by F. G. Cottam
There was not that much coverage in the newspapers. Mostly it was confined to single columns and almost all the stories carried the same cropped agency picture of O’Brien grinning bareheaded and in sunglasses astride his Harley Davidson. He was only a writer, after all. It was not as though a pop singer or soap star or Premiership footballer had died.
Jack walked in on her. He had just finished his breakfast and there were crumbs in the bumfluff thickening and coarsening on his upper lip. Puberty was in full swing with him. The assault had done nothing to retard that. He was on the way to becoming a man. She took a tissue from the box of them on the desk and stood and wiped his mouth clean, noticing that her son was almost as tall now as she was. He glanced beyond her at the story on the screen.
‘Blimey. How did he die?’
‘Drugs overdose,’ Lillian said.
Jack looked outside to the garden. It was overcast, raining, the fleshy leaves of the shrubs against the far wall glimmering greenly in the wet, matt light. ‘Good riddance,’ he said.
‘You should not speak ill of the dead,’ his mother said.
‘Nor should you be a hypocrite, Mum.’
They tried to share equally the burden of work involved in the preparation for their move over the following week. Inevitably, though, more of it fell to Lillian than to James. He had the Colorado meeting to prepare for and neither of them underestimated its potential importance and the beneficial impact it could have on their lives.
Lillian also understood, privately, that it was more than a question of prosperity. James had fallen into despondency and depression because he had lacked self-esteem. Colorado could restore his confidence, giving him the professional direction and personal vindication he felt his life lacked. It was vital that he was allowed to prepare properly for a trip upon which so much could depend.
Whatever the outcome in Colorado, she did not think they would ever fall back into the dismal situation together that had triggered her affair. They were too close and too passionately honest with each other now for that to happen. In Jack’s phrase, they were locked on. But she wanted the game he had invented to succeed. She wanted the man she loved to earn happiness and satisfaction through achieving success on his own terms. He had certainly worked hard enough and long enough for it.
They did talk about delaying the move until after the Colorado deal was signed and sealed. But relocation to the bay was something they could afford comfortably without supplementing their existing resources. And these things had their own momentum. Summer beckoned far more seductively on the Cornish coast than it did in Bermondsey. Topper’s Reach was waiting for them. The children almost literally could not wait.
So it was that Lillian organised the specifics of the move. She liaised with a very helpful land agent called Cooper who worked for Richard Penmarrick. She saw to it that the house was opened up and aired and supplied with its utilities. She ordered new furniture she judged to be of a piece with Topper’s Reach; arranged for it to be delivered there. She did not really want physical reminders of their Bermondsey home. Not beyond the four of them. There had been happy times in the house, but she agreed with James that this should be as fresh a start for them as possible. They would rent their townhouse furnished. They would leave almost everything tangible behind them. James drove the Saab to his brother’s house and simply parked it up and tossed his brother the keys.
‘The documents are in the glove compartment,’ he said. Mark had written off his own car the previous month in what he described as a takeaway cappuccino-related incident. The Greers would not be a two-car family in Cornwall. It was unnecessary and ostentatious. James thought Mark touchingly grateful for the gift.
On the Thursday afternoon, DS McCabe arrived promptly at 2 p.m. James and Lillian were both there to see him. Olivia, outraged by the fact, was probably not very much enjoying her penultimate day at school. Jack was in his room, involved in the pain and pleasure of deciding what among his many possessions he could and could not dispense with and see donated to the nearest charity shop.
McCabe told them that the boys accused of assaulting and robbing their son were now unlikely to be brought to trial. Their families had offered to rescind voluntarily their asylum seeker status and return to Somalia as soon as they possibly could. They were begging to return. The nightmares endured by the three alleged assailants had got much worse. They were not sleeping. They were living in terror. They were convinced they were the victims of witchcraft and thought returning home the only way of escaping the curse they had incurred.
‘It’s an interesting ploy,’ James said.
‘I’ve spoken to the family liaison officer assigned under their bail conditions,’ McCabe said. ‘She said if they’re acting, they are the best actors she has ever seen. She says they’re genuinely terrified.’
‘I wonder if they’re as genuinely terrified as an innocent thirteen-year-old being beaten on a bus with a tyre iron by complete strangers in the middle of the afternoon,’ Lillian said.
‘It might simply come down to cost,’ McCabe said. ‘We live in straitened times.’
‘I thought justice in this country was done partially at least simply so that it could be seen to be done,’ James said. ‘I thought that was how the criminal justice system functioned.’
McCabe said, ‘Think of the cost of bringing this case to trial. Prosecution counsel, expert witnesses, legal aid defence, jury expenses to compensate those jurors whose employers won’t and then if the prosecution is successful, the cost of incarceration in a secure youth facility. And then the cost of deportation, if a deportation hearing arrives at that outcome. You’ve got the involvement of the Borders Agency. After their sentences were served they would be entitled to relocation expenses when they were repatriated.’
‘You’re kidding,’ James said.
‘No,’ McCabe said, ‘I’m not. Much easier and cheaper just to accept their offer to return to their homeland, isn’t it?’
‘I’ve said this to you before, but there is such a thing as natural justice,’ James said.
McCabe smiled. He sipped the coffee Lillian had brewed him. He looked tautly muscled and immaculate in his uniform. James did not think it remotely funny or ironic that the police officer seated on their sofa took his coffee strong and black.
‘Natural justice is not a real world concept,’ McCabe said. ‘It’s as illusory as the village life idyll in that picturesque place by the sea where you and your family are escaping to.’
The Greers were both silent for a moment. James said, ‘You don’t believe there’s such a place as England any more?’
