I started to edge my way along the little path at the back of the shed. ‘But before we go, put some sun cream on,’ I shouted back. ‘Your nose is starting to burn.’
‘Okay, Gracie.’ I could hear her get up from her plant pot. ‘If you say so.’
I didn’t have many arguments with people. In fact, Tilly and I never had arguments. Sometimes I tried, but she would never join in. She would always say never mind or okay then, or if you say so.
This was the first real disagreement we’d ever had.
Whenever I did have an quarrel with someone, I always felt quite pleased if I was the one who won, but as I walked back into Mrs Morton’s kitchen that day and listened to Tilly walking very slowly behind me, even though I’d persuaded her to do what I wanted, I really didn’t feel like a winner at all.
Number Eleven, The Avenue
15 July 1976
Unlike the rest of the avenue, number eleven stood a long way back from the road. It hid behind a group of cedar trees, which gathered in a little group on the front lawn, like unhappy guests. Whilst the other houses greeted each other in a polite circle, number eleven stood hesitant and apologetic, watching the rest of the avenue and waiting to be invited in.
We stood at the edge of the garden wall.
I ran my fingers along the brickwork, and a trail of orange dust clouded into the air.
‘Do you think he’s in?’ said Tilly.
I peered around one of the cedar trees. ‘Dunno,’ I said.
The house gave nothing away. It had been built decades before the rest of the estate, and this set it apart from the newcomers which had appeared around it. The bricks were dark and mossy with age, and instead of polite, squared windows, giant yawns of glass looked back at us across the grass.
‘I think he’s always in,’ I said.
We took tightrope steps along the gravel path, all the way to the little covered porch. With each step, we looked around to see if anything had altered, to check that the trees hadn’t changed position, or that the windows hadn’t blinked at us as we walked past.
The front door of Walter Bishop’s house was painted black, but all around the edges were whispers of cobweb, and a dead spider sat patiently in a corner, waiting for a meal which had never arrived. We stood on chessboard tiles, next to a pile of newspapers which were almost as tall as Tilly. I looked through the hall windows, and saw more newspapers. Years of headlines pressed against the yellowed glass, trying to escape.
We stared at the spider.
‘I don’t think anyone uses this door much,’ said Tilly.
I pushed at the wooden rail, which ran around the edge of the porch. It leaned away from my hand and creaked in protest.
‘Why don’t we try the back?’ I said.
Tilly looked at the tower of newspapers.
‘I don’t know, Gracie. It just doesn’t feel right.’
It didn’t.
Even though we were only a few steps away from the avenue, a few steps away from my front door, and Eric Lamb and his garden shed, and Sheila Dakin’s deckchair, it felt as though we had wandered a very long way from where we were meant to be.
‘Don’t be silly,’ I said, ‘come on.’ Because I could never admit that to Tilly.
We walked around the side of the house, and I held on to the wall with each step, covering my hands with dusty brick-red. I could hear Tilly’s sandals behind me, crunching into the gravel. It was the only sound. Even the birds seemed to be holding their breath.
I stopped by the first window and pressed my face against the glass.
Tilly peered around the corner of the house. ‘Can you see Mrs Creasy?’ she whispered. ‘Is she tied up in there? Is she dead?’
The room looked tired and unhappy.
A stout afternoon sun beat against the glass, yet the inside of Walter Bishop’s house was filled only with darkness. The dark wood of the dresser, a rusty carpet, threaded with burgundy and age, and a moss-green settee, which looked itchy and unsat upon. It was a forgotten cave of tapestry and Wilton.
Tilly’s face appeared next to mine.
‘It’s empty,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t even look as though there’s air in there.’
I was just about to turn away when I saw it.
‘Look, Tilly.’ I tapped on the glass.
There was a cross. A large, brass crucifix, which stood on a shelf over the fireplace. It was all by itself. There were no photographs or ornaments, nothing to tell you anything about the person who lived there, and it made the mantelpiece look like an altar.
