The Nameless Page 4

  Ted had noticed his fallen jacket at last and was trying to beat out the dust, though it hardly mattered: however ------------------------------------com38

  impeccably he began the day, at lunchtime he was tousled; by now he looked as if he'd slept on a park bench. "And she's made no difference to your career," he said.

  "I was lucky. My friend who lives next door looks after her, picks her up from nursery school and so forth. I feel quite guilty sometimes--I'm sure I have it easier at work than looking after her. Why," she said, noticing how interested he looked, "is your wife going to have a baby?"

  "It looks that way. Helen came off the pill, with all these rumors about cancer. Well, I suppose I can work on my famous unwritten novel after the bratling's gone to bed."

  "You're pleased that you're going to be a father, aren't you?"

  "I'm sure I will be once it's born." He was scratching his eyebrows, which were thick enough to hide a frown. "Helen wants it, that's the main thing."

  "I'm sure you do as well, really. Look, I must be going. My friend's little boy is ill--I said I'd try to be home early and take Angela off her hands. Pressures of parenthood. It's worth it, though, believe me."

  Outside, the September day seemed even hotter. The Post Office tower looked jagged with light; Centre Point was a white-hot fire within a concrete mesh. Her briefcase was growing heavier. Should she leave the books with Ted? But she'd promised Angela that she would bring them home today.

  The underground was crammed with football fans, shoving one another to the edge of the platform, throwing empty beer cans onto the track, scrawling on the walls, converging on solitary women; a pack of them closed in on Barbara, until she stared them away. The atmosphere was thick as sweat, which the winds that rushed ahead of the trains seemed unable to move. ------------------------------------com39

  On the train it was worse. Even though she'd reached a seat, Barbara felt in danger of fainting. Football fans dangled like meat from the handholds, the rest of the crowd was wedged between them; beery scarves swayed into her face. The tunnel closed tight around the train, which rocked back and forth to its shrill monotonous clattering. The train had been as crowded on the day the lopsided woman had sat next to Angela.

  They'd been to Hamely's in Regent Street, buying toys. At Oxford Circus the crowd had rushed them onto the train and into seats. Barbara had been about to tell Angela to sit on her knee when the woman had sat next to the little girl, pinning her against the window.

  At first, once she'd glanced at the woman, Barbara hadn't taken much notice of her, in case she had seemed to stare. Though her skin had looked worn out, the woman couldn't have been more than twenty. Above a large nose red and porous as a strawberry, one eye had been lower than the other. She'd looked as if each time she came face to face with a mirror it sent her deeper into despair.

  Then Barbara had seen how the woman was looking at Angela. Perhaps she was on drugs--London seemed full of people who behaved as if everything around them were shifting--but the reason didn't matter: she was staring at Angela as though she couldn't look away, and her eyes were full of fear and loathing.

  Barbara had been poised to intervene--she had never felt so violently protective since Angela's first weeks-- when the train stopped at Green Park and the woman had noticed her staring. At once she'd struggled through the crowd and off the train. Or had she dodged into another carriage? In the crowd at Victoria Station, and all the way home on the train, Barbara had felt pursued.

  Here was Victoria, and she could leave the football fans behind. While she waited for the Otford train she scanned ------------------------------------com40

  the headlines: Manson trial continuing, submachine guns in the left luggage at the London Hilton Hotel. Perhaps she had needed to be shown that not everyone had to like Angela, yet when she remembered how the little girl had shrunk into herself, had hardly spoken until they'd reached home, she was furious again.

  On the Otford train she dumped her briefcase next to her and settled back with a gasp of relief. A nearby train looked like a hatter's shop; men were raising their bowlers to mop their foreheads, one was even fanning himself with the brim, before fitting them back into place. Soon her train had passed the Battersea Dogs' Home, the Battered Dogs' Home according to Angela. At Peckham Rye the tower blocks went trooping away over the horizon, leaving the hills clear for villages. Over Kent the sky was growing stormy, the color of twilight and rain.

