The Wasp Factory

5: A Bunch of Flowers

I KILLED little Esmerelda because I felt lowed it to myself and to the world in general. I had, after all, accounted for two male children and thus done womankind something of a statistical favour. If I really had the courage of my convictions, I reasoned, I ought to redress the balance at least slightly. My cousin was simply the easiest and most obvious target.

Again, I bore her no personal ill-will. Children aren't real people, in the sense that they are not small males and females but a separate species which will (probably) grow into one or the other in due time. Younger children in particular, before the insidious and evil influence of society and their parents have properly got to them, are sexlessly open and hence perfectly likeable. I did like Esmerelda (even if I thought her name was a bit soppy) and played with her a lot when she came to stay. She was the daughter of Harmsworth and Morag Stove, my half-uncle and half-aunt by my father's first marriage; they were the couple who had looked after Eric between the ages of three and five. They would come over from Belfast to stay with us in the summers sometimes; my father used to get on well with Harmsworth, and because I looked after Esmerelda they could have a nice relaxing holiday here. I think Mrs Stove was a little worried about trusting her daughter to me that particular summer, as it was the one after I'd struck young Paul down in his prime, but at nine years of age I was an obviously happy and well-adjusted child, responsible and well-spoken and, when it was mentioned, demonstrably sad about my younger brother's demise. I am convinced that only my genuinely clear conscience let me convince the adults around me that I was totally innocent. I even carried out a double-bluff of appearing slightly guilty for the wrong reasons, so that adults told me I shouldn't blame myself because I hadn't been able to warn Paul in time. I was brilliant.

I had decided I would try to murder Esmerelda before she and her parents even arrived for their holiday. Eric was away on a school cruise, so there would only be me and her. It would be risky, so soon after Paul's death, but I had to do something to even up the balance. I could feel it in my guts, in my bones; I had to. It was like an itch, something I had no way of resisting, like when I walk along a pavement in Porteneil and I accidentally scuff one heel on a paving stone. I have to scuff the other foot as well, with as near as possible the same weight, to feel good again. The same if I brush one arm against a wall or a lamp-post; I must brush the other one as well, soon, or at the very least scratch it with the other hand. In a whole range of ways like that I try to keep balanced, though I have no idea why. It is simply something that must be done; and, in the same way, I had to get rid of some woman, tip the scales back in the other direction.

I had taken to making kites that year. It was I973, I suppose. I used many things to make them: cane and dowling and metal coat hangers and aluminium tent-poles, and paper and plastic sheeting and dustbin bags and sheets and string and nylon rope and twine and all sorts of little straps and buckles and bits of cord and elastic bands and strips of wire and pins and screws and nails and pieces cannibalised from model yachts and various toys. I made a hand winch with a double handle and a ratchet and room for half a kilometre of twine on the drum; I made different types of tails for the kites that needed them, and dozens of kites large and small, some stunters. I kept them in the shed and eventually had to put the bikes outside under a tarpaulin when the collection got too large.

That summer I took Esmerelda kiting quite a lot. I let her play with a small, single-string kite while I used a stunter. I would send it swooping over and under hers, or dive it down to the sands while I stood on a dune cliff, pulling the kite down to nick tall towers of sand I'd built, then pulling up again, the kite trailing a spray of sand through the air from the collapsing tower. Although it took a while and I crashed a couple of times, once I even knocked a dam down with a kite. I swooped it so that on each pass it caught the top of the dam wall with one corner, gradually producing a nick in the sand barrier which the water was able to flow through, quickly going on to overwhelm the whole dam and the sand-house village beneath.

Then one day I was standing there on a dune top, straining against the pull of the wind in the kite, gripping and hauling and sensing and adjusting and twisting, when one of those twists became like a strangle around Esmerelda's neck, and the idea was there. Use the kites.

