Part 2 (2/2)

The man was shouting that she couldn't do her b.l.o.o.d.y job, that there were way too many kids in the place and they were completely out of control. He was very worked up and he was gesticulating exaggeratedly, like in a silent movie. If his son hadn't anch.o.r.ed his leg he would have been pacing around.

Looking for Jake, By China Mieville The manager was trying to hold her ground without being confrontational. I moved in behind her, in case it got nasty, but she was calming the man down. She's good at her job.

”Sir, as I said, we emptied the room as soon as your son was hurt, and we've had words with the other children-”

”You don't even know which one did it. If you'd been keeping an eye on them, which I imagine is your b.l.o.o.d.y job, then you might be a bit less ...sodding ineffectual.”

That seemed to bring him to a halt and he quieted down, finally, as did his son, who was looking up at him with a confused kind of respect.

The manager told him how sorry she was, and offered his son an ice cream. Things were easing down, but as I started to leave I saw Sandra crying. The man looked a bit guilty and tried to apologise to her, but she was too upset to respond.

The boy had been playing behind the climbing frame, in the corner by the Wendy house, Sandra told me later. He was burrowing down into the b.a.l.l.s till he was totally covered, the way some children like to. Sandra kept an eye on the boy but she could see the b.a.l.l.s bouncing as he moved, so she knew he was okay. Until he came lurching up, screaming.

The store is full of children. The little ones, the toddlers, spend their time in the main creche.

The older ones, eight or nine or ten, they normally walk around the store with their parents, choosing their own bedclothes or curtains, or a little desk with drawers or whatever. But if they're in between, they come back for the ball room.

They're so funny, moving over the climbing frame, concentrating hard. Laughing all the time.

They make each other cry, of course, but usually they stop in seconds. It always gets me how they do that: bawling, then suddenly getting distracted and running off happily.

Sometimes they play in groups, but it seems like there's always one who's alone. Quite content, pouring b.a.l.l.s onto b.a.l.l.s, dropping them through the holes of the climbing frame, dipping into them like a duck. Happy but playing alone.

Sandra left. It was nearly two weeks after that argument, but she was still upset. I couldn't believe it. I started talking to her about it, and I could see her fill up again. I was trying to say that the man had been out of line, that it wasn't her fault, but she wouldn't listen.

”It wasn't him,” she said. ”You don't understand. I can't be in there anymore.”

I felt sorry for her, but she was overreacting. It was out of all proportion. She told me that since the day that little boy got upset, she couldn't relax in the ball room at all. She kept trying to watch all the children at once, all the time. She became obsessed with double-checking the numbers.

”It always seems like there's too many,” she said. ”I count them and there's six, and I count Looking for Jake, By China Mieville them again and there's six, but it always seems there's too many.”

Maybe she could have asked to stay on and only done duty in the main creche, managing name tags, checking the kids in and out, changing the tapes in the video, but she didn't even want to do that. The children loved that ball room. They went on and on about it, she said. They would never have stopped badgering her to be let in.

* * * They're little kids, and sometimes they have accidents. When that happens, someone has to shovel all the b.a.l.l.s aside to clean the floor, then dunk the b.a.l.l.s themselves in water with a bit of bleach.

This was a bad time for that. Almost every day, some kid or other seemed to pee themselves.

We kept having to empty the room to sort out little puddles.

”I had every b.l.o.o.d.y one of them over playing with me, every second, just so we'd have no problems,” one of the nursery workers told me. ”Then after they left . . . you could smell it.

Right by the b.l.o.o.d.y Wendy house, where I'd have sworn none of the little b.u.g.g.e.rs had got to.”

His name was Matthew. He left a month after Sandra. I was amazed. I mean, you can see how much they love the children, people like them. Even having to wipe up dribble and sick and all that. Seeing them go was proof of what a tough job it was. Matthew looked really sick by the time he quit, really grey.

I asked him what was up, but he couldn't tell me. I'm not sure he even knew.

You have to watch those kids all the time. I couldn't do that job. Couldn't take the stress. The children are so unruly, and so tiny. I'd be terrified all the time, of losing them, of hurting them.

There was a bad mood to the place after that. We'd lost two people. The main store turns over staff like a motor, of course, but the creche normally does a bit better. You have to be qualified, to work in the creche, or the ball room. The departures felt like a bad sign.

