The Hunted, page 15
‘You betcha,’ he said. ‘And you think of the money she’s making.’
But before Tarrin could really get around to thinking about all that and to working out whether any amount of money was worth having to be in a child’s body until the day you died, Deet’s new mobe rang.
‘Mobe’s ringing, Deet.’
‘I can hear it.’
‘Why did you get a new one yesterday?’
‘Free upgrade.’
‘Can I have the old one?’
‘No. They kept it. Now, shh! – I’m answering!’
It could only be one person. There was only one person to whom he had so far given the new phone number.
‘Mr Hartinger, good morning. How are you, sir? Yes, indeed it is. Deet speaking. No, not Mr Deet, sir, no necessity for that. Just Deet, it is, straight Deet, not formalities, no titles. Just straight Deet will do when people are making the cheques out. Ha ha! That’s right. My little joke.’
Tarrin winced. He always cringed at Deet and his little jokes and at the ingratiating way he talked to people who had money, as if trying to both wheedle and to bludgeon his way into their affections and their finances.
‘So, Mr Hartinger, and what can I do for you, sir? I’m assuming this isn’t just a simple How-dee-do call, though if it is, it’s more than welcome. Or maybe there’s a question or two you forgot to ask last night. Some details you might need to be apprised of.’
Deet winked at Tarrin again, as if to say, ‘The fish is on the line, he’s taking the bait, we’ve got ourselves a live one.’
‘You’ve discussed it? Well, I’m glad to hear that, sir. Both you and your good lady? Well, that’s a good thing to do, if you don’t mind my saying, a joint and mutual decision. Avoids future friction, I always think, and makes for the more harmonious relationship.’
He winked at Tarrin again.
‘So you’re still interested, sir? And you’d like to make an offer? If he’s still available? Well . . . I guess he is, just about . . . though right at this moment, sir, I have to say that I’m fielding calls. Fielding calls, Mr Hartinger. Other interested parties, I have to say, who’ve made offers themselves. But I told them I wouldn’t accept nothing nor put pen to any paper until I’d heard from you.’
Deet covered the mobe with his hand and whispered gleefully, ‘I’ll get him to push the price for you, kid.’ He winked again, as if Tarrin ought to be pleased about this – that not only was Deet selling him, he was trying to get the top price for him too.
Tarrin went cold. He felt a deep inner rage.
‘What about me, Deet?’ his mind screamed. ‘What about me?’
I won’t go, he told himself. I won’t go. I won’t go and live with those people in that great big house. I won’t go.
Then he looked at Deet, at the stubble on his chin which no razor ever quite removed, at the grease on the plate in front of him, at the sly expression on his face as he negotiated with Hartinger, and he thought that if he didn’t go, then this was the alternative. This was it.
‘Well, that sounds like a fair price to me, sir . . .’
I want to go home, Deet. Can’t I go home? Do you know where my home is Deet?
Deet always got angry when he asked him that. No idea, kid. Don’t know. Couldn’t say. Couldn’t help you there.
Where’s my real home, Deet?
This hotel is home. What’s wrong with the hotel? You oughta be grateful. It’s a nice room. It’s got a TV with five hundred and forty-nine channels and a Gideon Bible by the bed. What’s wrong with the room?
Do I have a mum and dad, Deet?
Sure you did. One time.
What happened to them, Deet?
Couldn’t say, kid.
You must know. Didn’t they love me?
Sure they did.
Did they sell me then? Why did they sell me if they loved me?
Maybe times were hard, kid. Who knows. Or maybe they didn’t sell you. Maybe it was a car crash and an orphanage affair.
Are they dead, Deet?
I don’t like to upset you kid, but who knows, who knows?
How did you find me, Deet?
Told you, kid, won you in a card game.
Seriously?
Yeah. Sure.
Who was I with then?
Some rich guy who thought he was good at cards.
Not my dad?
He wasn’t your dad, nah.
So how did I come to be with him?
I don’t know, kid, you’re going too far back for me now.
Can’t we try to find them, Deet?
