by Peter Benson
‘Yes?’ said Frank.
‘Yes.’
‘You okay?’
‘Yes.’
‘No,’ said Frank. ‘Are you going to be all right?’
‘Yes,’ said Bob. ‘I’ve never been better.’
Frank laughed at his friend and Bob laughed back; Frank stood up and Bob sat in his chair.
Outside, the sky opened and it began to snow; big flakes drifted past the office window like breath. A silence floated over the town with the flakes; conversation came hushed, no doors slammed and car tyres rolled with whispers. ‘Okay,’ said Frank, and the word was a note. ‘What do you want me to do?’
Bob put the tips of his fingers together, spread them, flexed them, leant back, stared at the ceiling and said, ‘Tell her.’
‘Tell who?’
‘Austin’s wife.’
Frank looked at his nails. ‘His wife?’
‘Tell her…’ said Bob, ‘we’ve been following her for the last two weeks. That we know everything.’ He put a finger to his cut. It was nothing. ‘Give her a break.’
‘Are you serious?’ Frank looked at his friend, and his friend looked back with fat blue eyes.
‘Absolutely.’
‘Okay.’ Frank looked at his shoes, noticed a speck on one and bent to rub it off. When he sat up again, he said, ‘And then what? Go round and give him the bill?’
‘And this.’ He pushed a case report across the desk. ‘It’s all in there.’
Frank snorted. ‘And tell him what?’
‘That his wife’s been studying Tai Chi with his sister.’
Now Frank laughed. ‘Tai Chi?’
‘Yes. It’s a Chinese exercise…’
‘I know what it is.’
‘… and meditation. It’s supposed to prolong active life…’
‘Where? Where’s she supposed to be doing this?’
‘Places, dates, times.’ Bob tapped the report and then said, ‘Before you see her, buy a book about it, then go round to her place and give it to her. Explain why, and where you come from, and let her read the report. She can make notes.’
Frank sat back and rubbed his forehead. He studied Bob’s face, and watched the man’s eyes swivel from left to right. There was an unusual smile on his face, something that bothered Frank; it wasn’t a smile of pleasure, relief or contentment, there was something odd behind it. ‘She’ll love me for it?’
‘We’re doing her a favour.’ Bob put his hand over his heart and took a deep breath. His smile dropped, and he winced.
‘Are you okay?’
Bob nodded.
‘You ought to see someone about that knock.’ Frank pointed at his friend’s head and at the purpling wound.
‘Don’t worry about me; you worry about Austin.’ Bob picked up a sealed envelope from the desk and passed it to Frank. ‘This is his bill. Don’t forget to tell him—’
‘Ten per cent discount for early settlement.’
‘You got it.’
3
Lisa was twenty, and had been born in Brighton. When she was six, she wanted to be a pop singer, when she was seven, she wanted to be the woman who swung the letters on Wheel of Fortune, and when she was eight, she wanted to work on the Palace Pier with Madame Chin, a fortune-teller. For her ninth birthday, her father robbed a toyshop and gave her a magic set; he was arrested during her party. Her friends thought the chase through the house, the policemen falling over the fence at the bottom of the garden, and the howls of pain as her father was pinned against a side wall and given a good kicking, were part of the entertainment. The magic set was taken away as evidence.
When she was ten, her ambitions took a swing; she decided to join the army. She began to imagine herself as the brother she didn’t have, she built a secret camp in a park, and laid ambushes for old men with dogs. She got posters of tanks and soldiers skiing in Norway and stuck them on her bedroom wall. She dreamed in khaki and taught herself Morse code. When her mother told her that women couldn’t be soldiers, she refused to listen, she refused to allow her goal to be subverted. She strengthened her resolve, she learnt to identify every cap-badge in the British army, and watched every war movie she could.
