Laidlaw

11

The Bridgegate was empty. Harry Rayburn had parked the car well away and he was walking. He passed the second-hand furniture shop and ‘Alice’s Restaurant’, an old café whose only pretension was its name. The corrugated entrance was Number Seventeen. He paused, looking back along the street and then towards the corner with Jocelyn Square, where The Old Ship Bank was closed like everything else.

The metal across the door was sprung as Tommy had said. But having been weathered so long in one position, it wasn’t easy to force open. He had trouble easing the travelling-bag through the opening.

The entry was dark. He wondered whether to call Tommy’s name. But, thinking about it, he knew he must be upstairs. At the top of the stairs, he negotiated the last steps very carefully because they were corroded. The bannister wasn’t safe. Of the two doors, one was heavily cobwebbed in the dim light. It had to be the other.

He pushed it open. The small hallway had three doors, one facing him that was presumably a cupboard, and two others opposite each other. He hesitated, and opened the door on his left, into an empty room. He closed it, stepped across the hall and opened the other door.

He saw Tommy at once, saw him not in isolation but as part of a larger scene that gave him its significance and which he simultaneously interpreted. He was pressed against a corner, looking over his shoulder. Rayburn was aware of the scabby wall he stood against, different layers of paper showing against it like a record of failure to cover its bleakness; he was aware of the empty fireplace, the remnant of chintzy curtain on the window, flag of defeated respectability. At the centre of this small ruin of domesticity was Tommy, seeming to Rayburn at once its destroyer and its victim. He was what it denied and so he had been obliged to deny it in order to happen. He had arrived where, within himself, he had probably always been.

They watched each other. Rayburn made to move towards him and Tommy held up his hand.

‘Don’t touch me, Harry. That’s the first thing. Don’t try to touch me.’

Rayburn left the travelling-bag in the middle of the floor like bait and moved back to the doorway. Tommy looked at the bag.

‘Did you bring the things for writing?’

‘They’re there. And there’s food there and some blankets. And candles and matches. But why won’t you come back with me? We could go now.’

‘Did you see my mother?’

‘I saw her.’

‘What did you tell her?’

‘I told her you were in trouble with the police and couldn’t come home. I didn’t say why. I had to tell her that much. Because I asked her to say you had gone to London two weeks back, if they asked. It was all right.’

Rayburn thought of the small, grey-haired woman he had talked to that morning, as clean and about as yielding as stainless steel. She had wanted to know only one thing really, that Tommy was all right. She knew, Rayburn was sure, that whatever Tommy had done was very serious, but she hadn’t hesitated to accept the part he had given her.

‘Who was it, Tommy?’

Tommy shook his head.

‘Was it that girl you told me about?’

Tommy nodded. His right hand had been in his pocket all the time. As he brought it out now, kneading it, Rayburn realised that what he held in it was a pair of panties. There was blood on them.

‘Tommy. I can help you. I can get you away from here.’ He started to move nearer to him again. ‘Let me-’

Tommy cringed.

‘I don’t want anybody to touch me!’ he shouted. ‘I don’t want to talk. I don’t want anybody else here.’

Rayburn stared at him. In Tommy’s utter isolation Rayburn had found a complete commitment. Tommy stood like an admission of what Rayburn had managed to avoid.

‘I’ll come back, Tommy. I can get help. You’ve heard me talking about Matt Mason. He can help. Matt Mason’ll help.’

He turned towards the door.

‘Come back tomorrow, Harry. Please.’

Rayburn nodded and went out. He knew that if he didn’t get Tommy safely out of there, there would be nothing else he wanted to do again.