Part 3 (2/2)

”Wait a minute,” John said. ”I just want to go back and see--was But he couldn't p.r.o.nounce his inner turmoil. He was already frightened; they might get lost and not be back for Scott's cla.s.s this afternoon. If Dave wanted to go on, let him. He was going back.

He turned the corner of the stagnant blue light and plunged into darkness. The moistness of the air hinted of lightless underground pools; the only sound was the sliding of his heels on slimy stone. He reached the wall ahead, the door. There was no door.

One fingernail, exploring, broke. He bit it off. His left hand, still sore, ------------------------------------com77 flinched from the wet unbroken stone. Suddenly alone and threatened, John fled back into the blue twilight, slipping in his own tracks. Dave was not waiting.

”Oh, G.o.d,” John moaned. His eyes adjusted. Far down the perspective he made out a vague shape vanis.h.i.+ng, its shadows suppressed by the unwavering light. He hurled himself into the corridor, arms sc.r.a.ping the stone, the archway hurling by above him, a turquoise spider plummeting on an azure thread, winding itself back. Globules beaded the brick; still plunging headlong, John brushed his forehead with his hand. Ahead the figure halted, waiting. ”The door's shut. We can't get out,” John panted, sobbing for breath.

”Then you'll have to come with me,” Dave said. ”There must be another way out of this place, whatever it is.”

”But we're going downwards,” John discovered.

”I know that. So we'll have to go up again somewhere. Maybe-- Look!”

They were still walking; they had turned another bend. The pa.s.sage twisted onward, glowing. John tried not to look at Dave; the light had drained his face of blood, and doubt glinted faintly in his eyes. On the stone floor wisps of cobweb, tinted blue, led to another turn. And in the left-hand wall Dave had seen an opening, foreshortened. He ran to it; John followed, robbed of The Catacombs, seeking a way back to Scott's next cla.s.s, to the Inspector. Dave faced the opening, and the doubt in his eyes brightened.

It was an opening, but a dead end: an archway six feet high, a foot deep, empty except for filaments of cobweb which their breath sucked out to float and fall back. Dave peered in, and a spider as large as a thumb ran from a matted corner. He threw himself aside; but the spider was empty, rattling on the stone.

John had pressed past to the next bend. Another downward twist; another alcove. He waited for Dave to join him. The second alcove was thick with cobwebs; they filled it, s.h.i.+ning dully, s.h.i.+fting as Dave again took the lead. The boys were running; the light congealed about them, the ceiling descended, threads of cobweb drifted down. A turn, an alcove, webs. Another. Glancing sideways, John was chilled by a formless horror; the cobwebs in the alcove suggested a shape which he should be able to distinguish. But another fear burned this away like acid: returning late for Scott's cla.s.s. ”Look, it's widening!” Dave shouted. Before John could see beyond him, they had toppled out into an open s.p.a.ce.

It was a circular vaulted chamber; above their heads a dome shone blue through webs like clouds. In the walls gaped other archways, radiating from the circular pool in the centre of the chamber. The pool was still. Its surface ------------------------------------com78 was a beaded mat of cobwebs like a rotting jewelled veil. ”I don't get it,” Dave whispered; his voice settled through the air, disturbing s.h.i.+ning airborne wisps. John said nothing. Then Dave touched his arm and pointed.

Beyond the pool, between two archways, stood a rack of clothes: hats, caps, a black overcoat, a tweed suit, a pinstripe with an incongruous orange handkerchief like a flag, a grey. They filled John with nightmare horror. ”It must be a tramp,” he said desperately.

”With all these things? I'm going to have a closer look.” Dave moved round the pool.

”No, Dave, wait!” John skidded round the pool in pursuit; one foot slipped on the pool's rim. He looked down, and his reflection was caught by cobwebs, jewelled with droplets, swallowed up. His voice vanished into corridors. ”It's past one now! You try one pa.s.sage and I'll try another. One of them must lead out.” Immediately he realised that he would be alone in his corridor among the matted alcoves; but at least he'd diverted Dave from the suits.

”That's the best idea, yes. Just wait till I have a look at these. It won't take a minute.”

