But there was a need to hurry. It was necessary to get herself back upstairs and change into her own clothes. She couldn’t take the baby to the canal wearing Lizzie’s white boots, it would be unsuitable. Besides, why should the changeling emerge, unless it recognised its mother?
She turned in at the gate. She saw it, in her own mind, the murky waters parting as the human baby sank. She looked down at Gemma; pity, she thought, you could get fond of it. Slowly, trailing green weed, her own skeletal child swam to the bank. “Resurrection is a fact,” she whispered. She drew the child from the water; rigid, but not with cold. With damp and bony fingers, the changeling reached for her face.
She was putting the key in the lock when she heard hurried footsteps behind her. She turned, holding the box between herself and her pursuer.
“What’s that?” Miss Field demanded. She peered into the box.
“That’s little Gemma,” Muriel said calmly. “That’s little Gemma Ryan.”
“And who the hell are you?”
“Just the baby-sitter.”
“Where’s Suzanne?”
“Upstairs.” She nodded towards the front door. “Coming?” Isabel followed her inside, leaving the front door ajar. Muriel put down the box on the hall table. There was no one around; the doors were all closed. Isabel looked down at the child. “She doesn’t look like anybody,” she said. “Just a baby. Why is she in a box?”
“Ask her mother.” Muriel led the way upstairs.
Outside on Napier Street, the Mini was crawling along. It had begun to rain again, quite hard, and visibility was poor. This must be close enough, Sylvia thought. She pulled up, and took the box from the passenger seat. She left the car unlocked; I’ll only be a minute, she thought. Here it is, number 54, number 56. I could leave it outside. But it was wet on the front step, and she could see that the parcel would get ruined. The door was off the latch, so she opened it a fraction more, and peeped in. Her curiosity got the better of her; she intruded her head. “Hello, anybody home?” Some kind of rooming house, she thought, pretty sordid. There must be someone around. “Hello?” I’ve come this far, I may as well deliver it properly. She stepped inside, closing the door to the street.
Inside the hall, on a small table, was another box. Sylvia looked into it; to her amazement it contained a baby, a tiny wrapped-up baby with a pink healthy skin. As she watched it, it yawned and blinked, and waved a hand at her. Sylvia put her parcel down at her feet. She bent over the baby. It looked a well-cared-for mite, happy and plump, but what was it doing in a cardboard box? The waving, plucking fingers were caught in the open weave of its blanket. Gently and expertly, Sylvia began to free them. She straightened up and looked around her. There was not a sound. She grew alarmed, and ventured up the stairs. “Hello!” she called. “Lizzie? Are you there?”
But Lizzie was no longer there at all. On the first landing, she paused, to let Miss Field catch her up. This was Mr. K.’s floor, but apart from his bedroom, these rooms were empty, and kept locked. She had keys, of course; and about her person.
“Where is she?” Isabel asked, reaching the top of the stairs. “You can take me to her. I won’t do anything. I only want to find out where we stand.” Muriel caught a whiff of the whisky on her breath.
She unlocked the door, and they stepped inside. A smell of dampness and decay rushed out. The narrow window, uncurtained, looked out onto a brick wall. The paper was peeling from the walls, a spider’s web hung in the corner. Miss Field turned, her eyes suddenly bright with terror, the only light in the dark room. Muriel reached up and removed her wig. Miss Field screamed.
Sylvia stopped dead. What was that? I don’t like it, she thought; a baby in a cardboard box, and some woman—a battered wife perhaps—shrieking in terror overhead. Whoever these people were, they were certainly in need of the attentions of Social Services, if not of the police. She took a deep breath, and ran up the first flight of stairs. She stopped on the landing and looked around. Quite a big place, she thought, bigger than it looked from the outside; and dirt everywhere. Where had the noise come from? Suddenly, she felt herself seized from behind. A brawny arm locked across her throat, and her assailant forced her backwards. Her knees buckled, and she was dragged along. She kicked out behind her, clawed at the imprisoning arm, but the breath was being squeezed out of her, and she was weak with shock. Somewhere, the woman was still screaming. A door was thrust open and she was propelled through it. A blow between her shoulder blades sent her crashing forward. She landed on all fours, at the screamer’s feet. She heard the door close. She raised her head. “Hello, Mrs. Ryan,” she said. “What are you doing here?” At once she noticed that Mrs. Ryan was expecting. The whole thing had surprised her, of course, but she was not as astonished as she might have been. She felt she had been travelling for years to get here; as the key turned behind her in the lock, she knew that she had finally arrived.
