The Magpie Trap: A Novel

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The Magpie Trap: A Novel Page 26

by AJ Kirby


  Maybe, he thought, just maybe the significance of their very real Last Supper was that it put that final full stop on his old life.

  Goodbye

  Danny took Mark’s final, shouted advice; he decided that there were more important things to do that final evening than to get uproariously drunk, unceremoniously sozzled or unbelievably plastered. Danny was also searching for a conclusion; a full stop to his time in Leeds, or at least a conclusion to his speech-marks; he didn’t want to be left with any lingering parentheses. Even an exclamation mark would do; anything but a question mark.

  He extricated himself from Chris’s drunken embrace and bade a silent farewell to their trailing cronies, who had been left to argue over their share of the bill. No matter how much these people earned, they still maintained an almost neurotic desire not to ever have to pay more than they owed. So Danny pushed Chris away, and saw Chris’s face crumple into a heap of disappointment.

  ‘I thought this was supposed to be a big night? We’ve still got tomorrow to recover before the job. I know I won’t be able to sleep anyway without a skinful of booze mate,’ Chris whined.

  ‘I still have things to sort out, I’m sorry, I really am… just make sure you don’t give anything away when you’ve had a few…’

  Chris slipped his arm around Danny’s shoulder for a second time, his leather jacket creaking with the effort. Chris was bending from his usual towering height to a crooked almost beseeching stoop.

  ‘Remember how this all started, mate? At Sela Bar? I never believed that it would have happened,’ Chris’s breath wafted a heady mixture of garlic and liqueurs over Danny. ‘Please stay out mate… it means a lot to me. Unlike you and Mark, I’ve been in Leeds all of my life… I’m saying goodbye to everything I know.’

  But Danny shrugged him off again, and gave him his best impression of a carefree grin.

  ‘In two days time, we’ll be on a plane to Mauritius together. We will then get there and spend nearly every waking moment enjoying a freedom we could never have here. It’ll be all for one, and one for all; for tonight though, we all have our own personal errands to run. If you choose that yours is to spend your remaining time here with jokes like Steve Elton, then so be it. Go see your dad, Chris; it may be your last chance.’

  But Chris, without Danny to lean on, was now staggering backwards towards the huge glass frontage of Di Maggio’s. Luckily for him, Jed Burton had just left the restaurant and managed to avert catastrophe. Danny, meanwhile, was already walking away.

  Cheryl’s sister lived in the leafy suburb of Roundhay; a stone’s throw from the beautiful park. Danny, for once in his life, had no trouble hailing a taxi, and didn’t even abuse the driver once on the fifteen minute journey; his mind was elsewhere. He promptly paid the driver, and without waiting for his change, sparked up a cigarette and cautiously walked up the drive towards the menacingly quiet house.

  There appeared to be no lights on the front side of the house, and Danny was almost tempted to shin over the fence and into the back garden to see if there were any signs of life in the back of the garden, but reconsidered, thinking that such an unexpected arrival would put paid straight away to any hopes he had of a long talk with his wife. Danny instead tried the more conventional route; he rang the doorbell.

  After a suitable pause with no discernable change in the outlook of the house, he decided to ring it again, this time keeping his finger on the button to achieve a more prolonged sound. Finally, a silhouette appeared through the stained glass of the front door; he could hear an angry muttering.

  ‘What the hell’s going on? Is that you? I gave you bloody keys to this house the other week…’

  Cheryl’s sister’s monologue was promptly stopped when she opened the door to see Danny’s sheepish smile.

  ‘Danny… I thought it was Cheryl. Oh never mind. She’s not in, and she wouldn’t want to see you even if she was here. You’ve blown it, pal.’

  She was talking like a gunslinger in an old time Western; Danny had always hated her affectations.

  ‘Where is she then?’ Danny asked, perfectly reasonably in his opinion, but the door was already being pushed closed, and his foot couldn’t hold it for much longer.

  ‘Get your foot out from my property. You are not welcome here.’

