Книга - Twenty-Four Hours

Twenty-Four Hours
Margaret Mahy


Compelling drama in which 17-year-old Ellis comes to terms with the meaning of death…Ellis is an ordinary 17-year-old; someone who’s planning to finish school and go to university like any other teenager. The difference is that four months ago, his best friend Simon killed himself. Still – that was four months ago. Ellis has now ‘got over it’.Except, of course, he hasn’t. Returning to his home town, he gets drawn into a situation in which the ‘old’ Ellis would never have become embrangled. He gatecrashes a party and persuaded to ‘rescue’ two sisters – Ursa and Leo, driving them back to the Land of Smiles – the ex-motel where they live.From that moment on, nothing is the same again. The story is narrated hour-by-hour, as Ellis packs a life-time of experiences into the next twenty-four hours. Giving in to high spirits and booze, Ellis wakes next morning in a strange bed, with a stonking hangover and a shaven head! He learns that a child has been kidnapped, and is persuaded to help in her rescue…This is a bizarre, surreal and powerful novel in which the reader is taken on the same roller-coaster ride as Ellis.









TWENTY-FOUR HOURS

MARGARET MAHY










Contents


Cover (#u8e54bd92-3b95-5096-b1ff-15f15ad5bb50)

Title Page (#ub807994e-79a4-5b79-840c-d0d8a8a3416a)

Dedication (#u432696b4-9bfc-5581-8eb8-19f66a536873)

Part One (#ue888194b-c7cd-5d9a-8f67-7d77e45abad3)

5.10 pm – Friday (#u6fbea44a-b2ba-5c8c-8ad0-efbf76fa2d83)

5.20 pm – Friday (#uf13ac0cf-a4d2-52a5-a387-f3405867ac73)

5.50 pm – Friday (#u0739cec1-fcba-57ba-bab2-5270d4b44230)

6.30 pm – Friday (#ubb3f0744-4226-546e-ae4a-4c58b6d1d3c9)

6.55 pm – Friday (#ufc9c0b01-e919-5b2d-9f54-0c83ec7534ba)

7.30 pm – Friday (#u303a32db-1c41-56cc-9c52-3aa2736ab93e)

8.10 pm – Friday (#u0e167c2c-3249-5182-aa67-9cf6b761f1c7)

8.25 pm – Friday (#ua24b7412-475b-51ce-b7ae-4cc3deb71db9)

9.30 pm – Friday (#litres_trial_promo)

Time Stops (#litres_trial_promo)

Part Two (#litres_trial_promo)

9.00 am – Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

10.00 am – Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

10.20 am – Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

10.30 am – Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

10.40 am – Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

11.10 am – Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

11.40 am – Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

12.40 pm – Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

1.10 pm – Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

3.10 pm – Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

Part Three (#litres_trial_promo)

4.00 pm – Saturday (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




Dedication (#uaeedd6f3-7b5e-5d6b-8bc4-41c0862a23b3)


TO CRAIG

In celebration of the number-one hair-cut.

MM



PART ONE (#ulink_fb0a09cf-cbe7-50b2-8ba0-5510af2e509e)




5.10 pm – Friday (#ulink_09030619-a544-5a2c-a422-3c9d7ead8892)


Home. Home from school. Holidays. And here he was – out on the town, but on his own. As he walked through the early evening, bright with midsummer light, Ellis saw the city centre glowing like a far-off stage. But, although the sunlight was finding its way so confidently between hotels and banks, shops and offices, the city was threatened by a storm. To the north, between glassy office buildings, he could see bruised clouds, polished by a lurid light, rolling across the plain towards the town.

Most of the other people in the street were going in the same direction as Ellis, probably making for the cinema complex that dominated the eastern end of the city centre. He looked with interest at the few faces coming towards him, half-hoping to see someone he recognised. However, as yet, he had not seen a single person he knew.

I can always go to a film, he thought, and patted his back pocket as if the money there was a good-luck charm.

The traffic lights changed. Glancing to the left as he crossed the street, Ellis saw the city council had installed new street lamps since he had last walked that way. Retreating, like precisely spaced blooms in a park garden, they rose on long green stems which curved elegantly at the top, then blossomed into hoods of deep crimson. Foley Street, announced brass letters on a black background. At the far end of the street he saw the old library he had visited regularly as a child, bracing its stone shoulders against a constricting cage of platforms, steps and orange-coloured piping. Wide dormer windows looked towards Ellis from under deep, dipping lids, tiled with grey slate. Several streets away, a new library, complete with a computerised issue system and a much-praised information-retrieval programme, would no doubt be working busily. But the old building was still there, transformed into apartments – one of them owned, he suddenly remembered, by country-dwelling friends of his parents. He guessed, looking at the scaffolding, that the company which had bought the old library must be adding a third floor to the original two.

More changes, thought Ellis a little ruefully, although he also wanted the city to surprise him in some way – to put out branches … break into leaf … burst into gigantic laughter.

Free, thought Ellis, and he might have skipped a little if it had not been such a childish thing to do. Well, not quite free. University next year – OK! OK! That was decided. But, after all, the university had a drama society and a proper theatre, so they must need actors. And he would have adventures, moments of revelation, sex, even love. The coming year, he decided, would be a year of transformation. I’m going to be an actor, said the voice in the back of his head. I really am!

“I am going to be an actor,” Simon had also declared last year, casually but quite definitely. And then, later … “Forget acting! I’m into sex these days,” he had said when Ellis, excited by the prospect of the Shakespeare Fantasia planned for the end of the year, had auditioned successfully for the part of Claudio in a scene from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. But, only two weeks after saying this, Simon had killed himself. He had, after all, been into something much more dangerous than sex. He had been in love, and love had failed him.

Somewhere behind him in Foley Street a clock struck the quarter-hour with a soft but significant chime. “Now!” that final fading stroke seemed to declaim. “It begins now!” And, as it faded, almost as if its echo had triggered an event in the outside world, Ellis caught sight of himself in a looking-glass, framed by blue tiles, linking two shops. He saw, before he strode past, the long oval of his face smiling out of a halo of curls. Not bad! he thought, glad that the quickly-moving reflection had seemed to belong to someone so much older than seventeen. Yet, almost at once he felt discontented, for he did not want to look quite so wholesome – quite so new.

But now, out of nowhere it seemed, a huge wind came funnelling down the street towards him. Abruptly, the air whirled with leaves and rubbish, some of which danced higher and higher, lifting over the street lights, zigzagging, twisting, before tumbling away across roofs on the opposite side of the road. One piece of screwed-up red paper spun upwards as if it were about to go into orbit. A blackboard, advertising café meals, tumbled towards him like a square wheel, first one corner and then another striking the pavement. Ellis dodged it. The wind punched his face, at the same time stinging him with grit. Angry voices filled his ears, and a gliding figure, apparently lifted by the storm, leaped from the pavement on to a narrow empty strip designated as a bus stop. The skater swung so dangerously close to the line of slow-moving traffic that one or two drivers tooted their horns in outrage, and a passenger lowered his window to shout angrily, “What do you think you’re playing at, you bloody fool?” But the gliding man simply flung out his left arm, in a gesture both graceful and confident, and extended a single, insulting finger.

