by Joan Brady
Andy went back to his rocking.
‘Andrew, I can help you only so far. I can give you the drugs you need, but if you aren’t seen to be at work with me in the infirmary, they’ll send you back to the canal. And quite frankly, you haven’t the strength for it.’
‘You were there.’
‘You mean when the men got sick?’
Andy nodded.
Quack frowned, looked away, shrugged. ‘It’s the only day I’ve done that kind of work for years. But, look, the point I’m making is that they’re very unlikely to send you out again if you’re working with me. You’re very likely to get time off your sentence for good behaviour. There’s a lot to do in an infirmary. Nursing is crucial where we have such limited access to medicines and equipment. Not many people are good at nursing.’
‘I won’t be either.’
‘David says you can do it.’
‘What does he know?’
‘Andrew, I could say that you must do it because you now belong to me. But that wouldn’t be the truth. From here on out, nobody owns you. You’re your own man. The reason you must do it is because your life depends on it. We’ll begin with hygiene.’
12
SPRINGFIELD: The next day
Jimmy was a speed reader. He could scan a whole newspaper – get it pretty clearly in mind too – almost as quickly as he could turn the pages.
‘Fuck!’ he said, abruptly leaning forward over the Journal-Register. The article that stopped him was called:
A citizen’s stake in Springfield
It opened with a quick run-down: Becky was the chairperson of a newly formed citizen’s action group called the Coalition of Concerned Citizens of Springfield (CCCOS) – they’d borrowed both name and acronym from Stockton’s successful protest – with the aim of giving townspeople the right to vote on future decisions concerning Springfield Light and Power. It went on:
Mrs Freyl calls water “our most vital resource.” She says, “We can live for years without roofs over our heads. We can manage weeks without food. But without water we die in 4 days. Can we afford to let control of this God-given gift slip out of our hands?”
Mrs Freyl explained that major players in private water supply are French, German, even Russian. “These foreign conglomerates have gobbled up many of our smaller water companies. Do we in Springfield want decisions about the purity of our water taken in Moscow?”
Jimmy tossed the paper on the breakfast table. ‘Shit. Shit. Shit. I thought I was supposed to be the one scaring people about aliens in our midst.’
Ruth Madison took the paper from him and read the first half of the article. ‘Poor old Chuck is pouring out his heart for Becky.’
‘Chuck Finch?’
‘Um.’
‘He was there?’
‘What do you think?’
Ruth had been around that table at Becky’s meeting; now she sat opposite Jimmy in his house out at Lake Springfield, wearing one of his favourite shirts, looking good in it too. A couple of decades ago she’d spent a summer in New York as a hopeful with Ford Models, Inc, and she was still slender and willowy, still good at draping a languid body in a provocative pose. She hadn’t wanted to come home to marry the President of the First National Bank of Springfield. She certainly hadn’t expected to be one of the droves of hopefuls that New York chews up and spits out every year. But then, who does?
‘Doesn’t even have the guts to put his name on this piece of crap.’ Jimmy grabbed the paper back from her. ‘Gimme some coffee.’
‘Get it yourself,’ she said. ‘I don’t think anybody would accuse Chuck of courage.’
‘Why the fuck didn’t you warn me about this?’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Why wouldn’t you?’
‘And rob myself of the pleasure of seeing your face just now?’
She gave him an appraising glance. Her rich husband was a bully and a bore, as were most of the men she’d taken on to supplement his limited charms. Jimmy was an exception in his way. He had a roguish charm combined with a clear-eyed view of a lot of things if not about himself. Naked ambition added real spice. The trouble was, he was naked too, and it wasn’t a becoming state for him. He needed that girdle he wore under his clothes. What did they call those things? Compression garments? Why was it that guys like him seemed to think that a single fuck was an invitation to parade their wares?
‘What are you looking at me like that for?’
She couldn’t hold back her laughter any longer. ‘Think of it, Jimmy. Russians! First Becky has you threatening us with terrorists at the water supply. Then she slaps your wrist with Russians.’
