The Tooth Fairy (17 page)

‘No,’ they said together.

‘And who carried the flag?’ Dot wanted to know. ‘At the parade, who was it that carried the flag?’

No one seemed to know whether the argument was about the Guides, Boyfriends, Completing One’s Studies or Carrying the Flag. Linda swept away the cushions and ran out of the room, shouldering Terry and Sam aside. She stomped upstairs and slammed her bedroom door behind her. Charlie ran half-way up the stairs after her. ‘You can’t! You can’t do it!’ He came back down the stairs, nostrils flaring, eyes rolling. He wagged a trembling finger at the boys. ‘You can’t be a scholar and have boyfriends!’

‘We don’t want boyfriends,’ Terry said. He had to step back smartly to avoid Uncle Charlie’s backhand.

Charlie stormed back into the lounge, snatched up a newspaper and slumped into an armchair. The newspaper practically ignited in his hands.

‘Do you know anything about this boyfriend?’ Dot asked them again. ‘Do you know anything?’

‘Of course I didn’t do it,’ said Alice. ‘What do you think I am?’

‘You admitted to me you smashed up the gymkhana hut that time,’ Sam put it to her.

‘I had a reason. You told me you smashed the football pavilion, right? Does that prove you painted ‘‘Redstone Moodies’’ all over the place? Anyway, why would I? I’m not one of your gang.’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘Who said?’

‘I said.’

Alice shook her head.

This conversation took place three days after the morning the graffiti had been discovered. Both Sam and Terry had received another visit from the police – this time by the local uniformed bobbie called Sykes – as had Clive. Sykes had
turned up on a bicycle, wanting to know what Sam knew about the incident.

‘Do you know this girl called Alice?’ Sykes had asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Has she got anything to do with it?’

‘No.’

Nev Southall, listening and with his arms folded very tight, put in, ‘It’s hardly likely to be a girl now, is it?’

‘Hardly,’ said Sykes, pocketing a notepad on which he’d written nothing. ‘But Sam’s friend Clive said it would be this Alice.’

‘Clive said that?’ Sam bridled.

‘Oh, yes. But that was only after we’d found the paint.’

‘What paint?’

‘We found the tin of red paint at the bottom of Clive’s garden.’

So that was that. Clive was found out, fair cop. He was officially cautioned, though not charged with an offence. Sykes told him he was lucky not to be dragged before a juvenile court and sent to Borstal. He also told him that the reason why he personally wasn’t going to give Clive a bloody good hiding was because Eric Rogers had done the job already, judging by the bruise on Clive’s cheekbone. Sam never told Alice anything about Clive trying to switch the blame to her, but he did wonder why Clive – clever-clever Clive – could have been so inexpressibly dumb as to leave the incriminating paint at the bottom of his garden. He was certain Clive wouldn’t have done that. But then he believed Alice too.

‘Swear it wasn’t you.’

‘What?’ said Alice. ‘All right! I swear on all that’s holy! I swear on anything you want me to swear on! Is that enough for you?’

They sat by the pond, sharing a cigarette. The water had formed a thin skin of ice. They both agreed it was too cold to
sit around, so they went to their respective homes. It was the last time Sam was to see Alice until after Christmas. She was going with her mother to stay with relatives.

‘See you after, then,’ said Sam.

‘Sure.’ She flicked her long fringe out of her eyes. He thought her eyes were slightly red-rimmed. ‘See you after.’

He watched her walk across the frosted field, hands dug deep, deep into the pockets of her leather jacket.

‘Someone put it there,’ Clive said bitterly. The bruise on his cheek had changed hue to plum and marmalade.

‘Stitched up like a kipper,’ said Terry. It was a phrase he’d heard on TV.

‘But who would do that?’ said Sam. ‘Who would deliberately leave the paint in your garden?’

‘Yeah,’ Clive said. ‘Who?’

They stood under the Corporation bus shelter, waiting for the bus into town. The words DEEP MOOD sprayed on the side of the shelter didn’t help. No one had made any effort to get rid of the graffiti, and indeed most of them would stay untouched for eighteen months or more. Clive was scandalized that the police, or the municipality, or the parish council, or the community itself hadn’t made strenuous efforts to clear up. He almost felt like cleaning the place up or painting over the words himself, he said.

