The One Safe Place (44 page)

His skull exploded with pain. The room was blotted out. He felt his body retreat from him, driven by the shock. An onslaught of light filled his consciousness, and then his leg jerked as his hand and the revolver struck it. As he managed to grasp that his head was aching with tension, the blinding pain began to dwindle, and after perhaps a few seconds he was able to open his eyes. Darren was watching him expressionlessly. "I did it," Marshall gasped.

"You never counted one, lad."

"I didn't say I would. I said I'd take six shots, and I did. I won." Marshall fumbled for the barrel through the surges of light which threatened to wipe out his surroundings, and flung the weapon away from him. He saw it turn in the air, its muzzle swivelling toward Darren, and was all at once sure that the bullet was lined up with the hammer, so that when the revolver struck the floor—He tried to shove himself out of the chair with his weakened hands, but the thought was already too late. The gun thumped the carpet, and that was all. "Can I get some sleep now?" he said as the light and the pain in his skull continued to throb.

"You can try. Don't bet on it." Darren stared at the gun as though he was thinking of picking it up, then let it lie. "Reckon soon you'll be getting all the rest you need," he muttered.

Susanne awoke remembering her search for Marshall. He hadn't been any of the boys who had clustered around the Volvo to offer themselves to her and to anyone else who might be in it, some of them at least as young as Marshall but with faces several times that age. He hadn't been among the children running away from an Indian jewelry store which had been set on fire. She'd thought she recognised him outside an all-night pharmacy until the small figure had turned, catching a neon gleam on the syringe in his arm. Nor had Marshall been the child she'd seen dragged, screaming like an injured animal, into a car which had screeched away before she could read the number-plate. His hadn't been the body sprawled in the middle of a road, the blue pulse of an ambulance insistently blackening its spillage of blood. He hadn't been in any of the piles of newspapers in shop doorways, though each of the piles to which she'd stooped had poked out at least one head, and she hadn't found him among the inhabitants of a gap between the houses of a derelict street, people crowding so closely around a fire that their clothes had begun to smoulder.

She hadn't seen that. Though the memories were so vivid and detailed that she was no more able to dislodge them from her mind than to wipe the grubby coating of night from her eyes, she had only dreamed them. That wasn't even slightly comforting, because she could believe in all of them. Worse still, she'd projected them on the screen of her mind instead of trying to find Marshall.

A streetlamp died as she caught sight of it. It was daylight, and Marshall had been out all night, and she had never felt so alone. If she were a character in any of the movies he liked she wouldn't have stayed home, she would have sped from episode to episode of her search, experiencing only a sketch of emotions. If Don were alive one of them could have stayed by the phone while the other searched, but she hadn't felt able to leave the house in case Marshall needed to reach her. Suppose he'd called and she hadn't been there? Hilda Mattison had seen her light on after midnight and had sat with her to make increasingly small talk, not to mention cups of tea, while her husband Matt, a large shy man whose stomach was outgrowing its shirt and purple cardigan, had driven around the streets. He'd looked even more abashed than usual on his eventual return, and quite prepared to start another search although it was past two in the morning. Susanne had been afraid that he might have an accident through drowsiness, and so she'd sent them both home, having had to promise that she would wake them if she needed anything. She'd watched lights climb the inside of their house and go out one by one, and then there had been nothing to do but wait with all her thoughts.

She'd vowed she wouldn't go to sleep. She'd brought in the cordless telephone and held it on her lap, then she'd made herself place it on the table and wondered how to keep herself awake. She'd tried to read the essays, but the first had taken her aback: an unexpectedly bitter piece from Rosemary, a quiet student who required hardly any provocation to blush. Every British film had to have Americans in or behind it, British video stores were really American as far as the films they stocked were concerned and the token World Cinema section was an insult to the rest of the world, all this fostered an addiction to Americanism, just as the tobacco companies were paying to have actors smoke in almost every film... Maybe most of this was true, but Susanne hadn't wanted to contemplate it just then; it had made her feel more isolated than ever. She'd attempted to watch television, but the only transmission on any of the four channels had shown her Peter Sellers, whom she'd always thought of as a comedian, trapping a young man's fingers in the lid of a record player and grinding an old man's pet terrapin under his heel. She'd switched off the television and had watched the empty street beneath the unrelenting lamps until sleep had begun to nod her head. She'd jerked it up, she'd pinched her upper arms, she'd staggered to the bathroom to douse her face with cold water. Nevertheless she had slept several times, feeling worse every time she'd wakened. She had slept while Marshall was out somewhere in the dark.

