The Hunted, page 3
‘Then maybe we can go out into the garden.’
‘That would be great.’
‘There’s lots of space – and trees – and a swing – and a bicycle – and a skateboard – and a basketball hoop on the garage wall. I know what you boys are like.’
‘I know what you boys are like.’
If only you did, ma’am, Tarrin thought. If only you did. If only it were all that straightforward and simple, and it could all be cured by a basketball hoop and a skateboard and a swing. If only. Only. Only.
But he didn’t say, or even let his expression convey, any of that. No, ma’am. No sir. He just smiled his professional smile and nodded and said, ‘That’s right, Mum. That’s right.’
Then he sipped at his home-made lemonade and said how good it was – and it was good too, he wasn’t shamming – and then he followed her out to the garden, and as they went out he glanced up at the kitchen clock, and he saw that she, for her part, had glanced at her wristwatch. For a whole ten minutes had already gone. Ten minutes of her precious, expensive hour. Ten minutes of their time together. Ten minutes of their afternoon.
The garden was like the kitchen, like her, like the house. It was ordered and calm and cared for. There were an old oak and some sycamores growing, and the oak’s trunk divided into branches quite low down near to the earth, so it was perfect for climbing. There were some rustic garden benches and there was a table with an umbrella in the middle to shade out the sun, and the umbrella was weighted down, being set into a heavy oval of concrete so that no sudden breeze could blow it away like a kite. There was a swing seat too, facing the sun. That was where she headed for and she invited him to join her.
‘Shall we sit on the swing? We can sit for a while, and then you can play . . . and maybe I can watch. Will you mind if I watch you play?’
‘No . . . not at all . . . Mum.’
So they sat on the swing seat and sipped their lemonade. She set the swing in motion with the tips of her feet against the ground, and every now and then she would kick against the ground again, to make it swing some more.
Tarrin felt the sun on his face and the cool lemonade going down inside him. He looked at her and he wished that she really was his mother and that this really was his home, and he smiled. Or tried to.
‘You look sad,’ she said.
‘No, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Not me.’
‘Don’t you ever get the grumps, kid. Don’t you ever get moody with the customers. They’re not paying good money for your long face. So you keep smiling, even if it hurts.’
‘No . . . Mum. I’m fine.’
‘Sure?’
‘I’m fine.’
The swing seat went back and forth. He longed to reach out and take her hand. Maybe she longed as much to reach out and take his. He longed to snuggle up next to her, feel himself held in her arms, to smell the scent of her, to know he was loved, safe, secure, that he had a mother. He suddenly felt about three years old, lost in a shop, abandoned in a crowd, and aching for the arms of someone who loved him.
The seat swung. It creaked a little. Not much, just a little. The seat swung on.
‘No contact. You appreciate that, don’t you? Nobody’s implying nothing and nothing’s to be inferred. But misunderstandings can happen, so it’s best to define the boundaries and to have the definitions well in advance and that way we’re all agreed. So no contact.’
Deet was quite protective of him in some ways. Tarrin was his investment and it was in Deet’s own interests to look after him. He wouldn’t let him go to a house he didn’t like the look of, or with people he felt wrong about. Deet was a good judge of bad character, that had to be said. He knew a crook when he saw one, but maybe he’d developed that particular talent while shaving and looking at his own face in the mirror.
‘Lemonade OK?’
‘Lovely.’
‘There’s more if you’d like some.’
‘Maybe in a while. Thank you.’
He didn’t want to seem greedy. It didn’t do.
‘Got to project the right image, kid, got to live up to their dreams. The perfect boy, that’s what they want and that’s what you’ve got to be. So be on that old best behaviour – all the time. Don’t let the mask slip, kid, you hear me? Heck, I know that kids are a pain in the butt half the time, but the customers don’t know that. Not having any, they like to think it would all be perfect and hunky-dory all the time. So don’t you go knocking those rose-coloured glasses off their noses.’
