Child's Play

Chapter 6

Lexie Huby’s class finished at eight and she was driving up to Troy House by half past. It was a fine night, but moonless and with enough wind to set the trees trembling and shake out the odd dead leaf. The house was in darkness and the slight figure paused for a while by her car before slamming the door and shutting off the courtesy light which was the only illumination.

As she headed for the front porch, she heard a noise in the garden. She stopped and turned. There was movement there, in the shadows by the shrubbery, a menacing presence, now still, now beginning to advance.

Lexie said calmly, ‘Hob? Is that you?’

And a moment later smiled as her deduction was confirmed and the old donkey’s ears broke the dim skyline above the shrubs.

Next moment a hand descended on her shoulder and she spun round, shrieking.

‘Sorry, miss, it’s only me!’

It was Constable Jennison, the Greendale policeman, his square face rhomboid with concern.

‘Didn’t mean to scare you, but I’ve been told off to keep a weather eye open round Troy House and when I saw the car, I thought I’d better take a look. It’s Miss Lexie, isn’t it? Mrs Brooks said you was expected. She went off about an hour ago, said the old lady was sleeping sound.’

Lexie, recovered and reassured, said, ‘That’s good. Will you have a cup of tea?’

‘No, thanks. Got to get on down to the Greendale Inn. Big darts match tonight, first round of the cup.’

‘And you’re expecting bother?’

‘No way,’ he said. ‘I’m playing! Good night now. I’ll check back later.’

Lexie let herself into the house with Lomas’s key. There was a note to her from Mrs Brooks in the kitchen saying the doctor had called again and Miss Keech had taken some nourishment and gone to sleep. The doctor was arranging for a nurse the following day. A postscript added that all the animals had been fed despite anything they might say to the contrary.

Lexie smiled as she read the note. She knew Mrs Brooks and guessed that Jennison’s absence from his darts match had been as much to check on her arrival at the cleaner’s request as to check the security of the house at Dalziel’s.

She went upstairs to the big bedroom, once Great Aunt Gwen’s, now Miss Keech’s. It was strange. It was easy to imagine in the semidarkness that it was still her aunt lying there, though she and Miss Keech bore no great physical resemblance.

As she turned to leave, a quavery voice said, ‘Who’s there?’

‘It’s only me, Miss Keech,’ she said advancing. ‘Lexie.’

She switched on the bedside lamp to give confirmation.

‘Oh, Lexie,’ said the old woman. ‘Little Lexie. What’s the time?’

Lexie told her.

‘It’s good of you to come to see me. Everyone’s very good when you’re ill, aren’t they? Likes and dislikes, they all get forgotten.’

Lexie didn’t know how to answer this.

She said, ‘Would you like a hot drink?’

‘No, thank you. A little tonic wine would be nice.’

Lexie poured her a glass from the bottle on the bedside table. It was mildly alcoholic but she assumed the doctor would have removed it if he felt it was likely to be harmful. Then she helped Miss Keech to sit up, arranging her pillows as a back rest. Her body felt frail and skeletal and she smelt of lavender and old age.

She sipped the wine thirstily, but not indecorously, her little finger crooked in that much parodied signal of refinement.

‘More?’ said Lexie.

‘No, thank you, dear.’

She put the glass down.

‘Do you want to sleep now? Or listen to the radio perhaps?’

Miss Keech smiled like marsh-light on a dark pool.

‘You’ve never liked me much, have you, Lexie?’ she said.

Lexie considered her reply.

‘No. Not much,’ she said finally.

Miss Keech laughed silently.

‘You were always such a blunt little thing. No. That’s wrong. You were always a timid, quiet, rather frightened little girl, but once you set your mind on something, that was it.’

‘Was it?’

‘Oh yes. I remember when we put you and Jane on Hob. And Hob brayed at Jane and that was enough. She’d never go near him again. You fell off at least a dozen times, but it didn’t matter. You had to be lifted up again. And then when you changed your name! We all went on calling you Alexandra for a while. It was hard to break old habits. But you broke it all right. We could call you Alexandra till the cows came home and you’d carry on like someone stone deaf. It was because of Mrs Huby’s son, wasn’t it?’

