Thieving Fear Part 11

She headed downriver. This would take her below the area where she and her cousins had camped, and perhaps where her characters would do the same. What might they see? Perhaps million-selling novelist Carlotta might think that the pebbles strewn alongside the foot of the cliff and at the water's edge resembled fairy treasure, jewels turned to stone. She would observe the green crewcuts of tussocks protruding from mud exposed by the tide and wonder what species of heads was buried there. Ellen found the notion disconcerting, and tried to concentrate on how Roy, an artist garlanded with awards, saw the beach. Besides noticing that the sand retained the forms of waves, he might well reflect that the countless scattered sh.e.l.ls were tomorrow's sand, along with those patches of cliff that weren't protected by foliage. Indeed, a breeze was troubling the bushes in their sleep, and Ellen thought she glimpsed windblown sand catching on sh.e.l.ls ahead. Could care-home owner Helen spot an object glistening, no, glittering among the pebbles? It might have fallen out of an eroded section of the cliff, but Ellen found that she preferred to locate it by the water, where a wave could rearrange the delicate chain of some unfamiliar and unusually luminous metal into a shape like a magical symbol. By rescuing it Helen would discover that a pebble was attached to it, or rather that a perfectly globular stone was a a stone so uncommon that you could gaze into its depths and never name the visions it brought to mind. 'Have that to show your children,' Helen might say to Hugo, British Headmaster of the Year, as she pa.s.sed him the charm.

Had Ellen said the line of dialogue aloud? She had to glance over her shoulder to confirm she couldn't have been overheard, but she ought to be concerned about the way her book was reshaping itself. The characters hardly sounded like people who would camp out on a cliff. They would have to be friends who met at weekends for a bracing walk of the kind she could do with taking more often. Roy and Carlotta would need to handle the magic stone before Hugo accepted it on his pupils' behalf. What effect did it have on the friends? Perhaps it granted each of them their deepest wish a so deep that none of them had ever put theirs into words. Or might they not be wishes, the unadmitted feelings that became altogether too real? She was driven to tramp faster, as much as the soft sand allowed, but she couldn't outdistance the idea. She felt as if her imagination were in danger of lifting a lid on it, calling it up from the dark.

What might her characters wish for? Hugo would be anxious for his pupils to behave, which meant he might secretly dream that they did exactly as they were told. Roy's dream could be that any work he imagined, no matter how impossible it seemed, would become real in every smallest detail. As for Carlotta, what would a writer dream other than to write the most successful book of all time? Helen's dream had to be that all the old folk in her care would stay healthy for the rest of their considerable lives. So much for the wishes, but how would they go wrong?

Hugo's pupils might grow absolutely obedient, unable to act without his direction, inside or outside the school. How unremittingly responsible for them would that make him? Carlotta's book would be so successful that everyone she met insisted on questioning her about it, until her home and her phone and her computer were so besieged that she hadn't a moment of her own. The unnatural health of Helen's residents might suggest to their offspring that they were refusing to die, and Ellen fancied that some of the children would take matters into their own homicidal hands. As for Roy, anything he visualised would become real, including whatever he feared. How would he stop this, if indeed he could? How could any of them control elements buried so deep in their minds that they might not even be able to identify the material until it was too late?

This was certainly an unnerving notion. It even made its author uneasy, down here alone on the beach. Perhaps she should save working on it until she was home; she had more than enough to take back to her desk. She could walk faster now that she didn't have to think. If she'd had enough of the beach, the nearest escape route was up the path where Charlotte had walked in her sleep.

This put her in mind of her own dream that night, of being trapped in a house that had smelled stuffed with clay a a house as dark as the inside of a skull and yet not dark enough for her. In the dream she'd thought any of the windows would be as bad as a mirror, but she was distracted from the memory by the creaking of the cliff beside her, or rather of the shrubs that covered it. A trickle of sand emerged, presumably dislodged by the same imperceptible wind, and she veered away from the cliff. She ought to be able to walk faster on the pebbles than on the sand.

The stony trail bordered the mud at the edge of the water. The mud was as gloomily brown as the exposed clay of the cliff, and scored with ruts that she could take for scratches gouged by giant fingernails as their owner had sunk into it. Rocks of the same increasingly omnipresent colour protruded from it, some wearing wigs of moss or seaweed, some warty with barnacles. The tops of a few had been hollowed out by waves and held water as if, Ellen thought, they were fonts for a primitive baptism or a more mysterious ritual. Did she need to quell her imagination until it was safely home? The calls of seabirds had begun to sound like the cries of children in a panic if not worse. They seemed oddly m.u.f.fled, so that she wondered if any mischievous children were lying low in the rusty hull of a boat at the foot of the cliff, but it was full of clay and rocks. Ahead of it she saw the rounded bulge up which the trail snaked towards the dark stained lid of the sky, and she was making for the path so hastily that she almost failed to notice a movement within the cliff.

