Michael Dibdin - The Tryst

Steve hugged the wall, pressing himself up against it as though it were a warm firm body, and suddenly the memory of what had happened with Tracy came back to him with triumphant force. That had happened , he thought. It wasn’t just a story, even though it had started off as one. It was real, it was true. Nothing could alter the fact that he had held Tracy in his arms, that she had kissed him and put her tongue in his ear and he had touched her breasts. The trembling left him, as though by magic, and he was no longer bothered by the darkness. He edged his way up the pipe until he felt his hands touch the ledge outside the bathroom window. This one wouldn’t budge either, so he took off his shoe again, clinging on to the ledge one-handed, then stretched as high as he could and beat the heel against the glass. It had no effect, and when the light returned he saw that the window was made of tough frosted glass. Because he was standing so close to it, he could only hit it feebly. Then a gust of wind caught him off balance and for a moment he seemed to hang in mid-air, sustained by nothing but his fear. Grabbing the ledge again, he renewed his assault on the window. By the time the glass finally cracked he was shaking uncontrollably and mouthing futile pleas. There was no question of removing all the pieces of broken glass this time. He knocked out the largest and sharpest ones, threw his shoe inside and leapt after it. His hands flailed for purchase against the sides of the frame, slashing themselves on the jagged edges. He hung there for a long time, wriggling and twisting. Gradually his spasms moved him forward over the frame until his centre of gravity was once again inside the house. After that it was just a matter of slithering head first to the floor, where he lay sobbing among the fragments of broken glass until he remembered where he was and realized that the stotters might come back if they failed to find anywhere else to spend the night. The house was dark and silent. He negotiated the stairs, pushed back the plywood screen on the back door and left.

It was a shock at first to be back in the familiar streets and find them unchanged, to see cars passing by and people walking their dogs. ‘Don’t you wankers understand where you are yet?’ he felt like screaming at them. ‘Haven’t you realized that there’s only one way out of this place?’ But soon it was his own experience that came to seem bizarre, dubious and exaggerated. Things like that don’t happen, he thought, not really. By the time he reached Paxton Grove, the whole episode had come to seem like one of the stories he made up to tell himself or other people. Then he saw Hazchem striding along the pavement towards him, his arms swinging back and forth like a mad soldier, his lips fixed in the usual rictus.

Steve stepped into the gateway of the house he was passing and looked round for cover. A car with no wheels was parked in the concreted-over front garden, its axles supported on piles of breeze-blocks, and the boy crouched down behind it. It was as well to be cautious, even though he was no longer seriously afraid of Hazchem. He knew now that the man’s mocking grin expressed exactly what he himself had felt as he watched the dozy householders shuffling round the block behind their obese pampered pets. Steve had travelled a long way that evening. Hazchem must have made that journey too, only he had somehow got lost and been unable to find his way back. When he got to the house he would tell the old man all this. He would explain to him that there was really no reason to be afraid. Steve’s cuts were starting to smart badly now, and he had just noticed that his clothes were heavily stained with blood. The rapid tattoo of footsteps suddenly ceased, quite close by. For a moment Steve thought that he’d been spotted and Hazchem was going to come up and ask him if he knew what time it was. Then he heard a door slam, and realized what should have been obvious to him all along. No wonder he’d seen the grinning man around there so many times! The boy straightened up, smiling to himself at the thought of what Ernest Matthews would say when he told him that the man he went in such terror of lived just round the corner, that they were practically neighbours!

The house in Grafton Avenue looked reassuringly the same as ever. Its end wall still towered blindly over the adjacent property as though disdaining to take any notice of what went on there, its deeply bayed front still sought to dominate the street with a pompous pretension that was rather pathetic. Steve pushed open the gate and followed the winding path into the lean-to porch. He didn’t have the slightest doubt that the old man would take him in. He would have to. He needed him.

As he reached the top step, the boy stopped dead. The front door stood wide open and a cold draught streamed past, scattering the familiar smells that usually greeted Steve like eager pets. He stood there for a long time before realizing that further resistance was pointless. Then he let the current carry him forward the way he had to go, over the threshold, into the house.

‘Well then, it’s about bloody time you got your act together, isn’t it?’

The slow rhythmic throbbing sound from next door continued. It sounded rather like someone trying to start a car with a flat battery.

‘Because it’s your responsibility , that’s why,’ Jenny Wilcox told the phone. ‘This is a stand-up-and-be-counted situation! I’m damned if I’m having my members used as cannon fodder so that you lot can decide whether the battle’s worth fighting or not.’

She slammed the receiver down. For a moment the throbbing sound seemed to have faded, then it returned, peaking and dying as though carried from a distance on gusts of wind. Brushing a few stray crumbs off her leotard, Jenny went over and opened the door to Aileen’s office.

‘Christ, what’s wrong?’

Aileen sat slumped over her desk, head lowered, shoulders trembling. When she lifted her head, her face looked blurred and soft, like pottery which had lost its glaze and was gradually unbaking itself, returning to the damp clay.

‘He waited for her to wake up,’ she murmured.

‘Who?’

‘He just sat there beside the bed, waiting for her to wake up.’

‘Who? Where? When?’

Despite Jenny’s real concern, there was a note of irritation in her voice. Aileen sucked in enough air to stem her sobs and justify her emotion.

‘It’s Steven. I’ve been to the police. They told me …’

‘The police?’

The younger woman’s evident disapproval brought Aileen round like a whiff of ammonia.

‘It’s a police matter,’ she replied flatly, scrabbling in her bag for Kleenex and cigarettes. ‘They showed me the photographs. Everything thrown about, ripped up, smashed, destroyed, the old man beaten to death. Steven was covered in blood from the cuts he got escaping from the other house, so when one of the neighbours saw him leaving they phoned the police. A patrol car picked him up just a few streets away. Naturally they thought he’d done it.’

Jenny tilted her head experimentally in various directions.

‘Just unblocking my synapses,’ she explained. ‘I got embroiled in a slanging match with the area organizer about this planned day of action. Now then, what were you saying? I don’t really understand what this has to do with someone waiting for someone to wake up.’

‘It’s my fault, Jenny, I’m not explaining it well. I’ll tell you some other time.’

‘No, tell me now.’

Aileen would have much preferred not to do so, but after letting Jenny see her break down she felt a need to demonstrate control.

‘All right. Well, let’s begin at the beginning. The police had no difficulty in tracing Steven’s background once they knew his real name. His life is exceptionally well documented, in fact. He’s been in and out of one file or another since the day he was born. That happened in Holloway, where his mother was doing eighteen months for her part in a dope-smuggling operation. Once she got out of prison, things went from bad to worse. Petty theft, a bit of prostitution, then a heroin habit. She ended up in council emergency housing in a bed-and-breakfast in Bayswater. It sounds like an urban concentration camp. One room, one bed, one toilet and kitchen between thirty people.’