They went on towards the burger bar. As they entered, Tarrin looked back over his shoulder, up the street towards the club which was the home of Miss Virginia Two Shoes, everybody’s favourite girl. He briefly wondered what it must be like to be fifty-five years old yet still a child, never to have aged, never to have grown. What was it like for a girl never to become a woman? For a boy never to become a man?

  ‘Come on, kid – time’s moving!’ Deet beckoned him in and Tarrin followed him up to the counter, where they ordered burgers, Cokes and fries.

  ‘And make it snappy,’ Deet told the server. ‘We haven’t got all day.’ Then, ‘Fast food, huh?’ he muttered to Tarrin. ‘Even fast food don’t seem quick enough any more.’

  Yes, time was moving, that was true, time was always moving. But for the other people in the queue, with their forty-year-old faces, time stood still, or seemed to. There were days as long as eternity, afternoons which seemed impossible to fill, evenings that stretched forever towards an unending night. Life was long, life was long. And what did you do when you had done all there was to do? When you had experienced all there was to experience? When you had been everywhere there was to go? When you had read all there was to read? When you had heard all the music and knew all the stories, when you knew every cadence in every symphony, every hook in every song, every twist in every plot, every brush stroke in every work of art? What did you do then? What did you do?

  You took a walk along the street and you bought yourself a ticket for Miss Virginia Two Shoes – fifty-five years old and still dancing, everybody’s favourite girl and the source of eternal delight. And you sat and dreamed of the daughter you had never had and the son you had always wanted, and the children and the grandchildren you had never known and would never know.

  You thought of the family you had always desired, and the sound of children’s voices as they played out in the yard. You dreamed of the washing on the line and the plates in the sink, the untidiness in the rooms and the sounds of squabbling. You dreamed of birthdays, of the puff of breath blowing out candles, of Christmases, of weddings and christenings, of a hundred different occasions. You dreamed of the pictures they painted, the bikes they learned to ride. You dreamed and you dreamed, you forgot and you remembered, as you sat in the darkness while Miss Virginia Two Shoes (who was surely your most favourite girl) sang her song and danced her dance. Then at the end when the applause came, sometimes, before you put your hands together, you reached to your eyes with the flat of your hand and you wiped away a tear.

  A Child for the Afternoon

  As they left the burger bar – Deet picking his teeth with a wooden toothpick – a man passing by looked down at Tarrin and smiled.

  ‘My, that’s a fine child you have there, a fine child,’ the man said to Deet – his voice full of innocent appreciation.

  ‘You want to rent him?’ Deet asked. ‘How long do you want him for? Minimum time is an hour. You can have him for less but you still have to pay for an hour. It’s up to you.’

  The man looked shocked – insulted even.

  ‘Rent him? What do you mean, rent him? What sort of a person do you think I am?’

  ‘Nah, nah, nah,’ Deet said, ‘nothing like that. Strictly legit. You can take him for a walk, take him for a burger – though he’s only just had one so he may not be that hungry. Or you can take him to feed the ducks, take him to the park, play on the swings, skim stones across the pond – you can show him how, like a real dad, you know what I’m saying? And if you want to buy him a present at the end as a sign of appreciation – that’s up to you. He gets to keep everything.’

  No I don’t, Tarrin thought. Not if it’s valuable. You either sell it or keep it for yourself. When anyone took him anywhere, Deet would stalk them, keeping an eye on whatever might happen. If he ever saw any presents being given, he always asked for them when time was up.

  ‘You can’t have him right now, mind,’ Deet said. ‘We’ve got an appointment. But I can book you in for later in the day, or maybe tomorrow would be better. I’m not too sure about next week, we might be moving on.’

  Moving on? It was the first Tarrin knew about it. But that was Deet, always thinking of moving on. Not necessarily doing it, but thinking.

  The man shook his head and walked on. He didn’t want a child, not today. Or maybe he did, but he couldn’t afford one, or maybe he could afford one, but it would just be too painful for him, it would make him think of the son he had always wanted, of the family he had never had.

