Stranger Still

by Marilyn Messik

  I looked at Boris, “How risky?”

  “Ed and I will be there, no real risk.”

  “And I am not frightened,” Glory said.

  I nodded and reached for my own coat, “OK. Let’s go.” Glory was telling the truth, it wasn’t this proposed outing that was so distressing her, it was something else entirely but if I couldn’t stand by Glory when she wasn’t her best, then what use was I? As we moved out of the room a warm, extremely large hand engulfed mine and squeezed gently. It was about as effusive as Ed got but all the more appreciated for that.

  I’ll be honest, I wasn’t thrilled with the way things were going. As I’d seen them walk through the door, I had determined there’d be no budging, yet here I was – budged. My conscience was and always had been an ongoing liability, and frankly a flipping nuisance. I was far crosser about that than about anything they wanted me to do. I wasn’t really worried about risk, the last couple of times I’d got into a spot of bother, I’d been on my own, but I’d coped – more or less. Whatever was going down this time, I’d be with Glory, and Ed and Boris were there as back up. What could possibly go wrong? As we filed out, Brenda turned in surprise.

  “Everything alright?” Our Brenda was more attuned than she knew. I briefly balanced truth against peace of mind and also marital harmony. Peace and harmony won hands down.

  “Brenda, David won’t be home just yet, but be a love and leave him an answerphone message, so he won’t worry. Let him know I’m meeting some people, but I won’t be too late.” Not an outright lie, just sparing on detail, best for all really.

  As we went down the stairs, I felt a small bubble-bursting sensation in my stomach, I’d felt it earlier in the day too, it wasn’t remotely similar to the apprehensive twisting I’d become so used to in connection with Ruth, but neither did it feel like a kick.

  “Yes, it’s a kick.” Glory was behind me, using my sight to negotiate the stairs, so was in my head and had felt it too.

  “Really?” I stopped and she bumped into me. I hadn’t expected to feel anything for a few weeks yet, but maybe the baby had more common sense than I did and was registering a protest at the current outing. “It didn’t feel like a kick.”

  I glanced back at her and she smiled briefly, “I don’t think it does at first and look where you’re going for God’s sake, or we’ll both fall and break our necks.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  They’d arrived in a rather shabby, once-green van which wasn’t at all the sort of thing Ed usually drove but apparently was less likely to attract attention. Shabby it may have been on the outside but inside was a different and pristine story. Boris sat in the front with Ed, Glory and I moved to the seats behind. As Boris made to slide the door closed, it turned out there was an additional passenger. I thought she was asleep in her basket and knew Brenda would have taken her home for the night, but Katerina apparently had her own ideas. She gave Boris the look you give someone who’s just nearly shut you in the door, and stepped up and into the van, seating herself next to me.

  “Not worth taking her back up,” Boris said, “she can stay in the van while you’re inside.”

  “Inside where?” I wanted to know, a little clarification wouldn’t go amiss, but as was often the case, an answer from Boris veered all around the houses.

  “For every group there is a leader and there are followers. Correct? And what is it a leader has to have?” he paused, and I understood input was expected, I looked at Glory, she didn’t say anything, I shrugged. Boris gave up on us as a bad job and continued. “Respect. A leader must command respect. Sometimes that comes from charisma, sometimes fear, more often a combination. Lose that, lose status, lose control. Correct?”

  “Get to the point,” I muttered.

  “That is the point. You and Glory are going for a drink in a public house. A room at the back has been hired for a meeting of this group which,” he glanced at the clock on the dashboard, “should be starting round about now. When they’ve finished working themselves up, they will close the meeting and come to the bar for a drink. This is their habit. The leader of this group is a man called Alfred Beeton, his closest associate and ally is a man called Vernon Sloop. You will make both these men look like fools.”

  “And that’s going to put a stop to the far right?” I wasn’t impressed, “you’re telling me, if Hitler had slipped on a banana skin, things would have gone differently?”

  “You can chop down a tree in one go,” Boris was annoyingly enigmatic, “But a constant eroding of its roots, is a far more effective way of weakening it. Erosion, is probably all anyone can do - small steps.”

