The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life (27 page)

All Mummy can think about is that bloody little dog, you’d think she could have picked up a phone, but I knew nothing till the teacher called. A child surely has a higher claim on the attention than a dog, especially a dead dog.

‘How did it happen?’

‘We don’t really know. She found him dead in a field.’

Poor old Mummy, I mustn’t be too hard on her, that little dog was her child, more than me really. At least he didn’t go off and produce a bastard, though he might have done, no I think he’d been neutered.

‘But you were wonderful with Alice. I haven’t had a chance to thank you properly.’

‘It was good to get to know her a little.’

‘Well, whatever you said to her she’s totally in love with you now.’

I wonder what his name is, I can’t go on calling him Mr Strachan, he has to be younger than me, only a boy really. He has a sweet face, hard to think of him as a teacher. The truth is even we parents can’t help relating to teachers as power figures, we become children again, stand up tall, don’t shuffle your feet, Elizabeth, what’s that you’ve got in your mouth.

‘When you have time maybe we could have a talk about how she’s getting on.’ He’s using that bad-news voice that doctors put on. ‘I’m a little better informed than I was a day ago.’

That’s because I made him cry. At any rate he cried. Who knew that teachers cried?

We’re all unhappy.

But this I need to know.

‘Now. Let’s talk now.’

Ding-ding-ding! The bell for assembly.

‘I can’t now. But if you’re picking Alice up at the end of the day.’

‘Yes, I am. My mother’s not up to it yet, I’m afraid.’

You can say that again. Like a bloody zombie. Poor Mummy. Oh God here comes the swarm. Alice could show up again any minute, lost and faceless in the stream of clones. Every one of whom carries a mother’s heart in her heartless hands.

‘I’ll look out for you, then. It’s Alan, by the way.’

That’s perceptive. In the midst of the mounting chaos to notice that I’m finding the naming awkward. But then so is he.

‘I’m Liz.’

Funny little smile as he goes. What’s he doing being a teacher in a nancy little Sussex prep school? What am I doing sending my daughter here? Same thing we’re all doing, trying to buy a little safety, a little advantage. No reason to suppose she’d be any happier anywhere else, she’s the quiet kind, too tall for her age, not yet started her periods, oh my sweetheart you have all that to come, the bother and the anxiety and the shame, still so much shame. ‘Nothing shocks us any more,’ they said to Lenny Bruce, ‘you can tell jokes about anything, there are no more taboos.’ And he said, ‘Sanitary towels.’

There she is with her class, hasn’t seen me, slip away, she won’t want to see me. Once you tear yourself away from your mum you harden like a scar over a wound, you scar every single morning, you have to. Sometimes I wonder how it would have been different if Daddy hadn’t left us but he did and to tell the truth Mummy never smiled again. Is it worse for me or for Alice who’s never really had a daddy to start with?

Some of them holding hands not all and not Alice. Into the day’s battle she goes head high and dread in her heart, a gallant soldier who doesn’t know why there has to be a war, and Jesus nor do I. It gets better darling as you grow older, better but not that fucking good.

31

Jack passes Toby Clore a note in history saying ‘Dogman latest!’ and when it’s break he just strolls off down to the tennis courts and knows Toby is following. He feels sure and strong because he has a secret and for a very short time remaining he is the one with something to give and Toby the one who wants it. This is so unaccustomed a feeling that Jack almost decides to keep his secret, except that knowing Toby he could go cold in one second and disband the Dogman Fan Club. So Jack will tell him, but in telling him he seeks to win a privileged position in Toby’s circle. He wants it to be a secret for the two of them. Not Richard Adderley, not Angus Critchell. It’s to be his special bond with Toby.

So Toby comes after him, not fast, not as if he really cares, like it’s something to do in a boring break, and he’s got Richard and Angus with him.

‘Just Toby,’ says Jack. ‘It’s about the Dogman.’

