Keith Ridgway - Hawthorn & Child

There was much laughter. Sally laughed as well. Lloyd smiled widely, and glanced at me, and gave me another of his winks. I glared at him.

— Well, said Sally, you can be assured that the materials that arrive on the site are subjected to security checks, just as the people are.

— How so?

— How?

— Yes, what happens to them? Are they X-rayed, analysed? How are they checked?

— I’m not quite sure Lloyd. I can get someone in site security to get in touch with you if you like.

— Oh, yes please.

— So, the seating …

— Are they all checked?

— All what?

— All the materials? Will each girder in that pile have been examined, or will you just test a representative sample?

— You know Lloyd, I have no idea. But it’s an interesting question. I’ll get Matt Grainger to get in touch with you. Is that OK?

— Yes, Sally, thank you so much.

I stared at him, a cold patch of shock spreading out over my insides. He was not an anchor. I was beginning to fear that he was … I must have been looking at him very strangely, for he glanced at me, and then looked again, and raised his eyebrows and half shrugged, questioningly. I shook my head, looked down at my notes.

We arrived at a large temporary structure, not unlike a circus tent. We were ushered in for a video presentation. A man talked to us. We were given tea, coffee, biscuits. We were allowed to mingle with some engineers, a couple of sporting people, someone on the organizing committee. It was all a blur to me. I kept my eye on Lloyd. Perhaps not very discreetly, as Sally appeared at my side out of nowhere, insisting that she introduce me.

— Clive, this is Lloyd Page. You two should compare notes. It’s the first time I’ve had two novelists on the same tour.

He shook my hand firmly, and when he heard the word novelist he smiled, and clasped my hand in both of his.

— Clive …?

— Drayton.

— Clive Drayton! Of course! What a pleasure to meet you. I very much enjoyed your last book. Very much. I simply don’t understand why it wasn’t shortlisted.

— Thank you, I said. Quietly. I was stuttering in thought. Novelist. What was he talking about? Shortlisted for what? Sally drifted away.

— Well, I’m intrigued I must say. As to your interest. How fascinating. It’s no surprise to hear of interest from the genre chaps, the hacks like me. But from a literary writer such as yourself, to be focussing on an event like this … well, it’s intriguing, as I say. I don’t suppose you want to tell me what your angle is?

— Angle?

— I’m presuming it’s a novel of course? Am I wrong?

— No, I, yes, it’s a novel.

— Well well. How fascinating. And good too. At last a writer who won’t be in direct competition with me.

— I don’t … I don’t understand.

— Oh, well, you know the type of thing I write. My DCI? Billy Flint? Ex S.A.S.? You probably haven’t read the books. I’m not surprised. I don’t read the bloody things myself, I just write them.

He laughed loudly, and I remembered him from the television. Late Review. Maybe that books quiz on BBC 4. Sometimes he reviewed the papers on Sky News. I swallowed some sort of giant knot of misery. It stuck in my chest.

— Third time I’ve been on this damned tour. It’s useless, but I like to keep an eye on how the details change. And they do. The figures alter every time, just a little. And from my point of view — how to blow the place up — it’s full of deliciously tempting holes. Full of them. My Billy is a lummox really, but he gets things done, as they say. I’m going to have him stumble over a plot. An hunchy sort of thing. Ephemeral. He senses it. Then there’ll be disbelieving superiors, woman trouble, all of that. Tends to be a high body count in the Billy Flint books. This one might just top them all.

He winked, again. I was silent, the flood in my chest obstructing all thought.

— That makes six now.

— Six?

— Yes. That I know of. No doubt there are others of course. But Sally has told me of three, I know Candy Frame is working on something, and now you. Six, isn’t it?

— Six novelists?

I thought I was going to be sick.

— Yes. Not a single original idea between us. Still, it’s big enough. And obvious enough. Of course people want to do it. Though you’re the first non-genre one as I say. That I know of. Fascinating.

I didn’t hear much more of anything Lloyd Page said. Something inside me went under. I watched his mouth move. I watched his good looks animate and express, his fair hair falling over his tanned skin like sand on a distant shore, becoming more distant with each flailing moment.

I wanted to kill him.

I made the complicated journey home, and it seemed to take days, and I saw nothing.

My private excitement had become public and banal. There was nothing unique about my idea, or about me. I was just another writer, predictably chasing what was already a cliché. My thrilling secret, so jealously nourished and protected, had turned out not to be a secret at all. Everyone knew about it. They laughed about it. As if it meant nothing to them. And I was convinced that Lloyd Page was laughing at me. That he had seen the distress in my eyes, had interpreted it immediately and accurately as the shock of discovering that you are just like other people.

I climbed into my bed almost as soon as I retuned home. I curled up and slept and gave no thought for anything. I no longer cared.

And I might have stayed there forever, had I not arranged with Rosemary to spend my Sunday afternoon meeting with her policeman. She had done me the favour, and had made much of the trouble she had gone to. I could not cancel. Rosemary hovered over me in judgement and — much to my annoyance — that still mattered. Perhaps it mattered more.

And the man’s name was Child. Despite — or because of — the pit into which I had fallen, there was something too attractive about that to ignore. I wanted to meet a man called Child. As I cowered in what could only be described as a childish abjection, furious at the unfairness of the world, I wanted to know what it was like to be an adult called Child. I lay on my bed and wished for nothing more than to be back in my mother’s arms, behind my father’s legs, and I desired the company of children. I wanted to be a child. I lay there in the dawn, after twelve hours of post-traumatic sleep, and the appointment took on the hallucinatory shape of a play date, an adventure with sticks and streams and fields and trees. I fell asleep again to the clatter of children’s voices, urging each other simply on.

I expected him to be black, this Child. I don’t know why. But there were not many people in the café and the only man on his own was a pasty white. I regarded him from the doorway, disappointed. He looked like a policeman. He looked tall and solid and gormless. He was crouched over a tabloid lying open on the table. Chewing. He had a coffee cup in front of him, and a can of Red Bull. I was irritated. I looked around again. There was a woman on her own. I hoped for half a second that I had misunderstood, or not listened to anything Rosemary had said to me, and that Child was a woman. But Child was definitely a man. I looked back at him. He had stopped chewing and was regarding me, his can of Red Bull held in mid air. He raised his eyebrows. His face was pale and slightly twisted somehow. His dark hair was cropped very short and his nose looked like it had been broken a couple of times. He looked like a thug. I walked over to him. As I did he folded his paper, wiped his hands on a napkin, and stood up. He was tall. He wore jeans, and a cheap shirt that seemed to cling to him in an unattractive, wrong-size kind of way.