The walker, p.1
The Walker, page 1
The Walker
Jane Goodall
Copyright © Jane R Goodall 2004.
The right of Jane R Goodall to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
First published in the UK by Hodder Australia, 2004.
This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
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Plymouth, September 1967
It was fifteen minutes’ walk from school to the station, or a bit more if you were carrying a heavy bag. Nell was carrying two bags: one with the week’s clothing and her growing collection of cosmetics, and the other with the weekend’s homework. The homework bag was heaviest. She changed the bags from hand to hand, to share out the drag on her arms, and every twenty paces (she counted them) she stopped to rest briefly and blow on the whitening palms of her hands.
This was going to be a heavy year. Some of her teachers said ten O levels was too much, but Nell thought ten sounded like a nice number. Mum told her to take eight and Dad said you only needed five to get into the navy, but they weren’t here — so there. Aunty Pat said ten sounded impressive. The twins had five each and she was very proud of them.
Nell had to be a weekly boarder this year and spend the weekends at Aunty Pat’s, which was all right really because she liked being with the twins and anyway she was used to it because Dad was always being posted somewhere foreign and sometimes Mum went with him. The twins were Rita and Julie, and when she got home they were all going out to the cinema together in Exeter to see Doctor Zhivago.
‘Julie’s seen it twice already,’ Rita said on the phone. ‘She’s got a crush on Omar Shard. You’ll fall for Tom Courtenay, I know. He’s the intellectual type.’ Nell quite liked her cousins thinking she’d go for the intellectual type. She put the bags down again and flexed her hands. The new maths book was the worst thing to carry, even between classes. It was big and old and a bit smelly with a thick hard cover and an ink stain on the edge of the pages in one corner. Nell thought at least six people must have used it before. She didn’t like used books, with dirty pages and other people’s underlinings all over them. The biology book was almost new. It had glossy pages with photos of frogs pinned out for anatomy. She had a new French dictionary and an old French grammar. The English texts were old, too, but she was going to buy her own copies of those: The Mayor of Casterbridge and Book 6 of The Prelude were the ones Miss Crabbe announced they would be doing this term and she said that all the girls should try to have them.
Miss Crabbe was called Crabby, but she wasn’t. She even smiled when they said it. ‘Hey, Crabby, are there any good sex scenes in this book?’ She was a lot younger than the other teachers and looked a lot happier. She had a Sandie Shaw haircut and wore purple tights and in summer term she wore a Mary Quant dress. This term she came to school in a trouser suit. The girls crowded round her after assembly. ‘You could be a model,’ they said.
It took Nell twenty minutes to get to the station and that left only ten minutes to wait for the Exeter train. She hated waiting for trains. Or buses. But she specially hated waiting for the Friday train at the end of the day, when it was getting all gloomy. She positioned her bags near the edge of the platform and brushed the front of her school mac with her hands. It had been dry-cleaned for the new term but still looked faded and limp, and it flapped around in the wind. Nell wished she had a trouser suit like Crabby, with a big fold-back collar and two rows of buttons. In her school bag was a copy of Honey magazine with all the autumn clothes in it. She’d bought it after school on Wednesday — the day it came out — but had saved it for reading on the train.
There weren’t many people waiting on the platform — fewer than usual for the 5.10. Some of the trains had corridors but the 5.10 from Penzance often didn’t. It just had separate compartments with a door at each side of the carriage, so once you were in, you were in. Nell knew better than to get into a compartment where she’d be on her own, so she usually tried to pick out someone on the platform who’d be safe to travel with. Some other girls if possible, or, failing that, any woman would do, really. That’s what her mother advised her. But the only other people waiting today were a man with an umbrella, who would probably go first class, and a couple of boys from the high school. A lot of Nell’s friends would have got in with the boys. They didn’t look exactly dangerous, but Nell didn’t want anyone thinking she was ‘boy mad’, least of all the boys themselves. It was always better to play hard to get, Rita and Julie told her.
When the train drew in, a student in a green duffle coat got out and held the door for Nell, his long hair blowing across his face. She checked quickly inside. There was a dumpy, middle-aged woman in the corner opposite who seemed to be asleep, and that was good because Nell didn’t want to get drawn into aimless chat. She shut the door, put her bags on the seat and pulled the window up a bit. The man in the duffle coat had pushed it right down, so it must have been freezing with all that cold air rushing through. She arranged her bags on the seat beside her and got out her magazine.