Another gust of wind tilted advancing pedestrians back on their heels, and the skater, perhaps taking advantage of their uncertainty, jumped from bus-stop space to pavement. Suddenly, Ellis and the skater were face to face.

For the first time that evening Ellis had recognised someone, and was sure that he, too, was recognised. The skater’s expression changed. Sliding past Ellis, he turned into a shop doorway, spun around, and then darted back again. He seemed to move without any effort at all … a young man in an ancient camel-hair coat, both elbows worn through, one of them blackened as if the wearer had casually leaned among red-hot coals.

A name came into Ellis’s head. Jackie, wasn’t it? Jackie Kettle? No! Not quite! A voice from the past spoke softly in his memory. “Funny name, isn’t it? It’s a fair cow.” Jackie Cattle! That was it. Jackie Cattle.




5.20 pm – Friday (#ulink_f19e7482-5bab-58a5-b11c-1095e3c46c6d)


“Yay!” Jackie was shouting, circling Ellis. “How’s it going?”

“Jackie!” said Ellis, proud of remembering the name and anxious to reassure its owner. “Oh, well! OK! You know!” He waggled his fingers, vaguely suggesting that things were just what anyone might expect them to be … a bit of this, a bit of that, good and bad mixed.

Raised unnaturally high on his roller blades, Jackie was staring down at Ellis with friendly interest, but Ellis could easily see that something indefinable was going on behind those beaming, blue eyes … some sort of guess was being made. He knew he was being assessed. And now he remembered that, years ago, Jackie Cattle, a confused victim for the most part, touched by some oddity that Ellis had never really defined, had also had moments when he could seem quite sinister.

So he gave a hasty smile – a nod, a shrug – half-offering to move on. But Jackie smiled back at him – a smile bright with unconvincing innocence, revealing a clownish gap between his two front teeth. He grabbed Ellis’s arm.

“Long time no see, mate!” he shouted, the wind snatching at his words.

“I’ve been away,” Ellis shouted back.

“What? Inside?” Jackie asked with a sort of confused incredulity. “Jail?” Then he flung up his hands in a gesture of apology. “No! Of course not! Not you! Sorry!” All the time his eyes were flitting over Ellis with the attentive curiosity of someone planning to paint a portrait from memory. “So! Where the hell have you been?”

Automatically, Ellis was piecing together a memory portrait of his own. Before he had been sent to St Conan’s he had attended a small state school across the road from his home. Jackie Cattle had also been a pupil there, a boy at once exotic and pathetic, a year ahead of Ellis and old in his class. He must be nineteen by now, thought Ellis. Twenty, perhaps. In some ways he hadn’t changed much. He still had the same round, childish face, the same heavy-lidded eyes, the same sly, sideways smile.

“School!” Ellis yelled into the storm without thinking.

“School!” exclaimed Jackie, bending forward as if he could hardly believe what he was hearing. He sounded much more astonished at the thought of school than he had been at the possibility of jail.

“I’m out now,” said Ellis. “What about you?”

“Cross my heart, you wouldn’t want to know,” said Jackie, pulling a face.

He certainly looked disreputable – had always looked disreputable – and yet, for all that, he spoke with an accent that was almost elegant. His family had been well-to-do, hadn’t they? Adults had exclaimed over the contrast between Jackie and a clever, older sister. Anyhow, the contrast between the tattered camel-hair coat and the smooth way of speaking made Jackie hard to place. Ellis found he was not quite sure how to talk to him.

“Oh, well, see you around!” he said, knowing already that Jackie was not going to let him walk away. And sure enough, Jackie’s grip on his arm tightened a little.

“No! No, wait!” he cried, while his eyes ran over Ellis yet again with that same persistent speculation. “What are you rushing off for? You’re not meeting a girl or anything, are you?”

“No,” said Ellis a little aggressively, because Jackie had sounded so completely certain that Ellis would not be meeting a girl.

Jackie beamed.

“Well, that’s OK then! Let’s mingle! Be part of café society. I’ll buy you a beer.”

Why not? thought Ellis. I might as well find out what’s going on.

“Why not!” he said aloud. “I’ll pay,” he added, remembering the money in his back pocket.

“Even better!” said Jackie fervently. He twitched his battered coat into place as carefully as if it had been freshly cleaned and pressed and there was some reason for looking after it. Then he pointed backwards over his shoulder with his thumb.

“Follow me,” he said, spinning on the spot as he extended his arm, pointing dramatically. They moved off together, Jackie gliding at Ellis’s right shoulder like an escorting angel.

“So! School!” he reminisced. “School!” he repeated as if he were mentioning something so peculiar he couldn’t quite believe in it any more. “And what now? Got a job lined up?”

“I’m going to be an actor,” said Ellis, feeling he could safely practise this announcement on someone like Jackie. It came out well – crisp, assured and unapologetic.

“Crash hot!” said Jackie, though Ellis suspected Jackie would have said the same thing if he had announced that he was planning to be an accountant.

“I only got home last night. I’m just getting used to things again,” Ellis added quickly.

“Hey, you never get used to things,” Jackie said. “Take it from one who knows!” He had one of those faces that flared into life when he smiled. The little gap between his front teeth flashed – a flash of darkness. Ellis tried to imagine a gap-toothed Hamlet. Why not? There weren’t any orthodontists in Shakespeare’s day. For all that, he found he couldn’t quite imagine Hamlet with a gap in his front teeth. “Why did your parents send you away to school?” Jackie asked. “Were they trying to get rid of you, or what?”

“It was my dad’s old school,” said Ellis. “He loved it there, and he thought I would, too.”

“I’d have hated it,” declared Jackie with complete certainty.

“It was all right,” said Ellis.

The wind flung fistfuls of rain in their faces, drops flying towards them like transparent bullets.

“OK! Swing right!” Jackie commanded. “In here.”

A couple of minutes later Ellis was sitting at a table in a café bow window, with an oblique view of the city centre. Because it was so well lit, and yet a little distant, he was teased again by the idea that he was looking on to a stage, and that someone was busily operating a wind machine in the wings.

Jackie slid back from the bar where he had been talking in a familiar way with a barman. He was carrying two short, brown bottles of lager, a glass upended on top of one of them, and a bowl of mixed nuts and potato chips which he passed to Ellis. Then he slumped into his chair and put the bottle to his mouth, sensuously kissing its brown lips. Ellis put the glass to one side and drank from the bottle, too.

“Saves the washing-up,” he said.

Jackie grinned, his grin hyphenated by darkness. “So, let’s just watch the world go by for a minute or two,” he said. “Then, if you like,” he added with a slyness that was not intended to deceive, “we can take off to a party I know about. Well, we can if you’ve got wheels. Bigger wheels than mine, that is,” he added, glancing down at his skates.

