Somebody's Voice Read online

  Ramsey Campbell

  Somebody’s Voice

  FLAME TREE PRESS

  London & New York

  *

  For Priya and Mark –

  at least you can believe the dedication!

  CARLA

  My stepfather nearly killed my mother, and I used to wish he’d killed me. Now I’m glad I’m here to tell the truth, but first I want to tell some about my father.

  “My queen and my princess, your carriage awaits.” They’re the first words I remember. My father meant his taxi, and every Sunday he drove us to St Brendan’s and took us for a treat after mass. I think I was three when I learned the priest’s name – Father Brendan. I was amazed to think he owned the church, which was so much bigger than our little house that I couldn’t fit my mind around the idea. I dabbed at my eyes with my Sunday handkerchief, which was perfumed with Persil, and whispered “Mummy, he’s sad.”

  “Hush, child. You know you mustn’t talk in church,” she said, and then “Who is?”

  “The man at the front. Does he live here all by himself?”

  “He doesn’t live here,” my mother said and aimed an embarrassed laugh at the people next to her in the pew. “It’s God’s house.”

  “Won’t God let him stay in it? That’s mean.”

  “You talk to her, Bertie,” my mother said across me. “You’ve got the patience.”

  “Shush now,” my father said, “and I’ll tell you after we’ve thanked God we can go.”

  “Bertie,” my mother said as if she was tired of being shocked by him.

  Once everyone had thanked God that the mass was ended, we found the priest waiting outside. My father shook his hand while Father Brendan patted my head with the other one, which felt as soft and light as an empty glove. “Our Carla was having a weep about you,” my father said.

  The priest fondled me under my chin. “Why was that, now?”

  “Isn’t it your house? It’s got your name on.”

  “I’m not the saint, young lady. I’m just a man.”

  “And he’s got a house of his own, princess.”

  I still needed to find out “Who do you live with, then?”

  “Say father, Carla,” my mother said. “She’s still learning, father.”

  I didn’t want to call him that when he wasn’t mine. “She’s growing up like they all do,” he said. “My child, I live with God.”

  This sounded like living alone, since I’d been told God was everywhere. “No,” I persisted, “I mean people.”

  “I live with all my flock, and that means you, Carla. When you’re older you’ll come to me for guidance.”

  I might have asked more questions, but my mother was growing restless with embarrassment. As we headed for the taxi my father said “He doesn’t mind living on his own, princess. Priests aren’t like us, some of them.”

  Even then I didn’t know how much of that to believe, but my mother shook her head to warn me not to argue. “Mum for mum,” my father used to say if I didn’t comply. She didn’t even come up to his shoulder, but her size seemed to condense her fierceness. She was so angular that I once made a figure of her out of building blocks, and my father laughed at how much it looked like her till she gave him that shake of the head. As well as tall, he was broad enough for two of me to hide behind, and his features were so generous there was barely room for them. “When God was handing faces out,” he told me once, “he gave me extra for good luck,” but my mother shook her head at the joke.

  I don’t know where he drove us to after I’d talked to Father Brendan – maybe Speke Hall in Liverpool, where he told me a guide in a Victorian costume was a ghost, and I ran out into the sunlight because the corridor was so dark, though I was never afraid of the dark at home. Or perhaps we ended up in Chester, where he walked around the city walls talking what some people thought was Latin till my mother hushed him: “Dinus restaurantum fulltum plumpbum….” Or it could have been Freshfield, where red squirrels leapt from tree to tree and I saw one blaze up as the sunlight caught it. “Watch out or they’ll be setting the forest on fire,” my father said. At the end of these outings we’d drive home for my mother’s Sunday dinner, which made the house smell of cauliflower no matter what the meat was. As soon as my father finished mopping his lips with his square of Sunday linen, which my mother insisted only common people called a napkin rather than a serviette, he would head for the taxi office. “Forgive me, your majesty,” he would say while my mother sighed at hearing it again, “the people have need of your coachman.”

  He often made her laugh or frown or comment fiercely when he told us over dinner about his day at Reliablest Cars, a name he often turned into Really Not So Blessed. “You’ll know which words are real when you’re at university, Carly,” he used to say, though I was only a toddler. He’d tell us about searching for an address on a new estate where the streets all looked alike and the street names weren’t much better, or how he’d turned up for a fare to find twice as many passengers as the taxi would take and the ones who had to wait for a second car blamed him. Once he came home late because he’d driven twenty miles to return a purse with several hundred pounds in it a lady had left on the seat. “I hope she gave you a decent reward,” my mother said.

  “She offered but I wouldn’t let her. She’d already given me a good tip, and now here’s one for you, Carly. Never take from somebody when you can give, because that’ll make you happier.”

  “You could have given it to us, Bertie,” my mother objected. “She sounds better off than we are.”

  “We’re happy, though, aren’t we? You don’t want me turning into Limo Man.”

  “Of course I don’t want him,” my mother said as if he’d suggested she might be unfaithful, though she could just have been telling him not to perform his impression of Malcolm Randal.