‘It’s not funny.’
‘Sure it is. Hey, come on. You didn’t finish the story.’ Ruth settled her chin in her hands. ‘How’s the rest of it go?’
He read out loud, ‘“Please join us,” Mrs Freyl said. “We need volunteers and money. We desperately need your help to collect signatures for the ballot in two months’ time. If you can spare a few minutes of . ”’ He scrunched the paper in his hands, got up, circled the table, stared out of the window at the water beyond. ‘How can she do this to me?’
Another of Jimmy’s troubles, Ruth thought, was that he didn’t understand how many people resented his rise to power. ‘How big a kickback are you figuring on?’ she asked.
He swung around to face her. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Ruth’s humour used to be no more than coquettish. Recently it had taken on a harsher edge, but it was still more sex than threat. She had large brown eyes that sloped down at the corners. God knows how many hours she spent at the gym keeping the insides of her thighs firm, but even now, even though her legs were largely hidden by the table, Jimmy had difficulty keeping his eyes away.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said, ‘hardly anybody in the Midwest has bought into privatized utilities, and here you are on such happy terms with so many nice corporate fat cats who are all—’
‘Where the fuck did you get that idea?’
‘My, my, we are sensitive today, aren’t we? You talk in your sleep, my sweet. I heard the word for that just the other day. Para-something. Somnia? Is that—?’
‘I talk in my sleep?’ He was aghast.
She nodded. ‘You do say the most fascinating things. I gather you’ve been discussing the real cost of the Grand canal with those fat cats. What was it you said? Three trillion? Rather more than the newspapers report, isn’t it?Your friends are going to need an awful lot of customers to keep an investment like that afloat on the markets. So I think to myself, Springfield’s not going to bring in all that much, but we’re a leader. Where we go, people follow. The mayor auctions off the contract for our water, and the lucky winner is going to have instant entrée to hundreds of cities in . I don’t know, ten states? Twelve? Twenty?’ She stretched out, took his hand, held on to it, smiled as she pulled him to the table beside her. ‘Don’t be so down at the mouth, cutie-pie. I’m not going to bite. Unless you want me to, of course. You’re such a smart boy, aren’t you? Such a brilliant idea to sell a public utility. Do tell me you’re bargaining for more than a mere couple of million to line Jimmy’s own pockets.’
Jimmy frowned. ‘Not enough?’
‘How could it be? You’re dangling the deal of the century in front of these guys. You must have corporations all over the world grovelling at your feet.’ She tilted her head at him. ‘One of these days, you must tell me how to grovel in Chinese. Sweetie, they’re going to give you anything you ask. Now, pretty please, read me the rest of what Chuck has to say.’ Ruth was very flexible. Still holding his hand, she crossed her legs tailor-fashion in the chair, knees wide, feet tucked beneath them, those firm thighs fully exposed. Jimmy dropped her hand and reached for them before he was even aware the thought was in his mind. ‘No, no,’ she said, pushing him away. ‘Paper first. I want to know what it says. Jimmy! Goddamnit, get off!’
He sighed angrily and, still standing, uncrumpled t
he paper and spread it out with the palms of his hands. ‘What the fuck do you care?’
‘I get a kick out of pushing you around.’
‘I read you almost all of it.’
‘So read the rest.’
He sighed more angrily than before. ‘“Please contact our petition drive coordinator Kate Baga . ”’ He mouthed the name. ‘“Ba . ga . lay . os.”’ He scrunched the paper up again. ‘Who the fuck is that?’
On one of the less bedraggled streets of the poor east side of town, Kate’s telephone began ringing only minutes after the paper hit the stands. Her email box started piling up. By noon, she knew there was going to be more than she could handle.
Donna Stevenson was only too happy to help.
13
SPRINGFIELD: The first Monday in July
‘Teach? Me?’ Helen shouted, mobile phone clutched to one ear, free hand over the other. ‘Not high school kids. You’ve got to be kidding.’