  So few people could have families now. Sterility was the price of longevity, it seemed. With advanced age and increased lifespan had come new viruses, which had all but destroyed the ability to reproduce. Only the rare and fortunate few had proved immune. Even those who declined to take the Anti-Ageing pills, for moral or ethical reasons, were equally susceptible. Yet if it hadn’t been for this sterility, the world would have become so densely overpopulated – with a high birth rate and low death rate – that people would have been crammed into it like canned sardines.

  Only a minority were still able to conceive children, and those who did have them wouldn’t let them out of their sight – the way you wouldn’t let your gold watch or your most precious possessions out of your sight, or someone would take them from you. It wasn’t the bogeyman children had to worry about, it was Kiddernappers and, unlike the bogeymen and the monsters in the wardrobes, they were real enough.

  ‘Come on, kid,’ Deet said. ‘Let’s get you to Mrs Davey’s – just up here and around the corner, if I reckon it right.’

  They walked down a long street of terraced houses which widened at the end to two rows of detached and more expensive ones with large gardens. Deet checked his watch, led the way up the path to one of the houses and knocked on the door.

  ‘Never trust doorbells,’ he told Tarrin. ‘Sometimes you hear them, sometimes you don’t. And if you don’t hear them, are they ringing inside or aren’t they? But knocking – you know where you are. It’s got a positive feel about it.’

  A woman came to the door and looked out at them through a small glass panel. At the sight of Deet, she looked worried, but when she looked down and saw Tarrin standing next to him, her face relaxed into a smile and she reached to open the door.

  ‘Good day to you, ma’am,’ Deet said, so stiff and formal all of a sudden that Tarrin was afraid that he was going to break into a bow. ‘I believe,’ he continued, ‘that you ordered a child for the afternoon, and I have the pleasure of bringing him right here to your door. This is he,’ he said, nodding at Tarrin, as though Mrs Davey might otherwise have trouble working out which of them was the child and which wasn’t. He nudged Tarrin with his elbow and muttered, ‘Say hello to the lady and mind your manners.’

  Mrs Davey overheard him and smiled. ‘No need to tell him to mind his manners,’ she said. ‘He seems like a nice, polite and well-behaved boy to me.’

  Deet latched on to her words immediately, anxious to agree with them and to embellish them.

  ‘Indeed he is, ma’am, indeed he is. A nicer boy would be hard to find. In fact, come to that, any boy would be hard to find these days . . .’

  It was intended to be a small joke, but the childless Mrs Davey plainly did not find it amusing. Deet rapidly tried to salvage the situation.

  ‘Yes, any boy would be hard to find, and any girl too. And a sad and distressing state of affairs it is, ma’am, for a woman like yourself, if I may say, who would maybe love to have a family, and who – if I may make so bold, ma’am – would make a fine, fine mother. A fine one, if appearances can be trusted, and, in this instance, I believe they can.’

  Mrs Davey seemed well aware of the insincerity of his words, but was touched by them just the same. Tarrin saw her eyes grow cloudy.

  ‘I would,’ she nodded. ‘And that is the truth Mr . . .’

  ‘Deet,’ Deet said. ‘No first name, no after. Just straight Deet is how I take it.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Deet,’ she continued, ‘I would love a family. As you can see, I haven’t even begun to take the Anti-Ageing . . .’

  ‘I can see you’re still a young woman, ma’am,’ Deet agreed. It was on the tip of his tongue to add, ‘And a very attractive one,’ but he rightly thought that this would be pushing familiarity too far.

  ‘We would both love children,’ Mrs Davey said. ‘Both my husband and myself. But like so many other couples – so, so many other couples – alas, it has not proved possible.’

  ‘Alas,’ Deet sighed. ‘Alas, alas. The way of the world. The way things go . . . things going wrong, and no one knowing how to fix them. Alas, alas.’

  As he spoke he sneaked a look at his watch.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘better get down to business. An hour, I think we fixed on. Payment in advance, I believe, was arranged. Cheque will do, but cash is preferable. Time starts from when you close the door, and it ends when I return and knock on it again.’

  ‘You can use the bell,’ Mrs Davey said, pointing to it. ‘We have one.’

  ‘I prefer knocking,’ Deet said. ‘It’s more definite, more positive, it can’t be argued with and that way there’s no misunderstandings.’

