Sabrina Fludde (10 page)

The policeman banged on the knocker for the second time, and Phaze II shuffled restlessly as if he knew this was his last chance to get away. Abren heard feet dragging on the other side of the heavily studded front door, and a jangling sound which could have been a gaoler with a bunch of keys. She wondered what they were in for.

‘All right, all right, I hear you,' a voice called, and the door creaked open to reveal not the dingy horror which Abren had expected, but a bright white hall.

Abren beamed, weak with relief, and the woman standing at the door beamed back. She was tall, with jangling bracelets instead of gaoler's keys, waist-long, yellow, curling hair and a bright pink-lipstick smile slapped across her face like a flyer on a billboard – there for all the world to read and impossible to shift.

She stepped aside to let them in. ‘We've been expecting you.
Come in!
You're just in time for supper. I'm Mrs Morgan. Mrs Penny Morgan, but you must call me Pen.'

Phaze II scowled as if the only name that he would ever call her started with an S for scud. But Abren stepped over the threshold, wondering what fairyland
she'd found behind this little tower with its studded door. Yet again, it seemed that appearances had proved deceptive. Or, as Fee had once said, you should never judge a book by its cover!

She followed Pen down the scrubbed white hall, which smelt of wood polish and was full of paintings, fish in cases, a long willow basket and an old cutlass hanging on the wall. At the end of the hall, they descended a flight of steps to a kitchen built out over the back of the house. Here all the clutter of a busy life was spread around a bright red stove. Seedlings grew in trays, under sheets of glass. A pile of vegetable peelings sat on a wooden chopping board. Glasses of red wine waited, half drunk, to be finished off. A basket of duck-blue eggs sat in bowl on the window ledge.

Phaze II stood in the doorway, staring at it all as if nothing could impress him. But Abren was enthralled. Never in her wildest dreams had she expected her day to end like this! She stared at the supper which the woman, Pen, lifted out of the stove, shutting the oven door behind her with the back of her heel. Whatever was in that cooking pot smelt wonderful. Abren fondly imagined it containing stew with dumplings, followed by a pudding drenched in chocolate sauce.

‘Sit down,' Pen said. ‘Eat while it's hot. Sir Henry isn't in yet. I've called and called. But that's him for you! Make a start without him.'

Abren sat down, wondering what sort of man was called
Sir Henry
by his own wife. She tried to catch Phaze II's eye but he looked away, refusing to turn back even when Pen served food on to his plate. She offered helpings to the social worker and the
policeman too, but they said that they had to leave.

Pen went to see them out. She was gone a while and returned alone. Abren's plate had been scraped clean, but Phaze II's plate hadn't been touched.

‘Oh, dear, you don't like chicken curry! Can I get you something else?'

‘The boy will eat when he wants. Don't fuss. Leave him alone.'

At the sound of a new voice, Abren looked up to see a skinny black man standing at the back door. He was as tall as Pen, but stretched out like a taut wire. His cheekbones were high, and his eyes were full of something Abren couldn't quite identify, but she soon found out was laughter. His hair was salt-and-pepper grey, and he wore an old sailor's jersey. A clay pipe stuck out of his mouth, and a thin twist of something that smelt quite unlike tobacco came coiling out of it.

‘Meet Mr Morgan,' Pen said. ‘You can call him Henry if you want to, but hardly anybody does.
Sir Henry
's what most people know him as. After his famous ancestor, you understand, the chief of all the buccaneers, who made his fortune in the Caribbean plundering the Spanish Main. Not that we've seen much of his famous fortune though – apart from the old blunt cutlass hanging in the hall.'

Sir Henry laughed at her, and she beamed round, embracing all of them with her mile-wide smile. Abren thought that she could never call the man Sir Henry. It was a silly name. She looked at Phaze II to see what he thought.

‘What that boy needs isn't food, anyway. It's his bed,' Sir Henry said.

He was right. Phaze II was visibly wilting. His
bruises had come out like swollen prunes soaked in tea. His shoulders were sagging. His good eye was closing and Abren guessed that his other one – examined by a doctor at the police station, and covered in an enormous bandage – was now tightly shut. It had been an unexpected end to what had started as an ordinary day. And now he was exhausted.

