The Kind Folk (21 page)

"I'm sure you haven't told me that before, but let's not argue. I can see how Terence may have thought it was."

They're straggling further from the point than ever, and Luke tries to lurch beyond caution. "One thing you'll remember," he says and has to take a breath. "What you said about the Kind Folk, that he was involved with them."

"Did I say involved? I don't think—"

"It doesn't matter what you said, that's what he was. You must have seen he was looking for them."

"Because he keeps using the phrase, you mean? I don't understand why you're being so fierce."

"You have to see what's here." Luke lifts a hand but points it at the journal rather than himself. "He was trying to find them," he says, "so he could find out what to do about me."

"About—" Sophie is quiet for a moment. "Oh, Luke," she murmurs. "You're saying he was worried because you'd been sent to the psychiatrist."

"No, that's not it, not all of it anyway. I'm not angry with you, Sophie, just myself." Luke still can't step over the edge of revelation; he feels as if his nature has clamped on his mind, crushing the words too deep to reach. "One thing you won't have understood," he manages to say. "What do you think he meant by the end of magic?"

Sophie seems to welcome the respite as she leafs through the journal, and doesn't speak until she has read the entry at least once again. "Did he think some kind of magic ended with these people? I'm not sure why he keeps mentioning hands here unless he had some kind of secret sign in mind."

"It's the one the Kind Folk use to show what they are." For an instant that feels like losing all control Luke is aware that his fingers have begun to stretch wide, and then pain makes him clench his fists. "But the end, that's the title of a book," he says. "The author's name is Page, Alvin Page."

"Have you read it, Luke?"

He nods and feels as if the burden of knowledge weighs too much for his head to hold up. "In the library while I was away."

"You look as if you think it says something important."

"It says..." He has to open his fists, since they make him feel he's clenching the whole of himself to keep the revelation in. "It says if you ask them to help you to have a child you'll end up with one of their own."

Sophie looks away from him. He thinks he can't bear what she has realised she's seeing, but she's regarding the journal. In a moment she raises her eyes to him. "That's even sadder," she murmurs. "If that's what Terence thought it's a pity he won't be here for your test results."

Luke feels his mouth open and close again. He might almost have forgotten how to speak. He hasn't begun to think of a response by the time Sophie says "And if you're a changeling you'll do for me."

Too late he realises that she's already familiar with the idea from songs she knows. That's all it means to her—a folk tradition, a fairy tale. If he tries to convince her that it's so much more, will she think he needs to see another sort of doctor? Just the same, he's about to try when she says "Don't inherit his obsession, will you?"

"Don't you think I already have?" It feels like a last opportunity to persuade her of the truth. "If he were here," Luke says, "he'd be telling us we ought to remember some of the things that have happened."

Sophie looks as patient as her mother often does. "Such as what, Luke?"

"The kind of folk who got into the house where the nurse lived, for a start."

"Her neighbour said they were after drugs, if you recall."

"You didn't see them." This is no use, since Luke didn't either—not that night, at any rate. "But I'll tell you what you did see. The ones you said were making signs when you were performing in Chester."

"I thought you might have that in mind. I know what it must have been now."

"What?" Luke has to discover.

"I said I couldn't do that with my hands because nobody could. They must have been taking off their gloves and I thought those were hands in the dark."

"Who'd wear gloves," Luke says desperately, "when it's midsummer?"

"I can't say when I didn't see the people properly. Maybe it's the new fashion or it's going to be."

Luke takes a breath and forces himself to remind her "You said they followed you home."

"That was a dream, Luke."

"Have you had anything like it since?"

"Once was enough."

Surely all that matters is that she's left alone. Suppose talking about the unwelcome visitors summons them? He can sense that she's troubled by his insistence; does he really mean to distress her further while she's pregnant? He doesn't even know what continuing to pursue the subject could achieve. He has done as much as he reasonably can, but as he starts to experience a feeling not entirely unrelated to relief Sophie says "That wasn't what I meant by his obsession."

Luke finds he's reluctant to learn "What was?"

"I was thinking of the way you've arranged your tour."

