everything in the world was his to begin with."
"How could you leave your baby with a baby-sitter called 'Fangboner'?" Chris asked.
"Desperation at the time," Kate replied, "but actually she's very kind."
"She tortures her garden," said Laura in a sinister voice. "That uses all her energy. And somewhere there's a husband Fangboner who's had the name even longer. We never ever see him though. She might have his skeleton hanging up with one of those plastic covers that keeps the dust off velvet coats."
"The mystery of Mr Fangboner!" Chris said. "Anyway, Laura, we got talking about books, and on the strength of all that I took your mother out to have a drink with me and since I couldn't talk her into having dinner with me, I cunningly talked myself into having dinner with her. I professed an abiding love for fish and chips and I have to admit these are very good fish and chips."
"It's not always as good as this, though," Kate said. "It's a lucky night."
"Lucky for me, anyway," Chris Holly said. "I hope you don't mind a dinner guest, Laura?"
"No!" said Laura, but she minded dreadfully. Just after her father had left them Kate had gone out with several men, but part of the happiness of the last year was that she had stopped doing this and had seemed content to spend her time with Laura and Jacko.
The thought that a fish and chips night (a night of successful fish and chips into the bargain) had to be shared with a stranger who was trying— Laura recognized the signs — to be particularly nice to her, not because he was interested in her, but because he was interested in Kate, filled her with anxious discontent. Chris's was an understandable niceness, but was still something she was compelled to suspect.
"How's Jacko?" Kate asked suddenly. "I knew there was something I had forgotten to ask."
"He's asleep," Laura said. "Mum, there's something wrong with him. I don't think he's well."
"We don't get sick," Kate said firmly. "None of us can afford to be anything but healthy. Jacko's tough."
She gave Laura a glance that was faintly defiant but which seemed at the same time to be asking a favour, although quite what the favour might be Laura had no idea. She sat listening to her mother and Chris play the book-lover's game of finding which books of all the books in the world they had both read and enjoyed. They agreed about many of them — an ominous sign, and when they did not agree they argued like old friends, criticizing one another's taste with complete ease and confidence. Laura thought Mrs Fangboner had a lot to answer for. After a while she got up and tucked her own library book under her arm and said she was going to bed.
"Give me a kiss!" Kate commanded.
"It might be setting a risky example," Laura said, making a joke of a serious thought.
"That's cheeky," Kate said, without particular resentment, however.
"And shrewd," Chris agreed.
"I'll give you two tomorrow," Laura said, trying to be friendly though private, feeling they were laughing together at her, both happily retreating into an adult world where she could not quite follow them yet, even though she was the sort of girl a boy like Barry Hamilton could like from a distance. So she smiled politely and tried to mean it, going to bed because, after all, they did not really need her.
Laura was talked out of sleep the next morning by her mother nagging back the shallow tide of retreating sleep, anxious because Jacko had had a bad night— a night of terrible dreams. Yet Kate was unexpectedly bouncy as if the day might hold something to be looked forward to. Sorting and cataloguing the various jumbled alarms of the previous day Laura washed herself awake and found an unexpectedly organized breakfast waiting for her— apple-juice, stewed apple and cornflakes, toast, and a cup of tea. She was at first taken aback, and then resigned, recognizing, by she knew not what clues, that Kate had managed her morning so well because of an energy of optimism that had nothing to do with her children.
"You like him, don't you?" Laura asked accusingly.
"Yes, I do," Kate answered at once without asking who they were discussing, and added, half pleadingly, "Don't you think he's nice?"
"He's all right," said Laura grudgingly. All right, but unnecessary, she wanted to say — she
did
say — but managed to keep the words in her mind.
"He's going bald," was the only criticism she allowed herself.
"Yes, but he's got a nice laugh," Kate said. "A nice laugh is deadly. He looks really mischievous about solemn things, not just big, solemn things like politics which anyone can make fun of, but little ones like — telephone bills."
They had had a telephone once, but Kate had been unable to pay the bill and it had been cut off and had hung on their wall like a petrified insect hibernating through a winter of cold debt until at last post-office men had come and taken it away.
"Besides," Kate said, "he likes me, and, as far as I'm concerned, that shows he's a man of taste and judgement. All that stuff about Mrs Fangboner... it was a sort of line really. He just wanted an excuse to talk to me. Still, it was a cunning thing to pick on because it led to sharing jokes and that's a short-cut to getting to know someone. If your jokes match up, it's like being Alice in
Through the Looking-GIass.
Off you go through the third square by the railway and find yourself in the fourth square in no time."
"He could have bought a book," Laura said. "That's a very attractive thing for a customer to do," and she carried her breakfast through to Kate's room where Jacko, recovering from nightmares, was still in Kate's bed. Immediately, she saw he was duller, quieter and greyer than she could ever remember him before and as she approached he immediately held his hands out, backs up.
