The Dance of the Pheasodile

by Tim Roux

  “I don’t know. I’ve only ever made love to my Chrissie, and we don’t really discuss it. And, as far as I know, she has only ever made love to me, so she has no point of comparison.”

  “Well I have,” she said. “You are just going to have to do your best.”

  She certainly did hers, and somehow, despite desperately wanting to, I found myself too weak to resist.

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  I woke up at four in the morning as if my heart had stopped.

  Fran was lying beside me, her legs intertwined with mine.

  The thought that woke me from my dream, and tipped me into my nightmare, was that if I had replaced Harry within his family, perhaps he had replaced me within mine. Perhaps he, with animal instinct, had managed to disguise from my Chrissie that he was phishing in their midst, and was in fact an alien in my form. Perhaps my Chrissie had shown him all the tenderness she willingly offers me. Perhaps she had even made love to him

  The thought shocked me to a sense of apoplectic outrage. How dare he take advantage of her? That would be rape. I’d kill him for that! Nobody rapes my Chrissie and lives. True, I had just made love to his wife, but it certainly wasn’t rape. She knew exactly who it was she was being intimate with, and exactly who it wasn’t, and she was much happier making love to me than to him, or so she told me. I was evidently a man of considerable accomplishment and determination; someone to be admired.

  And had I committed adultery? Are you amazed and taken aback that I succumbed so easily? Well, the way I finally saw it was that it was Harry, not me, who had done his duty a few hours earlier. I had merely gained some vicarious enjoyment through helping him satisfy his wife, rather better than he could have done, in his absence. Yes, he could have made the same case, except that I doubted that he had performed better than me, and I was certain that he had acted in complete deception. It was his absolute dishonesty that made me hate and despise him.

  Perhaps he had hugged Ella and Mark, as their father. They are extremely astute and intuitive children so I was convinced that they would have been perplexed by how much I had changed. That gnawed at me too. The children would be pouring all of their trusting nature into that slimebag.

  Another shock: perhaps he would be going into my work that morning, destroying my carefully nurtured reputation within a few hours. Perhaps he wouldn't bother turning up at all, and fail to warn them, which might possibly be worse.

  From what I had been able to learn about Harry, he was not a caring man. He was at the very least a conman, a crook, a hollow charmer, and prone to violence too. What would happen if he hit my Chrissie, who would absolutely not tolerate it? What would she go through, believing her soul mate to have turned on her without reason, to have gone mad? What would the children think if they saw their father beating their mother up?

  The whole situation was terrifying, but if he was indeed acting uncharacteristically, then surely Chrissie might hear me out if I phoned her first thing in the morning. From the sound of things, the guy could barely hold a knife and fork.

  And what did I think of the woman lying beside me, breathing gently, demonstrating a level of affection for, and trust in, her husband she had probably not felt for many years? She seemed rather sweet, and certainly beautiful. Harry’s sister was not bad, either. I had certainly thought it a stroke of luck when she had got dressed in front of me in the afternoon. However, as her biological brother, I resolved to have nothing physical to do with her, tempting though it otherwise was. Any babies would still be the result of genetic incest, and run a heightened risk of being born deformed.

  Would I ever return to the body of Keith McGuire? If so, this would certainly have proven to be an interesting experience on my side. It is not often that you get to make love to a striking woman, who is not your wife, in all innocence. Up until this point, Chrissie had been my one and only love. I had never expected to be involved with anyone else throughout my entire life. If I could get back, this episode would be the equivalent of a carneval, where in Italy couples were entitled to stray for one night once a year. Maybe it would only be for one night. Maybe I would be back with Chrissie within a few hours, having to explain away my strange and possibly shocking behaviour in the meantime.

  At six o’clock, I phoned her, having overcome a ridiculous sense that London might occupy a different time zone from Hull. It certainly felt a long, long way away.

  Keith answered. He sounded quite different from the way I was used to hearing myself when I was him, however the words he used and his intonation was me.