"I don't understand," Luke says without necessarily inviting it.

"Now that we know what he was looking for you don't need to go where he did." Sophie gives the journal a light slap that seems close to parental and says "I noticed that all the bookings you've accepted recently, they're in places he visited too."

THE EYES

"Are you certain water's all you want to take onstage, Mr Arnold?"

"I need to drive home to my partner after the show."

"Can't you bear to be apart? How long have you been together?"

"Eight years, and we're having a child."

"That's the best reason to go back. Still or sparkling?" Trixie Hammond deals her quick grin a light slap with her fingertips as though admonishing the inadvertent joke. "Not your forthcoming event," she says. "The water."

She's a small woman with boyishly short hair that's counteracted by enough makeup for someone twice her size, and she's the manager of the Old Well Theatre in Snugsby New Town. They're in her boxy office, which is decorated with posters for shows at most a few years old, and the name of the theatre next to the almost identical concrete block of the library is the most venerable element Luke has encountered in the little town south of Leicester. "Make it still," he says, which sounds less like a joke.

"I'll fetch it now, and is there anything else we can do for you?"

"You could tell me something. Don't take this the wrong way, but what made you get in touch?"

"One of our regulars said we ought to book you while we could afford you. I hope that doesn't make us sound cheap."

"I've no complaints, don't worry. It was just one person, you're saying. Somebody you know."

"Valentine's the name. He rang me when you were on the television. He knew who you were," the manager says and touches her lips again as though groping for a smile she can't locate. "Are you over that now, what you found out about yourself?"

"I've had to be. Will he be here now?"

"I expect he's in the bar. Would you like to say hello?"

"I would," Luke says, though it's hardly what he has in mind.

Snugsby is mentioned in the journal—just the name, which must mean Terence visited it solely for the place itself—but Luke has seen nothing in the immature streets that he can imagine Terence would have found significant. He follows Trixie Hammond to the bar, a long concrete windowless room with tables and benches of the same pale pine as the counter. She orders a bottle of water for Luke and then makes for a man sitting alone in a corner with a tankard of murky beer. "Valentine," she says. "Here's someone who'd like to meet you."

The tall balding man rises from his crouch, but not entirely. His extravagantly broad shoulders seem to weigh him down, thrusting his wide flat reddish face at Luke. When he extends a large veinous hand Luke thinks for a grotesque moment that it's about to give him the secret sign. As Luke reciprocates its grip the man says "Good to know you."

His voice has almost expelled its regional accent and sounds as though it's braying about the achievement. "Likewise, Mr Valentine," Luke says.

"You can leave the mister out," Valentine says and lets go. "Not being rude, but who are you again?"

"Don't make me out a liar, Valentine. He's who you asked for."

"Not guilty, Trixie," Valentine says, remaining stooped while he peers at Luke. "Are you tonight's attraction? Looking forward to it, but I never put in for you."

"Think back," Trixie insists. "You rang me up."

"Is that a fact? Did I say it was me?"

"You didn't have to, Valentine. I'd never mistake your voice."

"Sorry, but you did."

"Wait a second, I was wrong." As he straightens up triumphantly Trixie says "I kept calling you your name and you didn't set me straight."

"Then it was somebody pretending." Valentine sits on the bench with a decisive thump and keeps his gaze on Luke. "Maybe," he says, "it was someone like your comedian here."

"Why would anyone want to do that?" Trixie says before Luke can respond.

"No point asking me. You're the one saying they did. Maybe it was some kind of stunt for the show."

He's still watching Luke, who retorts "I hope you don't think it was me."

"You copy people, don't you? That's what you're known for. It could be extra publicity for you, convincing everyone you're somebody you're not."

Luke is struggling to appear as innocent as he wants to feel. They've all been victims of a trick, but he's sure it had more of a purpose. He's reduced to demanding "Tell me how I could have imitated you when I've never met you before."

"I'm not that clever." Red patches swell up on Valentine's face as he adds "But you're doing it now."

Luke feels as if he's losing all sense of himself. When he turns to his companion she says "You did sound rather like him then."