I was conscious of wanting to look after the kids in the store. When I did my walks I felt like they were all around me. I felt like I had to be ready to leap in and save them any moment.

Everywhere I looked, I saw children. And they were as happy as ever, running through the fake rooms and jumping on the bunkbeds, sitting at the desks that had been laid out ready. But now the way they ran around made me wince, and all our furniture, which meets or exceeds the most rigorous international standards for safety, looked like it was lying in wait to injure them. I saw head wounds in every coffee-table corner, burns in every lamp.

I went past the ball room more than usual. Inside was always some hara.s.sed-looking young woman or man trying to herd the children, and them running through a tide of bright plastic that thudded every way as they dived into the Wendy house and piled up b.a.l.l.s on its roof. The children would spin around to make themselves dizzy, laughing.

Looking for Jake, By China Mieville It wasn't good for them. They loved it when they were in there, but they emerged so tired and crotchety and teary. They did that droning children's cry. They pulled themselves into their parents' jumpers, sobbing, when it was time to go. They didn't want to leave their friends.

Some children were coming back week after week. It seemed to me their parents ran out of things to buy. After a while they'd make some token purchase like tea lights and just sit in the cafe, drinking tea and staring out of the window at the grey flyovers while their kids got their dose of the room. There didn't look like much that was happy to these visits.

The mood infected us. There wasn't a good feeling in the store. Some people said it was too much trouble, and we should close the ball room. But the management made it clear that wouldn't happen.

You can't avoid night s.h.i.+fts.

There were three of us on that night, and we took different sections. Periodically we'd each of us wander through our patch, and between times we'd sit together in the staffroom or the unlit cafe and chat and play cards, with all sorts of rubbish flas.h.i.+ng on the mute TV.

My route took me outside, into the front car lot, flas.h.i.+ng my torch up and down the tarmac, the giant store behind me, with shrubbery around it black and whispery, and beyond the barriers the roads and night cars, moving away from me.

Inside again and through bedrooms, past all the pine frames and the fake walls. It was dim.

Half-lights in all the big chambers full of beds never slept in and sinks without plumbing. I could stand still and there was nothing, no movement and no noise.

One time, I made arrangements with the other guards on duty, and I brought my girlfriend to the store. We wandered hand in hand through all the pretend rooms like stage sets, trailing torchlight. We played house like children, acting out little moments-her stepping out of the shower to my proffered towel, dividing the paper at the breakfast bar. Then we found the biggest and most expensive bed, with a special mattress that you can see nearby cut in cross-section.

After a while, she told me to stop. I asked her what the matter was, but she seemed angry and wouldn't say. I led her out through the locked doors with my swipe card and walked her to her car, alone in the lot, and I watched her drive away. There's a long one-way system of ramps and roundabouts to leave the store, which she followed, unnecessarily, so it took a long time before she was gone. We don't see each other anymore.

In the warehouse, I walked between metal shelf units thirty feet high. My footsteps sounded to me like a prison guard's. I imagined the flat-packed furniture a.s.sembling itself around me.

I came back through kitchens, following the path towards the cafe, up the stairs into the unlit hallway. My mates weren't back: there was no light s.h.i.+ning off the big window that fronted the Looking for Jake, By China Mieville silent ball room.

It was absolutely dark. I put my face up close to the gla.s.s and stared at the black shape I knew was the climbing frame; the Wendy house, a little square of paler shadow, was adrift in plastic b.a.l.l.s. I turned on my torch and shone it into the room. Where the beam touched them, the b.a.l.l.s leapt into clown colours, and then the light moved and they went back to being black.

In the main creche, I sat on the a.s.sistant's chair, with a little half-circle of baby chairs in front of me. I sat like that in the dark, and listened to no noise. There was a little bit of lamplight, orangey through the windows, and once every few seconds a car would pa.s.s, just audible, way out on the other side of the parking lot.

I picked up the book by the side of the chair and opened it in torchlight. Fairy tales. Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella.

There was a sound.

A little soft thump.

I heard it again.

b.a.l.l.s in the ball room, falling onto each other.

I was standing instantly, staring through the gla.s.s into the darkness of the ball room. Pudda-thudda, it came again. It took me seconds to move, but I came close up to the window with my torch raised. I was holding my breath, and my skin felt much too tight.

<script>