‘Well, now we’re in damage-limitation mode. You’ll most likely get some reporters onto you. My guess is they’ll show up at your morning service. You can use that, Miles. Make a strong rebuttal of this story. A ringing affirmation of your Christian faith.’
Miles says nothing.
‘Look, Miles, this is serious. You do understand that?’
‘Yes, Peter. Yes.’
‘I’ll do what I can at this end. But you have to help me. And yourself.’
After this Miles unplugs the phone and sits in the armchair in his living room and thinks. From time to time he makes a note. He’s not much of a one for long sermons, but he always says a few words from the pulpit on a Sunday morning.
He thinks of the Blairs’ new baby, Leo. ‘The thing you forget is how tiny they are.’ His mind runs back over the babies he has baptized down the years. How many? Must be almost a hundred by now. The first was Dick Waller’s boy. He buried him, too, seventeen years later. He baptized Sue Barr, and he baptized Sue’s baby Lisa. Now Lisa is sixteen and has a steady boyfriend who works at the North Street Garage in Lewes. Lisa never comes to church but when she has a baby she’ll come. Does it really matter what she believes?
Clergy have become isolated in a failure situation.
There must be a public recantation. Can one recant on an absence of belief? A public cantation, perhaps. He must sing for his supper, it seems.
The church is a little fuller than usual, but not much. A few strange faces. Miles has never admired this church with its dark wood and its awkwardly placed side aisle, but he realizes today how much he loves it. Only familiarity, of course, but not to be underestimated for all that. Such deep and rooted bonds take many years to grow.
He climbs up into the pulpit at the assigned time and sees on the faces of the congregation an unusual readiness to hear what he has to say. They remind him of the hounds at a meet, the way they look up at the huntsman, eager for the off. All sports are blood sports; if not actual blood the game calls for conquest and defeat, triumph and humiliation.
His eyes fall on Mrs Huxtable, sitting beside her husband the judge. He remembers their conversation of a few days ago. Words come to his mouth that he has not planned.
‘Halloween is a long way off,’ he says. ‘But I want to say a word about Trick or Treat.’
Mrs Huxtable opens her mouth in surprise, and then shuts it again. The strange faces turn to each other with questioning glances. This is not according to the script.
‘I know Trick or Treat is fun for the children, and I don’t want to be a killjoy. Dressing up as ghosts and monsters does no harm. Perhaps it even helps children come to terms with their own nightmares. But Trick or Treat – what is that? A threat, and a demand. The children have nothing to give. They come only to take. They don’t have a song to sing, like the carol singers who knock on our doors at Christmas time. There’s no generosity in it. There’s no kindness. So maybe this year, speak to your children. Say to them that the world makes too many demands already. We’re beset by threats on all sides. What we lack is kindness. Perhaps kindness seems a small thing to you. It’s not even one of the seven virtues. But I rate it very highly, because kindness means wanting to make someone else happy. To do that you have to imagine what it feels like to be them. You have to know them not as you wish them to be, but as they are. That, I believe, is a truly good thing to do. Perhaps it’s the only act of true goodness of which we’re capable. I have tried to do that for you over these last thirty-seven years. Now I ask that you do it for me. I ask, my dear friends, that we be kind to one another.’
He climbs down from the pulpit in a church that is utterly silent. He has not said what he meant to say. He has said what he believes.
48
If the police come I could tell them the truth but say it was just a joke, which isn’t actually the truth, and anyway if it’s a crime what difference does it make if you say it was a joke? What’s so funny, Jack? Who’s laughing? Like Mr Kilmartin asking questions he already knows the answers to so that all you can do is say nothing, then he says, Lost your voice, have you?
Toby says it’s not money it’s a sign but it looks like money and you can spend it so that’s all just stupid. Toby won’t go to prison, he’ll have some clever way to get out of it. Maybe he’ll just stare at the police with those unblinking eyes and say, Nothing to do with me. Prove it. I can’t say that. My handwriting on the letter, my fingerprints. But I never had the money. Just asking isn’t a crime, you’ve got to take it, they have to find it on you. Except this is blackmail.