Luke strives to hear his own voice say "Would you have thought I was him on the phone?"

"The show will be commencing in five minutes." The announcement sounds as if identical members of a chorus are trying to imitate one another, since the loudspeakers throughout the building aren't quite synchronised. It silences Trixie, and Luke has to repeat "Would you?"

"Not as much as whoever rang up."

"There you are. It couldn't have been me." Presumably Luke no longer sounds like Valentine, since the man's face has reverted to its ordinary ruddiness. "I'm sorry if I seemed to be taking you off," Luke says. "I didn't realise I was."

Valentine makes him wait for the duration of a pair of gulps of beer and says "I suppose your whole life's a rehearsal."

"It feels like one," Luke says and trails the manager out of the bar. Beyond her office a bare corridor leads backstage past dressing-rooms. Luke hears a monotonous xylophone clatter of seats as people take their places, and then the lights dim. If he feels apprehensive, this isn't stage fright, though it might as well be. He leaves his mobile switched on, but only to ensure that Sophie can reach him. He takes a breath and strides onstage, where the boards exaggerate his footsteps. "I'm Luke Arnold in case anybody's wondering," he says. "I think."

While the pause isn't meant as timing, the afterthought gains a laugh. Even Valentine, who is sitting halfway up the wide concrete room in which the eighteen rows of seats are mostly full, throws back his head to emit a titter. Luke tries to ignore him in case he's tempted to imitate the man, and tries a routine about yawns, reminding everyone how infectious these can be; indeed, several people demonstrate it and reward him with rueful mirth. He performs a series of yawns, each setting off a more dramatic and elaborate imitation on his part, and then he wonders aloud if other tics could be catching too. He's portraying a variety of people losing a fierce battle with their compulsion to scratch, a spectacle the audience greets with increasing hilarity, when he notices someone at the very back of the auditorium.

It isn't just the dimness that makes it hard to distinguish the intruder's shape. The spindly figure, which is loitering behind the last row of seats, puts him in mind of a sketch that's waiting to be filled in. It looks bare, and not only of garments. Apart from the coaly glint of eyes and the glimmer of a grin, Luke suspects there isn't much of a face to see. He feels as if he has invited the intrusion by encouraging the audience to mimic him, because the figure has begun to copy his performance. The sight drives Luke to act more extravagantly still, stretching his arms in search of an inaccessible itch while he glares at the back of the theatre. The audience roars, but a few people glance behind them, though it's plain they see nothing significant. They must think Luke's glare is part of his routine, and surely he can ignore the unwelcome spectator, because he has realised how he can avoid being aped. "Suppose it's words as well?" he asks the audience.

Some people laugh. A few even sound as if they understand or want everybody else to think they do. For the moment the figure at the back has stopped moving, though that's just another imitation of Luke. He could think it's losing definition, unless he's seeing what he hopes to. It's still watching him, and he's sure that it brought him to Snugsby. He's close to demanding why, but he sets about representing a loquaciously inarticulate customer at a bank. "I'd like to pay in some, you know, some of that paper stuff and some of those little metal round things into what do you call it, that thing of mine where you keep the whatsits I bring in... "

There's a good deal more of this, which seems to bemuse some of the audience at least as much as it amuses them. He isn't helped by the distant spectator, which has begun to stretch its forefingers and little fingers wide, driving Luke to overstate his gestures in a bid to retain control of his hands while the customer is replaced at the bank clerk's window by a robber. "Give me all your, don't say you don't know what I'm talking about, the stuff you keep there in a drawer. I've got a how's your father and I'm not afraid to use it, one of the things that go bang and shoot bits of metal..."

The audience has seen the joke by now, but Luke wonders how many of them are mistaking his desperation for the character's, if there's any difference. He thought the acoustic had changed, and then he realised that the echo comes from the intruder, which is reproducing his voice despite scarcely having enough of a mouth. He can only keep the robber babbling until the clerk consults his superior. "Excuse me, Mr Whatsyourname, this gentleman's got a thingummy there and he wants me to, you know when people take stuff out of the bank they haven't got in it... "