Trial by Fire (25 page)

Bernadette passed her a glass of wine without glance or comment. She was not about to confess that dear Harold was snoring like a drunkard, dead to the world upstairs, the combined effect of a bender and a row with William, whose whereabouts were currently, not unusually, unknown. For once, Bernadette was conscious of her lack of control in her own family, bitter and ashamed of it. She was worried enough for her mind to be crossed with the idea of asking for help, but the thought died in passage.

If Helen had hoped for some biting conversation, perhaps a piece of invective, she was disappointed, but relieved all the same to retreat to a corner with a newspaper and book, only half of her waiting for Bailey; if she'd stayed at home, she would have waited with deathly, furious concentration.

`Himself coming down tonight, is he?' Bernadette shouted from the bar in the second tribute to manners.

`Maybe, maybe not. He'll please himself. I don't know.' `Bloody men,' yelled Bernadette, startling the customers, granting Helen a transitory sensation of solidarity.

She read, drank a second glass of wine, watched through the door daylight fading with reluctance, the sky clawing at the remnants of summer, conscious in herself of the trickling away of patience and concentration. She had resisted the impulse to swig a couple of large gins, but in the bloodstream of her thinking, the dry red wine provoked slow ideas, speculation, and the return of the restlessness that had driven her out of her home and into the harsh plush of the pub's seat.

With all this itching, she had deflected her mind from her own condition into thinking of William Featherstone. She remembered his reference to the summerhouse den, his retreat, a place that somehow offered him a curious safety and comfort. Helen felt a childish wish for the same sort of hiding place. She wondered if Bernadette knew of it, imagined she must; surely she did. There must be some place to which you consigned a child such as William with your blessing for his absence.

Helen's desire to see this refuge became suddenly overpowering; this impulse was not entirely the effect of the liquid, more the last resort of a weirder kind of stress. But the drink always had this kind of effect on her, making her wilfully stupid when she should have been cautious, active when passivity was appropriate, talkative when silence was better advised.

She wanted to see the den so much she did not have a choice; it was like that coat, there was no choice at all. There was this den, something to be discovered before darkness was complete, something to do. Professional solicitor plays amateur detective. How rude, how intrusive, how silly. She reflected she was merely curious after the most vulgar of fashions; she had no right to explore or trespass and would not have done so without the wine or the constant irritation of Bailey's absence. She got up and went to the bar.

`You trying to tank up or something?' said Bernadette briskly, avoiding her eye.

`Listen,' said Helen, 'you've got a summerhouse bar, something like that, in the garden, haven't you? Can I look at it?'

Bernadette blanched, grinned, and frowned in quick succession, looking in one moment the image of her uncertain son, mirroring his vulnerability. She forgot the obvious remark —

'What's it to you?' — and all the aggression that usually followed any question she regarded as impertinent. Her shoulders sagged and her face crumpled instead. There was bravado in her voice, but not in the way she stood, like a rag doll.

`Yes, there is. A bloody great shed. Want to buy it? It's William's, you know.' This she said in a great rush of confidence. 'At least I think it is.'

Ì know. He told me.' Tactless, thought Helen as she said it, very tactless.

Bernadette's face showed a whiplash of hurt. 'Did he, now? Well, I won't ask when and how, bugger never talks to me. Look all you want. Why should I bloody care? He never tells me anything, that boy, my bloody son. And if he's out there, send him in.'

`You said he was at the pictures.'

`So I did, so he is, of course, with his dad. Sorry I spoke. At the flicks.' Moving away in dismissal. 'Go on if you're going. Look out for the tree on the path. Sod you.'

It was this invitation that committed her; that and her own tactlessness dispatched her on a mission. Explore and report back, discover this den, since you already know more than Bernadette. Report back with reassurance if you dare, damn you, some hurt to be justified.

Crossing the dark path leading downhill from the kitchen, Helen was defensive rather than fearful, bold rather than afraid, ridiculously active in any pursuit rather than sitting still.