  Ed was negotiating us smoothly through the traffic, but it was rush hour and the going was slow. Lulled by the stop starts, I may have dozed for a while, as did Kat, I blamed the baby, don’t know what Kat’s excuse was. I woke when we stopped.

  “Here?”

  “The Royal Oak.” Boris got out, held out a hand to me as I climbed down, followed by Glory. He kept his hand on the open door.

  “Aren’t you coming in with us?”

  “I’ll be there,” he said, “in due course, although, you might not notice.” Boris was the ultimate blender-in; I’d never quite worked out how he did it even though I’d watched carefully. If he didn’t want people to see him, they didn’t; they looked over, around or even directly at, just didn’t see. It wasn’t anything I or the others could do.

  “Ed?” I asked.

  “When you need me..” He was a man of few words.

  Glory had put on a pair of dark glasses, tuned into my sight and Boris handed her the white stick. She glanced back briefly at Ed and they exchanged a thought, too quick for me to catch. Before Boris had a chance to forestall, Katerina had followed us out and I rested my hand briefly on her head, which came conveniently to waist height – or at least it did when I’d had a waist - then pushed her gently back towards the van.

  Boris stopped me, “No, take her,” he flashed through what he was seeing. Glory; small, slim, exotic and blind and me; way behind in the exotic stakes, still at the tubby stage rather than plainly pregnant, and Kat; a dog who looked as if she was only passing the time till her next fashion shoot. Oh, we were so going to fit in at the Royal Oak.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  You know the sort of entrance John Wayne used to make, in the old Westerns? Pushing through those swing doors, a long, slow survey of the room to an indrawn communal gasp from the drinkers, followed by complete silence. The hitch of a gun holster and a slow stroll to the bar, a single nod at the barman who pours a whisky, slides it along the wood, then dives for cover.

  Well, maybe that’s not quite how it went, but it was a scenario I played in our heads, that made us both laugh so we headed in with a grin on our faces. It wasn’t crowded; a couple of elderly chaps settled like fixtures and fittings at a table in the corner. I don’t think they moved a muscle the whole time we were there.

  There was a younger man in a paint-spattered coverall staring morosely into his beer at one end of the bar, and a middle-aged man staring morosely at the jukebox choices at the other end. On the other side of the room, near an empty fireplace, there was a group of six older women of assorted shapes and sizes, all knitting. Glory was holding my arm for effect and I walked her carefully over to a table not far from the women, and then went to get a couple of drinks, leaving Kat to do her best impression of an alert guide dog.

  The decor had seen better days, quite a lot of them, as indeed had the barmaid. Diana Ross on the jukebox was throwing herself into Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, but the joint wasn’t exactly jumping. I rested my hand on the bar’s wooden surface, it was pitted, scratched and sticky enough to make me hastily remove it. I smiled at the barmaid who didn’t smile back; she wasn’t happy, she wasn’t the barmaid either, she owned the place and had taken one look at us as we crossed the floor, and with the sure instinct of someone who’s spent a lifetime pulling pints, knew trouble when she saw it. Bad enough, she w
as thinking to herself, that the bloody knitting club had turned up as usual, despite her phoning Doreen to say would they mind coming in another day. It wasn’t as if she made any money on them – a milk stout each and a couple of packets of salt and vinegar between them, and sat there the whole evening. She swiftly poured the fruit juices I ordered, hoping we’d drink up quickly and bugger off before that lot came in from the back.

  As it happened, we wouldn’t have been quick enough anyway, because the meeting broke up just then and a crowd of men and a good few women, surged in. They were hyped by hate, rhetoric and being part of a tribe. They all headed for the bar at the same time. I knew Beeton immediately. Boris had shown us a photo but I didn’t need that; the dank, bleak sourness of him was what had seeped into the scrap of material Boris had used to test me. He sauntered in after everybody else and the crowd parted to let him through. He walked with the chip-on-the-shoulder strut of a small man, and a swift glance confirmed an extra couple of inches provided by Cuban-heeled boots, which must have brought him up to about five seven but he was very sure of himself, turning a bullet-shaped shaved head from side to side surveying his people. He was in charge here. He knew it and they knew it.