I thought about it calmly, still standing there as though nothing had passed through my mind but the continual computation guiding the kite, and I thought it seemed reasonable. As I thought about it, the notion took its own shape, blossoming, as it were, and escalating into what I finally conceived as my cousin's nemesis. I grinned then, I recall, and brought the stunter down fast and acute across the weeds and the water, the sand and the surf, scudding it in across the wind to jerk and zoom just before it hit the girl herself where she sat on the dune top holding and spasmodically jerking the string she held in her hand, connected to the sky. She turned, smiled and shrieked then, squinting in the summer light. I laughed, too, controlling the thing in the skies above and the thing in the brain beneath, equally well.

I built a big kite.

It was so big it didn't even fit inside the shed. I made it from old aluminium tent-poles, some of which I had found in the attic a long time previously and some I had got from the town dump. The fabric, at first, was black plastic bags, but later became tent fabric, also from the attic.

I used heavy orange nylon fishing-line for the string, wound round a specially made drum for the winch, which I had strengthed and fitted with a chest-brace. The kite had a tail of twisted magazine-pages — Guns and Ammo, which I got regularly at the time. I painted the head of a dog on the canvas in red paint because I had yet to learn I was not a Canis. My father had told me years before that I was born under the starsign of the Dog because Sirius was overhead at the time. Anyway, that was just a symbol.

I went out very early one morning, just after the sun came up and long before anybody else woke. I went to the shed, got the kite, walked a way along the dunes and assembled it, battered a tent-peg into the ground, tied the nylon to it, then flew the kite on a short string for a while. I sweated and strained with it, even in quite a light wind, and my hands grew warm despite the heavy-duty welding-gloves I had on. I decided the kite would do, and brought it in.

That afternoon, while the same wind, now freshened, still blew across the island and off into the North Sea, Esmerelda and I went out as usual, and stopped off at the shed to pick up the dismantled kite. She helped me carry it far along the dunes, dutifully clutching the lines and winch to her flat little chest and clicking the ratchet on the drum, until we reached a point well out of sight from the house. It was a tall dune head stuck nodding towards distant N orway or Denmark, grass like hair swept over the brow and pointing.

Esmerelda searched for flowers while I constructed the kite with an appropriately solemn slowness. She talked to the flowers, I recall, as though trying to persuade them to show themselves and be collected, broken and bunched. The wind blew her blonde hair in front of her face as she walked, squatted, crawled and talked, and I assembled.

Finally the kite was finished, fully made up and lying like a collapsed tent on the grass, green on green. The wind coursed over it and flapped it — little whip noises that stirred it and made it seem alive, the dog-face scowling. I sorted the orange nylon lines out and did some tying, untangling line from line, knot from knot.

I called Esmerelda over. She had a fistful of tiny flowers, and made me wait patiently while she described them all, making up her own names when she forgot or had never learned the real ones. I accepted the daisy she gave me graciously and put it in the buttonhole of my jacket's left breast pocket. I told her that I had finished constructing the new kite, and that she could help me test it in the wind. She was excited, wanting to hold the strings. I told her she might get a chance, though of course I would have the ultimate control. She wanted to hold the flowers as well, and I told her that might just be possible.

Esmerlda ooh'd and ah'd over the size of the kite and the fierce doggy painted on it. The kite lay on the wind-ruffled grass like an impatient manta, rippling. I found the main control lines and gave them to Esmerelda, showing her how to hold them, and where. I had made loops to go over her wrists, I told her, so that she wouldn't lose her grip. She struck her hands through the braided nylon, holding one line tight and grasping the posy of bright flowers and the second line with her other hand. I got my part of the control lines together and carried them in a loop round to the kite. Esmerelda jumped up and down and told me to hurry up and make the kite fly. I took a last look round, then only had to kick the top edge of the kite up a little for it to take the wind and lift. I ran back behind my cousin while the slack between her and the rapidly ascending kite was taken up.

