World's End in Winter (13 page)

‘She sent her twenty pounds,’ Carrie said, ’to pay the
rent.’ She saw Alec and Tom glance at each other. ’What do you know that I don’t know?’

‘Nothing. I wish we did,’ Alec sighed. ’If Red doesn’t turn up before Tom goes back to the zoo, I’ll have to find someone else for her job.’

‘Find me,’ Carrie said.

‘You have to go to school.’

‘Who made that lousy law? They ought to be shot. I want a job. We need the money.’

Outside the window, they could see the snow coming down again, big soft flakes mounding the mounded bushes.

‘Poor Bristler.’ Michael held Phillis up to twitch his nose at the cold window pane. ’Will it never be spring?’

Tom went back to stay the night with Alec Harvey. They were operating first thing tomorrow, and there was no early bus.

As he turned into his street in the Housing Estates, Alec said, ’Funny. I don’t remember leaving lights on.’ The waiting-room and surgery windows were bright. ’Must be getting senile.’ When he put his key into the side door, it wasn’t locked. ’I need a keeper.’ He opened the door.

On a waiting-room chair, a man was sitting with his hands on his knees, staring at the opposite wall.

’Hello?’ he said. ’Who’s that?’ He was blind.

’I’m the vet,’ Alec said. T thought I locked up.’

‘She brought me in.’ The blind man tilted his head towards the door of the surgery without looking at it.

‘She—?’ In two strides, Tom was across the room and through the door. Liza turned round, shaking back her hair. Her hands in rubber gloves were busy with a large yellow labrador lying limp on the operating table.

‘Just in time,’ she said. ’I’ve clamped the artery, but I can’t get the ligature under. I’m afraid she’ll move. Hold her, Tom.’

Without asking questions, he put his hands firmly on the labrador.

‘What’s going on?’ Alec came in.

’Cut artery. But she’s restless. I’m afraid she’ll move before I—’

‘What did you give her?’

‘Tranquillizer into the muscle. I didn’t dare give anaesthetic by myself. She’s lost too much blood anyway. I injected 1 cc of Novocaine round the wound.’

‘Not quite enough. She’s feeling it.’ When Alec had injected some more Novocaine, he scrubbed his hands quickly, put on rubber gloves and tied off the cut ends of the artery in the dog’s front leg. Liza released the clamps after the knots were tied, and handed Alec the curved needle and suture she had prepared for closing the wound.

None of them talked until the stitching was done and the leg tightly bandaged, and the blind man brought in from the waiting room to lay his hand on the labrador’s sleepy head. Her tail thumped weakly.

Then Alec said, ’She’ll do. OK. Now tell me what happened.’

Liza had turned away to the sink, busying herself with the gloves and instruments.

‘I’d been to supper with a friend,’ the man said. ’Wendy and I were walking home. We’re often out after dark. We know all the streets of the Estates like the back of our hand. Or paw. But something happened. We were getting near the pub - I can smell the beer fifty yards off - and there were people shouting and running and someone must have thrown a bottle. I heard it crash just as Wendy moved to protect me. I put my hand down and felt the blood and then suddenly this girl was there. She was marvellous. The blood was spurting out. She put on a tourniquet. I think she saved Wendy’s life.’

‘Oh shut up, anyone can put on a tourniquet,’ Liza said.

‘What did you use?’ Tom asked.

‘My sock.’ She giggled and turned round. She had one knee sock and one bare leg under frayed, cut-off blue jeans. ’My last pair.’

‘I’ll buy you some more.’ The blind man smiled, and Liza said, ’Ta.’ They seemed to have come to a friendly
understanding. ’She carried the dog here,’ he told Alec. ’You weren’t in, but she had the keys.’

‘There’s no other vet for miles,’ Liza said quickly, ’or I wouldn’t have come.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well - you know.’ She swung her red hair forward to hide her face. Then she lifted her head and looked Alec boldly in the eye. ’I took the money.’

‘I don’t care, Red. Your mother told me why.’

‘You don’t
care!
I thought you’d put the police on me. I been hiding. I been all over trying to get work. I came back here because I - because - oh hell, I don’t know why I came back, except that I thought somehow I could get some money and pay you back. I will too. I been hiding out with some hippies in that empty house the other side of the park. Got a few nights’ work over Christmas, washing glasses at the pub. I saw who threw the bottle.’

