel spread-eagled on Slater's chest and levers himself to his feet by propping his fists on his enemy's shoulders. As Slater lurches off the floor less gracefully than a drunk and flounders about in search of somewhere to eject the contents of his mouth, Woody gives Wilf another close view of his teeth. "Wait in my office."

All at once Wilf's legs feel flabby and unstable, as though whatever drove him has drained away through them, leaving his skull hollow above a stale taste. He reminds himself that Slater's mouth will be flavoured with paper and ink, a notion that helps him walk almost steadily to the exit to the staffroom. As it decides his badge is valid he sees Connie pass Slater the Frugo bag that contained the wine. Some of the women emit maternal noises while he spits extravagantly into the bag, and some cast Wilf out with their eyes until the door shuts behind him.

He supports himself on the banister all the way to the staffroom. Without its chairs the table puts him in mind of an abandoned altar. Books are clattering on racks in the stockroom while Ray frowns at his computer screen in the office. Even if Ray didn't look preoccupied Wilf wouldn't feel able to discuss his sick leave. He retreats into Woody's office, where the monitor shows Woody presenting Slater with a gift voucher and a smile of supplication. In the opposite quadrant the audience has settled down for Oates to answer a question about his book or Wilf. As Wilf leans against the clammy concrete wall and watches Woody usher Slater out of the shop, he's tempted to take the single chair until Woody darts across the sales floor as if he's aware of Wilf's presumption. Before Wilf is even close to prepared for the onslaught, Woody's in the room.

He spins his chair away from the monitor and plants himself on it to face Wilf. "Well, that cost the store."

It's Woody's unrelenting smile that encourages, if that's the word, Wilf to ask "How much?"

"A whole lot more than you're going to be able to afford."

"I'm sorry." Wilf doesn't know what to add except "I shouldn't have done that here."

"Hey, where else are you going to do it?" This sounds like an endorsement or at least a parody of one until Woody says "Who else don't you want to hear the truth about you?"

A surge of renewed fury makes Wilf blurt "What did he say about me?"

"How you fooled the store. I'm going to need to make sure you're the only one that's lying low here, aren't I, God damn it? The only guy that can't read."

"That isn't true. It's nowhere near."

"Hey, is that a fact? Okay then, show me." Woody smiles savagely at the lack of books in the room and pulls out the drawers of his desk until he finds a pile of official forms, one of which he thrusts at Wilf. "Go ahead, let me hear you read this."

At first the reason Wilf can't concentrate on the task is that he's thrown by what he thinks he glimpsed. When Woody opened the right-hand bottom drawer a crack, was it really full of socks and underwear? Every second Wilf spends wondering makes him appear more illiterate, and so he peers at the form. He recognises it as an application to work at Texts, but that isn't the same as putting the swarm of marks on the page into words. When he strains to force some meaning out of them his body starts to quiver, inwardly to begin with. "I can't just now," he says and feels even stupider for trying to explain. "It's Slater's fault. He used to get me like this when we were at school."

"I haven't time for this," Woody says, snatching the form and returning it to the drawer. "I'm only glad we found out about you before New York got here. Let's have your badge."

This sounds so reminiscent of a Western or a crime film that Wilf almost thinks Woody and his smile are jesting. "You can't believe I was never able to read," Wilf says. "How did I manage to shelve all my books?"

"I checked your section," Woody tells him and demonstrates the look he must have given it. "Thank God we'll have time to fix it before tomorrow. I don't have your badge yet."

Wilf takes it off and drops it on the desk. He feels as if there's nothing left of him worth having—as if whatever was worthwhile has been draining out of him unnoticed since he started work at Texts. He's turning to bear his dull empty shame away when Woody demands "Did you fill out your sick form?"

A last feeble uprush of pride incites Wilf to admit "I don't need to. I've never had a migraine."

"Fooled us there as well, huh?"

"You made me rush the ending of that book so I could talk to the writers and I couldn't finish it. That's what all this has been about, not being able to finish a book."

"I should be taking some of the blame, should I?" Woody says with a smile that seems to bleed into his eyes. "I believed you when you said you were a reader. It never occurred to me to check."

"I can read. It's what I like most. I've just kept not being able to read here."

"Well, here's your chance to do it someplace else," Woody says as if Wilf has insulted him or the shop or both. "Did you card yourself out?"

"I didn't think."

"Hey, let me do it for you." He springs out of his chair and heads for the door so fast Wilf barely has time to dodge out of his way. He grabs Wilf's card out of the rack and skims it under the clock, then snaps it in two and plants the halves on Ray's desk. "All yours, Ray. Mr Lowell is quitting as of right now."

"Good Lord." Ray gives him and Wilf an unhappy puzzled blink each. "Why on earth is that?"

"I'd call it getting rid of an invader," Woody says, levelling his smile at Wilf. "Still here? You shouldn't be. Maybe you forgot it says staff only on the door downstairs."

Surely it can be nothing except contentiousness that goads Wilf into saying "I haven't paid for that book yet."

"Ray will stop it out of the salary we wouldn't be paying you if it were up to me. Just leave."

Wilf sees Ray trying to decide how sympathetic to him he should look. "It's all right," Wilf feels bound to assure him while failing to convince himself, and then he can't face either of them. He grabs his coat from his locker and struggles into it as he plods unsteadily downstairs and heaves the door open for the last time. Since nobody appears to be watching him, he sneaks over to his section. The harder he peers at the books, the less he's certain whether they're in order; the titles and the authors' names might as well be in a foreign language or none at all. He's growing dizzy with straining his eyes and his mind when Woody's voice proclaims overhead "Mr Lowell is no longer with the store."

