by Mark Morris
The answering machine replied. Jack left a message and tried Gail’s number, but she was not home. He stood in the hall for a minute, wondering what to do. He could throw his things together, call a taxi and take the train back to London for the weekend, come back Tuesday or Wednesday for his car. Or he could stay here until his car was fixed, and put up with whatever else the Bates’s devised to antagonise him in the meantime.
He chewed his lip as he considered the options. He didn’t feel like travelling on public transport tonight. And he couldn’t believe the Bates’s would try anything else after this afternoon’s little stunt—at least not for a day or two.
No, he’d stay in Beckford tonight and then head back to London tomorrow morning. Matter resolved, he went into the kitchen and made himself some dinner. He was eating an orange and watching an Australian soap when the telephone rang. He scampered into the hall and picked up the phone with sticky fingers.
“Hello? Jack? Is that you?”
“Of course it’s me. Hi, Gail. How are you?”
“Jack, what’s happened? Why aren’t you coming home?”
“I explained on the answering machine, didn’t I?”
“You just said something was wrong with the car and you wouldn’t be able to come back yet.”
“Yeah, that’s right. The engine’s . . . er . . . broken.”
“What do you mean, broken?”
“It’s, er, packed in.” He didn’t want to tell her that it had been vandalised. She would only worry.
“Well . . . what exactly’s wrong with it?”
“I don’t know. I came back from the funeral and it wouldn’t start. It’s just . . . knackered. The garage have got it now.”
“Maybe it’s the starter motor.”
“Yeah, maybe. I don’t know anything about cars. You’re the mechanical one.”
“Did they say how long it would be?”
“Monday at the earliest. Could be as late as Wednesday.”
“You’re joking.”
“ ’Fraid not.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I thought I’d come home on the train tomorrow, then pop back and fetch the car next week.”
“Pop back and fetch it? But it’s a mammoth train journey.”
“Yeah, but there’s not much alternative, is there?”
“Couldn’t you get the RAC to bring the car back to London?”
“Not really. I haven’t got round to renewing my membership yet,” Jack admitted sheepishly.
“Oh, Jack, you prize klutz!” Gail exclaimed. “How many times have I reminded you about that?”
“I’d say . . . fifty million.”
“At least.” She sighed, was silent for a moment. Then she said, “I’ve got a suggestion.”
“What’s that?”
“Why don’t I come and spend the weekend with you?”
Jack felt a twinge of alarm, thinking of the potential threat from the Bates’s and their cronies, and his reluctance for her to be involved. “I dunno,” he said. “It’s not very exciting here.”
“What, with all those ghosts and bikers?” she tried to joke. Then she went on quickly, as though afraid she was giving him reasons for putting her off, “I’m not bothered about that. I just want to see you.”
“We-ell,” he prevaricated.
“Oh, come on, Jack, you know it makes sense. I’m not working next week, so I could stay until the car’s fixed and then we could drive back together.”
Jack thought of Patty Bates again, and almost immediately felt a surge of indignation. Gail’s suggestion was a sensible one. Why should the possibility of what Bates might do even be an issue? “Okay,” he conceded, “you ring me later and let me know what train you’ll be getting and I’ll meet you at the station. But you’ve got to let me pay for your fare.”
“We’ll sort that out later. I’m teaching in the morning, but I should be finished around twelve. I’ll get a train as soon after that as I can.”
“Okay. God, I can’t wait to see you.”
“Me too.”
Now that she’d put forward the idea of visiting Beckford, Jack found he was quickly warming to it. He was surprised to discover that he was actually looking forward to showing her the house and the woods, that he felt a kind of pride in them. “I can read you some of my dad’s stories,” he said.
“Yeah,” replied Gail noncommitally, and then, “By the way, how did the funeral go?”
“Oh . . . it was okay. You know what these things are like. Morbid. Depressing. Not many people came.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter. Tell me how your day’s been. And what’s been happening in the world? I haven’t seen a paper since I got here and I’ve only caught snatches of the news.”
They chatted for a while. Gail told Jack that she might take herself along to the NFT later if she didn’t feel too tired. They were showing Resnais’ Last Year in Marienbad, a film she adored and had already seen three times.
“So what are you doing tonight?” she asked him.
“Oh, I don’t know. Read some more of my dad’s stories. Watch TV. Do some work. Play some music.”
“Sounds nice.”
“It’d be nicer if you were here.”
“Goes without saying.”
Jack made a sound of acknowledgement in his throat, then sighed. “Oh well,” he said, “better go.”
“Don’t want to keep Sandra waiting,” said Gail.
“Who’s Sandra?”
“Your fancy woman.”
Jack grinned. “No, no, it was Sandra last night. It’s Betty tonight.”
“Is she as nice as me?”
“Nowhere near.”
“Good job. ’Cos if she was I’d come round there right now and duff her in.”
Jack laughed. “You’re such a violent person.” He puffed out air in another loud sigh. “You know, I’d really psyched myself up for Maxi’s tonight.”
“Maxi’s, eh? Never mind, sweetie, it’ll be something to look forward to.”
