Owning Jacob (1998)

by Simon Beckett

  'Bar, Sandra!' a man playing dominoes on a nearby table shouted as Ben reached the varnished wood counter. Suddenly what he was doing seemed like a very bad idea. In fact he couldn't even recall how he could have thought there was anything good about it. He made up his mind to leave, but before he could a door behind the bar opened and Sandra Kale came through.

  She stopped when she saw him. Her mouth compressed into a thin line that matched her plucked eyebrows.

  'What do you want?'

  No reasonable answer presented itself, except the obvious one. 'A pint of bitter, please.'

  She stared as if she wasn't going to serve him, then took a glass from below the counter, put it under an electric beer pump and pressed a button. She didn't speak as the glass began to fill, and Ben guessed she was trying to come to terms with the situation as much as he was.

  Or perhaps she just had nothing to say.

  She set the full glass on the counter. 'One eighty.'

  Ben reached into his wallet and gave her a note. On impulse he said, 'Would you like one?'

  Her eyes flitted to the room behind him. 'No.' She handed him his change then folded her arms below her breasts like a barrier. She wasn't wearing lipstick and her lips were pink and chapped.

  A wayward regret that he hadn't seen her getting dressed that morning blew across Ben's mind. He brushed it away.

  She regarded him, unsmilingly. 'Why've you come here?'

  It was odd hearing her speak after the dumb-shows he was used to. He took a drink of beer to hide his confusion. It was chilled to tastelessness. He put it back down. 'I was passing. I thought I'd see how Jacob is.'

  'Steven's fine.'

  'How's his cold?'

  'Comes and goes.'

  'I suppose it'll probably come when I'm due to see him again and go straight afterwards, won't it?'

  Something that might have been a smile touched a corner of her mouth. She shrugged. Her breasts lifted, then settled again on her folded arms.

  Ben took another drink of beer and wondered what she would do if he told her he knew she had sex with men for money. The thought strengthened him. Whore, he thought. Slag. Slut. Tart. He realised he was growing hard inside his jeans and felt a rush of pure lust that left him light-headed and faintly shocked. Jesus, what do they put in the beer in this place?

  As if she had caught the drift of his thoughts, he sensed an imperceptible shift in the currents between them. The casual antagonism he'd felt from her was replaced by a sort of awareness.

  She tilted her head slightly to one side and moved her arms, pushing her breasts closer together and so out towards him. 'Have you any idea what he'd do if he knew you were here?'

  There was no need to say who 'he' was. Ben drank some more of the tasteless beer. 'He doesn't, though, does he?'

  'Supposing I tell him?' He put the glass down. 'You don't tell him everything, do you?' What's that supposed to mean?' It was his turn to shrug. He saw uncertainty touch her face and felt a corresponding throb in his groin. There was a movement next to him at the bar.

  'Any problem, San?'

  It was one of the pool players. He glared at Ben as he asked the question.

  'No. It's all right, Willie,' Sandra said, but the man stayed where he was.

  He was short and thick-set. He grasped the cue around its middle in an overhand grip as he looked Ben up and down. 'You're that cunt who had John's kid, aren't you?' he said, loudly.

  The music didn't stop, but Ben could sense everything else in the room grinding to a halt; the desultory conversations, the domino games, all breaking off at this new entertainment.

  'Suddenly, it's fucking Deadwood.'

  'I don't want any trouble, Willie,' Sandra snapped.

  The man ignored her. His head wasn't completely shaved, Ben saw. It had a fine fuzz of pale stubble on it. His partner, also with a cue, came and stood behind and to one side of him.

  'What the fuck are you doing here?'

  'Having a beer, what's it look like?' Ben heard his own tone of voice and marvelled at it. On the jukebox Matt Monroe began singing 'Born Free'. He felt giddy with an unexpected recklessness.

  The one called Willie stared at him. 'We don't fucking want you.'

  Ben stared back, gripping the pint glass like a weapon. 'I don't give a fuck.'

