The Tooth Fairy Part 26

He raced upstairs. His father was in his parents' bedroom, tying a tie in the mirror. 'Aye, aye,' said Nev.

Sam muttered a reply before stumbling into his own room, sitting on his bed, trying to recover his breath. His father was obviously getting ready to go out. He waited.

And waited.

Finally Nev went downstairs. Sam heard the door close and listened to voices in the garden outside. He crept into their room. Nev and Connie were standing at the bottom of the garden talking about standard roses. If they looked up, they could see into their bedroom. He crouched on all fours and crawled to the far side of the bed. Slipping his hand between the mattress and the base of the bed he made a sweep back and forth. There was nothing. He pushed his arm further in, sweeping frantically now. Still nothing. He dug his hand closer to the pillow-end of the bed and his ringers fastened on what he was looking for. Withdrawing the packet, he found it contained only a single condom.

One. Would his father miss one? Of course his father would miss one. Nevertheless, he kept the single condom and returned the empty packet under the mattress, hoping Nev would simply think he'd been mistaken.

'Not a good idea,' said the Tooth Fairy.

Sam recoiled in shock. The Tooth Fairy sat on the bed, shaking her head. 'Go away,' said Sam. She gestured at something on the floor. He looked down. Mud from the knee of his jeans had scored a dirty trail on the beige carpet. 'No no no no no!' He leapt to his feet and ran to the bathroom, returning with a damp rag, trying to mop up the faintly glistening, giant-slug-like trail.

'This is going to cause all sorts of trouble,' the Tooth Fairy insisted. 'For both of us. The consequences of this are going to be enormous.'

Sam finished wiping up the mess. He jabbed a finger at the Tooth Fairy and said, 'Paranoia.' To his surprise, the Tooth Fairy disappeared instantly.

Wondering if Alice would still be waiting for him, he raced down the path. His mother called him back. 'Where are you going?'

'Nowhere.'

'Well, if you're going nowhere, there are things I want from the corner shop.'

'I can't. I'm going somewhere.'

'You just said-'

'WHAT? WHAT IS IT?' Connie was astonished by his vehemence. 'Sorry. I mean, what do you want? From the shops. What?'

'I made a list. It's in the kitchen.'

Sam took a deep breath and jogged back to the kitchen. There he leaned his head against the wall for a few seconds before s.n.a.t.c.hing up the note from the table. Then he was off again, running up the road to find Alice.

He found her sitting on a fence near the entrance to the woods, smoking a cigarette. 'I was just about to go. You look all in.'

'Don't ask,' he said, producing the condom from his hip pocket.

Alice looked as if she'd had second, or even third and fourth thoughts about the matter in the intervening period. Almost wearily she took Sam by the hand and led him into the woods. It was bluebell time all over again. Bluebells scintillated like pools of shallow water among the trees.

He didn't like the direction in which she led him, though he stifled all protest. When she settled on a secluded spot, Sam had the uncomfortable impression that it was very close to the mortal and presumably putrefying remains of the Dead Scout. Still, he said nothing. The trees gathered around them to witness the act; tangled bushes crowded in; leaf-mould and new ferns scented the air; bluebells chimed with a chorus of colour.

Alice stepped out of her jeans, laid them on the ground between some tall ferns, and sat down on them. Then she slipped off her knickers and pressed her knees shyly together. Sam tugged off his own jeans. His erection bobbed angrily, already having found a way outside his underpants. They kissed. Alice put her hand on his engorged c.o.c.k, and he thought he would e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e immediately.

'Don't come,' Alice said, removing her hand. 'Don't come yet.'

He was mesmerized by the nut-brown triangle of pubic hair at the top of her long, slender legs and by her creamy, flat belly. He detected the source of the scent which had had him in a noose since the first day she'd collided with him in the school bus queue. He whipped off his underpants. Then he remembered the condom. She watched him expectantly, her lips parted slightly as he rooted through his pockets for the condom. He tore open the foil packet, and the lubricated rubber slipped into his hand.

A bird broke from the thicket suddenly. Sam looked up. A short distance away, half-hidden by the giant ferns, a strange trumpet-shaped purple flower grew out of the hollow of a tree, similar or perhaps identical to the one shown to him by the Tooth Fairy. Its white tuber-like stamen jiggled suggestively in the breeze. Sam unravelled the condom a short length and tried to fit it over the straining helmet of his c.o.c.k. He seemed to have the thing twisted inside-out. Alice relaxed back, parting her legs a little. At the periphery of his vision the unpleasant, fleshy white tuber jiggled distractingly. Tooley's Revenge, he thought. Tooley's Revenge. As he struggled with the condom, he prayed his father wouldn't guess who'd stolen it. Then he remembered the muddy trail on his parents' bedroom carpet and instantly regretted not making a more thorough job of cleaning up behind him.

