Thieving Fear

TEN

'What's that bitch think she's up to? Who does she think she is?'

'Who are you calling one of those, Rory?'

'Who do you reckon, Hugh? Who do we both know?'

'Not Ellen.'

'Not her, no. She may be stupid in some ways, but nobody's got any reason to say she's a bitch that I know of. Cares too much for her own good about some things, like what people think of her. Have another go.'

'I don't see why you'd be talking about Charlotte.'

'What are you muttering about? Don't you want me hearing?'

'I said Charlotte. I mean, not her.'

'You've not heard what she's done to Ellen, then.'

'What?'

'By gum, I heard that all right. Didn't know you cared that much.' Rory gave Hugh's face time to grow hotter than the sunlight had rendered it before he said 'She's making Ellen change her whole book.'

'She'll be helping her, won't she? That's her job.'

'Shut my gob, are you telling me? I bet she'd like that, but I didn't think you would.'

'None of us would. I said she'll be doing her best for Ellen.'

'I didn't get half of that. You aren't making any sense to me.'

'It's noisy under the bridge. Wait till I'm over,' Hugh shouted, hurrying along the pavement above the road that girdled Huddersfield. In the midst of the thunder of lorries he thought he heard a shrivelled laugh. Pedestrians weren't allowed down there, and he was glad to be well clear of any driver who sounded like that. As he reached the brink of the street that sloped into the town, the mobile enquired 'Am I allowed to speak yet?'

'You never heard me say you weren't.'

'No, I heard you going on about someone that was under somewhere.'

'I didn't say that either,' Hugh protested more nervously than he understood.

'Carry on. You'll have me senseless before you're done.' Without giving Hugh time to respond Rory said 'Let me guess, you were standing up for your favourite girl.'

'She's not my favourite,' Hugh declared too vehemently and too loud. He felt desperate to hide his face as he tramped down to the pallid sandstone buildings around the railway station, although there was nobody in sight to observe him. 'All I'm saying,' he said, 'is Charlotte must know what she's doing.'

'Why?'

'She's paid to.'

'Money makes everything right, is that right?'

'Not everything, of course not, but it won't do Ellen any harm.'

'You reckon if you pay someone you buy the right to tell them how to create.'

'Charlotte won't be forcing her, will she? Maybe knowing she's worked for her money will help as well.'

'I'm losing you again. Where have you got to now?'

Hugh had turned under a railway bridge towards the town centre. 'I've something to do,' he said as he passed into the shadow, 'and then I could come and see you this afternoon if you're not too busy creating.'

'Trying to sound mysterious? That's not you.'

'I'm not trying to sound anything,' Hugh said, only to hear his voice grow close to subterranean. 'I just need to do some research.'

'Thought you'd found yourself someone there for a moment. What are you digging into?'

'I've had an idea for Ellen's next book.'

'Want to be like her cousin, do you? Want to tell her what to write.'

'I am her cousin,' Hugh said and felt absurdly obvious. 'You're wrong about the rest of it. I can't tell her what to do.'

'Sounds like you'd like to.'

Hugh almost retreated under the bridge to hide his progressively mottled face. 'I just want to give her my idea.'

'Let's hear it, then. Surprise me.'

'You mustn't tell her. I will when I've looked into it. Promise.'

'You're still the little brother, aren't you, Hugh? All right, promise. Hope to die.'

'I've thought where her thing that changes people's lives could be.'

'Let me guess. Where we all went back for a walk.'

'You still won't tell her, will you?' Hugh pleaded, feeling more obvious than ever. 'If it's no use there's no need for her to know.'

'Your secret's safe with me. Maybe you should tell her before she thinks of it herself.'

'I'll see what I can find out first, and then are we getting together?'

'I'm losing you again. Is who what?'

'Am I coming to see you?' Hugh demanded loud enough to rouse a muffled echo at his back, though he would have assumed he was too far from the bridge.

'Let's skip it this week. I'm best left alone till I've got a new project on the go. Right now I just feel locked up inside myself.'

Hugh might have pointed out that they hadn't met since the weekend of the funeral. He was opening his mouth when Rory said 'Anyway, you've got your own idea to work on. See to that and forget about me.'

