Silent Children Read online

  The Homeneeds store occupied most of a block of the main road. An assistant in an overall red as a brick and with bristling orange hair that stopped short an inch above his outsize ears sold him a can of paint remover and a brush. The lumpy plastic carrier practiced bruising Ian's thigh as he emerged into the sunlight, more of which the front of a bus to Pinner threw at him. He closed his eyes to clear them of blindness, and opened them to see Rupe Duke swaggering toward him.

  Though the pavement was crowded with shoppers, Ian saw only him. He was wearing more leather than ever, much of it displaying a rash of studs. He held his fists at his sides and jerked his face higher and shaped his mouth into an inverted grin, and stood in Ian's path. "Fixing your house?" he said, so monotonously it was barely a question.

  Ian didn't swing the heavy can at the other boy's face or at his crotch, he simply came to a halt. "What's it look like?"

  "Something need doing?"

  "You should know."

  "Who says?"

  "I do. You were there."

  "Who says I was?"

  His eyes were flat, and their dullness hoped to be kindled with violence, but it struck Ian that the question could mean one or more of the neighbours had seen Rupe breaking in. If they'd intended to tell Ian's mother they would have done so by now, and so they must think she wasn't worth telling. "You and me know," he said into Rupe's face, "and I'm going to make you know I do."

  "Try it. Go ahead, try it now. Don't dare, do you? I'm not some little girl you like scaring." When Ian walked past him, Rupe dodged around him and backed ahead of him, butting his head at him as though to invite the first punch. This wasn't the place, and so Ian was glad to encounter Janet from next door, wheeling a heaped Frugo trolley home and looking to him for help. He saw Rupe fall behind, sending a gob of spit down the side street after him, but he was more aware of the crowd through which Rupe had stayed with him—of all the faces that had seemed to be expecting him to maim Rupe, to live up to the reputation they were creating for him. He'd deal with Rupe all right, but he'd choose the time and place. Even Jack couldn't stop him from doing what so many people expected of him.

  SEVENTEEN

  "Adele, don't scream or anything. It's me. It's your dad."

  "Daddy, how can it be you? You're dead. You've been dead for years."

  "Not your real dad. Hush and look closer."

  "My God, it's you, Hector. You poor thing, what have they done to you?"

  "Wipe your eyes now. No need to feel sorry for me when I've come home. Nobody's had hold of me, don't fret. I did this."

  "How could you hurt yourself like that, Hector? How could you bear it?"

  "Because I knew I was only doing what I had to, just like always. It was worth it to be safe. None of the neighbours know your father's dead. Once they've got used to him living with you, he'll be able to go out of the house when he wants and lead a normal life."

  "You make sure you're careful, Hector. I thought I'd lost you when you fell out of that boat. I don't want to be losing you again."

  "I won't be going that far again, promise. Maybe you'll get tired of having me around the house."

  "Not as long as I live. You've been too many surprises for me ever to get tired of you."

  "I hope this one wasn't too much of a shock, old girl."

  "I couldn't ever be shocked by my old Hector."

  "Not even when he's this old? An old rag with too much hair and no teeth that nobody but you would want to look at twice, no, make that once. A scarecrow that's got loose, that's prattling away to itself and nobody wants to look it in the eye ..."

  He was indeed talking to himself as he limped into Cricklewood. Shoot Up Hill had turned into the Broadway, where a pavement-load of shoppers were doing their best to ignore him while children giggled and pointed at him. "That's all right," he cried, "let's have a laugh," too late to prevent one woman from yanking at her daughter's arm and cuffing her so violently about the head that the little girl's pigtails began to unravel. He jabbed his thinnest fingers deep into his ears, but even when the ears began to blaze with pain he couldn't quite shut out the child's howls, and so he dodged faster through the crowd, his lowered forehead driving at the heat and the wavering fumes of the traffic, his unwashed hair snatching at his cheeks, the rucksack jerking his undernourished shoulders at every step. He had to slow down or he would be home too soon—he would be home before he knew what to say to Adele.