“Oh, I see,” Ellis replied with satisfying irony. “You’re not just – you know – being nice!”

“No way, mate!” exclaimed Jackie indignantly. “This is straight-out exploitation. Trust me!”

“Suppose I don’t have a car?” Ellis asked. “What’ll you do? Skate to the party with me running beside you?”

“But you have got a car,” said Jackie. “I took one look at you and I just knew! ‘Now, there’s a man with a car,’ I said to myself, and I was right, wasn’t I?”

He spoke drowsily, almost absent-mindedly. But there was something far from sleepy moving in the eyes behind those heavy lids.

“It’s my mother’s car,” said Ellis. “I’m supposed to be home in …” he looked at his watch “… in about a hour.”

“Did you promise?” asked Jackie.

“Well, I didn’t exactly promise …” said Ellis.

Jackie relaxed. “Thank God,” he said. “You really frightened me then because you’re probably one of those pricks that keep their promises. It would have ruined everything.”

“What I am is the prick with the car,” Ellis reminded him. Jackie laughed and nodded.

“Yeah! Right! Nice one!” he said. “Now – this party! It’s out along the motor way … a country party. I could skate, but it would be easier if you drove me.”

Ellis remembered he had promised himself wild adventures and no apologies. And, after all, he had made his mother no real promises.

“OK, then!” he said.

Immediately, a new ease engulfed Jackie who flopped back in his chair.

“Your turn to tell me,” Ellis went on. “What have you been up to?”

“Oh, about up to here,” said Jackie, leaning sideways in his chair and holding his hand, fingers splayed, about an inch from the ground. “No real job. No self-respect. Mind you, the way I see it, self-respect is the easiest sort of respect to get, isn’t it? Me – I want respect with a bit more challenge to it.” He eased himself upwards in his chair once more as he went on talking. “I make a few dollars here and there, but basically I just fiddle around. I’m a born fiddler.”

“Yeah, I can tell,” said Ellis.

A piece of wastepaper whirled past the window and disappeared into the deepening, summer evening. The city was still embraced by a largely tearless storm.

Jackie slapped his hand down hard on the table.

“Five! Four! Three! Two! ONE!” he exclaimed, leaping to his feet and draining the rest of his beer. The movement upwards married into a movement forwards. “Blast-off!” he cried.

Before Ellis’s eyes he become charged with both energy and mischief. Hastily, Ellis drank half his beer and then, remembering he would be the driver, left the rest of it on the table. He followed Jackie into the street and they wove their way, side by side, back to the parking lot where Ellis had left his mother’s car.

“Straight down the Great North Road,” said Jackie, scrambling into the passenger seat. “It’s a sort of barbecue party. Begins – officially, that is – with five o’clock drinks. So, by the time we get there, they mightn’t care who’s turning up. Unless they’ve been rained out.”

“If it’s an inside party they mightn’t let us in,” said Ellis almost hopefully. He wanted the adventure, but felt dubious about gatecrashing a private party.

“Why not?” said Jackie, sounding affronted. “I mean, look at us: clean, smiling! Both respectable guys! Eh?”

Ellis felt certain that Jackie had chosen him not merely because he had a car, but because his curling hair and tidy clothes might persuade someone, somewhere to welcome them in.




5.50 pm – Friday (#ulink_d75ce3de-3694-5fd2-8785-aac16fedbaae)


As they surged on to the motorway, heading north, the suburbs fell away altogether. Moving deeper into the country, Ellis felt a change coming over Jackie Cattle. He had not understood just how tense his companion had been until Jackie shifted in the seat beside him, sighing as he relaxed.

They crossed a long bridge curving over one of the five rivers that braided and divided the plains between city and mountains, and Ellis glimpsed below him threads of water winding, separating, then weaving together again, negotiating wide, flat beds of grey shingle. Gusts of wind beat the river surfaces into angry grey-green ripples ticked with silver.

“Next turn-off, move into the left lane,” Jackie instructed, smiling in secret satisfaction.

Oh, no! Ellis thought automatically. He had been driven along this motorway, turning left at that very corner, many times throughout his childhood, and never with any pleasure. Come off it! he told himself derisively, as they curved away from the motorway and on to a long, straight road with fences, hedges and occasional gateways on either side. Just because … he began thinking, then forced himself to notice the ordinary roadsides as if he had never seen them before. Some gates had signs beside them listing fruit and vegetables which could be bought during the day, but most signs were lying flat on the grass, flapping and bucking wildly as the wind pushed powerful fingers under them. One particular sign, hanging by short chains from a wooden support that reminded Ellis of a gallows, was stretched out almost parallel with the ground, straining to escape. The words, Fresh Lettuce, Tomatoes, Avocados, angled into sight, then vanished once more.

But they were driving out of the path of the storm. The road ahead was suddenly dry. Hedges and trees which had been writhing on either side of the road were suddenly less convulsive, the sideways thrust on the car much less insistent.

It was hard for Ellis to imagine any connection between the friends of his parents who lived along this road and disreputable Jackie Cattle, and yet he felt himself touched by apprehension. Don’t be crazy, he kept telling himself. There are a dozen places out this way. We’ll probably drive on past, and …

“Big white gates!” announced Jackie, leaning forward.

Oh, no! Ellis sighed to himself in fatalistic despair. The familiar gates were rushing towards him on his right – big, old, gates, white, pointed palings like teeth sweeping down, then up again in a long curve – a sarcastic grin suspended between high stone posts, also painted white.

“White gates,” repeated Jackie. “And chestnut trees! This must be the place!”

Ellis was already turning in at the gates, noting festive balloons tied to the rural delivery mail box. Though the wind was gentler now, the balloons still strained and bobbed furiously like a huddle of demented heads. But the car glided confidently past them and on between the double line of chestnut trees. Even though he was sitting correctly in the driver’s seat, both hands on the wheel in a ten to two position, Ellis felt his mother’s car, which had turned in at that gate many times before, was really finding its own way. Every cell in his body seemed intent on turning and going back to town again. But there, in front of him, set in orchards and wide lawns, sprawled the house, casually impressive among its old trees.

“Oh, wow!” breathed Jackie.

Suddenly the air grew rich with the smell of barbecued steak and fish – salmon, no doubt, wrapped in foil, cooking in its own juices, thought Ellis, remembering other barbecues in this very place.

Beside him, Jackie pulled his knees up, bending and writhing inside his coat as he struggled to remove his roller blades. Ellis parked at the end of a long row of cars, then turned towards him.

“We’d better walk the last bit,” he said, looking dubiously at Jackie’s socks, which were full of holes.

“I’ll go barefoot,” said Jackie, peeling his feet. “I’ll look really laid-back!”

“What about your coat?” asked Ellis, knowing just what sort of party they were going to walk into. “It’s a warm evening.”

