Читать книгу Bright Girls - Clare Chambers - Страница 13

There’s a place in Oxford called Jericho which sounds solemn and biblical, but is actually full of cafés and arty-crafty shops and student hovels. Turn down any of the side streets towards the canal and you’ll find bicycles leaning drunkenly against every lamp-post and railing, curtains closed until mid-afternoon, wheelie bins overflowing with empty bottles and the pavements strewn with the fall-out from kebabs. If you walk north along the towpath and turn right, you eventually come to a close, a development of six modern houses, all out of tune with the surrounding architecture, but pretty in their own way. One of these – the one that is now dark and abandoned, and under surveillance from a camera hidden in the bedroom of the house opposite – is ours.

Unlike Jericho, our turning is quiet, day and night. The other residents are made up of retired couples, young professionals and an elderly widow The only noise you are likely to hear at weekends is the whirr of garden-grooming equipment – hedge trimmers, lawn mowers, leaf hoovers – and the occasional crump of car doors as people come and go.

Until this summer I never minded being in the house by myself, which was lucky as Dad and Rachel were not very good at co-ordinating their timetables, and from the age of about twelve it wasn’t an uncommon occurrence to find myself home alone.

That all changed one Thursday night in June. Dad was out at a retirement do for one of his colleagues at the Institute, and Rachel was celebrating the end of Frankie’s A Levels. (Rachel’s friends all seemed to finish their exams on different days and require separate festivities. This was the third in a week.)

I had lined up a programme of activities for myself to fill the empty hours until bedtime. 7-7.30: homework. 7.30-8.00: clarinet. 8-8.30: dinner in front of the TV (jacket potato with bacon, sour cream and chives.) This was one of my favourite meals, outlawed by Dad on two counts: cholesterol and fuel consumption. I had to wait until he was safely out before committing the eco-crime of running the oven on full for an hour and a half to cook a lone potato. 8.30-10.00: MSN. 10.00: DVD of Pride and Prejudice which, as it was a set text, also counted as homework.

When the potato was nearly done, I spread a couple of rashers of bacon under the grill and left them spitting fat while I went outside to pick some chives. As well as a small vegetable plot at the bottom of the garden, in which Dad was growing runner beans, hops, tomatoes, spinach, radishes and redcurrants, we had a few tubs on the patio containing useful herbs. Basil for pesto, chives for salad and parsley for disguising garlic breath before an important kiss (Rachel’s idea).

It was a warm evening, and the pot plants were looking rather limp and thirsty, so I filled a can from the water butt and gave them a good drenching. I ignored the parched veggie patch as this was an altogether lengthier job now we had a hose ban, and it was Not My Turn. I was wondering whether I could be bothered to brave the mutant monster spiders in the shed and bring out the patio furniture when a shrill bleeping reminded me that I’d left the grill on. I raced back into the kitchen, beating my way through billows of greasy smoke, to switch off the cooker before attempting to disable the alarm, which was still emitting an unbearable noise. There seemed to be no off-switch, so I finally resorted to prising off the lid and removing the battery which was no easy task with my fingers in my ears.

On inspection, it turned out that the culprit was not the bacon – which was surprisingly still edible, if somewhat brittle – but the centimetre of molten fat in the unwashed grill pan.

I retreated to the living room with my plate of food and shut the door, leaving the fan whirring wheezily in the fog-bound kitchen. With no one else at home, I was Queen of the TV Remote, so I made the most of my reign, watching five channels in strict rotation. By switching over every minute and skipping past adverts, it was possible to get a fairly good grasp of five different programmes at once. I wondered if this time-saving method could be applied to other areas of my life, schoolwork for example. If I read every fifth page of Macbeth, Pride and Prejudice, my GCSE Science Study Guide, Luke’s Gospel and Lernpunkt Deutsch, would my brain automatically fill in the gaps the way it just had, so effortlessly with prime-time TV? I made a mental note to try it some time.

Later, when the smoke had dispersed, I returned to the kitchen to tackle the washing up. As usual, someone, probably Rachel, had been taking liberties with the duty roster: as well as the devastated grill pan, there was a pile of crockery on the side left over from breakfast – coffee mugs and cereal bowls pebbledashed with dried muesli – and last night’s crusty lasagne dish soaking in the sink. I set to work, turning the radio up high, and plunging my hands into the cold, oily water to dig out the flabby pasta that was blocking the plughole.

“I predict a riot!” I sang defiantly at my reflection in the darkened window above the sink, as hot water thundered into the bowl, spraying me and the surrounding worktops with foam. Something moved just the other side of the window, a black shape in the blackness of the garden, looking in. For a fraction of a second we were face to face, but it was like no face I had ever seen. Then I let out a sound that was somewhere between a gasp and a scream, and the figure took a step back and ducked out of sight. The soapy bowl slipped from my hands and I turned and ran, across the hallway, up the stairs and into the bathroom – the only room with a lock – a strange, animal instinct making me burrow deeper rather than escape. I slid the bolt home and sat on the edge of the bath, my heart clubbing wildly as I listened for any sounds of breaking glass or forced entry.