  He couldn't believe she would refuse to take him back, but he still owed her an explanation. He'd never given her so much as a hint of the secret tasks he'd had to perform; she'd had enough on her mind with running the Haven. As he turned toward Childs Hill he managed to check his momentum and unplug his ears, whose throbbing had spread to his jaws. He didn't want to feel closed in with his voice, which had recommenced chattering to itself like a senile old man's—it could, since he wasn't one. "Adele?"

  "Hector?"

  "Don't look like that. I know it must have been a shock when you heard about the children, but I only kept it from you to protect you."

  "Like you were trying to protect them."

  "That's me. I knew you'd understand."

  "I'm not sure I do, Hector. You'll have to help me."

  "It started with Biff and how he suffered till he died, and then there was your sister."

  "Pamela? What's anything to do with her?"

  "It was her got you into caring, for a kickoff, her being a social worker and telling you how much was wrong."

  "She affected me right enough, but—"

  "You never realised how much she affected me, did you? You had to cover your ears sometimes when she talked about the little ones she saw, but I heard it all. I remember the first one I couldn't stand hearing about, the little boy with cigarette burns all over—"

  "Don't say it, Hector. I keep telling her I don't want to know when I can't do anything."

  "You see how it still gets to you even though he's at peace. He was my first, and I'm proud he was. You know, I hoped he'd be the only one I'd have to help, but Pamela kept talking about others that were as bad or sounded like they'd end up that way. I just wish the parents, not that most of them were even that, the bad lots that were arrested on suspicion could have stayed locked up after the police found out about me. That's the one thing I do regret."

  "Those people should never have been in charge of children, Hector."

  "Maybe nobody should, not even people like us. We ended up wishing we never had, didn't we? Think of all the people you have to look after—they used to be children. I'll bet all our money in the bank the ones I took care of would have grown up like them or worse. Children suffer too much, only nobody wants to know, and it takes a bit of courage to put a stop to it, let me tell you."

  "It must. I understand even if nobody else does, Hector. You needn't talk about it any more unless you want to. You're safe now. You're with me."

  He wouldn't be quite yet, however. Adele mightn't return from the Haven for hours. He could let himself into the house and make himself presentable. By now he'd passed under the railway bridge, and several men who'd alighted at the station were giving him rear views of their suits and hostile backward glances, obviously wondering what business anyone who looked like him had in their suburb. He mumbled incoherently at them and touched his forehead with two long-nailed fingers, and dawdled so as to watch the men out of sight before he dodged into the tree-lined street that led home.

  The links of an enormous chain clanked in the sky—trucks on the railway line—but otherwise there was only a fluttering of wings and a shrill chattering from the round leafy heads of the trees. In less than two minutes he'd made his way down the self-satisfied street to his gate, from which a narrow path wound away from the concrete drive and between tall thick rhododendrons to the wide pebble-dashed house. Once he sidled between the bushes he was hidden from the road and the neighbouring houses, but he crouched low as he extracted his keys from the rucksack. He limped into the spaciou
s oak porch he'd built and thrust the front door key into the lock. It wouldn't turn.

  He had been anticipating so vividly how he would feel to be back in his own home that he almost twisted the key out of shape before he managed to relax his grip. He pulled the key out of the crooked slit and eased it in again, and jiggled it with a gentleness meant to persuade it to work. It still didn't, not even when he slid it out a fraction in case that lined it up more precisely with the internal mechanism. His grubby skin was beginning to prickle and sweat, but he mustn't lose control—perhaps Adele was home and had bolted the lock for some reason. He was reaching for the bell push when his hand cramped itself into a fist that clawed at its palm. There were voices beyond the front door. There were children in his house.

  He shoved the keys into a clammy pocket of his trousers and backed away from the door. The voices had halted near the stairs. "You tell me where you put her right now, Baxter," a girl was demanding, to which a boy who could only be her brother said "Or what, Philippa?" Hector didn't want to listen—was afraid that any moment the girl might start to wail—but he had only just stumbled out of the porch when he faltered, having caught sight of the front room.