There was a hole in the clay, about the size of her head and slightly lower. She had the unwelcome notion that a face had peered out of it before withdrawing like a worm. It could have belonged to an animal, since the hole went deep into the cliff. It could hardly have grinned at her, displaying a mouthful of clay. She tramped towards it, holding her shaky breath, to quash the impression. Something moved as she did, back there in the dark.

Was it a rabbit? As she stooped with some reluctance to peer into the burrow, its denizen advanced to meet her. It was no wild animal, and Ellen recoiled, almost sprawling on her back. The tenant of the burrow shrank away just as vigorously, and when Ellen risked ducking for another look she was able to distinguish that the face was her own.

The reflection wasn't flattering. Surely it was blurred by the dimness or by the surface that was acting as a mirror. Had erosion exposed some uncommon species of rock? Ellen crouched, gripping handfuls of thigh, until she was certain what she was seeing. A mirror was buried at arm's length inside the cliff.

She was able to discern most of the oval frame and some of the handle, which was propped among the subterranean roots of a tree or bush, but her image in the smudged gla.s.s remained puffily shapeless. She couldn't really look like that. To prove it she planted one knee on the yielding sand, which made her feel yielding too, and reached into the burrow.

She hadn't fully grasped the implications of an arm's length. She had to grope blindly inside the narrow tunnel, catching earth under her fingernails, until she could almost have imagined that someone was inching the mirror out of reach. Her cheek was inches from the cliff, which filled her nostrils with a heavy smell of clay. She wobbled on her knee, and as her shoulder b.u.mped against the cliff, her fingertips nudged a flat surface a the gla.s.s of the mirror. By stretching her arm as straight as it would go she was able to touch the handle among the bony roots. She strained her thumb and forefinger to dislodge it, and the bunch of scrawny objects shifted in response.

Ellen sucked in a breath that tasted of clay. The next moment she lost her balance, and the side of her face slammed against the cliff. Beyond the impact she thought she could feel the thing she'd mistaken for roots flexing itself, rediscovering liveliness. Perhaps it was preparing to seize her by the hand. It took her a dismaying effort to remember that she had another one a that she could use it to fling herself backwards. She barely saved herself from falling as her arm emerged from the pa.s.sage. She wasn't certain that she saw the five discoloured twigs move, but the mirror did. It tilted just enough to trap her face, displaying how deformed it was, not only by terror, if indeed that could be blamed at all.

She didn't quite scream. She released an ill-defined cry that made her lips feel as unhealthily swollen as her entire face looked. It failed to rescue her from her nightmare, because she wasn't asleep. The mirror tilted further, turning her reflection into clay, and for a crazed moment she was tempted to reach for it again, to examine her face until she was sure of her appearance. Or might the remnants of a hand adjust the mirror? When she realised she was waiting for this a waiting like an animal pinned by headlight beams a she floundered away along the beach.

She couldn't use the path up to the field. It pa.s.sed directly above the burrow, from which she could imagine an arm thinner than flesh sprouting to clutch at her feet the instant she strayed close. As she fled towards a road that descended to the sh.o.r.e, the sand kept slipping aside, twisting her ankles, until she had to hobble like an old woman. Eventually the beach grew firmer, but it was a trick: when she trod on it her feet sank deep into packed sand that was well on the way to becoming mud. She felt as if it were dragging her weight into her legs, swelling them out of proportion, except that they were no heavier or more unmanageable than the rest of her. Surely only her toil and the heat as thick as the low clouds were weighing her down. When she held out her hands as if beseeching an invisible companion, she was almost certain they were more or less the size and shape they ought to be.

Nevertheless when she finally arrived at the road up the cliff she was wary of encountering someone at the top a anyone at all. She didn't want to be near people while she couldn't tell the difference between humidity and her own sweat or as long as a thick smell of clay seemed to cling to her. The road was deserted, and she put on speed once it flattened out alongside the field where she'd slept. A hedge blocked her view, but the occasional gap let her see that the field was unoccupied. If anyone was hiding, so they should, given how their hand had looked. While Ellen wished she hadn't had that thought, she gave in to whispering the rest of it. 'Worse than me.'

Perhaps she imagined the m.u.f.fled distant voice a if it was both, how could she hear it? a but she couldn't doubt its message, which felt buried in her skull. 'No,' it said.

FOURTEEN.

The schoolchildren on the back seats of the bus found Hugh's ringtone hilarious. Even though they were sharing the kind of cigarette Rory had once offered him, they made him feel childish. Perhaps he ought to subst.i.tute the Frugo ringtone, the melody of 'We're cheap so you'll be cheerful'. As he cut the Sesame Street theme short Ellen said 'Can you talk?'