After clambering over the fallen tree, still visible in the semidarkness, she saw the shed looming before her and almost laughed out loud. It was a ridiculous lopsided structure, a Featherstone masterpiece. Oh, what a fine abandoned dream, lovable on sight, redolent of her own childhood, a place she would have adopted, woven ghosts for, dreamed of, kept a secret from sisters and brothers, loved.

Still aware of the unkindness of her mission, the rudeness in her curiosity, she determined not to linger despite her delight in this eccentricity. She would take one quick look around the back, a few more glances of furtive admiration. Then she'd go back inside, make peace with Bernadette, walk home, and face whatever music happened to be playing when she arrived. She was making for the window when the door of the shed creaked open like a prop in a horror film, and there, squinting into her own startled face, were the equally startled features of one William Featherstone.

`Who's that?'

She could not open her mouth.

Òh. It's you.' He stood with his arms by his sides like a gorilla, face in a frown of confusion, unable to decide between anger, irritation, and relief in the knowledge that the eyes which met his own were neither unfamiliar nor unsympathetic. He flushed with disappointment, searching his mind for some sort of precedent or rule that would cover this situation. Evie had never mentioned or rehearsed him for this: he did not know what to do, but found in the end that anger was impossible.

There was something here he liked; he could not remember what. He rubbed his hands across his eyes, felt exposed, while some strange code of manners afflicted him. Lumbering alongside the remnants of social graces forced into him as a child and all but forgotten now, there lingered his pride in the den itself, his own creation, something he had always yearned to show while knowing he could not. And Evie was not here to forbid it. At this time of night she would not come here, and if she did, she would be angry, he knew it. Yesterday she had abandoned him to this woman; today she might have done the same, no telling.

Helen smiled, the expression intended to cover a feeling of fear still half formed.

William found himself smiling in return. 'You'd better come in,' he said, and tugged her arm in clumsy invitation.

She was suddenly diffident, genuinely shy herself. 'Should I?' she asked. 'Are you sure? You don't have to show me . .

`Course I'm sure. Come.' Some equally strange code of manners made it impossible for her to refuse.

He went back inside the shed. Helen followed, seeing herself in one brief glimpse in the window as the kind of character she had always hated in films, the one who walked off into the dark danger by herself with the whole audience shouting, 'Don't do that, you silly bitch. Can't you see it's the last thing you should do?' After negotiating the lethal steps and entering what appeared to be a kind of shallow grave, she found herself in a haven so bizarre she almost giggled with relief.

William lit the lamp before she descended the broken stepladder, something he could always do in the dark. Then he stood by like an anxious estate agent showing a house, waiting for her reaction, hoping for approval. With his arms extended, he could almost touch both walls, his head nearly touching the ceiling. The den in Helen's eyes was cluttered but reasonably clean, equipped with all the necessities of life, like a fallout shelter prepared for a siege: a few tins of food, two piled-up mattresses, a cupboard on which was pinned, quite incongruously, a bunch of tinsel pinched from the gaudy supply of The Crown, William's latest homemaking attempt, glittering foolishly in the dark.

Helen had a fleeting picture of submarine life, men living in restricted airspace that smelled like this, of bodies and dust and perspiration, a threatened prison bedecked with pathetic tributes to ordinary humanity in an ordinary world.

William regarded her hopefully, his face a question mark, his mind working out why he liked her. Oh, yes, she had not told on him about being in London. Was that it? Something of the kind registered, and, oh, yes, she had a coat she had shown him, pretty. She was old, of course, teacher-old, one of them, but nice. He had longed for adult approval, longed to show this place to someone other than Evie, who visited with intermittent grace and who was frequently critical, rarely admiring. His longing was a version of domestic pride. 'I made all this,' said William, the excitement of the achievement clear in his voice, 'and no one else comes here, except — '

Èxcept Evelyn,' said Helen neutrally. 'Of course she does. William, it's wonderful, really it is. Where did you find all these things? Oh, look at that, you've even got cutlery. You could live here for ever and no one would know.'

The thrill of approbation seemed endless: he shook with it, mumbling in shy embarrassment, remembering again his strange and erratic code of manners. 'Sit, sit. You want tea? Only I got no milk. Plenty sugar but no milk.'

