The Kind Folk (19 page)

Someone is standing just behind the door. He could be retrieving a jacket from a hook, but he needs to do more than that about dressing, since his feet and ankles are bare. They're as pallid as the tiles, and so thin that Luke would rather not envisage what kind of body goes with them. The toes are considerably longer than anyone's ought to be, and the grubby elongated nails are almost indistinguishable from them, as if the claws are composed of exactly the same substance. Luke cups his soapy hands and dashes water into his face, but that doesn't charm the sight away—indeed, the feet shift with a faint desiccated scraping on the tiles as though their owner has begun to grow impatient. Luke rubs his eyes so hard they sting and glares at the mirror, and speaks before he knows he means to. "I can see you."

Both of his neighbours glance at him. Perhaps they think he's talking to a child, and he has a sense that whatever is hiding behind the door is far too like one. It must have heard him, because it's giving him a sign, stretching the toes on either side of the left foot away from each other until they point in opposite directions. In another moment the right foot imitates the gesture. Luke clenches his fists but can't keep quiet. "Is that the best you can do?"

His neighbours stare at him. They could have decided he's mentally ill, and who's to contradict them? He's very close to urging them to look at the cubicle and say what they see, if anything;—and then a newcomer makes for it. As the man shoves the door with the flat of his hand Luke sees the clawed feet draw up behind it. The occupant of the cubicle is riding the hook on the back of the door.

Luke holds his breath until his head starts to throb like his fists. The man vanishes into the cubicle, and the door has hardly shut when the bolt slides into place. Luke stares into the mirror as his neighbours watch him sidelong, and all at once he's sure that he has been tricked into making a show of himself. He hurries to a hand dryer, which emits a miniature gale so fierce that he wonders if it's blotting out sounds he ought to hear, but when it falls silent there's no further sign of anything wrong in the cubicle. He stalks across the lobby and sees the exit doors sidling together, although nobody appears to have just left the block. As he emerges into the sunlight, a car alarm starts to yap ahead of him.

It has uttered just a couple of notes when an alarm several hundred yards away joins in. Almost immediately an alarm on the far side of the car park adds to the clamour. If this is a demonstration of power it seems even more banal than it's vindictive, or could it be meant to greet Luke? In either case he feels guilty and isolated, singled out for what he is. The security guard has taken out his phone, but before he can use it there's a metallic thump and a smash of glass. Two cars have collided near the entrance to the car park.

Luke thinks the drivers were distracted by the babble of alarms until he glimpses a thin sketchy figure scuttling away from the accident. It dodges into a hedge and hides among the twigs, which it instantly resembles. Luke is afraid he has provoked this latest childishly senile trick, and he's nervous that his guilt will be apparent to the guard beside him. When the man strides towards the crash, where the drivers have stormed out of their vehicles to bellow at each other, Luke thinks of following, but how could he help? If he tried to explain they would all think he was mad, which he still isn't sure is so far from the truth. If he's responsible he ought to leave before he causes worse, and he sprints to his car. As he speeds onto the motorway he does his utmost not to think he glimpsed spidery limbs groping out of a hedge as though to draw him back.

THE FOLLOWERS

"Luke, where have you been?"

"I went to the library."

"You didn't say you were going there. Didn't you say were out in the open?"

"I was there all right. Out where you can't come back from."

"Except you have. You've come back to me and little Maurice."

"Maybe I haven't, not who we wanted to think I was."

"I won't believe you. You'll always be who I want."

"I'll still put on a good show, you mean. That's the story of my life. You know what kind, don't you? A fairy tale."

"I'm not following you, Luke."

"Let's just hope nothing else has. Look, can we start again? I want to tell you everything but I don't know how."

"You only have to say it to me. It can't be that hard when you're so good with words."

"Maybe they don't belong to me. They're something else I've stolen from everyone I've known."

"You're going off the point again. Just say what you know. If you can't tell me you can't tell anyone."

"That has to be true, but maybe not how you'd like."