They both were
. One look at Abren too, and Pen took them upstairs to their beds. Abren's was a single room with a big, squashy bed and not much space for anything else. A sliding glass door opened out on a balcony. A paper lantern hung from the ceiling and long strips of red paper dangled over the bed. These were decorated with painted beads and feathers, and golden lettering which – according to Pen – wished all who slept beneath them sweet dreams.

Phaze II's room was bigger and contained sweet-dream banners too. It also contained bunk beds, an enormous hammock strung between beams, a model of one of Sir Henry Morgan's many warships and a glass case full of books. The floor was made of golden boards which gave off a lovely, woody, polished smell. And behind another sliding door stood a second balcony.

‘I hope you like it,' Pen said.

Phaze II stared in silence. Abren could see that Pen was proud of the room. But as far as he was concerned, it was just a stupid scud's room. Nothing special.

‘I'll leave you to get settled in,' Pen said. ‘The bathroom's next door. There are towels on the bath, and pyjamas warming in the airing cupboard if you
want them. Oh, and there's ointment in the medicine cabinet if you need it for that face of yours.'

She slipped away, no questions asked about how Phaze II had got that face of his with its big, ripe bruises. He pulled down all the sweet-dream banners, and Abren went to investigate the bathroom. She found it a blue-tiled dream of thick pile carpets, snowy enamel basins and shining chrome taps. Phaze II came in after her, still not a word said between them. He sat on the toilet with the lid down while Abren found the ointment, tilted him into the light and attended to his face. She started with his nose, applying the ointment generously, and finishing up covering most of his skin.

‘I'm sorry,' she whispered every time that Phaze II winced.

Phaze II didn't answer, and Abren felt to blame for everything. Not just the bruises and all that trouble with the BC boys. But that stupid postcard, too, announcing to the world where she was hiding. And Mena's hurt feelings. And Fee's face when he'd told her that she couldn't go back home with him. And Old Sabrina's disappearance.

Everything was Abren's fault.

You'd think that I was cursed. Everything I touch turns sour, Abren thought. Everyone I come across ends up being hurt. And now it'll happen to these people too – Pen and Sir Henry. I've entered their lives and they'll wish I hadn't! Something terrible will happen to them, and it will all be my fault.

Phaze II got up, still without a word, and went to bed. Abren took a bath, marvelling at the filthy state of the water when she got out. Then she went to bed
as well, thinking that sleep would come easily. But it turned out to be impossible, for all Pen's banners wishing sweet dreams. Maybe it was the bed, its mattress as soft as marshmallow after nights spent sleeping on a camp bed. Or maybe it was a sense of foreboding about what tomorrow might bring.

Abren lay rigid in the bed. Down the landing she could hear Pen and Sir Henry laughing and talking to each other until long after their bedroom light had gone out. Their voices made Abren feel lonely. She missed Phaze II. Not just talking to him in the darkness, but the sound of his breathing as well, and that hacking cough of his and the way he sometimes shouted in his sleep.

In the end she got up and went to his door. She half expected to find that he had run away, but he lay stretched out on the bottom bunk, with not a muscle moving. Abren thought of waking him, but she didn't dare. Phaze II was a mystery. Even after all this time she still never knew how he would react to things.

So she went back to her room instead, and stood out on the balcony. The night was clear and mild, stars in the sky but the moon nowhere to be seen. House lights were out all over town and everything was quiet. Abren leant against the railing, looking down a steeply terraced garden. At the bottom she could see something dark moving away between the trees. It was the river, of course. Always the river in this town – there was no getting away from it.

Abren watched it flowing past a long jetty with a boat shed built behind it, half screened by trees. Someone had left a light on inside the shed and she could see a pile of wooden planks stacked on shelves.
See another basket, too, like the willow one hanging in the hall, and a row of paint tins.