  It was no longer his or Adele's. The antique suite he'd bought from a customer at a fraction of its value had been ousted by some modern chairs, starved almost down to the wood. The reproductions of old London maps had gone, replaced on the walls by pastel landscapes that looked as though they had been left in the rain. The oak mantelpiece above the glassed-in coke fire had been occupied by photographs of a brother and sister, babies turning by stages into children as old as the scarcely teenage voices in the hall. The lock had been not jammed but changed. Adele had sold the house.

  He was shuffling backward fast when a bush snagged his rucksack. It felt as though he'd been arrested, not by the law but by his own mind. However much Adele had taken with her, there was no reason to assume she'd found his photographs. They must still be hidden under the floor.

  He couldn't leave them when he'd gone to so much trouble to produce them, fitting out a darkroom he'd told Adele was for Before and After pictures of his building work. He'd thought of an excuse. There was no point in pretending that he hadn't been looking forward to seeing them again, and besides, suppose the children in the house found them? They might be too young to appreciate the peace in them. The thought awakened the skills he'd learned, and he freed himself from the bush and limped swiftly to the corner of the house.

  The children were running upstairs, and arguing harder than ever. Any adult in the building would have intervened by now. On the back lawn a swing was swaying itself to a halt, and Hector was sure that whichever child had just left it for the house wouldn't have bothered to lock the back door.

  Hector made for it as fast as stealth would let him. Nobody was watching from any of the windows above the ten-foot hedge alongside the house. His kitchen was deserted and almost familiar; only the pans resting their mouths on the draining board weren't white but a cartoonish red. He grasped the handle of the back door and pushed it down just enough. The door yielded, and the next moment he was in the house.

  As he eased the door shut he heard the children chasing from room to room upstairs, the boy taunting his sister, who sounded dangerously close to tears. The threat of her distress snagged deep inside Hector, but he couldn't do anything about it except clench his face. He added to his fingerprints on several surfaces as he crossed the spacious sunlit kitchen—he almost laughed aloud at leaving traces of himself that nobody would ever know were there. He tiptoed into the wide hall, so carefully he didn't even limp, and used both hands to muffle the sly squeak of the knob as he inched open the door in the side of the staircase, then flattened one palm against the light switch to hush its click.

  The high broad space under the stairs was no longer the darkroom. The shelves he'd built were full of cloths and dusters and sprays, the scent of one of which caught in his throat. Coiled pythonlike on the lowest shelf was the detachable tube of a vacuum cleaner that was lounging in a corner along with two brushes and a mop, its grey tendrils glistening in a bucket. The mop and its companions were resting on the floorboard farthest from the door—the board he had to raise. He sidled into the room and coaxed the door after him, leaving it just sufficiently ajar to let him hear the children. He lifted a brush in each hand to move them to the corner nearest the door, and the plug of the vacuum cleaner toppled off one of them and struck the bucket with a loud clank.

  There was silence for an instant, and then a rush of footsteps upstairs. He was going to have to deal with the children—with both of them. It dismayed him to think that one would have to wait until he finished with the other, but he mustn't let that deter him. He'd taken a breath and was about to dash to the foot of the stairs when he realised that the voices had veered into a bedroom. They had been too busy arguing to hear him.

  He had to contort himself almost back to front to shift the brushes out of his way, and then the bucket with the mop lolling in it, and then the vacuum cleaner. The manoeuvre spread an ache from the base of his spine that made him grind his gums together. As he lowered himself to his knees, pain shot through his legs all the way to his creaking hips. He inserted a finger in the knotholes he'd enlarged at either end of the floorboard. The board rose from its niche with the faintest wooden groan, and he ducked forward, his shadow plunging into the dark beneath the floor. The treasure wrapped in cellophane was still there.