  Cheryl’s sister emphasised her final point with a triumphant slam of the front door.

  ‘I never was, was I, Jean? You never wanted me here. Wasn’t good enough for darling Cheryl!’

  Danny’s anger was reduced in force by his retreat from the front doorstep; licking his wounds and tremendously frustrated, he sat down on the kerb, lit a cigarette, and began to flick through his mobile phone’s contact list for a local taxi firm number. Suddenly the yellow light of a taxi rounded the corner at the end of the road. Saved! At least he would not have to waste his time on his last night waiting for a taxi to come and pick him up; he never usually had any luck with taxis.

  Danny struggled to his feet as the taxi began its steady approach to the front of the house. It was almost as though Danny had hypnotized the taxi-driver to drive right up to him in order to pick him up in the most comfortable way possible. He grinned; was his luck finally changing? But as the taxi drew ever closer, he began to make out two figures already in the back of the taxi.

  It was a drop off; the light was only on because the driver was touting for his next business of the night. Danny realised that he was probably shrouded in darkness; the overhang of a large laburnum tree had blocked out the street-light’s entire warm glow. He stepped out of the shadows just as the first of the two figures climbed out of the taxi. A second figure followed shortly after, leaning to pass a note through the driver’s open window, and with a wave, the driver began his U-turn to leave the street.

  They had still not seen him. He could still escape, but some animal force drove him forward into the inevitable confrontation.

  ‘Chhheeeeeeerrrrrrrryyyyyyylllllllll’ Danny’s yell erupted into the quiet street like an explosion. ‘What the fuck is going on! Who is he?’

  Cheryl almost jumped out of her skin, and then turned, her face contorted with anger to face her husband.

  ‘Danny,’ she said, anger bubbling into her throat like a poison. ‘What are you doing now? Stalking me?’

  Next to Cheryl, the short, slightly balding man looked utterly confused, his face was drained of all colour.

  ‘Who is he?’ asked the short man, fear making his voice tremble in alarm.

  ‘Never mind who am I. Who are you?’ Danny shouted back, long strides eating up the distance between himself and the man. Then he thought better of it and decided to explain who he was. ‘I’m her fucking husband you little shithouse.’

  ‘Get away from him,’ Cheryl warned, as Danny reached them. She moved her body into Danny’s path, blocking his route to his quaking victim. Suddenly, the small man had turned on his heels and was running; deceptively quickly back up the street wailing for the taxi to come back for him.

  Cheryl even allowed him a nip of brandy in his coffee which she retreated into the kitchen in order to make for him. She opened the gate which led into the back garden, and told him to wait on the patio. She could not risk her sister hearing him in the house, she said.

  He sat miserably alone in Jean’s ostentatious garden; it was like a B and Q show garden, complete with herbaceous border, sculpted rockeries and a sun-deck with a little-used barbecue. He heard Cheryl’s approach on the patio. As she passed him the steaming mug, she gave him a weak smile; Danny slumped back into his chair defeated.

  ‘I know that you’re expecting me to say this but that was not what it looked like… Don’s my friend, that’s all. He cheers me up; he’s like an English Danny De Vito.’

  She tried to reach over the garden furniture, but the wooden table was far too wide to allow any such placating touch.

  ‘That’s how bloody Danny De Vito thinks he’s going to get into your knickers, woman, by being funny. Do you know nothing? He�
��s probably seen you around a few times and thought ‘I fancy that’, but then noticed that he is a short, fat, balding shit, and then realised he’s got no chance; so he pretends to be friends and bides his time; he knows that good looking women like you are likely to have dickheads for boyfriends and at some point you’ll grow tired of them. One day, he sees you upset, and thinks, ‘my time has come.’ Where did he take you? Casa Mia? That was our restaurant…’

  The small traces of a smile appeared on Cheryl’s lips, but soon disappeared as she tried to look sternly at him.