Brodie Oates' gaze finds Wilf as the author finishes saying that it takes him a year to imagine a novel and six weeks to write it. As the listeners turn to stare at Wilf he wonders if they're treating him to the disapproval they would otherwise have kept for Oates. In any case it makes Wilf feel even more ostracised than Woody's announcement did. Connie lifts one hand in a wave that scarcely admits to itself as Wilf flees towards the exit, beside which Greg offers him a pursed reproving smile and a shake of the head from behind the counter. It doesn't matter how rude Wilf is to him now, but the only words he can bring to mind are terse as grunts. They grow stale and sour in his mouth as he leaves the shop for good.

Suppose Slater is waiting outside for him? Wilf hopes so: he's welcome to all the words Wilf kept to himself and maybe more than words. The fog that's suppressing even the time of day falls back for a breath, and he thinks it let him glimpse a watcher until he realises he saw only the pair of trees and their stunted companion. Nevertheless, as he retreats around the corner of the shop he has a distinct sense of being followed, however invisibly and silently. "Why don't you show yourself?" he calls, though it makes his mouth taste worse. "You've got what you wanted. Come on, let's see your face."

He hasn't tempted Slater out of hiding by the time he reaches the Micra. He slams the door as hard as he would have liked to have done on some part of his tormentor. Once he has succeeded in inserting the tag of his seat belt in the slot he rests his shaky hands on the wheel. The chill of the fog and his reaction to the events of the afternoon have seized him with a fit of shivering. He gazes at the meaningless blank of the rear wall of Texts until he regains enough control of himself to line up the key with the ignition.

Because of the fog he drives slowly out from behind the shop, but it feels as though he's skulking, afraid to be noticed. The light from the windows recedes into the nebulous glow, trees slither past in the murk, and then there's only an inexact patch of tarmac crawling ahead. What if the headlamps lit on Slater? How would he behave if he saw Wilf grinning over them as they gathered speed towards him? The corners of Wilf's mouth are starting to raise themselves when he remembers Lorraine. His hands clench on the wheel as he's overtaken by a shudder of self-loathing. He doesn't know how even Slater could have rendered him so thoughtless. Perhaps he didn't deserve to work at Texts after all.

The supermarket drags itself into focus before sinking into the grey depths of the mirror. If that's the last sight he will ever have of Fenny Meadows, he can't decide how that makes him feel. He cruises to the roundabout and up the motorway ramp. Though it's raising him towards the sun, he has a sense of being held back by the unstable pallid blankness and its chill. When he reaches the edge of the motorway he lowers his window to listen for oncoming traffic. By the time he's convinced he can risk a sprint, a mouldy taste of fog has lodged in his mouth.

The motorway is reluctant to unveil itself. He slackens his speed almost at once until the fog ahead more or less matches his pace. Before long it shows signs of drawing away, and he glimpses the sun like a silver token someone keeps breathing on. Soon he'll be able to see his way clear, a prospect that feels like being free of Fenny Meadows. That's hardly going to be possible unless he comes to terms with what he did. He doesn't want to brood over it while he needs to concentrate on driving, and it isn't quite the reason why he takes a firmer grip on the wheel. His mind is so weighed down by his encounter with Slater and the aftermath that he hasn't thought about the things he saw and said.

The sun gleams as though it has been polished, then it dulls and vanishes while he tries not to let his mind cloud over. Is Woody living in the shop? Why has Wilf been unable to read only there? The questions seem incapable of raising themselves quite far enough for him to grasp them; he needs to be out under the sun. He even has an odd impression that he shouldn't risk thinking them until he has escaped the fog—absurd, but it rouses his nerves. He presses the accelerator as the fog bares a quarter of a mile of road. Though he has no sense of travelling fast, the needle of the speedometer is swinging towards vertical when the fog takes an abrupt stand ahead. As he brakes, greyness floods the mirror. All at once the murk is so close on every side that despite the heater its chill seeps into the car and into him. He's fighting not to let his shivers reach the wheel when the fog behind him blazes icy white and unleashes the sound of an enormous trumpet. There's a lorry at his back, and it can't or won't slow down.

He tramps on the accelerator. The fog surges eagerly to cut him off, but it's more than fog. He's racing towards the wide high whitish backside of a lorry that's travelling at less than half his speed. He brakes, only for the deafening horn and the blinding light in the mirror to lurch closer. He jerks his foot clear of the pedal and twists the quivering wheel. He has forgotten to indicate. The car is veering into the middle lane when the lorry behind him swings out to overtake.

He can't return to the inner lane. He's too close to the vehicle ahead. He catches the indicator lever with the side of his hand and shoves it down as he swerves into the outer lane. The glare of the following lorry is still in his mirror. It's only trying to pass him, he isn't prey that it's determined to run down, it isn't in league with the fog that in any case can't be determined to trap him, but the thoughts are no use: they don't prevent the lorry from bearing down on him faster than he can gain speed. He grips the wheel and flees into the middle lane, and hears a vast gasp that suggests he has shocked his pursuer. It and a huge spasmodic panting are emitted by the brakes the driver has applied at last, but there's no longer any need. Wilf brakes and steers into the inner lane behind the foremost lorry so as to feel entirely safe.

He hasn't skidded. He hasn't come up too fast behind the vehicle, even given the poor visibility. When he hears a gigantic tortured screech of metal he tells himself it has nothing to do with him—and then a wave of fog at least as wide as all three lanes rushes at him in the mirror. He's put in mind of a breath expelled by a vast silent gleeful laugh until he sees it isn't fog, because a word taller than the car is printed on the flat pale surface. For an instant he's most concerned to know why he can't read the word. The letters are reversed, of course—the letters on the side of the lorry. The entire rear section of the vehicle is swinging towards him on the hinge of the cab.