The Summer of Secrets (18 page)

‘Even terrorists have to live somewhere.’ Victoria got up and went over to the window, craning her head sideways as if she was trying to see the boat. ‘And what better place to hide?’

‘I bet she’s making it up.’ Helen closed her eyes, the blood in her eyelids throbbing in time with her foot. ‘You don’t get terrorists, anyway. Not in this country.’

‘What about the IRA?’

Helen felt too tired to argue. She let the silence stretch out.

‘Which reminds me –’ there was the sound of Victoria crossing the room – ‘I wanted to show you something.’

The door opened and Victoria’s feet thumped off down the stairs. Tiredness washed over Helen’s body; she buried her face in the pillow and tried not to breathe. When she heard Victoria come back, she pretended to be asleep.

‘Helen?’ She felt Victoria nudge at her arm, but it was too much effort to respond. ‘Helen?’ The whisper came again, then retreating feet and the closing of the door.

The shutters go up with their usual rattle and I remember, yet again, that the windows need cleaning. It doesn’t matter, though, because the sun only hits this bit of the street for a short burst in the early morning before it disappears behind the shadow of the concrete multi-storey opposite. I’m only going through the motions today, and I wouldn’t even be doing that if it weren’t for the fact I need something to occupy me that doesn’t require emotional energy.

Larry bought the place before the Northern Quarter was redeveloped, for a clientele of solitary men who slipped in unnoticed and didn’t need shiny window displays. The shop’s uninviting position, on a tatty, curving access road, was a bonus then. The sex shops have largely disappeared, but a niche in the market they’d unexpectedly unearthed – selling D. H. Lawrence and Henry Miller – had led Larry into the second-hand book market. By the time I started to work there, it made up most of his trade, and his shop was part of a circuit browsed by wordless bibliophiles, as discreet in their way as the previous clients. They’ve mostly gone as well now and, with the tramlines and the bus station cutting us off from the bars and vintage shops and no Larry behind the counter recounting his stories, there’s not much point in making the effort.

There’s a customer waiting today. He follows me in, and stands in front of the crime and thriller shelf, pretending that’s what he is in here for. He’s going to be disappointed. When Larry was alive and in charge, that bookcase was filled with books about walking: Wainwright guides and Ordnance Survey maps, that sort of thing. The men would come in and pause to scan the shelves before strolling around the end and through one of those curtains made of strips of plastic in primary colours. Larry didn’t let me go in there, even though it was OK for me to take the money and wrap the magazines into a brown paper roll. One of the reasons he had against me when I first applied for the post of assistant was that I’d remind them of their daughters, put them off buying, but he could see I needed him. So I got to spend my days browsing the shelves out front, learning them by heart.

Some of them drop by occasionally, the old blokes who haven’t kept up with the times, and it’s always eyes right for the maps, then a step forward before stopping dead as it hits them: the magazines aren’t there any more, the curtain has gone. They tend to buy a couple of thrillers to save face, though some of them like to talk about the old days. I keep a few
Playboy
s in Larry’s memory.
Never forget
, he would say, tapping his fat forefinger down hard on the counter,
how many writers got their break in
Playboy.
Quality publication.
I often wonder what he’d make of the marketplace today, the online porn, the disappearing second-hand bookshops. He’d have laughed, I think, and set himself up on eBay.

On the wall by the till, there are some framed photographs from his heyday. Larry in his black overcoat, hair combed to the side, hobnobbing with a forgotten comedian. Larry at the dog races, next to a man with a trophy tucked in the crook of his sleeve. There’s even one where he has his arm around the shoulder of a very young George Best. They’re gritty, grey-toned. I remember the photos Victoria showed me of Alice and Jakob and Piet, the London of the sixties. The same time in history, perhaps, but it might as well have been happening in a different universe.

I close my eyes to let the memories brush through my mind. The runaway Alice, picked up on a street corner by the young artist, who falls in love with her face and her body, painting her into his best work only to lose her to his glamorous brother. I feel Victoria fixing me with a compelling gaze and hear her voice: ‘You can never talk about it to anyone. I shouldn’t be telling you, really.’ Alice had the most beautiful face I had ever seen, her eyes forever fixed elsewhere. She was the princess in the tower, the lady in the mist. I would have believed anything I was told about her. But was it even Victoria who told me about Alice being a runaway? I press my fingertips against my eyelids, letting the specks of colour swirl and retreat. I don’t trust my recollection of the past any more.