“Take off my coat?” cried Jackie. “Are you mad? My life story’s written on this coat. See this stain here? That’s a quarrel with my father, and this smear …”

“OK! OK!” Ellis sighed, waving his hand, palm outward at Jackie. “I just thought you’d be more comfortable if …”

“You think I’d sacrifice truth for comfort?” cried Jackie, settling the coat across his shoulders with a complacent grin. “It will be good for everyone here to see a coat like mine.”

Directly in front of them, between two silver birches whose upper branches had grown together to form an arch, Ellis saw the familiar triple garage set beyond a turning space. He saw a shiny red car parked at such a careless angle that it blocked the main garage door, just as if the owner knew no other car would need to come or go, or did not much care, anyway. Ellis grimaced in spite of himself as he and Jackie strolled towards the bricked flank of the house, Jackie stepping carefully on fallen leaves and grass clippings spread across fine, sharp gravel. Earlier in the day someone had mowed these verges.

Ellis slunk along guiltily, but Jackie, who had absolutely no right to be there (Ellis was sure), stepped out as confidently as if his bare feet were perfectly acceptable. The wind seemed anxious to push them away but, as they came round the edge of the house, the sound of many voices swelled towards them.

“Don’t look so furtive!” muttered Jackie. “Chill out, man!” He improvised a dance step. “Just stroll on in and say, ‘Hey folks! Your lucky day! Here we are! Now the fun begins!’”

“I don’t look furtive,” said Ellis indignantly. “And I know this crowd, which I reckon you don’t. The Kilmers are friends of ours – friends of my parents, that is! They’ve got one of those apartments in the old library, but this is their real home. I’ve visited them twenty million times before.” He looked sideways at Jackie, half-expecting to see capitulation of some kind, or even respect (because, after all, the Kilmers were rich). But in the clear, early twilight, Jackie’s expression was that of a child seeing a vision of wonder. Then he flung an arm across Ellis’s shoulder.

“Hey, Ellis!” he cried softly. “Has anyone told you how beautiful you are? A car! Naturally curly hair! And rich friends! The lot! I love you! I love you! And, hey, isn’t that sunshine? Let’s enjoy ourselves.”




6.30 pm – Friday (#ulink_91be0465-d73e-5474-8fa5-3b743c98f524)


Ellis stepped on to the wide, grassy terrace that led down from the veranda of the Kilmer’s house to the garden below, a familiar enchantment immediately taking hold of him. For there it all was: women in summer dresses, laughing and talking, leaning sexily into the intrusive wind; men in shorts hoisting long glasses of pale-gold lager. Elegant music came towards them in gusts and then retreated. Ellis recognised it as the theme tune of a television commercial in which an expensive car moved with grace and power through a bare, sculptural landscape. Farmers on horses (along with their dogs) watched the car go by with admiration and envy, and a beautiful woman studied it with voluptuous attention, licking her full, red lips.

Jackie seemed to react to the gusts of music, too. He came to a standstill and Ellis saw him grimace.

“Vivaldi!” he exclaimed, half-turning towards Ellis. “Poor bugger! Mind you, those musical jokers wrote a lot of stuff for parties, didn’t they?” Ellis found he had assumed yet again that, in spite of his unexpected accent, Jackie was a man without culture. “I mean, it’s so beautiful,” Jackie added. “But, by now, whenever I hear it going Tah dah dah dah da-da dah, I want to laugh. It’s become its own sort of joke. And it wasn’t meant to be funny, was it?”

“Ellis!” called an astonished voice. “Who is it?” hissed Jackie.

“Meg Kilmer! Hostess. Lives here,” Ellis muttered, grinning studiously at his mother’s friend and feeling suddenly treacherous. Why – why – had Jackie been so desperate to come here? There must have been other parties he could have gatecrashed – parties that were much more his sort of thing. Ellis wondered if he had unwittingly helped an enemy insinuate himself. For he was with Jackie, whose coat had one elbow burned out of it, who was barefoot, who was laughing at the idea of Vivaldi being played as background music, but who was also, at that very moment, turning to greet the hostess with a wide smile.

“Ellis … lovely to see you,” Meg cried, seeming only slightly surprised that he should be there at all.

“Just passing!” Ellis said, smiling too – the sort of frank, boyish smile a friend of one’s mother could trust – an actor’s smile. “Didn’t know you were having a party. Sorry!” He was relieved to find just how easily deception came to him. Though, after all, he hadn’t known: he was speaking the truth.

“Well, we did invite Kit and Dave,” said Meg Kilmer, referring to Ellis’s parents, “but Kit said she was having a few friends round tonight. Of course, she may have felt shy. People think it’s a bit strange celebrating a separation.”

“Well, I think the Robsons are looking in,” said Ellis, his voice hesitant, wondering if he had really heard Meg say what she appeared to have said. His voice seemed to come and go in his own ears. “But Jackie and I – oh, this is my friend, Jackie Cattle, by the way. And Jackie, this is Meg Kilmer who lives here – well, we’ve been cruising around …”

“Ellis shot home from school last night,” interrupted Jackie, speaking rather more easily than Ellis himself. “He’s getting himself reacquainted with this part of the world.”

Ellis saw Meg exchange a worldly glance with Jackie at the expense of a younger man.

“Well, lovely to see you,” said Meg warmly. “Go down to the lower lawn by the barbecue. There’s masses to eat and drink.” In spite of his ease and open smile, she was suddenly studying Jackie rather more intently. Ellis saw her expression change slightly – as if something was disturbing her. He felt she was aware of something rather more anarchic than either Jackie’s bare feet or battered coat. And Jackie, too, seemed to recognise her doubt.

“I don’t want to push in,” he said, smiling with old-world courtesy.

“Oh, you’re welcome,” Meg said, relaxing a little. “We always overdo things, so there’s plenty.” Someone called her name. She turned, laughed, and retreated, then looked over her shoulder, pointing vaguely into the crowd.

“Christo’s somewhere around,” she called. “Be nice to him! He’s so grumpy these days.”

Jackie and Ellis moved across the upper lawn between groups of chattering guests, nearly all protecting piled cardboard plates and glasses of wine from the wind, then down three wide, stone steps to a lower lawn. In spite of the big, brick barbecue, it was much less crowded, perhaps because the shade of tall lime trees imparted an early twilight to this part of the garden.

“So you don’t want to push in,” muttered Ellis as they walked towards two long tables covered with bottles and plates. “You know, you’re a real bull artist!”

“It’s my gift,” Jackie replied, “and we ought to use our talents. The Bible says so.”

“You do what the Bible says?” Ellis asked, leaning back from Jackie and studying him with exaggerated scepticism.

“When it’s in my interests,” Jackie replied, his own smile vanishing.

Alan Kilmer came to meet them with a bottle of wine and what was left of a jug of beer balanced on a tray. He was wearing a striped apron and a cook’s hat with the word Chef printed on it in flowing letters.

