There was pleasure in being amongst them, a safety in being on the street. It was a feeling she remembered from before, from the day she got the library books, and stood among the shoppers hurrying to the sales. In the foggy air, in the pavements under their busy feet, she saw for a moment a prospect of release.
She thought she might begin to cry. Tears seemed to choke her, and she put up a hand to unfasten the top button of her coat. She turned back and retraced her steps to the chemist’s shop, and stared in at the window. She stared at bottles of nail varnish in glittering racks, at hot water bottles, shelves of toothpaste. I would like to possess all of those things, she thought, all of that shop, everything new and plastic and wipe-clean, and live under those hard strip-lights. I would not go home when it was time to close. Everyone who wishes could look in at my life; there would be no shadows, no dark corners, no locked rooms.
But now it is time to go home. The baby, which might have changed everything, has brought nothing but the stench of its own peculiarities; that misbegotten, that changeling, that demon-food. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, hoping that no one had noticed her crying.
When she got back the baby was still wailing. She had put it in a big cardboard box, lined with old blankets; it was cosy enough. She bent over it; Clifford stared back.
At ten to nine on Tuesday morning, Colin entered the staffroom, his heart thudding with apprehension. He had decided to say nothing, let Frank take the initiative. He had buttressed himself with no explanations for the assault, being unable to think of any; he would have to go on the offensive if he was tackled, claiming that he was owed an apology himself, and Sylvia too, for having her coat put in the dustbin. The bell was ringing for Assembly; there was Frank, folding up his Daily Telegraph.
“Hello, Colin,” he said mildly. He was paler than usual, badly shaven, altogether worn and frayed. Colin’s resolve broke immediately.
“About the other night—”
“Yes,” Frank said. “Splendid do. Good food—if I say so myself—and the best of company. You must come again.”
Colin stared at him hard. “Oh, splendid do,” he said, with a heavy irony that did not seem to strike home. “A most civilised evening.”
“Excellent raconteur, Edmund Toye. And young Elvie the life and soul. Sylvia enjoy herself?”
“Hugely.”
“Get home all right?”
“In one piece.”
“Good, good, good. Well, better shuffle off now and sing a hymn, hadn’t we?”
Colin followed him. He felt benumbed, stupefied. What had he expected? Perhaps that Frank intended to sue him or at least knock him down, that Mrs. Toye had been taken to a psychiatric ward, that Yarker was in police custody. It seemed miraculous that anything short of murder should have come out of such an evening. Perhaps Frank was suffering some type of amnesia. He passed Stewart Colman in the corridor. Colman nodded amiably.
“I say,” he said, “did you nick Frank’s file?”
“Yes. Yes, I did.”
“All part of the fun,” Colman said. “We had a nude treasure hunt. Looked for it till dawn. What did you want to go rushing off for? Oh yes, they’re all right, Frank’s parties, if you can put up with the literary chitchat. That can be a bit of a bore.”
Is this how people live? Colin thought. I must have no idea how people live. At my age…He followed Colman.
“Stewart—”
“Got to get along.”
Colin took him by the arm. “Listen to me.” They came to a halt in the corridor seething with children. “Was he serious about writing that novel?”
“Good Lord, how do I know?” Sounding surprised, Colman disengaged his jacket from Colin’s grasp. “Doesn’t pay to take anything too seriously, you know. Life’s too short.”
“Look at it,” Evelyn said. “You can’t say it’s human.” It was Tuesday morning. She brought the child over to show to Muriel, pointing out the strange large ears, the wrinkled skin, lifting the flaccid limbs and letting them drop. “It cries all the time,” she added, unnecessarily. “You never cried, Muriel. You were as quiet as a lamb.”
Unable to bear the feel of the child’s damp skin, she crossed the room and put it back in the box. “It might be a changeling,” she said. “I’m not saying it is, but it could be. It didn’t seem as bad as this when it was born.”
Of course, she’d not been able to stay with Muriel all the time. Only a few minutes after the birth, she’d gone out to answer a call of nature. And any time, during the night or when she was down in the kitchen putting the kettle on; there was plenty of opportunity for a substitution to be made.
