The Face That Must Die

Chapter I

Perhaps he should stay on the bus, and avoid the tail end of Christmas.

In Lodge Lane, shops had broken out in fairy lights. Tiny coloured bulbs spelt Merry Christmas. The shoppers on the narrow pavements looked as though they all had hangovers. The window of a wine store glided by, glittering with an oval of frost false as a carol singer’s smile.

If he stayed on the bus he would reach the park more quickly – but he wanted his sweets. He’d loved them ever since he was a child: boiled sweets which bulged his cheeks, hard as fruity stones, while he sucked and sucked until it seemed they would never crack and yield up their sticky secret. Why should he deny himself? He hadn’t had much in his life.

Ambushed by wind from the side streets, the bus shuddered. The brakes squealed as a bus stop flagged it down. If there were too many people upstairs, might the bus topple over? Horridge felt unsafe, for the lurches of the bus had set everyone nodding, as though agreeing with a whisper which he’d failed to hear.

The bus had stopped. He limped rapidly to reach the doors before they closed. His hip bumped something. “That’s my hat!” a woman protested like an outraged parrot, patting the furry pink cap back into place. “That’s my hat!”

“ I’m very sorry,” he said sweetly, cursing her for drawing attention to him, to his limp.

He gripped the rusty bus stop for a few moments, like a crutch. People trudged by, greeting one another, laden with bags of anything but turkey. Nobody looked up beyond the shops, to the windows blank with dust, the jagged holes admitting weather to the deserted flats. Above a supermarket, bared nails spelt out the unreadable ghost of its name. Didn’t these people realise that all this could be used as an excuse to herd them into concrete prisons miles outside the city? So long as they had their pubs and betting shops, they didn’t care.

He made for the sweet shop, slowly enough to conceal his limp. The shopkeeper was serving a customer: a packet of razor-blades lay between them on the spread of newspapers. Cupboards and racks made the shop even smaller. Magazines were pegged like printed towels hung up to dry. Framed by romances and toilet rolls, glossy women exposed huge chests.

As he turned to the jars the shopkeeper said “They’d rather not work these days. They’re too well off.”

Was she referring to him? He wasn’t one of the layabouts who drove new cars to collect their dole. Dole! Fortune, more like. It wasn’t for him; he was only partially incapacitated, the Social Security had decided after cross-questioning him like a common criminal. All they needed to live up to their initials were jackboots.

“ I couldn’t agree more,” the other woman said.

Oh, surely she could if she really tried. These days nobody could think for themselves.

“ All these men walking the streets. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

He wasn’t a streetwalker, and he never would be. Just let her watch whom she was calling abnormal! He rapped a lid with his knuckles. “A quarter of these, please,” he said to shut her up.

As he started forward to grab the bag – a sweet was poking over its lip, ready to fall if she helped it a little – his leg gave way. His hand splayed a stack of newspapers across the counter, spreading headlines – New Murder Shock – and razor-blades. A dozen repetitions of the identikit drawing stared up at him, an unnatural family – as though the man had infected a dozen victims until they looked like him. Horridge snatched his hand away. “Bloody leg,” he muttered.

The customer stared at him as he groped for his wallet. Her hair was full of plastic burrs, her eyes were sunk in mascara. “He’s got a lot in his pockets,” she said. “Been robbing a bank, have you?”

Let her mind her own business. He thrust his documents deeper into his pocket: disability benefit order book, medical card, birth certificate. She stared at his overcoat as though it was an insult flung into a jumble sale. Yes, the pockets were discoloured with bulging. Let her try to live on the pittance they gave him!

Once out of the shop he made for the park. He felt shabby. He could have turned his coat, which was a reversible – but he was no turncoat, and besides, the tartan was too bright; he preferred the unobtrusive grey.

The sweet which he popped into his mouth tasted soapy. His hand was stigmatised by the newspapers. If the blur of ink was a word, it was indecipherable. He rubbed his skin clean with the sweet bag, but his hand still felt smeared.

A twinge counted his steps as he quickened his pace. Street signs were obscured by incomprehensible graffiti, as though invaded by a foreign language. The villas of Sefton Park Road were spacious and grand, with deep porches. Trees, promises of the park, grew in the large gardens.

On Aigburth Drive, which curved round the park, two men stood talking outside a house. The house looked discoloured and blurred, like something left in an attic; its three storeys of pairs of bay windows gleamed sullenly. It must have been dignified once.

Now it had fallen into bad company. Two men? They weren’t what he would call men. One was a thin pale youth with long black ratty hair and a paler tuft of beard. Was he pretending to be a man or a goat? His eyes were nervous yet blank. All these students tripping on their drugs – sooner or later they’d trip themselves up.

But the other was worse. He looked stiff, as though he was ashamed of his movements – as well he might be, for he was gesturing like a parody of a woman. In his dark heavy overcoat he was a blot on the landscape. He was hefty; the youth had no chance against him. Had he built up his body to convince people he was a man? Everything about him was a lie. When he turned to stare at Horridge the too-small face looked like a petulant mask swollen with flesh.

Horridge glared; then, feeling queasy, he hurried between the granite columns into the park. As he limped past the obelisk, wind tugged at his coat, trying to expose the tartan. Huge warty swellings grew on some of the trees which bordered the walk. Shouldn’t those trees be cut down before they infected their neighbours?

