SEPTEMBER 2007
It seemed such a little time ago. They’d often gone out, had a drink at the Ox, met friends for bingo, a walk to the Hill when the evenings were light, even a spin in the car to one of the village pubs. They’d gone to a film occasionally, had a fish-and-chip supper on the way back. Having no children, sorry though they both were, meant a bit more money for them to enjoy treats together. Tom had worked hard all his life, she’d had part-time work so that she could be in, with his tea on the table, when he got home.
Jean Mason stood waiting for the kettle to boil. Such a little time ago. She remembered everything. And Tom remembered nothing. Most days now he didn’t even remember her. Most days there seemed no point in even going to see him because it upset them both. He kept asking her who she was and why Jean hadn’t been to visit him, she couldn’t think of a thing to say to this man she no longer knew. This wasn’t Tom, the Tom she’d known since they were both eleven, the person she’d shared her entire adult life with, day in, day out. So who was it?
She poured boiling water into the teapot and took her tray through. They had never been a noisy couple, and the street had always been a quiet street, but now it was uncanny, the empty silence. They had lived in the flat above the shop for the last ten years, since their old street had been demolished. When they came, there had been a dozen shops in the row – launderette, baker, butcher, greengrocer, hardware, and then a Chinese take-away, a minicab office. Below them had been a wool shop, then a toy shop, then a cafe. One by one, they’d all closed. Now there was a charity shop at one end, a letting agency office at the other, and in between, nothing but windows boarded up. It was lonely and it was bleak and Tom had said they’d try and find somewhere else. But where else was there? So long as he’d been well she hadn’t minded. She minded now.
She started to watch a crime drama but it was too violent, turned over to a comedian who was too crude. The last ten minutes of a cookery programme was entertaining enough, but after that she switched off.
She would go to bed with a book she’d bought from the charity shop. Travels with my Elephant – she loved animals, she loved reading about places she would never see. Tom would have picked it up, smiled, teased her about it.
Now, he had forgotten how to smile.
A child was screaming.
She went to the window but the street was empty and silent. She opened the window. Nothing.
It had stopped.
Maybe it was a cat. A fox. The foxes still came scavenging round.
As she was getting into bed ten minutes later, she heard the scream again and this time it was in the street. This time, there were people – a car, pulled up outside the boarded-up shop next door, two men, one of them pulling a small child by the hand. They were too far from the street lamp for her to see clearly and in a few seconds the child was pushed into the car, one of the men in the back with it, and the car was moving away, accelerating fast as it reached the corner.
Then nothing. The street was silent, empty, dark. Jean wondered if she had been hallucinating, or was half-asleep, and somehow begun to dream while still awake.
Did that happen?
She went back to her bed but when she tried to read, the image of the child being pulled towards the car came between her and the words, and the sound of its cry seemed to echo again and again through her head.
She wondered what she should do.
She knew what she ought to do but her story sounded so fanciful that she could not bring herself to make the call.
It was four nights later that the child screamed again. There was no car in the street; the sound came from somewhere nearby but indoors. And almost as soon as she had heard it, the noise stopped quite suddenly. Then nothing.
Jean lay for a long time, listening, but the only sound she heard was the beat of her own heart.
She had fallen deeply asleep by the time the car drove up the street, lights doused, and stopped outside the empty shop next door. She was asleep when the child, silent now, was carried out and driven away.
There were no neighbours left to talk to. She was used to it by now. She had never been unfriendly, it was just that she and Tom had been company enough for one another, but now she remembered the sounds she had heard, of the child screaming in the night, she needed someone to talk to – just no one official, not the police or anyone else in authority. She had not been over to see Kath Latimer for months, partly because she found it hard to deal with questions about Tom, questions to which she didn’t really have any answers, partly because it was either a long walk or hanging round waiting for one of the few buses that went anywhere near Spalding Green. But Kath and Dennis Latimer had been the closest to best friends that either she or Tom had ever had, all at school together, all living in and around Lafferton most of their lives. Dennis had died ten years earlier and then Kath had shut herself away, before moving to be near her sister in Bognor. It had been a disaster, they had fallen out and Kath had returned to a smaller house in her old road.
‘I feel bad about you,’ Jean said later that morning, sitting in Kath’s tiny cluttered front room with a cup of milky coffee. The budgerigar hopped to and fro, to and fro, on the bar inside its cage until Jean had to look away, it irritated her so much. ‘Does he never settle down?’
Kath glared. ‘He’s perfectly happy.’
‘I’m sure. Just seems a bit restless.’
Funny, Jean thought, how you forgot things. There had always been a budgie – it was one of the things that had put her off visiting. Tom had never been able to stand them either. The only way they managed to stay friendly was if Dennis and Kath came to them, then halfway through an evening, Kath would say she was worried about Charlie or Pippy or some other silly thing, so they ought to get back.
Kath got up and fiddled with a stick of millet on the side of the cage, pursed her lips and made a tweeting noise. The budgie hopped about madly, tweeting back.
People’s lives. Jean finished her coffee. People’s narrow lives.
They couldn’t find anything to say.
‘I suppose there’s no real point in you visiting him, is there? As he doesn’t know who you are. No point in troubling him.’
‘It doesn’t trouble him, he likes me to go.’
‘Are you sure?’
Jean was not sure but would have cut out her tongue rather than say so.
‘I wouldn’t dream of not going.’
‘Well, I suppose if it’s a comfort to you, it’s worth it.’
Was it? A comfort? Worth it? Worth what?
She had made a mistake in coming. Kath was the last person she could confide in about the sounds she had heard. In any case, sitting here in the hot room with the hopping budgerigar, she wondered if she had heard anything. Sometimes, you hovered about the edge of a dream, sure you were awake and heard a sound that was never there. Kath would have made her feel a fool.
But she stayed for a second coffee, and a chocolate shortcake. It would have been rude not to when it was so long since she’d made the effort. It was only when she was finally waiting for the bus into town that it occurred to her Kath could equally well have come over to see her. She never did.
The sound of the child’s scream, real or dreamed, stayed with her. She did some shopping in town, caught another bus, walked the last half-mile, and all the time, it was there, in her head, it kept repeating itself. It wasn’t the sort of sound you forgot.
If it had been a sound.