The Tooth Fairy (6 page)

The Tooth Fairy clicked his teeth in irritation. ‘You won’t always see me this way. Only for now. Look, I feel bad about putting you through all this. I mean this thing with your eye. I’ve come to give you something.’

‘What? What do you mean?’

‘That little friend of yours. The one with the limp.’

‘Terry?’

‘He’s marked. But listen. Saturday it is. You damn well find a way, right? You damn well find a way to keep that kid at your place, eh? Saturday night.’ The Tooth Fairy prodded Sam’s shoulder with a hard, bony finger. ‘I’ve given you this and we’re quits. I’m clean again. You sodding well make damn sure. Now I’m gone.’

The Tooth Fairy got up from his chair and ambled down the hospital corridor, aggressively pushing a trolley out of his way before turning a corner out of sight. His head appeared briefly around the corner, glaring back at Sam.

‘Sam! Sam! Can’t you hear me when I’m talking to you?’ It was his mother. She grabbed his arm and pulled him from his chair. ‘Let’s go. You’ve got to have glasses.’

On Saturday, delivered in an impressively large cardboard box, the Southalls’ first television set arrived. It was a momentous day all round, since it was also the day Sam was taken to the optician’s to collect his prescription National Health spectacles. He would be able, everyone remarked pointedly, to watch the new television in his new glasses. The circular lenses framed by thin blue wire made his head feel large and top-heavy.

Nev Southall had consulted Clive’s father Eric, who already had a set, and Eric had told him that a signal aerial erected in the attic would suffice. It would also save a fair few quid and the trouble of mounting it on the roof, Eric pointed out. The delivery man had disagreed. Tugging his earlobe and clicking his ballpoint pen, he told them they lived in a ‘depression’ on the wrong side of the transmitting station and needed a roof-mounted aerial.

‘Nothing,’ said Connie.

‘Nothing,’ chimed Sam.

‘What about that?’ shouted his father.

‘What about that?’ echoed Sam.

‘No good,’ said Connie.

‘No good,’ called Sam.

Sam had been posted at the top of the stairs. Nev, manipulating the aerial up in the attic couldn’t hear Connie, gamely twiddling the dials of the new TV in the living room,
and vice versa. Sam’s job was to stand under the open loft door, relaying communications between the two of them.

‘Better.’ Connie.

‘Better.’ Sam.

‘Gone again.’

‘Gone again.’

To his credit, Nev endured a full quarter-hour of this before he started to lose his temper.

‘What’s happening down there?’

‘What’s happening down there?’

‘No good.’

‘No good.’

Nev’s disembodied and inverted head appeared, framed in the black hole giving way to the attic. He growled. Sam thought better of repeating the growl before his father’s legs swung down and dropped lightly to the top of the stairs. He could feel a slap to the ear coming on, and through no fault of his own. He remained upstairs as the dispute swelled in the living room. His father bounced up the stairs again and scrambled back into the attic, whereupon the entire process was repeated. Finally, with Sam losing interest and timing, and with the volley of his father’s curses augmenting in the attic, he found himself banished from the house.

He discovered Clive at Terry’s place, loitering in the doorway of Mr Morris’s workshop. Mr Morris was in a state of agitation, hurling things into a crate. He was clearing junk associated with his inventions, counting off his failures to Clive before binning them with unnecessary force.

‘. . . waste of time, Clive, waste of time.’ Sam joined Clive at the door of the workshop as a guitar-shaped object was dashed into the crate. Morris pulled another contraption from a shelf. There was something vaguely theatrical about his behaviour, as though he wanted someone to step in and stop him from doing this. ‘The Mechanical Butler. Another disaster. A machine for answering the telephone. No one
interested.’ Crash. They saw a perfectly good tape-recorder discarded as the Mechanical Butler was flung into the crate. Sam peered into the crate after it. Whatever it had been, in its short life, the instrument was now trashed beyond all possible repair.

