‘We’ve had dealings with them over the years, on and off. And I called round last week to talk to Ruby.’
‘And how would you describe them?’
‘Er…’
‘As a family?’
‘Well, I.. .’
‘In a word?’
‘Busy?’
On not being supplied with the adjective he was looking for, the Captain went on to explain how a glance through the records confirmed that the Moffat ‘brood’ had presented the school with a succession of problems over the preceding decade. The boys, he said, of which there were a large but unspecified number, had completed their education last year, or rather they had ceased attending the school, and the school was happy to believe it had seen the last of them. Then came Ruby, ‘their little afterthought’, and although her first few months at secondary school had been largely uneventful, it now appeared she was determined to match the poor standards set by her brothers. In fact after recent incidents, it now looked as if she might exceed them, if he could put it that way, or descend below them, rather. After completing his appraisal of the situation, he sat back in his chair and waited for Felix’s response.
‘Could you describe these incidents?’
‘They’re logged on the computer. If you want the full modus operandi I could get Mrs Cousins to print you a copy.’
‘Just a summary, for now.’
‘Spitting, both between lessons and in class. Swearing - shouting expletives at the top of her voice. General lack of cooperation. Rudeness towards teachers and aggressive behaviour towards other pupils. Hasn’t done a stroke of work for over a month now. And then there’s all this silliness with the spiders.’
‘Go on.’
‘One minute she’s drawing them all over her workbooks, despite being told not to. The next minute she’s invented some kind of phobia. Won’t go into the science lab because she saw one in the sink. Won’t open her desk in case there’s one inside. And then, the pièce de résistance - ran screaming from Mr Carrick’s history lesson when he embarked on the story of Robert the Bruce.’
‘Is she in school today?’
Mr Roderick eyed a large and complicated timetable on the whiteboard across the room. ‘Double geography with Miss Maloney.’
‘So, broadly speaking, you’d say that her recent behaviour is out of character. Yes?’
‘She’s a Moffat,’ asserted Mr Roderick.
Felix said, ‘I mean as an individual. As a person.’
Mr Roderick put his copy of the letter back in the drawer. ‘Yes, you could put it that way, if you wanted. I might put it another way, but then we each have our different jobs to do, and we each have our different vocabulary. Now, Mr…’
‘Fenton.’
‘If you wouldn’t mind, I’m sure you’re very busy and I know I am.’
As Mr Roderick drummed his fingers on the leather writing pad, Felix noticed that his fingernails were not only immaculately manicured but shiny as well, and on looking closer at them he could see they were painted with transparent, glossy nail varnish. The two men exchanged a few more remarks about keeping an eye on the girl and staying in contact. Then, below the picture of Captain Roderick’s investiture, Felix reached out and shook his hand.
∗
Back at the office there was something of a drama taking place. Everyone was in the staffroom, looking out over the Strawberry Field. When Felix peered through the window, he could see mat a large crowd had gathered in the far corner as if some kind of circus act were being staged. Or even a fight, like one of those illicit bare-knuckle boxing matches that once took place on the common. The crowd had formed a circle that couldn’t quite keep its shape. At one moment people seemed hellbent on getting as far away from the action as possible, the next they were drawn back to it, shouting and waving at something in the middle. As the ring of spectators slewed towards the office, something huge and cream-coloured showed itself for a split second before disappearing again. The mob dosed in, then panic broke out among a section closest to the building, and, as the bodies parted, Felix saw that the cream-coloured something in the middle was an animal. A cow, apparently. In fact a massive, thick-necked, prong-horned bull.
‘Poor, dumb animal,’ said Mo.
‘Seen someone you know?’ asked Neville.
For another five or ten minutes the crowd shrieked and ran whenever the bull made even the slightest movement in their direction. Then a loud cheer went up as a thin, gangly lad in a blue bomber jacket was pushed to the front. He staggered towards the bull, twisting and swaying in front of it, flapping his arms in a kind of mad dance. Then he went crashing to the ground as he attempted some kind of bicycle kick or cartwheel in mid-air.