"Hey, how did you get the stamp off?" Laura cried, but Kate, dressing herself, was already beginning the patter by which she encouraged herself and Laura into a quick and occasionally competent morning, not realizing yet that this morning was twisting into a new and anxious form.
"Come on — eat up, Lolly! Jacko darling, you're going to have to shift your precious bones. It's not Saturday yet. We've got to be off and away. What stamp?" she concluded, as if she were moving in a different time from Laura and the original question had only just reached her ears.
"He had a stamp on his hand that wouldn't come off," Laura said, and Kate suddenly remembered back to yesterday, striking her forehead with the palm of her hand.
"That's probably what's caused all these nightmares," she cried. "He was worried about his hand... I thought he must have a mosquito bite on it. Poor Jacko. Never mind! It's over and done with. The old dream's gone. Bright new morning! Look — the bad stamp's rubbed off over night."
"No way!" Laura declared, staring at Jacko's mute hands, the right one haunted by the faint, purple ghost of Mickey Mouse, and the left hand slightly inflamed perhaps, but innocent of any stamp of any kind. "Listen! Let me tell you what happened."
"All right, if you must! But be quick!" Kate said.
However, it was not easy to tell after all. As Laura tried, the story, lively and indignant in her head, twisted itself in her mouth, limping out of her lips, sick and ashamed.
"I know it sounds mad!" she cried despairingly, thumping the quilt with frustration. "I know you can't believe me."
Kate rescued the almost empty cup and stared at her in surprise.
"I'm sure you're partly right," she said. "Laura, I really am sure you're right about what actually happened, but I can't help questioning your interpretation. Come
on,
Lolly! Warnings one morning, wicked signs the next... it's not like you to come over all superstitious. I thought the stamp looked quite horrid. I thought it looked like some advertising gimmick that had misfired. But if it hasn't rubbed off, then where is it?"
"I don't know," Laura replied gloomily. "Dissolved, I expect. Dissolved into Jacko's blood."
"What a thing to say in front of a boy who's had nightmares," Kate exclaimed reproachfully. "Don't let's get carried away. Or rather do let's ... We're seven minutes late already, and empires have risen and fallen on being seven minutes late."
Later, Laura watched her mother and Jacko drive away. With a sigh she turned into the school gate, looking forward to Nicky's cheerful, gossipy company, sure at least that no matter what the day had to offer it couldn't be as threatening as yesterday. No jaws closed over her, there was no prospect of anything but ordinary school with ordinary, and therefore welcome, boredom. Disturbing ideas pursued her and nothing was reliable and straightforward any more. Sorry Carlisle stood by the flagpole talking to a girl, a sixth former called Carol Bright, someone he was quite entitled to talk to, but Laura thought she detected on his mild face the light of an interest that was more than casual. She stared very hard at him, trying to confirm this, and thought, not for the first time, that he was almost good-looking, and wondered how anyone with eyes full of reflections and dark staircases could enjoy the thought of Carol — except, of course, that she had wonderful, smooth, long, black hair which she wore in many different ways. Today it was in a pony- tail — the tail of a circus pony, a curving fall of dark silk tied with school ribbon, inviting hands to stroke its shining descent. Laura, who had two ways of wearing her hair, long and woolly and short and woolly, now found she could actually be jealous of Carol Bright, and realized that, although she had never spoken to him, except as a fourth former speaks to a prefect and seventh former, in some ways she believed Sorensen Carlisle belonged to her because she knew what he really was and nobody else did. Almost as if in confirmation, he lifted his eyes directly to hers as she went by, and gave her a look of amusement, caution and something else ... a look so complex she could not unravel, in the second of its duration, all its elements, but thought perhaps Kate would have called it ironic.
It was not usual for Laura to collect Jacko on a Friday since it was not a late night, for Mrs Fangboner did not mind having him until twenty-to-six, but Kate had suggested she might make an exception on this particular day when he was off-colour. So after talking to a mixed group of boys and girls, her usual acquaintances, and playing a game of tennis with Nicky who lived close to the school, Laura turned up on the Fangboner doorstep and was greeted with unusual enthusiasm by Mrs Fangboner, for Jacko had had an unhappy day and she was glad to be relieved of him.
"... like a different boy," she said, sounding bewildered. "Poor boy, I think he's going down with something. What on earth will your mum do if he's sick? She'll have to take time off and her boss won't like that, will he? I mean, it's not like a big shop where there's plenty of staff to take over."
