"I'll fetch her back."

"Oh, would you? Course, you could stay here with her"-she looked around doubtfully-"but it's a bit depressing."

"Better off at my place," Muriel said. "Be an outing for her, won't it?"

"I don't think she's old enough to appreciate an outing."

"She'll get the air, though. Where is she?"

Suzanne went into the other room and came back with a quilted bundle. She kissed the baby's fluffy head, and pulled up her hood around her face. "There, she'll be nice and warm," she said. "Can you manage? She's heavier than you think. Hold on, and I'll put her cot blanket round her. There. Okay?"

"Okay. Good luck then."

"Thanks, Lizzie. I'll pay you tonight. See you."

She followed them out onto the stairs. A keen draught whistled under the closed doors of the landing. Suzanne crossed her arms over her chest. She looked anxious.

"Sure you'll manage?"

"No problem." Muriel thought she was going to follow, hovering over them, until they were down in the street; but she paused at the top of the uncarpeted stairs and let them go down alone. Manoeuvring with her foot, Muriel pulled the front door behind her, and it closed with a clatter. There was a tiny porch, long unglazed, the wood rotting. Her box was where she had left it, on the composition floor running with damp. She stooped and put the baby in. Gemma was a bigger bundle than she had expected, encased in her snug quilting. She was asleep, and dreaming; Muriel saw the movement of her eyes under the tender skin of the lids.

She took up the box in her arms. At some point before she reached home, Gemma was sure to wake up, and then she would cry and attract attention. For this reason, it would be better not to fold over the flaps of the box; it would look odd. It was true that Mother had done it, but her own infant had been past crying, and moving only faintly, moving only feebly, like something burrowing underground. If anyone stops us, she thought, I'll say I'm her G.o.dmother. She stepped into the street.

No one stopped them. No one noticed them hurrying by; the big fleshy woman plastered with make-up, strutting along in her high-heeled boots; and her box from the Pick 'N' Save. The bottom edge of the box dug into her chest. She had no gloves, and her nails were drops of blood against the cardboard. The towns-people pa.s.sed them, bending in the wind, their faces screwed up and their collars pulled about their ears. In their concrete bunkers in the shopping centre, the saplings lashed in the gust, whipping the moist air with their half-fledged green. There was mud and broken gla.s.s on the pavements, the polystyrene cartons from the hamburger shop bowled down the street. Birds fled shrieking from wire to wire.

At ten o'clock the woman rang up again; the woman with the harsh, strange, threatening voice. She said, was Lizzie Blank there? This was the third time she'd rung, she said.

"No Blank is here," Mr. K. said. "You are under a mistake."

"Look," Sylvia said, "will you tell her, please, that I have this box for her?"

"Specify contents," said Mr. K. gruffly. High explosive, he thought.

"How would I know what's in it? All I know is that it's been cluttering up my hall for weeks past. Tell her: if she doesn't collect it right now, I don't know how she'll get it, because I'm moving today. The house will be all locked up."

She was a persistent, headstrong woman, this; he would not like to meet her in the dark. It seemed a bad mistake to inform her quarry over the telephone about what was in store; but no doubt, like him, she was a veteran of intrigue and destruction, and like him had long forgotten whose side she was on. Someone, somewhere, would be taping the call. It was all over the papers, about telephone tappers. Sooner or later the box would turn up; the parcel, the mystery, the infernal machine. He would be ready for it.

"Right," said Florence, straightening up. "Anything else I can do for you?" She sneezed twice, and blew her nose in a businesslike fashion.

Her face, when she took the handkerchief away, was sulky and woebegone. She had taken exception to their moving; was thinking about selling up herself and getting a flat. Colin could not imagine her leaving the district, but she said that people were talking about her. She said they had got wind of it, about Mother, and that when she walked along Lauderdale Road, people exchanged glances, and talked out of the side of their mouths, and hurried in, slamming their front doors.

"No, I think that's about it," Colin said to her. "Thanks, Florence, it was good of you to take time off. I think they're just about finished on the van." He went to the front door and looked out into the road. The removal men were just securing the tailgate. "That's it," he said.

The house was empty; even the carpets were taken up. They had come down far enough on the purchase price, Sylvia said, without throwing in soft furnishings. There were pale marks on the walls where the pictures had been; b.u.t.tons and small coins, shaken out of the furniture, lay on the floorboards for the new owner to sweep up. At the top of the stairs, all the doors were wedged open, and an unaccustomed white light lay across the banisters and the bare landing. There was something about the house in its present state that discomfited him extremely; like an old woman stripped naked. He couldn't wait to leave.

