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Authors: Ramsey Campbell

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BOOK: The Kind Folk
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OUT OF THE AUDIENCE

"Who's your daddy?"

In a moment Luke locates the heckler in the fifth row from the stage of the basement club. He's a man of about Luke's age—thirty—and his stance looks like a challenge. He's sitting with his big hands planted on his knees, his shoulders hunched, his large resolutely bald head lowered and thrust forward. "If you can tell me yours," Luke says, "I'll tell you mine."

The man's shout roused hoots and groans, and so does Luke's response, but he's also rewarded with laughter and applause. More than ever he feels distanced from his audience, as though he's observing them as much as amusing them. He has never really grasped why people find him entertaining; he remembers his bemusement with it when he was a child. Now he could conclude that his impersonations were bids to grow more like the family he'd taken for his own. "Give me honesty," he says, "and I'll give you rope, noooo, hope. You'll hang yourself before you know it if I'm honest..."

He judges this to be the kind of humour tonight's crowd likes, and they're roaring before he has said much else. He isn't simply imitating Brittan's pinched quick voice, he's heightening the presenter's traits until the audience finds them hilarious. He keeps raising an admonitory finger like Brittan but just close enough to his nose to seem about to insert it in a nostril. While Brittan often bounces on tiptoe to urge answers and perhaps to add to his stature, Luke adds crossing his legs as if he's desperate to pee. He leans forward with his crossed hands fidgeting behind his back, as Brittan's hands do when he's impatient with his guests, but Luke teeters on the edge of the stage as if he's in danger of toppling off. All this earns him so much mirth that he has to keep waiting to be heard, and he's in the middle of a pause when his phone breaks into song.

It won't be the first time he has built a call into his act. He's had fun with callers purporting to represent the phone company, or insisting that his computer needs treatment, or reading from another script in an effort to sell him insurance—people pretending to be someone other than they were. Now he sees how this applies to him as well, even if he didn't know. Terence's name is on the screen to remind him.

He owes Terence too much to reduce him to a joke, but he can't just cut him off. "Can I call you back?" he says. "I'm onstage."

He isn't ready for the merriment with which the audience greets this, and it makes him feel even less like them. "When?" says Terence.

He might be slowing his voice down to compensate for Luke's haste, but Luke suspects he's had quite a lot to drink. "Now," Luke says. "I'm on now."

This brings another gust of mirth. So long as the audience stays amused, perhaps he doesn't need to terminate the conversation. "Where?" Terence wants to know.

"Over in Rochdale. In a club."

That's apparently hilarious too. Someone at the back is so taken with the situation that they've risen to their feet for a better look. "You mean," Terence says more sluggishly than ever, "you're on right this very moment."

"That's what I said. I'm up here trying to be funny."

The audience lets him know he has succeeded, but he's distracted by the dim figure, which isn't in the back row but behind it, against the wall. How did the watcher slip in unnoticed? "Can't I talk?" Terence says.

He sounds as though he wants to be more serious than Luke can deal with just now. The shadowy intruder couldn't have sneaked in at the back, since the only entrance is beside the stage. "We will," Luke promises. "I'll call you as soon as I'm done."

Not too many people laugh as Terence says "Make it soon." Luke is taking the phone away from his ear when Terence adds "I don't want to be alone with this any more."

Luke is dismayed to think that some people might laugh at any response he would make, and so he ends the call. The conversation must have played on his nerves more than he realised; there's nobody behind the back row. Perhaps the stain that resembles someone's shadow on the wall confused him, except that he peers at it he sees there's no such stain. As he puts away his mobile a woman shouts "Who was that supposed to be?"

"He was supposed to be my uncle."

A few titters greet this, but Luke wishes he hadn't been so quick to answer. "Some folk will do anything to get on the box," the woman says.

Luke can't tell whether she means him or Terence or both. At least she has fed him a cue. "Such as..." he says and brings back Brittan to interrogate Hamlet and his family, a routine the audience appears to relish along with the rest of Luke's show. Afterwards the manager, a long-haired lanky man with a sprawling ginger moustache, stops him in the backstage corridor. "Brilliant," he says. "We'll have you back."

"Well, thank you. Excuse me if I run out now to make a call."