His c.o.c.k softened slightly as he tried to fit the condom the other way, but the teat-end wouldn't come clear. The smell of latex was distractingly strong. He thought of both the Tooth Fairy and the Dead Scout grinning over his shoulder, mocking this ineffectual fumbling. He looked at Alice. She raised her eyebrows at him, a gesture which didn't help.

His mother's shopping list came back to him, and again the thought of the Tooth Fairy, and then briefly and appallingly of his mother and father copulating. The white tuber inside the purple-black flower waved provocatively. By now his c.o.c.k had softened and the rubber refused to unroll the length of his p.e.n.i.s. He took it off and tried again. With the thing half unrolled the results this time were worse than before. Sam looked about him in desperation. The white tuber inside the purple flower was quivering with merriment in the breeze, almost as if it were being shaken by an unseen hand. Defeated, he snapped off the rubber and tossed it into the ferns before cradling his head in his hands.

Alice said nothing. She sat up and dressed quickly. After a while she put her hand in his hair. 'Put your jeans back on,' she said. 'We'll just lie here together for a while.'

And they did, lying amid the scent of ferns and bluebells until the twilight settled upon them and over the aromatic woods.

38.

Announcement Terry left school that summer. He had little interest in studies, and Redstone Secondary, where he'd been streamed from the age of eleven, had been designed to ensure things stayed that way. The loss of toes and a left hand showed no sign of restricting his footballing prowess; he had found his way on to the books of Coventry City FC, and neighbouring Aston Villa were sniffing around with suggestions of an apprentices.h.i.+p.

Terry's Uncle Charlie was realistic enough to ensure that the lad took a trade apprentices.h.i.+p. Charlie had been the one to encourage Terry's footballing interests ever since Terry had been spared Chris Morris's killings and suicide. Charlie knew football. 'The beautiful game, Terry. There are more disappointments in the beautiful game than there are in life itself. Get a trade.'

That wasn't so easy, what with only one hand; and after Terry had been rejected for several tool-making apprentices.h.i.+ps, Charlie called in a few favours and got Terry fixed up in the paintshop at the car factory.

Meanwhile in Sam's household there was an announcement.

'I don't know what to say,' said Sam.

'Well,' said Connie, 'we're as surprised as you are.'

'What . . . ?' said Sam. 'When . . . ?' He just about stopped himself from saying, 'How . . . ?'

'February,' said Connie. 'It's going to be around February.'

'Look,' Nev put in, himself still somewhat sh.e.l.l-shocked, 'it wasn't something we expected, but there it is and that's the way it is. So we're pleased about it. We think.'

'We are pleased,' Connie corrected.

The Tooth Fairy appeared to Sam that night. She was wearing a pale-blue cap, like a flower head. 'What do you think of this?' she said. 'I thought it looked kind of traditional. For a fairy.' Sam looked closer and saw it was a giant blue-bell. She moved her head this way and that. 'Well? Maybe I should have a name like Herb Twopence. I got it as a souvenir of that afternoon you were in the woods with Alice.'

'You put your mark on that, didn't you?'

'I'll admit I was watching. Though I did warn you. I said this was going to lead to trouble.'

'Trouble?'

'What's the matter with you? Can't count? Your mother said February. So that's May, June, July . . .'

Suddenly it dawned on Sam. The stolen condom. He slumped on to his bed, pressing his fingers to his temples, the Tooth Fairy counting through the months in exaggerated style.

'I do hope it's a girl,' said the Tooth Fairy.

Sam looked up suddenly, through the jail bars of his fingers. 'What do you mean?'

'You'll be leaving here soon. Going away. Leaving me trapped here. But I could have so much more fun with a girl. I would start earlier than I did with you. Females are so much more suggestible. So seducible. I could create her. Oh, I really do hope it's a girl!'

Sam thought his head would burst open. He could see no way of preventing the Tooth Fairy from daggering a newborn baby. He was horrified at the implications of what he'd done.

'Hey!' she said suddenly. 'Your dad doesn't have any problem getting it up! Not like you! Your old man f.u.c.ks your mother until her teeth rattle! Ha ha!'