Jacko sat on a Fangboner stool, Rosebud smiling pink as ever out of his Ruggie, staring at Laura as if he could barely remember who she was. Then he got up and stalked over to her, stiff legged as a wind-up toy, dropped Rosebud and put his arms up, asking to be held. He wanted to be a baby again. Laura's eyes prickled with love, but it was of limited use, for he was too heavy to carry easily, and the walk to the shopping complex, usually gay and cheerful, was interminable today, for she had to make him walk at least part of the way and he grizzled in a dreary voice and continually dropped Rosebud who had to be picked up again and again. Laura struggled with her school pack on her back, history, maths and science, dragging at her shoulders, Jacko in her right arm, and his basket in her left. At last, in a moment of helpless frustration with the sheer difficulty of moving things around in the world, she gave him a small, sharp slap. He did not cry but simply bent his head against her.
"Poor Jacko!" he said in a sad, hoarse voice. "Poor Jacko!"
She meant to hurry him past the tiny, wicked shop with its miniscule objects in its cottage garden window, in case his nightmares revived, but Mr Braque himself was out on the pavement painting the words 'Brique a Braque' on the window, and doing it rather well, too. Laura crossed over to the other side of the road but was very much aware of Mr Braque. Even as she struggled not to glance at him, he was projected into her mind, an invader of inner space and, turn her head away as she would, she could still see him. Her eye had trapped his image, her brain would not release it, and she felt she was looking into his ancient eyes once more, crocodile eyes, tied to a crocodile mind, and seeing something that could wear a human body and make it move, as an entertainer might wear and control a puppet-glove. With a sudden flare of— of what? — she wondered, for it was gone before she could define it, the hidden computer wired into her everyday mind (the very one which had informed her that her father was going to leave her, had warned her of Sorry Carlisle and only yesterday of Mr Braque) struggled to inform her yet again. "Spirit!" it said. "Incubus! Demon!" She knew, without looking, that he had turned and stared at her across the street, knew that his skin was less shrunken, his smile a little less deathly. Something was changing him, and she hardly dared to guess just what it might be.
It was late in the afternoon, but the bookshop was busy and Kate was selling a book to someone — a detective story.
"It's quite intriguing, though I liked his first one better," she was saying, but the book was already sold and being slipped into a special paperbag printed with the bookshop's name so there was no risk in giving an honest opinion. Kate's eyes fell on Laura coming in at the door and her face lit up. Laura's heart warmed at the pleasure in her smile, but as it turned out Kate was pleased to see Laura for purposes of her own, with which Laura found it hard to sympathize.
"Lolly!" she exclaimed her blue eyes shining with pleasure. "Lolly, would you mind if I went out tonight?"
"You've had your hair done!" Laura cried, outraged. "I thought we were broke this week."
"I've booked it up against next week," Kate replied. She looked less like a mother in real life, and more like a mother on television, keeping herself nice for husband and family, thrilled to death with her new soap powder. "I've fixed it up with Sally's mother to keep an eye on you."
Kate was not to know how Laura had looked forward to arriving at the bookshop and giving part of the responsibility for Jacko over to someone else, and how dismayed she was to find Kate's concentration focused elsewhere.
"I suppose it's that American," she growled.
"It is Chris Holly — yes," Kate said. "He's asked me to go out with him." She spoke humbly as if Laura were bullying her. "Don't be sour at me, Laura. I haven't been out for ages and I'd love to go to a nice concert and just get lost in lovely music."
"But look at Jacko!" Laura pushed him forward, disconcerted to detect a certain triumph in her voice, pleased to use Jacko's despair as a move in a complicated private game where the rules were barely understood. Now Kate did look at Jacko.
"Oh dear!" she said. "What can be wrong?"
She looked at her watch, a birthday present from Laura's father, still going, though the marriage had stopped ticking three years earlier. "I can't talk now. Take him to the tea shop down the Mall and buy him an apple-juice. Get him a cake, too, if there are any left at this time in the afternoon. They dust them and pack them away at four o'clock."
"You're flinging money about," Laura grumbled bitterly. "It's funny the way it stretches when it has to take in a bit of classical music, isn't it?"
She was not intending to be sympathetic, but Kate smiled warmly as if they were sharing a joke, hearing the words and ignoring the tone.
"Bless you, Laura, isn't it just!" she said. "It's not long to closing time, thank goodness."
Jacko really enjoyed his apple-juice, so Laura bought him some more with her own money and ate his cake herself thinking how awkwardly time was arranged so that there was either not enough of it or else great clots of useless minutes and seconds which it was impossible to use properly, and which had to be wasted.
Kate called for them where they sat in the tea-room, the only customers left among a forest of chair legs, for Jill, the waitress, put the chairs upside down on the tables as she swept up before going home. In the car, Kate dithered wildly. She wanted to go to the concert — she wanted to take Jacko to the doctor, she wanted to stay at home and look after him, but then she had promised Chris Holly she would go out with him, even though they had already had lunch together. Discussing this, backwards and forwards, Laura and Kate wound up visiting the Gardendale Health Centre and were actually able to see a doctor — not their usual doctor but another man who began by being impatient with them because they had come in at the last moment