The Loney Part 12

'On holiday?'

'Yes.'

'Poor you,' she said, as the rain started again.

She looked at us both and then turned back into the house.

'Come in,' she said. 'I'll see if he's left it lying around. Give Else a hand over the step.'

The girl smiled at Hanny again, hoping that he would do the honours.

'He doesn't understand,' I said.

But Hanny took hold of the handles and wheeled her backwards through the doorway and into a long corridor lined with empty coat hooks on which a smell of old, damp gabardine hung. There was room for little else other than a pair of wellingtons and an umbrella.

There were no stairs, only doors either side and one at the end, next to which there was an upturned plant pot for a telephone to sit on.

The rain came down hard outside and the hallway darkened. I had been right to think of the place as a tomb. The plaster had been left unpainted, the woodwork without varnish, as though it had been built and immediately abandoned. Its walls had never contained a family. No one had ever laughed there. It had a kind of airlessness, a heavy silence, that made it immediately unsettling. I've never felt it anywhere else since, but there was definitely something that I picked up with a different sense. Not a ghost or anything ridiculous like that, but something nevertheless.

'Wait here,' Laura said and went along the hallway to the door at the end where she paused to sort through the bunch of keys. She unlocked the door, there was a brief glimpse of a bare kitchen, and then she closed it behind her, locking it from the inside.

'What's his name?' Else said to me.

'Andrew,' I said.

'That's a nice name,' she said and smiled at Hanny.

Hanny smiled back and touched her hair.

'Don't do that,' I said.

'No, it's alright,' said Else, rearranging it back behind her ears.

She shifted in her chair and winced a little and breathed out.

'The baby's moving,' she said to Hanny. 'Do you want to feel it?'

She took Hanny's hand and placed it on her belly. He hesitated but Else put her hands over his and a grin spread across his face as he felt the baby kicking against his palm.

Laura came back out of the kitchen and then went to a different door, moving the keys around the ring until she came to the one she needed. She was about to go into the room when the telephone rang.

'Let them in here,' said Laura.

Else looked at her.

'Don't worry,' she said. 'This room is alright for them to be in.' And she went to pick up the phone.

Like the hallway, the room was bare and cold. There were no curtains, only yellow nets covering windows that were thick with cold condensation. The fireplace was boarded up and there were footprints in the dust where someone had walked in and out of the room carrying the boxes that were stacked against the wall. A porcelain doll in a bonnet and pinafore sat on top of one of the boxes staring at us. Hanny went over and picked it up. He smiled and showed me how its eyes closed and opened when he tipped it back and forth.

'He might have put it there,' said Else pointing to the battered desk in the alcove of the chimney breast. 'That's where he keeps the things he finds.'

I went over and looked through the various sh.e.l.ls and bits of gla.s.s and bone. There was a sheep's skull resting as a paperweight on a pile of brown envelopes and next to it was an old toothbrush in a mug. Leonard had evidently got halfway through cleaning off the green mould stuck between the sutures. I picked up the skull and looked into one of the eye sockets. The white worm of the optic nerve was still attached, though the eye and brain had long since been eaten or rotted away.

Hanny was sitting on a chair with the doll on his knee. The box next to him was open and he reached inside and took out an old encyclopaedia. I told him to leave it alone.

'It's alright,' said Else.

Hanny flipped through the pages, stopping now and then to show Else a picture that he liked. A matador. A mandarin duck. A magician.

The albino cat wandered in and jumped up onto Hanny's lap. He stroked it gently and then picked it up and pressed it to his cheek. The cat licked his face and then hopped down to Else.

'Thank you for bringing her back,' she said. 'She goes off for days sometimes, don't you?'

She scolded the cat and then kissed Hanny, leaving a smudged half moon of red on his lips.

It took me more by surprise than it did Hanny. He smiled and looked back at the book.

'Do you want to keep it?' she said to him.

'No, he doesn't,' I said.

'It's alright,' said Else. 'They're just old books. He's got hundreds of them. He never looks at them, but he won't throw them out.'

'Do you want the book?' I said to Hanny.

He looked at me and I went over and put it in his satchel.

'Take some more, if you like,' said Else.

'One's enough.'

'Please, she said. I want him to have them.'

'He'd rather just have his watch back.'

'Well, it'll be here somewhere, if you're sure Leonard picked it up.'

'He did.'

She frowned and c.o.c.ked her head to one side.

'Are you really here on holiday?' she said.

'Yes,' I replied.

'Why?'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean why come here? What is there to do?'

'There's the beach,' I said.

'Is that it?'

I shrugged.

'It didn't look much fun to me,' she said.

'Well it is.'

'What do you do there, apart from hide in the gra.s.s?'

'You wouldn't understand.'

'Wouldn't I?'

'No.'

'Boys' stuff is it?'

I said nothing. Her smile suddenly faded again and she gave a sudden sharp intake of breath and put her hands on her stomach. Exhaling slowly, she caught the expression of concern on Hanny's face.

'Oh, don't worry, Andrew,' she said, holding his hand. 'It's nothing. I've done this before. It gets easier the more you have.'

Hanny smiled and she touched his face and kissed him again. I reached into the box and took out a pile of other books and gave them to Hanny. He put them in his bag and went over to the desk to look at the sheep's skull.

I heard Laura put down the phone and then she came into the room.

'Well?' she said.

'It's not here.'

'Then I'm afraid you've had a bit of a wasted journey.'

'Is there nowhere else it might be?'

Laura lit another cigarette and shook her head. 'If it's not in here, I wouldn't like to say.'

'But it's my brother's. He wants it back.'

'I'm sorry,' she said, and then holding the cigarette in her lips, she dipped into her pocket and brought out a purse. She thumbed open the catches and took out a five pound note.

'Here. Buy him a new one,' she said, holding the note out to me.

'He doesn't want a new one,' I said.

Laura looked at me and then took out another note.

'Buy one for yourself as well,' she said, folding the two notes together and pressing them into my hand. 'Alright?'

I held the notes back to her.

'Isn't your husband in?'

'No.'

'When will he be back?'

'I'm afraid I don't know.'

'Will he be here tomorrow?'

'Possibly. It's hard to say. He's very busy.'

'We'll come back tomorrow.'

'I wouldn't want you to waste your time again.'

'It won't be a waste if Hanny gets his watch.'

'It's alright,' said Else pulling aside the net curtains. 'He's here.'

The rain was coming down in needles now and battering the roof of Leonard's Daimler. Water washed under its tyres and seeped away into the bracken. He looked at us standing on the porch.

Laura flapped open an umbrella and went down the steps to the car. Leonard got out and said something to her that I couldn't hear for the rain. She spoke back to him and then they both looked at us. Leonard hitched up the collar of his jacket and came stiffly up the steps to the house while Laura took a wicker basket from the back seat.

'I'm told you've lost a watch,' he said.

'Yes.'

'And that you think I've got it.'

'You found it at the beach yesterday.'

'Did I now?'

He lit up a stump of a cigar in his cupped hands.

'What did it look like, this watch?' he said blowing smoke out of the side of his mouth.

'Just give it back, Leonard,' Laura said quietly as she pa.s.sed him. 'Before the tide comes in,' she added.

He clamped the cigar in his teeth and withdrew a handkerchief from his breast pocket. He looked at us as he shook it loose and then refolded it into a square pad. Another long suck on the cigar and then he tossed it away and held the hankie to Hanny's face. Hanny drew back, but Leonard held him firmly by the shoulder.

'She's right, boys,' he said wiping the lipstick off Hanny's mouth. 'The thing you have to remember about the tides here, is that no one can say they know them. Not really.'