Sam leapt from the bed, aggressively jabbing a finger in the Tooth Fairy's face. 'Paranoia!' he shouted, and she disappeared.

Sam and Clive moved up into the sixth form at school. Sam studied physics, chemistry and biology at A-level. Clive's genius was detected to have been slowing down. He'd been persuaded to sit, during the summer holidays, A-level exams in applied maths, pure maths and physics. Something went 'badly' wrong with the pure maths, and he pa.s.sed with only a B grade instead of an A. Still, he and his father were united in staunchly resisting all pressure for him to go early to Oxford or Cambridge. The Epstein experience had frightened both of them, and Eric Rogers was adamant that Clive's education should not be speeded up beyond the norm. Even so, Clive was scheduled to take four more A-levels, making a total of seven to Sam's three. Along with Terry, they grew their hair long, took to wearing army-surplus greatcoats and looked more moody around Redstone than ever before.

They continued to help Ian Blythe run the Redstone Folk Club. Sixth-form status conferred on them the privilege of calling Blythe by his first name and of being able to drink (now only slightly under-age) in his presence. Clive pestered him into changing the name to the Blues and Folk Club and had a say in booking the acts. Some of the old folkie purists objected to the inevitable swing towards the electrical, but every Friday night the back room at the Gate Hangs Well was stuffed to capacity.

Around Christmas of that year they saw Blythe get blind-blazing drunk. He didn't seem to care that three pupils from his school witnessed the spectacle of him falling from his stool while trying to play a song in between two guest spots. Sam and Clive helped him outside, where he promptly threw up. But nothing he did could diminish him in their eyes. They were forced to admire the style with which he wiped his mouth, took a deep breath of air and said, 'G.o.d bless you, gents,' before going back inside to introduce the next act.

'I think his wife just left him,' whispered Alice, who was in his upper-sixth English cla.s.s. 'He said something when we were doing Oth.e.l.lo.'

They could tell Blythe most things, and they generally respected his advice when he gave it. They once tried to tempt him with a ready-rolled joint, but he declined it ruefully. One night, when again he'd imbibed a gallon of bitter, it seemed as though something darkly amorous was shaping up between him and Alice. The other three saw what was going on. Blythe must have noted the expressions of hurt and confusion and betrayal in their eyes, or perhaps he just thought about his position. Whatever it was, he sensibly backed off.

'What is it about you and older men?' Sam wanted to know, while Blythe was busy paying the band.

She thought hard about it. 'I don't know myself well enough to answer that question.'

'Know thyself,' bellowed Clive, eavesdropping over the pub talk, with the bell clanging loudly for last orders. 'That's what was written over the oracle at Delphi. ''Know thyself.'' '

Alice, Sam and Terry stared at Clive for a moment. 'f.u.c.k off !' they said with one voice.

Towards the end of February, Sam's sister was born. Sam went to the hospital with Nev to visit Connie and the baby. All Nev could say, over and over, was, 'She's gorgeous! Look at her, Sam, she's gorgeous!'

Sam had to agree. He was overwhelmed by the miniature perfection of the new arrival, by the fact that the baby could be born with fingernails, nostrils, toes and ears all on such a miraculously tiny scale. It was like seeing the Lord's Prayer written for novelty on the back of a postage stamp.

He also carried with him the burden of knowledge of the stolen condom. It was impossible that Nev or Connie remotely suspected it; but the fact remained that Sam, by his actions and by his intervention, was responsible for the birth of this s.h.i.+ny new human being.

'You're miles away, Sam,' Connie was saying, all proud smiles, hugging the baby to her breast. 'I said me and your father want you to name her.'

'Name her? Gosh. I can't! I mean, why me?'

'Don't panic. You don't have to come up with a name this instant!'

There was, it was pointed out, one slightly unusual feature about the baby. 'Look,' said Connie, gently prising open the baby's mouth with her finger. 'She was born with a tooth.'

Sam gazed in horror at the baby's tiny, pink mouth. The minute pearl of an incisor was visible there. Sam grasped the hair at the side of his head. 'My G.o.d! A tooth! My G.o.d!'

A nurse standing beside the bed scoffed at him. 'It's not so uncommon,' she chided. 'It's unusual, but it's not unheard-of. Some say it's good luck.'

'And some say it's bad luck,' Nev laughed.

Connie laughed too. 'Sam, you've gone white as a sheet.'

'Look at her, Sam,' Nev said oafishly. 'She's gorgeous!'

