The Servants Read online

  The next day it was on the news that some parts of the country had snow, but of course it didn’t snow in Brighton. It had to get really, really cold to snow by the sea, David said, even though Mark had not asked him for his opinion on the matter. Instead of snow there was sleet, and rain, and freezing winds. Despite this, Mark dutifully trudged out to the promenade with his board and endured forty minutes of falling over again.

  After some deliberation, he also broke David’s prohibition on going farther than the line of houses painted in Brunswick Cream.

  He walked past the rusty metal columns on the beach, stranded supports from a portion of the old West Pier, cut off from the tangled wreckage of the rest of its remains, which started fifty yards out in the water. Before the fires that had destroyed the pier, it had been possible to take tours on its remnants, small groups of people in hard hats being shown how it had once been—the ballroom, the tea shops, the viewing platforms. Mark’s mother and father had done this, once. Mark had stayed in the playground with his dad’s sister, who was visiting. Going on a broken old pier hadn’t seemed interesting at the time. Now it was no longer possible, and never would be again. He wished he’d properly understood the difference between these two states of affairs at the time.

  He walked on past the bars and cafés, all closed, which had been fitted into the old arches underneath the raised road level. He walked past the area where a few small, old boats lay on the pebbles, a kind of museum of the fishing that had used to be done here, many years ago; and past a large piece of machinery wrapped in canvas, the base of the carousel that was there in the summer season.

  He kept on walking, illicitly, all the way along the seafront until he was level with the big, modern hotel. Mark looked up at it and realized that there was no one there to stop him. He was eleven years old. He knew what was what. David couldn’t make him stay where he wanted him to. It was stupid, and it wasn’t fair.

  He walked across the promenade and up the stairs and over the road. Pushed his way in through the swing door and went up another small flight of stairs, and then he was in the big hotel’s atrium.

  Music was playing quietly. It was nice and warm and, of course, it was not raining—though if you tilted your head right back you could see the dark clouds through the glass roof, four floors above. Small groups of grown-ups sat at the tables, men and women dressed in black and white bringing them coffee and tea. Kind of like servants, Mark supposed, though he doubted any of them had to sleep in cupboards in the basement, but were probably allowed to go to their own homes at night. He sat down at one of the tables, on a wide couch that was covered in a fabric that looked exactly like the carpet.

  After a while, a thin man wearing an apron came over.

  “I’d like a cup of tea, please,” Mark said.

  “Are you staying in the hotel?”

  “No. Do I have to be?”

  The waiter stared down at him, one eyebrow raised. “Are your mother or father around?”

  “I’ve got money,” Mark said, reaching into his pocket and bringing out a handful of change. “How much is it?”

  The man just looked at Mark and then walked away. At first Mark thought he’d gone to fetch his tea, but after fifteen minutes it became clear that he had not. Mark held his position, getting more and more furious. He wasn’t staying in the hotel, but what difference did that make? He’d stayed here before, with his mum and dad. Why couldn’t he be here now? Who said he couldn’t be?

  Then he noticed the thin waiter talking to someone behind reception. Both he and the woman looked over at Mark.

  Mark got up and walked away, pushing his way back out through the revolving door and into the cold.

  BY the time he got back to the house, it was raining again and he wasn’t in the mood for taking any hassle from anyone. He went straight upstairs, pushing past the gatekeeper. His mother was sitting in the armchair, hunched over. She looked up quickly when he came in.

  “Hey,” she said. Her voice sounded odd. “Is it raining again?”

  “Are you ever going to come out?” he asked.

  “I’d like to. What time is it?”

  “Only four o’clock. Things are still open. We could go to the Lanes and you could look at rings and stuff.”

  “Oh, honey…”

  “No,” David said. “It’s foul out there.”

  “Just let her do what she wants!” Mark shouted. “Why do you always have to interfere in everything?”

  He turned back to his mother to enlist her support, and noticed that her skin was very pale and that her nose was running.

  David handed her a tissue and turned to Mark. His shoulders looked stiff. Mark stared back at him, willing him to squat down in that way he did, so he’d be at the right height for Mark to thump him one.

  “I’m not trying to—”

  “Yes you are,” Mark said. “This may be your house, but we don’t belong to you. You can’t always make us do what you want.”

  “Mark. It is too cold, and too wet, for…”

  “Oh, piss off,” Mark said, his head feeling cold and clear, and stalked out of the room.

  He could hear David coming after him before he was even halfway down the stairs, so he jumped the last few and ran into his room. He slammed the door quickly and grabbed the wooden chair and wedged its back under the door handle, like he’d seen it done on a television program a few weeks ago—a few seconds before David reached the hallway.

  The doorknob rattled and the chair creaked, but it worked. Mark was delighted. He’d never tried this before. It was worth knowing.

  “Mark,” David said from the other side. “Open this door.”

  Mark opened his mouth to reply, but shut it again. David was all about talking. Not getting a reply would annoy him far more.

  “Mark,” he said again.

  Stepping carefully and quietly, Mark moved over until he was just the other side of the door. He could hear his stepfather breathing heavily.

