Pat Barker - Noonday

Rachel had come to the door. “No sign?”

“No.” Elinor was trying not to sound worried.

“He’ll have gone to the station,” Paul said.

“Well, he’ll be out of luck, then.” Tim, peering over Rachel’s shoulder. “There’ll be no trains running tonight.”

“Would he have any money?” Elinor asked.

“Oh, yes,” Rachel said.

Tim explained: “He steals.”

“When did we last see him?” Elinor asked.

On the lawn at teatime, that was the general opinion. Nobody could be more precise than that.

“So he’s been gone for hours,” Paul said.

Elinor chafed her bare arms as if the night had suddenly grown colder. “I think he’s still here. He’s probably up there now, laughing at us.”

“I’ll just check the station,” Paul said.

“Hang on, I’ll come with you.”

“No, you stay with Rachel.” He lowered his voice. “And for God’s sake, try to get her to lay off the booze, she’s half-cut already.”

“You won’t be long?”

“No, you go on in, I’ll be all right.”

Reluctantly, she let go of his arm and went back into the house.

—

DRIVING DOWN THE long tunnel of trees with only the thin beams of blackout headlights to guide him, Paul felt a small sense of relief at getting away from the house and the empty bedroom upstairs. To have something concrete to do — find the little bugger and bring him back — helped enormously. He told himself he wasn’t seriously worried: a boy that age couldn’t have got far. On the other hand, Kenny wasn’t most boys.

At the station, Paul parked in a great spray of gravel and ran on to the platform. Despite Tim’s certainty, there might still be some local trains running and if he’d got on one of those he could be anywhere by now. The platform was deserted. Standing on the edge, Paul looked up the line towards London, where an ominous red glow was lighting the underbelly of the clouds. His fear, now — because his fears kept shifting — was that Kenny had come to the station, realized there were no trains, and had simply jumped down on to the track and started walking. That would solve one problem: finding his way. Walk along that line and, yes, you would reach London, in the end. He could be miles away by now. Or— let’s be optimistic —he might have decided to wait till morning.

Finding the door of the waiting room unlocked, Paul went in and flashed the dim needlepoint of his blackout torch around the walls. Posters advertising day trips to the seaside: children building sandcastles on beaches, buckets, spades, swings, roundabouts: all as innocent and far away as childhood itself. Only one poster, newer than the rest, warned of the dangers of careless talk. No Kenny. It was beginning to look as if he had set off to walk. Paul closed the door and went to the end of the platform. The more he thought about it the more obvious it seemed: Kenny would simply follow the lines.

Paul jumped down on to the track and started to walk, his footsteps loud on the gravel. Moonlight sliding along the rails beside him made him feel as if he were wading through water. He was treading on the heels of his own faint shadow. At the bend in the line, he stopped, the tracks stretching out ahead of him into the far distance. It was pointless to go on, when he didn’t even know whether Kenny had chosen this route or not.

He turned and started to go back, but then a movement in the buddleia bushes by the side of the track caught his eye. There was no wind to account for the movement, but it could be an animal, a fox out hunting, though something in the waiting silence felt human. Quickly, he darted up the bank and dragged out a struggling Kenny, a little, yelping, spitting ball of fury who kicked at his shins and, finally, bit his hand. “Ouch, you little sod.”

Kenny went still. “I’m not going back.”

“What are you going to do, then? Stay here?”

“Getting the train.”

“Not tonight you’re not.”

“There’ll be one in the morning.”

“All right, then, but what’s the point of staying here tonight? When you could be sleeping in your own bed?” A mulish silence. “Look, why don’t we talk about it in the morning? Just let’s get you home and—”

The boy wrenched himself free. “ That’s home.” He jabbed his finger at the red glare in the sky.

It was Paul’s turn to be silenced. At that moment, he knew he had to take Kenny to see his mother. Not necessarily to stay with her, but at least to see her. “She’ll be all right, you know.”

“No, she won’t, she’s only got a shelter in the backyard and she won’t even go in it.”

“Why won’t she?”

“She says she can’t breathe, she just—” He shook his head, on the verge of tears.

“Tell you what, come back now and—”

“No.”

“ Listen. I’ll take you to see her.”

“Now?”

“No, in the morning, it’s too—”

“She could be dead by then.”

Deep breath. “Kenny, you can’t go tonight.”

Kenny heaved a great sigh of resignation, his shoulders dropped and he started to trudge back towards the station.

Paul relaxed. “There’s a good lad.”

Then, without warning, Kenny dodged round him and raced away along the track. Oh for God’s sake. Paul set off after him, lurching from side to side, gritting his teeth against the pain in his knee — running on gravel was almost impossible. Mad, he thought. And dangerous. Local trains might still be running and like everything else these days they operated with dimmed lights. If there was one on the other side of the bend, it could be on you before you knew it. And Kenny was already well ahead.

“Kenny, all right!”

The boy looked over his shoulder, tripped and fell. But he was up on his feet again in a minute, brushing gravel from his knees, by the time Paul came panting up.

“You stupid little bugger, if a train had come round that bend you wouldn’t’ve stood a chance.”

“Thought you said there weren’t any.”

“ Local trains.”

“Well, why can’t I get on one of them, then, and walk the rest of the way?”

“Because it’s miles. ”

He realized Kenny had no idea where he was, or London was, or — supposing he ever got to London — where the docks were…Nothing. Not a bloody thing. And yet, if Paul forced him back to the house, he’d just wait for the first opportunity and run away again. He needed to see his mother.

“Look, all right, we’ll go tonight, but you’ve got to go back and tell everybody, do it properly. Right?”

Kenny nodded. “You promise, though?”

“I promise.”

“All right.”

—

THEY FOUND THE family still in the drawing room, slumped in armchairs with the dazed, disorientated look of the recently bereaved and the totally pissed.

“I’m taking him home,” Paul said.

Elinor looked up. “You mean, to our house?”

“No. Well, yes, that first. Then his.”

She shook her head. “You can’t do that.”

“He wants to go.”

“And that’s a reason? Paul, it’s mad. Oh, all right, if he wants to see his mother, fair enough…But surely it can wait till morning?”

Paul felt the boy’s eyes on him. “No, it’s got to be tonight. I promised.”

“Then you shouldn’t have done!”

Rachel stood up. “I’ll just pack a few things.”

Holding on to the backs of chairs, she made it to the door. She was making no effort to postpone their departure, nor even to assert her right to take the decision. The truth was, she was as keen to get rid of Kenny as he was to go. And Tim said nothing. It was all rather disgraceful, but it did at least confirm Paul’s view that the boy would be better off with his own family. While Rachel moved around upstairs, Paul and Elinor stood a few feet away from each other, Elinor with her bare arms clasped across her chest, Paul smoking furiously.