‘They almost killed Wendy,’ the blind man said, stroking the dog’s head. ’You ought to tell the police.’

‘No fear.’ Liza laughed. ’Not me.’

When the yellow labrador was bedded down for the night, Alec said he would drive her owner home and then take Liza back to World’s End.

‘Tom’s sleeping here,’ he told her. ’He’s helping me with a hip joint operation early tomorrow.’

‘What’s this?’ Liza turned to Tom. ’Trying to take over my job?’

‘I’ve been keeping it open for you,’ he said, ’you stupid dope.’

‘Carrie!

Carrie thought the whisper was in her dream. But she woke, and Liza was standing by her bed. ’Where’s Dusty?’

‘Oh, Liza.’ Carrie sat up. ’He’s dead.’ ’Tom didn’t tell me.’

‘You’ve seen him? He couldn’t, I suppose. He thinks it was his fault.’

’So what? If the old dog’s dead, he’s dead, that’s all.’ She turned away.

’Take Dump.’ Carrie fished under the blanket. ’He’s a good puppy.’ ’He yours?’

’He doesn’t like me,’ Carrie lied. ’You have him.’

‘OK.’ Liza took the spaniel puppy. She never said thank you, but you knew what she meant.

Carrie could not get to sleep again. She went to the window and looked towards the yard. The snow lay bright under the moon. The stable was silver on one side, black on the other, with sharp corners. Leonora coughed her chronic winter cough, and one of the horses snorted.

John. Carrie knew all the sounds of him, as well as all the smells.

She knelt with her arms on the sill and her head on her arms, staring through the frost patterns on the glass. When John came to the window and she rode him up to the Star, his hoofs rang hollow on the icy sky.

On the Star, it was always spring. The grass was always fresh and green. The horses never grew muddy winter coats and long burr-tangled tails.

Most of them had forgotten what Christmas was, but one American Morgan horse remembered pulling a sleigh to church at midnight, and being given a bag of carrots and a bucket of ale.

Carrie had given John a new halter, which Miss Etty had helped her to make out of different coloured cords braided together. He showed it off, turning his plain bony head this way and that with his eyelashes lowered.

‘Cissy,’ a carthorse jeered. ’It will be a plastic browband next, no doubt.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ Priscilla’s bay show pony jumped a low rail with as much flourish as if it was a five-barred gate. T had a green shiny browband with stars on it. They twinkled.’

’If a horse could throw up,’ John said, T would.’

’How is - er - what’s-her-name?’ the show pony asked.
She pretended not to care, but being a horse, and therefore basically good-natured, she did feel bad about Priscilla.

’Grounded,’ John said, ’for lack of money.’

‘Money, what’s that?’ The carthorse stared stupidly, his moustached lip hanging.

‘It’s what you can’t get anything on earth without,’ Carrie said bitterly. ’If we can’t pay for the barn roof to be mended, Priscilla can’t ride for the rest of the winter. Money spoils everything. It made Liza run away. She stole some, I think.’

On the Star, you could tell any secret, because the only people who came from earth were dead already and looking for their horses.

‘Stealing is wicked,’ a black, big-footed police horse said smugly.

‘She stole me.’ John turned his head in the fancy halter and nudged at Carrie’s bare toe. ’Out of a pig van.’

‘My dear,’ said the show pony, ’spare us the grisly details of your past.’

Every morning and every afternoon, Jerome Fielding watched for the Post Office van to bring him a letter about his book. Sometimes it slowed and Dad ran out across the iron-frosted lawn, jumped the snow-filled ditch before the postman opened his door, then turned and slogged dejectedly back with a bill or a circular or a picture postcard from one of his world-wide café acquaintances.

One morning, he could stand it no longer. After breakfast, he yelled up the stairs for Em.

She had been lying on the small floor space of her cupboard room, reading her play. In the last scene, the heroine
was tied to the stake for burning because she would not betray her lover. Em wept behind her eyes, as the audiences would weep.

‘Want to come to London?’

Em got up at once and collected the papers into the cracked satchel which she now took everywhere, in case someone got at the play. She slung it on her shoulder and jumped down the crooked stairs, with ink on her hands and face, dust on the front of her jeans.

‘In a skirt,’ Dad said. ’We are going to try and sell ourselves to the Editor of the
Daily Amazer.’