Children don’t go to prison. They have special places where they go, not prisons, there’s one in Seaford you can see from the Downs, the big white house, it’s like a school except you don’t go home after lessons. You sleep there and everything for years and years. All the other children are ones who’ve done crimes too and they make gangs and fight each other. Just boys of course, a different prison for the girls. They don’t let you see your parents. And afterwards when they let you out no good school wants to have you and when you grow up you can’t get a job because everyone knows you’ve been in one of those places.
‘Jack, aren’t you going to eat anything?’
‘Not hungry.’
‘Henry, make Jack eat something. He’s hardly had a thing.’
‘I’m not hungry!’
‘All right, darling. Just try to have a little.’
Jack bows his head over his untouched plate and wishes it was all a dream. His mouth is dry, there’s a bitter taste in his throat, he wants to get up and go somewhere else. They’re all looking at him like he’s a weirdo and maybe he is a weirdo but he doesn’t like all the secret glances that say leave him alone, pretend you haven’t noticed.
What if the Dogman doesn’t go to the police at all? What if he fetches his gun and comes looking for him himself? Like in the field when he got me, his hand was shaking, I felt it, he’s off his head. You little bastards! You bloody little bastards! I could shoot you! He’s off his head, he could do it too. Why don’t I put you out of your misery now? Then the gun goes off, louder than anything. The Dogman wouldn’t care, he’s off his head. Then the lead shot from the cartridge goes into you, into your chest and neck and face and eyes, like what? Stinging? Oh yeah ha ha I don’t think so. Like nails banged into your face so you scream with the hurt only one second later the nails are in your brain and you’re dead that’s you finished all over. Hurt till you scream and all over.
‘Where are you going, Jack?’
‘Going to the loo.’
‘Must you go in the middle of lunch?’
‘Gotta go.’
Jack leaves the kitchen and crosses the hall but the downstairs lavatory is too small he doesn’t want to be shut in there and in his own bedroom they’ll find him, it’s the first place they’d look, so he opens the front door really quietly and goes outside. At the bottom of the garden there’s a gate into the fields and on the other side of the gate there’s a stable, the people who had the house before them had a pony. Carrie wants a pony too but Mummy says she’s too young to look after it and she’ll end up doing all the mucking out and she hasn’t the time. The stable has been empty for years but there’s still straw in there on the floor and it’s dark and secret. Jack goes there sometimes and plays games there or just does nothing much, it’s good sometimes to be somewhere else, to be lost.
The grass is still wet from the night’s rain, he leaves dark footprints across the lawn, but there’s not much he can do about that except fly. The meadow has sheep in it, they’re right down the bottom by the ditch, all huddled together. The door to the stable is stiff. No one’s opened it for a while, grass has grown up against it, he has to pull hard. The door has a top part and a bottom part, he closes the bottom part all the way, leaves the top part a little open. There are no windows, the stable is dark, and the darkness comforts him.
He sits on the floor, on the dry dusty straw, and then he lies down, curl
ing himself up tight, knees to his chest. He can hear birds calling, and farther away the drone of traffic on the main road. But mostly he hears nothing.
If the Dogman shoots me he’ll go to jail for the rest of his life but I’ll still be dead, and what’s that like? Like never coming home again, never seeing Mummy and Daddy and Carrie again, never going to sleep in my own room again. Just the worst hurt there can ever be and then nothing for ever.
A sharp pang of love shoots through his body, making him squeeze himself up even tighter. He’s crying, tears but no sounds, and twisting his head from side to side, saying no, please no. I love Mummy and Daddy so much, and even Carrie, so much. Don’t make me go away. I’ll do whatever you tell me to do. I never meant anything. Only a joke. Don’t take me away for ever for a joke.