"Now you're just putting off telling me. Is it something you found out at the library?"

"It's far too much."

"Go on. You've come that far."

"I've got to do this in my own way or I can't do it at all. You remember what happened when you went to Terence's house."

"I broke that ornament, you mean."

"It wasn't an ornament. I'm not sure what it was, but you didn't break it. I already had."

"That can't be right, Luke. I know you're trying to make me feel better about it, but—"

"I'm not trying that at all. I'm saying that's the kind of thing it was and maybe still is."

"Well, let's go to the house and see what's there."

"Let's leave that for now. The point is the things Terence ended up believing were all true."

"Which were they?"

"His neighbour you met, she told you about one. You remember."

"Some kind of charm he'd believed in, you mean."

"You said it was a spell. And you said he eventually realised it was a trick. You were right, Sophie. You just didn't know how much."

"Are you going to let me into your secret, then?"

"He thought it was a way of making someone fertile when they hadn't been able to have a child, but that's just how it was meant to seem. Or maybe it helped Freda get pregnant, but that was only so her baby could be stolen. That's what happens when anyone does what Terence did."

"I can't believe what you're saying, Luke."

"You have to, Sophie. You wouldn't want to see the proof. Remember you said singing about, about what we were discussing might bring them. Promise you won't do that any more."

"Luke, do you honestly believe what I think you mean?"

"I've got to. If it isn't true it has to mean I'm mad, and you wouldn't want to make me worse by arguing, would you? So humour me if you care about us and Little Maurice."

"That's really unfair. You know how much I do. All right, enough not to sing about them to him if it bothers you that much."

"I hope that keeps them away, then."

"Why, what else is going to bring them?"

"I might, and you know why, don't you?"

"You have to tell me, Luke. You have to say it."

"Because they brought me in the first place."

"Don't say that," Sophie cries. At least, Luke does—he can't even judge how much he sounds like her—and stares at himself in the windscreen mirror. His face looks indefinably unfamiliar, as though he's seeing it with new eyes. He could fancy it's a mask he dons when he's performing, which is all the time. Yet another rehearsal has gone wrong. Perhaps his attempts at preparation have had no use except to let him feel less alone while he drove home, in which case he could have wished for better company than himself. He's as far from knowing what to say as ever, but he can't practice any more without putting off the moment Sophie sees him. He's home.

He drives down the ramp and parks beside her car. As he crosses the basement, thin footsteps imitate him while vague shapes dodge into corners to sink into the bricks. He's hearing his own echoes and seeing the shadows the lights make him cast, but he could think they're just as real as he is, or exactly as unreal—imitations of an imitation. All at once he's afraid he may not be able to choose the voice Sophie hears when he opens his mouth, since he was possessed by so many voices on the road. He doesn't have to choose, he just needs to be natural, an ambition that brings him close to sniggering aloud. "This is me," he hears himself repeating as he climbs the steps to the lobby. "This is me."

Somebody is singing upstairs. If it's Sophie he's anxious to distinguish the words. The clatter of his footsteps on the wooden stairs doesn't help, so that he's nearly at the first floor by the time he's certain that the singer isn't her. The song is accompanied not by her guitar but by several musicians. It ends as he reaches the second floor, and then it recommences. While he doesn't catch the first line, the second one is clear: "... all day contrive our magic spells ..."

It halts him for a moment, and then he climbs faster, desperate to learn where the song may be. His footsteps blot out some of it, but he keeps hearing words. "...shakes as if for fear... " "...we to some flowery meadow stray..." Which of these is more ominous? "...by mortal eyes unseen..." At least this ends the song, which is still above him, but it's revived as he climbs the last flight of stairs. "We fairy elves in secret dells..." He gropes for his keys so clumsily his fingers feel contorted, and sprints to his apartment. That's where the song is coming from.

He scrapes the key into the lock and slams the door behind him. "What are you doing?" he demands as he strides along the hall.

Sophie is at the computer. She pauses the playback, and as she swivels the chair to face him he has the disconcerting fancy that their unborn child is steering her. "Where have you been, Luke?" she says. "I almost started thinking you weren't coming home."