'Forget my own brother? I don't think so,' Hugh said, though mostly to himself. He returned the deadened mobile to his pocket as he crossed the road to Cybernet, the closest Internet connection. It was housed in the lobby of the old Empire cinema, the upper storey of which still exhibited sex films in a club. But the doors to Cybernet were locked.

He was registered to use the computers in the central library too. All the same, for a moment he felt robbed of the route he'd planned to follow. On the way into the town the shops grew larger and more expensive, as if striving to be worthy of the old pale stone they occupied. Three headscarved women, Muslims rather than just Yorkshire housewives, were sitting on the library steps to watch two men pore over a giant game of chess on the flagstones outside, to the accompaniment of calypsos performed on a steel drum near a pub. Beyond the doors at the top of the steps another flight divided at a landing to climb both ways to the reference library. Art was stuck to the wall above the stairs – two trails of outsize coloured arrows, one side identified as right, though the other was unnamed. It meant nothing to Hugh, and as he made for the lending room he wondered if it would to Rory. Once a librarian who'd slimmed her accent down had booked him in, he took his place halfway along a line of shallow computer booths. A faint metallic calypso greeted the appearance of the Internet, and he sent Metacrawler in search of Thurstaston.

Which of the references would help Ellen? Thurstaston Rugby Club seemed unlikely to inspire her, and the same went for a yacht club. Thurstaston Bird Hide suggested concealment and secrecy, which she might take further than he felt able to. Thurstaston Country Park, Thurstaston Tea Parties, Thurstaston Gardeners' Association . . . He was beginning to think he'd been too eager to give Ellen ideas until he found a reference to Thor's Stone. He called it up at once.

It described a block of red sandstone twenty-five feet high, twice as wide and almost three times as long, which stood in a stone amphitheatre on Thurstaston Common. Traditions suggested that it had given the area its name and that it was a Scandinavian altar on which animals – perhaps humans too – had been sacrificed. One Victorian commentator described it as 'red as blood'. Less than a hundred years ago children would decorate an adjacent fairy well with flowers, and even now local pagans celebrated the midsummer solstice and other occasions at the stone. Never mind rugby and cups of tea – there was magic in the landscape. Perhaps Ellen should use the common instead of the cliff top, though that was less than a mile from the stone. He returned to the list, on which the next item was Thurstaston Beach.

This brought him a gallery of black and white photographs. While some resembled his memories – yachts bowing to a wind, sandpipers stooping along the shoreline or flocking like a pennant of windblown smoke above the estuary, an elaborate sandcastle defying the waves – the shapes of the cliff were unfamiliar, and the clothes of such people as appeared in the photographs dated them to the early years of the last century. One image had strayed in by mistake or as a cameraman's joke: the stretch of cliff that Hugh and Rory and their cousins had climbed after the funeral. Hugh inched the photograph up the screen to reveal the legend. 'Site of Arthur Pendemon's House.' Photo by Stanley Neville, 1926.

Hugh stared at the picture of a convex stretch of cliff beneath a bloated cloud as dark as a winter midnight and tried to make sense of the caption. If the year referred to the date of the photograph, surely it was misattributed. This section of the cliff could hardly have survived unchanged for eighty years, especially when the other photographs showed such an altered landscape. How useful might Ellen find the notion, though? Perhaps there was more that she could use. He recalled the search engine and typed 'Arthur Pendemon' in the search box. At least, he thought he had until he read 'Stygie Orbswnim'.

He had to laugh, loud enough to earn him a frown from his turbaned neighbour on one side and a grunt from the white-robed greybeard on the other. While the grotesque words suggested a secret name or formula, he'd simply managed to miss every key, hitting adjacent ones instead. He erased the gibberish and set about taking his time until he saw that he'd typed 'Serjyt Owm'. Didn't he care about helping Ellen? He looked for the arrow like a nameless direction sign and held down the key until it swept the parodies of words away, then he ducked to the keyboard, peering about in search of the letters he needed. At last he glanced up for the thirteenth time to see the name in the search box. He clicked on the button to start the search, or rather he tried to. The cursor went nowhere near.