What a baby. What a lot of fuss over nothing. People don’t go shooting other people because of a stupid letter. Why should the police care about a kid’s game? The Dogman will most likely go to Mr Kilmartin and Mr Kilmartin will call him in and say he’s very disappointed and his parents will have to be told, and everyone will be cross for a day or two and then it’ll all be forgotten.
Unless the Dogman is mad.
He did look mad, waving his gun, spitting words out of his red face. There are mad people. No good telling them they’ll go to prison for the rest of their lives, they’re mad, they don’t care. He could do it out of mad rage. You little bastards! You bloody little bastards! Then the nails bang into my face and then black, and then what? I’m a spirit. I can see Mummy and Daddy but they can’t see me or hear me. Calling and calling and they never hear me.
Please no please no let it all go back to the way it was I’ll do anything—
Someone coming! Is it the Dogman with his gun?
The stable opens wide. Jack screams, but his scream hardly makes a sound. A man in the bright doorframe.
‘Here you are.’
‘Daddy!’
Jack throws himself into his father’s arms, sobbing and sobbing.
‘There now. There now. I guessed you’d be here.’
They sit down side by side on the old straw and Jack feels his father’s arms strong and tight round him and his terrors begin to subside. For a while his father says nothing. He just holds him and rocks him, and this is so right.
‘Sorry, Daddy. Sorry.’
‘Nothing to be sorry for, darling. You wouldn’t get like this for no reason. I’m sorry I didn’t see it sooner.’
‘I’m all right now.’
His father bends his head down and kisses him on the cheek. He feels the cool damp of his father’s tears.
‘You’re crying.’
‘I should have found you sooner.’
‘Not your fault, Daddy.’
‘Yes, it is. But I’m here now. I’ll not let anything hurt you now.’
It makes it easier that his father cried. It feels like they’re both in it together.
‘So you’d better tell me.’
Jack tells about the Dogman letter, and with every word he speaks he feels the fear retreat into the distance.
‘So it was blackmail really.’
‘Yes,’ says Jack.
He can tell from his father’s voice that he doesn’t think it’s all a silly fuss over nothing.
‘You could go to prison.’
‘Or worse,’ says Jack. ‘The Dogman has a gun. He’s mad, Daddy. Seriously.’
‘He could shoot you.’
‘Yes.’
‘Right. This is serious.’
Oh the bliss of having someone else to talk to about it. Jack clings to his father, nuzzling his cheek against his arm.
‘What can we do, Daddy?’
‘Well, the first thing is this. I’m not letting him shoot you, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘He’ll have to shoot me first.’
Thank you for believing me. Thank you for understanding it could really happen. The Dogman might really shoot me. But he won’t shoot you, Daddy. So now I’m safe.
‘As for the police, that’s another matter. But I don’t think you’d be sent away for this. You might have to do community service. Or pay a fine.’
‘They wouldn’t take me away from home?’
‘No. Not for a first offence.’
Everything he says is so specific, so sensible. Of course: not for a first offence. Daddy Daddy Daddy I love you so much.
‘I’ll tell you what I think we should do, Jack. I think we should go round to his house, you and me together, and talk to him.’
‘What if he doesn’t know it was me who sent the letter?’
‘We tell him.’
‘Then he’ll know for certain!’
‘And so will you. Then there’ll be no more worrying about what might happen. Because it will have happened.’
‘Will you tell him? I don’t dare.’
‘If you like I’ll say everything. You don’t have to talk at all if you don’t want to.’
‘I’ll have to say sorry.’
‘No. All you have to do is come with me. Nothing else.’
‘All right.’
They both get up and brush the straw off their clothes. Jack takes his father’s hand in his. They cross the lawn back to the house.
‘Do you mind if I tell Mummy what this has all been about?’
‘Okay. But not Carrie.’
‘I’ll have a quiet word. Then we’ll go straight into the village.’
49
The cottage door is open. Billy Holland knocks but gets no response. He knocks again and calls.
‘Mrs Willis?’
