Twenty-Three

Robert Wilde sat back from the television that evening. The police appeal had just been broadcast.

‘You looked funny,’ Alice told him.

‘What do you mean, funny?’

‘Not like you. Too smart.’

He smiled at her grimly.

‘And she’s really said nothing at all?’ Alice asked.

Wilde began picking up the supper plates. ‘Look, I never told you that, OK?’

‘Has she got a tongue?’

‘Of course she has.’

‘Well, some people haven’t.’

He made his way out to the kitchen. ‘She has a tongue, but she doesn’t use it.’ He stacked the dishwasher. Alice came out carrying a single spoon. ‘You’re a real help, d’you know that?’ he said.

She grinned. She made a pretence of watching him for a while, then started to wash the two saucepans at the sink. Standing up when his job was done, Wilde leaned against the worktop.

‘Allie,’ he said. ‘Do you believe in God?’

She didn’t look up. She washed the pan methodically, then laid it carefully on the draining board. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘The God I taught you about?’

She smiled. ‘In a white frock, with a thunderbolt in his hand?’

‘No. Maybe. A real God.’

‘Yes.’

‘You do?’ he repeated, astonished.

‘I don’t know why you’re so surprised,’ she observed calmly. ‘You were the one who gave me all that propaganda about it.’

‘What propaganda?’

‘Christmas and Easter.’

‘That’s what I was supposed to do,’ he said.

‘Are you saying you told me it, but you didn’t go for it yourself?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘You don’t know what, exactly?’

He fiddled with the worktop trim, self-conscious. ‘Various things.’

She turned to look at him. ‘You told me Mum was in heaven, remember? Well, where is she if she isn’t there?’

‘Alice, I don’t know.’

‘You don’t? You were very definite about it once.’

‘For you.’

‘You told me that and didn’t believe it?’ she said.

‘It’s not that I don’t believe it. I want it to be true. I wanted to reassure you.’

Now it was Alice that stared at him in amazement. ‘You did it, but you had your fingers crossed behind your back, right?’ Alice wiped her hands and faced him, the tea towel hitched in one hand on her hip. ‘You don’t think she’s around?’

He considered. He thought of the dream. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘So do I,’ she said. ‘That’s what religion is, isn’t it? Believing what you can’t prove.’

He paused, considering. ‘You believe all I told you, everything they said in Sunday school …’

‘Actually,’ she interrupted. ‘I don’t.’ She put the tea towel on the radiator, folding it neatly. ‘Vengeance is mine and all that. But I think there’s something else, and somewhere else. Like Alice through the Looking-Glass.’

‘What, some kind of Victorian nightmare?’

She laughed. ‘No, Dad. Just when Alice looks through the mirror, and sees another world. Then she steps through, and she looks back, and sees the room she just came from, the clock on the mantelpiece …’

‘Mum is in the next room.’

‘And they all watch us.’

He looked at her seriously, in a new light. ‘You think God is watching?’ he asked. A chill ran through him.

‘Not the God in a frock. But a force, maybe. Whole load of souls. Higher beings. Evolved ones.’

‘Angels,’ Wilde said.

‘Yeah, like that.’

Wilde turned and walked into the room they had just left. He sat down on the couch. Alice came to the door of the kitchen and looked at him. ‘What?’ she said.

‘Come and sit with me.’

She did so. He put his arm around her shoulder. ‘Alice,’ he said. ‘Don’t ever get involved in a cult, will you?’

‘What?’ she said, laughing.

‘I mean …’ He searched around to find out just what he did mean. ‘When you’ve got beliefs—and I’m glad you’ve got them, that’s good—but when you’re convinced about something, people can take advantage.’

‘Dad,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to shave my head and sing on the street.’

‘No, I know.’

They both looked at the empty TV screen ahead of them.

Robert thought of what Anna had said that afternoon, that men had no idea of what it felt like to be vulnerable. He thought he had experienced that—the sinking feeling, at least, of not knowing where to turn, of losing his grip on security. Reality, even. He had felt like that for a long time after Christine had died, and, even now, the same feeling could sometimes surprise him. He had done all the right things, all the so-called recommended things to combat his grief. He had joined clubs—his squash club, a night-school class—and he had maintained his friendships, and he had even taken out a few women, the last one for over eight months. But the feeling—that small hours, end-of-the-world feeling—would occasionally still creep up on him. It was a physical thing. It struck him, and left him winded, while he was doing the most routine and inconsequential jobs. He would suddenly realize he had lost a vital part of himself, and he would gasp, just for a few seconds.

Was that what Anna meant, he wondered. The ground falling away, the shortness of breath? He remembered going to a residential course several years ago, on equality in the workplace. There had been a discussion then about aggression, both overt and subliminal. The women there had maintained that they never lost the sensation of looking over their shoulder, especially alone at night. They had claimed that men were always looking for a way in, a moment of weakness. He had thought it paranoid at the time. Now, he thought of Anna, alive to the slightest sound, all the time. Losing sleep. Losing everything else.

He turned to his daughter. ‘Have you ever been followed?’ he asked.

‘Who by?’

‘Anyone.’

‘Yeah,’ she said, in the long-drawn-out tone that told him he was stating the obvious.

‘A man?’ His heart had quickened slightly.

‘Couple of times round the shops. Just round a counter,’ she said. ‘You know.’

He swivelled in his seat to look at her. ‘They follow you round shops?’

‘Boys do. And the perve.’

‘The …?’

‘The perve in town. The man with his carrier bags.’

This was complete news to him. ‘What man?’ he asked.

Alice began to laugh. ‘Everybody knows the perve. He looks at you, that’s all. He sits next to us on the benches in front of Woollies.’

‘He …’

‘Oh Dad,’ she said. ‘He’s harmless. He talks to the girls at the make-up counters. He’s got a loud voice, a bit nasal. You know.’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen him in my life.’

‘Well,’ she shrugged. ‘He’s there. Maybe it’s because when you go shopping you just whizz round and whizz out again and don’t notice.’

He considered. Maybe he wouldn’t notice if someone followed him, either. Is that what it was? Men had a blind spot. They had no reason to question their physical security. No woman was ever going to put an arm around their throat and rape them down a dark alley. No woman was ever going to … what? What was Anna afraid of? A man who rang her up and left no message. A man who sat outside her house.

He couldn’t quite get his head around it. If a woman did that to him, it would make him furious. But not afraid. How could he be afraid of a woman who sat in her car, or sometimes left a playing card on his front doorstep? Why would that frighten him? Why would a woman frighten him by bringing him an inappropriate present?

Maybe it wouldn’t frighten him because he had never had to deal with it, he thought. Because women didn’t do that kind of thing.

Did they?

‘Alice,’ he said. ‘Do you think that feeling unsafe is what every woman feels?’

‘Unsafe?’ she echoed. ‘No.’

‘No? Why?’

She snuggled into his shoulder. ‘Because I’ve got you. I’m a woman, and I’ve got you.’

His heart contracted at her innocence. Innocence and maturity in one package. In two years she would be sixteen. My God, sixteen …

‘What did she do?’ Alice asked suddenly.

‘Who?’

‘The girl in the picture. On the TV.’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘That we can prove.’

‘Is that why you’re going to Manningham tomorrow?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was she in a cult?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe.’

‘Why did she come here?’

‘I don’t know.’

Alice leaned forward to switch the TV back on with a sigh. ‘You don’t know much about anything really, Dad, do you?’ she said.