”You do that if you want to!” cried John. ”I'm getting back!” He fell into the pa.s.sage next to that through which they had entered; the first alcove was less than a minute ahead. He looked back miserably. Dave was peering at the suits. John forced himself over the harsh blue stone. Then Dave screamed.

John knew he had to run--but to Dave or away? He was too old for blind heroism, too young for conscious selflessness. His legs trembled; he felt sick. He turned.

Dave hadn't moved, but one suit lay crumpled at his feet. He was staring at what it had hung upon, too far for John to see in the blue haze. John's hand pulsed and perspired. He stretched out his fingers towards Dave as if to draw him forward; Dave's hands were warding off whatever was before him. John tore his feet free of the urge to flee. As he began to trudge forward, a figure moved between him and Dave. Cobwebs held to its shape like an aura. John recognised the profile and the patched coat. It was the newspaper seller.

John struggled to shriek a warning to Dave--but of what? His lips were gummed shut as if by cobwebs. His legs were tied to the stone. The man moved round the pool, beyond John's vision. John's lips worked, and Dave turned. His mouth opened, but this time no scream came. He backed around the pool, past the suits. And something appeared, hopping towards him inside the patched overcoat: long arms with claws reaching far beyond the ------------------------------------com79 sleeves, a head protruding far above the collar, and from what must have been a mouth a pouring stream of white which drifted into the air and sank towards Dave's face as he fell, finally screaming. John clapped his hands over his ears as he ran towards the outside world, but Dave's screams had already been m.u.f.fled.

As he fled past the first alcove, the web moaned feebly and opened a glazed eye. No more, he prayed, no more. Each turning was the last; each stretch was cruelly telescoped by the unrelenting light. His lungs were burning; each sucked breath drew a wisp of cobweb into his throat. In one alcove a girl's eyes pleaded; her hand stretched a wedding-ring towards him. He screamed to blot out her stifled cries. In answer came a sound of something hopping round a bend behind him, of something wet slapping the walls. A web-wisp brushed his cheek. He blundered onward. Another bend. He heaved around it hoa.r.s.ely, and saw daylight.

The door was propped with an empty milk-bottle; someone had found and blocked it, perhaps meaning to return. He staggered out onto a patch of waste ground: a broken bed, a disembowelled car, a baby's rattle encrusted with mud. Reaching behind him, he wrenched out the bottle. The door became one with the earth. Then he fell face downwards on the bed.

Dave! He was down there in an alcove! John jerked to his feet, s.h.i.+vering. Through the slight drizzle he saw people pa.s.sing, eyeing him oddly. He couldn't tell them; they might be from the pool. Someone had to know. Dave was in The Catacombs--no, in the catacombs. Someone. Where was he? He sidled to the pavement, watching them all, ready to scream if one came near. Up the road from the school, in the opposite direction to that they'd taken so long ago. Even further from home than he'd thought. Ford. He'd tell Ford that Dave was in The Catacombs. He made for the school; the tangled lines of rain on the pavement looked like something he'd forgotten.

Scott was waiting at the gate. He folded his arms as John appeared. John's terror kicked him in the stomach. Scott's lips opened, waiting; then his gaze slipped from John to someone behind him, and his expression altered. ”All right, Norris, you'd better get to cla.s.s,” he said.

It was the Inspector! John thought as he hurried up the stairs to the familiar faces. He didn't know where Ford was--perhaps he could tell the Inspector that Dave was in The Catacombs. If Scott would let him. He'd have to--he was scared of the Inspector. ”He's scared of the Inspector,” he said to Dave. ”What?” said Hawks behind him.

Scott and the Inspector entered; Scott held the door politely. The cla.s.s stood, raising chalk-dust and a cobweb from John's blazer, which was grey ------------------------------------com80 with wisps, he saw. But then so was the Inspector's pinstripe suit: even the orange handkerchief in his top pocket. ”Dave, sir--Mr. Ford--was cried John, and vomited into his open desk. ”My G.o.d!” shouted Scott. ”Please, Mr. Scott,” said the Inspector in a voice light yet clinging as cobwebs, ”the boy's ill. He looks frightened. I'll take him downstairs and arrange something for him.”

”Shall I wait?” hissed Scott.

”Better start your cla.s.s, Mr. Scott. I'll have time to find out all I want to know about them.”