He goes in. The door opens directly into the living room. A barrage of smells: burning firewood, sour milk, urine. The room is dark and dirty, the curtains drawn against the daylight, polystyrene containers of half-eaten food on the floor. Two cats come forward as he enters and rub themselves against his legs. A budgie chirrups in a cage. In the unseen kitchen a tap is dripping.
‘Mrs Willis?’
She is sitting asleep in an armchair facing the television. The television is on: motor racing from the Nurburgring in Germany. On the screen a crowd waiting in the rain for the race to start. The voice of the commentator. ‘Coulthard has pole position but Michael Schumacher is always happy in the wet, and he’s driving in front of a home crowd.’
One of the cats leaves Billy and jumps up onto the old lady’s lap. She is dozing with her mouth open, a cup of tea still gripped in one bony hand. Her hair has become thin, her yellowing scalp shows through. Two walking sticks lean against the chair, on either side.
A sudden roar of sound from the television signals the start of the race. Mrs Willis jerks awake. Her watery eyes take in the big man standing uncertainly near the door. She puts down the cold cup of tea.
‘So you’ve come,’ she says.
Billy nods, unsure what she means by this.
‘I hope I’m not disturbing you.’
‘Sit down, then,’ says the old lady. ‘So you’ve come.’
‘Did the rector tell you I was coming?’
‘The rector? Nonsense. She told me.’
‘She?’
Mrs Willis wags her head, as if to say they both know the answer to this question. Billy Holland settles down cautiously on one end of a sofa. Now he too is partly facing the television. The racing cars are screaming round the circuit in pouring rain, throwing up blizzards of spray. Mika Hakkinen has the lead.
‘I hope you don’t mind me calling on you.’
‘Why would I mind? You’ve been sent.’
‘Do you know who I am, Mrs Willis? I’m George Holland’s son. Lord Edenfield’s son.’
The old lady stares at him in surprise.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I’m sure.’
‘And you’ve come about the whirlwind?’
‘No. I’ve come to ask you about my father. If you don’t mind talking about him.’
‘Your father?’
??
?George Holland.’
‘Oh, George.’ The old lady wags her head again, this time to aid her memory. ‘That was long ago. What does any of that matter now?’
The crowd at the Nurburgring have their umbrellas up. Cars are skidding on the wet track, spinning into each other. Coulthard is in trouble.
‘I found some letters my father wrote to you.’
‘Letters?’
‘He says you made him very happy.’
‘George says that?’
‘If you’d rather not talk about it, I do understand.’
‘There’s not much to talk about, dear. I don’t really remember. George, you say?’
‘At the big house.’
Comprehension begins to dawn. The deep wrinkles on her face expand. Her eyes look far away.
‘Yes, George,’ she murmurs. ‘My Georgy.’
‘You knew him well.’
‘No,’ she says, ‘no, not well. We suited each other for a while.’
‘I think he loved you. He says so in the letters.’
‘He gave me a ring.’ This comes out quite suddenly, like the click of an opening catch. The discovery pleases her. ‘He gave me a ring.’
She starts the long struggle to rise from her chair.
‘Can I help?’
‘Why don’t you look for me, dear? The right-hand drawer of the dresser. A ring with a green stone.’
Billy Holland opens the dresser drawer. Inside is a jumble of small items, a hairbrush, necklaces, a christening spoon. He finds the ring, and gives it to her. A pretty ring, not of any great value.
Mrs Willis sees if it will go on her finger, but her knuckles are swollen with arthritis.
‘You knew him well,’ Billy Holland says again.
The old lady stares at the television. Hakkinen has pulled in for a pit stop. The crowd is howling in the rain.
‘We suited each other,’ she says. ‘For a while.’ She looks at Billy and gives a coquettish smile. ‘But that’s our secret.’
‘What was he like?’ says Billy. ‘With you, I mean.’
‘Georgy? He was soft. He was sweet. So you must be little Billy.’