“Serious money,” I go on. “They’re here big and they’re here to stay.”
Chas snorts.
Etty slumps down in the closest seat. “They’re clean, friendly and welcoming. Good stock and excellent prices. They’ve even got a play area for kids.”
“We’ve got that,” Chas points out.
Wire mesh, broken concrete and mossy gravel, rusted swings and slides, a faded hopscotch plot; a roundabout that screeches when it turns. You might chance it on a kid you didn’t like.
“We’re totally boned,” Etty says. “People lap up that shiny shite, don’t they? They’ll all be marching to the Garden World tune by next week.”
“What’s your take, Millsy?”
“I concur with my colleague here.” I nod at Etty. “Screwed.”
Another snort from Chas.
“What’s the first thing I said when you started working here?” he asks me.
I remember that day well.
Brackett leading me out onto the shop floor, everyone staring at me while he did the introductions, feeling out of place in my street clothes when everyone else was in uniform; already a team.
“This is Joshua Miller,” Brackett had announced. “Joining our happy family.”
No response from anyone.
“He’s had some troubles. Get to know him, make him welcome.”
Not much of a build-up, is it?
As I remember it, Chas was the first one to speak to me. Weeks later I can still remember his exact words.
“You said, ‘Alright, Millsy, what the fuck you doing here?’”
“Naw,” Chas is shaking his head. “After that.”
“Was it, ‘Have you come to buy some fucking plants?’”
Chas snorts. “You’re taking the piss.”
“I don’t recall you saying that”—Chas is getting unruly, but I can’t help myself—“no wait, was it… ‘This is the one I’ve been telling you about, the dickhead who upended the family motor in a boating lake’?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Chas is saying. “Very funny. Not the point though, is it? Not what I’m trying to tell you now. Not helpful.”
First day in the job—after Chas has walked and talked me through the essentials of light sweeping, watering plants, moving heavy ceramics and so forth—Chas and me are out the back in main storage, sorting through a stack of boxes from the local cash-and-carry. Soft drinks, confectionery, bits and bobs that hang on little hooks around the main shelving; impulse buys, mostly.
A simple enough routine to ease me back into the working world.
“How come there’s two of everything?”
“What you mean?” Chas asked me.
Docket said one pallet of cola, store room had two, note for two boxes of plastic trinkets, store had four. I showed Chas the sheet.
He scratched at his vague attempt at a beard. “Well.”
That’s all he said. I raised my eyebrows and adopted my best questioning look.
It seemed to work. He told me—with much looking back and forth and checking the doors were closed—that he heard a rumour of a dodge that Brackett was working.
“Some deal with a bloke at the wholesalers. Brackett strolls out with double the stuff, sells it on, and splits the profits.”
“That sounds criminal,” is about all I could say to that.
“Well, it’s certainly not straight up, no,” Chas said. “But then what is, round here? Times are tough; people cut a few corners, don’t they?”
“But the wholesaler’s losing—”
“Insurance,” Chas said. “Victimless crime and that. Right?”
It didn’t sound like the worst thing in the world, back then. And that was before I knew about the exotic plant deliveries and the sideline in rare arachnids. Not to mention Clone’s extensive underground operation.
If wealthy bankers could abandon their morals for cash, I figured I could do that too. For a while, at least, until something better came along.
“Don’t worry about the cops,” Chas had told me. “My boyfriend’s a Peeler and he says half the local nick are very keen gardeners. Surprising how many tropical greenhouses there are in the division.”
It was a lot to take in on the first day.
I didn’t know how much Chas might be bullshitting me. He’d always seemed a bit of a wide boy when I knew him socially. Back in the Jennifer days, that had been, back when he was Oscar Charleston-Speight, son of two surgeons or consultants. Something medical, anyway. Chas had been doing a grand job of hiding his intelligence and talent; liked to give the air of being a rowdy boy, played it up with ice hockey and rugby and all the usual hooray stuff. Half of what he said was lies, Jennifer had told me.
He’d not been wrong about Brackett though.
One other thing he’d said back then came to mind in the cold light of a Garden World dawn.
“You said, ‘Brackett’s always got a plan,’” I tell him.
“That’s the one,” Chas says. “Old Brackett will think of something.”
I’m not so confident.
“Here’s Brackett now,” Kelvin says. “Maybe we can ask him what he’s come up with?”
Everyone makes busy as Brackett scowls his way across the shop floor and heads out back to the office.
It doesn’t seem like a good time for questions.
12
THE DAY SHIFT is arriving and it’s my cue to leave; in general I work Saturdays, but being part of the Friday Club has garnered me some time off.
When I’ve retrieved my bag from the staff area, Dram is standing at station two—slouching, really, he does good slouch—and flicking through a newspaper. His hair is covering his face. A great welcome for the customers.
I’m about to start some casual conversation when I remember a warning from Etty.
“His name is short for Drama,” she’d told me. “Just don’t ask him how his day is going.”
I’ll remember that, I’d told her.
“He asked me out,” she’d said.
I’d enquired—as casual as possible—how that went.
“I didn’t say yes.”
I didn’t cheer out loud.
