He raised his lined wide face until his Adam’s apple was almost as prominent as the two knuckles of his chin. “I was serious.”
“Oh, now, Wilf, I really don’t think you can say your feelings are swept under the carpet all that much. But do remember you aren’t the only — ”
“About how she dresses, and don’t bother telling me you used to dress that way.”
“I could again if you like.”
“I’m still serious. You were older, old enough your parents couldn’t stop us marrying. Besides which, girls weren’t in the kind of danger they are these days.”
“That’s why we have folk like you patrolling. Most people are as decent as they used to be, and three of them live in this house.”
He lowered his head as if his thoughts had weighed it down, and peered at her beneath his eyebrows. “Never mind hiding in there,” she said with the laugh she had increasingly to use on him. “Instead of thinking whatever you’re thinking, why don’t you start your patrol early if you’re so worried and see her onto the bus.
“By God, you two are alike,” he said, slapping his thighs so hard she winced, and pushed himself to his feet.
“That’s us women for you.”
The front door thumped shut, and Claire expelled a long breath through her nose. If only he wouldn’t disapprove quite so openly and automatically of all that Laura was becoming — “What’s wrong?” she blurted, because he had tramped back in.
“Nothing you’ve spotted.” He played the xylophone of the stripped pine banisters as he climbed the stairs to the parental bedroom. She’d begun to wonder what was taking him so long when he reappeared, drumming his fingernails on his neighbourhood patrol badge, which he’d pinned to his black top over his heart. “Found it in with your baubles,” he said. “Now maybe I’ve some chance of being taken notice of.”
In the photograph he seemed determined to look younger, hence threatening. It still made her want to smile, and to prevent herself she asked “Who’s out there at the moment, do you know?”
“Your friend Mr Gummer for one.”
“No friend of mine. He’d better not come hanging round here if he sees you’re away.”
“You’d hope putting on one of these badges would make him into a pillar,” Wilf said as he let himself out of the house.
Claire followed to close the filigreed gate at the end of their cobbled path after him, and watched him trot along the street of large twinned houses and garages nestling against them. Perhaps she was being unfair, but Duncan Gummer was the kind of person — no, the only person — who made her wish that those who offered to patrol had to be vetted rather than merely to live in the small suburb. Abruptly she wanted him to show himself and loiter outside her house as he often found an excuse to do while he was on patroclass="underline" she could tell him she’d sent Wilf away and see how he reacted. She had a vision of his moist lower lip exposing itself, his clasped hands dangling over his stomach, their inverted prayer indicating his crotch. She wriggled her shoulders to shrug off the image and sent herself into the house to finish icing Laura’s cake.
She was halfway through piping the pink letters onto the snow-white disc when she faltered, unable to think how to cross the t of “Happy Birthday” without breaking her script. How had she done it twelve months ago and all the times before? She particularly wanted this cake to be special, because she knew she wouldn’t be decorating many more. Perhaps it was the shrilling of an alarm somewhere beyond the long back garden with its borders illuminated by flowers that was putting her off, a rapid bleeping like an Engaged tone speeded up. She imagined trying to place a call only to meet such a response — a sound that panic seemed to be rendering frantic. Nervousness was gaining control of her hands now that Wilf had aggravated the anxiety she experienced just about whenever Laura left the house.
She’d spent some time in flexing her fingers and laying down the plastic tool again for fear of spoiling the inscription — long enough for the back garden to fill up with the shadow of the house — before she decided to go out and look for him. Laura would be fine at the school disco, and on the bus home with her friends, so long as she’d caught the bus there. Having set the alarm — she needn’t programme the lights to switch themselves on, she would only be out for a few minutes — Claire draped a linen jacket over her shoulders and walked to the end of the road.
The Chung boys were sluicing the family Lancia with buckets of soapy water and a great deal of Cantonese chatter. Several mowers were rehearsing a drowsy chorus against the improvised percussion of at least two pairs of shears. The most intrusive sound, though not the loudest, was the unanswered plea of the alarm. When Claire reached the junction she saw that the convulsive light that accompanied the noise was several hundred yards away along the cross street, close to the pole of the deserted bus stop at the far end, against the baize humps of the golf course. As she saw all this, the alarm gave up. She turned from it and caught sight of Wilf.
He mustn’t have seen her, she thought, because he was striding away. Shrunken by distance, and obviously unaware that his trousers were a little lower than they might be — more like a building worker’s than any outfit of the architect he was — he looked unexpectedly vulnerable. She couldn’t imagine his tackling anyone with more than words, but then members of the patrol weren’t supposed to use force, only to alert the police. She felt a surge of the old affection, however determined he seemed these days to give it no purchase on his stiff exterior, as she cupped her hands about her mouth. “Wilf.”
At first she thought he hadn’t heard her. Two mowers had travelled the length of their lawns before he swung round and marched towards her, his face drawn into a mask of concern. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I hope. I just wanted to know if you saw her onto the bus.”
“She wasn’t there.”
“Are you sure?” Claire couldn’t help asking. “She’d have been in time for it, wouldn’t she?”
“If it came.”
“Don’t say that. How else could she have gone?”
“Maybe she got herself picked up.”
“She’d never have gone in anybody’s car she didn’t know, not Laura.”
“You’d hope not. That’s what I meant, a lift from a friend who was going, their parents, rather.”
The trouble was that none of Laura’s friends would have needed to be driven past the bus stop. Perhaps this had occurred to Wilf, who was staring down the street past Claire. A glance showed her that the streetlamp by the bus stop had acknowledged the growing darkness. The isolated metal flag gleamed like a knife against the secretive mounds of the golf course. “She should be there by now,” Claire said.
“You’d imagine so.”
It was only a turn of phrase, but it made her suspect herself of being less anxious than he felt there was reason to be. “She won’t like it, but she’ll have to put up with it,” she declared.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m going to phone to make sure she’s arrived.”
“That’s — yes, I should.”
“Are you coming to hear? You aren’t due on the street for a few minutes yet.”
“I thought I’d send your favourite man Mr Gummer home early. You’re right, though, I ought to be with you for the peace of mind.”
If he had just the average share, she reflected, she might have more herself. It took her several minutes to reach the phone, as a preamble to doing which she had to walk home not unduly fast and unbutton the alarm, by which time there was surely no point in calling except to assure herself there wasn’t. The phone at the disco went unanswered long enough for Wilf to turn away and rub his face twice; then a girl’s voice younger than Claire was expecting, and backed by music loud enough to distort it, said “Sin Tans.”