Incarnate (26 page)

Her start of panic made her furious. The figure beyond the frosted glass could hardly be the police, unless they’d taken to wearing red boots in the snow. Besides, the woman was too small, and when Molly opened the door the woman’s head looked even smaller for being tied up in a headscarf. “Molly Wolfe,” she said.

Something about her made Molly apprehensive—not just her peremptory briskness. “Yes?”

“Don’t you remember me? I didn’t think I’d changed that much. I recognized you as soon as I saw your picture in the paper. No? Joyce Churchill. You knew me as just Joyce.”

Molly’s apprehension grew solid in her stomach, though she wasn’t sure why: perhaps all of them from eleven years ago had seen her photograph, but why should that make her feel panicky? “You’ve come about Stuart’s letter,” she said.

“Stuart who?”

Why was she concerned with surnames now? “Stuart Hay. Dr. Kent’s assistant. The people who got us together in Oxford.”

“Don’t talk to me about them. I’ve finished with all that, I’ve found my purpose in life. Of course I haven’t come about them. I’ve come to ask for your help.”

Molly couldn’t stand there with her apprehension looming overhead so darkly it seemed solid. “You’d better come in.”

In the living room Joyce nodded approvingly at the furniture and video recorder and sections of the cabinet. “What can I do for you?” Molly said.

“Remember how we all wanted to change things? I think I have, in my own little way. Maybe I needed that business in Oxford to teach me not to be so ambitious.

What I do, you see, is look after old folk, giving them somewhere to go so they can make friends.”

“That’s worth doing.”

“Yes, it is. Nobody can say different. Nobody except the planners and the people who are too interested in making money. The planners let my day center be demolished, after my husband gave up his own shop to buy it for me. They’re paying compensation, as little as they can get away with. I’d like people to know about that,” she said fiercely, “but first there’s something else. I’ve found an empty property that’s suitable and I’m having to fight one of these hamburger chains to get it. They’re doing everything they can to make it seem they would be more of an asset to the district than a place for the old folk would be. But they’re afraid of public opinion, I’m sure they are.”

“So they should be,” Molly said, and wondered why Joyce was staring so impatiently at her. “So why have you come to me?”

“Because you work for the television, of course.”

“Yes, but not at the moment. I’ve been suspended.”

“I know that. They told me when they gave me your address.” Joyce was growing red-faced with impatience. “You still know who I should speak to, don’t you? Surely you can put in a word for me. I don’t know anyone else who can help.”

“I’ll do my best, Joyce,” Molly said, vowing that once she had put Joyce in touch she would have nothing more to do with her. “Let me make a call and see who’s there.”

Ben wasn’t, thank God, and wouldn’t be until the new year. Tessa Schuman was in charge of news, and sounded wary when she realized who Molly was. “It’s nothing to do with me,” Molly explained, “except that the lady is a friend of mine. Just let me bring her in and the rest is up to you.” She would have sent Joyce if she hadn’t wanted time to talk to her, to ask.

Joyce had overheard her and was wrapping up her head again. “You’re a brick. Look, here’s my number and where I live. If I can ever do anything for you, don’t hesitate to ask.”

The more Molly thought of the possibility of a reunion, the more trapped it made her feel. She closed the front door behind them and dug her mittens out of her coat pocket. “Don’t be offended, Joyce, but I honestly feel we should try to stay apart.”

“Well, of course I wouldn’t dream of imposing on you.”

“You’re offended. Look, it’s nothing personal. I don’t know why, I just feel none of us should meet.” She was beginning to resent the way Joyce was looking at her as if Joyce never had premonitions herself. “You had a letter from Stuart, didn’t you? Didn’t it make you feel that way?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean. I’ve neither seen nor heard of him in eleven years, and I’ve no wish to.”

“I assumed he’d written to all of us.” What did it mean if he had written only to Molly? She thought of Danny, whose name couldn’t be Swain, remembered his charge that she had made everything happen. She stopped at the corner of Bayswater Road and took the letter out of her bag. “See how it reads,” she said. “Like a form letter.”