‘Why?’ said Terry.

‘Because,’ he spat, ‘everyone thinks I did it. And every time they walk past it they think of me.’

‘So why don’t you?’ said Sam.

‘Terrific! So if I clear up, then that would be like
admitting
to the thing, wouldn’t it? It don’t matter if I leave the paint or if I clean it up: I’m dead in the water either way.’

‘You could explain to people,’ Sam said.

‘Sure,’ Clive said sarcastically. ‘I could put a note through everyone’s door saying I didn’t do it, but because of my
devotion to the neighbourhood I’m going to put it all right. Great idea!’

Sam adjusted his glasses on his nose. Terry said, ‘Here comes the bus.’

By the time they’d got into the city, a twenty-minute bus ride later, each of them was disgusted with the company of the other. Terry was angling to go to a department store, where a Coventry City footballer was appearing in public to open a new sports department. Only out of decency did he invite the other two along.

‘I’d rather watch snot congeal,’ said Clive.

‘You got plenty of that lately,’ Terry fired over his shoulder, already gone.

Clive had his own appointment with a visiting Russian Grand Master of chess. The Russian was in town to play twenty-four local challengers simultaneously, and Clive had earned the right to be one of them. Thus Sam was abandoned. He stood at the top of the town under the Lady Godiva clock, wondering where to go. He’d come here expressly to accomplish the tedious chore of Christmas shopping. It was a bitterly cold day. Tiny flurries of wind-blown frost never quite graduated to what might have been called snow.

On the stroke of noon, the clock above him began to strike. The mechanical Lady Godiva whirred forth precariously, but the third stroke of the timepiece clonked hollowly as Lady Godiva wobbled to an unexpected halt. Sam looked up. Godiva’s enamel buff skin seemed to chafe visibly in the cold air. Peeping Tom had just managed to insert a nose between his half-opened shutters. The mechanism, either frozen or failed, continued to clonk ineffectively until, before the job was completed, it too gave up the ghost.

Sam looked around. No crowd had gathered. Shoppers marched briskly past, huddled into heavy coats, faces deranged by the imperative of seasonal spending. No one
seemed particularly dismayed by the dysfunction of Lady Godiva and Peeping Tom or even of the town clock. The public simply proceeded, with appalling dedication.

Sam was astonished. Why did no one rush out to fix the clock? Why didn’t crowds of outraged and stubborn Coventrians form a large, unruly scrum and demand an immediate restoration of the city’s timepiece? But that was it. If something was wrong, they simply put their heads down and went on without righting it. He was appalled by humanity’s capacity to allow a broken thing to go unfixed.

‘It’s just a clock,’ said a voice behind him.

Sam turned. Sitting on the steps of the bank beneath the clock, her knees drawn up under her chin, was the Tooth Fairy. Sam felt a compression in his bowels and, for a moment, a painful ringing in his ears. The street tilted slightly.

‘Did you ask them? About the telescope?’ She was wearing a red-and-white Santa cap, and she had acquired a leather motorcycle jacket, several sizes too big. Huddled inside the jacket, her gloved fists pressed against her face and her nose blue with cold, she looked up at him, waiting for an answer. Her striped leggings were holed at the thigh. A disc of white flesh bulged from the hole in the stretched fabric. Sam gazed back up at the stopped clock, squeezed his eyes shut and then looked back at her. She was still there.

‘Well?’

The Tooth Fairy had appeared one night with a request. She wanted Sam to ask his parents for a telescope for Christmas. She didn’t insist; she merely pointed out that she had abetted him in the woods. For that, she said, Sam owed her something, and that something was a telescope. On the contrary, she suggested, if a telescope didn’t arrive, she would prepare a spectacular means of exposing Sam’s crime.

She shivered. ‘I’m freezing. Can’t we go inside somewhere?’

Sam ignored her and walked away, very fast, towards the
pedestrianized shopping precinct. She trotted at his heels. ‘Did you ask for it? The telescope? Did you?’

Sam didn’t look back.

‘Because if you didn’t, you know what’s going to happen. I’m going to tell everyone about your dirty little secret in the woods. Christmas Eve. On the stroke of midnight. I’m going to tell your folks. What a Christmas Box that would be! That’s what I’m going to do.’

Sam swung sharp left into a large department store, where the air inside was stale and warm. ‘That’s better,’ she said.