He skated the mouse around its mat to free it from the invisible obstruction and made another snatch at the button on the screen, but the arrow veered aside and did its best to vanish off the edge of the monitor. 'Wrong way,' Hugh muttered and watched the arrow sidle downwards as he tried to raise it. 'Wrong again,' he declared. 'All right, you little rodent, let's see you go left.' Was he losing his way among his words? 'I said left, right,' he exhorted through his teeth and assumed they were keeping his volume down even when he gritted 'Wrong' like a ventriloquist until the librarian with the lurking accent bustled over.

'Excuse me, what's the problem?' she murmured. 'You're disturbing people.'

'This is disturbing me,' Hugh complained as he saw his neighbours staring at him. 'It won't go where I want it to.'

The librarian leaned forwards while staying ostentatiously clear of him. 'You want to search for this, do you?'

For an absurd moment the question sounded like a warning. 'Of course I do.'

'Then there you are.'

She'd clicked on the search button before she finished speaking. 'Thanks,' Hugh said as she returned to the counter, having called up more than a dozen references to Arthur Pendemon. Hugh clicked on the first – at least he did his utmost to, but the mouse had still more ideas of its own.

'Wrong. Wrong. Wrong again, you little swine,' he tried to whisper, but his monologue grew louder and threatened to become less polite. Well before his neighbours started glaring at him he'd had enough. He could hardly ask the librarian to wield the mouse, and all the other terminals were in use, although was the computer the problem? He sent the chair stumbling backwards and blundered away from the source of his feverish embarrassment, looking, at nobody. Even the automatic doors that had admitted him no longer worked for him. He was making to haul them apart when he realised what the librarian had just called out to him. 'Isn't anything right round here?' he blurted as he dashed along the counter to the exit doors, which swung open at once.

He could easily have imagined that the word over the arrow above the stairs was a joke at his expense. The three women had vacated the steps outside the building, but the men were still at their chess. One used both hands to move the black knight backwards, a sidling retreat that bewildered Hugh. He needn't feel compelled to take so devious a route, but a flurry of metallic drumming wouldn't let him think. He felt as if his confusion were being observed, which made it worse. Straight ahead seemed to be the safest direction, though he hardly knew where he was going until a roof closed over him.

It belonged to the market, where he'd often been as a child. He remembered the smells of cloth and Asian spices, and the stalls piled with exotic vegetables and bright clothes, and the motto above one stall that announced WE CAN ALTER ANYTHING, but he seemed to have forgotten there was no direct route through. At each junction he had to dodge one way or the other to find the next aisle that led forwards. Soon he would be out and capable of seeing which way to proceed, but why couldn't he now? As he hesitated at yet another intersection boxed in by boxy stalls he realised where his haste was leading him. He was heading away from Cybernet, even if the place was open now. Worse, he was heading away from home.

He had only to retrace his steps, but which way had he come? He turned around, though not too far, to see the last junction. 'Stupid,' he muttered and thought it best to say 'Not you' to a pair of Indian grocers who were eyeing him across their stall. He retreated to the junction and almost ran along the next aisle to the blind end. 'Which way now?' he wondered, surely not aloud. This way and then this, past WE CAN ALTER ANYTHING, followed by the opposite direction, although shouldn't that be showing him the exit? It must be this way instead, but that led to an aisle where Hugh had to twist around more than once before he could decide which route to take out of it. His decision brought him back to WE CAN ALTER ANYTHING, which was approximately in the middle of the market. Surely he could use the other exit and head home around the outside of the building. 'Back again,' he told the grocers, whom he suspected of conducting an unsubtitled discussion about him. He bore his blazing face out of their sight and along the side aisle before backhanding his forehead to brush away sweat if not to rub his brain alert. This didn't restore his sense of direction, since he carried on turning blind corners until he grasped that there couldn't be so many between him and the exit or even, he was beginning to dread, in a building the size of the market. Indeed, he was being told WE CAN ALTER ANYTHING again, and had that befallen his mind? The smell of cloth grew stale in his nostrils as if he were being tracked by someone in disagreeably old clothes. He backed away from the sign towards the entrance opposite the library, but as soon as he left the aisle behind he lost his sense of where the next one led. He fled into it anyway, and its staggered continuation, and please not many more. A stalled intersection and another, both of which made him feel like a rat in a maze as the heat trapped beneath the roof parched his mouth, and WE CAN ALTER ANYTHING, and an airless junction smelling of dusty cloth together with something mustier, which hardly explained why he felt watched. Of course stallholders were observing him, however surreptitiously. Why hadn't he asked one of them the way out before he was too shamefaced to admit the need and too panicky to speak? The Indian grocers were undoubtedly discussing him. That dismayed him less than his having somehow wandered back to their stall, and he was retreating when the stocky slick-haired man said 'Pardon me, what is your name?'

