As he fumbled for the light switch he heard a scream. It sounded muffled., presumably by glass—by the window. He couldn’t tell whether it signified delight or dismay or a confusion of both, but he would have preferred not to be greeted by it. A memory was waiting to claim him once he huddled under the quilt in the dark.
Yet had he done anything so dreadful? Days after the incident at the Imperial, her mother had taken him and Dorothy to the amusement park. On the Ghost Train his cousin had sat as far from him as the bench would allow, though when the skull-faced car had blundered into the daylight they’d pretended to be chums for her mother’s camera. For her benefit they’d lent their faces to the painted couple, ancestors of the pair behind which Helen had posed. Lionel had been growing impatient with the pretense and with Dorothy’s covert hostility when he’d seen all six dwarfs, dapper in suits and disproportionately generous ties, strutting towards them.
He must have been too young to imagine how she might feel, otherwise he would surely have restrained himself. He’d grabbed her shoulders, wedging her head in the oval. “Look, Dorothy,” he’d whispered hotly in her ear, “they’re coming for you.” In what had seemed to him mere seconds he’d released her, though not before her struggles had caused her dress to ride up, exposing more of her thighs than he’d glimpsed in her room. As she’d dashed into the darkness behind the cartoon he’d heard her mother calling “Where’s Lionel? Where are you going, Dorothy? What’s up now?”
In time nothing much was, Lionel reassured himself: otherwise Dorothy wouldn’t have invited him to spend summers at the boarding-house after she’d inherited it. Or was it quite so straight-forward? He’d always thought that, having forgotten their contentious summer, she had both taken pity on his solitariness and looked to him for company once Carol had married and Dorothy’s husband had succumbed to an early heart attack, but now it occurred to him that she had kept him away from her daughter. He withdrew beneath the covers as if they could hide him from his undefined guilt, and eventually sleep joined him.
He thought walking by the sea might clear his head of whatever was troubling him. There was just one family on the beach. He assumed they were quite distant until he noticed the parents were dwarfs and the children pocket versions of them. They must work in a circus, for all of their faces were painted with grins wider than their mouths, even the face of the baby that was knocking down sandcastles as it crawled about. Lionel had to toil closer., dragging his inflated toy, before he understood that the family was laughing at him. When he followed their gazes he found he was clutching by one breast the life-size naked rubber woman he’d brought to the beach.
He writhed himself awake, feeling that his mind had only started to reveal its depths. As he tried to rediscover sleep he heard a scratching at the window. It must be a bird, though it sounded like fingernails on glass, not even in that part of the room. When it wasn’t repeated he managed to find his way back to sleep.
He felt he hadn’t by breakfast time. Being glanced at by more people than bade him good morning left him with the impression that he looked guilty of his dream. There wasn’t much more of a welcome in the kitchen, where a disagreement had evidently occurred. When Carol met his eyes while Helen didn’t, he said “She’ll be all right for this evening, won’t she?”
“Quite a few things aren’t all right. I’m afraid. Torn serviettes, for a start, and tablecloths not clean that should be.” She was aiming her voice upwards as if to have it fall more heavily on Helen. “We’ve standards to keep up,” she said.
“I think they’re as high as your mother’s ever were, so don’t drive yourself so hard. You deserve a night or two off. Is the show at the Imperial your kind of diversion?”
“More like my idea of hell.”
“Then you won’t be jealous if I take Helen tonight? I’ve got tickets.”
“You might have said sooner.”
“You were busy.”
“Exactly.”
“I think you could both benefit from taking it easier. You and your mother managed., didn’t you?”
Carol unloaded a tray into the sink with a furious clatter and twisted to face him. “You’ve no idea what she was like when you weren’t here. Used me harder than this one ever is, and my dad as well, poor little man. No wonder he had a heart attack.”
Lionel had forgotten how diminutive Dorothy’s husband had been, and hadn’t time to brood about it now. “Let me hold the fort while you two have an evening out,” he said.
“Thanks for the offer, but this place is our responsibility. Make that mine.” Carol sighed at this or as a preamble to muttering “Take her as long as you’ve bought tickets. As you say, I’ll just have to manage.”
He thought it best to respond to that with no more than a sympathetic grimace and to keep clear of her and Helen for a while. He stayed in his room no longer than was necessary to determine he had nothing to wear that would establish a holiday mood. He bought a defiantly luxuriant shirt from a shop in a narrow back street to which the town seemed reluctant to own up, and wandered with the package to the park, where he found a bench well away from the bandstand in case any of the musicians identified him as yesterday’s eructating spectator. The eventual concert repeated its predecessor, which might have allowed him to catch up on his sleep if he hadn’t been nervous of dreaming—of learning what his mind required unconsciousness to acknowledge it contained.
It was close to dinnertime when he ventured back to his room. Rather than examine his appearance, he left the mirror with its back to him. His new shirt raised eyebrows and lowered voices in the dining room. At least Carol said “You’re looking bright.” which would have heartened him more if she hadn’t rebuked Helen: “I hope you’ll be dressing for the occasion as well.”
Perhaps Helen had changed her black T-shirt and denim overalls and chubby shoes when he found her waiting on the pavement outside; he couldn’t judge. He told her she looked a picture, and thought she was responding when she mumbled “Uncle Lionel?”
“At your service.”
She peered sideways at him. “Will you be sad if I don’t come with you?”
“I would indeed.”
“I told Brandon last night I’d meet him. I wouldn’t have if you’d said you’d got tickets.”
“But you’ve known all day.”
“I couldn’t call him. Mum might have heard.”
“You mustn’t expect me to keep covering up for you.” Lionel supposed he sounded unreasonable, having previously complained of not being let into the secret. “Very well, just this once,” he said to forestall the moisture that had gathered in her eyes. “You two go and I’ll meet you at the end of the performance.”
“No, you. You like it.”
It was clear she no longer did. “Where will you be?” he said, and immediately “Never mind. I don’t want to know. Just make certain you’re waiting at the end.”
“I will.”
She might have kissed him, but instead ran across the promenade to her boyfriend. Lionel watched them clasp hands and hurry down a ramp to the beach. He stayed on the far side of the road so as not to glimpse them as he made for the Imperial.
The stout girl in the booth seemed even more suspicious of his returning a ticket than she had been of the purchase. At last she allowed him to leave it in case it could be resold. In the auditorium he had to sidle past a family with three daughters, loud in inverse proportion to their size. He was flattening a hand beside his cheek to ward off some of the clamor of his neighbor, the youngest, when someone tapped him on the shoulder. Seated behind him were two of Carol’s guests: a woman with a small face drawn tight and pale by her sharp nose, her husband whose droopy empurpled features had yet more skin to spare underneath. “Will you be stopping this show too?” the woman said.