Then, ‘Oh, yes, here’s a good one: the Nightmare Interceptor. I made this one for Terry.’ Morris displayed an electrical clock trailing a mess of wires. Sam noticed a fleck of white spittle on Morris’s chin. ‘He had nightmares after that pike took his toes. Still gets ’em. So I made this. See that thing? It’s a thermal sensor – detects heat. When you get a, nightmare, you start breathing heavily, so you fix this on—’ He snapped a metal crocodile clip on Clive’s nose.

‘Ow!’ said Clive.

‘And when you start breathing heavily through your nose the sensor trips a switch which makes the alarm clock come on. So you wake up and no more nightmare. Simple, eh?’

‘Does it work?’ Clive wanted to know.

‘Never had a nightmare while using this did you?’ Mr Morris shouted to Terry.

Terry was standing under the apple trees at a short distance, whacking the last of the fallen Bramleys over the hedge with a cricket bat. ‘No.’

‘No,’ Morris said bitterly. ‘Couldn’t get to sleep with all these wires up your nose could you?’ Morris unclipped the peg from Clive’s nostril and flung the device into the crate.

The failure of the Nightmare Interceptor seemed to make Morris sad. He clamped his lips together and appeared to have nothing left to say to the boys. More unfinished devices followed the others into the crate. Such a frightening degree of violence accompanied his actions that Clive and Sam drifted away to join Terry. The apples mushed by his cricket bat laid a sharp tang of cider on the air, already sharp with the decline of autumn.

‘How’s your television?’ Terry wanted to know.

‘Can’t get a good picture,’ said Sam, bowling Terry an apple.

‘Why not?’

‘Because we’re all depressed.’

A rickety and rotting table stood under the apple tree, draped with golden leaves and laden with bruised fallers. A jamjar wasp-trap rested on the table, set there by Morris. Narrow holes had been poked in the lid; eight or nine wasps crawled across the inside of the glass. Sam put his eye as near to the jar as he dared. The glass vibrated with angry activity as the wasps searched for a way out. The furious energy inside the glass seemed almost enough to crack it.

After a while Morris’s large face appeared next to Sam’s. The boy could smell tobacco and the rot of alcohol on the man’s breath. Though Morris himself had set the wasp-trap, he behaved as if he was seeing it now for the first time.

‘You see,’ he said to Sam very quietly, ‘they can find a way in, but they can’t find a way out.’

Morris made Sam feel uneasy as he continued to stare into the jar of angry wasps. Sam peeled away. Morris covered his eyes with his hand, and Sam saw that his shoulders were shaking. Then the other boys saw it too. After a moment Morris returned to his workshop, closing the doors behind him.

It was Terry who suggested they should go. While they waited for him to collect his coat from the caravan, Sam glanced through the dusty glass windowpanes of the garage-workshop. With his back to the doors, Morris was seated at his workdesk. His hands grasped the desk and he seemed to be staring dead ahead at the wall. But as he looked Sam saw a familiar shadow whispering to Morris. The figure, a little over four feet tall, worked its pink tongue close to Morris’s ear, back and forth, back and forth.

‘Hey,’ Terry said quietly. ‘Let’s go.’

They sat up by the pond where Terry had lost two of his
toes. The boys spent many hours there, ostensibly looking for the pike without ever seeing it. Terry had a small pen-knife, stolen from his father’s workshop. Whenever he was at the pond he opened and closed it more out of nervous habit than in any readiness for action should the pike choose to appear. After a while Clive went home. Sam hung on with Terry, knowing his friend was reluctant to return to the caravan. That day his fiddling with the penknife was more agitated than usual.

‘Do you think it’s still there?’ Sam wanted to know.

Terry stared into the water. Luminous green duckweed stippled the dark, mirror-like surface of the water. ‘Getting fatter and bigger every year.’

Sam saw Terry’s face reflected there. Suddenly, looming out of the depths alongside Terry’s reflection was another face. Familiar and frightening, squinting back at him, the pink tongue working back and forth, reminding him. Sam jumped back from the side of the pond.

‘What is it?’ shouted Terry.

‘Tonight,’ Sam gasped.

‘What about tonight?’ Terry closed his penknife and stood up.

‘Television. We’ve got a television.’

‘You told me that already.’