Past is gone, kid. Forget about it. Think about the here and now.
But if the past was gone, why did the dreams still come? Dreams of the sunlight filtering through the trees. Dreams of a woman, dreams of a man? Dreams of the scent of freshly mown grass and the sound of cattle lowing in the fields? If the past were truly gone, why did it keep returning?
I remember, I remember,
The house where I was born . . .
‘OK, Mr Hartinger, we have ourselves a deal, sir. I’ll be round to shake hands on it and to bring the kid over some time this afternoon. I’m sorry? How does he feel about it? The kid? Oh, he’s delighted.’
Deet grinned at Tarrin and winked, mouthing, ‘You’re delighted, aren’t you, kid?’ He winked again. Then he fixed a time, said cheerio and finished the call. He put the mobe down on the table, took up his knife and fork and cut into a sausage. It had gone cold and globules of fat had congealed upon its surface.
‘It’s done, kid,’ he said. ‘We sold you.’ He speared some sausage into his mouth.
Tarrin sat there, shocked into silence and incredulity.
Sold me? Sold me?
But you can’t sell me, Deet.
You can’t sell me. I’m a human being. You can’t sell a human being, Deet. Not a human being.
Deet took another bite of his sausage. He waved the bit that remained on his fork in a gesture of appreciation. Deet with a sausage, it was like a connoisseur with a bottle of fine, vintage wine.
‘Hmm. Good sausage, kid,’ he said. ‘Just how I like them.’
You can’t sell me, Deet, Tarrin’s mind went on repeating. I’m a human being. You can’t sell me.
But apparently he just had.
10
Souvenir
After breakfast, Deet took Tarrin around a couple of shops where he bought him a new toothbrush and a notebook and pen.
‘To remember me by, kid,’ he said, though the pen was not really expensive. ‘I dare say I’ll be calling by every now and then to see how you are and that no one’s mistreating you, but I won’t be outstaying my welcome. They’ll be wanting to bond with you, no doubt about that, and won’t want too many mementoes of the past coming by – such as myself. But just remember, kid, that out of sight don’t necessarily mean out of mind and that I’ll still be watching out for you.’
He winked his conspiratorial wink again. Tarrin was sure that Deet was up to something. He just didn’t know what, but he knew better than to ask, for Deet would just clam up and tell him nothing. Whereas if he didn’t ask, he might let something slip before they got to the Hartingers’.
They returned to the hotel and Tarrin packed his few possessions. He still felt numb, a little frightened and apprehensive at the prospect of change. In Deet, there was the comfort of familiarity, but Tarrin knew in his heart that he had never loved the man, barely even liked him a lot of the time.
‘Well, I’ll miss you, kid,’ Deet said, as he checked around the room, making sure that Tarrin had everything. ‘It’s been a long haul and a long road and we’ve seen some good times, but even the best of friends must part and so it is with you and me. It’s a good home you’re going to, kid. There’s money there and they’ll look after you. So don’t you disappoint them, as I don’t want any complaints or anyone demanding any refunds. Just go with the flow, kid, and you’ll have a ball. So let’s put that happy face on and we’ll go do the deed.’
Deet gave him a playful punch on the shoulder. And that was it. They left the hotel and got a cab to millionaires’ row.
They didn’t see the man in the car, parked a short way down and across the street from the Hartingers’ front door. They didn’t see him as he watched them get out of the taxi, watched Deet pay the driver, watched curiously as Tarrin pulled a bag and a small suitcase out of the taxi after him – as if he had come to stay somewhere for a while.
The man watched as they walked up the drive to the Hartingers’ house and as the door opened and they were admitted. He watched the door for forty-five minutes, after which time it opened again and Deet came out alone, calling goodbyes to those within, and folding up what looked like a cheque and putting it safely away into his wallet. Then he stood a while, looking up and down the street for a cab. Seeing none, he began to walk. He walked right past the car the man was sitting in. The man raised a newspaper as Deet approached, but Deet paid him no heed. As Deet walked by, the man looked at his face and didn’t much care for what he saw.
