‘Daddy?’ It was almost as though she could read his thoughts. ‘When the worms ate your fingers, did they eat the bones as well?’
The question shocked him back to reality. ‘No, just the … just the meat.’
Helen was bound to tamper with the ice-box. Suddenly he was convinced there must be at least one worm alive inside. Never underestimate them, that was the golden rule. He remembered how easily the last couple had seemed to die. Seemed to.
He took Jenny’s hand and hurried her back up the cobbled street, through the lane with its tiny fishermen’s houses and quiet stream, till they got to the cottage. The shed door was closed. Through the open window he saw Helen cooking supper in the kitchen.
Much to her surprise he kissed her on the cheek as she was trying to open a packet of bacon, and she flushed with pleasure at the gesture.
‘I’ve been thinking about the living room,’ she told him above the sizzle of the frying sausages and the scream of the boiling kettle. ‘We could leave it till later and do the garden first. After all that time in hospital, you need fresh air.’
She’d not been near the shed, that was obvious. Relieved, he started to lay the table. ‘I’ve a film to develop later this evening,’ he mentioned casually. He’d show her the pictures and raise the subject of the worms that way, he decided.
‘May I help you?’ Jenny asked eagerly.
‘Oh, you’ll be in bed long before I’m ready.’
After their meal he helped Helen to tidy the cottage and put things away. It was almost eleven o’clock before he went out to the shed. She had gone up to the bedroom; from the garden he could see her shadow on the curtain.
Not a sound came from the ice-box. He stood in front of it, listening. Maybe he’d been imagining things earlier; maybe not. He thought of Angus having to go down into those sewers every day, and some of the remarks he’d made.
But first things first. He washed the bench down and cleaned the whole place thoroughly, then refilled the reservoir with fresh water. Helen would find nothing odd about him working this late at night. As a darkroom, the shed was only makeshift, not even completely lightproof in the daytime.
He developed the film first, rinsed it, and hung it up to dry. Good clear pictures, most of them. Turning next to the ice-box, he began methodically to remove the strands of wire with his pliers. He collected them all up and threw them in the rubbish box before pulling on his gauntlet gloves and snapping open the clips which secured the lid.
Then he stopped for a second or two, apprehensively. His stomach muscles cramped. He’d the odd impression that Angus was looking over his shoulder, a sardonic grin on his face.
He raised the lid.
The worms lay curled up at the bottom of the box, intertwining and overlapping each other like Laocoon’s serpents. They were motionless, a glorious splash of luminous colour against the dull white of the plastic, every imaginable shade of green and purple merging into each other.
Still he hesitated, but at last he plunged his gauntleted hand in among them and grasped one. Carefully he extracted it from the coils of the others, shaking it slightly to free it. Between his fingers it felt supple, almost alive. He placed it on the sheet of white blotting paper he’d spread out on the bench in front of him.
Its jaws yawned open, then suddenly snapped shut again.
Startled, Matt was about to bring a heavy file down on its head when he paused and poked it with the end instead. No further movement. He rolled the worm over. Still nothing.
Laying a rule alongside it, he switched on his lamp and photographed it from several angles. In length it measured nineteen-and-a-half inches. The head was elongated, with long narrow jaws. He forced them apart and ran the tip of his gloved finger over the sharp teeth; surprisingly, a few felt loose. Between them were several decaying shreds of meat.
Its skin was tough and scaly. He wondered if they sloughed it off, or if it renewed itself patchily, a bit at a time. Even in death its colours had a scintillating brilliance; he’d never seen anything like it before, except perhaps certain stones or a rare seashell.
Opening the ice-box once again he took out a second worm and started to compare them. Were their skins identical or individual? He examined them methodically, inch by inch, and was so absorbed in the task, he didn’t hear the shed door open.
‘Oh no!’
It was the note of fear in Helen’s voice that shocked him more than anything else. She was staring at the worms on the bench, her eyes bulging.
‘Matt, it’s not worms, is it?’ And you’ve brought them here?’ She clutched her dressing-gown about her and took a step back. Her hand shook. ‘How could you?’
‘It’s all right,’ he tried to calm her.
‘All right?’ she screamed at him hysterically. ‘Matt, don’t you see it can’t be all right? We came down here to forget these things. They’re in the past.’
‘Helen—’
‘I suspected you’d something like that in the picnic box.’
‘They’re dead.’
She shook her head violently. ‘They’re not dead, Matt.’
‘Of course they are.’
‘Not in your mind. You dream about them, don’t you? I know you do. You toss and turn, you moan, sometimes I hear you crying, whimpering like some animal in pain.’ She was still yelling at him, all her pent-up emotions flooding out. ‘I lie awake listening to you, d’you understand? Now you go and do this to me.’
‘Helen, I’d like to tell you about them.’
‘The doctors explained you might be like this but I thought—’ She bit her lip anxiously, attempting to control herself. ‘I’ll have to ring them up, Matt.’
‘Why?’
‘They told me to.’
‘Not before we’ve had a talk.’
‘Don’t you see you’re ill, Matt?’ she pleaded with him. ‘The doctors will help you.’
‘Helen, listen to me!’ He stood with his back to the door, refusing to move till she’d heard him out. Then he told her how he’d gone back to the sewers to take some photographs — ‘And to prove I could, I suppose,’ he admitted — and all that had happened down there. The army of worms massing in every tunnel, what Angus had said, the lot.
Her face was anguished. He went to her, putting his arm around her. ‘What really made you do it?’ she asked. ‘Oh, Matt, they look horrid. Those teeth… the colour like slime… We’ve got to burn them. We can’t risk Jenny seeing them.’
‘But I think they’re lovely!’ Jenny stood in the doorway in her pyjamas. ‘I couldn’t sleep when you two were quarrelling. Are those the worms which ate you? Aren’t they beautiful?’
‘Jenny, don’t touch them!’ Helen cried out.
‘They’re dead,’ Matt repeated wearily. ‘And, Jenny, we weren’t really quarrelling. Your Mummy’s worried, that’s all.’
‘About the worms?’
‘That’s right.’
Helen was looking at them both helplessly. She must have been to bed already, Matt thought; perhaps even slept. Her short blonde hair stuck out untidily at the sides; her dressing-gown clung awkwardly to her figure, making it more obvious that she’d been putting on weight around the hips.
‘Have you developed your pictures yet?’ Jenny asked.
‘Yes. Helen. I thought… well, we need to earn more money and if we can sell the pictures to magazines…’
‘Of dead worms?’ Scorn. Disbelief.
‘They were alive.’
‘But why did you bring these dead ones here?’
It was a logical question. He glanced at Jenny. Her hand, clean from the bath and slightly rosy, was resting on the back of one of the worms. He remembered what she’d said about the crocodile farm and the thought he’d had outside the craft shop.