`Black tea, plenty sugar, will do fine.'

He was busy, flustered beyond efficiency, managing nevertheless to heat water on the other arm of the gas camping stove that held the light. He put tea-bags in mugs surprisingly clean, and finally, after providing a running commentary on each of his own movements, brought forth tea of a kind. It tasted as it looked, lukewarm, flavoured in her mind with the smell of butane and the heat of the camping stove, the taste at odds with the last of the red wine. The place had ambience, she decided, suppressing hysteria by concentrating on the tastes in her mouth.

The scents of the room were both domestic and animal. Her wandering imagination, which had lit first on the image of a submarine, dwelt next on the notion of a fox in its lair: William must not be made to feel at bay. With the image of a fox prancing through her mind, her hands curled around the mug and she remembered Mrs Blundell's fingers, thought of her predators, human and animal. She looked at the hulk of William sitting beside her on the makeshift bed, talking as if there were no tomorrow, benign, amiable, dangerous.

Ì keep my tools in here,' he was saying, eager to display anything and everything there was.

`Do you, now? And did you make the cupboard?'

`Yes, of course.'

`Why do you need so many tools?'

`For making things, of course.' He threw her a look of condescension reserved by males for silly females.

`What things? Can I see them?'

A sigh of exaggerated, completely hypocritical impatience, 'Oh, all right, then, I'spose you can . . . You won't tell?'

`Why on earth would I tell?'

`Don't know, but you might. They'd laugh.'

Ì promise I won't tell. And I shan't laugh, either.'

ÒK.' It had been enough to stroke William's burning impatience to show off his handiwork. He opened the crooked homemade compartments of the cupboard, showing his collection of polystyrene figures, recognizably human but odd. 'I don't do these any more,'

William remarked in passing. Then he revealed things carved in wood; then rings, bangles, and strings of strange glass beads spilled into Helen's hands. 'I like these things best,' he said simply in explanation for their existence. The shelf below this treasure chest held a hand drill, hammer, pliers, mallet, and the dull gleam of a blade.

Helen dragged her gaze to the glitter he held out for her inspection, and even while murmuring in genuine amazement, Òh, William, what's that?' or 'How on earth did you make this?' let her eyes go back to the knife on that shelf, an old horn handle and the pristine blade of a single-edge working knife, settled as comfortably as a carving knife in a kitchen. She admired William's possessions, silently remembering courtroom descriptions of wounds to the throat made by a single-edge knife that was never found. Oh, don't be silly, the world is full of knives. And throats cut within a half-mile of this shed?

William's sharper instincts caught her second glance at the weapon. He reached into the cupboard with the swiftness of a snake and pushed the thing to the back, looked at her in doubtful trust, withdrew it again. 'I saw you looking,' he remarked. 'You may as well see.

Nice, isn't it?'

`Lovely,' said Helen. 'Only I don't like knives much. They frighten me.'

`They don't frighten me,' said William. 'I know what to do with them.'

`What do you do with them?'

Òh, carve things most of the time. And kill people.' This was a boastful shout.

Ì don't see why anyone would want to do that,' said Helen. Ì did,' said William, puffing out his chest.

Òh, put the knife away, William. I like the jewels better. Show me some more.' He did as he was asked, anxious again to please, his memory as short as the moment.

Against her will she was impressed and frightened. 'Perhaps you could make things for a living, William. I mean, you could learn how to do all sorts of work . . . oh, I don't know, carpentry, making pretty things like these. You'd be earning your own money. Wouldn't that be nice? Would you like that?'

Òh, I would, I would.' He looked so vulnerable, like a bull terrier puppy, all pale snout and clumsy power, musclebound brain, confused reactions of confused strength.

`Perhaps you could talk to your dad about that.'

`Perhaps,' he said gruffly. 'But I don't talk to Dad much.' `Why not?'

Èvie said not to. She says when I talk I always talk too much, and if I talk too much she won't come here any more, not even on Sundays. Besides, I don't like talking to Dad. I'm no good at it.'

`You need more practice. Then you'd make more sense. You get better at everything if you practise.'