  ‘Whatever Danny; yes, he might like me… but the difference between you and me is the fact that I won’t return his fumbling advances. I still don’t know what went on between you and Paula; not properly, but I know that the blame lies with you. And before I forget, what the hell are you doing lurking in the shadows outside my sister’s house?’

  Taking a huge swig of his still-too-hot drink, Danny took a second to try to compose his mind.

  ‘I don’t know how I can tell you this Cheryl; but I might as well go ahead and tell you in m usual mumbling way,’ he began. ‘I am leaving Leeds. I am leaving England. I am going away; perhaps forever. I have already got myself a decent job out there… I… would you come with me?’

  ‘Where, Danny? What the hell are you talking about now? Are you drunk?’ asked Cheryl. She could not mask the obvious disappointment in her face.

  ‘Well, believe it or not, I’ve started up a charity, with Chris and Mark… we’re going to be doing relief work in Mauritius…’

  Cheryl cut him short. ‘Chris? Chris? Why does everything you do revolve around that bloke? A charity? What kind of fool do you take me for? He’d never do anything for anyone but himself and yet you’d follow him to the ends of the earth.’

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased… I was going to write you a postcard once we got there; invite you to come too, but I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye.’

  ‘But can you not see? There will be a catch. This will all be some big scam. And he has got you so twisted around his little finger, that you’ll probably be the fall guy. Honestly Danny, would you jump off a bloody cliff if Chris told you to?’

  Cheryl shook her head with exasperation, some of her hair escaping from her hair-clips and cascading playfully over her face. For some reason, Danny was suddenly infuriated by her feminine wiles.

  ‘What a ridiculous, hackneyed, question that is,’ he railed. ‘Everyone always asks that, but it’s a nonsense. What has jumping off a cliff got to do with this? It’s like asking would you kill someone for Chris. It doesn’t take into account circumstance, situation, need, anything like that. It’s a totally irrelevant question. We are setting up a charity.’

  He said the last few words painfully slowly as if talking to a child. He sulkily picked at a knot of wood on the patio table, refusing to meet her gaze; his bowed head seeming to amplify the widening chasm of non-communication that was developing between them.

  ‘Stop trying to be clever in everything you say. You’re talking to me now. What the hell do you think you’re doing? You know if you leave now, then there’s no chance of us getting back together? Or is that why you’ve planned all this, so I realise that I can’t live without you, beg you to stay and all’s back to normal again? You’re threatening me?”

  Danny couldn’t believe how quickly their conversations descended into arguments. It was clear that they both still loved each other, but too many awful things had happened for either of them to act as though they had a clean slate; chance comments triggered bad memories of the past, little digs started huge avalanches of pain which threatened to sweep their remaining love away with it. Danny knew that he would have to back down if his last night with his wife was not to collapse into a disastrous wreck of recrimination and torture.

  ‘No baby, I’m not. How many times have I said that I need to get away from this place? How many times have I said that I need a change of scenery?’

  Danny was almost breathless in his attempt to try and resurrect the situation.

  ‘I just feel as though I’ve burned all of my bridges, Cheryl, there’s no way back for me. Will you not come with me? Chris has offered us all this chance to go and work for him out there, and it’s like a big window of opportunity has been thrown wide open, letting in a breeze which will blow away all the straggling cobwebs of my old life.’

  But Cheryl could not dismiss the past as easily as Danny, and saw the chance to get in another barbed comment.

  ‘Straggling cobwebs of my old life? You really think you are something don’t you, Danny? That’s what’s always been your problem. You can’t just accept, like everybody else that you might have to just settle for normal. That’s not settling for second best, by the way, its just accepting that someone isn’t going to just decide that you, above all others, deserve a big break. You’ve always compared yourself to Chris; don’t now see this as your meal-ticket!’

  Danny rose from his creaky garden chair with a sigh. There was no way that they could rebuild their broken communication channels; some key connection had been lost, and now they could not achieve the same wavelength.

  ‘You’ve always treated me like a child. Now you are punishing me like one…’

  The anger was still burning brightly in Cheryl however, ‘You behave like a schoolboy, and that’s exactly why you are in this position.’

