The One Safe Place (36 page)

"Didn't you?"

"What if I did? What's it to you? Tell you what, you call me Da. What's my name?"

"Da?"

"Bet your arse. Say it again so you know it. Go on, lad, say it a few times."

"Da da."

"It's free, you know. You don't have to fill in a fucking claim form. Really a few, so you'll remember."

"Da da da da da."

"Magic. What's my name?"

"Da."

"You hang onto that, lad. Keep it short so you'll remember it even with all the shit that's happening to you. And your name's Ma. What's your name?"

"Ma?"

A snort of derision escaped from Darren's nose, which he wiped on a bit of one of the newspaper pages strewn about the floor. "Maaa," he said like a sheep he'd once heard, the time a teacher had taken his class at little kids' school up on the moors. The memory took him off guard, and he felt like belting someone, because he was fucked if he was going to let it make him feel sad. Then Marshall said, "Da?"

"What fucking now?"

"You said you'd give me something."

"I will and all, if you don't stop pissing me off." But if he didn't give him something like he'd promised, Marshall might try and leave. "I'll see what we've got," Darren said. "You stay sat in that chair and don't try to get up. You'll be safe if you stay sat in the chair."

He looked back from the hall and turned away quickly, suppressed mirth driving the taste of snot into his mouth. Marshall certainly did as he was told—he was pressing himself into the chair and hanging onto the arms like a tart on a roller coaster. To get him into the house Darren had promised him something that would calm him down, but now he didn't know what he could give him.

He jogged upstairs, letting go of the banister when he felt it grinding its screws in the wall. His grandfather was making a noise like some kind of giant dying insect, in his sleep or out of it, and Darren wondered how the moaning must sound to Marshall. He went into the bathroom and slid back the mirrors speckled with squirts of pus, but there was nothing in the cabinet except bottles and sprays, most of them empty, none of them with tops on. The solitary bottle of pills—aspirins—contained only a spider's cocoon furry with talcum powder. He dug his nails into the dents in the glass and slammed the mirrors shut, and sidled into his parents' room.

The quilt looked as though they'd just been sleeping under it, and not only sleeping. Maybe his mother had had some trade under it while he'd been out hunting Marshall. He lifted it up by one corner while he peered under the bed in case any pills had rolled into the dust there, and one of his fingers sank into the spongy filling through a hole charred by a cigarette. He felt as if it was trying to suck him into what had happened in the bed, and he threw back the quilt and spat on the rumpled grubby sheet which covered part of the mattress, then heaved the quilt over it and glared around the room.

The evening light through the high mingy window looked darkened by the stale smoke the room smelled of, but he could see the wardrobe with one door propping up the other, and the dressing table with bottles and jars of cosmetics staggering against one another where his mother must have shoved them aside to peer at herself in the mirror. The alarm clock which she'd thrown off the bedside table was blinking all its zeros, desperate for attention, and as he showed his teeth at it he saw a half-used tinfoil pack of her pills next to the ashtray snaggle toothed with butts, the kind of pill which her forgetting to take had got her pregnant with Darren, when Bernard wouldn't let her and his father get rid of him. Stealing one of those fell like getting even, though he wasn't sure for what. He pinched the capsule between finger and thumb and ran downstairs. "Get this down you, Ma. It's a stopper."

Marshall hadn't moved. He looked as if he thought he had been staying still for hours, and so grateful for the promise of a cure that Darren wondered if he should give him a bit of one to keep him there. Maybe there was some orange juice in the fridge. Juice is use, he remembered saying over and over to himself once as he'd drunk a litre
 of it, and after a very long time it had seemed to muffle what was happening to him. But there was no juice in the kitchen anymore, only a carton of milk that smelled as though something had died in it. If the kid was stupid enough to come into the house, he deserved everything he got. Darren grabbed a cracked beer glass from the mass of crockery drowning in the sink and poured most of the grey water out of it to make room for water from the tap, and took it to Marshall along with the pill. "Just stick it in your gob and swallow, lad."

