Healer (12 page)

“Okay,” he said. “You're a stupid hound, Norah. Take it easy. Careful, Pinkie.”

“She's all right.”

He grunted.

“Shine the light over this way,” he said. “I dropped my saw around here.”

The chrome of its handle caught the light and glittered. He picked it up, but as soon as he put it to the metal again, Norah began to growl. Somehow she seemed to recognize that this was one of the things she had been trained to stop.

“It's all right, Norah,” said Pinkie. “It's all right.”

He sawed steadily. His mind chewed away at the image of Pinkie's hand resting between Norah's stupid brown eyes. What did she do? Crazy, the idea of H.E. streaming like an electric current down her arm and through the dog's thick skull. Nothing you could measure, nothing you could think about, but still chew, chew, chew. Like gum, all flavour gone, but it's still there …

The metal pinched on the blade. With the numb fingers of his left hand he held it true for a dozen careful strokes, and suddenly he was through. As he pulled the door open, using the padlock as a handle, Norah's growl joined with the groaning hinges. He could see by the grass growing against it outside that it hadn't been opened all summer.

“You go first,” said Pinkie. “She's upset.”

She was indeed. He slipped through and stood with his hand around the door edge, ready to pull it shut. After several seconds Pinkie came quickly through the gap. He almost trapped his fingers as Norah's weight slammed into the wood on the far side, closing the door. Her bark rose, a different note now, harsher and louder. As they moved off down the squelching track, she followed them on the inside, still barking, until her path was blocked by the wall of the vegetable garden. On a still night she would have been heard for miles. Even now, despite the whoosh of wind in the treetops and the rush of rain against the leaves, it was always possible that her barking would coincide with a lull and reach to where Sergeant Coyne slept in the gate cottage, a quarter of a mile down the hill. As she heard their footsteps squelching away, she let out a few frantic yelps and gave up. Nasty while it lasted, though.

The track led out onto a tarred lane. Barry turned right, south-westerly into the wind. The high wall followed the lane for a couple of hundred yards and then gave way to a field hedge. At the end of this first field stood a ramshackle farmyard. Long ago the big house must have had its own home farm with acres of land belonging, but now it all seemed to be farmed by someone else, and this place was used only as a dump for old machinery and straw bales and empty oil drums. Exploring by day, Barry had never seen anyone around. They climbed the iron gate, and he led the way into the tractor shed. The rain on the iron roof rattled and boomed. In the shelter of the screen of bales he had built at the back he lifted up a layer of blue fertilizer bags, propped up the bike he'd hidden beneath them, and switched on the front lamp. Its light shone warmly off the golden straw, making the little space seem almost cozy, like a crib in a Nativity tableau. Barry realised that he was squelching with every step, every movement. He might just have dragged himself out of a swimming pool with all his clothes on.”How are you doing?” he said.

“My feet are wet, but I'm dry above. Can I take this off now?”

She looked almost like some kind of alien with her rain- fogged glasses and her face, pale as a mushroom, poking up through the shiny black plastic. If this were a film, Barry realised, she'd actually turn out to be an alien. That'd be how she did what she did. Why do you always have to have reasons?

“Okay,” he said. “I've got a proper cape and hat for you in the basket. Take your shoes and socks off, and we'll see what we can do. I'm going to find some dry clothes.”

“A bit's got in around my neck.”

“Too bad.”

He stripped off his uniform, wrung out his shirt, and gave it to her.

“Wipe yourself down a bit with this,” he said. “Better than nothing. And I've got some biscuits somewhere.”

“I'm not hungry.”

“You will be. And cold.”

She managed to dry herself off a bit and then nibbled reluctantly while he dressed. There was a dark stain on her green sweater along one shoulder where the rain had got in, but there was nothing much he could do about that, and her own body heat ought to cope with it. He was more worried about her feet. Her canvas shoes were wet through, and her jeans soaked to the knees. The luxurious dryness of the clothes he was putting on, even over damp underclothes, made him more aware of the problem. When he was dressed, he lifted her up, sat her on the bales, and stripped off her shoes and socks. Nothing he could do about her jeans. His own dry socks were enormously too large for her feet and came up to her knees.