Then, suddenly, she changed. At fourteen, she turned vegetarian, ripped down her tank posters and met a boy called Robin. She lost interest in ambition, left school at sixteen and moved in with him. She signed on, got up late, smoked dope and never went to bed before three o’clock in the morning. She lived like this for two years; then her mother died, and the shock readjusted her head. She left Robin and found the flat in Mrs Platt’s house, and decided to work her grief away. She got a job stacking supermarket shelves, then moved on to the chemist’s. She washed her hair every day, and met Adrian. Now she was dreaming of family life, a bigger flat and an enormous bed. During her lunch-break, she sat down and wrote a letter to her father. She didn’t explain anything; she just told him what had happened and how happy she was. She had always wanted a child, did he remember that? Did he remember when she used to keep rabbits and pretend that they were her family? Now she didn’t have to pretend any more. She wrote that one day Adrian was going to own his own garage, and that he loved her. She wrote that she wasn’t going to visit Maidstone until the baby was born; she had been feeling sick in the mornings and didn’t want to risk upsetting herself. She wrote that she hoped this was all right, that it was understood. She wrote that she’d write again, and then went back to work.
She was advising an old man on a choice of nail-clippers as Frank drove past the shop. He slowed to see if he could see her, but advertisements for photograph developing and pain-killers covered the window; he accelerated up Wheel Road, waited for the lights to change at the top junction, swung left, then right, then right again, and cruised into Spender Avenue. He parked and walked to the bookshop.
He liked bookshops but they made him feel uncomfortable. He didn’t want to be sucked into a conversation with a stranger about something he didn’t know. Knowledge bred wisdom or chaos, mainly chaos, he thought. He read history books, sometimes biographies. Events that were over and people that were dead; these were safe areas. Now he tried to look at ease; he put one hand in his pocket, then another, then both at once, then took them both out and let them swing. He narrowly avoided upsetting a display with his feet, and a sales assistant asked him if he needed any help, but he shook his head. He would find what he wanted, and when he had, he would buy it. He was a big man in a big shop, and Tai Chi was a big subject. China was a big country, and there are at least a billion Chinese people in the world.
He passed shelves of guidebooks to foreign places, ran his fingers along some teach-yourself language books, turned a corner and reached the Pregnancy and Motherhood section. He spotted a sign that read ‘Self-Improvement’ but was stopped by a display of Dr Miriam Stoppard’s New Pregnancy and Birth Book. He picked one up, opened it and read page 132. ‘Sports Activities’. There was a picture of a pregnant woman swimming; Dr Stoppard wrote that she went swimming two weeks before the birth of her second baby. Frank was amazed. He flipped the pages back and looked at pages of pictures of embryos developing in the womb; he was reminded of something he had dreamt, and was slapped by his own ignorance. He thought about the things Lisa would have to go through, and decided that he should know what to expect. He tucked a copy under his arm, took a step back and bumped into a pregnant woman.
‘Oh God,’ he said, and he dropped the book, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said the woman.
‘Are you sure? I mean…’
‘Really.’ The woman took a deep breath and put her hand on her belly. ‘We’re fine.’
Frank looked around for someone else. ‘Sorry?’ he said.
‘Don’t be,’ said the woman, and, ‘You dropped your book.’
‘Oh yes.’ He looked at the floor and bent to pick it up; he glanced at the cover and felt a peculiar sensation creep into his cheeks. It was hot, and it affected his eyes. He squi
nted, and the woman said, ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’
She smiled. ‘You’re blushing.’
‘What?’
‘You’re blushing.’
Frank was amazed. Strange things were happening to him. He said sorry again and hurried away to find a book about Tai Chi.
