The whoopsie was because the essential oils I was massaging into Jane’s shoulders had got a bit runny and began getting under my watch-strap. I warmed up a spot more liquid between my palms with a noisy rubbing motion and resumed the long broad strokes along Jane’s pale shoulders. “I offered him fifteen pounds and he took it,” I went on. “Fair and square.”
“Fair?” Jane said, twisting to look up at me. I shushed her back into position. “Well then I hope you never get old and have to sell any of your –”
“Oh c’mon, shush shush, this is meant to be relaxing.”
The lounge dropped into quiet once again, just Michael Nyman’s score to The Piano tinkling softly from the (£10 o.n.o.) stereo. Lana was asleep in her cot next door, a chunky baby monitor propped up by Jane’s pillow crackling murmurs and sighs. The flat smelled of our weekly date night. Baby poo smothered with oils, candles and clean towels. Propped up behind her, straddling the small of Jane’s back, I rubbed and smoothed her soft bathtime skin and tried to enjoy the moment.
Jane shifted a little, brushing bath-wet hair from her face.
“How is it fair?” she said. “Fair, surely, would have been telling him what a picture like that was worth and offering him two hundred pounds? Or a hundred at least? That would have been fair. Do you know where he got it? Maybe they’re his wife’s collection.”
“Wasn’t very ladylike stuff.”
“Right, we going to have that conversation again? When we met, I had more copies of 2000AD than –”
“All right, shush shush, you –”
“Your team all cocky at the Freshers’ Week quiz. Playing the girls …”
“You win, you win,” and I gave her a soft kiss between her shoulder blades, inhaling her bathtime scent.
“All I’m saying is, maybe they were her pride and joy? Down a bit.”
“Then why is he selling them door to door out of a suitcase? There?”
“Maybe she died? Right there.”
“Yes maybe,” I said. “But it looked more like he was about to spend the money on booze.”
“Naturally. Drowning his – ooh, that’s good, a bit more there,” Jane said. “Drowning his sorrows. Married thirty years. She has a heart attack, he’s left alone. Forced to sell her rare collections to meet the funeral expenses?”
“You wouldn’t be saying this if you’d met him.”
“Poor old chap.”
I thumbed the dip beneath her left shoulder silently for a moment.
Did I want to tell her that I didn’t have a hundred to give him? That apart from a listless Kerplunk and Cheng coming back in for another peer at Robert Redford at ten past four, I didn’t have another customer and spent the rest of the day knee-deep in antique papier-mâché? No, I thought. Best not.
I moved across to Jane’s right shoulder, gazing over the pale violin of her back. Swallowing hard I tried to concentrate. My wife. My perfect angel. But even there, hands kneading gently her velvet curves, guilt stared back. Plain guilt. The word stared up at me from her shoulders like Jane was a premier league football player and it was the tattooed name of her firstborn.
“But think about it hon. I do the nice thing, the honest thing,” I jabbered, giving the word as naïve and foolish an inflection as I could. “Give the bloke two hundred and fifty quid, which is what a signed promo shot of Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel is worth –
“Neil, you know that’s not –”
“And then sell it on for two hundred and fifty, what’s been the point of that? I’m trying to make a living here. For us. But if you’d rather I didn’t …” I said, somewhat petulantly.
It was a strategic manoeuvre. It was only a matter of days before Jane discovered what I’d done. How much I’d screwed up. And I knew that when she did – when the smoke cleared and she was able to pick through the debris of what used to be her life – I was going to be on the wrong end of a very big row. A plate-hurling, parent-phoning, locks-changing, never-want-to-see-you-again scale bust-up. So I was pushing this point as preparation. Ground work. Something I could barter with later. But hon, when I tried to make a little money to put things right you accused me of being unfair. Ow, ow that hurts, I’m sorry I’m sorry ow.
Something like that.
Jane was laying quietly. She does this during disagreements. The silent thing. Implying I’m not worth listening to. Which makes me frustrated and shouty and incoherent and not worth listening to.
“All I meant was,” she said, “you could have been nicer.”