“I suppose you drink all the beer you can get these days, young Ellis,” he cried in the voice of a surrogate father keen to show how understanding he could be.

“I’m driving …” Ellis said, and had a vision of the curls and the clean, open face that had flickered briefly across the looking-glass panel in the city street.

“Oh, one won’t hurt you,” Alan said, “though you’re right to be careful. I only wish Christo was careful … But you’re a big boy now. Take it! Food and plates over there by the barbie. I imagine you’ve heard our news? Meg and I are separating. After all, Sophie’s left home – she’s over in Sydney doing very well, and of course Christo’s grown up.”

“Gosh, I didn’t know …” began Ellis.

“It’s time,” said Alan, a touch of mysticism creeping into his voice. “Meg and I both feel these rites of passage deserve celebration.” His voice became friendly and fatherly again. “Now, just help yourselves.”

“We haven’t come to eat …” Ellis began guiltily.

“We’re starving,” declared Jackie, interrupting before Ellis could reject the offers of food and drink, or ask for Kilmer family news.

“Well, cram in all you can,” said Alan cheerfully. “We always cater for too many people. The steak’s from our own beast … but it’ll be dog tucker by tomorrow. Strike while the sausage is hot, eh?”

Together, Jackie and Ellis made their way to the table by the barbecue. Plates of steak and sausages sat beside huge wooden bowls of salad, the meat drying a little, the lettuce leaves starting to wilt around the edges. Jackie piled a plate with salad and sliced tomatoes, as well as a fillet of salmon, glittering in a wrap of tin foil.

“Have some steak,” said Ellis. It seemed the least they could do was eat the food most likely to be left over.

“I’m vegetarian – all but,” said Jackie.

“You?” cried Ellis incredulously.

“I said, ‘All but’!” Jackie replied, snapping a piece of garlic bread from its parent loaf. “I’m not above stocking up when it’s free, and probably going to be thrown out, anyway. That’s another of my virtues … I don’t waste anything. Let’s move before the Killers close in again and begin telling you about the civilised way they’re managing their separation.”

“Kilmers!” Ellis corrected him, not quite wanting to expose old friends to alien derision, and slightly irritated because Jackie seemed more at home with the gossip than he was. “Are they really separating?” He could not imagine Meg and Alan apart from one another.

“They say they are,” said Jackie. “And they’re pretending it’s all good, clean fun. But my sources, of which I have one, say they really want to kill each other, and they’re waiting till after Christmas to fight about who gets how much. New Year’s the traditional time for murder, isn’t it?”

“Do you know the Kilmers?” asked Ellis.

“Never met them until five minutes ago,” said Jackie.

Ellis came to a sudden stop. “Just level with me – what are we doing here?” he asked. “Why have we crashed this particular party?”

“Well, to tell you the truth I want to make trouble,” said Jackie. “I didn’t mention it before in case you got all shy, but …” He tilted his head back and drank the whole glass of beer at what seemed to be a single swallow. “Don’t you do that!” he added. “Remember, you’re driving.”

“What sort of trouble?” asked Ellis dubiously.

“I’m still choosing,” said Jackie in a pious voice. Then his gaze sharpened and he stared past Ellis with an expression of such deep appreciation that Ellis turned too. And there he saw his childhood nemesis, the Kilmer boy, Christo, talking to a lanky young woman wearing jeans, a sleeveless blue top and round, wire-rimmed glasses.




6.55 pm – Friday (#ulink_3aeb7b50-8f59-58a3-b26e-9187e25f495d)


Ellis and Christo had never got on together, though both sets of parents had tried hard to encourage them into some sort of friendship. In normal circumstances Ellis would have gone a long way to avoid talking to Christo. But Jackie was drifting so casually in his and the girl’s direction that nobody watching him would have guessed how purposeful that drifting was. Only Ellis knew – and suddenly knew for certain – that Jackie had forced his way into this party with the single intention of breaking in on that particular conversation. Ellis had no choice but to follow him, though with increasing alarm.

The couple had been chatting together cheerfully enough, or so it seemed to Ellis. Now, Christo, looking across the girl’s shoulder, met Ellis’s eyes and then, almost instantaneously, saw Jackie. Though Jackie was still pretending he had not yet seen Christo, Ellis felt the impact of Christo’s furious glance as if a dagger had been thrust towards them. Even from where he stood he could see Christo’s fair skin turn red as a wild blush of fury spread across it. A small mole, rather like an eighteenth-century beauty-spot, stood out darkly on Christo’s cheekbone as he grasped the girl’s upper arm.

Christo’s grasp must have been severe, for she started, glanced at him, then turned in order to see what he was looking at. For a moment she was as amazed as Jackie could ever have wished her to be. Behind her wire-rimmed spectacles, under the shadow of her lashes, her eyes were a light, startling blue. Her first surprise gave way to instant anger.

“What are you doing here?” she shouted.

Jackie looked directly at her for the first time. His expression showed nothing but startled innocence.

“Oh, wow!” he exclaimed. “You! What a coincidence! Hey, it’s a small world, isn’t it? Stunted really.”

“What are you doing here?” she repeated so forcefully that Ellis stepped back in alarm.

“Weird, eh?” Jackie went on. “Must be the morphic field! Or what’s that other thing? Chaos theory or something. See, I met up with Ellis – my old friend Ellis – you know, I’m always talking about Ellis – and he suggested …”

“You’re such a liar!” exclaimed the girl.

Jackie laughed. “Ellis,” he said. “This is Ursa Hammond. And you know Chris, don’t you?”

“Christo!” Christo corrected him. He had always hated it when people called him ‘Chris’.

“Oh! Sorry!” said Jackie, returning the hostility with his wide, innocent smile. “Hey, your parents know how to celebrate failure in style. Great party.”

People always said how handsome Christo was. Even though Ellis had detested him for a long time, and so much so that he thought of him as essentially disfigured, he was fair-minded enough to admit they were right.

“What are you doing here?” Christo was demanding, suddenly as furious as his companion, though Ellis understood there was a great difference between their two angers.

“Doing here?” repeated Jackie, frowning. “Big question. But what are any of us doing here, if it comes to that? I reckon it’s pretty random myself. What’s that word you were going on about the other day?” he asked, turning to Ursa. “Not telepathy, but like telepathy. It was to do with design or something … that things keep happening because of what’s meant to happen.”

“Teleology,” said Ursa. Ellis thought he could hear her first anger laced with some other mood as Jackie ran on and on, shaking his head in wonder. She was recognising something in Jackie and was unwillingly entertained by it. “Leave it alone, Jackie! Bug off!” she muttered.

“Nobody wants you here,” said Christo, provoked exactly as Jackie intended him to be provoked. He turned to Ellis. “Why the hell are you hanging out with this shit?”

Ellis looked directly at Christo for the first time.