Again Lexie considered before answering.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I never thought much of it, my name being so like his, till one Sunday I said I couldn’t come here to tea, I had too much homework, and Dad lost his temper. He said, Did I imagine he came here to enjoy himself, and the only reason he put up with it was because of securing his family’s future, and Aunt Gwen would be right offended if I didn’t go as I was the only one she really thought anything of because of the music, and because I had the same name as her missing son. It had never struck me before. That was why I’d been christened Alexandra, not because it was a name Mam and Dad liked and wanted to call me, but in order to butter up Aunt Gwen. So I changed it. Jane had always called me Lexie from a little girl. That was my own name, no one else’s.’

Miss Keech nodded sleepily.

‘Yes, that’s you, Lexie … your own name … your own person … it must be a gift … like grace … a precious, precious …’

Her eyes closed, forcing out of each a tear which might have been just an old woman’s rheum, yet they gleamed as bright as a young woman’s grief.

And she slept.

Others talked and listened, waking and sleeping, that night too. Rose Pascoe, content to have summoned her father by her cries on his late return home, let his flow of meaningless words lull her back to sleep.

‘I don’t get it, kid,’ he said to her. ‘Sergeant Wield, that’s the one who’s so ugly, you fall about laughing every time you see him, he’s turned out to be gay. Perhaps it was people like you laughing that did it. Jocund company turns you gay, doesn’t it? That’s a sort of intellectual joke. Ellie, that’s your mother, remember, the one with the short hair, she says that’s my trouble. She says she’s always known Wield was gay, and Fat Andy says he’s always known too. But me, I’m supposed to be a bit afraid of feelings, I’ve got an intellectual censor, that’s what your mother says. It’s what keeps me sane in the fuzz, but it cuts off part of me too. Is she right, do you think? Has part of me been cut off? What’s that you say? Forget the fruitcake analysis and how am I getting on with the Pontelli murder? It’s slow, kid, but I’m getting there. I think I know what’s happening, only I can’t really believe it. Story of my life, kid. Story of my life!’

Sergeant Wield had opened the door of his flat to a long insistent ring earlier that evening. He had been certain it was Pascoe. Instead the doorway was filled with Dalziel.

‘Peter’ll come and see you tomorrow,’ said Dalziel, casually thought-reading. ‘I told him to go straight home. He’s so full of guilt at not being any use to you, he’d probably offer you his bum in atonement if he came tonight, and that’d do none of you any good.’

Wield considered punching Dalziel on the nose, but found himself smiling wanly instead. The fat man was right. The last thing he needed was a guilty shoulder to cry on.

‘You’d best come in,’ he said. ‘Only I’ve finished the whisky.’

Silently Dalziel produced a bottle of Glen Grant out of an inside pocket. He unscrewed the top and threw it away.

‘You got some big glasses?’ he said.

Sarah Brodsworth was asleep and in her sleep she dreamt of Henry Vollans. The reporter’s face, too lupine now for Robert Redford, thrust itself eagerly at her, snapping and snarling questions and driving her back into a darkness filled with voices. Simplest would be to turn and run away and leave him sniffing fruitlessly at the space where she had been. But that would be an unforgivable weakness, and it wasn’t weakness that had brought her to where she was. Her task was to get her hands on the Huby money if and when it came to WFE, and waking or sleeping she wasn’t about to let anybody, journalist, policeman or anybody, interfere. But she would need to be vigilant, waking or sleeping. There was a noise. Someone opening a door. Faint footsteps. Shallow breathing. Was she sleeping or waking now? She did not know.

It was ten to midnight when Rod Lomas got back to Troy House. He found Lexie in the lounge asleep on a huge sofa beneath a patchwork quilt of cats and dogs who, barred from entry under Keech’s strict regime, had not missed this chance of celebrating their Paradise regained.

Lomas stooped and brushed the girl’s forehead with his lips. Her eyes opened and blinked myopically. He picked up her spectacles from beneath a labrador’s protective paw and dropped them on to her nose.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Hello,’ she said, struggling upright. ‘What time is it?’

He told her.

‘Sorry I’m so late. Only we had some trouble at the theatre. Someone let off a smoke bomb in the first act. The place had to be cleared. Chung insisted on starting right at the beginning again when we got things sorted, so even though we all spoke at twice our normal speed, we ran very late!’

‘Who did it? Kids?’