The autumn fashion colours were amazing. Twiggy was wearing a dress in rich chocolate corduroy with mustard tights and a rust coloured blouse from Biba in some shiny material that draped into big gathered sleeves. Over the page was the perfect trouser suit: deep burnt orange with a blue pin-stripe. The jacket was long — ‘military length’, said the description — and had a lovely curved shape, fitted close around the ribs, then flared out to the hem. The trousers were flared too, and the model wore high heeled boots under them. Jean Muir trouser suit, 14 guineas. Nell could not afford more than 12 guineas even if she saved up most of her dress allowance for the term. Perhaps when she went to university in a few years’ time she’d be able to buy a trouser suit from her student grant and throw away her old school mac, which was smelling horribly of dry-cleaning fluid.
She kept turning pages, then stopped to read an article about Lynn Redgrave. It said that Lynn had always been the ugly duckling in her glamorous family, because she was plump and self-conscious while her sister Vanessa was being called ‘the most beautiful actress in England’, but now everybody was raving about Lynn in Georgy Girl and saying that she could be the most talented of all the Redgraves. Nell lost interest in the article. She hadn’t seen Georgy Girl and, besides, her eyes were stinging. Maybe from too much reading.
Her gaze slid across to the window. The dark was closing in outside and the lights in the carriage were reflecting on the glass, so she had to put her face right up to it to see. The bushes were black shadows along the railway line, with an eerie glow around them because the sky was still letting through shafts of light that showed the high points of the moors further away. If this was Dartmoor, they must already have passed Ivybridge, but the train wouldn’t stop till Torquay. The glass was cold against Nell’s forehead and the rattling of the train made her teeth vibrate. She drew back and saw the compartment reflected, with the hills and the trees ruching through it like ghosts.
*
The woman in the opposite corner was still asleep. What if she missed her station? Nell began to wonder if she should ask her where she wanted to get off, but she didn’t like to disturb her. Anyway, she was enjoying the time to herself and the woman looked like the chatty type. Perhaps it would be best to wait till they were near Torquay, then tap her on the arm. Just in case. Nell wouldn’t like an old lady to miss her station and have to go all the way back from Exeter in the dark. She stared at the reflected image of the hunched figure, with its head slumped into its chest. How could you let yourself go like that? Why did women just give up when they were about thirty-five, and start wearing those boxy sheepskin coats and thick woollen skirts right down to their knees?
The train went over some points and jolted from side to side so Nell’s magazine nearly slipped from under her hand. She caught it as it was about to fall, and that was when she noticed something running along the floor of the carriage. At first she thought it was a trickle of water, but it was thick and dark, and then another streaked across after it, and another, and another. Nell lifted her feet off the floor in a sudden reflex, as she recognised that the liquid was dark red and spreading everywhere.
Although she hardly realised it, she was already screaming as she looked at the woman opposite and saw the bib of red stuff soaking int
1
London, August 1971
London was awash with pale sunlight and Joni Mitchell was singing ‘Chelsea Morning’ in Nell’s head as she watched a real Chelsea morning through the cab window. After she’d sat through what amounted to three continuous nights on the plane, relieved only by short episodes of shallow sleep, she felt as if she were dreaming and wide awake at the same time. Here she was, back in England.
Ten weeks of living in Adelaide, even in what were the winter months over there, had accustomed her to a light that was fiercer, thrown from the brilliant blue disc of an unbroken sky. It was hard to believe that the same sun shone here. This was an altogether different light, reflected from stone walls, broken into mottled patterns by the leaves of the trees, gleaming across the bare back of a passing cyclist.
It was Friday morning and Nell’s watch said 8.30, so in Adelaide it would be dinner time on Friday evening and Mum would be frying the chops. Mum didn’t like her going back on her own, not after what had happened, but everyone agreed she had to take up the university place she’d been offered, and her parents couldn’t move from Adelaide because Dad was the head of the new training program there. She’d be all right anyway, she told them, so now she was going to have to prove it.
She leant forward in her seat, relishing the space around her, watching the people walk at different paces along The Embankment, or bending over to stare at the river. A hippie sat on the wall and strummed a guitar. They passed a pub that seemed to explode with flowers from hanging baskets and window boxes. Some of the houses had window boxes, too, filled with pink and red geraniums. Living in London was going to be fantastic.
‘Pretty, init?’ said the driver. ‘That’s the Draper’s Arms. Gets fancier every year. Bit of a competition now, see, to be the fanciest pub in Chelsea. Trying to be part of the Flower Show. I’ve heard Adelaide’s the Garden City — is that right?’
‘Yes. There’s parks all around it, in a ring.’
‘That’s nice, then. It’s going to be a scorcher today, they reckon. Eighty’s the forecast. But I expect that’s nothing to you.’
‘Well, it’s winter in Australia now, so it can get quite cold.’
‘So I’ve heard. I got an uncle over in Australia. He lives in Perth. Loves it out there, apparently. But I love London. Lived here all my life. Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner…You know that silly old song? Collingham Gardens is nice. You’ll like it there. Lovely old houses. Got a flat, have you?’
‘Yes. Well, my cousins have. I’m moving in with them.’