  ‘Why is it women feel the right to dismiss men’s concerns these days as though they are flights of fancy? I dream; I hold great desires; I want to see everything; in days gone by, I would have been revered as a philosopher; now I am ridiculed in the problem pages of your damn magazines as some kind of lost cause,’ Danny almost shouted back at her, unable to bite his tongue any longer. He had to make something which meant something pass across their communication gap, and the louder he shouted, the less data seemed to be being received.

  ‘It’s because your great desires are always as if they are lifted straight out of the adventure books which you read as kids. Danny, you are not, nor can you be, a pirate, and yet you three are all off to Mauritius to try and be exactly that…’

  “That isn’t what I mean; I want something transcendental, something that means something…’ He stopped, unable to find the words to describe his universal thoughts.

  ‘We could have had something transcendental here Danny; kids. That’s what I wanted. That’s the big project which could have made your life mean something… it just wasn’t enough though was it?’

  Cheryl collapsed into sobs on the table; the great communication gap between the two of them had suddenly been fused; the years of radio silence were now over. It was as though a huge cloud had been lifted. Suddenly they each knew that the things that they had left unsaid - the big ideas which they buried under the million petty arguments - were the magnets which continued to draw them together despite everything.

  They had a deep primal understanding. Danny picked Cheryl up, hardly feeling her dead weight in his arms as he pushed open the patio doors and carried her to the sofa. His shoulder was already soaking wet from Cheryl’s tears, and yet his own eyes were dry.

  All Danny could think was four words, over and over again in his head: What have I done? What have I done? What have I done?

  They fell asleep in each other’s arms.

  Morning wafted into the front room like a bad smell; bringing with it harsh reality and the consequences of their actions. Danny had been awake for a while; crushed up against the multitude of cushions which made up the sultan’s bed of a sofa. He was staring gently at Cheryl’s face, stroking her still unfamiliarly short hair; the hair clips which had held up a collection of long strands down the side had long since fallen out, and it was now a straggly mess. He was trying to iron out the creases with his hands, to caress everything back into the same place it had been on the previous night.

  Through a small gap in the maroon curtains, he saw that it had started out a grey morning, reflecting his melancholy mood. The sto
len hours of last night now had to be returned, but he still had these peaceful moments before his wife woke up.

  Cheryl smelled faintly of spirits, the lingering after-taste of rum was still on her tongue. She was usually so careful about brushing her teeth that Danny revelled in the difference. Her eyes were jet black; dried riverbeds of mascara tears made them seem like panda eyes. She shivered in her sleep, and unconsciously drew Danny closer into her grasp, but gradually the cold worked its way into her system.

  He saw the first signs of her waking. A twitch of the nose as though she was about to sneeze. A sleepy murmur emanated from her lips. She was starting to emerge from whatever alternate reality she had hidden in for the past few hours. Danny wanted her to be shielded from the cold, harsh reality of the morning.

  Then he heard the soft, bare footsteps of Jean stepping out of her bed upstairs, directly above them at the front of the house. The house was so well insulated that surely she would not have heard them talking away at the back of the house the previous night, but for her to discover them now would be a disaster that he was not willing to face.

  For Jean, this would be just another morning; waking up, putting on the kettle, a brief read of the papers, followed by whatever else she did before work. For Danny, these were the last strands of normality.

  Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he began to untangle himself from the tight knot of limbs on the sofa. He managed to work his numb right arm out from underneath Cheryl, as though one false move would spring a trap. He continued to gently stroke her cheek with his other hand, lulling her into a false sense of security.

  Then he had to somehow climb over the sleeping body which he achieved in stages. Afterwards, he carefully replaced his missing body with a series of cushions from the back of the sofa, and in one nimble move, his lithe limbs were balletically lifted over her, and he was away.

  If escaping from your past is so difficult, thought Danny, escaping from Edison’s Printers will be a walk in the park…

 

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