Girls

by Bill James

  ‘Her mother and I had always planned a European element in the girls’ education, Manse. Venetia’s time abroad was simply part of that scheme, believe me.’ Ember considered this might easily have been true. Some schooling abroad could undoubtedly bring a child extra poise. He thought the nuns did keep her from more trouble over there, without trying any carry-ons with her themselves: grim things about convents appeared in the newspapers. It had been a successful gamble, as far as he could tell.

  ‘Anway, she’s back now and I should think really glad to have seen the French side of matters, Ralph. But that’s Venetia. We got to think about Harpur’s kid. What we got to ask is, when noting this trip to the Park with them, what we got to ask is, does Harpur think she’s tied up somehow with the disgraceful ding-dong there? And he takes her there to see them “with deepest sympathy” tokens on the so-called fucking “floral tributes” so she can get an idea of what it’s really like and decide to be a home-girl again, because she’s afraid.’

  Ember had been thinking like this, too. ‘It’s very speculative, Manse,’ he said.

  ‘She into boyfriends, that sort of thing? I know about Iles and the leering and the red scarf with tassels he wears, but boys her own age? You see the way I’m thinking, Ralph? You see what I mean when I say “connected”.’

  Yes, Ember saw.

  ‘This kid up there – I mean the boy my source saw. The kid with the armament. Trainers. She know him? If there’s some local firm at it as well as the Albs, this kid, the boy kid, he could of been pulled into it. This could be Adrian Cologne, Tommy the Strong, Sprale. One of them promise him a gun and he’d do anything. That’s how a lot of them are. Fight the Albs, fight anyone, as long as he got a piece for his own self. Harpur wonders about this? He gives the girls a lesson – not just talking to them, but the scene, the clingfilm carnations, what schools call “visual aids”, like cocoa beans to show agriculture abroad.’

  ‘This is an interesting thesis, Manse, but –’

  ‘I see a couple of very rosy possibilities here, Ralph. From our trade point of view, I mean.’

  ‘In what respect?’

  ‘I see a way of doing Harpur some good here, Ralph. That got to be useful from a commercial aspect, for sure. He’s going to think of this favour we done him and he’ll be grateful. He’s an ape, yes, but he’s also the kind who would know about gratitude and want to repay. How do he repay? Obvious. By being friendly to our firms, Ralph. This is a valuable matter at a time of very high commercial uncertainty, meaning you even had to give up your university studies.’

  ‘On hold. What favour, Manse?’

  ‘As I regard it, he can’t speak about all this to the boy hisself. Not on. It would be like accusing him. The daughter would hate Harpur for this. To her it would be nosing. It would be bringing heavy cop things into her love life. That’s why he got the girl up the Park, so she’ll do it.’

  ‘We don’t know it is the boy, Manse. Your source can’t identify. This is a kid of sixteen, seventeen, with trainers and a pistol. That’s as much as we have.’

  ‘Plus we have Harpur up the fucking Park, Ralph. That’s to say, a big crime scene with his daughters, and giving one of them daughters pain and also some comforting after the pain, but it’s the pain he wants to give most. Now, all right, Harpur’s an ape, but I wouldn’t say he’s the sort who would plan to hurt his kid, or even any kid, unless he thought this was the best way to get somewhere. He got an objective at that Park, Ralph. We can help him. We back up the warning for him – the warning he wants his daughter to give this lad.’

  ‘But how would we reach the lad, Manse? This is a kid who was in the Park, but where is he now? How do we find him?’

  ‘Maybe you’re going at it the wrong way, Ralph.’

  ‘Which other way is there? We have to identify him.’

  ‘If it’s the girl’s boyfriend we can find out who her boyfriend is, can’t we? That’s just a bit of research, no problem at all. We do a little watch and there’s her boyfriend coming to Harpur’s house, or meeting her somewhere at a disco or some other club or that crowd always around the bus station, skateboarding and ganja and so on. So, we got him. We tail him home. We ask some youngsters playing hopscotch in the street, Who lives in that house? We get his name. So, we can arrange to introduce ourselves and have a little word with him about the perils. This boy’s going to listen better to some giant of the game, such as yourself, Ralph, nor he would to his girlfriend, even if the girlfriend’s talking Harpur at him.