Florence pulled on her gloves. "Better get back to the office. I've got to go out and see a claimant."

"Don't be too hard on him."

"Her. It's a woman. I don't know why you think I'm such a tyrant. It's the taxpayer's money, you know. Well, Colin...so this is it."

"Yes. I hope the children won't be a nuisance when they come home from school. I'll be over for them mid-evening."

"They will be a nuisance, but by now I'm reconciled. Where's Alistair today?"

"G.o.d knows. I expect he'll turn up; like a homing rat or something."

For a moment he thought she was going to offer him her hand. "We've been neighbours ten years, Colin. I shall miss you."

"We'll miss you, too."

"I hope you will be very happy," she said formally, as she set off down the path.

Anyone would think I were getting married, Colin thought, as he watched her go. It still gave him a pang to think of Isabel; but now that he had become such a decision-maker, he was discovering an ability, a happy knack, of not thinking about her at all. The obsessions that had once alarmed him were attenuated now, washed-up little ghosts, trailing their spectral images through his brain when he was on the verge of sleep. He was not so vulnerable now, in waking hours. It was a man's life; an open countenance, a shuttered heart. It was just as the Prime Minister always said: There Is No Alternative. And that was a comfort too.

Sylvia came down the stairs, her feet clattering on the bare treads.

"What a day!" she said. "We could have picked a finer day for it."

"Looks as if it might clear, to me."

"Let's hope. Ready?"

"Yes."

Sylvia came to a halt, stubbing her toe on the cardboard box that still lay in the hall. "Oh, this blasted box," she said. "What am I to do with it?"

"Leave it."

"I rang up again. That bloke's foreign, who always answers. I can't get any sense out of him."

"You've got the right number?"

"She gave it me herself. Anyway, the address must be right, because that's where I sent her wages, and if she hadn't got them she'd have been round like a shot."

"I could take it," Colin offered. "I could drop it off."

"No, I'll do it. You follow the removers. Here you are." She took out of her shoulder bag the keys to the new house, with the estate agent's tag still on them. She dropped them into his hand. "You go and open up, and I'll drop the box off at Napier Street and follow you in the Mini."

"But I don't know where you want the furniture."

"Never mind." She smiled. "Whatever I decide now, I'll want it changed next week, I know I will. Off you go, then, I'll be right with you." She kissed him on the cheek.

Colin went down the path, swinging the keys. "My old man said follow the van," he sang. "And don't dilly dally on the way." He jumped into the Toyota and revved up the engine, ready for a sporty start. "Off went the van with me home packed in it-" He sped away from the kerb, waving gaily as he approached the corner, though his wife was no longer in sight.

Leaving the front door ajar, so that the squally rain blew in through the crack, Sylvia turned and clip-clopped down the hall. Just a final check, she thought. In the kitchen the smell of pine disinfectant rose to meet her. She had given the worktops a good going-over that morning, and washed the floor. There had to be some mess, when carpets were taken up, but she wanted the purchasers to know that she was clean.

She opened the cupboards one by one. All empty; the groceries were in the back of the car. Inside the last cupboard, by the hinge, there was a smear of something red. Tomato sauce, she thought. Those kids again, eating, eating, always eating. Pulling her abdomen in, she looked around. There was nothing to wipe it up with, no cloth or anything. Not even a tissue in her pocket. With an expression of distaste, she clicked the door shut and left the kitchen behind.

Strange how the living room looked smaller with all the furniture gone. You'd think it would be the other way round. On the mantel-piece sat Colin's head. Much to his disgust, and to Alistair's, she had insisted it should be left behind. A horrible thing, she thought it, with its blind white eyes. She walked over to it, touched the tip of the nose, then the cold lips. The porcelain was yellowish and crazed at the base. Faculty of Benevolence. Faculty of Hope.

She climbed the stairs and checked the bedrooms, opening the doors of the built-in wardrobes and easing out the drawers. In Alistair's room she stood by the window for a moment, looking out over the dank garden, into the tangle of grey branches that fenced it off. In summer it would be an impenetrable wall of green, but of course she would not be here to see it. She laid the palm of her hand flat against the wall. It felt damp, but there was no trace of the fungus now. Colin had done a good job on it. Perhaps there was hope for him yet. The growths would be back, naturally; but that was the next tenant's problem.

The sun was struggling out as she left Alistair's room, and shining through the narrow window onto the landing. It seemed to make everything look worse; illuminating the stains on the wallpaper, the cracks in the floorboards, even the brushmarks in the paintwork; a scouring, bleaching April sun. She hesitated, then turned back and drew closed the door of Alistair's room. Softly, in turn, she closed the other doors. Her face half in shadow, she went downstairs. She picked up the box, surprised again by how light it was. "Lost me way and don't know where to roam," she hummed. The front door clicked shut after her. She took the keys out of her pocket and posted them back through the letter box.