‘Would you like to play now?’
‘Can I climb the tree?’
‘Yes, of course.’
Climb the tree, follow the branch that extended over the garden fence, drop down into the back lane, run for it. He could be out and away in thirty seconds. Run and keep running and he’d be gone before she could stop him. By the time Deet returned with his rap on the door and disinclination to use the doorbell, he could be two or three miles away. Mrs Davey would open the door to him and Deet would know immediately, from the look of fear in her eyes and the tears on her face and the way she stuttered, ‘I-I’m ever so s-sorry, Mr Deet, ever so s-sorry . . .’ Calling him Mr Deet too, though he’d told her it was just Deet, plain straight and simple and that was how he liked it. Deet would know that he had made a run for it, gone on the lam.
‘That little son of a . . .’
And then he’d let out a whole stream of the kind of bad language you shouldn’t use in front of a lady. Though Mrs Davey would more than likely have heard it somewhere before. Just as Tarrin had heard all that kind of thing before. Many times in fact. From Deet. When he’d been full up with beer again.
If Tarrin ran, then Deet would come after him. Not that he’d necessarily find him. But the chances were that somebody would. Where could he go? Where could he hide? How could he hide? How could any child hide in a world where a child was possibly the most conspicuous thing in it? When a child attracted attention everywhere it went?
The reality was that maybe Tarrin needed Deet as much as Deet needed him. Tarrin was Deet’s living. Deet was Tarrin’s protection – against something worse. He was probably one of the lesser of many potential evils. Like Kiddernappers, for one. There were rich people who’d pay good money for a child in prime condition and there were plenty of people ready to snatch a kid off the street to cater to the demand.
He could head for the police station. Only what would they do? Deet had papers, proper ownership papers, which proved that Tarrin was his. Though the boy knew that he wasn’t. But how could he show otherwise? How could he demonstrate where he really belonged when he had no actual knowledge of it himself? Just faint memories now of a far-distant childhood, a babyhood, an infancy, memories of sunlight, a barking dog, a long, grassy lane overhung with trees, a woman’s scent, a man’s voice, the lowing of cattle, a harvest of hay, the feel of grain in his hand, trickling through his fat baby fingers like sand at the sea.
That was all he had – his passport, his identification, his personal ID – memories which could have belonged to anywhere, to anyone, to no one in particular.
So how could he ask them to send him home when he didn’t know where home was? How could he demand that they return him to his father and mother when he didn’t even know their names? And how did he know for sure that there even was such a home, such a family? Maybe he had invented the whole thing. Maybe longing had turned wishes into beliefs and hopes into certainties.
And Deet had the papers. Yes, Deet had the official guardianship papers, and there was nothing the police could do about that except send Tarrin back into his guardianship and protection.
Yet he couldn’t stop himself from believing that there was somewhere he belonged, that there were people he belonged to and who belonged to him, that he had been taken once, torn forcefully away from the family and the place he now scarcely remembered.
So why should he be afraid of Kiddernappers? Hadn’t the worst that could happen to him happened already? Hadn’t he been abducted once? What would be so bad about a second time? And in a few years he wouldn’t be at risk anyway. Nobody would want to grab him off the street any more. He would be too tall, too old. Everyone wanted a child for the afternoon, but a tall, gangly teenager with the beginnings of acne on his face, no, they didn’t want that, not at all.
Which was why Deet wanted him to have the PP, of course, so Tarrin could stay a child forever and go on making money for Deet forever, so that he could go on wasting it forever.
‘Are you OK, Tarrin?’
He looked down at Mrs Davey from behind the leaves. ‘I’m OK.’
‘Not too high, mind. I wouldn’t want you to fall and hurt yourself.’
‘I’m OK . . . Mum. No need to fuss.’
‘Sorry. Sorry, Tarrin. I don’t mean to fuss, but a mother worries, a mother cares. I’m only thinking of you.’