Suddenly, Abren felt as if she could sleep at last. She didn't care that she and Phaze II hadn't made up. Didn't care what had happened to Old Sabrina. Didn't care that she'd spent half the day running round the town in a state of terror, chased by nothing more substantial than a half-memory. She didn't even care what tomorrow would bring.

She went to bed, leaving the sliding window open so that she could see the river flowing past. It made her feel safe, but she couldn't have said why.

Abren awoke in the morning to a high, tight whine which she'd never heard before. She leapt out of bed and followed it to Phaze II's room. Here she found him nursing his ear against the pillow, crying to himself through clenched fists. She went off for the Morgans, and found them in the kitchen bustling between the toaster and the frying pan. She told them about Phaze II and explained about the stampede at the football pitch. Sir Henry spat with disgust at the mention of the BC boys, and Pen rushed upstairs.

She was down again five minutes later, bringing Phaze II dressed and ready to be taken to hospital. He didn't want to go but didn't have much choice. Bright and determined, Pen whisked him away. Abren wanted to go too, but Pen said that she should stay. She bundled Phaze II into her car and the last Abren saw of them was when it pulled out into the steep lane which ran up from the river beside their house.

‘Yet something else that's all my fault!' Abren said as she watched them go.

Sir Henry tried to coax her into eating some of the mountain of breakfast which was left behind. It was the last thing Abren wanted, but she gave in for a quiet life. While she ate, Sir Henry sat opposite her, drawing on a pipeful of his favourite smoke – dried coltsfoot, which he said grew down by the river.

Half hidden by its blue haze, Abren thought that he
did indeed look like a bold Sir Henry Morgan, with his clay pipe, wild curly hair and dark-brown eyes. Even more so when he got up, pulled on a pair of tall leather boots and turned towards the back door, announcing that he was off to see what he'd caught in his putcheons. Did Abren want to come with him?

Abren didn't know what putcheons were. Before she could ask, however, the door knocker thundered. Sir Henry went to answer it and a driver sat outside, blocking the road and yelling that he'd got a delivery for Mr Henry Morgan of Compass House, Town Walls.

‘We'll have to look at the putcheons later,' Sir Henry called, rushing through the house to let the driver in round the back, and unload the deliveries down at the boat shed.

Abren was forgotten, much to her relief. Suddenly Compass House was empty, and she liked it that way. It was good to be alone, thinking her own thoughts. She didn't have to smile as if everything was all right. Didn't have to eat to keep anybody happy, or say she'd slept like a log in the marshmallow bed, when she would have been more comfortable on the floor.

She walked from room to room, exploring the house, but with her mind always on the phone. What was happening at the hospital? She wished that Pen would ring and tell her. Why had Phaze II cried like that? Was he going to be all right? In the end she sat down by the phone, wishing that she'd insisted on going along with them, and refusing to move until it rang.

How long she remained like that she didn't know. Only when the front-door knocker thundered again
did she come to herself. She ran to the door, hoping it would be Phaze II, miraculously cured. But a police officer greeted her, standing on the narrow bit of pavement. She was a detective, she said, pulling out a wodge of official-looking papers, and she had some questions which she wanted to ask.

‘You'll have been expecting me,' she said, walking straight in. ‘You and your young friend. You'd better go and tell him that I'm here.'

Abren explained about the hospital, hoping that the woman would go away and come again another day. But she had a job to do and nothing, it seemed, was going to get in her way.

‘Never mind,' she said. ‘I can make a start with you.'

She marched into the Morgans' front room, bringing with her a hint of stale tobacco, settled down on the sofa and spread her papers around her. Abren sat on a wooden chair, as far away as she could get. The woman's job might be to ask questions, but Abren had spent months avoiding them, and she was determined not to change.

She wriggled on her chair, wishing herself anywhere but there. The woman stopped fiddling with her papers and briefly looked up. A pen sat poised between her brown-stained fingers. Abren looked into her cold eyes and longed for rescue.

‘Name, please,'
the woman said, bending over her papers again.

Abren refused to answer.

‘Date of birth
?
'

She didn't have an answer.

‘
Home address
?
'