‘Why?’ says Angus. ‘We’re all in the club.’

‘This is serious, Angus. I shouldn’t really tell anybody.’

‘So? Why tell Toby?’

Oh how sweet their hunger. And it’s all true. It’s serious.

‘Trickle away, people,’ says Toby in his lazy voice. How does he come up with these words? They’re simply perfect, like he’s being polite to small children. Angus and Richard hate it so Jack tries his hardest not to smile.

They don’t go far away. They hang about between the trees scuffing pine cones and looking round every two seconds to see if they can come back.

‘So what’s the news, Jacko?’ says Toby, leaning against the wire netting of the tennis court, reaching out his hands wide on either side and holding the wire mesh as if he’s practising to be crucified.

‘I was watching out for the Dogman,’ says Jack, whispering. He’s thought a lot about how to tell his secret. He doesn’t want it to be over too soon.

‘Can’t hear you.’

‘I saw the Dogman,’ he hisses. ‘In the field with the sheep. There was a dog.’

‘There’s always dogs.’

‘Not his dog. A little white dog.’

‘Okay. So there was a dog.’

‘It was chasing the sheep. He shouted at it to stop. He shouted, You little shit.’

‘That’s not bad. We’ll have that.’

Not too impressed so far. But Jack knows there’s more. This is the beautiful moment.

‘The dog wouldn’t stop barking, so he hit it. Then he ran off. He hit it with his stick.
He killed it
.’

The climax. Toby says nothing, but Jack knows he’s got him all right. Even Toby can’t be cool about that.

‘And no one knows but me. No one saw but me.’

‘Well, Jacko,’ says Toby at last. ‘You know what this is?’

‘What?’

‘It’s a sign. Woe to the world.’

Jack laughs aloud in sheer delight. Now Toby is going to make it into one of his cracky games and he’ll be by his side right at the heart of it. All mental together.

‘Woe to the world!’ he echoes.

‘None shall escape the wrath of the Dogman,’ says Toby, the gravity of his manner reproving Jack’s laughter. ‘First the dog. Then all mankind. But!’ One hand raised. One finger pointing skyward. ‘His true disciples will be spared.’

‘You and me, Tobe.’

‘We are his true disciples, Jacko. But does he know it?’

This is Toby in full flow. Jack marvels as he listens. Where does he find these ideas?

‘The Dogman doesn’t know you saw him, Jacko. He doesn’t know you’re keeping his secret. He doesn’t know you’ve told me. We could have him put in prison. But we won’t, will we?’

‘No.’

‘Because we’re his true disciples.’

‘You and me, Tobe.’

Jack knows he shouldn’t push it, but it excites him so. Richard and Angus are just burning to ashes with curiosity, they can see even from over by the trees that Toby’s off on one of his joyrides.

‘But he has to know, Jacko. He has to give us a sign that we’re among the chosen ones.’

He pushes his hands deep into his pockets and scowls at the ground. Jack remains respectfully silent. Toby is making a plan.

Angus shouts out, ‘Can we come back now?’

Toby shakes his head. Jack, Toby’s new closest associate who alone knows what’s going on, shouts back to them. ‘Not yet.’

Oh how sweet to be on the inside.

‘If the Dogman knows we’re not telling on him he’ll be grateful. And if he’s grateful, he’ll show it.’ Thus Toby reasons aloud. ‘And grateful people give things to the people they’re grateful to. That’s all true, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ says Jack.

‘So the Dogman has to give us a gift. That’ll be the sign.’

‘A gift?’

‘He has to give us money, Jacko.’ He says this gravely, as if it’s more a burden than a present. ‘Money will be the sign.’

‘I don’t think he’ll want to give us money, Tobe.’

Jack is beginning to feel uneasy about the way things are going.

‘Not money to spend, Jacko. Money as a sign. Twenty pounds each.’

‘Twenty pounds!’

