Stanley and the Women (28 page)

‘In his
chest of drawers,’ said Susan. ‘Not even covered up. It wasn’t there yesterday.
I look every morning.’

‘Quite
right. But when did he get it? Unless he was keeping it somewhere else before.
And even then … Must have been at the other end, out near the hospital. I
just drop him there, you see, I don’t bodyguard him all the way to the ward. It’s
quite a walk to the shops. Not impossible, though, I suppose. Anyway here it
is, eh?’

‘Must
have cost a bit if he got it new.’

‘I gave
him fifty the other day. I can’t have him coming to me every time he wants a
packet of fags, can I?’

‘What
are we going to do?’

‘I don’t
know.’ I clicked the knife back into its hilt. ‘I honestly don’t know. Well, we
can confront him with it.’

‘No
need for that, we can just ask him what it’s for. Can’t we?’

‘That’s
confronting him with it. Or we can throw it away. That’s confronting him with
it as soon as he finds it isn’t there instead of now.’

‘Well,
what about confronting him with it?’

‘Yes,’
I said trying to think whether concealed possession of a flick knife would
count as normal or abnormal in Collings’s book. ‘We can predict his reaction
from what happened the other day. Rage, curses, accusations of spying, and so
on.’

‘Which
can be faced.’

‘Oh,
sure. But … It’s a pity about the spying. I support you on it, I mean if
you’d asked me whether you should look through his things I’d have said go
ahead. But if you look at it it is very much the sort of response that …
Well, that Dr Collings said would alienate him.’

‘So you’re
in favour of putting it back.’

‘I can’t
see what’s to be gained from not. We know it’s there now, and he doesn’t know
we know. And it’s not as if it’s the only knife in the house. Those
non-stainless French kitchen jobs of yours, you could tackle a bleeding
elephant with one of them. I suppose we could lock them up. You’re not really
with me over this, are you, Sue?’

‘I just
think if you said very casually and calmly that I’d happened to come across it
when I was —’

‘Then
he’d fly into a rage and accuse us both of spying. Don’t forget he’s Nowell’s
son too. Can you imagine how she’d behave if you casually and calmly told her
you’d happened to come across something in her handbag? Of course, she is a… er, we all know what she is. I’ll check this with Collings in the morning.’

Collings
said putting the knife back was right — Stephen had probably only got hold of
it in the first place so as to feel secure. In case I went for him with a
hammer, I said to myself but not to her. Further reports would be welcome. His
action on being encouraged to take a shower, which was to take a shower so
thorough that he used up all the hot water and made me late for work, had its
annoying side but hardly seemed worth reporting.

At the
start of the second week he took to going to his room earlier than before, at
ten o’clock, nine o’clock, straight after arriving home. That time, feeling a
perfect idiot, I sneaked up about eight to spy out the land. The light was on
in the room. One or two slight sounds told me nothing except that he was not in
bed. Reading? Conceivably but not much more. Looking at dirty pictures? Quite
possibly. Staring into space? Quite likely. I left it and Susan and I forgot
about him for the whole evening, until we heard him coming down for his
late-night snack and our conversation, which had been bounding along before,
soon petered out.

Five days after the knife
incident Susan again had something waiting for me when I got home. In the
bedroom she handed me some sheets of cheap lined paper covered with Steve’s
familiar and terrible handwriting. ‘It was on the little round table in his
room,’ she said. I thought she looked tired, rather pale anyway. ‘He must have
meant us to find it there.’

‘What
is it, a letter?’

‘You’d
better read it.’

I sat
on the edge of the bed and she settled herself next to and partly behind me in
one of those kneeling or squatting female positions with her arm on my
shoulder. Although terrible enough, full of unnecessary loops, leaning, falling
over and straightening itself up again, the writing could mostly be read, and
the spelling mistakes were plentiful, but the intended words could mostly be
rescued. Put right as far as it could be put right, Steve’s message went like
this:

BE IT KNOWN TO ALL THE PEOPLES OF PLANET EARTH
—

Light
years ago in the secret heart of the galaxy an Element created itself. For
centuries it had no name, then ancient Atlantean physicists discovered it with
scanners and named it POTENTIUM. But when Atlantis perished neath the waves the
secret of POTENTIUM perished also.

More centuries flew by on the wings of time, until Lemurian
mystics got to know about it in dreams and visions sent by MITHRAS, but when
they went and told their king he was displeased and had them slain. So alas the
secret was lost once more.

Then as NOSTRADAMUS had predicted the Alchemists
brought POTENTIUM back into existence, but no man knew what it would do.

Then one day the great AVERROES was experimenting on
some POTENTIUM by bombarding it with Photon Particles and this mutated it into
an isotope that could live in the human brain.       REJOICE!

HENCEFORTH
MAN WAS ARMED AGAINST EVIL.

POTENTIUM IS THE SOURCE OF THE SPIRIT THAT FIGHTS FOR
GOOD.

Atomic Number 108

Symbol Pt

Atomic Weight 303

Valency Number 99

Rainbow Metal

THIS IS A DEMOCRATIC DOCUMENT OF GREAT IMPORTANCE

CREATED FOR THE PRESERVATION OF PEACE

AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE

WICKED

HAIL POTENTIUM
THE POWER OF THE LORD

Underneath the text there
was a drawing of a person with a beard stretching out an arm towards some
buildings that seemed to be falling down among small figures probably intended
to be human beings. It, the drawing, was done in ballpoint and I thought showed
very little talent.