Many years ago, before Ellis could swim properly, Christo and his sister, Sophie, had pushed him into a deep pool down among the willows, and had watched him gasping and choking, struggling and sinking, with chilly interest, pushing him under again and again with their bare feet, only pulling him out at what might have been his very last minute. They had then threatened him with terrible pain if he told either his parents or theirs. They also told him that they had drowned kittens and puppies in that very pool. Ellis found that he still hated Christo, with hatred as fresh and tender as if it had just been born in him. Watching Jackie dance around Christo, as he himself had never been able to do, filled him with hot pleasure.

“I just dropped in to say ‘Hi’” he said, his voice as innocent as Jackie’s. “And then your mum invited us to stay.” He sensed Jackie turn to him as if they were practised crosstalk comedians putting on a show they had rehearsed over and over again.

“Your mum clapped eyes on us and knew we were the right stuff,” Jackie said to Christo, but then he began filling his beer glass from the bottle of red wine. Ellis watched the level rise with incredulity. “She invited us to eat and drink all we could.”

“Well, I’m inviting you to get out,” said Christo. “I suppose Ellis can stay if he wants to,” he said, emphasising Ellis’s name with casual contempt. “But not you! Get out before I sling you out.”

The girl made a sudden sharp move and Jackie, holding the mug of red wine in front of him, gave an odd, gasping laugh.

“You and whose army, mate?” he asked smiling down into the wine. “You and whose army?” He looked up, and Ellis found Jackie had suddenly become alarming, though all he had done was to widen his eyes a little and fasten them intently on Christo.

Christo, who had stepped forward confidently, hesitated.

“Oh, no!” cried Ursa Hammond sharply. She glanced first at Jackie’s bare feet and then at Ellis. “You’ve got a car? You must have.”

“Back in the drive,” Ellis admitted.

“Just go and stand beside it and wait for me,” she said. “My sister’s here too. I’ll find her and we’ll be with you in a moment. You go with him,” she added, looking briefly at Jackie.

“Jesus! You don’t have to go,” exclaimed Christo, sounding desperate. “For God’s sake, Ursie … you’re a guest. Invited! Do you think I can’t cope with this deadbeat? I can easily manage him. I’ve done it a thousand times.”

“Managed me?” said Jackie vaguely. He bunched his right-hand fingers together, and tapped them against the centre of his forehead, frowning. “Was that at school? Wish I could remember! Brain damage, maybe.”

A few, nearby party-goers, catching on to an interesting argument, were watching curiously. Ellis gave them a placating smile, trying to suggest it was all good fun.

Jackie now drank half the mug of wine without a moment’s hesitation. He smiled and wiped his hand across his mouth. “A superior little wine,” he said. “A lovely voluptuous grape!”

“Christo, I’m sorry,” Ursa was saying as she moved away “But just look around you. Everyone’s being so civilised … and it’s nearly Christmas. What’ll your parents think if you suddenly have a punch-up at their party?”

“They’ll blame me,” said Christo. “They’re a couple of selfish shits, and they always blame me.”

“Oh no! They’ll blame me,” said Ursa. “They might even blame Leo! No, thanks!”

And she began to hurry towards the steps that led to the upper lawn. Forgetting Jackie, Christo set off after her, almost leaping beside her, apparently trying to argue her into staying. Ellis had never seen Christo so desperate – so vulnerable – before.

“I hate that bastard,” said Jackie cheerfully. He drank the rest of the red wine as if it were orange juice. “He’s suffering though, isn’t he? Good!”

“Be fair: his parents, his party!” said Ellis lightly, doing his best to sound like a disinterested watcher making a point. “What’s-her-name – Ursa – is she your girl or something?”

“She’s something,” said Jackie. “Not a girlfriend! Not as such! But she’s not going to be his, either.”

“So what’s the story, since you’re writing the plot?” asked Ellis.

“Ursie’s gone to find her sister. You race over and curtsey to the hostess. Do you think she’ll mind me walking out with a few nutritious scraps and a bottle of wine?”

Ellis looked around. He saw meat cooling beside the barbecue, and other bottles of wine half-empty and already looking abandoned. Jackie, sighing deeply and shaking his head like a man being forced to violate his own better judgement, poured one half-bottle of wine into another.

“Red and white makes pink,” he said. “I love bad taste. Love it!” Then he jammed a cork into the neck of the bottle and slid it into one of his deep pockets.

“Innocent grapes died so we could have this wine,” he went on. “They were crushed, mashed to pulp. Anyhow, when I was a kid I had to eat everything put in front of me.”

Ellis set off, crossing first one lawn, then climbing the stone steps on to the other, Jackie bounding beside him. They went back round the house, past the garage and waited, side by side, in the soft darkness under the chestnut trees.

“What’s it all about, anyway?” asked Ellis.

But Jackie did not answer. It was too dim in the shadow of the chestnuts to make out his precise expression, but somehow Ellis believed it would be both sinister and sad. At some time in the past, he suddenly knew for certain, Jackie had also suffered at the unkind, confident hands of Christo Kilmer.

“I can’t stand him, either,” he said.

“No one can,” said Jackie. “It’s starting to drive him round the bend. But, hey – that’s the right place for him. He’ll meet himself coming the other way.”

They waited, while the sound of voices rose from beyond the brick angles of the house, and the smell of the barbecue settled insistently around them. One voice suddenly sounded closer than the others. Ellis looked sideways down the drive towards the house. Quite unprepared for what was about to happen to him, he was overwhelmed by a vision.

Passing through the moving patches of light that shifted uneasily in the curving drive was a girl he knew he was seeing for the first time in his life. All the same, it now seemed to Ellis that for months – maybe even years – he had been expecting to see this very girl, moving from darkness into light and then back into darkness again, as she came towards him, her hair flaring, then fading, brightening sharply, before growing shadowy once again. She was wearing a very short skirt. Her legs were exquisite. They swept her towards him, and she spoke as she came, but not to Ellis.

“Oh, Jackie! Ursie says you’re ruining things for us.”

“Gee, she’s bright!” said Jackie. “It must be all that law she studies.”

“She’s not keen on Christo, if that’s what you’re afraid of,” the girl said. “She just wanted to go to a big party.” Her voice was soft, a little plaintive perhaps, but also amused.

“But life’s a continual big party back in the Land-of-Smiles!” said Jackie, talking, Ellis supposed, the sort of nonsense well-understood between friends. He and Simon had once had a private nonsense language which excluded everyone else. Come to think of it, that private language was one of the things Ellis missed most – now that Simon was dead.

“It’s nothing but parties in the Land-of-Smiles,” Jackie persisted.

“Not big parties like this one,” the girl replied. “Our parties are all scruffy and disgusting.”

“No such thing as a scruffy undertaker,” said Jackie, indulging once again in the language of private reference. He turned suddenly. “Ellis, this is Leo Hammond. Leona! Leona the Lion! Leo, this is Ellis. OK?”