  “Hello,” he said. “Who is this?”

  “I was wondering if I could talk to Chrissie urgently,” I replied. “I am a work colleague and we have an urgent problem.”

  “She is not awake yet, and I am loathe to wake her. Can it wait until she stirs, which won’t be long?” Surely Harry did not use words like ‘loathe’ and ‘stirs’. “Can I get her to call you?”

  “It’s okay,” I replied. “I will call back in an hour, if I may.”

  “I am most grateful,” said Keith, and put the phone down.

  Was it safe to have a conversation with Chrissie in front of Harry? Would it send him over the top if he realised what was going on? I imagined my wife and children being held hostage at gun point, although I doubted that Harry would have a gun yet.

  I phoned again at seven. Chrissie answered it. “Yes?”

  I hesitated momentarily, then I launched in. “Chrissie?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know how to explain this to you, but I am Keith, your husband.”

  There was a stunned silence at the other end of the phone. “Who is this?”

  “Keith McGuire.”

  “Keith McGuire is standing here in front of me.” Was that a rebuttal, or a warning to play it carefully, a signal that she had already caught him out?

  “You know I went for hypnosis yesterday ……”

  “…. I am sorry, whoever you are, but I don’t want to talk to you,” and she put the phone down on me.

  “Who are you phoning?” Fran asked me.

  “I am phoning home,” I replied, feeling like a cheat.

  “Any luck?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” I replied. “I think I shocked her.”

  “I know the feeling except, in this case, it is rather good to find that you like your husband again after having hated him for nearly ten years. Come back to bed.” She took me by the hand and led me there. She insisted upon us making love again. This time it felt like dirty adultery, but I couldn’t stop her or myself. It wasn’t through any weakness in my will; it was simply that my body took over and I couldn’t control it. I physically could not override its automatic reactions. I was a helpless backseat driver in a vehicle that did not belong to me, and where I had no physical access to the controls.

  Immediately after we have finished, Kathy opened the door. “I thought so,” she announced triumphantly. “You two seem to be getting on famously.” She was only wearing a shirt herself. She came and sat on the edge of the bed. “Has my brother improved suddenly?”

  “You bet,” Fran replied. “Marital relations have been restored.” She delivered this statement distractedly, clearly resenting the fact that Kathy had considered it appropriate to intrude into our room.

  “I guessed that is what I was hearing.”

  “You’ve had plenty of practice at it,” Fran commented.

  “Yes, I have,” Kathy responded, “but I have never had it off with a body swap. That would definitely be a first.”

  “You keep your hands off him,” Fran warned her. “He is still my husband and your brother.”

  “You needn’t worry,” Kathy assured her tartly, and got up and left to have a shower.

  “I never have liked your sister,” Fran confided to me, “although you have always been fond of her yourself. I have never been able to work out why.”

  I held up my hands. “Anything that happened in Harry’s
life before lunchtime yesterday is a complete blank to me, I promise you. You cannot use me to spy on Harry. I know nothing at all about him.”

  Fran pulled a disappointed face. “That’s a shame. Still, I would rather have you than Harry with all his sneaky little secrets any day. Tell me about yourself.” She settled back down into the bed, ready to listen, so I told her all that I would tell a stranger, without betraying any confidences.

  * * *

  I decided to phone Chrissie at work. What did I have to lose, after all? It was only a phone call. Sooner or later she would give in and hear me out. I had known Chrissie a long time, and was sure of it.

  Of course, I had to get past Chrissie’s secretary, Linda, first. “Chrissie McGuire’s phone. I am Linda, her PA. How can I help you?”

  “Can I talk to Chrissie, please?”

  “Are you a friend of hers?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Can I say who is calling?”

  “Harry Walker.”

  There was a pause for consultation.

  “I am sorry, Mr. Walker, but Mrs. McGuire is not available at the moment. Can I take your details and ask her to call you when she gets back?”

