EIGHTH CHILD EXTRACT It had been a hot and wearying climb up the path and Alan’s headache now felt far worse, hammering at the back of his skull as the sun beat down upon his bare head. He wondered why he had let Charles persuade him to come. He didn’t want to be here. But he was held in a vice-like grip, surrounded on all sides. Whether Alan wished it or not, he was forced to watch out the rest of the ritual. Dressed in a dark suit, he found the heat unbearable. His shirt and underclothes were already wet with perspiration. The stiff collar chafed at his neck and he longed to escape. Thoughts of happier days, gone forever, shimmered before his eyes like a mirage. The sun glazed his vision and made the ground dance.
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The priest droned on in a language of which Alan understood nothing. He felt he was the only one who didn’t know what was happening. Everyone else was attending carefully. Without lifting his head Alan swung his eyes around the rows of hot, pink, stolid, staring faces which made up his imprisoning circle. Packed around him, they looked like a mass of stuffed fabric dolls grown suddenly to life-size - void of all expression, all feeling.
Then suddenly his heart stopped - for there was the face. The face of Suzanne’s murderer was suspended among the mourners. He could see it clearly - the drops of sweat hanging on the man’s domed forehead - he had forgotten to tell Magda about the domed forehead. The black eyes were darting nervously round. The little pink tongue dabbed at the lip beneath the smear of a moustache. Jeanette told Alan afterwards that he gasped out loud and tried to step back. She was afraid he was going to faint or fall over. She grabbed his arm. He turned to tell her about the man. Then he became aware that everything had gone quiet. The shuffling had stopped. The priest had ceased to drone. Alan looked round the circle of faces. Every one was staring back at him. Were they annoyed by the interruption or merely curious? Alan dragged his eyes back to where he had seen the face - but it had gone. He knew before he looked that it wouldn’t be there. He looked all round. He searched the circle as far as he could see in each direction but there was no sign of the man. Where had he gone? Alan swore to himself that he hadn’t imagined the face. It wasn’t the product of his fevered brain or the hot, hallucinating sun. Some strange urge had made the man come back to see Suzanne’s body committed to the grave. Or was it for some other, more terrifying reason? Alan felt Charles’ comforting arm about his shoulders. Jeanette’s hand was in his - somehow it still managed to be cool. But he could say nothing to them about what he had seen - not in front of all these people. They wouldn’t understand. He was imprisoned in the way that people hold foreigners at bay. So Alan bowed his head again quietly and looked into the grave. After a few seconds the priest began again. There was a rustle as the heads bent once more and the feet stopped shuffling. They would think his distress had temporarily got the better of him. That would be his excuse. Now that he was once more the master of his emotions, they could return their attention to the holy father. But Alan heard nothing more of the service. He was unable to tear his thoughts away from that face. He felt all the time that the pair of dark, beady eyes were fastened on him from some secret hiding-place within the circle of Charles’ friends. |
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