Bare corridors. Leaping tiles smelling of polish. A strap cracking. Somewhere, laughter. A headlong latecomer who gaped at John and the figure leading him by the wrist. The tuning of the school orchestra. The dining-room, bare tables, metal plates. The cloakroom, racks of coats stirring in a draught. ”I don't think we can entrust you to anyone else's care,” said the Inspector.

The gates, deserted. They turned towards the pillared pub, the side street. There was still time. The fingers on his wrist were no longer fingers. The eyes were veiled as the pool. Two women with wheel-baskets were approaching. But his mouth was already choked closed by fear. They pa.s.sed on towards the side street. Yet his ears were clear, and he heard the comment one woman made.

”Did you see that? I'll wager another case of 'unwillingly to school'!” ------------------------------------com81

The Guy

You can can 'that hide from Guy Fawkes Night. This year as usual I played Beethoven's Fifth to blot out sound and memory, turned it loud and tried to read, fought back faces from the past as they appeared. In September and October the echoes of lone fireworks, the protests of distant startled dogs, the flopping faceless figures propped at bus-stops or wheeled in prams by children, had jarred into focus scenes I'd thought I had erased. Finally, as always, I stood up and succ.u.mbed. Walking, I saw memories, fading like the exploding molten claws upon the sky. On waste ground at the edge of Lower Brichester a gutted bonfire smouldered. Children stood about it, shaking sparklers as a dog shakes a rat. Then wood spat fire and flared; a man dragged off his boy to bed. Defined by flame, the child's face fell in upon itself like a pumpkin wizening from last week's Hallowe'en. He sobbed and gasped, but no words came. And I remembered. 'that hide from Guy Fawkes Night. This year as usual I played Beethoven's Fifth to blot out sound and memory, turned it loud and tried to read, fought back faces from the past as they appeared. In September and October the echoes of lone fireworks, the protests of distant startled dogs, the flopping faceless figures propped at bus-stops or wheeled in prams by children, had jarred into focus scenes I'd thought I had erased. Finally, as always, I stood up and succ.u.mbed. Walking, I saw memories, fading like the exploding molten claws upon the sky. On waste ground at the edge of Lower Brichester a gutted bonfire smouldered. Children stood about it, shaking sparklers as a dog shakes a rat. Then wood spat fire and flared; a man dragged off his boy to bed. Defined by flame, the child's face fell in upon itself like a pumpkin wizening from last week's Hallowe'en. He sobbed and gasped, but no words came. And I remembered.

A papier-mache hand, a burning fuse, a scream that never came-- But the memory was framed by the day's events; the houses of the past, my own and Joe Turner's, were overlaid by the picture I'd built up from behind my desk that morning, the imagined home of the boy who'd stood before me accused of setting fireworks in a car's exhaust pipe: drunken father, weak wife, backgarden lavatory, all the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs--I could see it clearly without having seen it. My parents hadn't liked my change of ambition from banker to probation officer; faced with the choice, I'd left them. ”Don't you know they all carry razors these days?” my father had protested round his pipe. ”Get yourself a little security. Then you can help them if you must. Look at your mother--don't you think the clothes she gives away mean anything?” Referred to, my mother had joined in. ”If you deal with such people all day, Denis, you'll become like them.” The same prejudices at which I'd squirmed when I was at school: when the Turners moved into our road.