‘Oh, no,’ said Marjorie. ‘He’s one of mine.’
‘Who, the matador?’ said Neville.
‘It’s Matthew Coyne, and it looks like he’s glued up to the eyeballs.’
As she spoke, Coyne was climbing to his feet and wagging his finger at the bull, like a pantomime dame telling off a naughty puppy. The crowd loved it and whooped even louder as he stood no further than a couple of yards away from the bull’s head and stripped off his jacket. Turned inside-out, the silky, crimson lining flared in the afternoon sun as he wafted it forwards, then held it to his side like a bullfighter’s cape. The bull appeared unimpressed at first, puzzled as to why a daft-looking lad should be offering his bomber jacket, ignorant even of the appropriate response. But its state of idleness didn’t last long. Suddenly, as if its memory had been triggered, the bull dipped its head, angled its horns in the direction of the jacket and snorted at the dust on the ground. A cheer went up as Coyne draped the jacket over the bull’s face, then passed along its flank, drawing it slowly down its neck, then along the thick saddle of its back, then over its rump. Marjorie had just picked up the phone when a police car drove on to the field and parked about thirty yards away. She replaced the receiver. Coyne made a low, sweeping bow in front of his audience, much to their approval. And was just bending down for an encore when the bull jerked backwards - like the first reverse jumps of a shot-putter – then punched out with its hind legs, which in an instant were higher than its head.
From their position on the ground, the sight of a thin, contorted body suddenly rocketing skywards out of a crowd of onlookers must have been a puzzling sight to the two policemen in shirtsleeves putting on their helmets and ambling slowly towards the disturbance. From his aerial viewpoint, Felix couldn’t tell what altitude young Coyne had achieved, but was reminded, momentarily, of the speed of sound relative to the speed of light. First came the sight of a body landing hard and flat on its spine, and fractionally later came the dull thud of a human being dropped from a decent height on to dried mud.
‘That looks like one less on your caseload,’ said Neville to Marjorie, who screamed.
What happened after that was complicated and hazy. The crowd ran. The police thought they were being chased so they ran too, but most of the crowd caught and overtook them. Then the police came back and so did the crowd. In the meantime, the bull had lumbered nonchalantly towards the edge of the roundabout, into the subway and out of sight. More police arrived, followed by an ambulance, followed by a bigger crowd. A human circle formed again with Matthew Coyne at the centre, only this time he wasn’t moving. After the paramedics had loaded the stretcher into their vehicle and closed the back doors, the people dosed in to fill the empty space. Then somebody looked up and pointed. Then somebody shouted something and then somebody shouted something else. Then everybody looked up. They looked to the top floor of Prospect House, at Felix, and at Neville, and Marjorie, Mo, Roy, Thelma and Bernard, who were looking down. They looked at the faces of social workers, and the faces of the town planners two floors below, and the faces of the housing officers on the floor below that. And what the people saw the people didn’t like. The first stone lost energy and fell away. In fact at the top of the building the Department of Social Services was safely out of range. But from below came th
e sound of breaking glass. This continued as Bernard urged everyone to step away from the windows, shelter under a table maybe. Ignoring his advice, Neville and Felix and Mo watched until more police arrived, followed by a fire engine. From the top of a turntable ladder a couple of streets away a lone fireman showered the stone throwers with light but continuous rain for several minutes until the final twenty or thirty dropped their missiles and slithered off through the mud.
A bull and a riot, but it wasn’t the end of the day. When Felix returned to his office the small red light on his telephone was flashing. There were three messages. The first was from Captain Roderick, saying there had been a further incident at the school involving Ruby Moffat. She had asked to leave early to go to the dentist’s but had ‘failed to produce the necessary proof of said appointment’. She had been sent to the head teacher’s office, where there had been ‘something of a scuffle’, at which point Ruby had climbed out of his ground-floor window and was now missing. ‘AWOL’. The second message was from a distressed-sounding Mrs Moffat. The school had phoned her. She’d told Captain Roderick that Ruby was expected at the dentist’s, but this was a lie, to keep her out of trouble. Then Ruby hadn’t come home, and now it was half past four and she’d left the school over two hours ago. The Moffat crew were out looking for her. The third voice was that of Police Constable Martin Nottingham, saying that Ruby had been found, or rather she’d arrived home at just after five o’clock. But there was something he needed to talk to Felix about, so could he phone back or call round at the nick on his way home.
