Part 8 (1/2)

”No,” Dutton said, and stumbled hurriedly on: ”There wasn't anything in that pram. I know. I looked in it once when she was going in her room. She was poorer than us.”

”Unless she was a witch,” Maud said.

Dutton shook the bottle to quicken the liquor. In a moment it would take hold of him completely, he'd be floating on it, Maud's words would drift by like flotsam on a warm sea. ”What?” he said. ------------------------------------146 ”Unless she was a witch. Then she could have given everything she owned, and her soul as well, to that man they never found, and still have had something for it that n.o.body could see, or wouldn't understand if they did see.” She panted, having managed her speech, and drank.

”That woman was a witch right enough,” Tommy said, challenging the splintered floor with his crutch. ”I used to go by there at night and hear her singing to herself. There was something not right there.”

”I sing,” Frank said, standing up menacingly, and did so: ”Rock of Ages.” ”Am I a witch, eh? Am I a witch?”

”They weren't hymns she was singing, I'll be bound. If I hadn't seen her in the street I'd have said she was a darkey. Jungle music, it was. Mumbo-jumbo.”

”She was singing to her baby,” Dutton said loosely.

”She didn't have a baby, Billy,” Maud said. ”Only a pram.”

”She was going to have one.”

”You're the man who should know, are you?” Frank demanded. ”She could have fooled me. She was flat as a pancake when they carried her out. Flat as a pancake.”

Dutton stared at Frank for as long as he could, before he had to look away from the deformed strawberry of the man's nose. He seemed to be telling the truth. Two memories were circling Dutton, trying to perch on his thoughts: a little girl who'd been peering in the old woman's window one day, suddenly running away and calling back--inappropriately, it had seemed at the time--”Fat cow”; the corpse on the dusty floor, indisputably pregnant even in the dim light. ”Flat as a pancake,” Frank repeated.

Dutton was still struggling to understand when Maud said ”What's that?”

Dutton could hear nothing but the rus.h.i.+ng of his blood. ”Sounds like a car” Betty said.

”Too small for a car. Needs oiling, whatever it is.”

What were they talking about? Why were they talking about things he couldn't understand, that he couldn't even hear, that disturbed him? ”What?” Dutton yelled.

They all stared at him, focusing elaborately, and Tommy thumped his crutch angrily. ”It's gone now,” Maud said at last.

There was a silence until Betty said sleepily ”If she was a witch where was her familiar?”

”Her what?” Dutton said, as the bottle blurred and dissolved above his eyes. She didn't know what she was talking about. Nor did he, he shouted at himself. Nor did he.

”Her familiar. A kind of, you know, creature that would do things for her. ------------------------------------147 Bring her food, that kind of thing. A cat, or something. She hadn't anything like that. She wouldn't have been able to hide it.”

Nowhere to hide it, Dutton thought. In her pram--but her pram had been empty. The top of his head was rising, floating away; it didn't matter. Betty's hand wobbled at the edge of his vision, spilling wine towards him. He grabbed the bottle as her eyes closed. He tried to drink but couldn't find his mouth. Somehow he managed to stopper the bottle with his finger, and a moment later was asleep.

When he awoke he was alone in the dark.

Among the bricks that were bruising his chest was the bottle, still glued to his finger. He clambered to his feet, deafened by the clattering of bricks, and dug the bottle into his pocket for safety, finger and all. He groped his way out of the house, sniffing, searching vainly for his handkerchief. A wall reeled back from him and he fell, sc.r.a.ping his shoulder. Eventually he reached the doorway.

Night had fallen. Amid the mutter of the city, fireworks were already sputtering; distant chimneys sprang up momentarily against a spray of white fire. Far ahead, between the tipsily s.h.i.+fting walls, the lights of the shops blinked faintly at Dutton. He took a draught to fend off the icy plucking of the wind, then he stuffed the bottle in his pocket and made for the lights.

The mud was lying in wait for him. It swallowed his feet with an approving sound. It poured into his shoes, seeping into the plastic bags. It squeezed out from beneath unsteady paving-stones, where there were any. He snarled at it and stamped, sending it over his trouser cuffs. It stretched glistening faintly before him as far as he could see.

Cars were taking a short cut from the main road, past the shops. Dutton stood and waited for their lights to sweep over the mud, lighting up his way. He emptied the bottle into himself. Headlights swung towards him, blazing abruptly in puddles, pinching up silver edges of ruts from the darkness, touching a small still dark object between the walls to Dutton's left.

He glared towards that, through the pale fading firework display on his eyeb.a.l.l.s. It had been low and squat, he was sure; part of it had been raised, like a hood. Suddenly he recoiled from the restless darkness and began to run wildly. He fell with a flat splash and heaved himself up, his hands gloved in grit and mud. He stumbled towards the swaying lights and glared about whenever headlights flashed between the walls. Around him the walls seemed as unstable as the ground.

He was close enough to the shops for the individual sounds of the street to have separated themselves from the muted anonymous roar of the city, ------------------------------------148 when he fell again. He fell into darkness behind walls, and scrabbled in the mud, slithering grittily. When he regained his feet he peered desperately about, trying to hold things still. The lights of the street, sinking, leaping back into place and sinking, sinking; the walls around him, wavering and drooping; a dwarfish fragment of wall close to him, on his left. Headlights slipped past him and corrected him. It wasn't a fragment of wall. It was a pram.

In that moment of frozen clarity he could see the twin clawmarks its wheels had scored in the mud, reaching back into darkness. Then the darkness rushed at him as his ankles tangled and he lost his footing. He was reeling helplessly towards the pram.