  As she reached Otford she heard distant thunder, the sound of the hills shifting forward, pushed by the leaden sky. The train shrank, a toy that dwindled to a speck, and then nothing moved on the deserted station, on the lurid neon hills. It was as if the air had turned into transparent resin.

  She was halfway across the footbridge when she saw that the station was not quite deserted. A woman was standing on the London platform. She moved beneath the bridge as Barbara crossed, almost as though she was trying to hide.

  Though she couldn't define her reason for doing so, though she told herself she was being neurotic, Barbara hurried so that she could see the woman's face. She was nearly at the foot of the steps from the bridge before she saw that it was Jan.

  She had never seen her look so worried--Jan looked actually shrunken, no longer tall--yet this morning Nigel had seemed to have nothing worse than a cold. Who was ------------------------------------com41

  looking after Angela? She ran down the last few steps. "What's the matter, Jan? Is Nigel worse?"

  She faltered, for Jan was backing away from her, her crossed hands gripping her breasts. She must be bruising herself, yet she appeared to feel nothing. "Oh, Barbara, I'm so sorry," she said. ------------------------------------com42 ------------------------------------com43

  43

  Five

  Barbara woke hearing thunder, and couldn't recall what was wrong. At least the thunder wasn't ominous, for it was Angela's footsteps overhead. Still, Barbara should wake up--she hadn't meant to doze off in the chair--so that the little girl wasn't left upstairs by herself too long.

  Then the footsteps stopped, and she heard Jan muttering. The footsteps had been Nigel's, next door. Jan's hushed voice made her nerves feel raw, and at once she remembered why. Though it was weeks later she was still running from the station--but now she knew what she would find when she reached home.

  She'd started running before Jan could explain. The houses stood back from her beyond their long gardens, the leaves of the trees looked shiny with oil. Everything seemed oppressively close to her yet unreal, flat as the dark sky. ------------------------------------com44

  No birds were singing. Nothing moved except her, everything was trying to drag her back.

  Jan was panting beside her and babbling. "Someone went to the nursery school. He said he'd come because I was looking after Nigel. I was only a couple of minutes late," she said desperately, but Barbara scarcely heard her; there would be time enough for explanations when she was home, when she saw for herself what had happened to Angela. She stumbled across the Palace Field, along the path that was choppy with hoofmarks; the briefcase full of books for Angela bruised her thigh. The sky had filled in windows of the ruined tower with slate, had turned the stream gray as mud, no longer sparkling.

  Faces were watching her from Jan's house. There was Miss Clarke, who ran the nursery school, a dumpy middle-aged woman whom Barbara thought rather stupid but whom the children loved. There was Keith, bending down to speak to Angela--to some child, at any rate, below the level of the window--and there was the large fatherly sergeant from the cozy police station. The sight of him made Barbara's heart lurch, but at least he was in charge. Surely everything would be all right now.

  He emerged from the house as she squeezed through her hedge. His face smoothed out, grew professionally solemn and reassuring, as she ran across the large shared garden. "You mustn't worry, Mrs. Waugh. The county police have been alerted. They'll be checking all the cars."

  The dark sky seemed to rush a
t her, to flood her brain. "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "I tried to tell her. She wouldn't listen," Jan said to him, almost pleading. "Barbara, someone went to Miss Clarke's and took Angela away."

  Barbara was sitting on a garden chair and was unable to recall how she had got there; the garden was wavering. "Who let him take her?" she demanded. ------------------------------------com45

  "You mustn't blame Miss Clarke," Jan said anxiously. "There was no reason for her to be suspicious."

  She must be unemotional, she must learn everything to make sure they had overlooked nothing, she must talk so that she wouldn't be alone with her feelings. "How long was it before you told the police?"