When the woman had stopped screaming and the house was quiet again, Miss Anaemia left her room and went downstairs. If Mr. K. had done a murder—and she could see things going that way—she would just have to say she knew nothing about it; but she was not, repeat not, going to be in when that woman arrived, wanting to look at the bedsheets again. She pulled her raincoat on as she went through the hall, and wondered if Poor Mrs. Wilmot would mind if she borrowed her telescopic umbrella from the stand by the front door.
What’s this? she said to herself. Another delivery for Mr. K.? As another strange face loomed over her, Gemma began to cry. Miss Anaemia opened her eyes wide, reached into the box, and lifted the baby out. She held the quilted head against her cheek, rocking, making soothing noises in her throat. “Don’t cry, sweetheart,” she said. “What are you doing in a cardboard box then? Have they left you all on your own? Never mind, don’t cry, precious. You and me are off to the housing office.”
She dropped the empty box on the floor, swaddled the baby in her blanket, hitched her onto her shoulder, and set off out of the front door. It was still drizzling, but the wind had dropped a bit. Miss Anaemia felt exalted, defiant; as if she were going to make people eat their words. Patches of scarlet flared in her cheeks. She crossed the road, clucking to the baby, quickening her step; and turned the corner by the post box. At once she spotted the person she was looking for; there she is, she thought, that fat old cow Miss Sidney from the DHSS, Snoopers herself, wielding her black umbrella, and looking in at everyone’s windows as she advances purposefully up the street.
“Hi there!” she called. “Coming to see me, were you? Told you I’d got a baby, didn’t I? Who’s a liar now?” Miss Sidney checked her stride, and stared.
When the cries of the infant subsided, Mr. Kowalski emerged from the kitchen. It was a fake, he had no doubt, a tape recording, a lure to draw him out. It was a cry from the past; the infants mewling in the burned-out ruins, the mothers bleeding in the city streets.
The box was the first thing he saw. He picked it up, put it on the hall table, and read the address: To Lizzie Blank, 2 Buckingham Avenue. The house had long ago run out of his control. Locking doors had no effect; he knew that now. From upstairs he heard voices raised, the voices of strange women. I will do or die for Poor Mrs. Wilmot, he thought; touch not a hair of that old grey head. He rattled the box. Curiosity killed the cat, is an expression. He touched the metal bulge of the Luger in his deep trouser pocket. Death was in the air of the damp old house. He could smell it, and he knew. He was a professional. He had burned his bridges; there was nothing to lose. He tore at the wrapping paper.
Muriel put on her boots; Muriel’s own boots, stout and thick-soled, ready for the mud on Turner’s Fields. She put on her big wool overcoat, and knotted her check scarf on the point of her chin. All over the house—in the empty room where the women were imprisoned, and in the kitchen where Mr. Kowalski was loading his gun—they could hear her feet stamping on the stairs, one two, one two: Terror Comes to Town.
And now for little Diddums. She turned, from the foot of the
stairs, and gaped. Sweetie Pie had altered; altered out of all recognition. Displayed on the hall table, neat and sweet and perfectly articulated, was a skeleton; fine and tiny, and set together with a deft and knowing hand. If there were an odd number of fingers, and something animal about the skull, she did not notice it. She had never torn the living apart, to study the bones within. With a forefinger, she probed the empty ribs. She shuddered. Bones can be clothed. It was a miraculous transportation; and an hour saved, of her valuable time. One by one she picked up the little bones and placed them in an orderly fashion back inside the box. Only when she had done this did she notice that it was a different box from the one she had carried Gemma in. A different box, with one of her names on it: TO LIZZIE BLANK, inscribed there by the hand of God.
I’m here first, Colin thought, pulling up in his new drive. Here I am for my ten-year NHBC guarantee; my split-level living area, my open aspect to rear. The small estate was on high ground; a golf course fell away below him, hidden now by the steady rain and a belt of young trees.
They should have taken the motorway, he thought, as he fumbled for the keys and prepared to dash for shelter. They’ll have got snarled up in the traffic going across the bridge; I should have told them about the road works. He looked at his watch. Thirty minutes; not bad. He let himself into the empty house. Well, you’ve dallied and dillied, haven’t you, he would say to the men when they arrived. He wondered if Sylvia would have the sense to use the motorway. Smiling to himself, he went through to the kitchen to turn the electricity on.