  Mr Randal owned the taxi firm and drove the only limousine, and behaved as though this made him better than all the other drivers put together. My father used to imitate him by squeezing his face small and strangling his voice like air leaking out of a balloon. “Curtsy costs nothing,” he would say, and for years I thought his boss bowed at the knees as my father pretended he did, but it was how Mr Randal said a different word. “But rudeness costs us rides,” he would remind the drivers, it seemed like at least once a day. “Waste is a sin,” he would squeak as well, and my father said the receptionists gobbled their sandwiches for fear that the boss would think they’d had enough and finish off their lunch, as he apparently once had. He only picked up customers he thought were superior, leaving the lesser drivers to deal with calls he felt weren’t worthy of him. According to my father, he’d been known to turn down passengers if he disapproved of how they dressed. “Knees oughtn’t to be seen by anyone except your husband,” my father made him whinny. “They’re a sin.”

  My mother used to laugh at the show he put on, but I could tell she was being dutiful. That seemed to drive him to carry on till she protested “You’re giving me a headache.” I wondered how often his jokes did, if that was even what they were. When he found her vacuuming his taxi one Sunday morning before church, he cried “The queen mustn’t lower herself. That’s the coachman’s job.” I thought she would be pleased, but she said “No need to let the whole street know. You take everything too far.”

  I thought she felt like that about the presents he brought home. “What have I got for my ladies today?” he wanted us to wonder, and then he’d produce the answer from behind his back – a box of chocolates or some earrings for my mother and one of the metal puzzles I used to like, where you had to find the secret way to separate the twisted bits of metal. I
would hug him for the present and hug my mother too in case she felt left out, but also I was trying to make sure they didn’t argue. When they did it was nearly always about money – the way he spent it when he didn’t have to and didn’t care enough how much he made – which left me feeling our life wasn’t as secure as they wanted me to think.

  I was four when I heard him talking about starting his own taxi firm. My mother thought he shouldn’t try to compete with Mr Randal’s, which only made him more determined. I wondered if he made fun of his boss because he felt he could do better than Mr Randal. When he went to the bank for a loan they said he didn’t earn enough and hadn’t saved enough. “They only lend to people who’ve already got it,” he told my mother. “I’ll show them I can make it or my name’s not Bertie Batchelor.”

  I didn’t realise how serious he was till he started cutting our Sunday outings short so he could spend extra hours on the road. Before long he went to Reliablest as soon as he’d driven us home from church. Some weeks he was on call every day and still didn’t get in before midnight, because I heard my mother say so. She was worried working all those hours might affect his driving, which made me anxious too. I started lying awake and praying he would be safe, and sometimes I woke when he came in. Once I heard my mother greet him by protesting “Aren’t you ever going to be home?”

  “I’m doing this for us, Elaine. I promise you’ll like what it brings.”

  “Come and have your dinner,” she said like a penance she was giving both of them.

  On my first day at school I could tell his driving made her nervous. I couldn’t see anything wrong with it, and starting school didn’t worry me either. The school opposite our house wasn’t Catholic, and the one my parents chose for me was most of a mile away. I would be walking to it with my mother, but since this was a special occasion my father drove us. “You show them what you’re made of, princess,” he said and gave me a hug that felt as if he meant it to last all day. “You’ll have lots to tell us when we pick you up.”

  My mother’s hug felt more like urging me to do well. My parents stood at the railings while I found Bridie Shea, my friend from next door. They had their arms round each other, and my father was offering a handkerchief my mother waved away so nobody would notice her rubbing her eyes with her knuckles. “She won’t be our little girl much longer,” I heard her say. Bridie wanted to show me the glittery bag she was wearing on her back, and when I looked for my parents again, they’d gone.

  The day wasn’t much of an adventure. We all sat on the floor to be told what school was going to be like, and then we had to sort things by their colours to show the teachers if we could. We did get taken to the dining hall before everybody else came in for lunch, and the dinner ladies served us what they thought we should eat, to let us know how to ask next time. I made them laugh by asking why they were called dinner ladies when they were serving lunch. One of them said I was the first person who’d asked, but I didn’t know whether any of them were laughing at me. In the afternoon we were allowed to choose what to do, and I drew my father driving a limousine with Batchelor Taxis written on the side. Miss O’Hagan, the teacher, said it was lovely and I should take it to show him, and she’d make sure she asked for him next time she phoned for a taxi. When we’d all finished our activities she read us a book called The Little Red Car, about a car that took its driver safely home when they got lost in a fog, and that was the end of my first day at school.

  I ran out to show my parents the Batchelor Taxis picture. All along the railings grownups were waving to their children, but I couldn’t see my parents. I knew my father never liked to be late picking someone up, but that meant he had been sometimes, and I told myself he was making money from a fare that would help him own a business, though I wouldn’t have put it in those words. I saw Bridie’s father beckoning to her, and then I realised he wanted me as well. His face looked as if it couldn’t quite get rid of a smile because it didn’t know how else to look. “Carla, you’re coming home with us,” he said.

  “My dad’s coming in a minute. He’s taking me home.”

  “He isn’t, love. You can play with Bridie at ours.”