“What about you?” she said.

“Feet are going to get soaked through in twenty yards,” he said. “No point in putting on new ones. You might as well have them.”

With his penknife he cut the liner she'd been wearing into four strips and made two rough bags to cover her feet and two sheaths for her legs. He lashed them into place with twine from a bale and pulled her jeans down over them.

“Best I can do.”

“Thank you.”

“You know, you're an extraordinary kid, Pinkie. You realise you haven't asked me anything, not even when we're going to see your granddad, let alone how we're going to get to him.”

“I know you've thought of it all.”

“Done my best. I better warn you the next bit's not going to be a picnic, this weather. We've got a twenty-mile bike ride. When do you usually get up in the mornings?”

“Louise's alarm goes off about seven, and she comes and opens my curtains soon after.”

“Should be all right. We're heading for the 6.20 from Alton. I thought if they spot you're gone before that, they'll try Winchester and maybe Petersfield. Alton gives us an extra chance, and it gets into London at a different platform, too. Same station, Waterloo, can't help that. 7.29 it gets there. If Mrs. B. doesn't spot you're gone till seven, give her five minutes to tell Freeman, ten minutes for him to decide you're nowhere around and get in touch with the police—we'll be unlucky if they've got anyone waiting for us at Waterloo. Then we've got to bike across London to Euston. I'm more worried about that end, because there isn't a train suits us till just before nine. We're not heading for Dallington, of course, because they'll be looking for us there and King's Cross, but if we go up the other line, we can get off at Stafford; that's only thirty miles. Sleep in a sort of cave place I know up on the moors and your granddad's coming out to meet us at Ferriby next morning, supposing he can get away without being followed.”

“It'll be all right.”

“Best I could think of. The other idea was to hire a car and a driver, but then we'd have been in his hands. Much safer, just us. Besides, it would've cost a packet. Your granddad's given me some, but he isn't made of the stuff, so I sold my Galaxy and bought this old rattler …”

“Oh, Bear!”

He looked at her and grinned. She was a funny kid all right. You thought she didn't notice anything, but then…

She'd never even seen the Galaxy. Maybe he'd mentioned bringing it down, talking to Mrs. Butterfield that teatime, but Pinkie'd only been half awake then … Still, she knew. She understood it was something that had mattered.

“Had to change it anyway,” he said. “Couldn't fit a seat for you over ten-speed gears. Had enough biscuits? We'd better get going.”

He stood her down and helped her into the crackling, new-smelling plastic cape and hat, then got into his own waterproofs.

“Hold it there,” he said. “Don't go tramping around. Your footwear's dead in fashion but not what I'd call hard-wearing. I'll be back for you in a sec. Might as well put your glasses away, though, case we have a spill. You won't be needing them next three hours.”

He unlocked the bike, stowed the chain in a basket, and wheeled the machine out through the sluicing rain to the gate. When he went back to fetch her, he found her standing still, apparently quite unalarmed by dark and loneliness and the drum-like roar of the rain. He picked her up and carried her across the boggy yard litter. She was small for her age, but a solid kid all the same. In his mind's eye as he'd planned the journey, he'd imagined her trudging beside him while he shoved the bike up the hills. Now he'd be shoving her weight as well. Hadn't he better forget about the lanes and go by the main roads after all? It was no farther, the hills were easier, and the road markings would be a help on a night like this. Twenty miles. Three hours and a bit. Oh, come on, Bear, you can do it by the lanes. It's your sort of thing, your kind of night secret and dark.

He settled Pinkie on the wall by the gate, heaved the bike over, climbed after it, and lifted her down into the kiddie seat over the rear wheel.

“Bit small for you,” he said, “but the fellow in the shop swore he'd sold one to a lady who'd taken her daughter on a cycling tour in Wales, and she was your age. Now listen, all you've got to do is sit tight. Don't try and balance the bike. If I lean, you lean with me. Got it?”

He switched on the lights, wheeled the bike into the middle of the lane, straddled the crossbar, and with a minor wobble or two pumped off into the sluicing dark.