Hugh might have ignored the question and kept moving if he'd had any idea of where. 'Who wants to know?' he felt childish for retorting.

'My wife.'

His portly partner took this as her cue. 'Are you looking for somebody, please?'

'Who would I be looking for?' Belatedly aware that this could sound insulting, Hugh had to admit 'The exit, that's all.'

The couple had a brief though passionate untranslated dialogue, and then the woman lifted a flap in the counter. 'Come along with me.'

She was vanishing around a corner before Hugh moved, and he was afraid she would be out of sight by the time he reached the junction. She was waiting more or less patiently for him, however, and he followed in her faintly spicy wake until a fourth turn brought them out of the market on the far side from the library. As he blinked both ways along the narrow street Hugh felt more lost than ever, unable to recognise left or right or to determine what became of them if he turned around. 'All right now?' his guide said and peered at him. 'Where are you wanting to go?'

The answer was almost too desperate for words. 'Home,' he begged.

'Just stay there.'

She trotted into the market and was lost to view before Hugh thought of a response. Did she mean he shouldn't have left home while he was in this state? He was trying to prepare to venture one way or the other in the desperate hope that some familiar landmark would restore his bearings when the male grocer emerged from the market. His frown made Hugh wonder if he intended to deal with some slight to his wife, especially since he complained 'You still have not said your name.'

'Hugh Lucas,' Hugh felt powerless for confessing.

'Rakesh.' The man delivered a terse soft loose handshake and turned away. 'Come quickly now.'

'Where?'

Rakesh renewed his frown over his shoulder. 'You are on the corner, are you not?'

'Of what?' Hugh pleaded, feeling yet more disoriented.

'Of the road.' Having gazed at him and seen no comprehension, Rakesh added, 'The road where we live.'

In a moment, far too tardily, Hugh recognised him. He and his wife and twin daughters lived at the far end of the terrace opposite Hugh's. 'I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I didn't know you at first,' Hugh babbled and, as his face grew hotter, couldn't stop. 'It's just that I'm, you know, you saw how I am.'

Rakesh gave him a last slow blink before facing forwards. 'I will take you home.'

He led Hugh to a white van speckled with rust above its wheels and watched closely until his passenger was strapped in. A devious series of turns led to the ring road, which the van hardly sooner joined than left. As he drove past a factory into the sudden shade of trees Rakesh said, 'I hope our girls will not see you like this. You should be careful of whatever you are doing.'

It was clear that he had drugs in mind. Hugh would have denied ever touching them – at least, the single joint he'd shared with Rory had left him coughing tearfully for several minutes – if the foliage hadn't loosed the sun, bleaching his vision. As the van swerved into a street and then another the pallor drained away, reinstating the shapes of houses along with their sandy colour. 'Do you know where you are now?' Rakesh said, halting the van.

Clothes flapped on lines in the narrow front gardens, dancers pranced on plasma screens in more than one front room. As Hugh released the seat belt and clambered clumsily out of the vehicle, he heard a sitar racing up a scale, pursued by the drumming of a tabla. He was home. He thanked Rakesh, who watched him hurry up the weedy path through the weedier garden to the house at the windy end of the terrace. When he unlocked the door he tried to find the house – hall and two rooms downstairs, three rooms and a bathroom above – reassuring in its simplicity. There was surely no space to get lost in it, and he did his best to believe that only the sunlight had distracted him during the journey. That didn't quite explain why he had absolutely no idea which way he'd just come home.