Then Ursa was coming down the drive towards them, almost jogging, with Christo still skirmishing around her, arguing and gesticulating on one side, then leaping to the other, as if hearing his arguments with a different ear, might make her change her mind. When he saw Ellis and Jackie watching him, he grabbed Ursa’s arm, forcing her to stop. Then they kissed – or perhaps he kissed her. It was hard to be sure.

“Bor-ing!” said Jackie, yawning. But for all that, he suddenly sounded, not angry, exactly, but certainly petulant.




7.30 pm – Friday (#ulink_2e97411c-0b4d-551b-9731-19763429f5b9)


Ursa climbed into the passenger seat beside Ellis and sat there in silence. Jackie opened the back door and slid in to recline gracefully along most of the back seat. Leona followed him. It was Ellis’s car, but he felt as if he did not exist for any of them except as a sort of driving ghost. All space in the car was taken over by the argument between Jackie and the angular Ursa, even though, in the beginning, the argument was conducted in silence.

“Shift over!” Leona said. “You’re such a pain, Jackie.”

“Home, James!” Jackie called triumphantly, pointing across Ellis’s shoulder.

Ellis started the car, wishing that Leona, rather than Ursa, were sitting beside him. Before he could stop himself, he was imagining light shifting on her rounded knees, outlining them in the darkness that lurked below the glovebox of his mother’s car.

“You know,” said Ursa, half-turning to glare at Jackie, “I was having a really nice time. Not wonderful! Not thrilling! Just nice! Instead of sitting around with a lot of screwed-up no-hopers, I was in a beautiful place with a beautiful garden, and I was enjoying talking to Christo and drinking champagne.”

“Some champagne!” said Jackie scornfully. “Made right here in New Zealand.”

“It did well in a competition in France,” said Ursa. “It came first – or almost first.”

“Second, say,” Jackie suggested. “Or third!”

“Don’t sit in the back, cuddling the bottle. You look disgusting,” said Ursa. “And don’t try to make out you’ve got taste of any kind,” she added. “You’d cuddle up to cat’s piss as long as it was free.”

“You bet I would,” Jackie agreed. “Cat’s piss has a delicate, crisp acidity, shot through with suggestions of grubby earthiness, the flavour of gooseberries mixed with a tang of acetone. It has a chunky chewiness to it which …”

But Ursa raised her voice and talked over him. “And don’t think you can joke your way out of this, Jackie. You purposefully set out to ruin things for me. You just hate to think I might drift away from the Land-of-Smiles, don’t you?”

Ellis, having driven between the chestnut trees, was turning out on to the road once more.

“Forget it, Ursie,” said Leona’s soft voice. “You’ll say something awful – something you’ll be sorry for. Or he will!”

“I don’t need him acting like a sort of Big Daddy,” Ursa cried impatiently.

“Well, I promise not to act like yours, anyway,” said Jackie, and Ellis could hear a sudden ferocious nudge in his voice – a peculiar emphasis twisting the ordinary words.

There was a sudden silence – a silence far more violent than the argument had been. Something had been said which changed the whole nature of the quarrel … something unforgivable.

Ellis longed to check out their expressions, but dared not take his eyes from the road. The car seemed to speed up, almost independently of his foot on the accelerator. Signs announcing that the motorway was a mere kilometre away, rushed towards them.

“OK,” commanded Ursa in an icy voice. “Stop the car! Stop right now!”

“Oh, no!” cried Leona. “He didn’t mean it, Ursie. You know he can’t resist a smart answer.”

“Stop!” yelled Ursa so fiercely that Ellis braked sharply and Leona fell silent. “I want to say something to that … thing in the back, and it’s not safe to say it in a moving car.”

Ellis brought the car to a graceful standstill. Ursa turned under the strap of her seatbelt and stared at Jackie – slumped behind her, eating – insolently eating – a sausage stolen from the barbecue.

“Get out!” Ursa said.

“What?” said Jackie, surprised at last, looking at her obliquely across the half-eaten sausage.

“Ursie!” groaned Leona. “It’s only making it worse.”

“Ursie! Ursie! Don’t make it worse-ie!” sang Jackie mockingly.

Ursa ignored her sister. “Get out of this car,” she repeated. “I don’t want to breathe the same air as you.”

“You’re going to dump me on the side of the road?” Jackie cried, sitting bolt upright, and making his voice deliberately pathetic. “How am I going to get home?” His voice was thickening a little. Words ran into one another. “And I’m beginning to get drunk, too,” he added accusingly, as if it were Ursa’s fault.

“Walk!” she commanded.

“You mean, ‘skate’!” said Jackie. “I’ve got my skates and …”

“OK! Skate, mate!” she said. She opened her own door. “Because if you don’t get out, I will.”

“Yeah, but maybe you’ve made some arrangement with Chris – oh, sorry! I should have said ‘Christ’, since that’s who he thinks he is,” Jackie said, making a rude gesture with the sausage. “Maybe he’ll come along in that new red car and …”

“Are you scared?” asked Ursa scornfully. “Frightened he’ll run you down?”

“He just might,” said Jackie. “He was the official school bully … got a cup for it at the end-of-school break-up, didn’t he, Ellis? A silver cup with handles and …”

“He could be a bit rough,” agreed Ellis.

“Get out!” said Ursa to Jackie.

“Oh, Ursa, leave him alone,” cried Leona. “He said what he said. You can’t change anything.”

“Look, I can’t just dump Jackie,” Ellis cut in, protesting.

“Then dump me,” Ursa cried. She opened her door and pushed one foot out into the darkness.

“No!” yelled Jackie. “No! I don’t care. Take her home, Ellis. I’ll skate. I’ll hitch. I’ll probably get there before you.”

Ursa slammed her door shut.

“Get where?” asked Ellis.

“She’ll tell you where,” said Jackie. “She’s good at laying down the law.”

A back door slammed. Then Ursa opened her door again. Ellis thought that perhaps she had relented. But she was only throwing the roller blades out after Jackie.

“Drive!” said Ursa. “Please,” she added.

“What did he say that was so bad?” Ellis asked.

“Oh, it’s a long story,” Ursa replied. “He’s sorry now, but that’s not enough. I want him to suffer.”

As the car moved off, Ellis saw through the back window Jackie’s shape, picked out in the red glow of the tail light, apparently giving a thumbs-up sign with one hand, and hoisting the bottle with the other …

“He’s drunk a lot,” Ellis said doubtfully. “He might flake out.”

“I hope he does,” said Ursa. “It’s not as if I give a stuff about Christopher Kilmer. I know he’s a bit of a creep – sorry, if he’s a friend of yours – but …”

“He isn’t a friend,” said Ellis shortly.

“It’s as if I’m being punished for wanting to have a good time,” Ursa complained. “I need it, too. Anyone needs a good time if their computer’s just been stolen, which mine was, last night.”

Ellis found he was beginning to remember Ursa vaguely from the days before he went to St Conan’s. In his head, a past version had begun flicking on and off like an inconstant ghost – shorter and fatter than she was now, and wearing glasses which had black tape wrapped around one of the arms. She had been a loud girl, he now remembered, always talking – the skirt of her school uniform hitched up over her belt so that it looked much shorter than the regulation length. She must have been wondering about him, too.