‘I know, Mum. I know.’
‘There’s a good boy.’
He climbed up higher. It felt good and a little dizzy too. He hadn’t climbed a tree in ages. Mrs Davey remained in the swing seat, holding her own, half-full glass of home made-lemonade and his empty one. She watched him climb. He climbed confidently, with occasional hesitation, a typical boy, a real boy. She didn’t like to think of anyone in terms of stereotypes, but he was everything she had anticipated, everything she had hoped: he was a real, real boy.
Maybe one day soon, if she could afford it, she could have a real girl for the afternoon. Would she want to climb trees too? Yes, maybe.
She’d save up and do that one day – hire a girl for an hour or two. There had to be somebody who had one. And it wasn’t illegal. Maybe not all that nice exactly and a lot of people frowned on it and disapproved of that sort of thing. Like Jack.
‘We can’t have children and that’s it. Not many people can now, and that’s how it is. But we’re lucky in so many ways. We can live a long, long time and we don’t have to decay or grow old or get wrinkles or suffer all the aches and pains. We can stay active until almost the day we die – and that won’t be for a long time, Alice, maybe not for another hundred and fifty years. So if you want something to love, let’s get a puppy, or a kitten, and watch it grow. You can’t afford to get attached to someone else’s child. Not even a loaner for the afternoon. It just makes it all that much harder to come to terms with reality. You’re just going on dangling out possibilities that can never be grasped. Or you end up like one of those people queuing outside some tawdry club place to see Miss Virginia Two Shoes, getting all tearful and sentimental over the antics of a fifty-five-year-old child. Do you see, Alice? Do you see?’
She saw. But she went her own way just the same. And she didn’t tell Jack anything. Mrs Davey glanced at her watch again. Twenty-five minutes gone. So soon, already. Twenty-five precious minutes. And Tarrin was far away, halfway up the oak tree. She suddenly wanted him near to her. She’d paid for him, after all, hadn’t she, and he had gone too far away.
‘Tarrin!’
He stopped climbing and looked down. She had got up from the swing seat and was looking up into the foliage.
‘Would you like to come down now? Maybe you could play with the basketball.’
Sure, ma’am, yes, ma’am, whatever the customer pleases.
He began to descend. As he did, he wondered about her. She didn’t just stay at home all day, did she? – what was there to do? She had to work, surely, if only to keep her mind occupied. She must have arranged to take the afternoon off so as to be alone in the house. What had she told them? Dental appointment, maybe? Visiting a friend?
Tarrin wondered if her husband knew. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe it was her secret, her secret treat and her secret craving, to have a child for the afternoon. A real child, a real boy. Who would be expensive – but worth it.
The PPs were cheaper. You could rent a PP for half the rate Deet was charging. And some of them were pretty good too. And so they should be. They had years and years of experience behind them, of acting the child, of keeping the customer satisfied. Only some of them had been doing it so long that they had turned into imitations of themselves, caricatures almost. They had their routines off pat, but they were acting all the way. They laughed, they cried, they could be cute and sweet and cuddly to order. They could even turn on a tantrum, if that was what you wanted, and lie there yelling and screaming and acting spoilt and beating their fists and kicking their shoes on the floor until you gave in and handed over the chocolate bar which you’d said they couldn’t have ever – and that was final, and otherwise there would be big trouble.
Yes, they could do all that. They could act the child better than anyone, but they had long since ceased to be children. They had the faces and the bodies of children, right enough, but they had the minds and souls of some strange new species that had never before existed in the world.
They had their admirers – just as Miss Virginia Two Shoes had hers – in crowds and droves. But they gave Tarrin the creeps, these children who were half a century old. And whenever Deet talked about getting the PP implant, it gave Tarrin more of the creeps than ever, the thought that Deet would want to turn him into one of them.