“Not my type,” she’d said. Whatever that meant.
TWO MORE BODIES from the day-shift show up. Francis Murphy and Sally Jackson.
I look out the window at the crowds thronging Garden World, then back to the tumbleweed emptiness of a Brackett’s Saturday.
“Good luck,” I say to the silence.
“C’mon.” Etty drags me along by the arm. “Give you a lift home.”
“S’very kind of you,” I mumble.
“Drew lots, didn’t we,” she tells me. “Guess who pulled short straw.”
Before we can escape, a customer arrives.
Well, she looks like a customer, until I spot the plastic smile, the slim black briefcase and the neat, bright uniform of the Garden World high command.
An enemy officer, crossing the lines.
At least we had the courtesy to go in disguise.
“Ms Angelica Wilson,” she says to no-one in particular. “Here to see Mr Brackett.”
“I’ll get him for you now,” Francis tells her.
“You’re most kind.”
Etty steers me away.
“You don’t want to know if Brackett’s going to sell us out to the glamorous Garden World rep?”
“I could do with more ugly surprises in my life,” Etty says. “Let’s let the mystery be, shall we?”
OUT BACK OF the garden centre is an unruly square of fencing and overgrown hedges, half way between the main building and the curious concrete sheds from the last war. It’s used as an overflow carpark for when the gravel patch out front is full up. Some hope.
Etty’s still holding onto my arm. I’m very cool about this.
Parked on its lonesome at one end of a broken patch of tarmac is a prehistoric Land Rover, bulky, battered, bright red.
“Jalopeno,” Etty says. “Cross betwee
n a jalapeno and—”
“A jalopy,” I say. “I get it. Now I know why you hide it out here.”
“Enjoy your stroll back to town,” she says, pushing me away.
“Sorry, sorry,” I tell her as she walks round to the driver’s side. “It’s the shock more than anything, isn’t it? I’ve never seen one like that before.”
“As the actress said to the bishop.”
“What colour is that anyway?”
“Painful,” Etty says. “Get in.”
I do what I’m told.
13
THE INTERIOR OF the Land Rover is as shabby as it is outside, although it has the advantage of not burning your eyes out when you look at it.
“Remnant of the band-old-days,” Etty says.
She drives fast, confident, doesn’t look at me when she speaks.
“Needed something to haul our gear an’ bodies round, out to every seedy dive and hole-in-the-wall from here to Barrowlands.” Etty taps the wheel. “I hate it, but it’s family, right? Bad memories and all.”
I know how that goes.
Looking around the interior, the one acknowledgment of modernity is a black plastic clamp that’s been bolted to the dashboard near the steering wheel, to hold a smart phone or sat nav.
“I was expecting a tape deck or an 8-track,” I say. “You know? Old school.”
“I have a minidisc player in a bag down there. That fit the bill?”
“Yeah. Cool.”
She side-eyes me. “Are you serious?”
“Sure. I love these things. Mind if I...”
She takes her hand off the gear stick and gestures. “Go right ahead.”
Stowed under my seat is a faded green haversack. Pretty hefty, and it rattles when I pick it up. Inside is a fat wallet made of Velcro and duct tape, and a couple of slim spy novels with dog-eared pages. Explains Etty’s keenness for our undercover jaunt.
And there it is:
Beautiful. A chunky old Sharp 702 minidisc recorder, jumbled up with various cables, headphones, and a bunch of discs. Little squares of coloured plastic with silver circles trapped inside. Like CDs frozen in glass. Okay, plastic. Awesome.
I take out a disc and turn it over in my hands.
“Always makes me think of ’nineties espionage movies,” I say. “Or that film with the squid head thing and the experience sharing, yeah?”
“Strange Days,” Etty says.
I think of the new store opening on our territory, of the whole disaster that led me there in the first place; all of this whilst speeding on old roads under grey skies, through a landscape of rolling urban blight.
“They are indeed,” I reply.
“No, the movie. Ralph Fiennes. Angela Bassett. As sampled by Fat Boy Slim. You know the one.”
“‘Right Here, Right Now’?”
“Exactly.”
I’m still shuffling through the pile of minidiscs. Neat labels in a black ink. Tiny writing: Eighties Mix. Nu-metal. Movie Themes. J-Pop. Country & Western Greats. Goa Trance.
“Your tastes are eclectic.”
“I like to keep my options open,” Etty says.
Couple of discs with titles I know, then other unfamiliar songs.
‘Snow Daze’; ‘Life Would Be Easy’; ‘Government Cheese’; ‘State of Decay’; ‘Reindeer Flotilla’—
“I recognise some of these. They from the Near Beth days? I mean. Are these tracks from your band. Former band. That is. Your music…”
I let the sentence die an awkward death. Not a great conversation topic.
There’s a long pause whilst Etty contemplates the road ahead.
“Some old stuff, some new things I’m doodling with. I’ll see how it goes. You know?”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“Is it true, what Chas said?”
Chas says plenty of things. Many of them very rude. What in particular Etty has in mind I’d rather not hazard.
“You binned a Rolls Royce into a swimming pool?”