Joe Turner was in the cla.s.s next door to me; he'd started there that term when the Turners had come up from Lower Brichester. Sometimes, walking past their house, I'd heard arguments, the crash of china, a man's voice ------------------------------------com82 shouting ”Just because we've moved in with the toffs, don't go turning my house into Buckingham Palace!” That was Mr Turner. One night I'd seen him staggering home, leaning on our gate and swearing; my father had been ready to go out to him, but my mother had restrained him. ”Stay in, don't lower yourself.” She was disgusted because Mr Turner was drunk; I'd realised that but couldn't see how this was different from the parties at our house, the Martini bottles, the man who'd fallen into my bedroom one night and apologised, then been loudly sick on the landing. I was sorry for Mr Turner because my parents had instantly disliked him. ”I don't object to them as people. I don't know them, not that I want to,” my father had said. ”It's simply that they'll bring down the property values for the entire street if they're not watched.” ”Have you seen their back garden?” my mother responded. ”Already they've dumped an old dresser out there.” ”Perhaps they're getting ready for a bonfire,” I suggested. ”Well, remember you're to stay away,” my mother warned. ”You're not to mix with such people.” I was fourteen, ready to resent such prohibitions. And of course I was to have no bonfire; it might dull the house's paint or raze the garden. Instead, a Beethoven symphony for the collection I didn't then appreciate. ”Why not?” I complained. ”I go to school with him.” ”You may,” my father agreed, ”but just because the school sees fit to lower its standards doesn't mean we have to fall in with the crowd.” ”I don't see what's wrong with Joe,” I said. A look spoke between my parents. ”Someday,” said my mother, ”when you're older--was There was always something about Joe they wouldn't specify. I thought I knew what they found objectionable; the acts schoolboys admire are usually deplored by their parents. Joe Turner's exploits had taken on the stature of legend for us. For example, the day he'd sworn at a teacher who'd caned him, paying interest on his words. ”Some night I'll get him,” Joe told me walking home, spitting further than I ever could. Or the magazines he showed us, stolen from his father as he said: he told terrifying stories of his father's buckled belt. ”I Kept the U.S. Army Going,” by a Fraulein; my vocabulary grew enormously in two months, until the only time my father ever hit me. I felt enriched by Joe; soon it was him and me against the teachers, running from the lavatories, hiding sticks of chalk. Joe knew things; the tales of Lower Brichester he told me as we walked home were real, not like the jokes the others told, sn.i.g.g.e.ring in corners; Joe didn't have to creep into a corner to talk. In the two months since he'd run after me and parodied my suburban accent until we'd fought and become inseparable, he showed me sides of life I never knew existed. All of which helped me to understand the people who ------------------------------------com83 appear before my desk. Even the seat behind my desk belongs to Joe as much as to me; it was Joe who showed me injustice.

It was late October, two weeks before the bonfire, that fragments of the picture began to fit together. From my window, writing homework, I'd watched early rockets spit a last star and fall far off; once I'd found a cardboard cylinder trodden into the pavement. That was magic: not the Beethoven. So that when Joe said ”I bet you won't be coming to my bonfire,” I flared up readily. ”Why shouldn't I?” I attacked him, throwing a stone into someone's garden.

”Because your parents don't like us.” He threw a stone and cracked mine open.

”We 're us,” I said loyally. ”I'll be coming. What's the matter, don't you like it up here in Brichester?” 're us,” I said loyally. ”I'll be coming. What's the matter, don't you like it up here in Brichester?”

”It's all right. My father didn't want to move. I couldn't care less, really. It was my mother. She was scared.”

I imagined I knew what he meant: stones through the front windows, boys backing girls into alleys, knives and bottles outside the pubs; I'd probably have been as scared. But he continued ”She didn't want to live where my brother was.”

We ran from a stretched rain and stood beneath an inscribed bus-shelter; two housewives disapproved of us and brought umbrellas down like s.h.i.+elds. ”Where's your brother now? In the Army?” In those days that was my idea of heroism.

”He was younger than me. He's dead.” The umbrellas lifted a little, then determinedly came down.

”h.e.l.l.” I wasn't equipped to deal with such things. ”What happened?” I asked, curiosity intermixed with sympathy.

”Of course only ill-brought-up boys try to impress with made-up stories,” came from beneath the umbrellas.

Joe made a sign at them in which I hurriedly joined. We went out into the thinning lines of drizzle. I didn't like to ask again; I waited for Joe to take me into his trust. But he was silent until he reached our road, suburban villas p.r.o.nged with TV aerials, curtains drawn back to display front-room riches. ”You won't really come to my bonfire,” he repeated suddenly: his eyes gleamed like the murderer's in the film we'd surrept.i.tiously seen last Sat.u.r.day, luring the girl towards his camera with its built-in spike.

”See if I don't.”

”Well, I'd better say good-bye now. You won't want to be seen near your house with me.” ------------------------------------com84 ”You watch this!” I shouted angrily, and strode with him arm in arm to his door. Joe beat on the knocker, which hung by a screw. ”You're not coming in, are you?” he asked.

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