“Because I wouldn’t want you to think,” she said generously, “that it’s some shortcoming of yours. Not necessarily. You’re bound to be disappointed in it. Are you disappointed, Muriel?”
From Muriel, no answer. Head twisted away. No gratitude for her mother’s concern.
“If it is a changeling, you ought to give some thought to getting the real one back. The ones they take lead miserable lives. They look in at people’s windows. Their growth’s stunted. They’re always cold.”
Muriel took the feeding bottle and thrust it at the child once again. The ugly little face contorted, sucked a little, twitched away.
“It’s a simple matter, Muriel. You have to find some water, a river or something. Float it along. And sometimes they pick it up and give you your own back. Well, you ought to have something better than this after all you’ve been through. You’re entitled. I’m not saying it always works. There’s a risk, of course. A real baby would be nice, though, wouldn’t it?”
Muriel seemed dubious. She peered at the baby, as if she thought that, after all, this was her own, this was what she was entitled to. Did they have stores of them, she wanted to know, real babies stacked up by river banks?
“Fairly cunning, aren’t you?” Evelyn said in admiration. “Like to pull a little trick on them, would you? Well, you’re right, even if it’s not a changeling it certainly looks like one.”
Muriel had always been credulous. Evelyn had noticed that she believed most things she was told. I am perhaps halfway to believing myself, she thought, there are plenty of subhumans planted among the real men and women; you learn about them if you read the newspapers: rapists, vandals, people who make nail bombs. On the bus, she had been reading the headlines, and it made her feel queasy to think about it all.
“A real baby…” she said, her voice softening. “We could do the place up a bit. Decorate. Perhaps we could have television. Ah, you understand that, don’t you?”
She looked down at the baby, and saw Clifford again, sitting behind its eyes; behind the glassy layers the years peeling away. She picked up Muriel’s cardigan from a chair, and threw it over the baby’s face.
CHAPTER 8
Wednesday. They hadn’t slept. The incessant mewing kept them awake. At least it was too feeble for the neighbours to hear. “We’ll not put it off any longer,” Evelyn said. “We’ll take it up to the canal this afternoon. There’ll be nobody around. If they give us a nice little baby, Muriel, we’ll take it out in a pushchair, you and me. In the spring. We’ll go to the Parade.”
More likely, of course, the Welfare would catch up with them and take it away. They couldn’t be avoided for ever. Still, Muriel was entitled to a bit of hope. Except for the baby, the house was so quiet. No incursions from the spare room. Everything held its breath. Another lightbulb had gone. The weather was getting colder, and the house was full of draughts.
By now there was no more milk. Muriel had spilled a lot, wasted it, even drunk some of it herself. Evelyn didn’t feel up to another shopping trip. It had a strange effect on her, making her speak out to people like that, tell them confidences. Least said, soonest mended. There were people everywhere waiting to report you to the Welfare. Look at that Florence Sidney.
Yes, look at her. Evelyn stood at the window on the landing. What did Florence think she was doing, stand
ing outside by her dustbin and staring up at the roof?
Evelyn stopped at the door of the spare room and listened. She distrusted this unnatural silence. After a minute or two she thought she heard a faint stir behind the door, a grumbling, a low mutter of protest. I’ll fetch you a sop, something that’s belonged to it, palm you off.
“Well now, Muriel, are you ready?” she asked, going downstairs. “It’ll be dark before long. You carry the box. Sink or swim, we’ll have to see. We all take our chances in this world.”
“All right,” Muriel said.
They put on headscarves, and their thick coats. The baby seemed exhausted now, and had stopped crying; it didn’t seem likely to attract attention. Evelyn put a towel over its face, and folded over the flaps of the box.
The clock struck half-past three as they set out. It was one of those dank cheerless days so frequent in February and March; the ground was sodden underfoot, the trees dripping, and the sun a white haze low on the horizon. They passed no one on Lauderdale Road, no one on Turner’s Lane. From here a muddy path led across an open field. There was a faint scrabbling from within the box, and Muriel tightened her arms around it. She looked about her as she walked. It was months since she’d had an outing, of course. “Don’t dawdle, Muriel,” Evelyn said crossly. “At my age you feel the cold.”