"That was brilliant too," the manager says, not a comment Luke appreciates. He climbs the stairs between signed posters and emerges beneath the night sky, where a gibbous moon reminds him of pregnancy by lying on its back. The street full of shops is deserted, and he thumbs the key to recall Terence. The distant phone rings in his ear while stars appear to flicker into existence overhead, unless they're so remote that their light has outlived them. At last Terence says "Universal Demolition is open nine to five on weekdays. If it's urgent leave a message..."

"I'm returning your call," Luke says. "I couldn't any sooner." He leaves that and waits in case Terence picks up the message. In a few minutes he gives up pacing back and forth past window dummies that look arrested in the act of trying to seem human. He tries calling again, but all he hears is the phone imitating Terence once more. "Don't be alone," Luke says, "let's talk about whatever you wanted to." When the phone stays as silent as the moon he pockets it and makes for his car.

THE HOUSE BY THE BRIDGE

As Luke drives past Speke Airport a plane climbs the sky on stilts of vapour. While the stilts lengthen, their lower ends swell and crumble, dissipating into the blue sky. He's on the main road, which is divided by trees like a forest reduced to a single file miles long. Beyond Speke they're supplanted by twin-branched concrete lampposts, on one of which a crow lifts a wing like a black flag raised by a wind. The outermost houses of Liverpool have given way to industrial blocks, and soon the central reservation of the carriageway is bare apart from weeds and grass. It must be the image of a climber in the sky that revives a story Terence told Luke long ago.

Was it called "The Boy who Made Friends with the Clouds"? It involved a mountain so high that the clouds would nest there while they whispered to one another. At those times nobody from the village in the foothills would venture near the mountain, until one day an orphan boy found a hidden path. As he made the final ascent the clouds came down to gather about him. He thought they were about to blind him so that he would lose his way or fall, but they ushered him up to their eyrie and told him secrets they'd learned in their voyages across the sky. After that he climbed the mountain whenever they were there, but failed to realise how they were changing him. If he dreamed even while he was awake he would begin to lose his shape in the manner of a cloud, and soon the villagers noticed how they couldn't see him properly. When they drove him out he fled up the mountain, starving until the clouds returned just in time to raise him up. Once his body dissolved it was free to rove the spaces above the world. Sometimes the villagers would see him striding the mountains on legs composed of cloud and as long as the sky was tall.

Presumably Terence wanted to expand Luke's imagination; Luke seems to remember that the tale made his mind feel enlarged and unfamiliar. Just now he's only interested in learning what Terence wanted to tell him last night. Terence still isn't answering his phone, and Luke wonders if he has had second thoughts—if he's unwilling to respond when he sees Luke's number. That's why Luke is on his way to the Universal Demolition office.

The road is winding towards Runcorn when a Frugoil tanker brakes at the bend ahead of the bridge across the river. The intervening vehicles relay red flares back to Luke as the tanker pulls into the outer lane. Indicator after indicator twitches orange at the bend, and both lanes of traffic slow to the speed of a funeral procession. The obstruction must be on the bridge; Luke sees passengers staring back at it from a train on the elevated track beside the road. If there were a way to leave the road he would use it—he's less than five minutes from Terence's office.

It takes Luke that long to inch to the bend. A white van has broken down halfway across the bridge, and the driver hasn't even switched his hazard lights on. A car races up behind it to sound a disapproving horn and in a bid to overtake at the last moment, which simply helps to impede the traffic. Luke's Lexus is nearly abreast of the obstacle when the bodiless cabin of a lorry speeds past him in the inner lane and pulls out with a token flash of its indicator. It's followed by half a dozen motorcyclists who don't care which side of the Lexus they pass, all of which is so distracting that Luke is past the van before he has a chance to look at it. The motorcyclists veer into the inner lane, blocking his view in the mirror, so that he barely glimpses the driver of the van. He's slumped over the wheel, and he's Terence.

He's staring through the windscreen but doesn't seem to recognise the Lexus. Luke brakes instinctively, and a chorus of horns almost robs him of the ability to think. As soon as he swerves into the inner lane a minibus follows him. It's plain that he won't be able to park on the bridge. He has to drive several hundred yards down the slip road to Runcorn, and even once he switches on the hazard lights cars trumpet at him as they overtake. He slams the door and locks the car and dashes up the narrow pavement to the bridge.

