The Dance of the Pheasodile

by Tim Roux

  What do I actually know about my predicament? I know that the children are here, that I am here, that Agnes is here, and that Chrissie is working late. That all seems entirely normal to me.

  I stand up, expecting to feel so weak that I collapse back into the chair. I am wrong. I am lighter on my feet than I have ever known myself, full of energy, needled by an urge to run upstairs, which I duly do. I burst into our bedroom and confront myself in the mirror. There I am – Keith McGuire – the bespectacled, tolerably handsome beanpole. I want to inspect myself, so I get undressed and stare at myself in the mirror. This is the body I like, the one that I especially appreciate after holidaying in somebody else’s, if that is what I did.

  Ella barges into the room. “Dad!” she protests. “What are you doing?”

  “Checking to see if I have lost some weight.”

  “You know you have, Dad. We talk about nothing else, about how you are fading away before our eyes.”

  “In that case I am checking to see if I have gained any weight. What do you think?”

  “I think that I am embarrassed.”

  “Why are you embarrassed?”

  “Well, you know.”

  “Not really, no.”

  “You look so pleased with yourself, as if you are showing yourself off, saying ‘Look at me!’. I am a twelve year old girl, Dad. You shouldn’t be doing that sort of thing in front of me. It is indecent.”

  “But I was in here by myself until you came charging in.”

  “Can’t you keep it for Mum for later, without involving me?”

  “I wasn’t trying to involve you. You involved yourself.”

  Mark enters. “Dad, will you come and bounce on the trampoline with me? Now?”

  “I need to get dressed first, Mark.”

  “When you are dressed, will you come and bounce on the trampoline with me, before I have to go to bed?”

  “Why not?”

  “Then come on, Dad.”

  I get some shorts out of the drawer and a polo shirt, and slip them on. Ella is watching me with a troubled expression on her face. “You are different somehow, Dad. What is it?”

  “I don’t know. I am feeling great.”

  “Yes, that is what is different. You have been such a misery-guts over the last few weeks. Mum thought you were going to die. I overheard her discussing it with Agnes and then Linda. You aren’t going to die, are you, Dad?”

  “No, I am not going to die, Ella.” I step towards her to give her a hug, but she chooses to retreat in equal measure to avoid the intimacy of a man she has just seen naked. “I have done all the dying I intend to do for one day.” She frowns.

  “Aren’t you coming, Dad?” Mark hassles me. “I am waiting. I have to go to bed soon.”

  “Mark! Ella! Supper time!” Agnes’ voice summons them.

  “I am going to bounce on the trampoline with Dad, Agnes. He said that I could.”

  There was a silence from down the stairs while Agnes awaits further instructions from me.

  “It is true, Agnes,” I confirm. “I did promise that I would bounce with Mark for a few minutes. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Of course not, Mr. McGuire. I will pop the food back into the oven to keep it warm, if you are only going to be a few minutes.”

  “We will.”

  Mark grabs my hand pressingly. “Come on! Come on!”

  Ella trails behind us pensively.

  * * *

  Chrissie arrives back at eleven o’clock. I am in the sitting room reading “Flat Earth News” and sipping at a glass of red wine.

  “What a day!” Chrissie exclaims.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “Don’t ask,” Chrissie replies. “We were in conference with George Bartholomew and Jengo Shipping most of the day, then Peter Brenton decided that it would be the perfect moment to call me in to demand an explanation of that strange incident with Harry Walker last Tuesday.”

  “Last Tuesday?”

  “Yes, last Tuesday. Peter said it about fifteen times. I said it about fifteen times. So, it was definitely last Tuesday.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him that it was a man who claimed to be my husband, and I hadn’t the first idea why he was there flapping naked outside the office window.”

  “How did he react to that?”

  “He asked me where the man was now.”

  “And?”