I had
just had time to take this in when Susan gave a sort of shrieking gasp right in
my ear and I looked up rather quickly to see Steve standing by the door, which
I could have sworn had been shut, and glaring at us. He might have been there
for a couple of minutes. When he saw us see him he came towards us in a determined
way. I jumped up.

‘What
are you doing with that?’ he said, or rather snarled.

‘Reading
it. That’s what you meant us to do, isn’t it?’

‘Fucking
snooping!’

‘You
left it lying about,’ I said, and tried and failed to get the energy together
to go on about people having to go into his room to make the bed, etc.

The
next moment, probably just by chance, his manner changed. All menace left it.
He looked alert and preoccupied at the same time, like somebody trying to
remember something or to hear a distant sound. He soon gave this up and focused
on me with his mouth hanging open. Slowly he closed it and pressed the lips
together until his expression was one of smothered amusement, also shyness and
a modest kind of pride, reminding me of how he had looked at me the first time
I saw him walk. Then he broke out into laughter, completely amused and amiable,
no awful side to it at all in itself. The trouble was I could see nothing much
that was funny in what was actually happening or what was there in front of us.
I tried to make out he was laughing at me and Susan for being serious or stupid
or worried or frightened, or at himself for being angry just now, or anything
like that, but it was no good. Nash had talked about schizophrenics being too
mad to know what was funny. I stood there longing for a drink till Steve jerked
his head back and scampered out of the room.

Susan
had come up and taken my hand and now she put her arms round me and squeezed. ‘Stanley,
I’m scared,’ she whispered.

‘Not
much of a treat, was it?’

‘No, I
mean I’m still scared. All that …
mad
stuff about Atlantis and
alchemists and smashing the evil ones, it’s like … I don’t know.’

‘Bleeding
ridiculous.’

‘Darling,
it’s not just ridiculous. That boy, he’s very seriously disturbed.’

‘We
knew that,’ I said. ‘I’ll discuss the matter when I’ve got a glass in my hand
and not before.’ When I had, and we were in the sitting room with the door
firmly shut, I said, ‘Sue, love, listen to me, now. This thing is just an old
piece of sci-fi, that’s all it is. Tripe, in fact. I thought it had gone out.
Plus the sort of stuff you get through the post from the green-ink brigade —
you know, the pyramids one minute and lasers the next. The thing’s not worth
taking seriously, really.’

‘He
believes it,’ said Susan. ‘He thinks it’s true.’

‘Oh,
come on. Believes it? It’s like a kid scribbling. Doodling.’

‘There’s
violence there. To smash their vile creed and make them all bleed. I suppose
that’s more doodling.’

‘I’d
say maybe he was trying to get a rhyme, but then I wouldn’t know about a thing
like that.’

‘The
destruction of the wicked doesn’t sound very funny to me.’

‘Well,
he wasn’t going to threaten to let their dog out and knock over their pint in
the pub, was he?’

This
was the moment where she should have looked up at me and smiled and said she
was sorry to have gone on like that, and I would have said of course I saw why
and more in the same strain while saying to myself, in this case, that although
Steve’s document might not be worth getting steamed up about it was a long way
from reassuring in itself. But instead of that she went on sitting there on the
grey velvet settee in one of her grey cardigans and dark skirts, pressing her
lips together, her head down in a way that showed off the blackness and
glossiness of her hair. I felt I was a long way from knowing what she was
thinking, not that I would have gone round claiming I regularly did know.

Partly
to break the tension I said, ‘I’d better give Nowell a ring.’

Susan
looked up then and no mistake. ‘Why? What for?’

‘I’d
like to tell her about this just now and, well, the general situation. I should
have got hold of her earlier.’

‘What
for? What can she do?’

‘Nothing,
love. I don’t want her to do anything, I just want her to be informed. She
probably doesn’t even know he’s here.’

‘I dare
say she doesn’t,’ said Susan sharply. ‘She never takes the slightest interest
in him.’

‘Look,
I’m not calling her in as a consultant, all I’m after is putting her in the
picture so if he does act up, like walking in there out of the blue as he’s
quite liable to do, she can’t complain she was kept in the dark. Okay?’

‘Yes.’
Susan sighed and blinked apologetically. ‘You know, it’s hard going on being
reasonable all the time when you’re feeling a bit shaken up.

‘Oh,
absolutely. Listen, Sue, I’m sorry all this is happening, and it’s sort of none
of your doing.’

‘It’s
none of yours, either. Forget it, darling.’

‘No,
you know what I mean. I don’t really feel I can leave him alone in the house
much for the moment, but you can go out. You must go out on your own a bit
more.’

‘I don’t
like going out without you.’

‘Then
we must have a few more people in.’

‘Don’t
worry, there’s always plenty to do here. And you’re here, aren’t you?’

‘It’s
not much of a life for you.’

‘Yes it
is. We’ll make sure he doesn’t get into the bedroom again, darling.’

When I tried the
Hutchinson number it answered immediately. I remembered feeling very slightly
baffled when there was no answer before — what if I had been somebody who might
have had work for Nowell? But no point in going into that now because it was
Bert at the other end.

‘Stan
here. Hold on a minute. How did you get away with it the other day, going out
on a blind with your favourite shit?’