Sam looked. The baby opened its brilliant blue eyes for him and stared back, as if stunned by the horrifyingly sensual beauty of the universe into which it had been delivered without consultation. There, reflected in the mirror of the baby's tiny black pupil, was the yellow-eyed Tooth Fairy, gazing out at him. Sam's fear for his sister's innocence was glacial. He had done something to mark her, to bring trouble and difficulty to her, to invite wicked fairies to gather at the foot of the maternity bed.

All attention was on the baby. Sam turned to see the Tooth Fairy waiting, unnoticed, behind them all, arms folded. Sam wanted to ask what this new thing meant. He was prepared to make a deal that would allow him to sacrifice himself in order to protect his sister.

'Paranoia,' said the Tooth Fairy, and disappeared.

Later Sam left the hospital and went looking for the Tooth Fairy. He'd never been able to make her appear at his bidding. She came whenever she wanted to come and always on her own terms. He had no way of changing that. His search took him back to Chris Morris's locked and abandoned workshop. He remembered that the Tooth Fairy had once appeared there, although with disastrous consequences, and he wondered if she would do so again. Waiting until dusk, he slipped unseen down the side of the garage, swung open the loose window frame and climbed inside.

Terry had been correct. Any of Morris's remotely valuable gear had been sold off. Only junk remained. Sam folded an old sheet, and sat down in the dark. Dust settled, and after a few moments his eyes adjusted to the available light.

The workshop still reeked of Morris's brittle, neurotic energy. Sam imagined too that he could still smell the man's hair-oil and his tobacco. But it had been almost a decade since Morris had taken his shotgun to his family. The wall-bracket where the shotgun had been mounted was still intact.

'I hate this place. Why do you bring me here?' The Tooth Fairy was crouching under the shotgun bracket, s.h.i.+vering.

'You have to leave her alone. My baby sister. I can't have you going near her.'

'You put her there, Sam. It was your doing.'

'Why the tooth? Why did you do that?'

'It was one you gave me, a long time ago. You took it back. Never really let go of it, did you? Why didn't you just let go of it, all those years ago, instead of keeping me here?'

'I don't keep you here. And if you don't stay away from her, I have the solution.'

The Tooth Fairy froze. Then she smiled. 'You'd do that? You're prepared to do that to yourself to keep me out of it?'

Sam nodded.

'You don't understand anything,' said the Tooth Fairy. There were tears in her eyes. 'You don't dream me. I dream you. You're my nightmare, Sam. Please let me go. I hate this place. Morris is here. Please let me go.'

Exhausted, confused, Sam closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the Tooth Fairy had gone. He shuddered. He was losing himself. He hardly knew whether the conversation had taken place at all. But the Tooth Fairy was right. Morris's breath was on the place. He was afraid that if he stayed, he would certainly encounter Morris's ghost. In one specific way, he felt he already had. In one precise way, Morris had already spoken to him.

He got out the way he came in. On returning home he said to himself, 'I think we should call the baby Linda Alice.'

In the moments between sleeping and waking, in the airless workshop where thoughts are forged into words, there came to Sam a voice, speaking out of the dark, intimate, rea.s.suring, reasonable. Suicide, said the voice from the dark, suicide.

Linda came home again the following spring. People started to remark that she was looking a little tired. She'd lost weight, and she turned up in an Afghan coat, which Charlie detested. Charlie asked her if she'd slaughtered the garment in one of the nearby fields, and he made other hurtful comments about her appearance, the true meaning of which was obvious. He didn't like what he was seeing. He wasn't happy that his daughter appeared to be turning into 'some sort of hippy'. She was twenty-one years old, and it broke Charlie's heart that she had a life of her own.

It was unusual for Sam to find so much tension in the generally warm household, but relations became more strained with each visit. 'Get me out of here,' Linda said to Sam and Terry one evening. 'I need a drink.'

The gang was called together, and they took Linda into the city for a night out. For them the evening had a gala air about it. Linda's name had been romantically linked in the press with Gregg Austen, lead guitarist and front man for the Craft. She'd been pictured with him, and Clive in particular couldn't wait to pose a mouthful of questions.

She bridled. 'He's a s.h.i.+t, Clive. Some of these people are not as interesting as they look. Let's just leave it at that.'

So they left it at that. Sam observed that Linda's hands had developed a slight tremble as she drew hard on her cigarette. She told them about London and she dropped famous names not to impress them but to offer a flavour of her lifestyle and they all realized how much they'd missed her. Terry took a chance and tapped her knee, offering her a small joint under the table.