“So could he!” I spat. Streaky looked up from underneath the radiator. “He trod on Laura’s toe and didn’t apologise, he virtually pulled an entire display down, told me I was a tosser, fuckin’ amateur hour, don’t know what the fuck you’re –”
“Who’s Laura?”
“What?”
Jane lifted her head from the pillow a little.
“You said he trod on Laura’s toe. Who’s Laura?”
The room went quiet. The cat blinked.
“Oh. Uhmm the woman. The Chanel woman. Yesterday. With the car. Turns out she works nearby. Dropped in to say thank you. Brought me a coffee.”
I didn’t mention her buns.
“That was nice of her.”
“Huh? Yes, yes. I s’pose. C’mere, let me move down a bit.”
I edged down to the back of Jane’s legs, adjusting my weight and began to smooth the oil into the base of her back. The conversation was over. Topic dropped. Died a natural death. We could leave it be, draw a veil, usher out the mourners without it being considered hurried or disrespectful.
Which I suppose, with less fear and beer inside me, is what I would have done.
“Your dad wouldn’t have had a problem with it,” I mumbled.
“Yours neither,” Jane said back quickly.
Ooooh ref. Yellow card.
I stopped. Chin up, I wiped a hand on the towel and picked up my beer.
“Sorry,” Jane said.
I sighed, easing myself to my feet.
“Neil?”
“S’all right,” I pouted. “Just a bit of cramp,” and I gave my thigh a half-hearted rub.
“I didn’t mean –”
“It’s fine,” I said.
“Did you post your letter to him?” Jane said tentatively. She leant up a little, propping herself on an elbow. She was making peace. “You were going to send him those photos of Lana too. Neil?”
“Hn? No, no not yet.” I sighed and sloshed back another mouthful of beer, fizzing about my gums, making my head swim. “I will. But …”
“What? What is it?”
“You have to admit it. Your dad would have slapped me on the back and bought me a drink. Shrewd, young man, shrewwwwwd,” I said in my best Edward voice. It’s an easy one to do. You basically imagine Windsor Davies playing Shere Khan in a touring rep version of The Jungle Book.
“Dad never said you should –”
“He’s told me I’m too nice to be a businessman. That I don’t have the killer instinct. Never tires of asking me how the shop’s going. Made that first million yet young man? You know he’d have preferred you to have got hitched to some –”
“Oh Neil, for heaven’s sake, how many times. Dad doesn’t –”
“… some macho, six foot, alpha male provider. Like … thingy. Andrew.”
“Andrew? Wait, where’s this come from?” Jane sat up.
“Oh nowhere. Forget it. Forget it. I was just thinking about him today,” I said. I perched myself on the chair by the desk. “That Sting poster he helped me hang when we shared halls. I’ve had an offer on it. Not much but …” I burped a stale beer burp, head thick and cloudy. “Andrew was much more your dad’s idea of husband material though, don’t you think?”
“Hairy Andrew, eco-warrior? With those chunky jumpers and wounded ducklings? Hardly Mr Wall Street, was he?”
“No, but he was a … provider. All that Viking, Nordic, outdoorsy hunter gatherer … stuff.”
&nbs
p; “You’re a –”
“Big shoulders and that long flowy hair that all the girls tried to play with. Mr Sensitive New Man with the wounded soul. That bloody … Arran sweater and his save the seal cubs. You could have had him if you’d wanted him, y’know?”
“Andrew Benjamin?”
“If you’d wanted him. Instead. He had a crush on you.”
“Andrew? He got us together. There was no … We were friends.”
“Did you know about the poems?”
“Oh he didn’t have –”
“Those red spiral notebooks he used to always carry. I shared a room with him.”
“Then why didn’t he … ?” Jane flapped and then stopped, shrugging the memories off, sweeping thoughts away. “Look, what’s brought all this on suddenly?”
“Nothing, I … Nothing.” I shook myself, chugging a little more beer over the sick ache in my stomach. “I’m being stupid.”
“You are. He and I were friends. We all were. A team,” Jane said. She suddenly remembered something. “Oh, talking of Dad, there’s a letter from his accountant I think. On the desk there. Came this morning. And something from the bank it looks like.”