  Part of him stood aside from himself, watching this stranger with amazement, but the rest of him was borne up in the thick, hot gorge of aggression. His limbs and head felt pumped full of blood. Only a thin membrane of sanity restrained him. He pressed against it, feeling it give, wanting an excuse to break through.

  'You're already on one warning, Willie. Any more and you're fucking barred,' he heard Sandra say, and later he would wonder at her apparently taking his side, but right then her words didn't mean anything. He and the man faced each other, on the lip of violence.

  The man spat on the floor.

  'Fucking London ponce,' he said, turning away.

  The tension in the room was released. The other customers went back to their beer and dominoes.

  Ben watched the two skinheads go back to the pool table, laughing at some muttered insult, and felt as if he'd woken up on top of a precipice. He put his beer glass down on the bar with a hand that was suddenly shaking.

  Sandra Kale shook her head. 'If you really want to kill yourself you should come here on a Saturday night.'

  He didn't say anything. He would have asked for a brandy, but that would have made his weakness obvious. The thought of the pool players coming over again terrified him. He drank half of the beer left in the glass. It had warmed up but didn't taste any better.

  Sandra was still watching him. 'So what did you really come here for?'

  I don't know. Reaction from the near-fight was setting in. He wanted to get out of the pub very badly.

  'I'm not going to give up,' he said.

  He immediately regretted the pointless bravado. Sandra Kale's face closed down again, but not before he saw the tiredness that stole across it.

  'Please yourself,'she said, and walked out through the door behind the bar.

  Ben finished his beer. He didn't want it, but he didn't want to be seen to be rushing out either. Putting the empty glass down on the counter, he walked out past the pool players without looking at them.

  No one followed him out, but by the time he had unlocked his car and driven away he was clammy with sweat. He went past the Kales' house, noticing that the scrap in the front garden had also been added to and moved around since the last time he'd seen it, and followed the road up to the wood that overlooked the town. He pulled into the gateway where he usually parked and turned off the ignition.

  'You fucking idiot.' He shut his eyes and rested his head on the steering wheel—Jesus Christ, what had he been thinking of? The thought of how close he'd come to being worked over by two pairs of boots and pool cues made him feel sick. A pub fight was a different proposition to a scrap on a football pitch. Yet he hadn't just been ready, he'd wanted it to happen. That wasn't courage, it was fucking madness. But he hadn't cared. Even more incredible was that he had got away with it.

  Perhaps that's the trick, he thought, you just have to not care.

  A sudden spatter of rain against the windscreen made him lift his head. Fat drops the size of pennies were flattening themselves against the glass. The blue-black clouds bellied overhead like a water-filled awning. The rain came down more heavily, obliterating his view of the world outside. He looked out at the transient, spun-glass strands it formed as it bounced from the bonnet and told himself how stupid he'd been. This time, though, the self-flagellation lacked conviction.

  He was more relieved than surprised when he realised he didn't regret what he'd done. Not even the confrontation with the pool players.

  You're getting as bad as Kale, he jeered, but he couldn't deny he was glad he hadn't lost face in front of Kale's wife.

  She's just a fucking whore, he thought, angrily. Then: I want to fuck her.

>   It was like lancing an abscess. He felt he couldn't breathe with the sheer pressure of lust, the need for rut.

  The rain beat against the car. Condensation had steamed the glass, making a dry, private cave of the interior. His fingers trembled with haste as he unzipped his fly and pulled his erection free. He gripped it and closed his eyes. He pictured Sandra Kale undressing in the bedroom, the man's penis in her mouth. With his eyes still shut Ben looked down and saw her sitting on the bed in front of him. She stared back, her plucked eyebrows mocking and callous as he thrust himself between her lips. He threw her on to the bed, ramming himself into her, and with a choked cry he came, arching his hips as the scalding white stream spurted over him, splashing the steering wheel, dashboard and the door panel until he felt he was pumping out his entire self and it would never stop.

