The Fallen Curtain Read Free Page A

out alone. Even when he was in his own room doing his homework, he’d been watched (“Leave your door open, dear. We don’t want any secrets in this house”), and he hadn’t had a single real friend. Would Barry be his friend, just for a few hours, just for that evening? Barry would.
    “But you’re grown up now,” he said.
    The Man nodded. Barry said later when he recalled the details of what his mother called “that nasty experience”—for he was always able to remember every detail—that it was at this point the Man had begun to cry.
    A small, rather dirty hand touched the Man’s hand and held it. No one had ever held his hand like that before. Not possessively or commandingly (“Hold on to me tight, Richard, while we cross the road”) but gently, sympathetically—lovingly? Their hands remained clasped, the small one covering the large, then the large enclosing and gripping the small. A tension, as of time stopped, held the two people in the car still. The boy broke it, and time moved again.
    “I’m getting a bit hungry,” he said.
    “Are you? It’s past your teatime. I’ll tell you what, we could have some fish and chips. One of those shops over there is a fish and chip shop.”
    Barry started to get out of the car.
    “No, not you,” the Man said. “It’s better if I go alone. You wait here. O.K.?”
    “O.K.,” Barry said.
    He was only gone ten minutes—for he knew exactly and from a distance which one of the shops it was—and when he got back Barry was waiting for him. The fish and chips were good, almost as good as those gran used to cook. By the time they had finished eating and had wiped their greasy fingers on his handkerchief, dusk had come. Lights were going up in those far-off shops and houses but here, down by the lake, the trees made it quite dark.
    “What’s the time?” said Barry.
    “A quarter past six.”
    “I ought to be getting back now.”
    “How about a game of hide and seek first? Your mum won’t be home yet. I can get you back to Upfield in ten minutes.”
    “I don’t know…. Suppose she gets in early?”
    “Please,” the Man said.
“Please
, just for a little while. I used to play hide and seek down here when I was a kid.”
    “But you said you never played anywhere. You said…”
    “Did I? Maybe I didn’t. I’m a bit confused.”
    Barry looked at him gravely. “I’ll hide first,” he said.
    He watched Barry disappear among the trees. Grown-ups who play hide and seek don’t keep to the rules, they don’t bother with that counting to a hundred bit. But the Man did. He counted slowly and seriously, and then he got out of the car and began walking round the pond. It took him a long time to find Barry, who was more proficient at this game than he, a proficiency which showed when it was his turn to do the seeking. The darkness was deepening, and there was no one else on the common. He and the boy were quite alone.
    Barry had gone to hide. In the car the Man sat counting—ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred. When he stopped he was aware of the silence of the place, alleviated only by the faint, distant hum of traffic on the South Circular Road, just as the darkness was alleviated by the red blush ofthe sky, radiating the glow of London. Last time round, it hadn’t been this dark. The boy wasn’t behind any of the trees or in the bushes by the waterside or covered by the brambles in the ditch that ran parallel to the road.
    Where the hell had the stupid kid got to? His anger was irrational, for he had suggested the game himself. Was he angry because the boy had proved better at it than he? Or was it something deeper and fiercer than that, rage at rejection by this puny and ignorant little savage?
    “Where are you, Barry? Come on out. I’ve had about enough of this.”
    There was no answer. The wind rustled, and a tiny twig scuttered down out of a treetop to his feet. God, that little devil! What’ll I do if I can’t find him? What the