Two pneumatic drills powered away not far from her in the forecourt of the building that in a few months would be a house for her and David. David was wielding a pickaxe, ripping out the tarmac as the drills burrowed it up. Two other workmen with sledgehammers were inside breaking down walls. Yet another pushed a wheelbarrow back and forth, ferrying slabs of tarmac to a dumpster.
At the other end of the line, Sister Evangeline was apologetic, deferential. She’d been head of Science and Mathematics at St Mary & Joseph Community College for thirty years, and if she hadn’t been an old friend of Becky’s, Helen would have cut her off well before now. ‘I can hear you’re busy, and I know it’s very short notice.’ Sister Evangeline paused, then pushed ahead. ‘These boys and girls have been chosen from dozens of applicants, Helen. Most of them have had a little calculus – just not enough to make them stand out.’
‘What happened to . Whatshername?’
‘Dr Gonzaga emailed me a month ago saying she’d try very, very hard to be back at the end of the month but wasn’t sure she’d make it.’ Sister Evangeline explained that her assistant had forgotten to mention the matter until this very day. She told Helen that there’d be only a session or two: Dr Gonzaga would surely be back by then. ‘It’s a summer term, and the students really are very bright.’ She paused again, then again pressed on. ‘We’ve assigned the class to one of the air-conditioned rooms. It’s wonderfully cool in there. You’ll be very comfortable.’
Living in Springfield, working with Becky, Helen had no use for her doctorate in physics. Her published thesis meant little to anybody, and the Freyl family interests weren’t holding her attention as she knew they ought to. She did keep trying. Every day she forced herself to read about commodities and futures, mortgages and property development. Her mind wouldn’t stay put. A stray movement of air around her or an unexplained sound behind her, and she swung around with one thought: ‘David!’
This being in love was far harder than she’d imagined. She’d had no idea what it can do to a person. She’d seen stunned sows at her grandfather’s farm near Lake Michigan; he’d told her that a boar’s cock is something magical, and servicing leaves the sow in that state for twenty-four hours. The honeymoon period at that lake had only turned her into one of them. She needed to get back to something she’d been trained for, anything that could take her mind off beds and this man.
‘Okay, Sister,’ she said. ‘When do I start?’
‘Eleven o’clock this morning.’
‘Eleven o’clock! That’s only an hour off. Is there a text?’
‘It’ll be on your desk when you arrive.’
The college was west of Leland Grove, a large brick building with tall windows and a wide flight of steps up to an arched entryway. There was a time when it had been the only indication that any kind of higher learning went on in Springfield. Becky herself had taught there for several years – English literature – and she’d continued to help raise funds for it ever since. Helen climbed the stairs to her second-floor classroom. The air conditioner was only a window unit, but it did cool the room, and the room itself looked out into trees that still had green leaves despite the heat that had burned so many in town. She glanced through Calculus: Theory and Practice while her students gathered, fresh faces, an ethnic hotchpotch, mainly boys – only a couple of girls – lots of noise, laughter. She was scared. She’d never taught kids before.
‘Quiet!’ she called out. They quietened at once. She hadn’t expected that. ‘I’m no good at names,’ she went on. ‘I’m not going to call roll either. If you come to class, fine. If you don’t, that’s your business.’ She held up the text that had been lying on her desk. ‘How many of you’ve had a look at this?’ Most of the hands went up.
She tossed the book into the wastebasket beside her and looked up in surprise at the shocked titters and intakes of breath. ‘Calculus isn’t like that,’ she said. ‘You use it instinctively every time you pitch a ball or shoot a rifle. All you’ve got to do is think “triangle”, and you’re in.’ She picked up a marker, turned to the whiteboard behind her and drew a right-angled triangle. ‘How many of you know how to pick this thing apart?’
People with doctorates are often snobbish about teaching kids, but Helen enjoyed the hour. When it was over, her students clustered around her, anxious for more, bubbling with excitement. She only managed to extricate herself twenty minutes later, full of ideas about what came next, so preoccupied as she crossed the parking lot that she didn’t even see the guy she bumped into.