At the end of the day, whatever their provenance, these are stories belonging to a summer which existed outside of the bounds of everyday reality. And its abrupt ending, its total, final and underlining cut-off, leaves them floating there, fairy tales from a world so enclosed I am no longer certain what was real and what I had created for myself. The globe clouds over but, before the pictures disappear, I catch sight of Moira, the bad fairy taking the colour away, her mocking face reminding me that I am, will always be, on the outside.

Something falls to the floor and brings me out of the past. I’d forgotten there was anyone else in here. The man who came in behind me has knocked a pile of books over. I pretend I haven’t noticed as he bends and stacks them on the floor before crossing to the records. They’re on the far side, the big squares of the LPs stacked upright so browsers can flick them forwards one at a time, the seven-inch singles heaped into a box. I keep my eye on him. Not in case he helps himself – I can’t work myself up to worry about that, not today. He picks up a record, one from the back of the box, and I send out desperate thought waves.
Not that one
, I ask.
Please, not that one, not today
. He glances round as if he can hear and takes a step away. Then, as he seems he about to leave, he walks quickly back, picks up one of the albums and comes up to the desk. It’s some obscure prog-rock group. I wave his money away in relief. Take it, it’s not worth anything, have a nice day.

When he’s gone, I go over to the box and flick through the records myself. There it is, at the back, the cardboard cover foxed at the corners, but the drummer still smiling, the snail serene in his endless slide. It had turned up in a job lot from a house clearance ten years ago. Cumulus. A message from Victoria to me. I wanted to hide it away, to keep it safe, but something stopped me. It’s not like I believe in all that stuff, but I left it in the box, with the three-for-fifty-pence Top of the Pops and James Lasts and Funky Aerobics, waiting for the day one of them would come in for it. I didn’t need to look at it, didn’t need to know when. It was enough that it was there, keeping a tiny crack open for them to come back to me. If some random customer found it and bought it, I would never see the Dovers again. It was my gamble with the universe.

Could that be the other reason I’ve opened the shop up today? All these years, the record has been there and Victoria has been elsewhere, on another planet. Today, she is in Manchester. Who’s to say she hasn’t brought the others with her? Piet, Alice. The twins. Seth. My fingers tap on the sides of the box. They could arrive early, take some time to explore. They might well be on the lookout for a dusty-fronted store with a box of old LPs. I go back to my stool, aware of every passing shadow, and I reach for the book I keep under the counter. It’s dog-eared and stained, with a cracked spine and only half a cover.
Ulysses
. A relic from another life, almost the only thing I took with me when I left. Altogether, I’ve probably read it at least three times, but never in the right order. It’s become the answer when my mind is unsettled. I don’t have to know where I am, and I don’t have to remember who is who or what is what. I can open it at any page and let the world retreat.

The abandoned glasshouses were majestic in their dereliction. They went on and on, some sheltering the dried and twisted remnants of what might once have been tomato plants. Victoria had been the one to find them, even though they were no more than ten minutes’ walk from Helen’s house, going across the fields. Once they were inside, they could have been anywhere. It was, Helen thought, a bit creepy. Victoria led Helen through space after space, glass crunched under their feet, fugitive wafts of humid growth dissipating around them. The glass magnified the sun to a vicious level of intensity.

‘Didn’t I say it was amazing? Wasn’t it worth leaving your stupid book?’ Victoria spoke in a low voice, as if afraid of being overheard. ‘I can’t believe you’ve never been here before.’

Helen kicked at a stone. ‘I didn’t know they were here. You can’t see them from the road or anything. And my foot still hurts.’

Victoria giggled. ‘Why are we whispering? There’s no one around.’ She stuck her fingers into her mouth and let out a long, shrill whistle.