A second before he reached it he lashed out blindly with one foot. He tottered in a socket of mud, but he felt his foot strike metal, and heard the pram fall. He whirled about, running towards the whirling lights, changing his direction when they steadied. The next time headlights pa.s.sed him he twisted about to look. The force of his movement spun him back again and on, towards the lights. But he was sure he'd seen the pram upturned in the mud, and shaking like a turtle trying to right itself.

Once among the shops he felt safe. This was his territory. People were hurrying home from work, children were running errands; cars laden with packages b.u.t.ted their way towards the suburbs, honking. He'd stay here, where there were people; he wouldn't go home to his room.

He began to stroll, rolling unsteadily. He gazed in the shop windows, whose contents sank like a loose television image. When he reached a launderette he halted, frowning, and couldn't understand why. Was it something he'd heard? Yes, there was a sound somewhere amid the impatient clamour of the traffic: a yawn of metal cut short by a high squeal. It was something like that, not entirely, not the sound he remembered, only the sound of a car. Within the launderette things whirled, whirled; so did the launderette; so did the pavement. Dutton forced himself onward, cursing as he almost fell over a child. He shoved the child aside and collided with a pram.

Bulging out from beneath its hood was a swollen faceless head of blue plastic. Folds of its wrinkled wormlike body squeezed over the side of the pram; within the blue transparent body he could see white coils and rolls of was.h.i.+ng, like tripe. Dutton thrust it away, choking. The woman wheeling it aimed a blow at him and pushed the pram into the launderette.

He ran helplessly forward, trying to retrieve his balance. Mud trickled through the burst plastic in his shoes and grated between his toes. He fell, slapping the pavement with himself. When someone tried to help him up he snarled and rolled out of their reach. ------------------------------------149 He was cold and wet. His coat had soaked up all the water his falls had squeezed out of the mud. He couldn't go home, couldn't warm himself in bed; he had to stay here, out on the street. His mouth tasted like an abandoned bottle. He glared about, roaring at anyone who came near. Then, over the jerking segments of the line of car roofs, he saw Maud hurrying down a side street, carrying a bottle wrapped in newspaper.

That was what he needed. A ball of fire sprang up spinning and whooping above the roofs. Dutton surged towards the pedestrian crossing, whose two green stick-figures were squeaking at each other across the path through the cars. He was almost there when a pram rushed at him from an alley.

He grappled with it, hurling it from him. It was only a pram, never mind, he must catch up with Maud. But a white featureless head nodded towards him on a scrawny neck, craning out from beneath the hood; a head that slipped awry, rolling loose on its neck, as the strings that tied it came unknotted. It was only a guy begging pennies for cut-price fireworks. Before he realised that, Dutton had overbalanced away from it into the road, in front of a released car.

There was a howl of brakes, another, a tinkle of gla.s.s. Dutton found himself staring up from beneath a front b.u.mper. Wheels blocked his vision on either side, like huge oppressive earm.u.f.fs. People were shouting at each other, someone was shouting at him, the crowd was chattering, laughing. When someone tried to help him to his feet he kicked out and clung to the b.u.mper. Nothing could touch him now, he was safe, they wouldn't dare to. Eventually someone took hold of his arm and wouldn't let go until he stood up. It was Constable Wayne.

”Come on, Billy,” Wayne said. ”That's enough for today. Go home.”

”I won't go home!” Dutton cried in panic.

”Do you mean to tell me you're sending him home and that's all?” a woman shouted above the clamour of her jacketed Pekinese. ”What about my headlight?”

”I'll deal with him,” Wayne said. ”My colleague will take your statements. Don't give me any trouble, Billy,” he said, taking a firmer hold on Dutton's arm.

Dutton found himself being marched along the street, towards his room. ”I'm not going home,” he shouted.

”You are, and I'll see that you do.” A fire engine was elbowing its way through the traffic, braying. In the middle of a side street, between walls that quaked with the light of a huge bonfire, children were stoning firemen.

”I won't,” Dutton said, pleading. ”If you make me I'll get out again. I've drunk too much. I'll do something bad, I'll hurt someone.” ------------------------------------150 ”You aren't one of those. Go home now and sleep it off. You know we've no room for you on Sat.u.r.day nights. And tonight of all nights we don't want to be bothered with you.”

They had almost reached the house. Wayne gazed up at the dormant bonfire on the waste ground. ”We'll have to see about that,” he said. But Dutton hardly heard him. As the house swayed towards him, a rocket exploded low and s.n.a.t.c.hed the house forward for a moment from the darkness. In the old woman's room, at the bottom of the windowpane, he saw a metal bar: the handle of a pram.

Dutton began to struggle again. ”I'm not going in there!” he shouted, searching his mind wildly for anything. ”I killed that old woman! I knocked her head in, it was me!”

”That's enough of that, now,” Wayne said, dragging him up the steps. ”You're lucky I can see you're drunk.”

Dutton clenched the front door-frame with both hands. ”There's something in there!” he screamed. ”In her room!”

”There's nothing at all,” Wayne said. ”Come here and I'll show you.” He propelled Dutton into the hall and, switching on his torch, pushed open the old woman's door with his foot. ”Now, what's in here?” he demanded. ”Nothing.”

Dutton looked in, ready to flinch. The torch-beam swept impatiently about the room, revealing nothing but dust. The bed had been pushed beneath the window during the police search. Its headrail was visible through the pane: a metal bar.