Oh. That thing.
“It was a lake, if you must know.”
“I must,” Etty says, giving me another side-eye.
“More of a pond, really, if I had to be accurate. I bet there’s a big dusty book of rules and regulations somewhere explaining lengths and widths.”
“And depths,” Etty added. “Don’t forget depths. Very important in your water-feature specifications.”
“Are you mocking me in my time of woe?” I ask her.
“I expect so.”
“Okay,” I say. Not sure how to respond to that. I guess it’s honesty. That’s good, isn’t it?
“And that was the end o’ that, was it?” Etty says.
I give it some thought.
“It didn’t help. Nail in the coffin, sort of style.”
I guess that coffin had been measured-up for a long time.
We’d always had different views of life, different directions of travel, alternative takes on what the future might hold. Jennifer had very strong views about her purpose, about my role in achieving that. What I’d need to do to fit in, how I should complement her progress and so forth. My parents were thrilled, of course. Perhaps they sensed that Jennifer—like them—would steer me to the right degree, the perfect job, whatever professional society I’d need to join. A serious amount of routine and tradition and ritual; they loved that sort of thing.
As I explain all this to Etty it begins to sound quite cold and calculated.
“I think it’s just the way her family brought her up. My family too, I guess.”
Here I am, defending Jennifer. Isn’t that acknowledging that something was wrong, that she’d need defending?
“You still have feelings,” Etty says.
I can only shrug. Everyone has feelings, don’t they? Wonders about roads not taken and chances missed.
“It used to be simple,” I say. “Then it got complicated; I wanted her back, did I want her back, was the Incident the reason for the break up or was it just a symptom of the problem…”
Was it deliberate self-destruction on my part? A kick against the straits in which I found myself contained? Who’s more to blame, in the end—
“Trashing her family car is a pretty major error of judgement, you have to admit,” Etty says. “No surprise she’d be less than happy wi’ you after that.”
“A fair point well made,” I answer. “It seems pretty simple now, though.”
“Yeah?”
“When the final showdown happened, Jennifer said some things, hurtful things. True things, though, so you know, I have to accept that. Whatever held us together wasn’t so strong after all, I guess. And maybe better for both of us, knowing that now, rather than finding it out one strained marriage and three kids down the line.”
Maybe I didn’t fit the profile for the role she’d got planned. Or I just didn’t want it any more. Either way, that door was closed…
“Sounds grim,” Etty says, pats my arm. Tilts her head in that consoling way you do.
“Also, at the final breakdown, Jennifer threw some things, very hurtful things—”
“Now you’re just fishing for sympathy,” Etty says. “That’s not attractive.”
She’s smiling, though.
“Can’t blame a boy for trying,” I say.
“True,” Etty says. “Just don’t try too hard.”
We pull up outside my flat not long after.
A light rain has swept the grey tenements clean; or cleaner, at least. A pale sun is drying out the damp pavements and the scattered rubbish.
“You live here? I can see why she dumped you.”
I gather my stuff and slide out of the front seat, into the road.
“This is where I ended up. I’d been sharing her apartment for two years. I didn’t have a great deal of options after… you know.”
“Sorry,” Etty says. “Sometimes my sarcasm comes off as straight up sour, doesn’t it? I’m very much a work in progress, post simultaneous detonation of
both my private life and musical career.”
My turn for the tilted head.
“Anyway,” Etty says, “I’m totally beat now, so I best scoot off for a quiet soak and a long sleep.”
“Good plan,” I say, closing the passenger door, walking around the Land Rover to get to the kerb.
“See you tomorrow,” Etty says, leaning from the driver’s side window.
“Absolutely,” I say. I have nowhere else to be.
“I’ll pick you up about half-four,” Etty shouts, and then she’s off. “We can go find out if we’ve still got jobs, aye?”
That’s a date, I don’t say, but I’m almost skipping up the path to the front door.
BOOK TWO
THE HOST
14
“WHERE THE HELL is everybody?”
It’s a fair question.
Sunday night at Brackett’s, restocking after the big weekend rush. Yeah...
Etty collects me as arranged and when we show up at the garden centre there’s no sign of the day staff, who should have been holding the fort until now.
“Maybe Brackett closed early?”
“That’s no’ likely, is it?” Etty says.
He’s paying sod-all squared—getting half of it back off the government for alleged training courses he’s providing for us—and the least that he expects for his minimal outlay is a few bodies standing around the tills and looking presentable, for as many hours as possible. Just in case of passing custom.
“He’d no’ close up if the world was ending,” Etty says.
Good point. “We’ve got cheap sun visors for nuclear flash, umbrellas to ward off the hard rain.”
“The place is graveyard empty,” Etty is saying.
Not quite.
Some shuffling in the shelving stacks. Squeak of worn-out wheels.
“We’re not alone,” I say to Etty, pointing dramatically.
Francis Murphy appears, pushing a barrow filled with soft drinks.
“Hey, Franco,” Etty says. “Like a cemetery in here. What’s been happening?”
He settles the barrow, shoves thick-rimmed spectacles up his nose. Sticks a thumb in the direction of Garden World.
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