  I doubt I’d have been keen on any of this lot as individuals; as a crowd they were toxic. With the night being warm, there was an awful lot of tattooed flesh on display - and none of it was hearts and flowers. I didn’t want to go into any of the heads in front of me, didn’t have to, what they were thinking and feeling was coming off them in waves.

  The excitement in the room was feverishly palpable, Beeton was a good speaker, and he said exactly what they wanted to hear, putting into words precisely what they felt. He’d whipped them up into a fighting frenzy; good thing there was the march in a couple of days. The simmering anticipation of violence and disruption was lighting them up like Roman candles, and they were oozing the courage of a crowd - aggressively jokey, chummy jostling, shoulder slapping, boxing feints, bouncing and swivelling on the balls of their feet in combat boots which creaked and squealed protest against the wooden floor. None of them wanted to stand still; they were a poisonous powder keg waiting to go off.

  As glasses were drained, refilled and drained again, noise and jittery movement increased exponentially, an excess of energy looking for an outlet. I momentarily caught the eye of the woman behind the bar, she jerked her head slightly at me; get out. I knew she meant well. I ignored her. Our table was just beyond that of the knitters but nobody had taken any notice of us, then I realised the knitting women had all shifted their chairs, just enough to shield Glory from sight.

  Beeton had his back to us, leaning on the bar with one boot on the foot rail, holding court. A taller, broader guy stood next to him. Looking around the room from his higher vantage point he suddenly spotted us, stared in astonishment then gave Beeton a nudge that made him swing round. Pale blue eyes in a surprisingly youthful face moved over us slowly with nothing short of delight. He wiped some beer foam from his mouth with an arm; this was a chap who felt a good many of his Christmases had arrived at once.

  “Here we go,” Glory murmured in my head, “me or you?”

  “Let me,” I said. A sense of something happening filtered through and quietened the crowd; people were turning to see what it was. From the jukebox, Dusty Springfield told us She Just Didn’t Know What To Do With Herself and Beeton set his glass down gently on the bar. Then, sure and certain every eye was on him, and that everyone had clocked Glory, he started to stroll across the room and I pulled his left foot forward and up; his other foot followed as feet tend to do and he went down flat on his back with a thump which startled dust from the hard wood floor. If it was as sticky as the bar, he wouldn’t be getting up that quickly.

  “Oh dear, what’s happened?” Glory, clutching my arm in alarm and best blind mode, broke the horrified silence, her voice ringing across the room. I patted her hand comfortingly.

  “Nothing to worry about, a gentleman here has just had a bit of a fall, must have been something slippery on the floor.” I leaned forward all compassion and concern, “Sir, are you hurt?” He’d given his back a teeth-jarring blow, but it was his ego that was badly bruised. I tutted sympathetically, “You went down terribly hard, didn’t you?” I leaned my head a little closer to Glory, putting my hand over my mouth for an aside which unfortunately was audible to all.

  “The way he kicked his legs up there – thought he was doing the Can Can.”

  “Ooh shoosh,” said Glory, “he’ll hear.” Vernon Sloop was trying to hoist Beeton to his feet but that darn slipperiness on the floor must have still been there, because as soon as Beeton got to a certain point, his foot just plain slid away from under him and he was back on his backside. There was an awful lot of effing and blinding and then, friend Vern must have stood on the self-same slippery something, though his landing wasn’t quite so painful because he landed face first on top of Beeton, an embarrassing juxtaposition.

  “Oops a daisy, Maisie!” someone called out cheerfully and somewhere in the room, someone else smothered a laugh.

  “Perhaps,” I suggested helpfully, “if you and your friend just shimmied on over a teeny-weeny bit, it might not be so slippery there.” Pale blue eyes fixed on me and turned to ice as he and Vernon disentangled and finally, clinging to each other, regained their feet and sprang apart. At any time, this was a man ripe and ready for violence, unhinged, unbalanced and right now, extremely unhappy. There were veins standing rope-like on his bull neck, another one pulsing at his temple.