The kite blew into the sky like something wild, hoisting its tail with a noise like tearing cardboard. It shook itself and cracked in the air. It sliced its tail and flexed its hollow bones. I came up behind Esmerelda and held the lines just behind her little freckled elbows, waiting for the tug. The lines came taut, and it came. I had to dig my heels in to stay steady. I bumped into Esmerelda and made her squeal. She had let the lines go when the first brutal snap had straightened the nylon, and stood glancing back at me and staring up into the sky as I fought to control the power in the skies above us. She still clutched the flowers, and my tuggings on the lines moved her arms like a marionette, guided by the loops. The winch rested against my chest, a little slack between it and my hands. Esmerelda looked round one last time at me, giggling, and I laughed back. Then I let the lines go.

The winch hit her in the small of the back and she yelped. Then she was dragged off her feet as the lines pulled her and the loops tightened round her wrists. I staggered back, partly to make it look good on the off chance there was somebody watching and partly because letting go of the winch had put me off balance. I fell to the ground as Esmerelda left it forever. The kite just kept snapping and flapping and flapping and snapping and it hauled the girl off the earth and into the air, winch and all. I lay on my back and watched it for a second, then got up and ran after her as fast as I could, again just because I knew I couldn't catch her. She was screaming and waggling her legs for all she was worth, but the cruel loops of nylon had her about the wrists, the kite was in the jaws of the wind, and she was already well out of reach even if I had wanted to catch her.

I ran and ran, jumping off a dune and rolling down its seaward face, watching the tiny struggling figure being hoisted farther and farther into the sky as the kite swept her away. I could just barely hear her yells and shouts, a thin wailing carried on the wind. She sailed over the sands and the rocks and out towards the sea, me running, exhilarated, underneath, watching the stuck winch bob under her kicking feet. Her dress billowed out around her.

She went higher and higher and I kept running, outpaced now by the wind and the kite. I ran through the ripple-puddles at the margins of the sea, then into it, up to my knees. Just then something, at first seemingly solid, then separating and dissociating, fell from her. At first I though she had pissed herself, then I saw flowers tumble out of the sky and hit the water ahead of me like some strange rain. I waded out over the shallows until I came to them, and gathered the ones I could, looking up from my harvest as Esmerelda and kite struck out for the North Sea. It did cross my mind that she might actually get across the damn thing and hit land before the wind dropped, but I reckoned that even if that happened I had done my best, and honour was satisfied.

I watched her get smaller and smaller, then turned and headed for shore.

I knew that three deaths in my immediate vicinity within four years had to look suspicious, and I had already planned my reaction carefully. I didn't run straight home to the house, but went back up into the dunes and sat down there, holding the flowers. I sang songs to myself, made up stories, got hungry, rolled around in the sand a bit, rubbed a little of it into my eyes and generally tried to psyche myself up into something that might look like a terrible state for a wee boy to be in. I was still sitting there in the early evening, staring out to sea when a young forestry worker from the town found me.

He was one of the search party drummed up by Diggs after my father and relations missed us and couldn't find us and called the police. The young man came over the tops of the dunes, whistling and casually whacking clumps of reed and grass with a stick.

I didn't take any notice of him. I kept staring and shivering and clutching the flowers. My father and Diggs came along after the young man passed word along the line of people beating their way along the dunes, but I didn't take any notice of those two, either. Eventually there were dozens of people clustered around me, looking at me, asking me questions, scratching their heads, looking at their watches and gazing about. I didn't take any notice of them. They formed their line again and started searching for Esmerelda while I was carried back to the house. They offered me soup I was desperate for but took no notice of, asked me questions I answered with a catatonic silence and a stare. My uncle and aunt shook me, their faces red and eyes wet, but I took no notice of them. Eventually my father took me to my room, undressed me and put me to bed.

Somebody stayed in my room all night and, whether it was my father, Diggs or anybody else, I kept them and me awake all night by lying quiet for a while, feigning sleep, then screaming with all my might and falling out of bed to thrash about on the floor. Each time I was picked up, cuddled and put back to bed. Each time I pretended to go to sleep again and went crazy after a few minutes. If any of them talked to me, I just lay shaking in the bed staring at them, soundless and deaf.

I kept that up until dawn, when the search party returned, Esmerelda-less, then I let myself go to sleep.