  "I didn't know what had happened at first. Miss Clarke had gone by the time I arrived. She left as soon as the children went home. I had to look all over the village for her, and I had to keep coming back here in case Angela had turned up. Nobody had seen either of them. I thought perhaps they were together." She looked afraid to go on. "I found Miss Clarke after about an hour, and we went straight to the police."

  Beside her the sergeant looked perfect for comforting people and telling children off for stealing apples, but could he bring back Angela? "You said they would be checking the cars," Barbara said. "Have you got the number?"

  "I never thought to look." Miss Clarke had come out, pushing her spectacles higher on her nose. "I don't think even you would have, Mrs. Waugh."

  "Did you see the car?" When the woman nodded Barbara turned to the sergeant, who was at least not so nerve-racking. "Then you know the make, at any rate."

  "Well, no, they don't really." Miss Clarke's frown dislodged her spectacles again; one finger shoved them back. "I'm afraid I can't tell one make from another."

  "We know it's black or dark blue," the sergeant said, "and we think it's a station wagon."

  When Miss Clarke nodded defiantly, Barbara could have knocked her down. "How could you let him take her?" she demanded.

  "I think you might have done so if you had been in my shoes, Mrs. Waugh. He was very nicely dressed and ------------------------------------com46

  beautifully spoken. But if he really was a thug as you all say, how do you think I could have stopped him? I'm only one woman, you know, and I had all the other children in my care as well. In any case," she said almost triumphantly, "it wasn't like that at all. Angela went to him quite freely."

  She must be able to hear Barbara's nails clawing the canvas seat. "What did he say to her?"

  "I can tell you that exactly. `Hello, Angela, I'm staying with your Auntie Jan. Be quick, or you'll have me done for parking.` Well, you know yourself how narrow the road is."

  Barbara's teeth had begun to chatter. "It didn't strike you as at all strange," she said shakily, "that he needed a car to take her halfway across the village?"

  "I've never needed a car at all. Besides, it's easy to be wise after the event." Miss Clarke was growing angry with her spectacles. "I've seen you drive quite short distances," she said.

  If Barbara replied it might be by screaming, but the sergeant was pointing at a car that had just left the rotary. "Here are the county police, I think."

  Barbara managed to lever herself to her feet, though her arms were trembling. But the new policeman was alone, and had nothing to report. He was young and sharply efficient, and he seemed to disapprove of the way everyone had been allowed to scatter untidily outside the house. He took the sergeant down the garden to question him, then he came to Barbara. "Can we go inside your house, please."

  Once there he began to interrogate her. He didn't seem especially sympathetic, but perhaps he felt there was no time. She mustn't waste time by resenting him. Did she live alone? Where was her husband? What had been his job? Had he left her a substantial legacy? What was her ------------------------------------com47

  job? How much did she make? Was there anyone who might feel he had a title to her child? Could she think of anyone who fitted the description of the kidnapper? "Nobody," she said. "How could he know all the names, my little girl's name and my neighbor's?"

  "Presumably you call your daughter by name in the street. The names of adults are in the voters' list. It looks like a professional job. Maybe they reckoned that living in a place like this you could afford a ransom, or maybe they knew you could."

  Could he be envious? Now he was telling her about the kinds of phone calls she might receive. He wouldn't have her phone tapped for the moment, but she must call the police at once if the kidnapper made contact. He left to interview the others, and there was nothing for her to do but wait, nothing to prevent her from demanding of herself how she could have cared so little for Angela, nothing to hold back the shudder that was spreading through her entire body.

  The shudder had faded at last, leaving her fragile and hollow as shell, in constant danger of shattering. Perhaps she would have felt like that when Arthur died if she had had the time, but now there was guilt as well, guilt that pervaded her and everything around her, made them feel shabby, grimy, worthless. She was still waiting, and the worst thing was that she couldn't go driving in search of Angela; she dared not leave the house. For weeks she'd grown tense whenever she heard a car, she'd started violently the few times the phone had rung. Beyond the windows the sunlit days looked fake. Nothing was real but the unbearable silence of the house.