A tremulous shiver ran through the air, as if the glass edges were responding to the sharp wave of sound. Helen held her breath, prepared for glittering shards to rain down on their heads, for the plants to turn and crawl towards them with grasping tendrils. Nothing happened. The surrounding fields remained quiet; they could have been at the end of the world.

Victoria bent down, grasped a stone and swung her arm around in an arc. From high above their heads came the sound of glass breaking.

Once again, Helen held her breath, but any possible repercussions would have been inaudible in any case, drowned by the triumphant whoops from Victoria, who was already gathering a handful of pebbles for her next throw. She straightened up, saw Helen’s face, and stopped.

‘What’s wrong with you?’

Helen hesitated. ‘I don’t know, I mean, we could get into trouble …’ Her voice tailed off. How could she explain the level of her discomfort? It was wrong: there would be consequences.

‘You honestly believe there’s someone out there who’s worried about how many panes of glass are left?’ Victoria’s tone was both incredulous and scathing. ‘Have you seen the holes? It’s like … it’s like …’ She screwed up her eyes, grappling for the right metaphor. ‘It’s like poking at a dead dinosaur with a matchstick.’ She looked up at Helen and grinned. ‘No one will care! Now come on, throw!’ and she lifted her arm and let the stones in her hand trickle over Helen’s head.

‘Stop it!’ Helen turned, more than half inclined to walk off. There had been dust in with the stones, and she could feel it thickening her hair and sticking to the sweat on her neck. She was too angry to trust herself to say anything, and had a satisfying vision of throwing Victoria herself through the glass walls.

‘Come on.’ Victoria’s voice was wheedling now, a hint of a laugh at its tail, and she started to rub at Helen’s head.

‘Get off.’ Helen wriggled away, running through the doorway into the next greenhouse. Victoria followed, and Helen dodged behind an abandoned workbench. It was too hot to keep running, though. She tipped her head down and ruffled at her hair to get the grit out.

Victoria scooped up another handful of stones. ‘There isn’t anyone to care, you know.’ She threw the whole lot, hard, against the end panes. The stones bounced off and scattered, too small and spread out to make an impact. She cast a glance about and took a step towards some bigger stones piled in a corner, then shrugged the canvas rucksack she was wearing off her shoulders and put it down, squatting beside it in the dust as she undid the buckles.

‘Have you got a drink in there?’ Helen asked, trying to make light of the situation. ‘I’ll do anything you want for something cold and wet.’

‘No.’ Victoria was shielding the bag with her body as if on purpose. ‘Piet let me borrow it. I need to get the settings right.’

When she stood up, she was holding an expensive camera with a long lens. She pointed it towards Helen, squinting through the viewfinder, then held it out in front of her, doing something with the dials on the back.

‘Does he know you borrowed it?’

Victoria kept her head down as she replied. ‘You have such a suspicious mind.’ She positioned the camera in front of her face again but carried on talking. ‘What I want is an action shot of you breaking the glass.’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’d be the one who got in trouble. On film.’ Helen went back to the workbench and leaned against it, her back half turned. She heard a click from behind.

‘OK.’ Victoria’s response was unexpected. Helen swivelled in surprise, but Victoria carried on, as if she was thinking aloud. ‘I can come back another time. Not the twins, though. I’ll have to ask Moira.’

There was a half-brick lying a few feet from her. Without letting herself stop to consider, Helen stooped to grab it. The smash was intoxicating, the pleasure of destruction unexpected. She could hear the camera clicking away behind her.

‘I hope you got that, I’m not doing it again.’ She heard her voice shake, felt the remnants of the adrenaline rush burn at her skin.

‘This would be a great place to practise for an insurgency.’ Victoria had let the camera dangle on its strap and was juggling a stone between her hands.

‘A what?’

‘An insurgency, like plotting to overthrow a government.’

‘I know what an insurgency is, thank you.’ Helen took a deep breath. She was feeling a bit dizzy. ‘I meant, why an insurgency?’

‘It’s so boring sometimes.’ Victoria threw her stone up in the air, hitting it away with her palm as it came down. ‘Moira was telling me about all these campaigns she’s been in. Barricades and sit-ins. And revolutions.’