At the police station, PC Nottingham took Felix into one of the interview rooms and dosed the door. He was younger than Felix, in his late twenties at most, and when he spoke a small nugget of ivory-coloured chewing gum glinted in his mouth. ‘Just need to have a quick word with you about the girl.’
‘She’s OK, is she?’
‘Sort of. We were at the house when she got back. Any idea where she might have been?’
‘Not really. Captain Roderick - at the school - said there had been some kind of altercation.’
‘Yeah, we’re looking into that. Thing is, when she gets home she’s in a bit of a sulk and goes straight upstairs to her bedroom. Locks the door. Doesn’t say where she’s been. All the Moffat lads are there, giving it this.’ He made his hand into the shape of a mouth, jabbering and pecking right in front of Felix’s face.
‘Anyways, she’s thrown her coat on the kitchen floor, and when the mother picks it up, there’s a pair of knickers stuffed in the pocket.’
‘Ruby’s knickers?’
‘Exactly. Definitely hers. Dark blue with yellow sea-horses stitched on the side. And that’s not all that’s on ’em.’
He leaned closer and lowered his voice, pushing his chewing gum to one side of his mouth with his tongue.
‘There’s some very dodgy-looking silvery stains, front and back. So now they’re in a plastic bag down in Manchester, waiting for the white-coats to run the tests.’
Felix said, ‘That sounds worrying. Did she say anything about spiders?’
The policeman shook his head as he stood up. ‘No. She didn’t say nothing about nothing.’
‘When will you have the results?’
‘End of next week. But there’s going to be an investigation anyway, so you should get the ball rolling at your end. Eleven-year-old girl comes home with her clouts in her pocket - that’s dodgy, jizz or no jizz, yeah?’
Then he opened the door and walked Felix back towards the reception area, raising the hatch in the front desk for Felix to pass through.
‘So I’ll call next week, then,’ said Felix. ‘Should I ask for you?’
‘No, I’ll have passed it on to one of the brides.’
‘One of the what?’
‘One of the women. A WPG,’ he said, spelling out the letters. ‘Although we’re all PCs now. Technically speaking.’
‘Oh, OK. Thanks.’
It was nearly seven o’clock when Felix got home. He put his briefcase down in the hall, hauled off his jacket and tie and hung them on the newel post. He could hear music playing. Soft, atmospheric music, and as he made his way upstairs he was met by the smell of scented candles.
GEMINI (21 May-21 June)
8
The lift wasn’t working. Felix waited at the top of the fire escape, watching the crown of her head and her hand on the banister rail as she made her way towards him up the tiled staircase. With his foot, he nudged a flattened cigarette butt over the ledge and watched it fall, then a sweet wrapper which parachuted slowly down to the ground floor. Abbie was slightly breathless by the time she reached the fifth floor, and as she leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek he felt the heat in her face.
‘God, I couldn’t do that every day. I’m knackered,’ she said, pulling off her coat and throwing it over her shoulder.
‘Keeps me fit,’ said Felix, punching the code into the keypad and showing her through the heavy wooden doors. They walked slowly along the corridor, past the staffroom on the right-hand side, where Bernard was changing a fuse in the kettle, and into Felix’s office. He dosed the door behind them.
‘Nice view,’ said Abbie, staring out of the window.
‘Haven’t you been in here before?’
‘No. It’s a regular little lookout post, isn’t it?’
‘Well, I can keep an eye on you in the precinct, if that’s what you mean.’
‘So I see.’