It could be a cue for one of the attempts at explanation he's rehearsed, but the sight of the lyrics on the screen is too immediate. "I've been on my way," he only just takes time to tell her. "Why are you doing that? You promised you'd leave it alone."

"I think I said I wouldn't sing that kind of song to him within."

"You might as well be. It's still near him."

"I honestly don't think this can do him any harm. It's Beethoven." When Luke gazes at her as he struggles to find words she says "I was only doing some research while we were waiting for you. You might as well say reading the words is too close to him."

"Maybe, maybe you shouldn't take the risk."

"Oh, Luke." For a moment Sophie seems reduced to leaving it at that, and then she swings around to the computer. "Look," she says and points at the first line of the song, which is called
The Elfin Fairies.
"Did you know that was what they used to call the moon?"

We fairy elves in secret dells
All day contrive our magic spells,
Till sable night o'ercast the sky,
And through the airy regions fly,
By Cynthia's light so clear...

Luke gathers this is what she wants him to see, and it has no appeal for him. He thinks it reads as though the writer was striving to disguise a reality he was afraid to acknowledge, unless it showed how accepted the innocuous version of the fairies had become. It occurs to him that Shakespeare has a good deal to answer for. "Have you finished with it now?" he blurts.

"If you have."

Sophie sounds a little disappointed. She's shutting the computer down when Luke says "You aren't planning to use that, are you?"

"I don't break my promises, Luke."

"In your act, I meant."

"I wasn't thinking of it. Shall I check with you in future that everything I do is acceptable?" Sophie wheels around as if she's ready for a confrontation but relents when she looks into his face. "Luke, I'm sorry," she says. "Has it brought something back?"

Though her sympathy is plain, her words feel ominously closer. "Such as what?" Luke hears himself ask.

"Maybe something about your childhood."

"Why do you think it would do that?"

"We decided Terence believed in magic, didn't we? A lot of his generation did. It was like the Victorians but with different drugs." She gazes into Luke's eyes while she says "Did that song make you think of him?"

"A lot of things have lately."

"It isn't just him that's on your mind, is it?" Luke sees her trying to gaze deeper as she says "Have you been feeling how he used to make you feel?"

He can't quite take the cue. "Meaning how?"

"However you did when the doctor sent you to the specialist. Are you afraid you'll end up like that again?"

What can he accomplish by trying to convince her of ideas that he has no reason to expect her to believe? It's a great deal easier to agree with her, particularly since he isn't wholly sure that she's mistaken, and he blurts "Don't you think I ought to be?"

"I think you shouldn't let it bother you too much. You overcame it by yourself when you were just a little boy, didn't you? And now you've got me if you need me."

"You know I do." That's a formula people use in this kind of situation, and he doesn't want to feel he's nothing but a mimic—and then he thinks he sees how to deal with his fears without being forced to define them. "You made me a promise before," he says, "and now I'll make you one. If I ever think I'm any kind of a threat to you or the baby I'll see whoever I have to see. And if that doesn't work I'll do whatever else needs doing. If I have to I'll go far away."

"You won't, Luke." Sophie takes his hand and rests it on her midriff. "Maybe I know you better than you know yourself," she says. "You'd never do us any harm."

Luke believes the last few words. If he ever could have been a danger to them, surely he's sufficiently aware of himself not to be. "Going away so much hasn't helped you, has it?" Sophie murmurs.

"Why," Luke says and hesitates, "what do you think it's done to me?"

"I think it's giving you too much time on your own with everything that's happened lately." She strokes her midriff with Luke's hand as she says "Remember you've still got nearly all of us."

"I can do without my real parents."

Once she has searched his eyes for the meaning behind this Sophie says "Won't you be trying to find them any more?"

"Would you mind if I gave up?"

"I wouldn't mind anything that meant you weren't away from me so much." She lets go of his hand at last and says "Let's make sure people realise we can travel as a package."