  “Well, you know ‘and’, Keith. He plunged into the Thames, presumed drowned, so that is what I told Peter, although he must have read it in the papers as much as we have. He said that he wanted to ensure that the man was dead as he didn’t want any more incidents of that sort outside his premises. I said that I couldn’t be responsible for the insane behaviour of every weirdo who decides they want to gain my attention. I didn’t know who this guy was. I only knew that he kept phoning me to claim to be my husband, when I had a perfectly good husband already beside me.”

  “So, basically you washed your hands of him.”

  “I decided that it would make my life very much easier if I could. I could have entertained Peter with the full explanation, but it would only have made matters worse. He would definitely have assumed in that case that I was complicit in bringing the name of the firm into disrepute.”

  “So, was that it?”

  “Not really. I then needed to go back into the conference to deal with George who was behaving like a right pompous buffoon. You know how Jengo resent anything which isn’t 100% buttoned down. They were fuming, and Rachel kept calling me out in order to demand that we drop this idiot and find ourselves someone at least vaguely tolerable. I kept insisting that George was the best man for the job, however peculiarly he behaved, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Jengo don’t simply up and leave us, and then Peter will be hauling me in again to explain why I have now lost one of our key clients, and to predict how long my run of disastrous bad luck will continue.”

  “Poor you,” I give her a monumental squeeze.

  “Where did you get all that strength from?” she challenges me.

  “Why?”

  “You haven’t hugged me like that recently.”

  “I haven’t been myself recently,” I reply, “but I am now.”

  “What do you mean?” She watches me carefully.

  “I mean that I am now the whole nine yards again.”

  “How?”

  “That I cannot say. All I can tell you is that I am back again as Keith, and we are re-united as one whole human being, and I am also re-united with my family, and you cannot believe how relieved I am.” The realisation of the truth of what I have just declared hits me like a wave in the face, producing uncontrollable floods of tears. I carry on sobbing for at least ten minutes, perched over the bed, every now and again trying to break into speech to explain myself. Chrissie shushes me, and holds herself against me empathetically.

  She waits for my anguish to subside, and then whispers “You mean that you used to be Harry?”

  “Yes.”

  “And now you are back?”

  “Yes.”

  She grabs me really hard so that we both collapse back onto the bed, with our feet in the air “That is fantastic!”

  “That is what I have been trying to tell you, but I haven’t been able to stop crying about it.”

  “The nightmare is over. Thank God for that.”

  “That I am not so sure of,” I reply.

  * * *

  It is not often that Chrissie becomes the British Welter-Weight Champion, but her reaction to my statement was as if I was about to receive a 1-2-3, followed by the knock-out upper-cut.

  “What do you mean?” she demanded.

  “I have responsibilities,” I reminded her.

  “No, you don’t! What responsibilities do you have?”

  “I can’t just leave Fran and Tommy and Kathy there. They might be in great danger. They may be starving. I promised Fran that whatever happened I would make t
hings all right for them.”

  Chrissie grabbed me by the shoulders to seize my full attention. “Look here, Keith,” she said firmly, “you have no responsibility to these people whatsoever. How you got mixed up with them, God alone knows, but they are not your concern, you only knew them a few weeks, I am sure that you did your best for them while you were with them, as you always do, but now you are back with your real family, as Keith, and that is where you are staying. I am not going through the last few weeks all over again, burdened with half a husband and two frantic children who adore him and cannot understand what is wrong with him. You are back, you are healthy, the children are delighted I’m sure, don’t mess it up again. Don’t take risks you don’t need to take. Pick up your life here again, and put those people in Hull out of your mind forever. They don’t matter to you, you don’t owe them anything, they don’t even exist. Understand? Capisce?”

  “I understand what you are saying, Chrissie, but that is not possible.”

  “Keith, believe me, it is possible.”

  “Chrissie, it is not possible, for one simple reason.”

  “What is that one simple reason?” Chrissie apes me sardonically.

  “Somebody knows that Harry is linked to you.”

  “So?”

  “So they are not going away.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Chrissie, I promise you, I know it. Believe me, I would love to be back here, focussing on you and Ella and Mark, and picking up my job again, and I cannot imagine what sort of mess that is in …...”