13

Nothing could have made the ride to Alton a fun event, but despite its being pretty well pure hell, it was still somehow glorious. Not that Barry was suddenly endowed with Superbear strength; in fact, he was already tireder than he'd expected, and the weather made everything harder than he'd planned for. It wasn't long before he realised that by the time they reached Alton—if they did reach it—he'd be somewhere near the limit of his strength.

Pinkie's weight was bad enough. It made the levels stiff going and even the gentler downhills nervy; the steep ones felt dead dangerous. The beam lit five yards of glittering downpour, which he squinted at through rain-blinded eyes. Wet brakes barely gripped the slithering wheel rims. The heavy gear felt primitive and inefficient compared with the ten-speed change he'd been used to on the Galaxy, and though he'd oiled every bearing, the whole bike seemed stiff. Time nagged at his mind with every pedal stroke. Twenty miles in three hours is less than seven miles an hour—child's play, you'd have thought, on anything. But after half an hour he knew they had nothing to spare.

Their course lay north-west. The valleys ran roughly east and west. None of the hills rose more than a few hundred feet, but most were steep, and the ancient, high-hedged lanes—picked out perhaps centuries before by packhorses and foot travellers—twisted irrationally among them. Standing up on his pedals, Barry would pump along some undulating ridge, not daring to use the down slopes to gather speed for the next short up in case the up wasn't there and he found himself plunging full tilt into a valley. He had had time to explore the full route only once and had been more concerned to memorize landmarks and not get lost in the maze of lanes than to take note of ups and downs.

Along these uplands the economic speed was little more than that of the wind, which blew gustily from behind him. Anything faster, and his cape turned into an air brake. Indeed, when the odd gust swirled the wrong way and came at him head-on, the buffet felt almost as if he'd ridden into some solid obstacle, unseen in the dark.

The valleys were worse. The road would plunge with no warning into a black tunnel of hazel coppice. Brakes hard on, but no sense of slowing, steep bank rushing up as the lane twisted, became steeper, blacker, slither of loose leaves, out of control…yell “Hold tight!” and try and hit the bank slantwise.

It happened like that a couple of times before Barry decided that the only safe thing was to get off and walk before he lost control, or at least to stand on one pedal and scoot, ready to jump down as the rush began, though half the time he discovered that the precaution hadn't been necessary and he could have ridden the whole way down. But in other places the lanes cut deep beneath the land surface and ran between cliffs of earth, reeking with wild garlic, which often hid juts of the underlying rock. Hit something like that full speed, and the escape would be over. Then in the bottom they would hear the rush of a swollen stream, and Barry would lean against the handlebars and trudge up the far slope, always deciding too early that it had eased enough for him to ride and trying to do so and then having to get off again.

That was not all. There was the numbing wind chill on his hands, the slop of water in his shoes, the slash of rain in his eyes, and the weary rattle of raindrops against his head.

Worse still were the bouts of doubt, the moments when he became convinced that he had missed the way. When he had ridden the route, he had brought a one-inch map, marked all possible landmarks on it, and then spent part of his night shifts learning them by heart. He had not realised how little he would see—that he could actually be on the lookout for a pair of white cottages not ten feet from the road and still miss them and then go pounding on into the dark, convinced that he hadn't passed them and was now astray in the maze of lanes, with time running helplessly away …

Yet, despite doubt and panic, cold, risk, effort, and weariness, Barry was happy. Bear was happy. They were going to make it.
He
was going to make it, rather. He had hardly noticed, but since Pinkie had called him by his secret name in the cupboard, Bear had been strangely quiet. Even in the long night hours at the Foundation he had existed as little more than a fancy, a faint mind shadow. Now he was at the surface again, but somehow not separate. Working not just together with Barry but as one, doing something which only they—he—could have done. The slog and struggle were suffused with physical happiness. The rain-cleaned air was good to breathe, good to feed the lungs, making strong blood for the heart to pump through the arteries to muscles that might ache as they toiled but did not whine. And the brain, too, fed on that good blood, thought sense, kept the map clear, refused the nudgings of panic. The sense of wellness, of life being good, was so strong that it seemed to spread out beyond his body, to make a sort of bubble, or force field, around him and Pinkie, moving along the black lanes with them at its . The rain and the night and the road, the old-fashioned bike with its frustrating gears, even the hedges and the fields and woods beyond were part of the bubble, felt with him, shared his happiness. Of course, it was stupid to think of a bike's being happy, let alone a raindrop as it flicked through the lamp beam, golden for its moment before it slapped into tarmac and stopped existing as an individual drop, lost in wetness, but Barry discovered that that was how he was thinking.