  He put his arm round Tarrin’s shoulders in a fatherly way. The sheer, rank insincerity of it always gave Tarrin the creeps.

  ‘Now you behave yourself, my boy, and you be nice to Mrs Davey and mind your manners. In you go now and have a nice afternoon.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Mrs Davey said. ‘Are you coming in now . . .?’

  Tarrin realized that Deet hadn’t told her his name.

  ‘It’s Tarrin,’ he said.

  ‘That’s a nice name,’ Mrs Davey said. ‘Unusual, but nice.’

  ‘I gave it to him myself,’ Deet told her.

  Liar, Tarrin thought, but he didn’t say anything.

  ‘Will you come in now, Tarrin?’ Mrs Davey smiled. ‘And we can spend our hour together. See you in a while, Mr Deet.’

  ‘No mister. Just Deet. Straight Deet,’ Deet said. ‘No forenames nor encumbrances.’

  Maybe he had been hoping that Mrs Davey might invite him to wait inside and to spend the hour in front of the television, watching the horse racing and even drinking a can of Mr Davey’s beer. But if such were his hopes, they were dashed. She was already closing the door.

  ‘A moment, ma’am!’ Deet all but screeched. ‘A moment!’

  She reopened the door and looked blankly at him.

  ‘We forgot the . . . eh . . . the . . . recompense,’ Deet said, almost sheepishly, like he didn’t care to talk about it and that money changing hands was a grubby thing he would have preferred to have had no part of, but was forced into by a cruel and hostile world.

  ‘Forgive me,’ Mrs Davey said. ‘I have it ready. It’s all here.’

  She handed him an envelope. Tarrin was afraid for a moment that Deet was going to open it up and count it there and then, right in front of the lady. But he somehow managed to contain himself until she had closed the door. He was sure the money would be all there, and he was right. He was a good judge of character and of honesty, even if he lacked those two qualities himself.

  *

  The door closed behind them. The house was cool. It was clean and tidy, a refuge from the bustle and heat of the afternoon.

  ‘Well . . .’

  Mrs Davey seemed as shy and as awkward as a young girl in a strange place. As the house was hers, and Tarrin was the stranger, he should have been the shy and awkward one, but he had done this too many times before to let his apprehension or his nervousness show. He maybe felt the way a seasoned performer does before he goes on stage to give a show. There was an edge of nervousness, but confidence too, and the nervousness would help him to give a good performance, to give value for money, the way Deet liked it. Because that way you got the word of mouth recommendations and more work elsewhere.

  Strangely, there was not all that much return work, however. Tarrin would probably not see Mrs Davey again after this afternoon. Deet discouraged it. He felt that after two or three visits people were starting to get too attached, or there was a danger they would, and that could lead to problems. After a visit or two, most people never got in contact again anyway. It was obvious why – it was just too painful. The customers had wanted to know what it would be like to have a child, if only for an hour or two of the morning, if only for an afternoon. At first they enjoyed it and marvelled at it and they could hardly wait for the second appointment to come round. But around the second visit or the third, they grew melancholy after the boy had gone. They realized that they were only prolonging an inner agony, and that all their money was buying them was salt for their wounds, when they had sought to purchase balm.

  ‘So what would you like to do, Tarrin?’

  They often asked him that. It was their hour, and their money and their choice. Only when it came down to it, they often found they didn’t really have much idea. For so long they had wondered what it would be like to have a child, and now he was here they didn’t know what to do with him.

  ‘What would you like to do? Anything?’

  Tarrin could have made it easier for her, but he didn’t, at least not immediately. He just made it a little more complicated.

  ‘What would you like to do, ma’am. Whatever you’d like to do, I’d be pleased to do that. That would be just fine.’

  She looked a little bit confused, then she started thinking, then she smiled.

  ‘Please don’t call me ma’am . . . call me . . .’ Her voice drifted to silence, as if she were embarrassed, even a little ashamed to say.

  Tarrin decided that he liked her. She had a nice face, she was clean and pretty, her house was calm and ordered and, more importantly, she was probably the age she seemed.