“I thought I knew everyone Jackie knew,” she said, turning her powerful gaze towards him.

“I’ve been out of town. Studying.” Ellis quickly added. He did not want Leona to know that only yesterday he had been at school.

“Studying what?” Ursa asked.

“General stuff,” said Ellis. He was irritated by her sceptical voice. “What about you?” he asked, glad to hear himself sounding mildly aggressive.

“Law!” she replied absently, but not as if she were really interested in letting him know. “Law and philosophy. I need the philosophy right this minute, and I’ll need the law a little later on.”




8.10 pm – Friday (#ulink_c548d134-6321-53c3-84e0-402df5b51740)


Ellis, doing what he was told to do, left the motorway on a different road from the one by which he had entered. He found himself driving past lawns and letterboxes and deserted shopping centres, one of a number of cars that seemed uncertain quite where they wanted to go. Ellis recognised the names of suburbs without knowing exactly where he was in the changing city.

“Right at these lights!” commanded Ursa. “Straight on for a couple of blocks, then right again.” Ellis turned obediently into a wide avenue, lined on either side with well-established plane trees, and became part of a continuous line of cars. They were back in the centre of the city. He knew where he was. He would be home in half an hour.

Yet, just as he was relaxing and beginning to feel in charge of life once more, the city gave him an unexpected jolt which, almost at once, changed into the feeling that what he was seeing had first come out of his own head. Houses on the left gave way to a floodlit slope of neatly-cut grass; oaks framed a chaste, white building. It was gently lit and glowed in the summer twilight. Dommett & Christie said a notice; cool, plain, discreet, but clearly visible. Integrity Funerals. It seemed he could not escape – might never escape – from Simon’s ironic smile, for Dommett & Christie had organised Simon’s funeral. After his death, Simon’s body had been taken to this white building, and someone somewhere in there had given him a final, enigmatic expression.

Ellis had not realised just how changeable Simon’s living expression had been until, in the chapel at the crematorium, he found himself face to face with a stillness fixed for ever by the skill of an undertaker … the suggestion of a smile about to begin but never quite managing it. Had there possibly been just a little smugness about that last expression? It was almost as if, in some dead way, Simon knew he had finally up-staged Ellis – had pulled off an act that could never be surpassed. As he thought this Ellis’s hands tightened on the wheel, while his own voice repeated in his head:

“…’tis too horrible!

The weariest and most loathed worldly life

That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment

Can lay on nature is a paradise

To what we fear of death.”

“Home sweet home,” said Leona a little wearily, interrupting his thoughts.

“Well, almost!” said Ursa. “Turn right into Moncrieff Street. Here!” she added, though Ellis had already recognised Moncrieff Street, one of the oldest roads in the city. These days it was part of the grid of one-way streets around the city centre.

Fastened across the window of a darkened shop, Ellis saw a white sheet with words painted on it. Party! Land-of-Smiles! said the blue letters, rough but clear. Ursa groaned.

“Did you see that?” she said to Leona. “Can’t I go out for an evening without …”

But now they were skirting the Moncrieff Road cemetery, an historic landmark. Tall, and sometimes broken, gravestones rose, like pale admonishing fingers from beyond a low, stone wall. Someone had sprayed the words Anarchy rules, OK? on the stones – possibly one of the three children in baggy clothes briefly seen as they darted up a path and into the darkness under old trees.

“The glue gang!” Ursa said, in the absent-minded voice of someone checking off landmarks as she returned to familiar territory. “Is Terry Stamp still hanging out with Jason these days?” She asked this question without seeming to expect any answer. “Three blocks down and turn to the left,” she added, speaking directly to Ellis this time. “It’s a skinny little street – Garden Lane – so don’t drive too fast and miss it.”

High in the city air, a bright sign flashed on and off. A blonde woman was beckoning with a jerking arm, swinging one bare leg out and back, out and back. Her scarlet mouth widened in a smile then shrank back into a pursed, electric kiss. Ellis drove towards this spasmodic beauty. Beneath her jittering leg was a lighted doorway through which people were either coming or going. And then they were past her, cruising between two lines of largely darkened shop windows. It’s Never Too Late For Breakfast, said a flashing sign. The Southern Grenadier, proclaimed another sign – old, square lettering across the front of a grimy hotel.

“There! Turn there!” said Ursa pointing.

Ellis turned the car yet again, this time into a narrow street crowded with houses that were not only old but visibly disintegrating. The lingering twilight, which had seemed so pure out on the plains, had taken on a smeared and grubby quality. On either side he saw rusting roofs, broken fences, and gateposts guarded by long grasses.

“And now to the left again. It’s really a right-of-way for pedestrians … but people don’t mind if you drive along it. Take it easy, though!”

Everything around them was so shabby that Ellis felt conscious of the shine on his mother’s car, reflecting light from the street lamps. A long, low building shaped like the letter ‘E’ with its middle stroke missing, seemed to advance wearily through the twilight. Coloured letters flashed in the air above it. A stream of scarlet, electric arrows leaped like frightened fish, arching over and emphasising the blue and green letters below. THE AND-OF- MILES, announced the sign. There was no gate and no fence. LAND-OF-SMILES MOTEL a second dingy sign elaborated at the gate in letters rather more reliable than the electric ones.

“Home, sweet home.” It was Ursa who spoke this time. “Look, thanks for bringing us back, and sorry about the complications. Like a cup of coffee, after all that?”

Ellis hesitated. In the silence he heard rackety music beating in from somewhere.

“Do come!” said Leona. “It sounds as if we’ve got a houseful already, but we can find a peaceful place somewhere.”

“The gang’s here!” said Ursa gloomily. “As always!”

Ellis almost said that he’d better be getting home – indeed, he’d been thinking of home with pleasure – and yet, within a breath, the words he was shaping in the back of his mouth twisted on his tongue and came out saying something that surprised him much more than they surprised anyone else.

“Great! OK to leave the car here?” After all, in spite of everything that had happened, it was still early. Not even half-past eight, yet.

“Safer than some places,” Ursa said, smiling and sketching the sign of the cross in the air with her finger.




8.25 pm – Friday (#ulink_c598a8b9-617d-5bd5-9608-7120df3ca5f7)


Following Ursa and Leona in at the front door, Ellis was immediately aware that the Land-of-Smiles Motel, though it was no longer used as a motel, was haunted by its past. He was confronted by a small counter, across the front of which narrow ledges and sagging, rusting wires had once supported brochures and flyers advertising city tours. A phone stood on the end of the counter, a phone book beside it, and the wall beside the phone was scribbled and scratched with a swarm of numbers, some of them boxed in so that they could be easily found again. Leaning against a wall beyond the counter was the sort of backpack used for carrying a small child, an unexpectedly innocent object in such weary surroundings.





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