  Then it did. He slumped in the car seat. Gradually, his heart slowed to something like normal.

  The rain drummed on the car roof as he looked down at the sticky mess he'd made. He felt disgusted with himself, but not as disgusted as he probably should. Or guilty, since it was the first orgasm he'd had since Sarah died. He thought about the last time they'd made love, but it seemed unreal and long ago. A solitary ejaculation in a steamed-up car with the vision of a cheap prostitute for company seemed infinitely more real now. Far from bringing any sort of release, though, it had left him only with a dull and heavy sense of depression. With a sigh he began searching through his pockets.

  He hoped he had some tissues.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was only because of a sleepless night that Ben found out that Kale was keeping Jacob from school.

  Insomnia had never been something that had troubled him before Sarah's death. Since then, though, and especially in the last few weeks, he was beginning to become familiar with its company. He'd fallen asleep when he went to bed but woken just after three, suddenly wide awake—a feat he wished he could achieve as painlessly at a more humane hour. There had been no reason for it, no noises or disturbance he could blame, but sleep was suddenly as far away as if he'd been up for ages. He'd lain watching the luminous digits of the clock radio beside the bed counting off the night's passage with silent, infinitesimally slow beats. Sleeplessness, he'd found, distorted time more than the acid he'd tried at university. He would wait for one minute to lick into another. The numerals were an electronic cage that time seemed wantonly to wind in and out of, cramming more and more of itself into each sixty seconds until Ben became convinced that the clock had stopped. Then the numbers would change, and he would watch and wait again.

  His mind began to run like an automated cinema projector, throwing up images that the dark had kitted out with spikes and poison. He reviewed his bravado in the pub and saw it was juvenile. It had been a ridiculous posture, a bluster to hide the fact that he daren't do anything where it mattered, with Kale. He replayed their encounters and felt shamed. He had backed down at every one. In the daylight he could tell himself that Kale was a trained soldier, used to violence, that he was unbalanced and provoking him would be suicidal. But the darkness stripped those rationalisations away.

  The uncushioned truth was that he was scared of him.

  He remembered a street fight he had seen when he was a student. A group of men had been arguing outside a pub, and as Ben had crossed to the other side of the road to avoid them the argument had suddenly exploded. He saw one man drop to his knees and have his head kicked like a football. The dull crack of his skull hitting the pavement had been audible even across the street, and as the fight spilled into the road Ben had hurried away from the sight of someone jumping with both feet on the fallen man's head.

  He never heard anything about the fight afterwards, but he'd felt sick, sure he'd watched a man being killed. He'd hated himself for not doing anything, just as he hated himself now.

  You're a fucking coward. He visualised the scene again, only this time with Kale as the attacker, and himself the figure on the floor. As he stared at the bedroom ceiling he felt a four-o'-clock-in-the-morning certainty that there wasn't going to be any amicable ending between them. The soldier had slipped whatever restraints checked most people. If Ben kept on trying to see Jacob, sooner or later something would snap when there wasn't anyone around to intervene.

  If that happened, Ben knew Kale wouldn't stop until he was dead.

  At six o'clock he threw back the quilt and got up. It was still dark outside. He turned on the lights and tried to shrug off the disjointed feeling that still hung over him. He showered, treating himself to longer than usual, and under the hot needles he immediately began to feel tired. He was tempted to go back to bed, but he knew if he did he'd feel worse than ever when it came to getting up again in an hour or two's time.

  He went downstairs, switched on the radio and set some coffee percolating. Jacob used to like morning TV, but Ben couldn't bear to listen to it now. He ate a bowl of cereal standing by the kitchen window while he waited for the toast.

  There was a faint paleness in the sky, but not enough to suggest that daylight was on its way. He put his dish in the bowl and spread sunflower margarine on the toast. Sarah had weaned him off butter and he still felt guilty if he spread anything remotely cholesterol-friendly on his bread.