He sat in the car for a long time – longer than was safe, but he had to risk it – waiting for Deet to return to collect the boy, waiting for the boy to come out. Eventually it grew dark, and still Deet did not return.
‘He’s not coming back,’ Kinane thought. ‘He’s sold him.’
He sat there wondering how he could ever break into the house, with its cameras and alarms and security. It would be difficult, but anything was possible – at least it was when there was enough at stake.
It had been an awkward and a stilted farewell, with Mrs Hartinger anxious to see the back of Deet as quickly as possible, but not wishing to seem ungracious by urging him to go, or by making such remarks as, ‘Well, we musn’t keep you, Mr Deet,’ and ‘Well, thank you for bringing Tarrin round . . . I’m sure you must be busy.’
The business side of things had been taken care of by Deet and Mr Hartinger, who were ensconced in the latter’s study. Deet made a pretence of admiring the paintings on the walls, while all the time keeping a close eye on the words and figures Hartinger was writing in his chequebook.
When Deet was satisfied, he handed over Tarrin’s documents and the two men shook hands.
‘Well, he’s yours now, and I’m sure you’ll give him a good home.’
‘We will, Mr Deet, rest assured of that.’
‘He couldn’t do better, I’m thinking,’ Deet said. ‘Nice surroundings, good address, educated people . . .’
‘We’ll do our best for him, Mr Deet.’
‘Which is why I’m letting him come to you,’ Deet said. ‘It’s his future I’m thinking of, his welfare. I’ve only ever wanted the best for the boy, and you can offer him things that I never could – home, security, family. That’s what a child needs.’
Hartinger would dearly have loved to tell Deet exactly what sort of a lying, parasitic, self-serving hypocrite he thought he was. But there was doubt in Hartinger’s mind as to his own actions. If Deet had sunk low enough to sell a child, then what had Hartinger done in buying him? Or could he excuse his behaviour on the grounds that he was indeed in a position to offer Tarrin a better future and a better home?
‘Well, I’ll just say a quick goodbye to him, if I might, then I’ll be on my way.’
Hartinger would have preferred it if Deet could have contented himself with just the second of these two actions, but he could hardly refuse his request, so he led the way to the drawing room where Tarrin and Mrs Hartinger were – as Deet put it – ‘getting acquainted’.
‘So how’s it going, kid?’ Deet said. ‘You getting to know your new ma? She’s a good one, kid, I can tell you that. She’ll love you like you were her own. Ain’t that so, ma’am?’
‘We’ll certainly do our best to give Tarrin all the love and care he needs, Mr Deet,’ Mrs Hartinger assured him.
Deet spun the moment out for a while, and he even managed to get a little moisture into his eye when it came to the final parting of the ways. But however upset he was to part from his charge, the cheque in his pocket seemed to console him.
‘Bye then, kid. You be happy.’
‘And you. Bye, Deet.’
As he turned to go, Tarrin felt his own tears begin to fall. He wanted to run to Deet, to put his arms round him, to beg him not to leave.
Don’t go, Deet. Please, don’t go!
But even as the tears fell, he recognized that what prompted them was not any real love for the man, just a sense of loss of the past, and a fear of the future.
Then the butler arrived, and Deet was gone, walking out of the drawing room, going along the corridor, then the front door was heard to close. Tarrin hurried to the window just in time to see Deet walk down the steps to the street.
He saw the way he scrutinized the cheque, the way he put it away safely in his wallet, the way he put the wallet away and patted his pocket, the way he walked on without a backward glance.
Suddenly Tarrin didn’t feel so sad after all.
‘Tarrin . . . Tarrin?’
‘Sorry, I was just thinking . . .’
‘Would you like to get settled? In your room?’
‘Yes, OK.’
‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes, I’m all right, ma’am.’
‘Please, Tarrin . . .’
‘Yes, ma’am?’
‘Mum – I’m your mother now – aren’t I? And you’re our son. Mum and Dad. Can you call us that? Is that OK? Mum and Dad?’