Tai Chi is an interesting subject; Frank read some of Tai Chi: A Guide to the 48 Step Form while he drank a cup of coffee at Juliet’s Coffee and Video Bar. He sat at a corner table facing the door, the window, the counter and the racks of videos for rent. He was alone; Juliet was out the back, washing breakfast dishes, whistling to herself. The place smelt of slush and stale doughnuts, condensation streamed down the window, a television showed a thriller with the sound down. A man was chased up a dark street, a car skidded to a halt, a gun fired two shots. A man’s face was seen in close-up, blood streaming from a wound to his cheek; Frank put the book down, stared at the screen and thought about Bob. Bob was the brains and the organisation, Frank was the charming muscle and the man who sat in cars for hours. Frank had tried to plan and organise, but his mind got in the way. There was something about telephones that split his brain; he had never kept a diary, and he didn’t own a calendar. He hated numbers and he hated loose change. Reading about Tai Chi had given him something to think about. In ancient China, peasant children would be killed so their mothers could breast-feed the Imperial Pekinese dogs. He remembered reading this once, but he couldn’t recall where, or when. He left Juliet a tip, and went to see Mrs Austin.
Mrs Platt poked a fresh cuttlefish through the bars of Joey’s cage, but Joey didn’t move. He huddled by a maize stick with one eye open and the other closed. One of his toes poked out, and he held his mouth open; he had some primeval memory in his head, and it was bothering him. There was a cliff, there was a huge sky and red earth, there were trees in leaf and there were thousands of other budgies chirping. The noise was deafening; Joey closed the other eye as his head filled with sound. He felt himself take off and fly over a deep ravine. He saw a river below him, a huge flock of sheep and a man on horseback, but when he opened his eye again, all he saw was Mrs Platt, a cuttlefish and the roses on the wallpaper of her flat. Joey closed his eye again, Mrs Platt shook her head, ran her fingers down the bars of the bird’s cage, sighed and went to make a fresh pot of tea.
As she stood over her kettle, she worked out that she’d had Joey ten years. She remembered the shop where she had bought him, and how the woman behind the counter had been so helpful. Since then, the bird had never pined, showed signs of boredom, gone off its food or fallen off its perch. It had been a perfect companion, and now it was dying. Oh, life is a bastard and then we die. Religions were designed by the imaginative for the unimaginative to consider theirs; God is not dead, how could something that never existed die? Mrs Platt knew that religion was a comfort, and she understood why people needed it to fill some hole in their minds, but she also understood the con. Even something as simple as Joey understood the con, and that comforted her. With his one eye open and the other closed, he was not stupid. Mrs Platt decided to call the vet.
Frank drove slowly to Mr Austin’s sister’s house, where Mrs Austin was standing with her arms around the woman. The book about Tai Chi lay on the passenger seat, the roads were gritted and pedestrians walked carefully. The sun was hidden by cloud.
Frank worried. Bob had never asked him to work like this. He had never asked him to deceive a client. The client was always right, the client paid their wages. You gave him the information he was paying for and you moved on to the next case. Subjectivity wasn’t in it; it was a dispassionate world, and all living things, when faced with primeval dreams, knew it. The risks of the work did not worry Frank, but he was made nervous by unexpected twists. He was forced to ask questions he hadn’t expected; why was Bob trying to protect Mrs Austin? Or was he trying to protect Miss Austin? Or was the Austin case a diversion? Was Bob losing it? Frank turned into Gordon Road and parked as the lighest shower of snow fell, then stopped.
He stood in front of Miss Austin’s front door and rang the bell. He held the Tai Chi book under his arm and took deep breaths. A minute passed; he rang again, and the door was opened immediately by a thin woman in a dressing-gown. He recognised her as Miss Austin; he lowered his eyes, and in a soft, unalarming voice, said, ‘Miss Austin? My name is Frank, and I’ve got a message from your brother.’
‘Cyril?’ she said. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘Yes…’ said Frank, ‘and no.’
Miss Austin held the collar of her dressing-gown, took a step back and said, ‘You’d better come in.’
‘Thanks.’
Frank knew every inch of the outside of the house he was now standing in; it was strange to him to be in it. There was a smell of perfume in the hall, and the sound of movement upstairs; he was led to the kitchen, where Miss Austin filled a kettle with water and said, ‘Please.’ She pointed to a chair. ‘Sit down. Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘Thanks.’
She fetched a pot from a cupboard and began to fiddle with some mugs; as she did, she said, ‘So you’re Cyril’s messenger boy. What’s that like?’
Frank smiled. ‘I wouldn’t know.’
Miss Austin narrowed her eyes and looked at him carefully. ‘Don’t I recognise you?’
‘I shouldn’t think so.’
‘I’m sure I’ve seen your face somewhere.’
Frank shrugged. ‘I should say,’ he said, ‘that my message isn’t for you, but it involves you, if you know what I mean.’
‘I don’t think I do.’
‘It’s for Cyril’s wife. Mrs Austin.’
‘Sandie?’
‘Yes.’
‘So why come round here?’ Miss Austin’s eyes glanced at the ceiling, and she licked her lips.
‘Because she’s here,’ Frank said.
‘What?’ Her voice was up now, her face muscles rippled and her fingers tightened.
‘I know she is.’
‘Who the hell are you?’
‘Frank.’
‘Yeah, but Frank who?’
‘I know,’ said a voice from behind the door, and Sandie walked into the kitchen. She was wearing jeans and a loose white shirt knotted at the waist. She had untidy hair and was carrying a basket of dirty washing. She put it on the floor and said, ‘I’ve been waiting to meet you.’
Frank stood up. He felt awkward now. He was used to cases ending tidily.
‘What’s going on?’ said Miss Austin.
‘Are you going to tell her, or shall I?’ said Sandie.
‘I think I should; you’ll appreciate the new ending.’
‘Will I?’
‘I think so.’
‘Okay.’
Frank sat down again and crossed his legs. Sandie sat opposite and Miss Austin made the tea. As it brewed, he said, ‘Two weeks ago, your husband asked us to tail you; he was suspicious. New perfume, new clothes, something about your face he hadn’t noticed before; he gave us all the details. He was bothered. I think he’d done a bit of snooping himself, but he couldn’t work it out. You’d drop the kids off, you’d shop, you’d come round here, stay a few hours, maybe go to the cinema, then back to pick the kids up. But he was convinced.’ Frank rubbed his knees. ‘I think deceiving people sweat their deceit, and I think he thinks so too. I sussed you a couple of days ago, and was going to give your husband the real report today.’ Frank reached into his pocket. ‘And the bill.’
‘The real report?’ said Sandie. She was thinking about her kids and she was thinking about her husband’s temper. She could see walls falling down, and plates flying through the air. Miss Austin moved to her, and laid a hand on her shoulder.
‘Yes,’ said Frank, ‘but this morning I got new orders.’
‘From him?’
‘No. These were from Bob.’
‘Bob?’
‘My boss. He told me to give you this’ — he gave Sandie the book — ‘then I
’m to tell your husband that the two of you have been studying this — Tai Chi — together, and give him this.’ He held up Bob’s report. ‘It explains everything. You’d better read it; you don’t want to be caught out.’
‘You’re joking!’
‘I am not.’
‘Tai Chi?’ said Miss Austin.
‘Yes.’
‘And that’s it?’
‘For me, yes.’
The two women had known each other for years, but had only discovered their love during the summer. Neither had known passion like it. They felt like two rivers in flood meeting in a parched gorge.
Miss Austin ruffled Sandie’s hair and began to pour the tea. ‘So your boss; this was his idea?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said Frank.
‘Why? Cyril hired you…’
‘I don’t know. We’re not supposed to make judgement calls, but Bob, he came in and he’d made his mind up. Mr Austin was wrong, you two were right, Mr Austin gets the bill and a lie. One more lie in a world of lies, and no one gets hurt. Bob’s always been a bit of a philosopher, but he’s getting it bad now.’
‘It sounds good to me,’ said Sandie.
‘I thought it would,’ said Frank, and he cupped his tea in his hands, ‘but that didn’t stop me wondering.’