  ‘Or maybe we could both chat to him. Plus, this would give him a bit of terror, if he thought we had him identified. He’ll know you don’t like no rivalry in the trade, up Morton Cross or anywhere else in the town, and he’ll know I don’t like it neither. People have been seen off for trying competition. I don’t want to speak much about that, but they have been, haven’t they? That’s just an ordinary part of the company scene. This is just dog eat dog. You can look a bit worrying when you’re angry, Ralph, or acting angry. Yes, yes, I know it’s famed you could be mistook for Charlton Heston when young – that’s when he was young – but sometimes it’s like Charlton Heston when young but in a rage, say because of cruel overseers in Ben Hur. So we tell him, Just get out of it, sonny, drop the gun in the river, and mention to your girlfriend that you had a chat with Mr Ralph Ember and Mr Mansel Shale and they persuaded you to give it up. Then the girlfriend tells daddy, and Harpur has big warmth to us and shows it the best way possible. I mean, we get looked after in the trade, Ralph. All right, you’ll say, Have they got the power now to look after us, him and Iles, in view of all the developments? Well, maybe they can’t do it the way Iles used to, but they could still do the opposite, that is, they could fuck us up if they wanted to. These shootings – all right, they’re not in our trading area, but you got to think of the Government.’

  ‘Think of the Government in which respect, Manse?’

  ‘The Government won’t like street shootings – not so many. This is a Government that believes in law and order. All right, they don’t get law and order, obviously, not here and not in Iraq. But they believe in it. When they hear about three deads in a Park battle here and some injured, they’re going to tell the police in this town to make sure it stops. They’re going to tell police in this town to hit the drugs firms. All the drugs firms. The Government won’t know the difference between dealing up Morton Cross way and dealing nice and orderly and very traditional around Valencia Esplanade. The Government can’t come out and say, Hit them fucking Albanian bastards and the ones imitating them for fucking up the trade arrangements, can they, because that’s going to sound racist and they got to be so careful on that? Plus, they can’t talk about the previous trade arrangements as if they was great, because officially there shouldn’t be no trade arrangements at all. So, they’re going to give orders, Smash every fucking drugs firm and stop this warring – like equal treatment for each drug firm, Alb or not. They got an election coming soon. They got to make this country look safe, even if they can’t do it in Iraq. But if Harpur knows we been looking after his daughter, by looking after his daughter’s boyfriend, he’ll keep us low on the priority list for targeting. The other firms will get done and we’ll be back to sweet monopoly and fine peace, Ralph. That will satisfy everyone -– the Government, everyone.

  ‘All right, you’ll say, Harpur might be like this because of thankfulness to us, but Iles won’t be. You’ll say Iles would not want to save this boy, he’d want him taken out, so there’s an open way to Harpur’s daughter who Iles been trying glam and lech approaches to for months or longer regardless of underage.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think Iles would be like that, Manse.’

  ‘Like what? Like fancying underage?’

  ‘Wishing harm to the boy.’

  ‘He’s a mystery, that Iles.’

  ‘Yes, he is a mystery. But just the same I don’t –’

  ‘I see this as two dads,’ Shale said – ‘you and me – wanting
to help another dad – Harpur – even though he’s not in no way a colleague, and could even be said to be the opposite of a colleague. But there’s like a bond through that fatherliness. This I reckon got much nobility to it. We terrify the shit out of this kid and get the silly little fucker back to safety.’

  God, perhaps Manse could do strategy after all. Ember heard voices getting untoward in the bar. He needed to be amongst them quickly. ‘I’m going to think about all this, Manse.’

  ‘Yes, think about it, Ralph. Give it urgency, all right?’

  Chapter Four

  Harpur awoke alongside Denise and for a minute or two, eyes still shut, wondered if tailing Scott and/or taking a look on the quiet through his parents’ house might prove whether he’d been drawn into working for a drugs firm, and whether he possessed a gun. ‘On the quiet’ meant breaking in when the place was empty. Or not actually breaking. He hoped a bit of plastic would do a lock for him. Harpur always enjoyed having these looks on the quiet through other people’s property. It could tell you a lot about them that you would never otherwise get to. He likened it in some ways to psychiatry. A psychiatrist was interested in the furniture of a patient’s mind. Harpur was interested in furniture as furniture.