“Bank?” I squeaked, covering it with a belchy cough. I spun the chair. There were two envelopes propped against the silver photo-frame.
“Shall I do your back?” Jane said, standing, waggling the jar of oil. “It’ll help you relax.”
“Uhm, no. No I’m … er fine. Should we look in on Lana?” I stood shruggily, edging around to block Jane’s view of the desk, wiping my oily hands and ruining another towel in exactly the way Jane had told me not to.
She gathered the pillows and gave me a kiss. I smiled weakly and watched as she plucked the monitor from the floor and ambled in her loose tracksuit bottoms, cooing down the short hall to what was now either a study with a cot jammed in it or a nursery with a computer jammed in it.
Ignoring the pink cardboard ‘£15’ star Blu-tacked to the desk, I lifted the bank envelope. Plain and business-like, my name peeked guiltily from the little window. Heart thudding, I tore it open and scanned through it, throat tight.
Oh Christ.
“Everything all right?” Jane said, appearing in the doorway, Lana on her hip.
“Oh, just a statement. Everything’s fine,” I lied, stuffing it in my jeans. “Everything’s just fine.”
Half an hour later, by the dim glow of a plastic caterpillar night-light, I was skulking in the nursery. Hunched over the rickety, flat-pack computer desk in the corner, another beer thudding about my temples, a freshly changed Lana dozed contentedly in her cot behind me. Fists closed, mouth open, her small room smelled of brushed cotton and nappies.
What the hell was I doing, dragging up old university memories to pummel Jane with? It was all getting out of hand. The fear, the worry. Knowing it was only a matter of days before our world was picked up, turned upside down and had everything we knew shaken out of it by men in overalls.
Pushing thoughts aside, I fetched the Overstreet guide from the bedroom, picking up my satchel from the hall on the way back. In the lounge I could hear Jane on the phone with her dad, promising we’d get his accountant guy over by the end of the week.
Returning to the sanctum of the nursery once again, I shut the door behind me and tugged out my paperwork.
Sotheby’s, it turned out, were right. The valuations matched. I didn’t know if this was what I wanted to hear or not. Whether it just made things more confusing, having two experts telling me I had an unboardable lifeboat out there. Pulling the buckled bank letter from my pocket, I took another long look at it. Volume four in a long line of statements, adding up all the bank charges and missed direct debits. You don’t want to know how much it all came to.
I tore it up and buried it at the bottom of the bin under a scented nappy sack, concentrating instead on the stiff envelope containing the day’s ill-gotten prize. Untacking the lip, I eased the faded photograph free and laid it on the computer keyboard, sliding the night-light a little nearer, shadows shifting.
Two men. Teenagers. Felt hats and shirt-sleeves, side by side in a boxy office. Smiling the guilty, awkward smiles of the suddenly famous. On the right, the artist, a pencil behind his ear and drawing pad clamped under his arm, no doubt at the behest of some unimaginative publicity hack. On the left, his partner, writer and occasional model sports a knotted tablecloth about his neck, a typewriter under his arm and – pulled over his suit trousers, causing them to ride and ruck – a huge pair of absurd underpants.
Best wishes – Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
I eased the crumbling paper over carefully. A date on the reverse. 1933. Plus an inky stamp: image copyright Detective Comics Inc. 480 Lexington Ave NYC.
I set the photograph aside and booted up the computer.
Fifteen pounds I’d paid. A quick click and drag across a webful of collectors’ sites moments later told me I should be slapping it on the Heroes Inc website for twenty times that amount. Did I feel guilty? Was Jane right?
Gor dear, fuckin’ amateur hour this place. New to the game are you, ya fuckin’ fairy?
Screw it. He’d had it coming.
As my old scanner whirred and stuttered, I tried to focus on the job in hand. Opening up a file, I spent a moment banging out a suitably gushy description – mint, must see, collector’s item, perfect gift, offers in the region, bing bang bong, all that. The photo was taking a while to download so I took a quick surf across to eBay to check out Cheng’s story.