She stumbled to the kitchen in an attempt to shake off the night. Her body felt brittle and stiff and as though she hadn't bathed for days. She made coffee so strong that at the first mouthful a shudder rushed all the way down her and back up to her scalp, then she clutched her portable radio and carried it and the mug to the bathroom, resting an elbow on the banister as she climbed each stair. She dropped her clothes in the washing basket and switched on the radio. She was in the bath, pirouetting like a dancer stuck in treacle through what the British apparently considered to be a powerful shower but which seemed hardly palpable, when a vigorous jingle announced the early breakfast news.

Most of yesterday's atrocities had had their moments of fame, though the police wanted it to be known that they were still looking for the gang who had smashed a bank guard's knees. Susanne twisted the taps shut and fought off the plastic curtain and stepped out of the trough of the bath. A teenage girl who had been thrown into a fire by three youths was described as comfortable in the hospital. A burglar had bitten several householders who'd caught him on their property, and they were being tested for infection. Half a dozen families who were accused of using one another's children, all of them younger than Marshall, for sex had been rounded up in Operation Nursery. Police were appealing for information regarding the whereabouts of Marshall Travis, twelve years old.

Speaks with an American accent, five feet five inches tall, blue eyes, fair hair, slight build, last seen wearing a purple Nike track suit and white Reebok trainers... Susanne wasn't sure which dismayed her more, how the description rendered him so present it was as though he had just stepped out of the room and yet so absent that the lack of him felt like an ache as big as the whole of herself, or how the appeal seemed far too generalised to identify him to the public: it hadn't mentioned the way he walked, swinging his arms and rolling a little as though he'd just disembarked from a ship, or his habit of patting the crown of his head to reassure himself that no hair was standing up, or his lopsided smile which was all she had left of his father... She didn't realise how fiercely she was towelling herself until her nipples began to sting. She dabbed at them and finished drying herself, and switched off the radio and went into the bedroom, having wakened all her nerves, to get dressed.

She'd forgotten that the curtains were open since she'd slept downstairs. She dodged across the room and hid behind the right-hand curtain so as to pull it across. Then her hands almost yanked it off the rail. A man she'd never seen before was leaning over the wall into her garden.

Susanne dashed into the bathroom and grabbed her robe from the hook beside Marshall's. She struggled into the rough cloth as she padded fast across the landing, and tied the cord, strangling her waist, as she returned to the windows. The man was leaning farther, reaching a hand into the garden, showing her the whole of his naked scalp. She felt as though he was exposing himself to her. She slipped the bolts of the windows and padded onto the balcony, the chill of the stone seizing her feet. When the intruder didn't look up she cleared her throat, forcing out her voice. "What are you doing? What are you leaving there?"

The man raised his head: a broad brow crossed by three ridges of flesh, eyebrows like wads of dust, eyes rather too large for the rest of his face. He drew back his hand before meeting her gaze. "Just admiring your lavender, love."

She wasn't sure if she believed him—not when he stooped to lift something beyond the wall. The pinkish swelling of his scalp confronted her once more as she gripped the railing of the balcony with both cold hands. Then she heard a clink of glass, and realised what he was—didn't need to see the crate of milk bottles which he hoisted into view. "Sorry if I gave you a turn, love," he called. "The other lad's off sick."

Susanne had to clear her throat again as he turned away. "Take a sprig if you like."

"Aye, I will, then." He reached across the wall and broke off a twig, which he inserted in the top buttonhole of his work shirt. "Good bit of gardening you've done. It wasn't here last time I was."