  “Is he alright?” enquired Glory loudly, “only I keep hearing people falling down.” Ice blue swivelled from me to her and he reacted completely instinctively with a torrent of verbal diarrhoea covering what she could do, where she should go and what he wanted to happen to her. He was just getting into his stride and advancing towards us, when someone gave him the most enormous whack round the head with a bag full of knitting. It was the unexpectedness I think, that got him.

  It was a good many years since Ethel Mount, a stalwart of the knitting club, had felt the need to pull someone up this way and, truth to tell, she’d quite forgotten how good she was at it.

  “You shut that filthy gob right now, Alfie Beeton,” she yelled, “I won’t have you talk like that in front of decent people, I won’t have it, you hear me?” Beeton, stunned into temporary silence, opened his mouth, but Ethel wasn’t finished, “I’ve wiped your dirty arse more’n once, and your snotty nose too. I’ve taken your mum in when your low-life dad went too far with fists – thrown ‘im down our stairs more’n once. Wouldn’t put up with his filthy mouth and I’ll not put up with yours neither.” She swung decisively on a sensible heel with a ‘that’s him told’ expression and walked back to where knitting had been temporarily suspended.

  There were perhaps fifteen seconds when things hung in the balance; he’d been dead scared of Auntie Ethel when he was a kid, she told you to do something, you did it or you got one of her right handers, nobody round here crossed Ethel. But then, over her shoulder, she added, “You leave them girls alone, they done nothing to you. Sit down and shut up and I don’t want any of your tantrums.” And that tipped the scales, the wrong way.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Beeton let out something between a growl and a roar, strode the few paces after her and placed two hands under the table she was about to sit down at. It was long, wooden and heavy but he heaved it up as if it weighed nothing. The five women still sitting scattered. Two fell in their haste, bottles, glasses and balls of wool flew to shatter or unroll, and Beeton told Ethel, one hand now at her throat, in extremely graphic detail where exactly she could shove her effing wool and stick her bleeding needles, interfering old cow.

  Well, this was all just too much for knitting club founder, Doreen. Fifteen years they’d been going; every Tuesday, 8.00 sharp, regular as clockwork and an annual outing Christmastime for which they all put a weekly pound in the pot and records meticulously kept of who’d paid and
who owed, and never a cross word. Doreen had, on occasion, wondered whether Ethel was a little bit on the rough side for the group, she certainly had a mouth and a half on her, but it takes all sorts and rough or not, Ethel was one of her Knitting Girls and Doreen had responsibilities.

  She bent clumsily, knees not what they were, picked up an empty pint glass from the floor and swinging full circle for maximum momentum, brought the chunky glass down on the swastika tattooed in blue on the back of Beeton’s shaved head.

  “Get off ‘er you dirty bugger,” she yelled. She didn’t knock him out. She did though divert his attention.

  This whole evening wasn’t going the way Beeton had envisaged. His speech had gone down a treat, the group’s determination to make this march matter was brilliant, they were on fire and he’d been ready to bask in a bit of the admiration he so richly deserved. When he came into the bar they were queuing up to buy him a drink, then somehow it had all gone to hell in a handcart. Bloody Ethel giving him what for in front of everyone, and now some crazy old bat, he’d never seen in his life before, bashing his brains in, well, she was going to feel the back of his hand that was for sure, he drew his arm back and Glory froze it in mid-air.

  “Don’t do that,” she said conversationally and sent him flying sideways. He landed a safe distance away and Glory sent Vernon after him for good measure, whereupon a brief misunderstanding arose, each man thinking he’d been punched across the room by the other.

  Attention momentarily diverted; the landlady took action. She wasn’t a woman who had the wind put up her easily, all sorts she’d had in here in her time, bodily thrown out a good many too but she could see the way this was going and 999 was now on the cards. First though, she swooped on the knitters, gathered them up like a mother hen and chivvied them rapidly into the back room. She grabbed Glory’s arm as well, Glory shook her off, good-naturedly.