As soon as Muriel turned the corner-she felt the baby stirring within the box-she saw the car parked by the kerb; h.e.l.lo, she thought, Miss Isabel Field. She was parked a few houses along, on the other side of the road, and she was watching Mr. K.'s gate. Muriel saw the upturned white oval of her face; then sunlight struck across the windscreen, and wiped it from her view.

Miss Field was not somebody who understood life. She had not grasped how things work. She had not grasped it ten years ago; almost under her nose, she and Mother had toddled off to the ca.n.a.l. Muriel had an impulse to cross the road, the box in her arms, and pa.s.s the time of day.

But there was a need to hurry. It was necessary to get herself back upstairs and change into her own clothes. She couldn't take the baby to the ca.n.a.l wearing Lizzie's white boots, it would be unsuitable. Besides, why should the changeling emerge, unless it recognised its mother?

She turned in at the gate. She saw it, in her own mind, the murky waters parting as the human baby sank. She looked down at Gemma; pity, she thought, you could get fond of it. Slowly, trailing green weed, her own skeletal child swam to the bank. "Resurrection is a fact," she whispered. She drew the child from the water; rigid, but not with cold. With damp and bony fingers, the changeling reached for her face.

She was putting the key in the lock when she heard hurried footsteps behind her. She turned, holding the box between herself and her pursuer.

"What's that?" Miss Field demanded. She peered into the box.

"That's little Gemma," Muriel said calmly. "That's little Gemma Ryan."

"And who the h.e.l.l are you?"

"Just the baby-sitter."

"Where's Suzanne?"

"Upstairs." She nodded towards the front door. "Coming?" Isabel followed her inside, leaving the front door ajar. Muriel put down the box on the hall table. There was no one around; the doors were all closed. Isabel looked down at the child. "She doesn't look like anybody," she said. "Just a baby. Why is she in a box?"

"Ask her mother." Muriel led the way upstairs.

Outside on Napier Street, the Mini was crawling along. It had begun to rain again, quite hard, and visibility was poor. This must be close enough, Sylvia thought. She pulled up, and took the box from the pa.s.senger seat. She left the car unlocked; I'll only be a minute, she thought. Here it is, number 54, number 56. I could leave it outside. But it was wet on the front step, and she could see that the parcel would get ruined. The door was off the latch, so she opened it a fraction more, and peeped in. Her curiosity got the better of her; she intruded her head. "h.e.l.lo, anybody home?" Some kind of rooming house, she thought, pretty sordid. There must be someone around. "h.e.l.lo?" I've come this far, I may as well deliver it properly. She stepped inside, closing the door to the street.

Inside the hall, on a small table, was another box. Sylvia looked into it; to her amazement it contained a baby, a tiny wrapped-up baby with a pink healthy skin. As she watched it, it yawned and blinked, and waved a hand at her. Sylvia put her parcel down at her feet. She bent over the baby. It looked a well-cared-for mite, happy and plump, but what was it doing in a cardboard box? The waving, plucking fingers were caught in the open weave of its blanket. Gently and expertly, Sylvia began to free them. She straightened up and looked around her. There was not a sound. She grew alarmed, and ventured up the stairs. "h.e.l.lo!" she called. "Lizzie? Are you there?"

But Lizzie was no longer there at all. On the first landing, she paused, to let Miss Field catch her up. This was Mr. K.'s floor, but apart from his bedroom, these rooms were empty, and kept locked. She had keys, of course; and about her person.

"Where is she?" Isabel asked, reaching the top of the stairs. "You can take me to her. I won't do anything. I only want to find out where we stand." Muriel caught a whiff of the whisky on her breath.

She unlocked the door, and they stepped inside. A smell of dampness and decay rushed out. The narrow window, uncurtained, looked out onto a brick wall. The paper was peeling from the walls, a spider's web hung in the corner. Miss Field turned, her eyes suddenly bright with terror, the only light in the dark room. Muriel reached up and removed her wig. Miss Field screamed.

