‘It’s a thought,’ he said uncertainly – although he knew he could. If he knew what he was writing about.
‘Perhaps we could have it playing softly in this room.’ Sally Boswell laughed. Lol thought she didn’t seem to have much sympathy for either the knight or the Lady of the Bines.
‘She still seen?’
‘Depends who you believe. It’s certainly said she was widely observed in the sixties.’ She nodded towards a black and white photograph of a man with a heavy moustache, who looked a bit like Lord Lucan. ‘But then, people would say that – in the last days of the Emperor of Frome, when all was darkness and chaos.’
She was poised to go on, but for Lol, the darkness and chaos could wait.
He hadn’t planned to ask it. He just did. ‘Does she always have a dress on?’
Sally Boswell’s face was gaunt with shadows. From two rooms away, there was a skimming of strings: the legendary Al stowing away his creation.
‘What an extraordinary question,’ she said coldly.
6
Full of Dead People
MUFFLED SOBBING GAVE way to those time-honoured battle-cries from the generation war.
‘Leave me alone! Just go away! It’s nothing to do with you!’
The clouds were a deep luminous mauve now, and the sky looked like a taut, well-beaten drum-skin through the long window pane in the front door.
It was stifling in the small, rectangular hall with its beige woodchip and wall-lights with peeling coppery shades. Merrily stood under a print in a chipped gilt frame: Christ on the Mount of Olives. Opposite her was a cream door with a little pottery plaque on it.
Amy’s Room
The door was closed, but its plywood panels were not exactly soundproof. Merrily thought David Shelbone, historic-buildings officer, was unlikely ever to see his own home listed, except as a classic example of 1970s Utility. How did the Shelbones spend their money? Probably on their adopted child? Perhaps long, educational holidays.
‘Amy. Please.’
‘I… am… not… going… anywhere! Do you understand? There is nothing wrong with me! And… and if there is, it’s nothing to do with you. It’s nothing to do with her. Just get her out of the house. Please. This is… disgraceful.’
Please? Disgraceful? Comparatively speaking, this was a restrained, almost polite response. In extreme situations, kids were rarely able to contain extreme language. You sad old bitch had sometimes been Jane’s starting point, before things got heated.
Hazel Shelbone murmured something Merrily didn’t catch.
‘No!’ Amy screamed. ‘You… How dare you make out there’s something wrong with me?’
‘Amy, do you really think you’d be in any position to judge, if there was?’
‘What do you know? What do you know about the way I feel? How can you understand? You’re not even—’
Merrily willed her not to say it. This was not the time to say it.
‘—my moth—’
Then the unmistakable and always-shocking sound of a slap. Merrily closed her eyes.
An abyss of silence. Jane would have been composing a response involving the European Court of Human Rights.
Amy just started to cry again, long hollow sobs, close to retching.
But this was surely not the first time she’d thrown out the not-my-mother line. There had to be something additional to have provoked Hazel, the seasoned foster-mother, the reservoir. And when I look into her eyes…
With no windows you could open, it was hard to breathe in here. Merrily ran a finger around the inside of her dog collar, walked away towards the front door. She felt like an intruder. She felt this was becoming futile. She looked across into the placidly glowing face of Jesus in the picture, and Jesus smiled, in His knowing way.
Merrily closed her eyes again, let her arms fall to her sides, stilled her thoughts.
Mrs Shelbone was saying, ‘Oh, my darling, I’m so sorry, but you—’
‘Go away. Just go away.’
‘We only want to—’
‘You can’t help me. Nobody can help me.’
‘The Good Lord can help you, Amy.’
Another silence. No sniffles, no whimpers. Then, as Merrily straightened up, Amy said,
‘There’s no such thing as a Good Lord, you stupid woman.’
‘Amy!’
‘It’s all just a sick, horrible joke! There’s nobody out there who can protect us. Or if… if God exists, he just totally hates us. He watches us suffer and die and he doesn’t do a thing to help us. He doesn’t help us, ever, ever, ever! He enjoys watching us suffer. You can plead and plead and plead, and you can say your prayers till you’re b–blue in the face and nobody’s going to ever save you. It’s all a horrible sick lie! And the Church is just a big… a big cover-up. It’s all smelly and musty and horrible and it’s full of dead people, and I don’t… I don’t want to die in—’
Merrily leaned back against the wall. Christ gave her a sad smile. The door of Amy’s Room opened. Hazel Shelbone stood there, stone-faced. ‘Mrs Watkins? Would you mind—?’
‘Don’t you dare bring her in here! I’m not talking to her, do you understand?’
Merrily took a step back along the hall. Something had happened to this kid. If not a sneering boyfriend, what about some cool, compelling atheistic teacher?
She whispered, ‘Hazel, I… think, on the whole, it might be better if Amy came out, and—’
‘I’m warning you, if she comes in here I’ll smash the window. Do you hear me? I’ll smash the window and I’ll get out of here for good! I’ll throw the chair through the window. Can you hear—?’
‘I’m sorry.’ Mrs Shelbone pulled the door closed behind her, new lines and hollows showing in her wide, honest face. ‘I don’t know what to do. She’s never been quite like this before, I swear to you.’
‘You just keep lying to me. Lies, lies, lies!’
Merrily opened the front door and stepped down to the flagged garden path, followed by Amy’s mother.
The bungalow was detached but fairly small, with a bay window each side of the door. There were other houses and bungalows either side of the country lane, well separated, with high hedges and gardens crowded with trees and bushes.
The sky was the colour of a cemetery. In contrast, a small yellow sports car, parked half up on the grass verge, looked indecently lurid.
‘Hazel, what does she mean by lies?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve told you, this is not my Amy. I don’t know how she can say these things about God.’
But she looked away as she spoke, and Merrily thought perhaps she did know… knew something, anyway.
‘What’s she been like at school?’
‘Well behaved, always well behaved. Her teachers have nothing but praise for her.’
‘Do you know her teachers?’
‘Most of them. We’ve always made it our business to know them. As good parents.’
‘What about her friends?’
‘She’s…’ A sigh. ‘She’s never had many friends. She’s very conscientious, she studies hard. She’s always felt she had to, because… well, she’s bright, but she’s no genius. Because she’s adopted, I think she feels she has to make it up to us. Make us proud, do you see? Good children, children who study hard, they aren’t always very popular at school these days, are they?’