‘Well, the place was full of school parties. But someone had been at work with a spray can in the foyer. Nasty racist stuff, mainly about Chung. So if it’s children, you can put me down for the W. C. Fields’ Fan Club. I would have rung, but I was worried in case you’d gone home and I’d just wake Keechie. How is she?’

Lexie struggled to her feet, disturbing a cry of cats, and went with the accuracy of childish memory to the sideboard where the drinks were kept. Under Keech’s rule, there was Scotch as well as sweet sherry.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said, pouring a stiff one. ‘She seems strong enough in herself but she was rambling on very strangely till she fell asleep.’

‘What about?’

‘Just rambling,’ said Lexie vaguely, handing him the drink. ‘It may be some drug the doctor’s given her. Mrs Brooks left a note saying a nurse would be coming in the morning.’

‘Thank God for that,’ said Lomas wearily. ‘I only hope she doesn’t wake up in the night.’

He sipped his drink and regarded the girl speculatively.

‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance, just in case, that you could stay …’ he said.

‘To take care of Miss Keech, you mean?’

‘Oh yes. Purely honourable motives,’ he assured her. ‘And I’d like a chance to talk to you.’

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why are your motives honourable?’ It was, like most of her questions, not ironical but single-dimensional, direct.

He considered, then grinned.

‘Fail-safe,’ he said. ‘Then if my physical weakness or your moral strength prevails, I can always claim that’s what I intended anyway. What do you say, Lexie? Seriously, on your terms. Can you give the Old Mill a ring?’

‘I’ve done it already,’ said Lexie. ‘For Miss Keech’s sake, not yours.’

‘That’s great,’ said Lomas. ‘Where will you sleep?’

Lexie took a long look at him.

‘Anywhere,’ she said, ‘as long as it’s not full of cats and labradors.’

‘I know just the place,’ said Lomas.

It was the corny, the obvious thing to say. But it was not what he had intended to say. There were things to talk about, things to sort out. He had no interest at all in this anorexic child’s skinny body. He could not, did not want to imagine what it would be like, what her reaction would be to his masculine size and hardness. But it was too late. The offer had come, had been accepted. He followed her out of the room and up the stairs, pausing by Keechie’s door in hope of hearing her saving bell. But all that came was the gentle snoring of peaceful sleep.

It was a sleep that remained peaceful, which was fortunate for Miss Keech as there were moments when it would have taken a very strong hand and a very large bell to attract the attention of her putative nurses.

‘By Christ, but I enjoyed that!’ said Lomas.

‘No need to sound so surprised,’ said Lexie.

‘I’m sorry! I didn’t mean … no, what I meant was …’

‘Try the truth.’

‘Well, the truth is, I thought it might be like being in bed with a boy,’ confessed Lomas, wrapping his arms and legs round her narrow little body in way of illustration.

‘And was it?’

‘If it was, bring on the boys!’ laughed Lomas. ‘Also …’

‘Yes?’

‘I thought it’d be your first time.’

‘Nearly right,’ said Lexie. ‘Third.’

‘You’re very exact.’

‘I did it first during my O-levels,’ said Lexie. ‘Everyone talked about it and I know some girls who really had done it, and I thought I ought to give it a go.’

‘Jesus. I’ve heard of an inquiring mind, but this is ridiculous. How was it?’

‘Painful. Cold. Uncomfortable. The lad said he’d done it before, but I’m not sure. And we were outside, on the edge of the playing fields, and it had been raining.’

‘But you tried again?’

‘Oh yes. Everyone said it always hurt first time off and you didn’t start enjoying it till second time.’

‘Were they right?’

‘It were better,’ conceded Lexie. ‘But not enough to give me a taste.’

‘And the third time?’

‘I’m not sure yet. Mebbe I’ll be able to tell you after the fourth.’

‘You’ll have to hang around for that,’ he said. ‘Lexie …’

‘Yes.’

He knew what he wanted to ask her, and he guessed she knew too. But he couldn’t ask without himself answering questions, and there were things in his life he suddenly did not want this girl mixed up with.

He heard himself saying, ‘Lexie, do you love your parents?’

That took her by surprise.

She said, ‘Love,’ as though trying a new taste.

‘That’s what I said. The other things — gratitude, obedience, dependency and so on — they don’t matter, they’re for anyone. Parents need love, don’t they, otherwise, who’d bother?’