Joyce read it quickly and passed it back. Molly was tempted to let it be blown into the muddy slush. Instead she replaced it in her handbag, and then had to hurry after Joyce, who wasn’t waiting. “You see what I mean,” she said hopefully. “So how about it, Joyce? Any aftereffects?”

“I’m afraid not. Reality keeps me too busy to dream.”

Did her briskness disguise nervousness? “Joyce, what do you remember from Oxford?”

“I remember feeling I’d been locked away with nobody to turn to, just like old people who’re locked up in homes because their children can’t be bothered looking after them.”

“Do you remember what you dreamed?”

Joyce stared as if Molly were raving. “Why on earth would I remember a dream I had eleven years ago?”

“I thought you might remember the last dream you had there—the one that was more than you could take.”

“Well, I don’t, and I’m glad I don’t. Do you?” she said with a fierce triumphant look.

“Parts of it, yes. I remember a back room full of people who looked, I don’t know, unfinished. I remember getting there via a red front door with a dog-faced knocker. Have you ever seen a door like that?”

“Never, and I don’t want to.”

“What bothers me is that I can’t remember how you got to that house.”

“I don’t remember that either,” Joyce said, and looked furious, then tried to look careless as she hurried ahead. It took Molly a moment to realize Joyce had trapped herself, but by the time she overtook Joyce, the small woman was ready for her. “I’ve only one thing to say about Oxford,” she said, “and it’s this. They shouldn’t have put us all together like that. They locked up all that dreaming with nowhere for it to go. They overloaded us, that’s what they did. They burned out my dreaming. And I’ll tell you one more thing,” she said, grabbing a railing of the park as if she wanted to shake it at Molly, “I wouldn’t tell them, but I’m glad they did. I never want to dream again. Reality is more than enough for me.”

They reached MTV without having exchanged another word. Tessa on the fifth floor seemed determined to get rid of Molly. “I wouldn’t be seen round here just now if I were you,” she told her as Joyce began her story. Molly couldn’t understand why she was lingering, after she’d told Joyce they ought to stay apart, but Tessa had to say, “I really think you ought to go,” before Molly could make herself do so, feeling a looming frustration so intense that it didn’t feel like hers at all.

Of course it must be. She was frustrated by Joyce’s denial of everything she had once been. At least I can still dream, Molly told herself walking home, and I mean to use that. She already had. She stopped to gaze at the police station. What had she suddenly almost remembered? The boxy, off-white building with its gutters spiky with icicles and its buried cells looked so enigmatic it seemed meaningless. Eventually she made her way through the unsteady crowd, still wondering what she had already dreamed about the police that she had overlooked and which it was so crucial to remember.

24

D
ANNY
got a gray suit for Christmas. His father shook his hand curtly and growled, “Happy Christmas”; his mother cried, “Try it on.” When he slipped his arms into the jacket he found that the breast pocket bulged. He reached in, hoping for sweets or even a radio, but the book that looked like a miniature Bible was a thesaurus. “You take that to work and read a page whenever you can and then you won’t be stuck for words,” his mother said. Danny gave her a set of pans, gave his father a book about MGM.

It was much like previous Christmases: his mother blinked forlornly at the turkey and the charred vegetables and said, “I don’t know what went wrong”; his father clapped her on the shoulder and growled, “Nothing wrong with it at all.” He glared at Danny for saying, “I’ll bet you’re glad now I gave you pans.” After they had gnawed their portions of dried-up Christmas pudding, they played games to cheer her up, and then finally the whisky ritual, his father producing the bottle and muttering, “I suppose you want one too,” while his mother said, “Don’t give him too much,” and then his father demanded, “What are you going to do if the Hercules closes?”

Danny choked. His nostrils felt afire with whisky. “It isn’t going to,” he managed to say finally.

“Listen to it. Don’t you notice anything that’s going on around you? Why do you think it’s closing every afternoon?”

He noticed all right, noticed more than anyone else; he’d just learned to keep it to himself. “Who says?”

“Sidney Pettigrew says, that’s who. Every afternoon once the kids are back at school. Don’t tell me you didn’t take that in.”

Had Danny forgotten he’d been told? Mr. Pettigrew hadn’t bothered telling him, more like—maybe he’d hoped there would be a scene like this. His father was shaking his head in disgust. “Look at it. The place could catch fire and he wouldn’t notice.”