"My—Thanks." She didn't trust herself to mention Don, not when the thought of him was the tip of so much grief, which didn't relate only to him. She watched the milkman trot away, crate jingling, to his wagon at the corner. She ought to have noticed that sooner. She mustn't let her fears blind her, or she would be no use to Marshall. She curtained the street and pulled on enough clothes to make herself feel less shivery, and took the radio and telephone downstairs, telling herself she had to eat breakfast to keep up her strength.

She managed to eat nearly half a bowl of cereal before the question of what, if anything, Marshall might have eaten since she'd last seen him turned the food to soggy cardboard in her mouth. She had to wash the mouthful down with a gulp of coffee so bitter it made her head swim. After that there seemed to be nothing to do except brush her teeth before returning to her chair in the front room.

She tried to grade the essays, setting Rosemary's aside for when she felt able to be objective about it, and waited for the University switchboard to be staffed so that she could call in. The eight o'clock news came first, and she listened to it to reassure herself that the item about Marshall was repeated and nothing new was said about him, though what was reassuring about that? The description was there, again without a headline. That had to mean he soon wouldn't be news, because he would have been found safe. The news gave way to music, to uncommunicative silence as she switched off the radio, and the phone rang.

She snatched it up and pressed the talk button, her hand all at once so slippery that she almost dropped the receiver. "Susanne Travis."

"Susanne, is it? Is that Susanne?"

"That's right, Clement," she told him. "That's what I said."

"I thought it might be your, but I see you're there in the flesh. I hope I haven't called at, if it's inconvenient please do say."

"No no, it's fine," Susanne said, fighting not to let him reach her nerves. "What can I do for you?"

"Well, it's rather what I, what we, you should appreciate. I'm sure I speak for the department, indeed the entire, all of those who've heard the news."

"The"—the word almost blocked her throat—"news."

"About your young, is he not missing? My wife assured me that was what she just, isn't that the case, dear? I was at my ablutions, you understand." His voice, having veered away for five words, came back. "She gathered from the news that your, the name eludes me for the moment, you heard it, dear—"

"Marshall. Yes, he's missing. I'm waiting to hear from the police."

"Ah. Yes. I mustn't interpose myself in the way of, then, no." If anything, Susanne's impatience seemed to be slowing Clement down. "Should we tell your students to expect, or do you plan to stay at home until, ah?"

"I'd rather stay here, Clement. Then if anything urgent," Susanne said, and was unable to continue.

"I quite, yes. Please accept my, indeed our, deepest, shall I advise your colleagues not to attempt to phone you while, until you direct to the contrary?"

"That would be best. I'll let you know as soon as..." She'd already wounded him with her impatience, she'd sensed that, and now she sounded as if she was imitating him. "Thanks for calling, Clement. Thanks for your support. It's appreciated."

"If there is any, you know where to reach me."

"I do."

"In that case, let me vacate, goodbye for the present."

"Goodbye, Clement. Thanks again."

It wasn't only that she wanted to convince him of her sincerity—she hadn't realised how much she welcomed talking to another human being. She held the receiver until a click turned him into a drone. Though there were people she needed to call, she supposed it was too early. Cars were deserting the street outside, and she saw a last streetlamp give up the ghost. That only meant daylight was strengthening—had to mean Marshall would be easier to find. A mass of fears was clamouring for her attention, which she tried to divert by keying a number. But the school didn't answer, and the next time the line was busy, and the next, and the time after that too. It was almost nine o'clock before she heard a voice say "Bushy Boys."

"Susanne Travis. I—"

"Oh yes, Mrs. Travis. Head would like a word. He's just about to take assembly. Can he call you back?"

"About what, do you know?"

"I'm afraid I couldn't tell you. That's for Head to say. He shouldn't be more than, oh, twenty minutes at the outside. Will you be at home?"

"Where else would you expect me to be, you stupid—" Susanne persuaded herself that it would be unfair to utter any of that, and all she said was, "Yes."