‘I was right all along.’ I stared at the cross. ‘We were just searching in the wrong houses.’
‘I don’t think that definitely means God is here, though,’ said Tilly. ‘My mum has loads of recipe books, but she never actually does any cooking.’
As we watched, the sun brushed the edges of the cross and sent a splinter of light across the room. It climbed along the itchy settee, and across the tired carpet, until it reached the windowsill, where it bounced from the glass right where we were standing.
‘Wow,’ said Tilly. ‘It looks like God is pointing at something.’
‘Can I help you?’
We were so amazed with ourselves, it took a second to realize that someone else was standing there with us.
*
Walter Bishop was shorter than I remembered, or perhaps I was just taller than I had been in the chip shop. He was thinner, too, and his skin was smooth and turned to terracotta by the summer.
‘Were you looking for someone?’ he said.
‘God,’ said Tilly.
‘And Mrs Creasy,’ I added. In case he thought wewere mental.
‘I see.’ He smiled very slowly, and his eyes creased at the edges.
‘This is the last place to search,’ Tilly said. ‘We’ve been everywhere else.’
‘I see,’ he said again. ‘So where have you already looked?’
‘All over,’ I said. ‘The Bible says that God is everywhere, but we can’t find Him. I’m beginning to think the vicar was making it all up.’
Walter Bishop sat on an old bench which leaned against the back wall, and gestured to a wooden seat opposite.
‘God is an interesting subject to talk about,’ he said. ‘And what do you think has happened to Mrs Creasy?’
We sat down.
‘We think she might be in Scotland,’ said Tilly. ‘Or perhaps murdered.’
‘Do you not think there would be more policemen about, if she were murdered?’
I thought about it. ‘Policemen sometimes get it wrong,’ I said.
‘This is true.’ He looked down and began picking at the paintwork on the bench, although, to be fair, there wasn’t much left of it to pick at.
Tilly took off her cardigan and folded it on to her knee. ‘We liked Mrs Creasy, didn’t we, Grace?’
‘Very much,’ I said. ‘Did you know her, Mr Bishop?’
‘Oh yes, she often came to visit,’ Walter looked up and smiled, before he went back to the paintwork. ‘I knew her very well.’
‘Why do you think she left?’ said Tilly.
Walter Bishop didn’t speak for a while. It was so long before he answered, I was beginning to wonder if he hadn’t even heard the question.
‘I’m sure she’ll tell us everything when she returns,’ he said eventually.
‘Do you think she’s coming back?’ I said.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘if she does, she will certainly have a lot to say.’
It was a while before he looked up and returned his glasses to the bridge of his nose.
I felt warmth from the wood reach my legs. ‘This seat is very comfortable,’ I said.
‘It’s called a settle.’
I leaned back and felt it press into my shoulder blades. ‘It’s a good name for a seat.’
He smiled. ‘It is.’
We sat in silence. I knew straight away that Walter Bishop was the kind of person you could sit in silence with. There were
very few people like that, I had found. Most grown-ups liked to fill a silence with conversation. Not important, necessary conversation, but a spray of words that served no purpose other than to cover up the quiet. But Walter Bishop was comfortable with saying nothing, and all I could hear as we sat together on that hot July day, was the anxious cry of a wood pigeon, high up in one of the trees, calling for its mate. I looked, but although I searched all the branches, I couldn’t find it.
He saw me staring.
‘He’s there,’ Walter said, pointing to the very top of the tree, and I saw a flash of grey amongst the leaves.
‘Do you think God is in that pigeon?’ I said.
Walter looked up. ‘Definitely.’
‘And in the cedar trees,’ I said.
Walter smiled again. ‘I’m sure He is. I agree with your vicar. God is everywhere, or at least, someone is.’
I frowned at him. ‘I’ve never seen you in church.’
‘I don’t mix very well.’ He looked down and shifted his feet in the gravel.
‘Us neither,’ said Tilly.
‘Does it bother you,’ I said, ‘not mixing well?’