‘Here’s what you do. You write the Dogman a letter saying you saw him kill the dog, but you’ll keep his secret if he gives us the sign. Which is twenty pounds each.’

‘That’s like – isn’t that blackmail?’

‘Only if we want the money to spend. This money’s for a sign.’

‘He’ll tell our parents.’

‘We don’t put our names, duh.’

‘So how does he give us the money?’

‘The sign.’

‘The sign, then.’

‘We say in the letter where to put it.’

‘Where?’

‘You don’t have to be in the club if you don’t want, Jacko. Me and Angus and Richard can write the letter.’

Toby stares past him. Jack can see how close he is to shutting him out. It’s like a door closes in his eyes and he doesn’t see you any more. You play Toby’s way or you don’t play.

‘No, I want to do it. I’m the one who saw him.’

‘That’s why you have to write the letter.’

‘All right.’

‘You tell him to put the signs in a jar and tie a long piece of string to the jar and sink it in the Drowning Pool and tie the end of the string to a tree.’

Jack is dumb with admiration. Toby summons the others.

‘So what’s going on?’ says Richard.

‘Jacko’s going to sort it,’ says Toby. ‘Don’t ask because you won’t be told.’

Jack hears this with a fierce thrill. Their frustration is his feast. Their ignorance is his power.

‘No one will ever know,’ says Toby, ‘except me, Jacko, and the Dogman.’

He raises his arm and bends it at right angles over his head. This is the salute he’s invented for the club.

‘Dogman rules!’

The other three make the salute.

‘Dogman rules!’

Jack writes the letter in Religious Studies while old Jimmy Hall is going on about the Garden of Eden. He writes it with his left hand to disguise his writing.

Dear Dogman. We saw you kill the dog. We will never tell if you give us a sign. The sign is £40. Put it in a jar in the Drowning Pool tied by a string to a tree. Dogman rules!

Toby approves the letter.

‘Now put it in his door.’

‘But he’ll see me!’

‘No, he won’t. You think he stands there all day looking at people who come to his door?’

‘I don’t go into the village. Not for no reason.’

‘So think of a reason, duh.’

32

Who can she call? In her time of greatest need Aster Dickinson calls Victor Peak, her gardener. He comes and picks up the little white furry body and carries it back to her house. His silence is what she needs, she accepts it as his own tribute to her grief. He lays Perry in the low chair by the fire and sits with her for a while. Then once again understanding her needs, he goes.

She slips into a half-sleep, and waking thinks it was all a dream.

‘Perry? Where are you?’

He lies in his chair, unbearably still.

It’s so like when Rex left and that was her fault too, thirty years ago but it might have been yesterday. He slipped out of her life with his face averted as if he thought she would hit him, which she now regrets she didn’t. And yet she was to blame then as she is now. She is hollowed out by the inescapability of it all, the way she kills the things she loves. She loved Rex, well you do, you make your choice, not that there was much choice back then. You make your bed and you lie in it and he’s there beside you. Then one day when you thought it could never happen you’re pregnant and from then on you’re tied together, you and this man and this baby, or that’s what you think. You’ve got his name and the baby’s got his name and how can he wriggle his way out of that? That’s love, isn’t it? Not the being cosy and comfortable and whatever it is he wanted and claimed he never got. It’s the iron bond of new life, our child, our Elizabeth, whose life has naturally turned out bad, her man left even before the child was born, so what hope is there for Alice? At this rate when her time comes she’ll be impregnated by some boy whose name she never quite catches and who she never sees again.

She knew Perry was dead as soon as she found him, after a long hour tramping the valley where he had run on ahead of her. The way his head lay in the lush grass, the angle very slightly wrong, forever wrong. Not an accident, how could it be an accident, but who would do such a thing?

My fault, she thinks, helplessly hounded by guilt. She recalls the countless occasions on which she hit him with her stick and every blow now falls on her own unprotected flanks. She tortures herself with the memories. I said I’d kill him and now I have.