It took me a week to recover, and it was one of the best weeks of my life. Eric came back from his school cruise and I started to talk a little after he arrived; just nonsense at first, then later disjointed hints at what had happened, always followed by screaming and catatonia.

Sometime around the middle of the week, Dr MacLennan was allowed to see me for a while, after Diggs overruled my father's refusal to have me medically inspected by anybody else but him. Even so, he stayed in the room, glowering and suspicious, making sure that the examination was kept within certain limits; I was glad he didn't let the doctor look all over me, and I responded by becoming a little more lucid.

By the end of the week I was still having the occasional fake nightmare, I would suddenly go very quiet and shivery every now and again, but I was eating more or less normally and could answer most questions quite happily. Talking about Esmerelda, and what had happened to her, still brought on mini-fits and screams and total withdrawal for a while, but after long and patient questioning by my father and Diggs I let them know what I wanted them to think had happened — a big kite; Esmerelda becoming entangled in the lines; me trying to help her and the winch slipping out of my fingers; desperate running; then a blank.

I explained that I was afraid I was jinxed, that I brought death and destruction upon all those near me, and also that I was afraid I might get sent to prison because people would think I had murdered Esmerelda. I wept and I hugged my father and I even hugged Diggs, smelling his hard-blue uniform fabric as I did so and almost feeling him melt and believe me. I asked him to go to the shed and take all my kites away and burn them, which he duly did, in a hollow now called Kite Pyre Dell. I was sorry about the kites, and I knew that I'd have to give up flying them for good to keep the act looking realistic, but it was worth it. Esmerelda never did show up; nobody saw her after me, as far as Diggs" enquiries of trawlers and drilling-rigs and so on could show.

So I got to even up the score and have a wonderful, if demanding, week of fun acting. The flowers that I had still been clutching when they carried me back to the house had been prised from my fingers and left in a plastic bag on top of the fridge. I discovered them there, shrivelled and dead, forgotten and unnoticed, two weeks later. I took them for the shrine in the loft one night, and have them to this day, little brown twists of dried plant like old Sellotape, stuck in a little glass bottle. I wonder sometimes where my cousin ended up; at the bottom of the sea, or washed on to some craggy and deserted shore, or blown on to a high mountain face, to be eaten by gulls or eagles….

I would like to think that she died still being floated by the giant kite, that she went round the world and rose higher as she died of starvation and dehydration and so grew less weighty still, to become, eventually, a tiny skeleton riding the jetstreams of the planet; a sort of Flying Dutchwoman. But I doubt that such a romantic vision really matches the truth.

I spent most of Sunday in bed. After my binge of the previous night, I wanted rest, lots of liquid, little food, and my hangover to go away. I felt like deciding then and there never to get drunk again, but being so young I decided that this was probably a little unrealistic, so I determined not to get that drunk again.

My father came and banged at my door when I didn't appear for breakfast.

"And what's wrong with you, as if I need ask?"

"Nothing," I croaked at the door.

"That'll be right," my father said sarcastically. "And how much did you have to drink last night?"

"Not much."

"Hnnh," he said.

"I'II be down soon," I said, and rocked to and fro in the bed to make noises which might make it sound as though I was getting up.

"Was that you on the phone last night?"

"What?" I asked the door, stopping my rocking.

"It was, wasn't it? I thought it was you; you were trying to disguise your voice. What were you doing ringing at that time?"

"Aah… I don't remember ringing, Dad, honest," I said carefully.

"Hnnh. You're a fool, boy," he said, and clumped off down the hall. I lay there, thinking. I was quite sure I hadn't called the house the previous night. I had been with Jamie in the pub, then with him and the girl outside, then alone when I was running, and then with Jamie and later him and his mother, then I walked home almost sober. There were no blank spots. I assumed it must have been Eric calling. From the sound of it my father couldn't have spoken to him for very long, or he would have recognised his son's voice. I lay back in my bed, hoping that Eric was still at large and heading this way, and also that my head and guts would stop reminding me how uncomfortable they could feel.