  He propped the board against the wall and lay full length on the floor, the toes of his shoes digging into the angle of the underside of the staircase. He stretched an arm down, the edge of the gap scraping his armpit, and hooked his fingertips beneath the album not much bigger than his hand. Soil gritted under his nails, and the cellophane felt as cold as any child's face he remembered touching. He was closing his thumb over the package when he heard the voices emerge from a bedroom. "Want a clue?" the boy said.

  "You tell me where she is this instant, Baxter, or when mum and dad come back I'm telling them."

  "Think of a fairy story I used to read you."

  Hector didn't know why he held his breath—held it harder as the girl let out a wail. "You've never put her in the oven. The timer's on," she cried, and bolted for the stairs.

  Hector made himself breathe out and in again, smelling earth. He lifted the album from the hole and dragged himself into a crouch. His hand felt energised by the cold and stillness of all the children's faces in the album; the energy was spreading through him like ice in his blood. A sobbing wail and a clatter of childish footsteps passed over his head and raced down past him to the hall.

  He stowed the album on a shelf and took hold of the edge of the door. She sounded as if she might never stop crying, but in a very few heartbeats she would. Once he had snatched her into his hiding place, she would know nothing while he went to find her brother, and Hector couldn't help a toothless grin at the thought that the boy might glimpse his sister vanishing under the stairs. He would come down to find out why, and—

  The boy raised his voice. "Don't be wet, Philippa. Sleeping Beauty was the one you always made me read. Your doll's in your bed. I can't believe you're such a prune you didn't see."

  The girl's footsteps left the stairs and took two paces toward the kitchen. It was too late for her, Hector thought: she must have seen his fingertips on the door. He was tensing himself to leap the moment she came abreast of him when she sprinted back upstairs. "She was never there before," she cried. "You put her in just now."

  Hector thrust the album into his trousers pocket, which was clammier than ever. When he heard the children race into the bedroom that used to be his son's, he tiptoed into the hall and through the kitchen onto the patio. He left the garden as speedily as he could, and headed for the park, eager to revisit the photographs that were rubbing against his thigh. Looking at them ought to comfort and restrain him, but he didn't know for how long. There were so many children in the world.

  EIGHTEEN />
  The photograph showed Jack waving at the lens and grinning. He'd been trying to wave the camera away until he was out of the shot, but it looked as though he were happily indicating the graffiti on the doors. It was a picture of "Horror writer in murder house," and the headline said MURDER SCENE DAUBED. Less than half the text consisted of what seemed to Leslie a grudging admission that her house, "a site of terror for children of the neighbourhood," had been vandalised, but then the reporter apparently thought the writer of violent horror novels who'd moved in was called Jack Lamp. "So may I know what your objection is?" Leslie's mother said.

  It occurred to Leslie that the question could at least as well have been addressed to Jack, who was perched somewhat awkwardly on the edge of the sofa. "Do you want this back?" she countered.

  "I've digested it, thank you."

  "You must be better at swallowing than me. Where did you find it? It doesn't cover your area."

  "We took out a subscription after you told us how unfairly you felt it was treating you. I hope that won't be another source of disagreement. I hope I'm allowed to care, since I can't stop being your mother."

  "I don't want you to."

  "Am I to get any help with understanding what's so wrong with the piece in the paper? Mr. Lamb, do you think it's untrue?"

  "Jack by all means, ma'am. I'd have to say it's kind of true, but it's like Ian said when the lady who wrote that was here, it ain't the words so much as what's behind them."

  Leslie's mother frowned at Ian, who was watching American wrestling with the sound turned low. "Ain't?"

  "That's my word, ma'am, not his. I don't really use it either. What he got hold of, though, this lady has a talent for meaning more than you can prove she said."

  "You speak as a writer yourself. I would still like to know—" She shook her head in Ian's direction and squeezed its features small. "Could you be an awfully good boy for me and turn that down? Or off, for preference. I should have thought there had been quite enough mayhem in this house."