“Yeah, suppose so. You’ll ring me later then?”
“Yeah, when I’ve found out the train times.”
Jack waited until Gail had put the phone down, then put it down himself. The hallway was gloomy and cold. He went back into the sitting room, massaging his ear where he’d pressed the receiver too hard against it. He ought to build a fire, but he was still wearing his suit from the funeral. It was already crumpled, but that was no reason to get coal dust all over it as well. He switched on the lamps, put on an Elvis Costello CD, then went upstairs and changed into his jeans and sweater. If he was going to be here all weekend he’d have to wash some of his clothes, but he couldn’t be bothered to do it now; it could wait until the morning. He went back downstairs to make a fire and paused in the hallway by the telephone, realising his aunt didn’t know he was still here. He ought to tell her before she heard it on the village grapevine and thought he was avoiding her. He picked up the phone and rang her. She expressed concern and sympathy when he told her about the car, but secretly Jack thought she was pleased he would be staying longer, especially when he told her that Gail would be arriving tomorrow.
As he put the phone down he wondered how the meeting between Gail and his aunt would go. It was only now, as he tried to picture the confrontation, that he realised they were similar in many ways. “Wow, Jack, Oedipus complex,” he muttered to himself. Though Georgina was not his mother, she had been a surrogate mother to him, the woman he had looked to in his childhood. And now he had fallen for a woman who, like her, was independent, broached no nonsense and yet was infinitely caring. Jack wondered, not for the first time, what his own mother had been like. He thought of her paintings, pictured her working on them quietly and contentedly, and he felt a lump rise to his throat.
He made a fire, poured himself a whiskey and lit a cigarette. He was torn between reading his father’s stories and doing some work. He knew he ought to wor
k, but he was drawn to the blue notebooks by an instinctive and voracious desire. He drew on his cigarette as he struggled with his conscience, then he reached down and picked up one of the notebooks. He had a long evening ahead of him. There was no reason why he couldn’t read first and then work later.
Because that afternoon’s events had unsettled him, he thought he might have to concentrate a little harder than usual, but this was not the case; he slipped into the first of his father’s stories quickly and effortlessly. He hadn’t known this since childhood, this utter absorption in written fiction. It was akin to falling under the influence of a hypnotist. His surroundings dissolved, and even the physical act of reading—holding the book, his eyes travelling across and down the lines of his father’s scrawl—became subliminal. Time became meaningless, his body’s cravings subsided as in sleep. Jack became a willing slave to The Story; he would serve it for as long as it required him. Just as Jack had an inexorable hunger to read, The Story had an inexorable hunger to be read. It was almost akin to a physical need that worked both ways, a mutual parasitism. Jack felt all this subconsciously, and yet he also felt that the act was a positive one. Like sex, it was purging, loving, shattering, fulfilling.
Three hours after he had begun, Jack looked up and blinked as if someone had clicked their fingers in front of his face. He scanned back and saw that he had read fourteen more of the stories. The last, entitled Sitting on the Stairs, was dated 8/8/94. A piece of coal shifted in the grate, drawing Jack’s attention. He hauled himself up from the settee and tormented the fire back to life with the poker, then added more coal. His mind felt clear, sharp as a razor. Reading the stories had pepped him up, roused his imagination, made him eager to work. He would make some coffee and then write until he became tired. The idea excited him. He would only go to bed when he felt like it; he would not be constrained by the conventions of time, or even by darkness and light. He went out of the sitting room, rolling his head from side to side, aware of the crackle of his bones, and finding it a pleasurable experience. Jack had once toyed with the idea of taking up karate, but in the end had decided he did not have the necessary commitment, the required predilection for self-discipline. What had attracted him to the idea had not been the self-defence aspect, but the prospect of being vitally aware and in control of his own mental and physical being. He felt that way now; it was as if the separate components that made up Jack Stone had slipped into perfect alignment, creating an incredible harmony, a perfect pattern within which it might just be possible to glimpse some unbelievable truth.
He was filling the kettle at the sink when there came a loud, steady knocking—five beats—on the front door. Jack was so startled that, as he turned, he pulled the kettle round with him and water from the tap battered off the curving metal side and drenched him. “Bloody hell!” he shouted. He put the kettle down, turned off the tap and mopped himself with a tea towel. The knocking came again. “Just a minute,” he muttered. He balled up the tea towel and dumped it on the kitchen table, then crept through the hall to the front door and pressed his ear to the wood.
He could hear nothing, but what did he expect? “Who is it?” he called and was pleased at the strength in his voice.
The sound of a female voice surprised him. “Mr. Stone? Jack? It’s me, Tracey.”
Tracey? Tracey Bates? Jack was astounded. How could she possibly have the gall to come here? “What do you want?” he demanded.
“I wondered if I could talk to you for a minute.”
“What about?”
“It’s about what’s been going on. I just wanted to explain.”
“What the bloody hell is there to explain?”
“If you’ll open the door, I’ll tell you.”