The pavement leads to the single walkway across the bridge. Railings higher than his waist fence off the inner edge of the walkway, and an arm's length from them a taller set of railings borders the road. As Luke sprints along the walkway he can't help observing that the curved girders of the bridge are painted the pallid green of an old hospital interior, perhaps the very colour of the ward where he was born. If he's so alert, how did he fail to recognise Terence's van? Both sides are emblazoned with the Universal Demolition logo, in which the Os are miniature hemispheres. As a taste of petrol invades Luke's breaths he sees that Terence hasn't moved. He's afraid to learn what this may mean, but then Terence lifts a hand.

He has seen Luke. He waves feebly before his left hand grabs the wheel again while he struggles to grin with that side of his face. He sprawls across the passenger seat to wind the window down and then shoves himself shakily upright. "What's wrong, Terence?" Luke shouts.

"That's a bit formal, isn't it?" Terence's voice is as weak as his lopsided grin, so that Luke can barely hear him across the gap between the barriers. "Can't I still be Terry even if I'm not your uncle?"

"You still are." Luke hasn't time to make that clearer while he needs to learn "What's happened?"

"Just the old heart, son. Left my pills. Too much on my mind. Not your fault, so don't think it."

He seems increasingly less able to form complete sentences or perhaps to take the breaths they need. Luke digs in his pocket for his mobile. "I'll call an ambulance."

"Don't bother them. Just get me home."

As Luke hesitates, Terence clutches at the passenger seat with his left hand and begins to haul himself across the van. Luke attempts to vault over both barriers at once, but they must be designed to prevent it. He has to clamber into the gap between them and then scramble over the roadside railings, bruising his midriff. The oncoming traffic has slowed while drivers watch his antics, and a fanfare of horns greets his sprint around the front of the van.

Terence has managed to drag himself into the passenger seat. He dabs his glistening forehead and gives Luke a sluggish wink; at least, that's how his right eye looks. In a voice that strains to sound amused he says "Can you do my belt?"

Luke has to wonder how senile he's suddenly grown until Terence points a shaky thumb in the general direction of the seat belt. Luke leans over to find the metal tag and pull it across him. At first the belt refuses to pay out enough length, and Terence doesn't help by tugging at it like a petulant child jerking at a parent's sleeve. Eventually Luke succeeds in coaxing the tag all the way to its socket, and Terence slumps against the seat, mopping his forehead. "Are you sure you don't want to go to a hospital?" Luke persists.

"I said." Just as fretfully Terence adds "Need to be home."

Luke twists the key, and the engine sputters before spluttering alive. "That's where your medication is, yes?"

"Where a lot is." Terence does his best to lean towards Luke against the seat belt, but his left hand can't reach Luke's arm. "Don't let them see," he mutters.

Luke indicates and sends the van forward, earning a blare of the horn from a driver who was about to swing into the inner lane. "Who?" Luke says. "See what?"

"Forget it, Luke. No point knowing."

"Is it anything to do with why you called me last night?"

"Wish I hadn't." More fiercely than Luke understands Terence says "Fed up with wishing."

Drivers are braking on the slip road as they see Luke's abandoned car and trying to pull out before drivers in the outer lane will let them. Once he's past the car Luke speeds to the junction and heads through the narrow streets towards the railway bridge. "Leave it till you're feeling better," he says, "but I really would like to know why you called."

"Sure about that?" Terence grasps the top of the dashboard one-handed to help him turn to Luke. "Tell you," he says and has to draw an unsteady breath, "one thing."

Luke glances at him, but the eye that's fully open seems as veiled as its twin, and Terence's bottom lip has sagged beyond expressiveness. "They're all you ever needed," Terence pants. "Freddy and my brother. All you'll ever."

"And you," Luke says, but he knows none of this is an answer to his plea about the phone call. The terraced street he's driving down ends opposite the brick arches that lead to the viaduct across the river. They're taller than a house, several of which newsed against them. One house in the two-storey row is Terence's, a few doors away from a spiritualist church. Reflected sunlight makes the two front windows as opaquely pale as the front door with its step on the pavement is black. "You stay in the van," Luke says, "and I'll get your pills. Where do I look?"

BOOK: The Kind Folk
5.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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