His mother had been wheezing in sympathy with Danny’s coughing, she’d heaved herself to her feet to thump him on the back, but now she had caught her breath. “They won’t really close, will they?”

“Afternoons are the beginning of the end, you mark my words. It’s these videos that are the root of it, and people being afraid to go out at night. Soon they won’t go out at all. They’ll ring up for their shopping and have it delivered in armored cars.”

She was sipping her milk with a festive touch of rum. “Well, I think it’s very sad.”

“It’s more than bloody sad, it’s criminal. Give me wartime any day. People cared about each other then, and the Hercules was somewhere you were proud to work. Remember how I used to have to run to the Plaza with the newsreels as soon as we’d shown them? Nearly lost them in the blackout once. We didn’t need to advertise in the papers, just put our posters in the shops and we’d have a full house every night. After the war the rot set in,” he said, and Danny wondered if he meant that Danny had been born, if he were remembering teaching Danny to work the projector and losing his temper whenever he had to repeat himself. “Pettigrew can see the way it’s going. He’s thinking of opening a video library.”

“Then I’ll work there,” Danny said.

“You’ll be lucky.” His father glared at him. “You’d need to be able to talk to people.”

“Well, leave him alone and maybe he will. You do what I said, Danny, you read that book every chance you get. Then you won’t always be having to stop and think.”

But he needed to, to make sure he was safe. He wished they would both leave him alone. Danny closed his eyes and woke when his mother asked who wanted a snack. He was in bed when he realized he hadn’t said thank you for the suit and the thesaurus, but he couldn’t even pronounce that word; it felt like a trick played on his mouth. He wouldn’t be so easy to trick tomorrow, when he would be at the Hercules and could start to deal with Dr. Kent.

He left home early, he was so eager to be in the projection box. Children were fighting on the steps of the Hercules, trying to pry open the display case to steal the Disney poster, writing their names on the walls. Danny chased them away just as Mr. Pettigrew unbolted the doors for him. “Never mind chasing my audience, there’s few enough of the little darlings as it is,” he said, and then saw the graffiti. “Little swines. I should never have left Bath. We showed the better class of film there for the better class of audience. Never sent the children by themselves, always came as a family. Half the families booked the same seats every time. It was like pews in church, and they had just as much respect for them.”

Danny was wondering why he’d come here from Bath if he hadn’t had to, when the manager frowned. “Come in my office. I want a word with you.”

There was nobody to overhear, but that was Mr. Pettigrew’s way, like always being on the steps at the end of the show to say good-night to his audience even when they told him where to go, and wearing his black jacket on the hottest summer days. Danny wanted to be alone in the projection box. As soon as he was standing in front of Mr. Pettigrew’s desk, he said, “It’s all right, my dad’s told me.”

Mr. Pettigrew touched the tips of his moustache with finger and thumb as if to line it up with his bow tie. “Told you what?”

“About the afternoons.” When Mr. Pettigrew still frowned, he said, “How we’re going to close.”

“What do you mean, close?”

“He said how you’re going to open a video place instead of here.”

“He said that, did he? I’ll be having words with him. And is that why you went skulking off to Felicity there?”

Danny glanced round, expecting to see whoever she was, or at least a photograph. The sight of nobody confused him even more than the question. “Where?”

“All the gods help us, have you forgotten already? Don’t act the fool with me, lad, you’re enough of one without trying. I suppose you didn’t know I knew. Well, what have you to say for yourself?”

“I didn’t follow what you said.”

“Sainted heavens, you get worse. They’ll be putting you away. The Royal in Chelsea, does that mean anything to you? Do you happen to recall the manageress who I’ve known for years and always comes round for a Christmas drink?”

The syllables fell into place: Felicity Tare, Mrs. Tare, who had sounded like Miss Astaire. Danny felt prickly and desperate. “I didn’t know we were closing then,” he pleaded. “And she wouldn’t give me the job.”

“You astound me. How could she have missed that chance?” He was gripping his own lapels so hard that sweat bloomed grayly from his fingertips on the black material. “I’ll tell you something, lad, in case it hasn’t sunk in. I’m the only one who’ll employ you, for your dad’s sake.”