‘Mum, Dad, Aunt Madge, Uncle Bill, Aunt Mary, Aunt Bettie.’ He chanted his Christmas shopping list like a rhyme or prayer for holding off his fear. Hastily selecting a gift from a counter, he paid for it and moved on quickly before taking an escalator to the next floor. He carefully avoided the floor displaying the telescopes. Connie had already priced them for him, and they were prohibitively expensive. Sam was sensitive to his parents’ limited means. There was no conceivable way he could ask his parents about it a second time.

‘I could help you choose your presents,’ said the Tooth Fairy, jogging to keep pace. ‘I’ve got loads of ideas.’

‘Dad, Aunt Madge, Uncle Bill . . .’

‘Look at that! You know, that kind of thing really makes me want to do something violent! Just look at that!’ The Tooth Fairy had stopped dead and was jabbing an angry finger at the corner of the store. A huge Christmas tree dominated one end of the store, resplendent with lights and shimmering baubles and golden bows. At the top of the tree a Barbie-doll fairy in a white crinoline waved a mechanical starred wand benevolently over the heads of shoppers passing obliviously beneath. The Barbie-fairy seemed to be the focus for this outburst.

The Tooth Fairy was puce in the face, spitting with rage. ‘I feel like going over there and pulling the whole thing down. I could too! I could pull the whole thing down!’ She jabbed a
corkscrewed fingernail in the direction of the tree. Sam saw that her fingers were stained red.

‘Red paint!’ Sam gasped.

‘What?’ Puzzled, the Tooth Fairy looked at her hands. ‘My hands are just cold.’

‘Why are you fucking up my life?’ Sam hissed. ‘Why? Why?’

An elderly lady loaded with shopping bags stopped and stared at him, open-mouthed. He bustled away, putting a distance between himself and the Tooth Fairy.

‘Where are you going?’ she shouted. ‘Telescopes are on the next floor.’

‘Aunt Mary, Aunt Bettie, Mum, Dad, Aunt Madge . . .’

‘You wait, you little shit! You just fucking wait!’ She bellowed across the department store. ‘Midnight on Christmas Eve! I’m going to tell them all! I’m going to tell them everything.’

The weathermen predicted a white Christmas that year, but the Tooth Fairy woke Sam in the middle of the night just to tell him that the weathermen were wrong, and by Christmas Eve it still hadn’t snowed. The house was full of seasonal favourites: tangerines, Brazil nuts, boxes of chocolate liqueurs with glossy foil wrappings, tins of biscuits, packets of ‘Eat Me’ dates which wouldn’t be touched until late February. A nylon tree had been decorated and placed in the front window.

‘What a sad-looking thing!’ Connie looked doubtfully at their own fairy. Half of her blonde hair had fallen in tufts from her head, her white dress was yellowing with age and her wings had been creased in storage. ‘Perhaps we’ll have to get you a new dress,’ she said stroking it affectionately.

‘Don’t talk to it,’ Sam said in disgust.

‘Got to talk to Fairy, haven’t we, Fairy? Fairy’s been in her
box all year, so we love to have a little talk, don’t we, Fairy? Don’t we?’

‘Can’t we have a star instead?’

‘Oh, Sam! We can’t just throw Fairy away like that. You’ve been on the tree since I was a little girl, haven’t you, darling?’

‘Stop talking to it!’

Which only encouraged Connie to launch into a nauseating dialogue while holding the fairy like a glove-puppet. She even affected a squeaking, wheedling voice for the fairy, which made Sam grit his teeth. He was rescued from wanting to do violence to the tree-fairy by the rap of the cast-iron knocker at the front door. A taste of grey cinders came into his mouth as he thought of the Tooth Fairy’s threat to reveal his crime that very evening.

Christmas saw a string of visitors, mostly relatives, some of whom elicited a warmer welcome than others. There were large, perfume-drenched aunts in floral-print dresses who imprinted red lipstick on Sam’s blushing cheeks, and thin, whey-faced aunts in catalogue-frocks who preferred, thank you, to sit on a hard-backed chair. They arrived with fat and thin uncles, often but not always the converse of themselves. The fat uncles might unbutton their waistcoats and let their opinions spread all across the room. The thin ones might have very little to say between consulting their wristwatches.