"Look at you," my father said when I eventually came down in my dressing-gown to watch an old movie on the television that afternoon. "I hope you're proud of yourself. I hope you think feeling like that makes you a man." My father tutted and shook his head, then went back to reading the Scientific American. I sat down carefully in one of the lounge's big easy chairs.

"I did get a bit drunk last night, Dad, I admit it. I'm sorry if it upsets you, but I assure you I'm suffering for it."

"Well, I hope that teaches you a lesson. Do you realise how many brain cells you probably managed to kill off last night?"

"A good few thousand," I said after a brief pause for calculation.

My father nodded enthusiastically: "At least."

"Well, I'll try not to do it again."

"Hnnh."

"Brrap!" said my anus loudly, surprising me as well as my father. He put the magazine down and stared into space over my head, smiling wisely as I cleared my throat and flapped the hem of my dressing-gown as unobtrusively as I could. I could see his nostrils flex and quiver.

"Lager and whisky, eh?" he said, nodding to himself and taking up his magazine again. I felt myself blush and I gritted my teeth, glad he had retreated behind the glossy pages. How did he do that? I pretended nothing had happened.

"Oh. By the way I said, "I hope you don't mind, but I told Jamie that Eric had escaped."

My father glared over the magazine, shook his head and continued reading. "Idiot," he said.

In the evening, after a snack rather than a meal, I went up to the loft and used the telescope to take a distant look at the island, making sure that nothing had happened to it while I rested inside the house. Everything appeared calm. I did go for one short walk in the cool overcast, just along the beach to the south end of the island and back, then I stayed in and watched some more television when the rain came on, carried on a low wind, glum muttering against the window.

I had gone to bed when the phone rang. I got up quickly, as I hadn't really started to drop off when it went, and ran down to get there before my father. I didn't know if he was still up or not.

"Yes?" I said breathlessly, tucking my pyjama jacket into the bottoms. Pips sounded, then a voice on the other end sighed.

"No."

"What?" I said, frowning.

"No," the voice on the other end said.

"Eh?" I said. I wasn't even sure it was Eric.

"You said 'Yes'. I say 'No'."

"What do you want me to say?"

"'Porteneil 531. "

"OK. Porteneil 531. Hello?"

"OK. Goodbye." The voice giggled, the phone went dead. I looked at it accusingly, then put it down in the cradle. I hesistated. The phone rang again. I snatched it up halfway through the first tinkle.

"Ye-" I started, then the pips sounded. I waited until they stopped and said; "Porteneil 531."

"Porteneil 531," said Eric. I thought it was Eric, at least.

"Yes," I said.

"Yes what?"

"Yes, this is Porteneil 531."

"But I thought this was Porteneil 531."

"This is. Who is that? Is that you-"

"It's me. Is that Porteneil 531?"

"Yes!" I shouted.

"And who's that?"

"Frank Cauldhame," I said, trying to be calm. "Who's that?"

"Frank Cauldhame," Eric said. I looked around, up and down the stairs, but saw no sign of my father.

"Hello, Eric," I said, smiling. I decided that, whatever else happened, tonight I would not make him angry. I'd put the phone down rather than say the wrong thing and have my brother wreck yet another piece of Post Office property.

"I just told you my name's Frank. Why are you calling me 'Eric'?"

"Come on, Eric, I recognise your voice."

"I'm Frank. Stop calling me Eric."

"OK. OK. I'll call you Frank."

"So who are you?"

I thought for a moment. "Eric?" I said tentatively.

"You just said you were called Frank."

"Well," I sighed, leaning against the wall with one hand and wondering what I could say. "That was… that was just a joke. Oh God, I don't know." I frowned at the phone and waited for Eric to say something.

"Anyway, Eric," Eric said, "what's the latest news?"

"Oh, nothing much. I was out last night, at the pub. Did you call last night?"

"Me? No."

"Oh. Dad said somebody did. I thought it might have been you."

"Why would I call?"

"Well, I don't know." I shrugged to myself. "For the same reason you called tonight. Whatever."

"Well, why do you think I called tonight?"

"I don't know."