‘They fuck you up, your mam and dad. They may not mean to, but they do,’ said Lexie.

‘Good Lord.’

‘Larkin,’ she said.

‘I know.’

‘But you’re surprised. Because I’ve heard of Larkin or because I said fuck?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Old habits. You can’t expect me to stop patronizing you just because of one good screw, can you?’

‘Two had better do it,’ she said. ‘But you’re right in a way. I’d never heard of Larkin till some lad in the fourth form found this poem with the word fuck in it. It were funny. I could hear it, and worse, any time I wanted in the playground or back home at the pub. But seeing it printed there in a book of poems was still a shock. ‘Specially when it said those things about my mam and dad.’

‘Not about your mum and dad, surely. It’s a little more generalized than that.’

‘There’s no such thing as generalized when you’re a lass of fourteen and you’ve just started having periods. Not when most of the other girls in your class and even your little sister had started a lot sooner. I used to lie, not to be different. I tried asking Mam but she said I should be grateful and not to bother her. No, everything anyone said or did or wrote was about me. Earthquakes in China were about me! Any road, what about you? Do you love your Mam?’

‘Old Windypants?’ he said with a laugh. ‘Yes, I think so. It’s always been an artificial relationship in the best sense. A thing of delicate artifice. Up until three years ago I was the marvellous boy of infinite promise. Then Daddy died and soon after I became just another resting actor. Mummy did some quick rewriting, I tell you. Now we’re both word perfect in an intimate two-hander in which I don’t remind her she’s old enough to be my mother and she doesn’t remind me that I’m old enough to be earning my own living. Well, not too often anyway.’

‘You are earning your own living.’

‘My own survival, you mean. Chung got me right in the doubling-up part she got me to do. It’s not big bold fast-talking Mercutio you’re in bed with but the apothecary. Who calls so loud? And Romeo replying, Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor.'

‘The trouble with actors,’ said Lexie slowly, ‘is acting. What was your dad like?’

‘Oh, my astute little Lexie! He was the last of the actor-managers. People think I get it from Mummy, but hers is a thin, brittle, strictly nontransferable talent. Pa was different. He moved from role to role with infinite ease. People said he was a con artist, but he conned himself as much as anyone. He believed totally in every role he played and that’s the secret of great acting. It was pure accident that he drifted into finance rather than the theatre. Do you know, he couldn’t bear to buy things in a sale? Show him a fur coat marked down from four thousand to two and he’d turn his back in disgust. One simply did not buy such things. But show him the same thing at its full price and he would talk it down fifty per cent in as many minutes.’

He paused. For once, Lexie guessed, he was using his own talents to conceal rather than project emotion.

‘You miss him,’ said Lexie flatly.

‘Oh yes, I miss him. Mum’s great, we get on fine — most of the time! But Dad was something else.’

‘Yes. I’m beginning to see how things must have worked out.’

‘What things, Lexie?’ asked Lomas.

‘Things,’ she said.

He looked at her with an expression of bafflement.

‘I’m not sure …’ he began.

‘What?’

‘Of anything! What am I doing here?’

‘That’s a bit rude.’

‘No. I mean … Lexie, why did you tell that policeman I was at the opera with you on Friday? And imply that we spent the night together?’

‘You’ve taken long enough to ask,’ she said. ‘And what is it you’re asking? Why I did it? Or why I thought it needed to be done?’

‘Oh Lexie, you have been too long already with lawyers! Why you thought it needed to be done, then.’

‘Well,’ said the girl slowly, ‘I guessed why the police were asking. I heard a conversation at work … what I mean is, I eavesdropped on the telephone … I knew that this man, Pontelli, had been staying in Leeds and that a man had turned up there late on Friday looking for him.’

‘And what makes you think that has anything to do with me?’ wondered Lomas, searching through his drama college ragbag of faces for honest bewilderment.

She regarded him with the courteous blankness of an unimpressed producer and he knew he was not going to get the part.

‘It seemed likely,’ she said, ‘as it was you that put Pontelli up to claiming he was Alexander in the first place, wasn’t it?’

He shook his head not in denial but like a boxer who has just taken a sharp hook. Then he slipped out of the bed and stood looking down at her in a pose which could easily have passed for menacing.

‘Oh Lexie,’ he said. ‘Oh, little, little Lexie!’