She carried on looking out of the window while Felix made himself comfortable in his chair and began searching for a folder in the drawer in the desk. Then, still with her back to him, she said, ‘Felix, what do men want?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘If I asked you what you wanted, as a man, what would you say to me?’
‘I don’t know,’ he answered, after thinking about it for a minute or so. ‘Depends on the context.’
Abbie turned around, and even though she’d had time to cool down he could see that her cheeks were still red, as if she were blushing.
‘The context is that I come up to you on the street with my clipboard to ask you a few questions. And I’m a woman and you’re a man, and I’ve never seen you before in my life, and I ask you, “What do men want?” What do you say?’
It sounded like a trick question. Maybe she was asking him what he wanted for his birthday. Or maybe he’d forgotten something, like Valentine’s Day or their anniversary. Women were strict about things like that. If Jed didn’t buy Maxine a Mother’s Day present from the twins, he slept in the garden, frost or no frost, and Felix didn’t imagine Abbie would be any more forgiving, should the opportunity arise. He pictured himself and Jed waking up under the trampoline, or sleeping top to toe in the hammock, Jed’s giant feet in his face all night. There had been other times when Abbie had asked questions like this one, open-ended questions with an infinite number of answers, and one occasion in particular when she had asked Felix what he was thinking. ‘Felix, what are you thinking?’ They were sitting in the car at night, parked in a lay-by at the edge of the Peak District, watching chimney smoke from a farmhouse rising vertically into the cold, still air, silver in the moonlight. There was no baby that month. Like the month before that, and the month before. A full moon meant no baby. Trusting to his instincts, he had replied, ‘That all good things come to those who wait.’
‘Wrong,’ she said.
He could still hear her saying it, final and definitive. Today he wanted to avoid his instincts. He wanted to get it right.
‘How about…’ he began, emphasizing that he was treating this as an exercise and that his answer should be taken as an example of what a man might say, in such circumstances, rather than a reflection of his own character. ‘How about security?’ he said. Then, on realizing this answer sounded too much like the response of a social worker, he appended, ‘Or happiness?’
‘Exactly,’ Abbie agreed. ‘Something abstract. Something vague but positive. Something apt. But oh, no
, that isn’t the case. Not in this town anyway. In this town that isn’t what men want, not by a long chalk.’
‘What do they want?’ Felix asked.
‘Blow jobs.’
‘What?’
‘Blow jobs.’
Felix didn’t understand and shook his head, waiting for the explanation.
Abbie said, ‘It’s for a magazine, an article called What Men Want. So, I’m down in the precinct and a man comes out of the post office, and he fits the bill - between twenty and forty, professional-looking, in a suit - and I ask him if he can spare a moment of his time and he says he can, so I ask him what men want. And that’s what he says.’
‘Blow jobs?’
‘Yes. Just like that.’
Felix hopped over to the window and looked out. ‘Is he still there? Can you point him out?’
‘No! This was twenty minutes ago. I had to go and sit in the park to cool down. Look at this - I’m still red.’ She touched her hand to her face, then showed Felix her fingers, as if they might be stained with the colour of embarrassment.
‘You wouldn’t say that to a woman, would you, Felix?’
‘No.’
‘No, that’s what I thought. Where’s the loo?’
‘Just on there to the left. Look, if anyone asks you why you’re here…’
‘Don’t worry, I told your receptionist I’ve brought your sandwiches in.’
‘What did she say?’
‘Didn’t hear her. Something about true love.’
When she came back she was shaking her hands in the air, saying there was no paper in the ladies’ toilet and the hand-dryer wasn’t working. He said he’d tell Bernard and made a note of it on a yellow Post-it. Then he asked her if she was nervous, and she said she was but wanted to get on with it, and sat down.
‘Well, this is it,’ he said, weighing a buff folder in his hands. The seams were worn through and the top flap had torn. Someone had tied a pink ribbon around its length and width to hold it together.
‘It doesn’t seem like much,’ she said. ‘For a whole life.’
The White Stuff Page 7