Marshall was watching drips from the bottom of the glass running across the carpet toward him, a trail of drops dark as blood. He snatched the pill and poked it together with all the fingers and thumb of one hand into his mouth, and threw his head back so far that Darren could almost see the pill slipping down the stretched throat. A gulp of water followed, though Marshall would clearly have liked to return that to the glass, which he dropped on the floor, spilling some of its contents. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, and Darren sat down to watch.

Maybe Marshall wanted to pray; he was trying to fit his fingers between one another. Darren observed him having to look and see what he was holding—the channel control. That led his stare to the television, and he glared at his reflection on the fingermarked screen in such dismay that Darren felt excluded and more irritated than ever. "What's on telly, Ma? Something good?"

A grin of panic dragged at one side of Marshall's mouth and let go. "That isn't me," he pleaded.

"Doesn't baba want to be on it now? Wasn't you once?"

Marshall grabbed at his eyes as though he meant to rip whatever he was seeing out of his head. He held onto them as he twisted awkwardly, drawing his knees up toward his stomach. When he was more or less facing Darren he let go and stared at him, and Darren knew from his look of relief, which was so pitiful it was funny, that he felt as though the horrors were going away. "See," Darren said. "It's working already."

Of course Marshall was just experiencing a lull before the next wave, and when he spoke Darren wondered whether he was too far gone ever to come back. "The police let them into our house."

"Fucking filth," Darren responded automatically, and returned to amusing himself. "Let what in, Ma? If there's summat there you're scared of you won't want to go home."

He was amazed and delighted how easy it was to put ideas into Marshall's head. The kid might think he was better than Darren, or would do if he was able to think straight, but he wouldn't be better in any way by the time Darren had finished with him. He held out his hands to Darren, maybe to plead with him to take the idea back, but visibly didn't like the look of them. "I don't mean now. There's nothing there now."

"Sodded off, have they?"

"They were there, though." Marshall was managing to summon up some resentment at being mocked. "Men with lights, you know, men."

"Fairy lights, was they wearing?"

"You know what I mean. Lights, the kind they hold. Lights and cameras."

"And action, eh, Ma? You was never making a mucky film."

For some reason that made Marshall stare at him as though trying to recognise him. "This is my fucking face all right," Darren said. "Got a problem with it? Want to come here and change it, lad?"

"No," Marshall pleaded, closing his eyes tight. "Only didn't you say that before, about that kind of film?"

Darren hadn't, but wasn't admitting it. "So what if I did?"

"Nothing except I must have told you we weren't in any blue movie. I thought we were on—"

What he said then bewildered Darren, who snarled, "What's a candy camera?"

"Candid, like what's another word, you must know." The grin was flickering in and out of Marshall's mouth, amusement teetering at the edge of panic. He mustn't be able to drive the idea of a candy camera out of his head, and by the look of him it was starting to rot and go soft and taste too sweet, or something at least as gross. "Like truthful or hidden," he said in a rush, and seemed unable to make sense of that himself. "When you're filmed and you don't know you're being."

"They've got them cameras all over outside," Darren lied on impulse, "so stay in if you don't want them coming to take you away. Any road, I thought you said you saw them when the filth let them in your house."

"Sure, when they took all our videos away." He stared hard at Darren. "When did you see us? They oughtn't to have broadcast it when my mom's still waiting to hear what the law's going to do to us."

"You've got a fucking screw loose, lad. The last dick who went around saying I did summat I never, even the dentist couldn't put his teeth back together."

"She hasn't even been to court yet," Marshall insisted, then thrust his legs out clumsily and wavered to his feet. "My mom, she'll be worrying. What time is it now?"

"Fucking hell, don't you ever get sick of asking? There's the clock. The tail's hanging down and the dick's sticking up, which means it's six o'clock. It does here, any road. Maybe you do it different where you come from."

Marshall didn't seem to know. He dropped his head toward his watch, 
but was obviously unable to decide whether it showed the same time as the clock, which had been stopped for weeks. He only had to glance out of the window to see the time was later, except he was too busy digging his nails into his scalp, maybe trying to persuade himself it wasn't coming loose. "Can I call my mom?"