‘I think you can get used to most things if you taste them for long enough.’
Walter Bishop spoke slowly and he held the words in his mouth like pieces of food. There was a softness to his voice as well, which made his speech seem even more full of thinking.
He looked across at me. ‘I don’t read people very well,’ he said. ‘They can be very confusing.’
‘Especially people on this avenue,’ said Tilly.
‘You mix with us all right, though, don’t you?’ I said. ‘You can read us?’
‘I have always got along very well with children.’ He went back to picking at the paint.
I could see why there was so very little of it left.
We slid back into the silence. I could hear voices somewhere beyond the trees. It sounded like Sheila Dakin or Mrs Forbes. I couldn’t be sure, because the warmth of the day seemed to blanket all the sounds, until it felt as though everything was being carried away from me in the heat.
‘The thing is,’ I said after a while, ‘no one around here seems very bothered about God.’
The picking had stopped. Walter brushed flecks of paint from underneath his nails. ‘They won’t be,’ he said, ‘until they need something.’
‘Do you think God listens, even if you’ve not really had much of a conversation with Him before?’ said Tilly.
‘I wouldn’t.’ I pressed my legs into the settle. ‘It’s bad manners.’
‘What is it that you want from God?’ said Walter. He took off his glasses and began cleaning them with a handkerchief that didn’t look particularly clean to begin with.
I thought about the question for a long time. I thought about it as I listened to the call of the pigeon in the cedar tree, and as I filled my lungs with the smell of summer and felt the warmth of the wood on my legs.
‘I want Him to keep everyone on the avenue safe,’ I said eventually. ‘Like a shepherd.’
‘Only the sheep, though,’ said Tilly. ‘God doesn’t like goats. He sends them into the wilderness and doesn’t ever speak to them again.’
Walter looked up. ‘Goats?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘The world is full of goats and sheep. You just have to try and work out which is which.’
‘I see.’ Walter replaced his glasses. There was a wrapping of Sellotape around one of the arms, but they still leaned far too much to one side. ‘And do you think all the people on the avenue are goats,’ he said, ‘or sheep?’
I was about to answer, but then I stopped and thought about it, and said, ‘I haven’t made my mind up’ instead.
Walter stood up. ‘Why don’t we go inside and have some lemonade. We can talk about it in there. Out of the heat.’
Tilly looked at me, and I looked up at Walter Bishop.
I wasn’t sure if it was because of the missing button on his shirt, or the rash of stubble on his face. Or perhaps it was the way his hair hung in yellowed strands around his collar. Or perhaps it was none of these things. Perhaps it was just because of Mrs Morton’s words, which were still marching around in my ears.
‘We can drink it out here, Mr Bishop, can’t we?’ I said.
He walked towards the back door. ‘Oh no. That wouldn’t do at all. Look at the state of your hands. You need to wash them.’
I looked down. They were dirty brick-red from holding on to the wall. Even after I wiped them on my skirt, the colour was still there, eating into the lines on my fingers.
He opened the door into his kitchen. ‘Do your parents know you’re here?’ he said.
I didn’t reply at first. I stood up and looked at Tilly, and she stared back at me with uncertain eyes.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Nobody knows we’re here.’
And even as Tilly and I walked through the door, I still wasn’t sure I’d given him the right answer.
Number Twelve, The Avenue
15 July 1976
‘Nothing.’ Brian’s gaze moved between yesterday’s newspaper and the tip of his left trainer.
‘How could you have had an appointment with Margaret Creasy about nothing?’ Sheila Dakin said.
She had summoned him to her deckchair.
He had been minding his own business, looking for some old LPs in the garage, when she’d spotted him and screeched his name out across the avenue, like a bird of prey. Now he was standing in the front garden of number twelve, with Hank Marvin and the Shadows, trying not to look her in the eye.
‘Well?’ she said.
He hugged the vinyl against his chest. ‘It’s personal,’ he said.
‘Don’t come the high and mighty with me, Brian Roper.’