On the canal bank, their shoes squelched in a mulch of old newsprint and last autumn’s leaves. There was no one about. There was a wrecked car rusting away, and broken glass on the path. The water was stagnant, green. A wind was getting up.
When Evelyn turned back the flaps of the box, Muriel thrust her hands out officiously, as if to pick the infant up. Evelyn slapped them away. She removed the towel and the sheet that had lined the box, put them aside, and lowered the box onto the surface of the water. She straightened up; her back ached from bending. In the last few minutes it had seemed to grow darker. The wind will push it along, Evelyn thought. They watched the box growing sodden, tipping into the water. “It must be moving,” Evelyn said. Then darkness sucked it away.
Inexplicably, Muriel leaned down and put a finger into the slime, as if she were testing bathwater. There was a kind of avidity in her face; no doubt she was straining her eyes. Evelyn gave her a clean handkerchief to dry her hand, then took it off her and put it in a damp ball in her pocket.
They waited on the bank for ten minutes. It was quite dark now. “It must be dead,” Evelyn said at last. “They won’t give you anything in exchange for a corpse. Well, I did the best I could for you, Muriel.” She folded the bedding and crammed it into her shopping basket, and took out a torch to light their way home. “Kick that box over by the wall,” she said, “we don’t want that.”
Muriel did as she was told, with an energetic boot from her sturdy leg. It will all be as before, Evelyn thought, as they trudged back across the field. As if Muriel had never been pregnant. Back to our old life. Oh, dear God. A sickly fear began to tickle and scrape in the pit of her stomach, then rose and lodged itself behind her ribs. The old life. What have I done? Her heart felt like lead, but molten lead, heaving and pulsating inside its coffin of flesh.
On the doormat there was another card from the gasman. Muriel rushed into the hall as if she had no concept of what might be waiting for her. Perhaps the changeling, come home already. She showed no fear. Sometimes Evelyn wondered at her.
“We’ll have our tea early,” she said. “We’ll have corned beef. I want to put my feet up. That walk’s taken it out of me.”
There was something she had to do first. She collected together the baby’s towel, its blanket, its feeding bottle and the sterilizing solution, and put them in a paper bag. She took them out to the lean-to, and thrust them into a pile of Clifford’s newspapers. It gave her a sour satisfaction. Back from the dead, are you? Your own daughter, in your own house. Damn you, Clifford; your handiwork hasn’t lasted long.
As she came through to the kitchen, she heard the doorbell ring. It was probably the gasman again, she thought. They’d not let him in the last two times, and he was getting impatient. Well, it could do no harm now, there was nothing out of the way for him to notice. Calling to Muriel to stay in the back room, she went down the hall and opened the door. On the doorstep stood the girl from the Welfare.
Evelyn’s jaw sagged. With a bleat of protest she stepped back and made to slam the door. But the girl put up her arm and held it open, a stronger girl than she looked, planting a booted foot on the threshold. She smiled implacably.
“Hello, Mrs. Axon. May I come in?” She was coming in, even as she asked, pulling off her woollen gloves as if she meant business. “I’m sorry to call on you so late, but I did come by just after half-past three.”
“I was out.”
“Yes. I thought you must be,” she said easily. “How’s Muriel?”
Evelyn felt she might suffocate with rage. “Who notified you?” she said fiercely.
“Notified me?” The girl’s face was blank. “But it’s just a routine call, Mrs. Axon. You’re on our files.”
“But you’ve not been, have you? Not for months. What have you come for now?”
The girl hesitated for a second. “No, it’s been a while. I’ve been very busy, Mrs. Axon, and—let’s be honest now—you don’t always let me in when I do call, do you?”
“Why should I?”
“I do want to help you, you know,” the girl said gently. “You’re not getting any younger, Mrs. Axon, and I know there are some things that Muriel can’t do for herself. You’re always hostile, but nobody’s against you. Nobody means to upset you.”