‘Yes, of course . . . Mum . . .’
She smiled. ‘And Dad.’
Tarrin smiled too. He even seemed to stand straighter, visibly to grow in stature.
They weren’t really ‘Mum and Dad’, of course, and they never would be. But the desire to please was ingrained in him, after so many years of doing nothing else. That was why he was there, after all, to keep the customer happy.
For the first few days Tarrin buried himself in books. His new room was full of them.
Deet hadn’t liked books much. ‘I don’t trust them,’ he’d said. Though he liked the cinema. ‘Give me the visual image, the motion picture, any time. I’m not saying the camera can’t lie, of course it can, it lies all the time. But books lie too. And if you need all those words to say something, there’s something fishy going on. If a man needs five hundred pages to tell a lie, what kind of a lie is he telling? A film isn’t like that. Someone arches an eyebrow on screen, and that tells you a whole lot about him, but in a book it would take three pages, and a stack of punctuation.’
Tarrin worked his way through the books. He read about families and schools. He read about people whose parents had split up, of children who had run away from home, who didn’t get on at school, who were poor, who were picked on, who had to struggle against terrible odds and adversities, but it all worked out somehow in the end.
But there was no one like him. Which was maybe no bad thing either. Because he didn’t want to read about anyone like himself. He didn’t wish to be reminded. He wanted only to forget, to disappear for a while into that book-filled graveyard, to be buried there, to haunt the headstones, to never come back to life.
The Hartingers were tactful people and they didn’t bother him much for the first few days. They just saw to it that he had all that he needed and that he didn’t go hungry or short of company when he wanted it. They made polite conversation with him when they all sat together round the table at meal times. They were fine, kind, gentle, considerate, sophisticated people.
And yet . . .
Tarrin didn’t know what it was. But it was some immense, uncrossable gulf, like one of those canyons that they had in adventure films, with a rickety old rope and wooden plank bridge stretched perilously across it, and sure to break the moment anyone put their weight upon it.
It was a gulf of time.
The Hartingers were both over a century old. Their own childhoods were so far away now that they could remember little about them, or how it had ever felt to be truly young.
So they were nice, very nice. And yet, whenever Tarrin came across the blue-grey Persian cat, he felt that, yes, that was just what he was too – an acquisition, a must-have, he was something that would look nice around the house – a pet.
He noticed that when Mrs Hartinger picked the cat up, she would say, ‘Floo-Floo come to Mummy now. Floo-Floo come to his mummy.’
Then he would remember that she had asked him to call her ‘Mum’.
So there was Tarrin and there was Floo-Floo – different species, yes, but both household pets, one a cat, one a boy.
After allowing him a few days to settle in, Mrs Hartinger took him out in the car to have him measured for some new clothes.
‘I know you can still buy the odd thing off the peg,’ she said. ‘But there isn’t much to choose from, so it’ll be nice to have something made.’
So she took him to a tailor.
Then they arranged for tutors to give him lessons.
‘Did you actually learn anything while you were with Mr Deet, Tarrin?’
‘Yes. He used to buy me Edu-Packs. He said I ought to study. He said people didn’t want to rent a kid for the afternoon if he was going to turn out to be pig— that is – if he was going to turn out to be ignorant.’
‘Good, well, we’re not completely starting from the beginning then. But we’ll get a few tutors in, to smooth off those rough edges, shall we say. Do you play the piano?’
‘No.’
‘Would you like to learn?’
He didn’t know. ‘Er, yes. I guess.’
‘Good. We’ll start lessons for you next week.’
‘OK.’
‘And we’ll have to get you your injections. Did Mr Deet take you for your injections?’
‘I’m – I’m not sure. Yes. I think he did.’
‘We’ll get you a health check anyway and, if you need them, we’ll get you your injections. Which reminds me, I must arrange to take Floo-Floo to the vet. He needs his injections too.’
Over the course of the next two weeks, a routine developed. Tarrin would wake, have breakfast, and then a tutor would come to take him through a particular subject, or the piano teacher would arrive to take him through his exercises and scales.