The sweet cracked open. Within was nothing but a disappointing hollow. Horridge crunched it and sucked a red one, which tasted vaguely of strawberry. Pain plucked at his teeth like a dentist’s hooks. Once his father had made him visit the dentist. “Don’t be a baby. Look how you’re upsetting your mother. Be a man.” He had never felt so terrified as then, lying helpless in the air with his mouth forced open, awaiting more pain. Since then he had visited the surgery only in nightmares.

At the end of the walk, near an ice-cream cafe, a statue of Eros posed with a bow. He’d used to enjoy that, until he’d seen a man loitering beneath it, ogling children. Was nothing left unspoiled?

At least the park was deserted, apart from distant childish shouts. Years ago, when he’d lived nearby in Boaler Street, he’d learned to come here in the afternoons. People spoiled his peace.

A small bridge led him across a narrow of the lake. Beyond it the concrete path sloped towards the first calm pool. His aching leg ceased to bother him. The descent always reminded him of climbing down into the quarry.

When he reached the place opposite the bandstand, he halted. The desertion of the bandstand seemed to orchestrate the quiet of the artificial valley. Everything was vividly precise: the austere trees, the bushes with their glossy pelt of leaves, the grassy slope above him refreshed by the morning’s rain, the sky blue as a summer lake fading subtly towards the horizon. Everything felt clean as the quarry.

The wind had fallen. The inverted bandstand and trees lay perfectly still in the pool, their reflections glazed by the water. He stood tasting the slow explosion of strawberry.

Ducks glided by, feet waving like submerged orange fronds. Their ripples passed through the reflections; the bandstand wriggled a little, branches flowed and quivered gently. He watched zigzags undulate along each separate twig, as though the sound of lapping had been translated into sight. The ducks returned, the ripples overlapped. Though the patterns were intricate, every detail was clear to him.

Soon the ducks left him for a man who was throwing bread. Their flight shattered the reflections. He trudged away, past a statue of a man who gazed across the lake, trying to ignore the graffiti on his pedestal.

Beyond stepping-stones enclosed by railings, the lake widened. Fishermen glanced up like watchdogs. He crossed on the stones and followed a path to Lark Lane. Though the lane resembled a village street, it soon led to the dual carriageway. Beyond the petrol fumes and headlong metal stood a Bingo hall, the Mecca. Wasn’t that what foreigners thought of as heaven?

But here was the mock-Tudor library. The ceiling was supported by high white beams; briefly he thought of a church. Beneath them hung faded paper festoons, and an iron gallery clung to the wall, so that the staff could look down on people. He remembered the first time he’d climbed his father’s ladder.

As he reached a table, he cursed himself. This library took no newspapers; he couldn’t read the murder report. He’d visit another library on his way home, or buy a newspaper. At least the place was quiet. He tried to think of the pool or the quarry.

The blonde girl serving at the counter wore no shoes. You wouldn’t think it would be allowed. And she wore trousers, which was unnatural. A lady in tweeds was asking her about books. “Will the titles be in the index, yonder?”

“ Yes, I should think so. Shall I show you?”

“ I can look after myself perfectly well.”

The girl grinned secretly at her colleagues. She ought to look out for her own speech instead of mocking people who could speak properly. Her trace of the catarrhal Liverpool accent made her sound common, however glossy she kept her long hair.

The junior wing grew noisy. Schoolboys gazed at the girl’s breasts, tittering. Tittering – yes, he knew what the word sounded like, no need to think it. He hated people who corrupted the young. She must know what her right sweater was doing.

He watched her until she went home. She tucked her hair beneath a black wool cap, as though she didn’t want to look like a woman. There wouldn’t be so much unemployment if they stopped all these women working. No chance of that: it wouldn’t please the herd.

The noise of children drove him out into the dark. Passers-by were carrying plastic trays of curry, as though English food weren’t good enough for them. On the road that encircled the park, lamps lit trees from beneath. Was that the blonde girl ahead, or a man? Horridge plunged his hands deep among his documents, to try to warm his fingers. Before he could overtake the figure, it disappeared.

He knew when he reached the house where he’d seen the two men, for he’d observed the number; nobody could say his vision wasn’t sharp. Besides, the van which he had vaguely noticed was outside: a battered vehicle painted with large cartoonish flowers. Whoever was responsible had no idea what real flowers looked like. No doubt that was the fault of all their drugs.

He was staring at the parody of a flower when light reached out from the house towards him, and displayed a face.

The light came from curtains parting: no reason for his fists to clench. But the face which the window displayed as though it was something to admire was the face of the hefty effeminate man. It looked even more mask-like now. It turned as if searching the dark road, then faced Horridge.

Suddenly he realised how he looked, standing beneath the lamp as though waiting to be seen, while the sly corrupt mask hunted eagerly. Shivering, his face frozen by rage and the night into an expression which he could not read, he limped violently away.

The lights of Sefton Park Road dazzled him, but could not clear his mind. The face at the window clung to his memory; it lay on his thoughts, close and heavy. His skin felt prickly, nervous. He had seen that face earlier, outside the house. But where – his thoughts struggled vainly, as though in a dream – had he seen it before?