‘That’s nice, then. I hope they take care of you — little Australian girl like you could get swallowed up in London.’
Nell saw in the driving mirror his eyes, raised to see her reflection. A warning signal flickered somewhere on the edge of her consciousness. ‘I’m not really Australian. Just my parents moved there a few years ago, so I went out there to stay with them after I finished my A levels.’
‘Ah, that explains it. I didn’t think you sounded much like one of them. They’re all supposed to live in Earl’s Court, you know. Kangaroo Valley, they call it. But anyway, you want to take care in swinging London. Few sharpers about, if you know what I mean. They older than you, these cousins?’
The warning light was on now.
‘Yes. They’re judo champions, as a matter of fact.’
‘That right?’ The cab drew up at a junction. ‘I’m a bit of a judo champion myself.’ The driver turned and winked at Nell before he drove off again and took a right turn.
She felt the panic wave start to rise and remembered the counsellor’s instructions. Breathe through it. Just concentrate on your breathing. Let the breath out through your lips, smooth and steady. The cabbie went on talking.
‘I’m only kidding, of course. My brother was the fighter. He used to tell me I couldn’t knock the skin off a rice pudding — but I always knew my way around. That’s the thing in London, see. Got to know your way around. Get yourself an A to Z. There’s a tube map on the back. Then — doesn’t matter where you are, or what time of the day or night it is — you can find your way home. This is Sloane Street, where the trendies live. What do you think of those platform shoes, then? Ridiculous, init? Wonder they don’t fall over and cripple theirselves.’
Nell was counting her out breaths: one, two, three. She could feel sweat on her forehead and her mouth was dry. This was how it happened. Just as she was feeling happy, when she thought she was safe, some slight thing would open the crack through which it came back at her. The killer was still around, she knew — delivering milk, or selling ice-creams or driving a cab — and he knew Nell. Schoolgirl Nell Adams, all the newspapers reported, finds murder victim on train. And there was her picture, on the front page. So he knew her name and he knew her face. His own, sought obsessively now in dreams and waking nightmares, was always obscured by the straggly brown hair blowing across it. It was worse in dreams. The focus zoomed in, like a close-up in a film, and just as the hair was about to blow clear and reveal the killer’s eyes, she woke, sweating, with a strangled cry in her throat.
The cab turned another corner, then another. Sometimes she dreamt that a middle-aged woman in a sheepskin coat was looking for her; the woman wanted to explain politely that her throat had been cut, and to show where the wound was, pointing with a plump finger at the great smiling gash. Once, she dreamt she was back in Aunty Pat’s house in Exeter watching television and turned to see the woman asleep in the armchair next to her, but this time with her head thrown back…
‘Here we are, then: Collingham Gardens. That’s one pound and sixty-two new pence, my duck, or thirty-two and six, as I was brought up to call it. And here come the judo champions, by the looks.’
Julie and Rita were bopping around on the pavement, waving with rapid hand flaps and calling out.
‘We thought it was you. We saw the taxi turn in on the other side of the square. We’ve been looking out for you for an hour.’
They pulled her out of the cab and hugged her, then began hauling her suitcases up the steps to the front door as Nell found a five pound note to pay the driver. She took three pounds in change and returned the coins to his skinny hand. He was okay. Just a friendly old bloke.
‘Thank you, my duck. You take care now, won’t you? Have a lovely time.’
*
The flat was up two flights of stairs, and had a small front balcony overlooking the gardens in the square.
French windows led out from the sitting room, which must once have been vast, with its high ceilings and ornate plaster work. Now it was divided with a partition, to make an area for the bedrooms. These were so small they were almost like cubicles, side by side, each with its single bed, miniature chest of drawers and bedside table. The one at the front was the best, because it had a big window that overlooked the trees. The back one, the worst of the three, was rather dark, with a small window from which you could see onto an alley lined with rubbish bins. The middle one had a skylight and was slightly larger than the other two, so that there was room for a narrow table along the wall opposite the bed.
‘This is yours,’ said Rita, ‘because there’s room for the little desk, see? Julie and me are going to swap every six months, so each of us gets a turn in the front bedroom. You’ll have one of us on either side of you, so you’ll feel very safe. The only problem is those little windows above the doors let in quite a lot of light, so it’s hard to go to sleep if someone has the light on in the sitting room. Means it’s best if we all go to bed at the same time. Oh — bathroom! Through here.’
Rita led the way out into the hall and opened a door at the far end.
‘We share it with the other flat, unfortunately. They sometimes complain if we take long baths or if they think we haven’t cleaned it properly. So we bought a Mickey Mouse bath brush. Look! Isn’t it wonderful? It’s from Habitat. So’s the aubergine bathmat — there are towels to match — Mum gave them to us last birthday. What about a cup of coffee?’