  They had a routine at Harpur’s house when Denise slept over. Hazel and Jill came into the bedroom with a cup of tea for both of them quite early, and then, having chatted with the girls and/or Harpur for a while, Denise would go downstairs and make breakfast while he pushbiked to the newspaper shop. Except for the shop trip, each segment of this ritual had big importance, beginning with the cups of tea. These days, the children opened the door and walked in without warning though each had a hand tea-less and free to knock. Harpur understood their thinking. They wanted to show they saw his relationship with Denise as normal, open, wholesome and, in fact, to Harpur’s credit. For them to be in bed together was part of this normal arrangement: Hazel and Jill knew something of the world. Tact from the girls would have been a kind of squeamish reproach. They regarded themselves as well above all that – on condition the woman alongside him was Denise, and invariably Denise.

  Although they entirely approved of her, the girls – and Hazel, especially – mistrusted Harpur and could turn on him if they thought he might be looking about elsewhere. When he came home late, Hazel often queried his claims to have been working, although frequently, in fact, Harpur had been working. Often, he had explained that police duties could not be governed by the clock. The girls would nod and doubt. They considered that, when youngsters, Harpur and his wife, Megan, dead now, inhaled too much relaxed morality from the 1960s and ’70s. This needed correction whenever it showed itself. They believed that Harpur’s feelings for Denise might keep him reasonably spruce, though their own liking for her was not based only on this. She guided, amused, encouraged them. Mothered them? The girls might say so. Possibly Denise would dislike the word. She was a student at the local university up the road, only a few years older than Hazel, and generally talked to the girls as she might have done to contemporaries.

  She did cook these magnificent, long-lasting, meaningful breakfasts, though – the kind of thing good mothers offered, to sustain the family for the day. Hazel and Jill enjoyed being sustained as parts of a family, a full family, or as near to that as possible now. They thought Denise helped them get nearer. Harpur could cook fine breakfasts and so could his daughters themselves, but these excellent meals amounted to no more than excellent meals. They lacked the happy, bonding symbolism of a Denise breakfast. When she was not around and Harpur gave his daughters a large breakfast – including black pudding, sausage, mushrooms and beans, as well as bacon, egg and fried bread, of course – yes, when he really went for it, he hoped this would stick in their memories: as adults they might then recall a grand provider and altogether brilliant single parent, not just someone to be regarded as dissolute and in danger of getting poxed when out late. But he recognized that, for the present, the Denise breakfasts ranked much higher than his and had a resonance beyond the actual piled-up greasy chow and choice of coffee or tea and red or brown sauce. He not only recognized it, he shared the enthusiasm his daughters had for a Denise-concocted meal.

  ‘The way we see it, you got some big, but I mean big, trouble coming, dad,’ Jill said. She stood at the head of the bed on Harpur’s side, ready to offer the cup of tea when he awoke a bit more. Hazel waited on the other side, close to Denise. The girls wore school uniform. And, looking at Hazel in this classroom gear, Harpur found it almost absurd to imagine she might get touched, destroyed, as the result of a drugs war. But that thought was suddenly squashed by a brain-rush he could not control. It proposed – insisted on – three certainties: (i) the lad in the park had been Scott, (ii) if Scott stayed in the game he’d get hit, (iii) if he was hit, Hazel would never recover from the distress. Harpur did not often cave in to intuition, and he tried to resist these emphatic, badgering notions now. He switched on some matter-of-fact heartiness. ‘So, who’s got big trouble coming?’ he said.

  ‘You,’ Jill said. ‘You being you and you also being the police. We’re worried.’

  ‘Oh, we’ve got enough big trouble already,’ Harpur said. ‘Always have.’

  ‘Haze and I both take Sociology at school, you know, Denise,’ Jill said. ‘That’s where we’re coming from.’