They waited two hours in the reception room, while impressive, busy people came and went, and the receptionist handled telephone calls that sounded earth-shakingly important.

When they were finally called in, the Editor of the
Daily A mazer
had the manuscript of
Sailor of the Seven Seas
on his wide desk and the photographs of Mother and the boat.

Dad and Em walked nervously over the thick carpet and sat down. The Editor watched them approach, a bald, rosy man who twinkled at Em to show that he was good with children.

‘Didn’t make a special trip, I hope?’

‘Oh no. I have a lot of business to see to.’ Dad tried to sound airy, but he fiddled nervously with the gold ring in his ear. He waited for the Editor to say something about his book.

The Editor waited for him.

‘So I thought...’ Dad uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way. T thought, as long as I was here...’ He cleared his throat.

The Editor waited.

‘... I’d just drop in to see what you thought of - of the book.’

‘To save you a stamp,’ Em added politely.

‘Good of you.’ The Editor smiled. ’I’m sorry.’

Em’s heart stopped. Her father had gone white round the edges of his beard.

‘Don’t you like my book?’

‘I
like
it all right. But it’s not right for us. Nor are the pictures.’

‘What do you mean not right?’ Dad stood up.

‘We can’t use it. I’m sorry.’ The Editor held out the manuscript. Em was horrified to see that when her father reached for it, his strong brown hands were shaking.

It was like when someone cuts themself and you see the edges of flesh open and the blood, and you double up in pain because you feel it too. Em could have been sick on the Editor’s plushy carpet, as he called her up to take the pile of photographs. On top was the worst one of Mother, her hair wet and stringy, knock-kneed in a faded swimsuit against a sullen grey sky. You could almost hear her teeth chattering.

‘Beautiful daughter you have there, Mr Fielding. You should take pictures of
her
in a boat some time. “Child of the Sea.” In colour. Those eyes...’ He twinkled his own. Em, who usually loved compliments, could only put her head down and stumble for the door.

In the lift, they could not look at each other. In the car, they couldn’t talk, not only because of the noise.

Charlie stood on the back seat with his nose to the window, snuffing the draught. Off the main road, taking the short cut through the far corner of the Housing Estates, there was a van blocking their road. Dad opened the window to yell at it to get out of the way.

‘Detour.’ A man came from behind the van. ’Shooting a film here.’

‘What film?’ Dad asked belligerently. He was ready to pick a fight with anybody. ’Dog biscuit commercial.’

At the far end of the street, there was a crowd of people, and some dogs on leads.

Dad growled a curse - would he ever smile again? - and crunched into reverse. As he turned to look behind him,
Charlie favoured his nose with a wet mauve tongue.

Dad was already so angry that he hit him in the face. Charlie sneezed. Em burst into tears and climbed into the back seat.

‘Go on,’ Dad said miserably. ’You turn against me too, like all the rest.’ He tortured the gears, wrenched the wheel and skidded forward on the icy road. Charlie lost his balance and fell against his shoulder.

‘Get back.’ He shrugged him off. ’Useless, stupid dog.’

‘He’s a genius,’ Em mumbled into Charlie’s coat.

‘Then why doesn’t
he
write a book? You work your guts out, and who cares? Dog food commercial, he says. All people care about is some stupid dog.’

Em lifted her face out of Charlie’s long hair and said, ’Let me out at the corner. I want to see Alec Harvey.’

‘I’ll drop you there.’

‘I want to walk.’

He jammed on the brakes. The back doors didn’t open when you braked like that. Clutching the satchel, Em climbed over the seat to get out. Charlie leaped after her.

‘The rats desert the sinking ship,’ Dad said bitterly and drove off, polluting Newtown with his broken exhaust pipe.

Em ran back over the dirty town snow to where she had seen the film people.
Which is the producer?
As she ran, she rehearsed what she was going to say.
Here is a play. You can buy it if you want.
The man would look through the pages.
Great stuff. Who wrote it? I did. You?
No. As she ran, Em felt again the pain in the pit of her stomach when her father took the terrible blow in the Editor’s office.
My father wrote it. Jerome Fielding.

She came to the back of a small crowd, and pushed her way through.

‘Which is the—’

‘Quiet. They’re going to shoot.’

‘All right, everybody. Quiet please.. This will be a take.’ A man in dark glasses and a long sheepskin coat with fur round the collar and bottom was shouting through a megaphone in the middle of the street.