  By the time he'd finished breakfast it was almost seven.

  He had to be at the studio later that morning for the day's shoot, a fashion piece for a magazine. But he still had time to kill. He poured himself another cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table. The salt and pepper mills lay exactly where he'd left them the night before. At the far end of the table was a ring from the coffee mug he'd almost knocked over the previous morning. He'd meant to wipe it up but had forgotten. The stain would stay there until he did something about it. He looked around the kitchen. Everything in it would remain exactly as it was now, unless he made it otherwise. There was no one to scold him for not washing the dishes, no one to move a chair out of place, to disturb a single spoon except him.

  It struck him with a painful clarity how alone he was.

  He wondered why he didn't move to somewhere smaller. The house was far too big for him, and the empty rooms only reminded him of what he'd lost. He felt no sentimental attachment to it. It was part of the life he'd had with Sarah, but that life had ended. It made more sense to sell it and buy a flat, big enough to have a darkroom, not so big that felt lost in it. Time to move on, cut his losses and get on with building a new life instead of living in the shadows of the old.

  So why don't you?

  He couldn't answer that. Any more than he could explain why he had held on to the old toys and clothes of Jacob's that the Kales hadn't wanted instead of getting rid of them as he had Sarah's belongings. He knew that the two issues were connected, but he wasn't ready yet to face up to them.

  Not at seven o'clock in the morning.

  Make that five past, he thought, glancing at the clock.

  Hours yet before he had to be at the studio. Fuck it.

  He went upstairs to get dressed.

  It had grudgingly lightened when he set off for Tunford, as though the day felt as unenthusiastic about starting as he did. He turned on the car heater full to drive away the chill as he set off. With luck he'd miss the heaviest of the rush-hour traffic and shave something off the one-and-a-half-hour run.

  He would have three-quarters of an hour there at best, and might just catch the Kales at breakfast. He knew there was no real point to the journey, but the town had become his magnetic north. He swung to it automatically when there was no other draw on his attention.

  The sleepless night had made him gritty-eyed and irritable. He yawned as he moved into the motorway's inside lane for the Tunford exit There were flashing red lights up ahead. The slip road was walled off by a line of orange cones, clustered with workmen and earth-shifting machinery.

  'Fucking great.'

  He could still get to Tunford from the next junction but it would take longer, cutting into the time he could spen
d there. His mood deteriorated with each mile, and dropped still lower after he took the next turnoff and found there were no road signs. He consulted the map. He would have to come in from the opposite direction to usual, joining the road that linked Tunford and the next town at the halfway point. Tossing the map on to the seat in disgust, he set off again, sure now that Kale and Jacob would have left by the time he arrived.

  Although Sandra would still be there, perhaps still in bed.

  Ben had never seen her getting up.

  It took him ten minutes to reach the connecting road. He pulled up at a give-way sign, waiting for a gap in the traffic.

  One of the cars approaching was a rusting Ford Escort. That's like Kale's, he thought, a moment before he recognised Kale himself behind the wheel. Jacob was next to him.

  The car shot by in a blat of exhaust. He briefly considered the possibility that Kale might be taking his son to school, but somehow he knew he wasn't. There was a fleeting regret that he wouldn't see Sandra getting up after all, then he flicked the indicator the other way and went after them.

  He hung back, keeping other cars in between himself and the Escort as he followed. He was already certain where they were going even before the scrapyard's barbed-wire-topped wall came into sight. He drove past after Kale's car had disappeared inside, then made a tight U-turn and parked a little further down the road.

  From there he could see anything that came in or out of the tall gates. He felt a tight anger at himself for not realising sooner what Kale was doing. All this time he'd never given a thought to the fact that when Kale was at work, Jacob wasn't around either. He remembered the smudges and oil stains he'd noticed on Jacob's clothes and wondered how he could have been so stupid. He should have known that Kale didn't want anything coming between him and his son. Including school.