Of course, the operation was expensive, more money than a waster like Deet could ever dream of saving. On top of that, it was now illegal. And what child would willingly consent to be a child forever, anyway?
But a lot of things in the world were illegal, yet that didn’t stop them happening. The law could forbid things, but it couldn’t prevent them. There was always a corrupt doctor down some back street who knew some struck-off surgeon somewhere, who, for a small fee – well, no, for an extremely large fee – would be willing to do the PP implant to keep your child young and childlike forever, in this world in which a child was a rarity, and more precious than diamonds or gold.
And it was irreversible. That was the worst thing of all. There could be no change of heart, no changing your mind five years down the line and deciding that you would now like to grow up after all please, thank you very much.
The Anti-Ageing pills and the PP implant had come from rival research labs but were similar processes, both intended to prolong life and slow down ageing and decay. One eventually got the Food and Drug Authority’s approval and the other didn’t, for the Anti-Ageing merely slowed you down, but the PP halted you in your tracks and turned off the switch forever.
Some bright sparks had implanted first a rat, then a young chimpanzee, with the PP to see what would happen. The animals lived, but didn’t develop. That began it. When the process started to be used on healthy children, the government made it illegal.
The lab eventually took the PP implant out of the chimp. It aged years in minutes and dropped dead of old age within the hour. At the post-mortem, its brain showed signs of advanced Alzheimer’s and it had arthritis in all its limbs. Two hours earlier, it had been a youngster – a regular Peter Pan.
If Miss Virginia Two Shoes had her PP implant taken out, within two days she would have the face of a fifty-five-year-old. And who would come to see her then?
Tarrin shinned on down the tree, maybe a little too fast . . . ‘Coming, Mum!’
‘Careful now, careful!’
‘Won’t be a second!’
‘Take your time now! Careful! I know what you boys are! Think you’re indestructible, I know.’
‘I know what you boys are.’
Only no one knows, Mum, no one knows, except that boy himself, how sad and how lonely only a boy nowadays can be. That’s what people don’t know about boys.
He scrambled on down. He was back on the lower branch now.
‘No, Tarrin – don’t jump from there. It’s too high. Here – let me help you.’
Too late, he jumped. He landed fine, but pretended otherwise, deliberately stumbling and letting himself fall.
‘Oh, Tarrin! Tarrin! Are you all right? What have you done?’
He was fine. He lay there, quite unhurt, as she ran to him solicitously, full of love and worry and care.
‘Tarrin, Tarrin, Tarrin! You haven’t broken anything, have you? You can still walk, can’t you? Oh, you boys, you boys!’
He knew, despite her protests of concern, that she would be secretly disappointed to find him unharmed. As she hurried over, he reached out and picked up a sharp-edged stone which lay by the base of the tree, half hidden in the grass. He brutally dug it into his left forearm and dragged it down. It opened up a narrow cut about four inches long. Blood instantly seeped out of it. Mrs Davey saw the blood at once. She didn’t notice him drop the stone back into the grass.
‘You’ve cut yourself! You’ve cut yourself! Quick. Come inside. Up to the bathroom. I’ll see to it straight away!’
She helped him to his feet, the ‘no contact’ rule forgotten. This was different. This was an emergency. He limped as she helped him across the garden and back into the house.
‘You’re limping! Have you twisted your ankle?’
‘No. Just a little, maybe. I’ll be all right.’
‘Oh, you poor thing. You poor, poor thing.’
‘I’ll be all right, Mum.’
‘Oh, you poor, poor thing.’
She helped him into the house and up to the bathroom.
‘Shall I take my shoes off, Mum?’
‘Don’t worry about that.’
He left small muddy patches behind him, shoe-sole sized, on the steps of the stairs.
‘We’ll go in here.’
It was the main bathroom. They probably had several. But this was the one with the first-aid stuff in it.
‘Here, sit down here.’
He sat on the closed lid of the toilet. She took the first-aid kit from the cabinet and knelt down beside him.