  ‘Yes, it’s true we’ve done some Sociology on the situation,’ Hazel said.

  ‘Ah, learned stuff,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘Look, dad, here’s the question we’ve been thinking about – what’s going to happen now at Morton Cross and Chilton Park?’ Jill said. Harpur sat up in bed and took his cup of tea from her.

  Denise, on her stomach and still three quarters asleep, waved a nicotined hand slackly once. It might mean that Hazel should put her cup of tea on the floor, please. It might mean, ‘For God’s sake, stuff your theories, kids, shut up and go away.’ She grunted but said nothing intelligible. He couldn’t tell whether she’d registered the children’s remarks about Sociology, or whether this would interest her, suppose she had. But he forced himself to keep his mind on Denise, and on his unwavering delight in her, rather than listen to those harsh, internal self-briefings. Harpur loved the way Denise could relax here, as if she belonged. Her unconsciousness spells were classics of blottoness. He’d never seen a head dig deeper into the pillow, like really fixtured, the way woodworms got at planks.

  ‘What we thought is, you’ll fill the streets and the Park with officers now,’ Jill said. ‘You’ll have to.’

  ‘There’ll be a visible police presence, yes,’ Harpur said.

  ‘That’s what it’s called, like officially, is it? “A visible police presence”.’

  ‘Not “like officially”,’ Harpur said. ‘Officially.’

  ‘Like a cop-swarm, anyway,’ Jill replied.

  ‘Yes, you’ll have to,’ Hazel said.

  ‘There’s big houses, a lot of rich people with big, brassy voices up there,’ Jill said. ‘They’re going to make a fuss. The thing is, dad, people like that know how to make a fuss. Ever come across the word “articulate” at all? Meaning they can mouth. That’s what they are, articulate. This is how they get on so fast. Articulate. Think of Clinton. Or that big thinks woman who died, also U.S.’

  ‘Susan Sontag,’ Hazel said.

  ‘But some British are articulate, also. These people up there at Chilton Park are going to blame you, dad, for what happened. I mean you, the police. A girl at judo lives up there. Her father’s in what’s known as the media. It’s sure he knows about influence. He’s in touch with all sorts – editors, MPs, business people. He can modem everywhere and get replies, known as “working from home”, and very common these days. Most likely he’ll do some real big complaining because World War Three was nearly into his front garden chipping the bird bath. Down goes the value of his house, or his property, as he’d call it, I expect.

  ‘People in properties like that think they shouldn’t have gunfire banging off
close like Iraq when they paid so much for the property and also big council tax. Yes, it would be properties up there at Chilton Park. They’ll all be double-glazed to keep noise out, admitted, but the people still won’t fancy that sort of carry-on near. These are the sort of people the Government want to keep sweet so they’ll vote for them at the next election. This is what’s known as Middle England and they’re the ones whose votes make all the difference. New Labour was cooked up just for them. John Prescott is there to get the old Labour lot in, so he doesn’t have to be articulate. But New Labour with all the bright smiles and full stops just right is for Chilton Park and that sort.

  ‘So, anyway, you got to clean up there and put in this what you call . . . this visible police presence and you got to keep it there a time. Well, then we got to ask what happens to the firms who been working in the Park and around? There’s survivors. They don’t give up, do they? They got to live. Morton Cross, Inton, the Park – these are what’s called their “career path”. But, now, they look around and see it’s too dangerous in these nice areas with properties, and they got to think quick and very quick of somewhere else. So, which somewhere else? They take another look around and find there been dealing going on for more or less eternity very lovely and peaceful down Valencia Esplanade way. All right, there’s no properties there but there’s houses and streets. They decide they better move there. That’s why we said Sociology. These firms who been working in the smart areas up Inton, Morton Cross and Chilton Park realize it’s not no go no longer, or not for the moment, anyway, because police everywhere and punters are scared to come because of that or more bullets although it used to be a ducky area, but in a scruffier place, like the Valencia, it will be all right because that’s what’s usual in scruffy areas – that’s what scruffy areas are for, and the Government don’t have to worry about looking after scruffy areas because the people there would never vote Tory, through habit.’