‘Can’t you watch where you’re going?’ she said irritably.
‘Hiya, babe.’
She looked up. ‘Shit, Jimmy. What are you doing here? Aren’t mayors supposed to be . I don’t know, doing whatever mayors are supposed to do.’
‘Looking for beautiful women is part of the job description.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘I’m busy – and I hate being called “babe”.’
‘I brought you a flower.’ He held out a dandelion plucked from the roadside. ‘How about a cup of coffee?’
‘I don’t want coffee.’
‘Then let me carry your books.’
‘No, damnit.’
‘Suppose I just walk along with you.’
She sighed. ‘You’ve already done it. This is my car.’ He leaned against the door. ‘Get off.’
Ruth telling him to ‘get off’ had astonished him. It had hurt. Helen repeating it – no more than a couple of hours later – made him wince despite himself. He fiddled, self-conscious now, with the half-moon glasses around his neck. But he didn’t move. ‘Helen, I know you want me. What the hell, half the women in Springfield want to fuck the mayor. You should see my fan mail. Makes me blush sometimes. Look, I intend to be governor of this state, and I’m going to need you at my—’
‘Shut up, Jimmy. I just got married.’
‘That’s supposed to mean something to me?’
‘Get away from my car.’
‘Come on. You can’t really think all that much of this guy. What do you know about him other than that he’s a murderer your father taught out of the kindness of his heart? I mean, look at me. Who wouldn’t want me instead? I got a cute cowlick and a real bright future.’
But she only rolled her eyes again, opened her purse, rummaged around, found an emery board and went to work on a broken nail.
‘Your father wouldn’t be dead if it weren’t for David Marion. The guy’s a loser, Helen. He’ll always be a loser, and he’s going to drag you down with him. Look, I know you. You only got involved with him to make me jealous, and now this fucker is using you. Anybody with eyes can see the only thing holding you—’
‘Bye, Dr Freyl!’ A gaggle of Helen’s students ran past, waving. ‘See you Thursday.’
‘Looking forward to it,’ she called back. ‘Finished?’ she said to Jimmy.
‘Come to daddy, huh? All’s forgiven. I promise.’
She put her emery board away. ‘You going to let me go home now?’
‘So he finally backs o
ff and holds out this damned dandelion again like a votive offering.’ Helen was regaling David with the encounter over dinner at the Pair-a-Dice: steak, fries, beer for him, wine for her.
‘Still fiddling with those half-moon glasses, huh?’ he said, tilting his beer can at her.
‘If you were in prison, my darling, would you beat him to death for moving in on your woman like that?’
‘Shove those glasses up his prick first.’
She burst out laughing. ‘You wouldn’t!’
‘You going to dare me?’
‘Yeah.’
‘All right, you’re on.’
Helen was half shocked, half enchanted. She reached over, took his hand, long fingers, broad across the palm. ‘What about your day? Any excitements?’
David frowned. ‘Something a little weird.’
Helen had said the Riley was a racing car back in England. ‘A hundred and twenty on the open road,’ she’d said. He’d tried it not far out of town, windows open, wind on his face, roar of the engine beneath him – and not a single judder. A siren behind him was inevitable. He’d looked forward to it, steeled himself for the old-time thrill of it, prepared his usual defence. Stare straight ahead. Say nothing. Don’t even admit to a name.
The cop got out of his car and ambled towards him. ‘Hi there, Mr Marion,’ he said. ‘Out for a spin in the wedding present?’
David was so taken aback that he turned to look at the cop.
The cop smiled. ‘Beautiful car.’ He patted the solid metal of the Riley’s bonnet. ‘They knew how to make them back then, didn’t they? Nowadays? They just stick a tin can on an air pump and blow it until it’s big enough to make a saloon. Look, there’s a speed trap ahead. Just wanted to warn you. You may be a Freyl now, but it might be inconvenient, don’t you think? You have a good day now.’
The cop patted the Riley again, then turned and walked back to his car.
‘Cops protecting you?’ Helen said to David.