  “Certainly,” I replied, before realising that I hadn’t a clue what number I was calling from.

  “I am sorry,” I said. “I am phoning from a friend’s house, and I need to find out what the number is.”

  “No problem,” responded the intrepid Linda. “Do you have a mobile phone?”

  “Yes, it is 07899 062836,” which is Keith’s mobile. It wouldn’t enable her to reach me, but it might trouble her enough to want to talk to me sometime.

  “I think you must be mistaken, Mr. Walker. I happen to know that that number belongs to someone else.”

  “Well, yes and no. I think Chrissie will understand. In the meantime, I’ll find out my number here.”

  * * *

  “Any luck?” Fran asked me again.

  “No, this is going to be very hard work.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I think I am going to have to travel to Wokingham to see her in person.”

  “How are you going to pay for that?”

  Now, that was a good question.

  I smiled. “I may have to find some work.”

  She laughed. “Now I am certain that you are not the Harry I used to know and despise. I wonder what happened to him.”

  * * *

  The obvious thing for me to do was to try to find work as an architect except that, as Harry Walker, I did not have a glimmer of a qualification, and with a shabby suit and a rat’s face, I didn’t look anywhere near the part either. Nevertheless, I managed to persuade Tommy to lend me five sheets of his drawing paper on which I reconstructed some of my most successful designs of the last two years. If I could get them in front of an architect, I might stand half a chance of at least getting some dogsbody work that would earn me enough money to get back to Wokingham.

  Well, naturally, I didn’t. I tracked down about five architectural practices and received nice, polite, calm receptionist permafrost. In four cases, I was dismissed within a minute. On the fifth and last occasion, one of the partners happened to be passing and asked to see my drawings.

  “Very nice,” he said. “Where did you study?”

  “Bath.”

  “Bath?”

  “Bath.”

  “Whom have you worked for?”

  I told him the truth.

  “Good credentials,” he commented. “As it happens, I know someone there – Bobby Coningsby. Do you know him?”

  “Very well,” I replied. “I have worked with him for years.”

  “Come through. My name is John Farmer, by the way. And yours?” He invited me to sit down.

  “Harry Walker.”

  “Good to meet you, Harry. Would you mind if I called Bobby?”

  “Well, it might be a bit awkward. No-one knows that I am thinking about leaving, Bobby included.”

  “Oh don’t worry,” he assured me. “I can be very subtle. What’s the number?”

  He got through to Bobby straightaway. He started with “Hi, Bobby, we haven’t spoken in a long time,” and continued in catch-up chat mode for about ten minutes, ten excruciating minutes for me as I knew exactly what was going to happen next. I should have stopped the torture, but I couldn’t work out how and, anyway, I thought it might be yet another clue for Chrissie to pick up on sometime. And then the punch was landed. “Bobby, can I ask a favour? We have some work that we do not feel sufficiently experienced to handle ourselves, and someone recommended a guy called Harry Walker who works at your place I believe …..Oh. you have never heard of him? Are you sure? Oh, okay, no matter. I must have been mistaken ……..”

  John came off the phone projecting a look of hurt thunder. “Bobby hasn’t heard of you. You are not in the phone book, and he checked with reception who had never heard of you either. Would you care to explain?”

  Some things are beyond explaining, so I got up, with an apology and a protestation that the drawings were indeed my own designs, and walked out on any prospective career in Hull as an architect.

  I was strolling rather dejectedly along a street called Ferensway when a car stopped alongside me, and two very determined-looking men invited me to get in.

  “You aren’t architects?” I inquired facetiously.

  “No, ‘arry, but we’ve done our time in construction, if that counts. Jump in, ‘arry. We think you’ll want to ‘ear what we ‘ave to say. Kathy ‘ere will vouch for us,” at which point my sister leant over and shouted “It’s okay, Harry. It’s safe to get in. I think they are going to offer you a job.”