It happened when he was on foot, shoving up a slope. He had dismounted when the effort of pedalling hard stopped being worth while, had gripped the back of the saddle with his right hand and the handlebars with his left, and leaned into a straining trudge.

Deprived of her hold on his waist, Pinkie put her left hand on his wrist. The pitch of the slope eased. Through a gap in the overarching hazels a shaft of rain shot down and glittered in the lamplight, like sparks from a firework, fountaining down. As he pushed into the gold shower, Barry's mind took hold of the whole experience and put it into shape, into thoughts he could think about. He pushed on up the hill.

“You doing something?” he asked.

“I want to help.”

“You're helping all right.”

“Mustn't think about it.”

“Can't stop myself. Kind of person I am.”

But it was true. The bubble had somehow shrunk with the discovery of its existence. It was still there but reached barely beyond him. And its centre was not Barry or Barry-and-Pinkie; it was the point at which her chill hand touched his wrist. What did she do? What was she doing to him? Was it all that different from what she'd done to Norah?

“Is it a lot farther to go?” she said.

“Fair bit. We're halfway. You all right?”

“I'm cold.”

She wasn't complaining, just telling him. Poor kid. The effort of pedalling had kept Barry warm under his rainwear despite the wetness of hands and face and feet. Pinkie had just had to sit.

“Can't you think yourself warm?”

“Me?”

“I don't see why not. I mean, if you can…”

“It isn't like that.”

“Okay. Sorry. Pity you can't walk. We'll stop at the top of the hill and try and warm you up a bit.”

“All right.”

Where the slope eased he lifted her down and made her do knee bends and arm slaps while he felt for biscuits in the basket. They were under trees still, but he could see the faint arch of sky where the woods ended. Despite the leaf cover, it was difficult to find any place where the rain didn't come through as heavily as if they'd been out in the open. He ate a couple of biscuits while Pinkie slapped obediently in the dark beside him.

“Better?” he asked.

“A bit.”

“On we go then.”

They wobbled out from under the trees and were gathering speed along a level before Barry realised that something had changed. It had almost stopped raining. What had seemed like rain in the wood had been mostly drips off all those leaves. But now, apart from an occasional spattering, the lamp beam shone clear through onto the glossy black wetness of the road. It made a fantastic difference. A mile or so later, as the road dipped into another valley, he found that he could actually see beyond the reach of the lamp beam. Night was ending. When they climbed out on the far side, he could see the trailing edges of the storm lit faintly grey and pale streaks of the beginnings of daylight in the clearing sky to the south-east.

“Look at that,” he said. “If we'd started an hour later, we wouldn't have got wet at all. We've been travelling with it.”

Now that he no longer needed the lights, he switched them off. Steadily the dawn brightened, and as it did, the soaked landscape started to come alive. Anywhere with trees or bushes a racket of birdsong began. In a farmyard a tractor engine clattered. They passed a milk cart by a cottage gate; the milkman's whistling came from behind the house. Later a small blue van breasted a hill and came toward them. The driver was the first witness all night who could have told anyone which way they'd come, and with luck he hadn't noticed Pinkie huddled against Barry's back; a bicyclist slogging along in the wet dawn wasn't that extraordinary a sight. The later it got, the more likely they were to be seen but the less likely to be noticed.

And they were making better time, with the rain gone and the road properly visible. Barry pushed his hood back, opened the collar of his cape, and let himself steam as he rode. The steepest valleys were all behind them now. The storm drifted north, leaving a sky that changed from pearly to blue as the sun came up.