  The way his face seemed to be struggling to keep hold of its expression made me uneasy. “I will when he’s brought me home,” I said.

  “I told you that’s not happening. Don’t make a scene, now. You like playing with Bridie. You like coming to our house.”

  His voice had begun to sound as false as I thought his face looked, and I backed away from the railings in case he made a grab for me. A mother frowned at me and then at him. “What’s the trouble?”

  “He wants me to go with him,” I said. “I’m supposed to wait for my dad.”

  “Your dad’s Bertie from the taxis, isn’t he? I saw him bring you this morning.” I thought I could tell my father he was famous till she said “He carried my mam’s shopping all the way up to her flat and wouldn’t take a tip.”

  As I decided I wouldn’t relay her comments to my father while my mother could hear, the lady frowned at Mr Shea again. “He’s a nice man, your dad,” she told me. “You wait for him and I’ll wait with you, chick.”

  Mr Shea let out a sigh that came close to breathing in her face. “Please excuse me, but you don’t know the situation.”

  “I hope it isn’t what it looks like. You come here to me, chick.”

  “Just wait there, Carla. Bridie, stay with her,” Mr Shea said and reached for the lady’s shoulder. “Please just come with me and listen.”

  “Don’t you think you can handle me,” she said and fended off his hand with a shrug that looked disgusted. She turned her back as they began a conversation too low for me to hear over the babble of the other children. Soon she swung round, and I saw her looking for her own child, and wondered why she didn’t want to look at me. When she did she put on a smile her tight lips fixed before she said “Better do what he says, chick. They’ll explain to you at home.”

  “But I don’t want to go with him,” I protested so loud that several parents turned to stare.

  “You do as grownups tell you.” She grabbed her daughter and ushered her away at speed. “This gentleman is only looking after you,” she called without looking back.

  “Trust me, Carla,” Mr Shea said, “that’s the gospel truth.”

  Perhaps the mention of the Bible convinced me I should, because I didn’t think anybody who invoked it could be lying. I was anxious to be home, where at least I was promised an explanation. When I ventured out of the gates Mr Shea led Bridie and me to his car. As soon as we climbed in he said “Put your seat belts on.”

  “Dad, you never tell me to.”

  “I’m telling you now. See, Carla has.”

  I only had so we’d be home faster. I would have put Bridie’s on for her if she hadn’t heeded the warning in his voice, though I saw it puzzled her. “What did you do at school today?” Mr Shea said as he started the car, but I didn’t like how bright he was making his voice sound and besides, I wanted to save the answer for my parents. I let Bridie tell her tale, but she’d only got as far as lunchtime when we reached home. A police car was parked outside the Sheas’ house, and so Mr Shea had to park outside ours. The instant he stopped the car I released my safety belt, because it made me feel held back from learning what was going on. As soon as I climbed out of the car I saw my mother in the front room.

  Mrs Shea was with her, and they were sitting as still as the waxworks my father took us to see one Sunday in a museum. Their faces looked as if they couldn’t move or didn’t want to, but their eyes were glinting like the ones the waxworks had. When I ran into our tiny stone-flagged garden I saw their eyes were wet, and heard a man’s low voice. What was my father telling them to make them cry? I was afraid he might have lost his job or crashed the taxi, since I couldn’t see it anywhere. I thought of showing them my picture to cheer them up, but I’d left it in the car
. “Come away, Carla,” Mr Shea called, which made my mother glance towards the window. As she caught sight of me her face wavered and then tried to be more like a waxwork. “Go away, child,” she said, and louder “Go away for now.”

  She sounded like nobody I knew, which dismayed and frightened me. “Mummy, I want to come in.”

  “You can’t at the moment. Go and play with Bridie. Mrs Shea’s giving you your tea.”

  This might have sounded like a treat if her voice hadn’t grown harsh. “Daddy, let me in,” I pleaded, sidling alongside the window to find him. The man sitting forward on the chair the curtain had hidden from me was a policeman. “Where’s my dad?” I cried. “I want to see him.”

  “You’re never going to.” I didn’t think my mother meant me to hear this, but then she raised her voice. “For God’s sake go away, child, till I come and get you.”

  I knew taking the Lord’s name in vain was a sin, and hearing her do it disconcerted me so much that I fled. Mr Shea had unlocked his front door, and I followed Bridie in. He was about to close the door when I heard my mother come out of our house. “I’m going to see him,” she said, holding her voice stiff.

  Mr Shea tried to catch me, but I dodged past the door and ran to her. “You’re going to my dad. Please, I want to.”

  “You can’t, Carla.” My mother’s face seemed to clench around her eyes, squeezing trickles out of them. “Just remember him the way he was.”

  “But what is he now?”

  “He’s in heaven, child. You say a prayer so he will be.”

  I couldn’t say a prayer or even speak. I clung to her and pressed my face against her stomach, which smelled of cigarette ash that she’d spilled on herself. As much as anything, this departure from her usual fastidiousness upset me. I pulled my head back and managed to ask “Mummy, what happened to him?”

  “They’ve killed him,” my mother said, glaring at the officer who had followed Mrs Shea out of our house. “The police killed your father.”