Sylvia stopped dead. What was that? I don't like it, she thought; a baby in a cardboard box, and some woman-a battered wife perhaps-shrieking in terror overhead. Whoever these people were, they were certainly in need of the attentions of Social Services, if not of the police. She took a deep breath, and ran up the first flight of stairs. She stopped on the landing and looked around. Quite a big place, she thought, bigger than it looked from the outside; and dirt everywhere. Where had the noise come from? Suddenly, she felt herself seized from behind. A brawny arm locked across her throat, and her a.s.sailant forced her backwards. Her knees buckled, and she was dragged along. She kicked out behind her, clawed at the imprisoning arm, but the breath was being squeezed out of her, and she was weak with shock. Somewhere, the woman was still screaming. A door was thrust open and she was propelled through it. A blow between her shoulder blades sent her crashing forward. She landed on all fours, at the screamer's feet. She heard the door close. She raised her head. "h.e.l.lo, Mrs. Ryan," she said. "What are you doing here?" At once she noticed that Mrs. Ryan was expecting. The whole thing had surprised her, of course, but she was not as astonished as she might have been. She felt she had been travelling for years to get here; as the key turned behind her in the lock, she knew that she had finally arrived.

When the woman had stopped screaming and the house was quiet again, Miss Anaemia left her room and went downstairs. If Mr. K. had done a murder-and she could see things going that way-she would just have to say she knew nothing about it; but she was not, repeat not, going to be in when that woman arrived, wanting to look at the bedsheets again. She pulled her raincoat on as she went through the hall, and wondered if Poor Mrs. Wilmot would mind if she borrowed her telescopic umbrella from the stand by the front door.

What's this? she said to herself. Another delivery for Mr. K.? As another strange face loomed over her, Gemma began to cry. Miss Anaemia opened her eyes wide, reached into the box, and lifted the baby out. She held the quilted head against her cheek, rocking, making soothing noises in her throat. "Don't cry, sweetheart," she said. "What are you doing in a cardboard box then? Have they left you all on your own? Never mind, don't cry, precious. You and me are off to the housing office."

She dropped the empty box on the floor, swaddled the baby in her blanket, hitched her onto her shoulder, and set off out of the front door. It was still drizzling, but the wind had dropped a bit. Miss Anaemia felt exalted, defiant; as if she were going to make people eat their words. Patches of scarlet flared in her cheeks. She crossed the road, clucking to the baby, quickening her step; and turned the corner by the post box. At once she spotted the person she was looking for; there she is, she thought, that fat old cow Miss Sidney from the DHSS, Snoopers herself, wielding her black umbrella, and looking in at everyone's windows as she advances purposefully up the street.

"Hi there!" she called. "Coming to see me, were you? Told you I'd got a baby, didn't I? Who's a liar now?" Miss Sidney checked her stride, and stared.

When the cries of the infant subsided, Mr. Kowalski emerged from the kitchen. It was a fake, he had no doubt, a tape recording, a lure to draw him out. It was a cry from the past; the infants mewling in the burned-out ruins, the mothers bleeding in the city streets.

The box was the first thing he saw. He picked it up, put it on the hall table, and read the address: To Lizzie Blank, 2 Buckingham Avenue. The house had long ago run out of his control. Locking doors had no effect; he knew that now. From upstairs he heard voices raised, the voices of strange women. I will do or die for Poor Mrs. Wilmot, he thought; touch not a hair of that old grey head. He rattled the box. Curiosity killed the cat, is an expression. He touched the metal bulge of the Luger in his deep trouser pocket. Death was in the air of the damp old house. He could smell it, and he knew. He was a professional. He had burned his bridges; there was nothing to lose. He tore at the wrapping paper.

Muriel put on her boots; Muriel's own boots, stout and thick-soled, ready for the mud on Turner's Fields. She put on her big wool overcoat, and knotted her check scarf on the point of her chin. All over the house-in the empty room where the women were imprisoned, and in the kitchen where Mr. Kowalski was loading his gun-they could hear her feet stamping on the stairs, one two, one two: Terror Comes to Town.

And now for little Diddums. She turned, from the foot of the stairs, and gaped. Sweetie Pie had altered; altered out of all recognition. Displayed on the hall table, neat and sweet and perfectly articulated, was a skeleton; fine and tiny, and set together with a deft and knowing hand. If there were an odd number of fingers, and something animal about the skull, she did not notice it. She had never torn the living apart, to study the bones within. With a forefinger, she probed the empty ribs. She shuddered. Bones can be clothed. It was a miraculous transportation; and an hour saved, of her valuable time. One by one she picked up the little bones and placed them in an orderly fashion back inside the box. Only when she had done this did she notice that it was a different box from the one she had carried Gemma in. A different box, with one of her names on it: TO LIZZIE BLANK, inscribed there by the hand of G.o.d.

I'm here first, Colin thought, pulling up in his new drive. Here I am for my ten-year NHBC guarantee; my split-level living area, my open aspect to rear. The small estate was on high ground; a golf course fell away below him, hidden now by the steady rain and a belt of young trees.