He looked at his other trainer. He couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t tell anyone.
If he tried to explain what happened with Margaret Creasy, no one would understand. It would only lead to more questions, and he’d tie himself up in knots trying to answer them. They’d blame him. People always did.
‘Did you hear a word I said?’ Sheila Dakin shifted her weight and the canvas groaned in protest.
He looked away from his trainer and pinched a glance at her. She was all deckchair and bikini.
‘What exactly did you tell Margaret Creasy about this avenue, Brian?’
‘Nothing.’
‘About the fire?’
‘Nothing.’ He dared to take another glance. ‘She knew everything about it already.’
‘Did she now. So someone has opened their mouth, then.’
‘They might not have done.’ Brian automatically reached into the back of his jeans. ‘She went to the library a lot. They’ve got copies of the Gazette in there going back years.’
He had started to carry the library ticket around with him. He was sure his mother had been searching through his pockets. Whenever she became bored of her own life, she would rummage around in someone else’s to help pass the time. He’d thought about trying to sneak the card back somehow. Maybe go round to John’s and leave it between the pages of a book, or under a table mat, but he was bound to be caught. He always was.
‘What are you messing around in your back pocket for?’ said Sheila.
He could never get away with anything. ‘No reason,’ he said.
‘Old copies of the Gazette be buggered,’ said Sheila. ‘She’s been told what happened. That’s why she’s gone missing. Someone needed to keep her quiet.’
‘She talked to everyone. Not just me.’ Brian went to check his back pocket again, but he stopped himself just in time.
‘That’s the bloody problem, Brian. She did talk to everybody. She knows everything there is to know about all of us.’
He hugged the record closer to his chest. ‘What is there to know?’ he said. ‘We’re just like any other avenue, aren’t we?’
Sheila narrowed her lips and her eyes, and everything else on her face which could be narrowed, all at the
same time. ‘And if anyone’s been opening their mouths, my money’s on you,’ she said.
He stared at her.
Sheila reached over and floundered around in the grass, knocking over a glass and sending a crisp packet tumbling on to the path, until her hands found the newspaper. ‘Read it,’ she said, ‘go on.’
He felt very thirsty. He could sense it, that familiar feeling. The slow, dry crackle in the back of his throat, the ringing in his ears. ‘I don’t want to,’ he said.
‘Go on.’ Sheila was waving the paper around in front of him. ‘Read it.’
‘I don’t need to,’ he said.
‘Well, I’ll read it, then.’ She snapped her glasses on to her face. ‘Let me see.’
Local woman still missing, she said. Police are keen to trace the whereabouts of local woman Mrs Margaret Creasy, who went missing from her home on The Avenue on June 21st.
Sheila traced the words as she read. Out of character, no contact, no reason for her disappearance, etc, etc, etc. She brought the newspaper a little closer to her face. ‘Here we are,’ she said, ‘this is it.’ Mr Brian Roper (43). She looked at Brian over the top of her glasses and looked down again. (43), also of The Avenue said, ‘We’re all worried that someone’s done her in, there are some really odd people around this place.’
Sheila took off her glasses and stared at Brian. ‘What on earth are you doing, talking to newspaper reporters?’
‘I thought they were just being friendly,’ he said.
‘Newspaper reporters? Being friendly?’ She stabbed at the newspaper article with the arm of her glasses. ‘You’re forty-three, Brian.’
He scratched the end of his nose. His mother had said the same thing.
‘You’ve got to stop opening that big trap of yours. Newspaper journalists, Margaret Creasy, Grace and Tilly.’
‘I didn’t say anything to Grace and Tilly.’
‘And stop picking your nose.’
‘You can ask them if you want, they’re only just up there.’ He turned to look at the avenue, but it was deserted. Not even Mrs Forbes’ sweeping brush or Eric Lamb’s lawnmower, just the baked, hot silence of a July afternoon. ‘They’ve disappeared now,’ he said.
The Trouble with Goats and Sheep Page 18