Then my heart almost stopped altogether as I remembered the kitchen door: I hadn’t bothered to lock it when I came in from the garden; in fact, I couldn’t now be sure I had even shut it. Surely I had left it open to let the smoke out? I felt dizzy with fear. Perhaps the prowler was even now moving through the house, creeping from room to room to find me? I cowered in the corner of the room, wedged between the washbasin and the wall, hardly daring to breathe, straining to pick out approaching footsteps over the crashing of blood in my ears.

Why had I trapped myself up here with no protection but a feeble brass bolt, instead of running next door for help, or calling the police? I thought of my mobile phone, lying uselessly on the coffee table downstairs, and almost cried with frustration. The window above the basin, a small frosted porthole not much bigger than a dinner plate, faced on to the blank brick side of our elderly neighbour’s house. She was deaf and unlikely to hear a call for help, and still less likely to be able to act on it.

I waited, tense with anxiety for what seemed like hours – perhaps it was, I didn’t have a watch – but around me the house was silent. By degrees, the sense of immediate and urgent panic began to wear off and I was able to emerge from my corner and make myself more comfortable on a pile of folded towels. But I was still too scared to open the door. He might have been Out There, just the other side, waiting and watching through the strange distorted eyeholes of his balaclava. That was what disturbed me more than anything – his masked face, and the thought that he must have seen my every movement in the brightly lit kitchen, while I had no idea I was being watched.

At the age of fifteen I had discovered something new about myself: I was a coward. Until this moment I had never experienced anything remotely threatening. I had never been abused at home or mugged on the bus, hassled in the street or bullied at school. My life so far had been absolutely peril-free and yet, for some reason, I had just naturally assumed that I was brave. The discovery that I was in fact spineless was a bitter disappointment.

Eventually I must have dozed off where I sat because I was woken by the familiar sounds of Dad coming home – the car engine and the scrape of his key in the lock, and then the various exclamations of annoyance: “What’s that smell?” “Look at the state of this place!” and “Every bloody light on as usual!” and I knew I was safe.

At first he was bewildered to find me holed up in the bathroom at past midnight, still in my apron and Marigold gloves, but when I told him about the prowler, he soon stopped smiling.

“Oh, Robyn,” he said, gathering me into a fierce hug. “You poor thing. Were you really frightened?”

I nodded, sniffing, from within the hug. He smelled of the office – synthetic carpet and computers and the ozone pumped out by the photocopiers. He hadn’t bothered to change after work then.

“I’m so sorry I wasn’t here,” he said, releasing me at last. “Where’s Rachel?”

“I don’t know. Out with Frankie somewhere.”

“Phone her and tell her to get the cab to bring her right to the door. Don’t let it drop her off at the end of the close.” Dad had taken his shoes off when he came in; now he started to put them back on again.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“To check the garden.” He fetched the big torch, heavy as an iron bar, from the cupboard under the stairs and strode out through the kitchen, where everything was just as I’d left it: the washing up half done, the cereal bowl in pieces on the floor. A moment later I could see the torch beam – solid and substantial in the darkness – sweeping along the fence and probing into the bushes. Still keeping one eye on Dad, I called Rachel and delivered his message as best I could over the background racket of music and shouted conversation. “Where are you?” I asked, out of habit.

There was a pause and then, “Where are we?” I could hear her asking someone. Back came the reported answer: “Wadham College bar.” Sometimes I wondered about her state of mind.

“No one there now,” Dad said, coming in and locking the back door behind him.

“It was hours ago.”

“All the same. Got to call the police. These nutters. God, they don’t waste any time, I’ll say that for them.” He disappeared into the study and returned holding the local directory, flipping through the pages with one hand while trying to put his glasses on with the other.

“What nutters?” I said uneasily.

“Oh, you know, Animal Rights,” said Dad.

“Why do you think it’s got anything to do with them? It could just be some random weirdo.”

Dad shrugged. “Maybe. Funny coincidence if so.”

“What…” He was thumbing in the number as he spoke and held up a hand to shush me as the phone was picked up at the other end. I wandered into the living room to look out for Rachel, chewing over what Dad had just said about Animal Rights. Of course, I knew that he worked at the Institute, a new high-tech complex just inside the ring road, dedicated to research and development of drugs for everything from baldness to beriberi. And I suppose I must have known that a lot of the experiments and trials involved animals – laboratory rats, specially bred for the purpose. But Dad worked in the office – he wasn’t a vivisectionist; he was an accountant. He’d probably never even set foot in a lab. Plus, he was if anything an animal lover: witness his treatment only last year of the runaway springer spaniel that got clipped by a car on Banbury Road and left for dead. He took it to the vet to get it patched up and paid the bill himself. Then he took out an ad in the local paper and stuck dozens of leaflets on trees to trace the owner. A proper good Samaritan, she had called him, weeping tears of gratitude and relief over the heartbreaking doggy plastercast.