"Christ; you don't know why I've called, you aren't sure of your own name, you get mine wrong. You're not up to much, are you?"

"Oh dear," I said, more to myself than to Eric. I could feel this conversation going all the wrong way.

"Aren't you going to ask me how I am?"

"Yes, yes," I said. "How are you?"

"Terrible. How are you?"

"OK. Why are you feeling terrible?"

"You don't really care."

"Of course I care. What's wrong?"

"Nothing that would interest you. Ask me something else, like how the weather is or where I am or something. I know you don't care how I feel."

"Of course I do. You're my brother. Naturally I care," I protested. Just at that moment I heard the kitchen door open, and seconds later my father appeared at the bottom of the stairs and, taking hold of the great wooden ball sculpted on to the top of the last banister, stood glaring up at me. He lifted his head and put it slightly to one side to listen better. I missed a little of what Eric said in reply to me, and only caught;

"… care how I feel. Every time I ring up it's the same. 'Where are you? That's all you care about; you don't care about where my head's at, only my body. I don't know why I bother, I don't. I might as well not take the trouble of calling."

"H'm. Well. There you are," I said, looking down at my father and smiling. He stood there, silent and unmoving.

"See what I mean? That's all you can say. 'H'm. Well. There you are. Thanks a fucking lot. That shows all you care."

"Not at all. Quite the contrary," I told him, then put the phone just a little away from my mouth and shouted to my father: "It's only Jamie again, Dad!"

"… why I bother to make the effort really I don't…," Eric rambled on in the earpiece, apparently oblivious to what I'd just said. My father ignored it, too, standing in the same position as before, head cocked.

I licked my lips and said; "Well, Jamie —»

"What? You see? You've forgotten my name again now. What's the use? That's what I'd like to know. H'm? What's the use? He doesn't love me. You love me, though, don't you, h'm?" His voice became slightly fainter and more echoey; he must have taken his mouth away from the handset. It sounded as though he was talking to somebody else in the call-box with him.

"Yes, Jamie, of course." I smiled at my father and nodded and put one hand under the other armpit, trying to look as relaxed as possible.

"You love me, don't you, my sweet? As though your little heart was on fire for me…," Eric mumbled far away. I swallowed and smiled again at my father.

"Well, that's the way things go, Jamie. I was just saying that to Dad here this morning." I waved at Father.

"You're burning up with love for me, aren't you, me little darlin'?"

My heart and stomach seemed to collide as I heard a rapid panting noise come over the phone behind Eric's muttering. A slight whine and some slobbering noises brought goosepimples up all over me. I shivered. My head shook as though I'd just knocked back some hundred-proof whisky. Pant pant whine whine went the noise. Eric said something soothing and quiet in the background. Oh my God, he had a dog in there with him. Oh, no.

"Well! Listen! Listen, Jamie! What do you think?" I said loudly and desperately, wondering if my father could see my goosebumps. I thought my eyes must be starting out of my head, too, but there was little I could do; I was trying the best I could to think of something distracting to say to Eric. "I was — ah — I was just thinking that we really must — must get Willy to give us another shot of his old car; you know, the Mini he bombs up and down the sands on sometimes? That was really good fun earlier on, wasn't it?" I was croaking by now, my mouth drying up.

"What? What are you talking about?" Eric's voice said suddenly, close to the phone again. I swallowed, smiled once more at my father, whose eyes seemed to have narrowed slightly.

"You remember, Jamie. Getting a shot of Willy's Mini. I really must get Dad here" — I hissed those two words — "to get me an old car I could drive on the sands."

"You're talking crap. I've never driven anybody's car on the sands. You've forgotten who I am again," Eric said, still not listening to what I was saying. I turned away from looking down at my father and faced into the corner, sighing mightily and whispering "Oh my God," to myself, away from the mouthpiece.

"Yes. Yes, that's right, Jamie," I continued hopelessly.

"That brother of mine is still making his way here, as far as I can tell. Me and Dad here are hoping he's all right."