  “Mark, open the door.”

  Mark said nothing. Every second that passed without saying anything was a small victory.

  “I know you’re there,” David said then, disconcertingly. His voice was low and quiet. “I know you’re right the other side of this door, and I know you can hear me. So hear this. What your mother needs right now is for you and me to get on with each other. So what I need, if I’m honest, is for you to stop being such a little asshole.”

  Mark blinked.

  “Oh, sorry,” David added. “That’s an American word, isn’t it, and I know how much they confuse you. Try not being an arsehole instead, if that’s easier. Put another way, just fucking grow up.”

  He walked away from the door and back up the stairs.

  The blood was singing in Mark’s ears, and his mouth was hanging open. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t believe it. This man, this stranger, was now calling him rude words! When Mark’s mother couldn’t hear, and so wouldn’t know what was going on!

  Before this man arrived, everything had been okay, even after Mark’s real father had not been living at home so much anymore. But within mere weeks of David coming into their lives, Mark’s mother had started to get ill. And yet now he was blaming Mark for things and calling him rude words. Mark turned furiously from the door, and that’s when he noticed that there was something lying on his bed. A small bag. He went over and tipped the contents out.

  It was a new book.

  For a split second Mark felt guilty—but then he dropped to his knees and reached his arm under the bed. Swept out the books he threw under there a couple of nights before.

  He laughed harshly. Yep. Just as he’d thought.

  The book on his bed tonight was one of the same books David had bought last time. He hadn’t even noticed. Hadn’t been looking or caring when he bought it the first time, or when he’d bought it again today. He was faking it, pretending to do the right thing. Mark could just picture him coming back into the house, his mother asking what w
as in the bag, and his stepfather shrugging, saying just a little something for the boy, and Mark’s mother thinking how nice he was…

  Mark picked up the book. He yanked the covers off first, then tore the pages out from the middle, and then ripped and shredded these until the floor was covered with tiny pieces and the book was no more.

  eight

  His hands were shaking and hurt a little from what he’d just done, from the blurred fury they’d discovered within themselves. He could hear voices upstairs through the ceiling, mainly David’s. Mark couldn’t make out any words, but he could hear the music of them, the tune of utter calm, the sound of a man who was always right.

  Suddenly, and all at once, Mark realized the enormity of his position. When he’d stood at the back of a small room, under protest, and listened as his mother and this man had been declared man and wife, he’d known what it had meant. Of course. But he hadn’t taken it seriously. His dad was his dad, and that meant—whatever this event declared to the contrary—his mother and real dad were still married in some way, still joined, remained the fabric of the world. This unspoken assumption had stood firm all the time they’d still been in London. London was London. It didn’t stop. It continued on. Things had to work the way they always did there, despite appearances. On the drive down to the coast, he now realized, this belief had started to waver, deep inside him where he wasn’t always aware of what was going on. David being around in London was one thing. His presence in Brighton was different. It said that even in the place where you came to get away, he would be here.

  It said everything about how the world had changed.

  This person—who nine months ago had been unknown to Mark—now had control over his life. Over his mother, even worse. The voices upstairs were already quietening. His mother wasn’t defending Mark, and David wasn’t coming down here to apologize. David had won. Again. He was upstairs with Mark’s mother, and Mark was stuck down here in this cold room with nothing but old books and a television that didn’t get cable.

  Abruptly, he grabbed the other book from the bed, but before he’d even tensed to shred it, he knew that wasn’t the answer. Instead he threw it against the wall and turned around. The book wasn’t the real problem. The problem was being stuck here, stuck in this situation.

  He walked quickly over to the window.

  If he opened the door to his room, the gatekeeper would hear and come back down to give him a hard time. So instead Mark flipped the catch on one of the three big sashes. It was stiff, but once he got his shoulder under it, he was able to shove it up a couple of feet. It was dark outside, though it was only half past four. Spitting with rain, too. The sidewalk outside the house was deserted, as was the rest of the square. It wasn’t walking weather.

  There was no one to see.

  He went and got his coat, then came back to the window. Put one foot up onto the sill, pulled the other up. He slipped under the bottom of the window, and then he was outside.

  The exterior sill was over a foot deep—plenty of room. He half-turned and quietly pushed the window down, leaving it open a couple of inches. He’d have to come back this way, too. If he pulled the chair away from his bedroom door, then David would be able to enter the room and discover that Mark had disappeared.

  Then he started to sidle around to his left, toward the front door to the house. When he got to the end of the sill, he realized he hadn’t quite pictured the front of the house accurately. There was well over a yard of empty space between him and the ornamental fence and handrail that led down from the front-door steps to the street.

  Hmm.

  He considered the problem for a moment, then lowered himself so that he was sitting on the sill, legs dangling over the edge. The metal uprights of the fence had been painted so many times that there were no sharp edges, just a thick covering of paint everywhere. If he pushed himself off, hard, and then whipped his hands around to the front, he’d be able to grab two of the uprights. Pull himself up, and hoist himself over the handrail. Then he’d be on the steps, and away.