‘You’ve got to come and watch it. Tonight.’

Terry smiled. ‘Great.’

‘No! You’ve got to stay over! You’ve got to stay at our house. You can sleep in my room.’

Terry was puzzled but flattered by Sam’s urgency. ‘My mum won’t let me.’

‘She will. She’s got to. My mum will tell her.’ Sam was up and running.

Terry darted a glance back at the black waters of the pond. Then he ran to catch up with Sam.

*

‘It’s practically next door,’ said Connie when Sam asked her if Terry could stay overnight. ‘Why?’

‘Television!’ was all Sam could think of saying.

‘So, he can watch television, and then he can go home.’

‘No! He’s got to stay. First television night!’

Connie looked at her boy. His eyes were moist, his fists were clenched. He was normally such an undemanding child. She couldn’t understand why he was so insistent. Terry hung back, knowing when to stay out of an argument; Connie looked at him and was flushed with a wave of sympathy for her neighbour’s son. She’d spent the afternoon baking apple pies; she’d iced cakes. Maybe it was a special day. ‘I’ll see what Mrs Morris has to say about it.’

Nev had fixed the TV aerial, approximately. He, Connie, Sam and Terry watched the screen that Saturday evening in awed and almost spiritual silence. They watched, through a moderate blizzard dogged by a screen ghost, an early episode of
Doctor Who and the Daleks
. So astonished were they by what they’d seen, the two boys were convinced the world outside must surely be a changed place. They were also amazed that Sam’s mother had the courage to venture all the way to Terry’s caravan to have a word with Mrs Morris about his staying overnight. When she returned, bearing his pyjamas and a toothbrush, the boys made joyful fists at each other.

‘Cut it with a knife,’ Sam overheard his mother say to Nev. The boys were permitted to stay up to watch a game show and half of an incomprehensible drama before being packed off to bed. Finally they were settled, head-to-toe in Sam’s bed, before the light was switched off. Muffled voices and signature tunes from the television carried to the bedroom. It was a new and comforting sound.

Sam woke at about one o’clock in the morning. The window was ajar and the room was cold. He lifted his head from the pillow. At first he thought a Dalek might have come
into his room, metal gleaming, death-ray levelled at his head. Blinking back sleep he saw it was the Tooth Fairy. Somewhere in the night, not far away, he heard two very loud bangs. He looked into the Tooth Fairy’s eyes.

The Tooth Fairy was somehow diminished. His coal-black hair was wet and matted, and his face was a pale, dirty ivory. He was shivering and hugging himself. Then there was a third bang. And a fourth.

The Tooth Fairy nodded his head slowly at Sam. He seemed to be crying. Then he faded.

‘Terry! Terry!’

Terry woke up. His eyelashes flickered. ‘It’s cold in here.’

Sam closed the window. ‘Did you see him?’

‘Who?’

‘He was here!’ Sam had never previously mentioned the Tooth Fairy to either Terry or Clive. He was highly excited that the fairy had made an appearance in the presence of Terry. Because Terry
didn’t
see him, it
didn’t
mean that he
couldn’t
.

They heard someone get up. The bangs had also disturbed Sam’s father. Nev put his head round the door. ‘Go back to sleep, you boys.’

‘I heard some bangs.’

‘A car backfiring. Go back to sleep.’

In the morning, while the boys were having their breakfast, Nev came in and shouted for Connie. He cast a glance at Terry as Connie came hurrying down the stairs. Something in his father’s eye frightened Sam. Nev ushered Connie through to the lounge and closed the door.

When they came out, Nev said, ‘Get your coat on, Terry. I’m taking you up to your Aunt Dot’s house.’

‘Why?’

Nev floundered for words. He looked ghastly. ‘Because it’s a good idea right now.’

Sam went to the window. A police car had parked outside the gateway to the cottage behind which Terry’s caravan was sited. As he watched, an ambulance arrived and turned into the yard. It was followed by a second police car.

Connie got Terry’s coat and buttoned it on for him. Her lips clamped tight together. Sam could see her fingers trembling on Terry’s buttons. She hugged Terry before Nev took him by the hand and led him away.