The last two miles were along a main road. More traffic whipped past, spraying out spume. Alton High Street was almost empty. Twenty minutes to spare. He turned into an alley between two shops, where he undid the lashings around Pinkie's feet and legs and put her back barefoot into her sodden shoes. When he straightened to pedal the last couple of hundred yards to the station, his legs were so feeble that for a moment he thought he couldn't even stand.

There was no sign of anything that looked like a police car at the station. He bought their tickets from an unquestioning clerk, wheeled the bike out onto the platform, and put it into the guard's van of the waiting train. With a basket in each hand and Pinkie beside him he squelched up along the train. Every seat was empty because Alton was the start of that line. They climbed into a pleasant, mild, greenhousy warmth, settled facing each other by the far windows where the sun came in, and ate biscuits and raisins. Pinkie took off her shoes, and Barry balanced them on a window ledge in the sun to begin to dry. Some men with heavy, grumbling voices got in farther down the same carriage. More people, not many, moved along the platform, choosing where to sit. Nine minutes dragged achingly by. Pinkie had fallen asleep before the train started. 6.20.

At 6.30 Barry took his little radio from a basket and held it to his ear, trying to hear the news bulletin through the clatter of interference from the overhead cables. Trouble in Lebanon. Big CND rally. Test Match pitch under water. Fire in holiday camp. Nothing about a kid missing—too soon. Eight o'clock earliest.

The train stopped every five minutes or so, and more people got on. An Indian in a turban took the seat next to Pinkie, who stirred but did not wake. Barry had to move the baskets onto the rack to make room for a fat young woman, who then read incredibly slowly through the
Sun
, page by page, not missing anything. The more people, the better, because it meant Barry and Pinkie became less noticeable.

He ached, body and mind, with tiredness. It was getting on toward his normal bedtime now, and for the last week he had needed to cut down on sleep in order to make all the preparations for the escape—exploring the route, trading the bikes, buying maps and tools and so on, picking up the money Mr. Stott had sent. Everything had demanded a twenty-mile bike ride at least. But in spite of exhaustion, he was too keyed up to sleep. Just as well. Last thing he wanted was for the train to reach Waterloo and all the passengers leave except him and Pinkie, snoozing in their corners. Sure way to get noticed.

He found himself gazing vaguely at Pinkie. She didn't have that especially angelic look some kids take on when they're asleep. Her glasses had slid crooked, and her plain, pale face had somehow closed itself away. It was like the wall of a house that has no windows on the outside; perhaps there's an inner courtyard with flowers, and a fountain, and a child nursing a kitten, but you don't know about any of that from the street. He wondered if in order to do what she did, Pinkie needed to be like that. When she gave, she gave enormously. You couldn't do that without killing yourself, not all the time. You had to have a way of putting the shutters up … Anyway, how long could she go on? Looking at her now, studying her for tiny signs, Barry thought that even in sleep she seemed worn, stretched, thinned.

Was it all worth her while? Sort of subject for a pub argument: You have this gift; the world needs it; the more you give, the less chance you have of becoming anything except your gift. Must you go on giving? Look at pop stars. A lot of them destroy themselves, giving the fans what they want; drug to keep going, heavier and heavier; and then the overdose. Of course, they'd chosen, it was their own lookout. Pinkie had been chosen, so she was different. Except she'd told him it was all she ever wanted to do. Anyway, she'd chosen old Bear, all that time ago, sneaking up on him in the corridor outside the secretary's office at Marsden Ash Junior. “You've got a nasty head …” Had she somehow known then she was going to need him? Oh, rubbish. But just thinking about that morning was good as a hot breakfast.

It was, too. Of course, some of the warmth and restfulness and sense of renewal came from the food he'd eaten, the sun, and the cradle-like swaying of the train. But not all. There was an inward glow along his spine and across his shoulder blades, a feeling inside him of fresh reserves being raised, like troops streaming out from his innermost citadel to replace the exhausted, battered, almost defeated armies at the front. Could Pinkie do that, even asleep? Did she have to be there? Could you do it by thinking about her? Could you do it for yourself without using her at all? No. To the last question anyway. Somehow he was sure of that. She'd said she couldn't think herself warm, hadn't she?