  It turned out that it wasn’t only the police who were pleased that I had offed Martin in Pease Street. Martin’s old gang didn’t appreciate him much either, plus they were in urgent need of leadership given that a gang from Bransholme was closing in on them. They thought I might be interested in helping them out.

  “Well, I am certainly looking for a job,” I admitted.

  “That’s settled, then,” concluded Mike “the ‘ammer” Stevenson, so named I was told a short while later because “’e’s crap at DIY”.

  “We’ll call you ‘Boss’ from now on, then, shall we, ‘arry,” volunteered Andy “Fingers” Murphy, a man with an almost super-human craving for fish fingers, apparently, which was noteworthy even in an old fishing port like Hull.

  “’e’ll have to prove ‘issen first,” objected Pete “Cut-throat” Carver whose epithet had indeed been earned by cutting throats to order. Perhaps he had wanted my job, because he gave me a hostile and evil look.

  Kathy came up and hugged me. “We’re a team now, bro. With their muscle and your brain, we’ll make Hull the crime capital of England.”

  “Just like it used to be,” added Fingers Murphy nostalgically.

  “When you were a lad?” I asked.

  I got some strange looks. “Nah, three years ago.”

  “Where ‘ave you been, ‘arry?”

  “Biding my time,” I replied, and tried to make it sound menacing. “Watching and waiting.”

  * * *

  “You’ve gone and done what?” Fran stormed at me. “And I thought we were going up in the world!”

  “They didn’t give me a lot of choice. They had already held the election before I turned up.”

  “This is Kathy’s doing, this is. Silly tart. Wait till I get my hands on her! She has obviously been paid off to betray you. She gets some better clients, or a rake-off or something, and you get picked up and shoved in prison for ten years as the local gang boss. I am sure we are all going to enjoy that.”

  “How do I get out of it?”

  “How did you get into it, more’s the point?”

  And, indeed, how did I? How could a bunch of thugs suggest that I become their boss, and I agree just like that? I would never have done it as Keith McGuire and, of course, nobody would have asked me. Something inside me sa
id “Yes, go for it. It is what you have always wanted.” The place was surreal, the people were surreal, the situation was surreal, and I went along with it as if in a dream. There’d be no chance of resigning now, I supposed.

  “You’re sleeping on your own tonight,” Fran informed me fiercely. “I would rather sleep with Kathy, although something tells me that she will be working overtime this evening, and that we won’t be seeing her sorry face until the morning. And keep away from Tommy. You’re not just as bad as the old Harry; you are worse.” And with that, she grabbed Tommy’s hand and dragged him upstairs.

  I winked at him. “Thanks for the paper, Tommy,” I said.

  He winked back. “No problems, Dad.” Fran scowled.

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  Thus I became the boss of the ‘Royals’, as they called themselves, as we all lived in the vicinity of Hull Royal Infirmary. Fran was surely right, they were only looking for a scapegoat leader, one who knew nothing about them and who would therefore not be able to implicate them in anything, especially as I seemed to have had my memory wiped and didn’t even seem to know what day of the week it was. I was perfect, a malicious dope with a recent killing to his name, and a long history of pitifully petty crime. I would be a cinch to bang up, all honour satisfied. The police in Hull were spreading it about that they were dramatically reducing crime in a city which had one of the worst records in the country, so they would be only too happy to pick up and incarcerate a gangland boss to crown their glory.

  "Not exactly ‘ard to reduce crime," commented Mike the Hammer cynically. "You just wipe ‘alf of the incidents from the records. A mate of mine is a copper. ‘e says they’ve two sets of records, the one which ‘olds all the incidents in case the victim suddenly turns up, and the one they use for reporting up the ladder. When crime goes down, everyone is 'appy, and no bugger questions the numbers. When there’s another crime wave again, they give you more coppers, pay rises, overtime, everything. So that’s a bit of alright too. They keep the numbers yo-yoing up and down, and every bugger’s a winner, eh? That's 'ow it works in real ife, ain’t it? People'll believe anything."