Sure enough, there it was. Action Comics, issue 4. September 1938. Four thousand pounds. I didn’t know the seller but it was getting a lot of attention, mostly from a collector in the US called Grayson, topping everyone’s bid.
Me? Ha, what do you think.
No, I just sat there in the glow of a plastic caterpillar, watching the screen fill with tablecloths, underpants and fedoras, half listening to Jane next door on the phone with her dad.
They seemed to be discussing private schools.
Heart hammering, I was gripped suddenly with an urge to tell her. To come clean. Get up, march into the lounge, sit down, take her hand, look her in the eyes and just tell her. Blurt it out. Own up. The trouble I’d got us in. What was about to happen.
But –
Well I didn’t. I couldn’t. Her dad –
I just couldn’t.
Instead I just sat there, not blinking, eyes on my screen. Feeling them getting sore. Worry, slithery and black, coiling about my gut. Tasting fear, coppery in my mouth. Praying, praying, silently, it would be okay.
That everything would somehow sort itself out.
Ha. Look at the state of me.
What do you think?
three
Oh by the way, before we go on – you got that, did you? Jane’s little dig about Dad? The ‘neither would yours’ thing?
Yes. It’s … a little complicated.
Let’s just say, so you know, I didn’t quite enjoy the family life that Lady Jane did.
Not that my father and I weren’t close, you understand. We were. In our own strange way. Closer than Jane and her father are even now in some respects. But it was a closeness that had nothing to do with annual trips to the Seychelles. Nothing to do with ponies, private school or party shoes.
Dad and I had what you might call a Saturday-afternoon closeness. A movie and a comic closeness. Through everything. Arguments. Hangovers. Casualty wards. Court appearances. Come Saturday afternoon, he was there.
Movie and a comic. Without fail.
Explains a lot, I suppose.
“I’m afraid there isn’t a lot you can do sir.”
“Not a lot I can – ? That’s it? That’s your 24-hour help-line’s helpful line? The bank are about to … I mean do you know how serious this is?”
“I can put you through to a customer policy care supervisor.”
“Isn’t that you?”
“Er, yes. I mean I could put you through to … another one.�
��
“Who’ll tell me something different?”
“Uhmm, no.”
“Right. Look … I just need to know if there’s some chance that, well … that maybe you might pay it this time?”
“Sir –”
“And I-I increase my premiums, y’know, from now on?”
“That’s not how your policy works sir , I’m afraid. We do have a new Emergency 48 Hour Valuables Cover Plan that is along those lines though. Would you like me to put you through to sales sir?”
“Well that depends doesn’t it?” I said through gritted teeth. “If your sales department is located within a worm-hole in the spacetime continuum, enabling me to buy this policy three weeks ago when I needed it.”
“I’ll put you through to sales,” she said and either Hank Marvin abruptly turned up at her call centre playing Handel’s Water Music or she’d put me on hold.
Yes, it had been an unbelievably long shot, I admit. But when you’ve spent half a late-October Thursday morning crouched trembling and dripping in a pool of black gunk behind a water-damaged cardboard Chewbacca while a large, goateed, memorabilia-salesman called Maurice, with Judge Dredd on his lapel badge and spit dribbling down his pyjama top, kicks your shutters with steel-toed motorcycle boots, hollering both your name, how much of a ‘feckin’ faggot’ you are and what his lawyers are going to do with you when they find you, lengthiness of shot often ceases to be of any relevance.
Hank moving on to a twangy version of Moonlight Sonata, I looked up at the sound of my bell tingling softly. A figure stood framed in the doorway.
“Good morning, sales?” the phone crackled. “My colleague says you’re concerned about worm-holes? Our Standard Homecare covers all damage to gardens, including lawns and fences.”
“I-I’m sorry, what?”
The figure began to wander up the shop towards me, unpeeling his ratty scarf.
“We do have a new Emergency 48 Hour Valuables Cover Plan which we’re telling our customers about. This covers items in your care that you are not the owner of. For example, if you were looking after something for somebody else and it was accidentally –”
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