"You little bastard! You "re talking as though I'm not even here! Christ, I hate when people do that! You wouldn't do that to me, would you, me old flame?" His voice went away again, and I heard doggy noises — puppy noises, come to think of it over the phone. I was starting to sweat.

I heard footsteps in the hall below, then the kitchen light click off. The footsteps came again, then started up the stairs. I turned round quickly, smiled at my father as he approached.

"Well, there you go, Jamie," I said pathetically, drying up metaphorically as well as literally.

"Don't spend too long on that phone," my father said as he passed me, and continued up the stairs.

"Right, Dad!" I shouted merrily, beginning to experience an ache somewhere near my bladder that I sometimes get when things are going particluarly badly and I can't see any way out.

"Aaaaoooo!"

I jerked the phone away from my ear and stared into it for a second. I couldn't decide whether Eric or the dog had made the noise.

"Hello? Hello?" I whispered feverishly, glancing up to see Father's shadow leave the wall on the floor above.

"Haaaooowwwaaaaooooww!" came the scream down the line. I shook and flinched. My God, what was he doing to the animal? Then the receiver clunked, I heard a shout like a curse, and the phone rattled and crashed again. "You little bastard- Aargh! Fuck! Shit. Come back, you little-"

"Hello! Eric! I mean Frank! I mean- Hello! What's happening?" I hissed, glancing up the stairs for shadows, crouching down at the phone and covering up my mouth with my free hand. "Hello?"

There was a clatter, then "That was your fault!" shouted close to the handset, then another crash. I could hear vague noises for a bit, but even straining I couldn't make out what they were, and they could have been just noises on the line. I wondered whether I should put the phone down, and was about to do so when Eric's voice came again, muttering something I couldn't make out.

"Hello? What?" I said.

"Still there, eh? I lost the little bastard. That was your fault. Christ, what's the use of you?"

"I'm sorry," I said, genuinely.

"Too bloody late now. Bit me, the little shit. I'll catch it again, though. Bastard." The pips went. I heard more money being put in. "I suppose you're glad, aren't you?"

"Glad what?"

"Glad the goddam dog got away, asshole."

"What? Me?" I stalled.

"You aren't trying to tell me you're sorry it got away, are you?"

"Ah. .»

"You did it on purpose!" Eric shouted. "You did it on. purpose! You wanted it to get away! You won't let me play with anything! You'd rather the dog enjoyed itself than me! You shit! You rotten bastard!"

"Ha ha," I laughed unconvincingly. "Well, thanks for calling — ah — Frank. Goodbye." I slammed the receiver down and stood for a second, congratulating myself on how well I had done, all things considered. I wiped my brow, which had become a little sweaty, and took a last look up at the shadow less wall above.

I shook my head and trudged up the stairs. I'd got as far as the top step on that flight when the phone went again. I froze.

If I answered it…. But if I didn't, and father did….

I ran back down, picked it up, heard the coins go in; then "Bastard!" followed by a series of deafening crashes as plastic met metal and glass. I closed my eyes and listened to the cracks and smashes until one especially loud thump ended in a low buzz telephones don't usually make; then I put the phone down again, turned, looked upward, and set wearily off, back up the stairs.

I lay in bed. Soon I would have to try some long-range fixing of this problem. It was the only way. I'd have to try to influence things through the root cause of it all: Old Saul himself. Some heavy medicine was required if Eric wasn't to wreck single-handedly the entire Scottish telephone network and decimate the country's canine population. First, though, I would have to consult the Factory again.

It wasn't exactly my fault, but I was totally involved, and I might just be able to do something about it, with the skull of the ancient hound, the Factory's help and a little luck. How susceptible my brother would be to whatever vibes I could send out was a question I didn't like too much to think about, given the state of his head, but I had to do something.

I hoped the little puppy had got well away. Dammit, I didn't hold all dogs to blame for what had happened. Old Saul was the culprit, Old Saul had gone down in our history and my personal mythology as the Castraitor, but thanks to the little creatures who flew the creek I had him in my power now.

Eric was crazy all right, even if he was my brother. He was lucky to have somebody sane who still liked him.