The Great and Secret Show. Clive Barker

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СКАЧАТЬ the day I lose my zits and get my tits is the day the Reverend’s right. I’ll wake up perfect, open the curtains, and the Grove will be gone. I’ll never get to kiss Randy Krentzman.

      There, of course, lay the real reason behind her close questioning of Arleen. Randy was in Joyce’s every thought, or every other, though she’d only met him three times and spoken to him twice. She’d been with Arleen during the first encounter, and Randy had scarcely looked her way when she was introduced, so she’d said nothing. The second occasion she’d not had any competition, but her friendly hello had been greeted with an off-hand: ‘Who are you?’ She’d persisted; reminded him; even told him where she lived. On the third meeting (‘Hello again,’ she’d said. ‘Do I know you?’ he’d replied), she’d recited all her personal details shamelessly; even asked him, in a sudden rush of optimism, if he was a Mormon. That, she’d later decided, had been a tactical error. Next time she’d use Arleen’s approach, and treat the boy as though his presence was barely endurable; never look at him; only smile if it was absolutely necessary. Then, when you were about to saunter away look straight into his eyes, and purr something vaguely dirty. The law of mixed messages. It worked for Arleen, why not for her? And now that the great beauty had publicly announced her indifference to Joyce’s idol she had some sliver of hope. If Arleen had been seriously interested in Randy’s affections then Joyce might have gone straight round to the Reverend Meuse and asked him if he could hurry the Apocalypse up a little.

      She took off her glasses and squinted up at the white hot sky, vaguely wondering if it was already on its way. The day was strange.

      ‘Shouldn’t do that,’ Carolyn said, emerging from Marvin’s Food and Drug with Trudi following, ‘the sun’ll burn out your eyes.’

      ‘It will not.’

      ‘It will so,’ Carolyn, ever the source of unwanted information, replied, ‘your retina’s a lens. Like in a camera. It focuses –’

      ‘All right,’ Joyce said, returning her gaze to solid ground. ‘I believe you.’ Colours cavorted behind her eyes for a few moments, disorienting her.

      ‘Where now?’ said Trudi.

      ‘I’m going back home,’ Arleen said. ‘I’m tired.’

      ‘I’m not,’ Trudi said brightly. ‘I’m not going home, either. It’s boring.’

      ‘Well it’s no use standing in the middle of the Mall,’ Carolyn said. ‘That’s as boring as being at home. And we’ll cook in the sun.’

      She looked roasted already. The heaviest of the four by twenty pounds or more, and a red-head, the combination of her weight, and skin that never tanned, should have driven her indoors. But she seemed indifferent to the discomfort, as she was to every other physical stimulus but that of taste. The previous November the entire Hotchkiss family had been involved in a freeway pile-up. Carolyn had crawled free of the wreckage, slightly concussed, and had subsequently been found by the police some way down the freeway, with half-chewed Hershey bars in both hands. There was more chocolate on her face than blood, and she’d screamed blue murder – or so rumour went – when one of the cops attempted to dissuade her from her snack. Only later was it discovered that she’d sustained half a dozen cracked ribs.

      ‘So where?’ said Trudi, returning to the burning issue of the day. ‘In this heat: where?’

      ‘We’ll just walk,’ said Joyce. ‘Maybe down to the woods. It’ll be cooler there.’ She glanced at Arleen. ‘Are you coming?’

      Arleen made her companions hang on her silence for ten seconds. Finally she agreed.

      ‘Nowhere better to go,’ she said.

      ii

      Most towns, however small, make themselves after the pattern of a city. That is, they divide. White from black, straight from gay, wealthy from less wealthy, less wealthy from poor. Palomo Grove, the population of which was in that year, 1971, a mere one thousand two hundred, was no exception. Built on the flanks of a gently sloping hillside, the town had been designed as an embodiment of democratic principles, in which every occupant was intended to have equal access to the centre of power in the town, the Mall. It lay at the bottom of Sunrise Hill, known simply as the Hill, with four villages – Stillbrook, Deerdell, Laureltree and Windbluff – radiating from its hub, their feed thoroughfares aligned with the compass points. But that was as far as the planners’ idealism went. Thereafter the subtle differences in the geography of the villages made each quite different in character. Windbluff, which lay on the south-west flank of the hill, commanded the best views, and its properties the highest prices. The top third of the Hill was dominated by half a dozen grand residences, their roofs barely visible behind lush foliage. On the lower slopes of this Olympus were the Five Crescents, streets bowed upon themselves, which were – if you couldn’t afford a house at the very top – the next most desirable places to live.

      By contrast, Deerdell. Built on flat ground, and flanked on two sides by undeveloped woodland, this quadrant of the Grove had rapidly gone down-market. Here the houses lacked pools and needed paint. For some, the locale was a hip retreat. There were, even in 1971, a few artists living in Deerdell; that community would steadily grow. But if there was anywhere in the Grove where people went in fear for their automobiles’ paintwork, it was here.

      Between these two extremes, socially and geographically, lay Stillbrook and Laureltree, the latter thought marginally more up-market because several of its streets were built on the second flank of the Hill, their scale and their prices less modest with every bend the streets took as they climbed.

      None of the quartet were residents of Deerdell. Arleen lived on Emerson, the second highest of the Crescents, Joyce and Carolyn within a block of each other on Steeple Chase Drive in Stillbrook Village, and Trudi in Laureltree. So there was a certain adventure in treading the streets of the East Grove, where their parents had seldom, if ever, ventured. Even if they had strayed down here, they’d certainly never gone where the girls now went: into the woods.

      ‘It’s no cooler,’ Arleen complained when they’d been wandering a few minutes. ‘In fact, it’s worse.’

      She was right. Though the foliage kept the stare of the sun off their heads, the heat still found its way between the branches. Trapped, it made the damp air steamy.

      ‘I haven’t been here for years,’ Trudi said, whipping a switch of stripped twig back and forth through a cloud of gnats. ‘I used to come with my brother.’

      ‘How is he?’ Joyce enquired.

      ‘Still in hospital. He’s never going to come out. All the family knows that but nobody ever says it. Makes me sick.’

      Sam Katz had been drafted and gone to Vietnam fit in mind and body. In the third month of his tour of duty all that had been undone by a land mine, which had killed two of his comrades and badly injured him. There’d been a squirmingly uneasy homecoming, the Grove’s little mighty lined up to greet the crippled hero. What followed was much talk of heroism and sacrifice; much drinking; some hidden tears. Through it all Sam Katz had sat stony featured, not setting his face against the celebrations but detached from them, as though his mind were still rehearsing the moment when his youth had been blown to smithereens. A few weeks later he’d been taken back to hospital. Though his mother had told enquirers it was for corrective surgery to his spine the months dragged on until they became years, and Sam didn’t reappear. Everyone guessed the reason, though it went unadmitted. Sam’s physical wounds had healed adequately СКАЧАТЬ