"If you reckon you can yell that loud. We've got no phone. We're too poor, us. Got one but it doesn't work. They cut us off because my mam can't pay the bill now my da—" Darren shut himself up and glared at Marshall. "I thought you came in to lie down, lad."

"I need to go home if I can't call my mom. She'll be getting upset. She's upset already."

"Why, what's up with her? Won't she let her ickle baba go out by his self?" Fun though this was, it wouldn't keep Marshall in the house. "Listen, I know what," Darren said, moving between Marshall and the door. "You go up on my bed and I'll go and phone."

"What will you say?"

"What do you want saying?"

"Just where I am and I'm all right and she can come and get me. I will be all right once she comes."

Darren wasn't sure whether that was meant to comfort Marshall or himself, not that it mattered. "Straight up then, Ma, and give your pill a chance to work."

"Can I have another?"

"Aye, why not. Do you twice as much good. You get where you're told and don't forget your water and I'll bring you your pill."

Darren stood out of the way, mostly to block Marshall's route to the front door, and followed him upstairs. Maybe Marshall didn't know he was gouging bits out of the wallpaper as he clawed himself along. If Darren's mother even noticed, like as not she would think she'd done it. "Next to the bog," Darren said when Marshall started to prowl back and forth on the landing as though the banisters which Darren's father had shoved him against a few times were a cage. Marshall seemed to have no idea what he meant—maybe they didn't call a toilet that where he came from—and Darren had to catch him by one arm and push him into the bedroom.

Clothes were slung over most of the clutter, including the computer Darren had broken months past; only the television and video were on display. He thought of telling Marshall he could watch a mucky video, because when was the last time he'd had a friend to boast to in his room? Except Marshall wasn't a friend, and Darren didn't need any. "Don't hang about, lie down," he ordered, and went to fetch another pill.

When he came back Marshall had taken off his shoes and pulled the quilt over him, so obedient it made Darren want to heave. At least he wouldn't get far with no shoes on, and he looked as if he mightn't be able to find them again, especially once Darren had kicked them under the bed. "Get your gob open," Darren said, pinching his nose to keep in a snigger at the sight of Marshall poking his head up like some kind of reptile and shutting his eyes and dropping his jaw as far as it would stretch. Darren was tempted to throw in something for Marshall to swallow before he knew what it was, but he couldn't think of anything gross enough that was handy and besides, he was supposed to be keeping Marshall there. He flicked the pill onto Marshall's tongue and watched it go down. "Don't you move while I'm out or I won't phone," he said, and closed the door.

He wasn't going anywhere except downstairs. He could slam the front door a couple of times to convince Marshall he'd gone out and come back. He waited on the landing a few minutes in case Marshall tried to leave the room, but the only sound was his grandfather moaning like a tart in a mucky film. He was heading for the stairs when he heard someone unlocking the front door.

It was his mother, and not by herself. When she said, "This way, love, don't be shy," he knew she'd brought some trade home, and he crouched to watch over the edge of the landing. She came in wearing at least an hour's worth of makeup and her silver dress that clung to all of her arse that it covered, and the man shut the door after them. He was nearly twice as wide as her, with oily black curls and a chin that didn't leave much room for the rest of his face, and a neck that stuck out farther than the chin, and a bald pink chest which showed between the buttons of his white shirt. He plodded toward Darren's mother like a zombie hungry for flesh, his hands making the shape of the tits they were reaching for. "Ooh, you excite me, but give us a tick, love," she said, and raised her voice. "Where are you, Darren? You're in, aren't you?"

The man halted, his neck wobbling. "Who's he? Why do you want him?"

"Don't fret, he's just my little lad. He knows to lock up if he goes out, little bastard. Ooh, I want you so much, but let's just see where he is first. Darren, you answer me right now or I'm telling your Uncle Bernard."

The man poked his face over his bag of neck as if he thought Bernard was about to jump him, and Darren would have liked to carry on watching him and his mother acting stupid, but he couldn't have Marshall coming to see what the row was and letting the man see him. He hauled himself up, letting go of the banisters as they gave. "Here I am, mam."