“I don’t appreciate these visits. I never have done.”
“I know that, Mrs. Axon. But I need to see Muriel, so let’s get it over with, shall we? Can I put the light on?”
“It’s gone. The bulb’s gone.”
“Can’t Muriel change it for you? She’s a big girl. You ought to let her do things like that.”
“Would you like a cup of tea?” Evelyn asked abruptly.
The Welfare woman stopped short, struck by the change in her tone. “Why, that’s very kind of you, Mrs. Axon. Actually, no thank you, but I appreciate the offer. I really do.”
She looked very pleased. She thinks it’s going to be a new era in our relationship, Evelyn thought. “My daughter’s upstairs,” she said sweetly. “In my husband’s old room. Just one minute.” She opened the drawer of the hallstand, felt about, and pulled out a key on a piece of string.
“You haven’t locked her in, have you?” the woman asked in consternation.
“She’s been wandering, Miss Field. Wandering off. I don’t like to think she might get into trouble, and how else do you stop a grown woman going out?” Evelyn made her voice pathetic. “I’m getting on in years, Miss Field.”
“Yes, I know that.” The girl was striding upstairs ahead of her.
“She hides from me,” Evelyn said. “She’s always up to something.”
“I told you always to call me if you felt you couldn’t cope.” Her voice had an edge to it; Evelyn fumbled with the key. “I can’t live in your pocket, Mrs. Axon, and I can’t read your mind.”
The door was open now.
“Where is she?” the girl said. “I don’t see her.”
“Hiding again. Under the bed, very likely. In the wardrobe. Go and fetch her out. She won’t come for me.”
She stepped into the room, her heels clicking on the floorboards, and wrenched open the door of the huge wardrobe. An empty mothball dimness within, but a space big enough for two. As she bent down to peer under the high old-fashioned bed, her dark hair slid forward over her shoulder.
“There’s no one—”
Evelyn stepped out of the room, closed the door, and turned the key in the lock. Smiling to herself on the landing, she imagined that she had heard the girl’s neck click back as she glanced up in surprise. She waited for the inevitable. Yes, there she was, banging on the door. Predictable as Muriel, and not much cleverer.
r /> “Mrs. Axon, let me out. For goodness sake, Mrs. Axon. What do you think you’re doing?”
The noise hadn’t attracted Muriel into the hall. Muriel had many faults, but curiosity wasn’t one of them.
Isabel fumbled for the lightswitch. At least there was a bulb in here, though it was dusty and dim, the strength you’d have in a table lamp; unshaded, it cast patchy shadows into the corners of the room. She looked around. Besides the wardrobe, there was a heavy chest of drawers, and the bedstead with its mattress inside a yellowing cover, and a solid bolster lying across it. The top of the chest of drawers was thick with dust, and there were drifts of it under the bed and on the windowsill.
She raised her fist and banged on the door twice, as loud and hard as she could. I might as well save my strength, she thought. By now she had realised that the room was very cold, colder even than the rest of the house. Even in her jacket and scarf she felt it, not icy, but a clammy chill like wet earth. Let me think, she said to herself, let me think.
She thought she caught a movement from the corner of the room. She swung round. Nothing there. Crossing to the window, she looked out. Worse luck, the room looked over the gardens. The light must be on in Evelyn’s back room, and so perhaps were the lights in the house next door; a dim glow allowed her to see a little. Could that be Colin’s sister’s house? Not that it would be any help, if it were. Colin’s sister was unlikely to make a habit of gardening in the wet February darkness. It had turned half-past five. Not even hope of a delivery man calling at this time. Besides, could she be seen from the garden next door? Why did I come, she asked herself angrily. That stupid, malign old woman. The daughter will have to go away, and I’ll have to make out a very good case to explain why I didn’t see the situation deteriorating. She knew why she had come, of course; guilt had brought her back. Guilt, and duty, and an inability to go on living with a set of stupid and groundless fears. Whatever Muriel’s problems were, a secret sex life wasn’t one of them.