  What she had said to Deet had probably been true. She hadn’t started taking the Anti-Ageing yet. But no doubt some day she would. They all did. Every one of them. Nobody wanted to grow old, Tarrin reflected, or that was what they told themselves. Maybe the reality was that they did want to grow old. What they didn’t want to do was to look old. What they wanted was to live forever and seem young forever. Maybe a small part of everyone was just like Miss Virginia Two Shoes, fifty-five, or sixty, or seventy, or ninety years young, and still dancing . . . dancing . . . dancing . . .

  ‘Can I call you “Mum”, ma’am?’

  Mrs Davey smiled, a real genuine smile that crinkled her eyes. ‘That would be lovely, Tarrin. That would be nice.’

  They still stood in the quiet hallway. There was an old-fashioned grandfather clock in a corner, it ticked and tocked slowly, almost as though it were the wood of the case creaking and not the pendulum inside.

  Tarrin wondered what Deet would be doing, where he would have gone. He wouldn’t have gone far, that was for sure. ‘Only hanging round protecting my investment,’ he told the boy once when Tarrin had questioned him as to why he had seen him loitering outside the house he had been in for the last hour. Deet trusted him more now, but still not that much, and never entirely. He wouldn’t have gone more than a few minutes away. He’d be right outside, leaning on a lamp post, reading the newspaper he kept folded in his pocket for half the day, squinting across at Mrs Davey’s windows every now and again. Or he’d be sitting on a bench in a nearby park, doing the same. Or he might be in a coffee bar, trying to get friendly with the waitress. Or he’d be inside a local betting shop, losing money on the latest sure-fire winner he had chosen from the racing pages of his newspaper. But, wherever he was, he’d be back in sixty minutes. He’d be back in fifty-nine.

  ‘Would you like anything to eat, Tarrin?’

  ‘I’m OK, thanks . . . Mum.’

  Mrs Davey looked a little disappointed. Maybe he shouldn’t have had lunch. Maybe he should have anticipated the offer of food. It happened frequently enough. If she offered him a drink he would accept it. Not that he was thirsty. He was only doing his job.

  ‘A drink, then?’

  ‘That would be lovely.’

  ‘Then let’s go into the kitchen.’

  She led the way. The kitchen was immaculate; it was light and airy and spacious.

  ‘You have a lovely home,’ Tarrin said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘No, I mean it. I’m not just saying it because I have to.’

  ‘You say a lot of things because you have to?’

  ‘Deet tells me to say things to please people.’

  ‘To keep the client sweet?’

  ‘I guess.’

  Honesty always disarmed them. Some might have thought that it was mere professionalism, a ploy in its own right, almost a slightly dishonest one, that deliberate frankness was a form of deceit. And maybe sometimes it was, but not today.

  Mrs Davey smiled. She seemed to understand and not to resent him for his plain speaking. He didn’t know quite why he was being so confidential today. Maybe he was tired, maybe he was sad, maybe it was the atmosphere of her safe, quiet home, which made him long for such a place – such a mother – for himself.

  ‘We have milk, squash, orange juice, cola or . . .’

  She looked shy again.

  Or what? Tarrin wondered and waited to see what it would be. She reached into the fridge and took out a glass jug, covered with a cloth.

  Here it came. Like always.

  ‘There’s some home-made lemonade . . .?’

  Tarrin would have chosen it even if he didn’t have to. So it was neither effort nor sacrifice to smile and look pleased, almost excited, and say, ‘The lemonade, please . . . Mum.’

  For a moment she turned away and her hand reached to her face and her eyes. Then she pulled a piece of tissue from the kitchen roll and blew her nose and threw the paper into the bin and then she washed her hands. By the time she turned round to face him again, she was back in control, and her cheeks were dry, and he would never have known – if he hadn’t had the experience of being in this same situation so many times before – that for a second there, she had been crying.

  ‘Lemonade it is then. I’ll have some too.’

  She poured it into tall, plastic glasses, decorated with cartoon figures. Tarrin watched her. The tumblers were childish. They were new. She had bought them in anticipation of his visit. She had bought them for him. And maybe, when he had gone, she would take the one he had drunk from, and would put it away somewhere safe, and some time in the future, when she was alone in the house, she would take it out and hold it in her hands and press its rim against her face.

 

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