'What's going to stop me?'

'You aren't busy at work.'

'I won't be there for . . .' He peered at the two-storey houses packed together on either side of him. Surely he'd slept off his bout of disorientation, which must have been some kind of summer virus, even if he was glad that the bus stopped at the end of his road. 'We've got plenty of time,' he promised Ellen as well as himself.

'Can I ask you a question, then?'

'Anything,' Hugh said and held his breath.

'What do you remember about Thurstaston?'

This was so much less intimate than he'd hoped or feared that his breath emerged in a kind of tentative gasp if not exactly a sigh. 'What sort of thing?'

'I don't want to prompt you. Whatever comes into your mind.'

'Us all being together. I wish some of us could be more often.'

'Just some?'

'I see quite a lot of Rory. Not so much lately.' Hugh tried to detain his retreating pluck by admitting 'It'd be nice to see you.'

'Do you think so?' With a weightiness he didn't understand Ellen said 'You're kind.'

'I'm not. I mean, I hope I am, but I'm not being now.'

'Anyway, we're talking about Thurstaston.'

Hugh felt rebuffed if not rebuked. 'So what do you remember?'

'I said I didn't want to prompt you.'

'I expect we all remember Charlotte sleepwalking best,' he said and risked adding 'I wouldn't have minded if it had been me.'

'Why not?'

Her voice had grown sharp, and Hugh's was ready to falter. 'Never mind. Just a silly idea.'

'Tell me anyway.'

Hugh could see no way out except to speak. As his face continued reddening he mumbled 'I might have wandered into your tent. That'd have been my excuse.'

He didn't realise the schoolchildren were listening until they dawdled giggling past him and looked back from the stairs to aggravate his mortification. 'Go away,' he blurted. 'Leave me alone.'

'I'm sorry if you think I a'

'Not you,' he pleaded as the children piled downstairs. 'They've gone now.'

'Who? Are you sure?'

'I saw them go. Just kids being like kids are a well, we weren't, I don't think.'

'Listen, Hugh.' As he wondered what she was urging him to listen for she said 'I appreciate what you were saying before, truly I do, but this isn't the right time for me just now. I can't expect you to understand, but will you try and be patient with me?'

'Maybe if you told me what's a'

'Trust me, Hugh, it couldn't be wronger. Just let me say it's not your fault. It's nothing to do with you.'

He couldn't claim any right to feel excluded. As he uttered rather less than a word of agreement she said 'Any other memories?'

Hugh had no idea how she could use it, but he wasn't a writer. 'Just a dream I had when we were sleeping there.'

'You remember that.'

'I just did. I was in some house with no lights and I didn't know which way to go.'

'Where did you need to?'

'Out.' Even if this was for her book, he regretted having brought it up. 'Away,' he said.

His brusqueness failed to truncate the memory of knowing he wasn't alone in the darkness as thick as the clay it had smelled of. He'd sensed that any way he turned would deliver him into the clutches of whoever was waiting, so silently it seemed they'd given up the need to breathe. He was sure his outstretched hands would touch a face, if it was recognisable as such. Perhaps it would bare its teeth in delight, if they could be exposed any further, and widen its eyes as his fingertips groped at them, although that was a.s.suming it still had a 'I'm there,' Hugh gasped.

'Where? Hugh, where are you?'

'My stop,' he said and struggled to laugh at the misunderstanding, not least to overcome the panic she seemed to have communicated to him. If this was how it felt to be as imaginative as his cousins and his brother, he should be glad that he ordinarily wasn't. He had never looked forward so much to his supermarket work, the more mechanical the better. He clattered downstairs just in time to halt the bus beside a shelter surrounded by the hailstorm of its gla.s.s. 'I'm off,' he said.

'Should I let you go?'

Beyond the concrete path into the retail park Frugo was visible across hundreds of emptied cars. 'Not unless you want to,' he said. 'I've got minutes yet.'

'I haven't upset you, have I? I wouldn't want to.'

'It's like you said, there'll be a better time. You can tell me when.'

'I meant about your bad dream.'

'Forget it,' Hugh said and glanced around to see that n.o.body was observing how mottled his face had grown as he struck out across the car park. 'I found out something for you,' he managed to admit.

'Will I like it?'

'I don't know.' He had the sudden wholly irrational notion that he should invent a discovery rather than tell her the real one, but of course he was incapable of any such invention. 'Where we all slept,' he said, 'it's the same.'

'I should think so, but I don't think Rory would.' He couldn't tell if she was disappointed in him or with the information as she added 'Does it make much difference either way?'