  “….. quite a mess, according to Adam …..”

  “That is what I would like to do, and I know that these people in Hull seem completely irrelevant to us down here, just northern clowns who would be out of their depth even if they bothered to chase us down here, but it is not true. They are gangsters, they are drug dealers, they run prostitution rackets, they almost certainly have friends and associates down here, and dangling me, and Harry outside your office window prior to blowing Harry away was meant to make it absolutely clear to us that we would not be off the hook even when Harry had been disposed of. They wanted to tell us that they know the trail leads to you and Ella and Mark, and that their thirst for revenge is not yet satisfied. I don’t know what they plan to do with you or me, but I have a pretty shrewd idea of what they will try to do to either Ella or Mark or both, and I am not about to let them, I promise you that!”

  “What will they do to Ella and Mark?”

  “Put it this way, we have to keep a super-vigilant eye on both of them. I think we should home-school them for a bit, never let them out except under armed guard, never ever let them out of our sight. In fact, we need to go further than that. We need bodyguards. How do we get bodyguards?”

  “Keith, are you being serious? What are you talking about? How can you give twenty-four hour protection to young children? What do the bodyguards do, sit next to them in class and try to resist the temptation of helping them with their work or answering all the questions the teacher throws at them?”

  “Chrissie, I don’t want to frighten you, but there is every chance that they will try to kidnap Ella or Mark, or both, and I shudder to think what they will do with them once they have them in their hands.”

  “Why would they want to kidnap our children?”

  “Because that is what Harry did to them.”

  Chrissie’s eyes widen. They are tinted with a menacing glare. “You kidnapped their children?”

  “Not their children, well I assume not their children (it depends on who they are), but Harry was a kidnapper and he, or I, stitched up some pretty dangerous people up there. I don’t know quite who we are dealing with, I cannot work it out exactly, but whoever they are, they have every reason to want to hurt me as they have clearly realised that I was tied up with Harry in some way, and their best way of hurting me is by hurting you. That is what I must stop, so that is why I must find out what has happened to Fran, and Tommy, and Kathy and Mike, because they are the only allies I have. They can probably tell us what is going on. In fact, I am going to ring Mike now.”

  “Which Mike?”

  “Harry’s accomplice.”

  “Will he be awake at this time of night?”

  “He will be once I phone him.”

  I pick up the phone. Mike answers immediately. He sounds groggy, or drunk, or groggy and drunk. “Mike?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Keith McGuire.”

  “Keith McGuire?”

  “You used to know me as Harry.”

  “Yeah, I know who you are. Kathy told me the whole story. I thought she was completely barmy.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “Well, it was after Planty, and Nobby and Ernie and Basher burst in ‘ere and started beating us up, demanding to know where you were.”

  “When was this?”

  “About two weeks ago. Two weeks last Thursday.”

  “And?”

  “They picked you up, you being ‘arry that is, somewhere out towards ‘edon, whatever you were doing over there. Probably trying to get into prison before they got their ‘ands on you.”

  “And?”

  “They took you to a warehouse somewhere and beat you to a pulp. They left you alive and conscious, but that is about it. And while they were breaking your legs, and plugging you into the mains through your nuts, and drowning you, and whatever else they did with you, you told ‘em the whole story, about ‘ow you weren’t really ‘arry, and that it was ‘arry they were after, not you, and as you weren’t really ‘arry, they should leave you alone. They then rang Kathy to tell ‘er what pitiful rubbish you were blurting out, and Kathy told Fran, and Fran said yeah, it was true, then Kathy told me.”

  “I told them everything?”