  When the newspaper slipped from her lap to the floor she picked it up absently. She'd become obsessed with the idea that the kidnapper might not contact her by phone, that he might place an advertisement in one of the local ------------------------------------com48

  newspapers instead. Suppose he referred to a memory which only she and Angela shared? Then the police couldn't tell that it was his message. She was terrified that he might harm Angela if he knew the police were involved.

  There was nothing she could recognize in the personal column. Suppose it was hidden in one of the other columns, the better to fool the police? She searched among the houses and secondhand cars until she realized that the only one to be fooled was herself. The Railway Children, The Trouble with Girls, Heart of a Mother-- She folded the newspaper quickly, before she could see more of the entertainments page.

  She stared at the headlines until they began to writhe as though they were burning. She felt as though her eyes were charring their way into her head. Sometimes she thought she saw Arthur trying to reassure her, in doorways or at the top of the stairs. No doubt he was a dream that her insomnia had forced into her waking hours, a hallucination like the child's distant voice that called "Mummy." Perhaps he always had been, she thought bitterly.

  She went upstairs to the bathroom, to wake herself up if she could. The first three stairs creaked, proclaiming that she no longer had anyone to waken. She wished the boys next door would make more noise--at least that might convince her there was someone near her--but Jan had kept them quiet all these weeks. Jan had been so helpful and considerate that before long Barbara had felt scarcely able to breathe.

  At first Jan and Keith had tried to get her out of the house, exhorting her at least to come next door and eat with them, until they'd seen how stubborn she could be. Then they'd kept visiting her with the relentless cheerfulness of visitors to a deathbed. Eventually she managed to convince them that she wanted to be alone, though Jan insisted on shopping for her. She could see how anxious ------------------------------------com49

  Jan was to be forgiven, but if Angela came home safely, when she came home safely, there would be nothing to forgive Jan for.

  In the bathroom she splashed cold water in her eyes. Water trickled down her reflection, but she had no time for tears. Everyone's sympathy seemed so final, because she sensed that everyone was trying to prepare her for something which was assumed to have already happened--but she wouldn't be prepared, for that was almost as bad as wishing the worst to happen, to put her out of her misery. So long as Angela came back to her, nothing else mattered. She would give everything she had. As if that though
t had started time moving again, she heard a knocking at the front door.

  At once her stomach, and then her whole body, felt raw as her eyes. She grew dizzy and afraid that she would be sick. Then she realized that she hadn't heard a car. It must be another dose of sympathy from next door: don't worry, try and take your mind off things, you won't help Angela by getting yourself into a state. Only when the knocking was repeated did she notice that it didn't sound like Jan or Keith or the boys, and by the time she reached the stairs she was running. ------------------------------------com50 ------------------------------------com51

  51

  Six

  When she opened the door she found Miss Clarke. Beside her was a woman who looked like an actress: makeup clogged cracks in her face below a shock of hair red as a setter's, silk protruded from her sleeves, layers of scarves formed a ruff at her throat, bracelets tumbled down her wrists as she raised her hands in a gesture of instant sympathy. Perhaps sympathy was her job.

  "I understand you aren't receiving visitors, Mrs. Waugh, but I felt I had a duty to help." Miss Clarke sounded as though she would listen to no arguments. "This lady can help you," she said.

  "Oh bugger off, you bloody old fool," Barbara just managed not to say, and realized how unpleasant she was growing. Wasn't she using Jan and Miss Clarke as scapegoats for her own sense of guilt? Could she afford to refuse any offer of help, when she would be refusing for ------------------------------------com52

  Angela? "That's very kind of you," she said. "Please come in."

  The scarved woman strode past her, overwhelming her with her perfume, and went straight into the living room, whose picture window overlooked the field. "There she is," she cried.