There was only one, Hugh thought, and that was straight ahead. The gaps between the cars didn't const.i.tute a maze, or if they did he could see his route. He oughtn't to feel distracted by saying 'It's been like that for, I don't know, a hundred years?'

'Watch where you're going, son,' a driver apparently felt ent.i.tled to protest as he backed a van almost too large for its parking s.p.a.ce into Hugh's path.

By this time Ellen was repeating 'Like what, Hugh?'

'The cliff where we were, it was the same shape eighty years ago. All the rest has changed but it's still sticking out like there's something inside it. You'd wonder what's keeping it that way.'

The van hadn't made him late for work, but he kept an eye on the supermarket while he dodged around car after parked car. He was so intent on it that he had to make an effort to grasp Ellen's question. 'What are you suggesting?' she hardly seemed to want to know.

'Will the rock be harder? That's just me being unimaginative. I'm sure you can think of something, I don't know, more magical.'

'It isn't rock, it's clay.' Quite as sharply she said 'How do you know about it?'

'Found it on the Internet for you.' At last he was clear of the labyrinth of parked cars. 'I've got to go in now,' he said.

He sounded like a child summoned by a parent. Had Tamara and Mishel overheard him? They'd just emerged blonder than ever from Hair You Are. As they sauntered to the nearest Frugo entrance Ellen said 'Let's speak again soon. Shall I let you know how my book goes down with Charlotte?'

Hugh found her turn of phrase inexplicably ominous, but he said 'I'd love you to.'

The girls shared a glance about this and loitered as he made for the entrance, pocketing his mobile. 'Girlfriend, Hugh?' Tamara said.

If he hadn't been struggling to forget his dream he mightn't have mumbled 'Are you offering?'

The girls produced identical momentary frowns. 'Justin warned you about that,' said Mishel.

'Stop doing it to me, then.'

'She was asking if you'd got your girlfriend there.'

'Might be.'

'How long have you been with her, Hugh?' Tamara said.

'I haven't.' To fend off their instant sympathy he said 'I've known her a lot longer than I've known you.'

'Lucky her,' Tamara said without quite winking at Mishel. 'Have you told her how you feel about her, Hugh?'

They were pa.s.sing the checkout desks. Hugh might have terminated the interrogation by taking a longer route to the staff quarters, but the ground floor seemed bewilderingly crowded, not least with children for some reason out of school. He couldn't escape Mishel's contribution to the survey. 'Don't you want her knowing you care?'

'She'd know how he feels just from looking at his face. Ooh, I don't know what kind of feeling that's supposed to be, though.'

Was it betraying more nervousness than he preferred to understand? He trailed the girls to the Staff Only door beside the shelves of Frugogo energy drinks. Beyond it a concrete pa.s.sage almost featureless except for staff notices all ent.i.tled GO FRUGO! led past the staffroom to the toilets. As she pushed open the door marked female, Mishel turned on Hugh. 'Why are you following us now?'

'I have to go as well.'

'Not in here you don't,' she said while Tamara retorted 'That's right, away from us.'

As they stalked into female he hurried past to male. Opposite the door a concrete wall sported oval urinals, out of sight from the corridor, while the wall at right angles was occupied by cubicles green-eyed with vacant signs. The urinals faced a row of sinks beneath a mirror, and Hugh glimpsed his reflection as he crossed the room. That must be why he had to overcome an impression that someone was there with him or at any rate uncomfortably close, unless it was his awareness that the girls were next door. He couldn't hear them, and surely they couldn't overhear his trickling in the porcelain. The fluorescent lights hummed as if trying to display nonchalance on his behalf. He zipped up his flies, although he felt nervous enough for the action to seem premature, and headed for the sinks. He saw his reflection turn to face him, and at once he had no idea which way either of them had turned.

He was straight ahead, but that was no help. The exit was to the left or right, whichever contained most of the maddeningly monotonous hum, although how could that be true in the mirror as well? He could see the door twice, and he only wished that were twice as helpful. He s.n.a.t.c.hed his hands back from a gush of aggressively hot water and sidled alongside his distressed reflection to rub them under the snout of the hand dryer. The machine was still exhaling without having stopped for breath when he heard the girls emerge into the corridor. At once, in a panic that felt as if a hole had opened under his guts, he realised that only the girls' banter had prevented him from grasping that unless he'd followed them into the staff quarters he wouldn't have known which way to go.

He lurched towards their voices and into the corridor. Mishel emitted more of a gasp than he quite believed was genuine, and Tamara said 'Don't bother trying to scare us.'

'n.o.body needs to be scared,' Hugh did his utmost to believe.

'Why are you wandering after us now?' Mishel demanded.

'I have to go to work too, haven't I?'