  “I don’t know what you told ‘em, ‘arry, but I’ll tell you some’at. Whatever you told ‘em, I’d ‘ave done the same thing in your shoes. From what Kathy and Fingers said, they really gave you everything they’d got. You were black and blue and yellow, and swollen, and covered in blood and everything when they brought you round to present you to Fran. She was beside ‘erself, understandably. She took ‘erself off to bed for a week. Kathy and I ‘ad to look after little Tommy. Fran couldn’t move an inch. She was no bleeding use to anyone. She was even peeing in her bed, according to Kathy – a right mess. Kids shouldn’t have to see their mums in that sort of state, so we let Tommy sleep ‘ere, and Kathy moved in for a few days to ‘elp look after ‘im.”

  “That must have been nice for you, Mike.”

  “It ‘ad its compensations, shall we say.”

  “Hang on a second, Mike. I just need to ask Chrissie something.” I held my hand over the voice-piece of the phone. “Was Harry covered in bruises when he was hanging outside your office?”

  “Yes,” she replied, “from head to toe, except that I could not see what had happened under the boots. You must have been in agony. You were writhing all over the place. You looked like you had been marbled, and your legs and your arms and your face were completely swollen. I almost couldn’t recognise you. You could almost have been a Guy Fawkes effigy or something. You were absolutely stomach-churning.”

  I turned back to Mike. “Okay, Mike, then what?”

  “Then they drove you down to London in the back of a van and strung you onto a rope and tied the rope to an ‘elicopter, and flew you over London and paraded you in front of your wife’s office building, at least that is what they told everyone. They were right chuffed with theirsens. They were over the moon about it.”

  “And then?”

  “And then they chucked you in the Thames and watched you drown. Well, they couldn’t really watch you. You went straight to the bottom. It was all over the news.”

  “Have they been arrested?”

  “Neah. Where’s the proof, except for their boasting? And the coppers are not going to arrest ‘em again in an ‘urry after they got let out last time, even though they thoug
ht they ‘ad ‘em good and proper. DI Martin keeps snooping around, but ‘e’s going to need a lot more evidence before ‘e makes ‘is move.”

  “So how did they get out in the first place?”

  “Lack of evidence. The coppers found the boy at Planty’s ‘ouse, and ‘is neighbours in Pocklington reported that they ‘ad seen activity in ‘is ‘ouse there, but they couldn’t actually prove that Planty was personally involved, nor that any of the Inbies were involved either, so they ‘ad to let ‘em all go.”

  “How did Planty know it was us?”

  “’e didn’t know it was us. ‘e still doesn’t. ‘e thinks it was just you and Kathy, and ‘e doesn’t think Kathy ‘as the brains to plan anything like that, ‘e’s a right chauvinist pig, so ‘e came after you, and left Kathy to ‘er own devices spreading the word of what ‘appens when you cross Trevor Plant.”

  “But how did Planty find out?”

  “Well you know your mate Kenny Bender?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, Kenny Bender distributes ‘is drugs through Planty’s network, doesn’t ‘e? When Planty and ‘is gang were shoved in the nick, Kenny didn’t immediately associate your scam with what ‘appened to Planty, or at least didn’t realise what you ‘ad done to ‘im, or if ‘e did, ‘e was waiting to see ‘ow things would work out. In fact, ‘e approached Kathy to ask whether the Royals would take over from the Inbies in distributing his drugs, and she said not a chance. So ‘ere ‘e is, Planty and his gang in the clink, no distributors in ‘ull and the East Riding, and losing a bloody fortune despite ‘is 50% of our business. Then ‘e says ‘alf a mo, how did Planty get ‘issen arrested, and ‘e started asking around and found out that it was for kidnapping a boy. ‘ang on another mo, ‘e said, but ‘ere was you blackmailing families with the threat of kidnapping their children, which ‘e knew ‘cos ‘e was picking up the cash, wasn’t ‘e? Bingo! You ‘ad stitched up Planty in a gang war, to the major detriment of ‘is business. ‘e didn’t like that, so ‘e ‘ired a swanky London lawyer to get Planty and ‘is gang out of the nick. The coppers could not prove that Planty and co had carried out the kidnapping or even knew anything about it, and the coppers ‘ad to release ‘em, which is when they came after you, didn’t they? And the rest you know.”