Muriel was at home. She was at home at last; Buckingham Avenue. Holding her box, she wandered through the empty rooms. The Sidneys had gone, and the house was returning to itself; their occupation had been a temporary thing, the blink of an eye, a memory erased as soon as the door closed on them. The dimness was gathering, hanging in clots from the ceiling; the air itself was thickening, and the floors exuded the cold and secret smell of earth. She would take a few minutes; enjoy herself. Then she would go upstairs to the spare room, sit down; arrange the bones, and wait.
Mr. Kowalski went upstairs. He heard them; chattering, their voices on the edge of hysteria. Telephone Voice was one of them; the other was Ghoul.
It seemed that hours had passed. The women heard the key turn in the lock. They stood together, arms intertwined. He faced them, a squat bristling bully, yelling in Rumanian and waving a gun. He motioned them apart. They obeyed, their eyes staring, licking their dry lips in fear. Mr. K. pointed the gun at Sylvia. She lifted her head and glared at him as she dropped back against the wall. He swung round to Isabel. Her fists were clenched at her sides, tensed for the explosion. “I know an expression,” he said. “Eeny, meemy, miny, mo—” Both together, the ladies screamed.
The furniture was all in place. Well, you say in place; as Sylvia said, it would be all changed by this time next week. If he could find the kettle, he might be able to make some coffee. They had brought quite a lot of stuff over last night. He looked at his watch again. Where the devil had she got to? She couldn’t have taken the motorway after all.
He surveyed the pile of boxes and tea-chests stacked up in the living room. Where to start? He wished she would come. Had the Mini broken down again? It often gave trouble in wet weather. Francis said it was the condenser; but what would a bloody vicar know? “You can’t trust these Specials like an old-time copper—” he sang. The telephone rang.
Warily—because he was not expecting a call, and yet he was always expecting one—Colin raised his head and listened. Just where was the telephone? He followed the sound. “When you can’t find your way home,” he sang. Kitchen; wall phone, very modish. “Hello?” He had to read the number off the dial. “Five-one-two-eight-six?”
There was no answer, just the sound of breathing; quiet and steady.
“Sylvia, is that you?” No answer. He sighed impatiently. “If you want the Broadbents, they’ve moved. They went yesterday. I’ve got their address somewhere, I can give it to you if you ring back later tonight.” Imbecile vendors; why hadn’t they left their new number to hand, as he had done? He paused. “Who is that?”
He felt the hairs rise, prickling, at the nape of his neck. Funny, he’d always imagined that was a figure of speech. The line was open: a meaningless hum, a static crackle. “Mr. Sidney?”
That was not a voice he knew. It seemed to come from very far away. It pricked at his memory with an evil familiarity, like an old habit, an old crime. Again he heard the sound of breathing: heavier, almost laboured, hoarse. At first it seemed that the caller was choking back laughter, gloating laughter long suppressed; but then the note changed, as if a term had been set to the merriment, by a hand around the throat. What could he do, alone in the cold and empty house? He turned his head, hunched his shoulders, as if he felt that the walls had moved in on him; the matt emulsion, the cork notice-board, making their approach. There was something else on the line: the chant of dubiously human voices, a subdued and gathering roar. Was someone throwing a party? He could hear the clink of crystal, the popping of corks; the discreet firm contact of flesh upon flesh. Was someone mourning? Had somebody died? Colin listened, his mouth gaping a little, his hand tight on the receiver: the chuckling, the gasping, the sniggering, the struggle for air. He could not be sure what he heard any more, terminal jubilee, bodily harm; the act of laughter, the art of dying. Rain spattered against the uncurtained windows; the wind got up, and already, by mid-afternoon, it was quite dark.
VACANT POSSESSION. Copyright © 1986 by Hilary Mantel. All rights reserved. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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[email protected] The Library of Congress has cataloged the Henry Holt edition as follows:
Mantel, Hilary, 1952–
Vacant possession / Hilary Mantel.—1st Owl Books ed.
p. cm.
“An Owl book.”
ISBN: 978-0-8050-6271-7
1. Mentally ill offenders—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6063.A438V33 2000
823'.914—dc21
99033536
Originally published in the United Kingdom by Chatto & Windus
First published in the United States by Henry Holt and Company
Hilary Mantel, Vacant Possession
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