While this anxious internal monologue was going on I could hear Dad impatiently spelling out his details. “Richard Stenning. S-T-E-N-N-I-N-G…OX2 6FZ…No, F. F for Flatulence. Z for Zoroastrian.” He always got ratty with telephonists, receptionists, all those poor women in the front line, just trying to do their jobs. “Do you really need my date of birth?” he spluttered. “If I was ringing to report a murder-in-progress, I’d be dead by now.”

He joined me at the living-room window, peering out into the darkness. Always resentful at wearing his suit outside work, he’d undone his top button and pulled his tie down to half mast like a scruffy schoolboy “Sorry you were frightened,” he said again, putting an arm round my shoulders and giving me a squeeze. “They’re going to send someone round. I didn’t think they would.”

“What did you mean about Animal Rights nutters?” I asked.

“Oh, there are loads of anti-vivisection groups in Oxford. They picket the Institute now and then, when they can get themselves up and out of bed. Peaceful demonstrations are fair enough. But there’s a hard core who are into direct action. Terrorists basically They’ve even got kids as young as twelve involved in sabotage and stuff. You must have read all that in the papers last year about the place that breeds the rats for us. The guy who runs it has had so much intimidation, death threats, a bomb under his car, family graves desecrated, it’s all but closed down. He can’t afford the security”

“But you don’t get involved in any of those animal experiments. You’re not a scientist.”

“I know, but the Institute pays my wages. Everyone who has anything to do with the place is a target. The cleaners, the caterers, everybody Even the binmen. We got a memo about it only last week: the company that gets rid of our toxic waste has had its premises torched.”

“What do they want?”

“Ultimately they want the place closed down, and the easiest way to do that is to intimidate people into not working there.”

“How do they know where you live?”

“You can find anything off the internet.”

“But it could just have been a prowler. I mean, they do exist.”

“Maybe,” Dad said, without much conviction. “Would that make you feel better?”

“I don’t know.” In truth it wasn’t his motivation so much as his intentions that worried me. “Do you wish you still worked at the John Radcliffe?”

“No fear.” Dad had only been at the Institute six months. He’d been so glad to get out of the National Health Service into somewhere free from political interference. He loved the job.

Within fifteen minutes a patrol car arrived, lit up like a slot machine, and in spite of the late hour, curtains began to twitch up and down the close, pale faces appearing in the darkened windows. People love a show Two uniformed police officers, one of them a WPC, did another sweep of the garden with a flashlight, and then made a note of my rather unhelpful description of the prowler. Medium height: this much we’d established from the fact that his eyes were on a level with mine, but the kitchen was slightly elevated above patio level, though this conclusion didn’t strike me as foolproof He could have been a giant kneeling down, or a dwarf standing on a plant pot. Disguised as he was, I couldn’t tell them whether he was black or white and in all honesty, I had no evidence – apart from a conviction that women don’t do that sort of thing – that he was even a he.

Their departure was interrupted by the arrival of Rachel, needing change for the cab. She looked slightly squiffy, but sobered up at the sight of the police.

“What time do you call this? Haven’t you got an exam tomorrow?” Dad said, handing over a tenner. Education, education, education, even in extremity.

“Not till the afternoon,” she replied, not bothering to stifle a yawn. She went back out to pay the driver, but at the sight of the police car he had executed a smart three-point turn and driven off. Another man with something to hide evidently

“He’s probably got no tax disc and no insurance,” Dad muttered, shaking his head over this fresh example of the general lawlessness of society.

Once they’d taken my statement and looked the place over, there wasn’t much more the police could do, so they departed, advising us to be vigilant and report anything suspicious. Dad did another check of all the locks on the downstairs windows, and set the burglar alarm for the first time in living memory before we all went up to bed. Rachel and I sat up talking in her room till after one. She seemed a bit put out to have missed the evening’s drama, which was all it was to her, safely out of it. Even my own experience seemed slightly unreal, now that the threat had passed. I wondered if my sense of terror, so authentic at the time, hadn’t been exaggerated, unnecessary

Rachel was quick to pour cold water on Dad’s theory “Oh, he would say that. He’s got a total bee in his bonnet about Animal Rights protesters since he’s been in this new job. Before that it was Pro-Lifers. Next week it’ll be, I don’t know, Buddhists. It was probably just some regular perv trying to see if he can get a glimpse of a woman undressing.”

“Well, I don’t know,” I said, not wanting to be disloyal to Dad, and not especially comforted by the idea of having been spied on by a “regular” perv, whatever that was.

“It’ll be all right anyway,” said Rachel, her eyes shiny with drunken confidence. “You probably scared him off with your singing. He won’t be back.”

I was quite comfortable there on Rachel’s beanbag and didn’t particularly want to go off to my own room, but I was too proud to ask, and besides, she had an exam the next day and needed to sleep, so I said goodnight and left her. But I couldn’t seem to settle in bed: I felt too hyper-alert, and all the usual sighs and creaks and taps from the sleeping house sounded strangely loud and menacing.