“I’m sorry, John,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. I did try, in spite of what you’ll think—but tonight you’re on your own.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The family was united again, all its members sitting in a semi-circle in the downstairs front room.
Betty York sat nearest the wall on the left of the fireplace, with flecks of red lacquer on her toenails and nacreous brown lacquer on her fingernails. Next to her was Redpath, and then came Wilbur Tennent, plump and handsome, sitting upright and leaning forward slightly in an attitude which might have been designed to prevent his lustrous suit from creasing. Beside him was Albert, nodding and sniffing, massive hands interlaced across his stomach, clad as always in his brown boiler suit and scuffed work boots. And closest to the wall on the right of the fireplace was Miss Connie, with ivory-coloured hair and ribboned glasses, her angular but broad-shouldered figure draped in a grey cardigan and ankle-length black dress. She was knitting industriously, adding another irregular section to the dimly seen mass in the corner behind her.
“Before I forget, John.” Tennent reached into his pocket, took out a thin bundle of banknotes which were secured by an elastic band, and dropped them into Redpath’s lap. “We connected with Parsnip Bridge, just like I told you.”
“Thanks,” Redpath said, belatedly realising he had no idea of what had happened to the previous winnings he had received in a like manner. He wondered briefly if Tennent had managed to take the money back again without his noticing, or if for some reason Miss Connie had spirited it away from him.
Tennent rubbed his hands, boyishly gleeful. “We’re going well, John boy. I’ve got a double lined up for us tomorrow, and if you’ll take my advice you’ll put…”
“Leave him alone,” Betty cut in. “I’ve told you before that John isn’t interested in your get-rich-quick schemes.”
“Why shouldn’t he be? Everybody likes a bit of extra loot. Isn’t that right?” Tennent turned to Redpath for support, showing his small regular teeth in a companionable grin. He gazed at Redpath for a few seconds, his look of pleasure slowly fading, and a hint of perplexity came into his eyes. “John? You like it here, don’t you? I mean, you wouldn’t do anything to…”
“Leave him be,” Betty snapped. “How can he rest with you going on at him the whole time?”
Tennent subsided into his chair in silence, shooting Redpath an occasional thoughtful glance. Redpath, feeling oddly relieved, set the bundle of money in a neutral position on the arm of his chair. There followed a long period during which nobody spoke, but in which the room was full of small sounds—the popping and muttering of the gas fire, the ticking of the clock, the clicking of Miss Connie’s needles, odd little snuffles and snorts from Albert. The curtains breathed steadily in the bay window. Redpath allowed his gaze to roam the walls and it came to rest centred on something small and dark that was clinging to the wallpaper. It was a crane-fly, possibly the same one he had noticed two nights earlier, seemingly still in the same place, still vibrating to the same mindless rhythm.
Oh Christ, what makes them do that? I thought it would have been dead by this time. How long can a daddy-long-legs go on living, anyway? A frog can live for forty years. Just think of it! It’d be bad enough being a frog for one year—but to have to keep it up for forty years! Leila, how can you be dead if you…?
“I know what we need,” Betty York said, getting to her feet. “A nice cup of tea and something to eat.”
That’s not what I need. I need to drink some water, a hell of a lot of water, and to watch some television.
“The sandwiches are ready, love, and the tea won’t be long,“Betty said to Redpath as she crossed the semi-circle of chairs in front of him, momentarily filling his field of view with long black hair, taut blue haunches and copper rivets. “You like Plumrose, don’t you?”
Redpath nodded, thinking bemusedly about his sudden thirst for water and the urge to watch television. Jack Haley isn’t on tonight, is he? I saw him last night—but who was I with?
Betty returned in a surprisingly short time and Tennent moved his chair to let her wheel the laden trolley into the centre of the group. She poured five cups of tea from a huge glazed pot. Miss Connie set her knitting aside, took a sandwich and began to eat with a zest which seemed inappropriate for her age and meagre build. The sight of the thick-cut, pink-tongued layers of bread brought it home to Redpath that he had had no food all day.
He put four sandwiches on a plate and was biting into the last of them when he realised that Albert, two seats away on his right, had not taken anything to eat or drink. Mildly curious, he leaned forward to see past Tennent and observed that Albert had not changed his position in anyway since he had entered the room. The little man was sprawled in the chair with his legs extended and his hands still clasped across his middle. His enormous chin was jutting more than ever, his eyes were staring straight ahead—opaque as those of a hospital patient under the heaviest sedation—and almost continual tremors coursed through his limbs. Lentils of perspiration dotted his brow.
The other members of the group, seemingly oblivious to what was happening, continued to eat in silent concentration.
Redpath set his plate down, frowning, and twisted in his seat to be able to see Albert more clearly. The inarticulate sounds Albert had been making grew louder and his eyes turned in Redpath’s direction—pained, pleading, desperate. They seemed to hold a message for Redpath, to be trying to remind him of some terrible responsibility he had once undertaken. He began to feel afraid.
“Isn’t this nice?” Miss Connie said in her scratchy voice, smiling, showing her antique dentures.
“Very nice,” Tennent and Betty said in unison.
Redpath turned away from Albert, looked at the clock above the fireplace and saw that its filigreed hands stood at almost ten-thirty. Far in the back of his mind there was an uneasy flickering, a sense of time going by too quickly. He picked up his partly-eaten sandwich, found he no longer wanted it and settled back into his chair. His thoughts began to wander and, for some reason he was at a loss to understand, he became acutely conscious of the house, not as a conceptual unity, but as an assemblage of various architectural elements. The room was still a room, but he also saw it was a roughly cubical volume of space, artificially contrived and bounded. Instinctively he tended to equate a floor with solid ground, but the solid-seeming floor of the room he was in was in fact a kind of platform or bridge. It was a structural sandwich consisting of an upper layer of boards, a central filling of timber joists, a bottom layer of laths and plaster, and beneath that…beneath that was the cellar of the house…a kingdom of darkness that began only inches below his feet…and there was something …
He blinked, taken aback, as he discovered that Tennent had turned in his direction and was pointing at him with an expression of twinkling exuberance on his plump-cheeked face.
“Keeee…pright on to the end of the road,” Tennent chanted, “keeee…pright on to the end.”
“That’s the spirit,” Betty said, joining in the song.
Redpath glanced at Miss Connie, who nodded encouragingly, and he heard himself begin to sing in a low, tentative voice. The members of the family had begun to enjoy themselves, like any other group of normal people in Calbridge, and if Albert had no wish to join in that was his own affair.
Some time later Redpath noticed the clock again, and was obscurely jolted to realise that there were only fifteen minutes to midnight. Again there was a curious shifting and slithering behind his eyes.