They should have taken the motorway, he thought, as he fumbled for the keys and prepared to dash for shelter. They'll have got snarled up in the traffic going across the bridge; I should have told them about the road works. He looked at his watch. Thirty minutes; not bad. He let himself into the empty house. Well, you've dallied and dillied, haven't you, he would say to the men when they arrived. He wondered if Sylvia would have the sense to use the motorway. Smiling to himself, he went through to the kitchen to turn the electricity on.

Muriel was at home. She was at home at last; Buckingham Avenue. Holding her box, she wandered through the empty rooms. The Sidneys had gone, and the house was returning to itself; their occupation had been a temporary thing, the blink of an eye, a memory erased as soon as the door closed on them. The dimness was gathering, hanging in clots from the ceiling; the air itself was thickening, and the floors exuded the cold and secret smell of earth. She would take a few minutes; enjoy herself. Then she would go upstairs to the spare room, sit down; arrange the bones, and wait.

Mr. Kowalski went upstairs. He heard them; chattering, their voices on the edge of hysteria. Telephone Voice was one of them; the other was Ghoul.

It seemed that hours had pa.s.sed. The women heard the key turn in the lock. They stood together, arms intertwined. He faced them, a squat bristling bully, yelling in Rumanian and waving a gun. He motioned them apart. They obeyed, their eyes staring, licking their dry lips in fear. Mr. K. pointed the gun at Sylvia. She lifted her head and glared at him as she dropped back against the wall. He swung round to Isabel. Her fists were clenched at her sides, tensed for the explosion. "I know an expression," he said. "Eeny, meemy, miny, mo-" Both together, the ladies screamed.

The furniture was all in place. Well, you say in place; as Sylvia said, it would be all changed by this time next week. If he could find the kettle, he might be able to make some coffee. They had brought quite a lot of stuff over last night. He looked at his watch again. Where the devil had she got to? She couldn't have taken the motorway after all.

He surveyed the pile of boxes and tea-chests stacked up in the living room. Where to start? He wished she would come. Had the Mini broken down again? It often gave trouble in wet weather. Francis said it was the condenser; but what would a b.l.o.o.d.y vicar know? "You can't trust these Specials like an old-time copper-" he sang. The telephone rang.

Warily-because he was not expecting a call, and yet he was always expecting one-Colin raised his head and listened. Just where was the telephone? He followed the sound. "When you can't find your way home," he sang. Kitchen; wall phone, very modish. "h.e.l.lo?" He had to read the number off the dial. "Five-one-two-eight-six?"

There was no answer, just the sound of breathing; quiet and steady.

"Sylvia, is that you?" No answer. He sighed impatiently. "If you want the Broadbents, they've moved. They went yesterday. I've got their address somewhere, I can give it to you if you ring back later tonight." Imbecile vendors; why hadn't they left their new number to hand, as he had done? He paused. "Who is that?"

He felt the hairs rise, p.r.i.c.kling, at the nape of his neck. Funny, he'd always imagined that was a figure of speech. The line was open: a meaningless hum, a static crackle. "Mr. Sidney?"

That was not a voice he knew. It seemed to come from very far away. It p.r.i.c.ked at his memory with an evil familiarity, like an old habit, an old crime. Again he heard the sound of breathing: heavier, almost laboured, hoa.r.s.e. At first it seemed that the caller was choking back laughter, gloating laughter long suppressed; but then the note changed, as if a term had been set to the merriment, by a hand around the throat. What could he do, alone in the cold and empty house? He turned his head, hunched his shoulders, as if he felt that the walls had moved in on him; the matt emulsion, the cork notice-board, making their approach. There was something else on the line: the chant of dubiously human voices, a subdued and gathering roar. Was someone throwing a party? He could hear the clink of crystal, the popping of corks; the discreet firm contact of flesh upon flesh. Was someone mourning? Had somebody died? Colin listened, his mouth gaping a little, his hand tight on the receiver: the chuckling, the gasping, the sn.i.g.g.e.ring, the struggle for air. He could not be sure what he heard any more, terminal jubilee, bodily harm; the act of laughter, the art of dying. Rain spattered against the uncurtained windows; the wind got up, and already, by mid-afternoon, it was quite dark.

VACANT POSSESSION. Copyright 1986 by Hilary Mantel. All rights reserved. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

ALSO BY HILARY MANTEL.

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Eight Months on Ghazzah Street.

Fludd.

A Place of Greater Safety A Change of Climate.

An Experiment in Love The Giant, O'Brien.