  He hesitated. What was he going to do after that? Leaving the house was all very well, but what happened next?

  Then he heard the sound of the television drifting through the window of the floor above and down to him. An old film.

  All was well up there, evidently. Mark was no longer even being discussed. It was as if he wasn’t even here.

  He might as well not be, then. He’d work out what he was going to do when he got to the other side of the fence.

  He pushed out hard, before he could change his mind, and suddenly was flying through the air. He yanked his hands around immediately, reaching out. Even though the distance was a little farther than he’d thought, both hands clamped firmly around an upright bar of the fence.

  That part went exactly according to plan.

  But it was raining, and the uprights were a lot wetter than he’d expected. No sooner had his hands gripped them than he started to slide down, and fast. He scrabbled out with his feet, trying to find something to grip onto. There wasn’t anything.

  His left hand reached the bottom first, and the shock of its collision with the stone bounced it right off. Mark had an instant to realize the same thing might happen when his right hand reached the bottom, and then it did.

  And he was falling through the air.

  He lashed out, managing to get brief holds on things—little brick outcrops, a lower sill—but these were also wet, and he was dropping too fast to get any purchase. He whacked his knee in passing and lost what little balance remained and plummeted the last six feet all in one tumbling crash.

  He was on his feet for a moment, but the force of his landing pushed them out from underneath him and dropped him hard on his behind. That hurt enough, but gravity wasn’t finished with him yet—and very soon afterward he was lying on his back, fetching his head a solid crack on the ground.

  He lay there twisted, panting. He was in practice at being knocked around, but it still hurt. A lot. Above him was the underside of the windowsill outside his room. It looked a very long way up.

  A moment later, there was something else above him. A figure, black in silhouette against the dark sky.

  “Good gracious,” said an old, cracked voice. “How did you come to be down here, I wonder?”

  MARK’s first thought was that he should jump to his feet, sprint up the narrow metal staircase that led from this basement courtyard to the street, and run away. Run down to the front. Run…just run somewhere else. Then he found that he was crying.

  There was no warning of this. He had no sense it was going to happen, didn’t even decide to do it, as—like most people—he’d done from time to time. He didn’t want to do it at all. He was just doing it. Lying there on his back, with tears streaming silently down his face.

  “Oh dear,” the old lady said. “Now, now.”

  She’d moved to one side, so that light from a streetlamp caught her face, and through his tears Mark could see she was looking down at him with a frown of concern. This just made him feel worse, and he started to sob properly.

  She waited, not saying anything, as the gusts of misery blew through him. After a minute or so, she started to nod. Gradually, his sobs subsided, taking with them all but the last of the tears.

  “Yes,” the old lady said reflectively. “I think there’s only one thing for it.”

  “One thing for what?” Mark managed. His voice sounded thick.

  “I know just what you need,” she said. “Can you guess?”

  Mark shook his head. He couldn’t imagine what she had in mind.

  “A nice strong cup of tea,” she said.

  Mark was so surprised that he started to laugh.

  “That’s better,” she said, and stood aside so he had room to clamber to his feet.

  HER room was very, very warm. As he sat in the chair, watching the old lady pottering about at the stove with the kettle, Mark saw that she had not one but two of those old-fashioned hea
ters that have horizontal metal bars that glow orange when they’re turned on. Underneath the lace curtains at the window she had taped a strip of cloth to stop the slightest draft from coming in. She was wearing the thick black dress he’d seen her in before, and also a cardigan.

  “Don’t you get hot?” he asked.

  His voice still sounded a little snotty, and his head hurt. Partly from cracking it on the ground, probably, but mainly from the tears. He didn’t cry often. He knew he’d probably feel bad about doing it, later, but just right now he was too worn out to care.

  “The older you get, the colder you feel,” the old lady said. “The engine starts to wear out.”

  She put two cups on the little table, poured a dash of milk into both, then added tea. From somewhere she had produced a small plate of cookies. Two bourbons, two custard creams, and a garibaldi. Exactly the same cookies Mark’s grandmothers had favored, before they’d died, one the year after the other. Maybe there was a special shop where old ladies bought their cookies, and their dresses and coats, a little place hidden away down a side street or alleyway, where a grandfather clock ticked and an ancient man covered in dust and cobwebs came out of the back, walking slowly, summoned by the tinkle tinkle of the bell when someone hobbled in.

  The old lady sat down carefully in the other chair. “The good thing is that means nothing hurts quite so much.”

  He looked at her, not understanding what she meant.

  “You don’t get as happy as you used to,” she said. “But…you don’t cry very often either.”

  “Neither do I,” Mark said defensively.

  “I’m sure you don’t,” she agreed mildly. “You’re a boy. You’re not allowed to. God forbid that a boy reveal that he isn’t made of stone.”

  It took Mark a moment to puzzle this out, but it didn’t seem that he was being got at, so he just grunted and took a sip of his tea. It was so strong you could almost chew it. Maybe you could get tea bags from the special shop down the alley too, ones which had five times as many leaves in them as normal.