Jack’s fingers rested on the door handle, but did not turn it. The prospect of an explanation intrigued him, for how could she possibly justify her actions? Yet on the other hand this might be a ploy for her and her cronies to gain entry. He imagined Tracey Bates standing at the head of half a dozen bikers who were holding their breaths to keep quiet, trying not to giggle. The one who looked like Lemmy would be there, hefting the sledgehammer he had used to disable Jack’s car. The others would be clasping pieces of wood or oily chains. Jack imagined the chains swaying and catching the moonlight.
“Do you really think I’m that stupid?” Jack said.
“What?”
“Opening the door to you and your friends? If you don’t fuck off now I’m calling the police.”
“For God’s sake, I’m on my own. I walked here.”
“Sure you did.”
“I did! Honestly! Look, if we wanted to get to you, we would. We could drive a motorbike through the front door or smash all the windows without anyone hearing a thing.”
What she had said was true, but Jack still thought that opening the door was a bad idea. “Look,” he said, “I think you’re in enough trouble as it is. The police already know what you did to my car, and if you don’t leave I’ll tell them about the other night as well, when you tried to kill me.”
“We didn’t try to kill you, it was only—”
“A bit of fun? Sure. What do you do for an encore? Set fire to people’s houses when they’re asleep?”
Tracey’s reply was sulky. “How were we to know you’d overreact?”
“Overreact? Jeez, I don’t believe this. How do you think you’d react, given the circumstances?”
He heard her sigh, as if he were being tiresome. “Look,” she said, “are you going to let me in or not?”
“Not,” said Jack.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, it’s bloody cold out here.”
“My heart bleeds for you.”
She sighed again, deeper this time. Jack was enjoying her exasperation.
“Please, Jack,” she wheedled. “Can’t we let bygones be bygones? I only wanted to say I was sorry.”
“So now you’ve said it. Good-bye.”
He leapt back as something slammed against the door, making it vibrate. Here it comes, he thought, Lemmy’s sledgehammer. But the sound was not repeated. Instead he heard a sliding sound and then, from knee-level, sobbing.
He waited, trying to decide whether this was all part of the ploy. If he opened the door would she lunge for him, grabbing him round the knees and knocking him off balance? Would her friends swarm over him and into the house, stinking of booze and leather and dirt? How could Jack find out if she really was alone? And then all at once he realised. He turned and raced up the stairs as nimbly and silently as he could.
He sped along the landing, bypassing his bedroom and the bathroom. He paused only for a second outside the door to his father’s room, expelling a quick breath like a runner, before opening the door and stepping inside. Moonlight glowed on the other side of the drawn curtains, a dull lemony sheen. The texture of the darkness inside the room was grainy, rough, like black tweed.
Jack felt as though the darkness were wisping across his face and the backs of his hands as he stepped to the window. He took an edge of curtain between the index finger and thumb of his right hand and twitched it back. There was enough moonlight to see that the front garden, Daisy Lane and the surrounding fields were empty. Unless all the bikers, like Tracey, were crammed against the front door or hiding around the sides of the house, she was telling the truth.
Gritting his teeth against the sound of its squealing hinges, Jack pushed open the narrow window at the left-hand side, which would be directly above Tracey Bates’ head. He leaned over the sill and peered out. She had been telling the truth about the cold, too; the wind which pressed against his cheeks and forehead was so icy it would make his skull ache before long. Tracey was sitting on the stoop, head resting against the door. Her blonde hair fanned out like a golden cone, obscuring most of her face. She looked to be sleeping or exhausted. Jack ducked back in, pulling the window closed, and ran across the room, along the landing and down the stairs, taking them two at a time. He unlocked the front door as quietly as he coul
d, then took the handle in his hand, twisted it and tugged it open. Tracey cried out, her hands slapping the floor as she sprawled across the threshold. “Come in then,” said Jack. When she gaped up at him, tearful and confused, he added gruffly, “Hurry up or I’m shutting this door again.”
She got the message and pulled herself, crab-like, into the hallway. The charge from behind her, which Jack had been half-anticipating, did not come; nevertheless, he slammed the door shut and turned the key in the lock so fiercely that he hurt his hand.
“Right then,” he said, “what is it you wanted to say?”
She looked at him with wide eyes and then got slowly to her feet. “I’m cold,” she said, drawing the word out, making it shudder. She crossed her arms tightly across her chest and rubbed her shoulders. “Can I sit by the fire?”
Jack did not reply at once. He was very wary; he felt there was an ulterior motive in everything she said and did. At last he replied grudgingly, “Okay. Go on.”
He followed her into the sitting room, keeping a little distance between them in case she should suddenly snatch something from her jacket, or even an ornament from the table, and threaten him with it. She released a moan of pleasure at the warmth of the room, crossed immediately to the fire and crouched before it, holding out her hands.
“That’s better,” she said. “I’m freezing.”
“It’s not that cold,” replied Jack.
“It is when you’ve walked two miles. The wind that blows down that lane is evil.”
“You should wear warmer clothes,” he said reprovingly.
She smiled at that and turned back to the fire. Jack understood that smile perfectly. It would have translated as: Warmer clothes? You must be joking. I’d rather freeze to death than be seen in a scarf and woolly mitts.