McCabe shrugged. ‘It depends on what you mean by England. Maybe in a tourist theme park sort of way, there is. Beefeaters still guard the Tower. Stratford has been dressed up to look fairly Shakespearean. You’ve always struck me as a pragmatist, Mr Greer. You should go back to trusting your instincts because you can butter crumpets from now till kingdom come. Rupert Brooke isn’t coming to tea. It isn’t going to happen.’
James said, ‘You’ve changed your tune, Detective Sergeant. You approved of our plan the last time we spoke about it. You told us that you’d moved out yourself, from Brixton to the Kent suburbs. You said you and your family were glad you’d done so, had no regrets at all.’
‘The tune where you’re going is by Elgar, played at 78rpm under an old-fashioned gramophone needle. It’s Elgar or it’s Benjamin Britten. He was very partial to the seaside. Do you know there has not been a felony crime recorded in Brodmaw Bay since the summer of 1932?’
‘You looked it up?’
‘I was curious. It’s fifteen years since a new surname was added to the electoral roll. The last census shows everyone there is of the same ethnic origin. No prizes for guessing which. Joblessness is registered officially at 0 per cent. But it’s the crime statistic that really stunned me. It seems less like a living community than a bricks and mortar museum. It’s not right.’
‘Well, thanks for your opti
mism and encouragement,’ Lillian said. ‘It’s much appreciated, Detective Sergeant.’
‘Thanks for the coffee,’ McCabe said, climbing to his feet. ‘It was excellent.’
‘You’re welcome,’ Lillian said. ‘What happens now?’
‘Nothing happens, at least for a few weeks. I’ll keep you informed. I gather your move is imminent?’
‘We leave on Monday.’
He nodded. ‘Could I say goodbye to Jack?’
‘Of course,’ James said. ‘He’s in his room. Just go up.’
Lillian and James listened to McCabe’s light, agile tread receding up the stairs. Lillian said, ‘I wouldn’t have had him down as an authority on classical music.’
‘Maybe his daughter’s ballet has made him one. Books and covers, you of all people should know that. I mean, what music do you think Richard Penmarrick enjoys?’
‘His wife’s singing, if he has any taste.’
‘Generally, I mean.’
‘Easy,’ Lillian said, ‘the Doors and a bit of Free and Traffic and the Strolling Bones, obviously.’
‘He told me he likes Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye and the Isley Brothers. I think that shows how deceptive appearances can be.’
Upstairs, they talked about Chelsea and their next season prospects for a bit before McCabe steered the conversation in the direction of the assault on Jack and his feelings about it.
‘Still want them punished?’
‘Yeah, I do.’
‘An eye for an eye is it, Jack? Is that how you play your football?’
‘No, it isn’t. I don’t go in for retaliation on the pitch at all. Only muppets play like that.’
‘But you want revenge against the boys who hurt you.’
‘It isn’t about revenge, Alec. I want them to get what’s legally coming to them. I want them punished. But mostly I want them off the streets so they can’t do it again to someone else.’
‘Looking forward to your move?’
‘I was and I wasn’t. I was looking forward to leaving school. Against that, I thought I was going there damaged goods, like one of those people sent to a convalescent home in an old-fashioned movie. But I played tennis against my uncle at the end of last week and I’m going to be fine, I think. I’ll be heading a ball again before Christmas.’
‘That’s great.’
They shook hands. Jack said, ‘Will you keep in touch?’
‘Would you like me to?’
‘Of course I would.’
‘Then I will.’
On the following morning, Lillian received an email forwarded by her agent, from the publisher of the series of books she had been collaborating on with Robert O’Brien. It stated that it would be unlikely now that any but the first of them, the single completed story, would ever be put into print. Nevertheless, in recognition of her commitment to the project and the quantity and quality of material she had already produced, her contract was to be honoured. She would be paid the original sum agreed in full.
She replied saying that she wanted the entire amount minus her agent’s percentage donated equally to three charities. They were ChildLine, the NSPCC and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. For a moment she thought about adding a fourth. She thought about listing Narcotics Anonymous. But she was actually quite unsympathetic to mature adults with drug habits. She thought the problem largely, if not wholly, self-inflicted.
They left for the bay not on the Monday as originally planned, but on the preceding day, the Sunday. This meant a pre-dawn drive back to Heathrow and his flight to Denver for James less than twenty-four hours later. But Lillian thought it important he go with them. She thought it essential that they all leave their old home and arrive at their new one together and her husband agreed with her. And Richard Penmarrick’s man Cooper had assured them that Topper’s Reach was ready and Richard had himself made sure the fridge and food cupboards were provisioned as a welcoming courtesy.
They arrived at four in the afternoon. As they crested the rising hills and passed the circle of standing stones to their left and the bay came fully into view, the children in the seats behind them gasped audibly at the panorama revealed by the descent they were about to take. Lillian could understand why. It was a vista full of the promise of adventure and vibrant new life. The sun still hung high in the sky before them. The beach was a vivid orange crescent against the deep blue of the sea. The fishing fleet bobbed picturesquely beyond the granite breakwater to the right of the Leeward Arms and the whitecaps stretched to the horizon almost infinitely before them.
‘Blimey, Dad,’ Jack said, ‘you didn’t half come up with the goods.’
James heard air escape Jack’s lungs in a rush as his sister elbowed him expertly in the side. ‘Mum organised most of it,’ she said.
‘Dad deserves the credit, Livs,’ Lillian said. ‘Dad was the decision-maker on this one. On this one you were the big cheese, weren’t you, darling?’
‘Uurgh, they’re going to kiss,’ Olivia said.
‘Not while Dad’s driving,’ Jack said. ‘Mum’s too sensible. He might crash and kill us all.’
‘You mean in a ball of fire?’
‘Yep, in a raging inferno of flames.’
James smiled, thinking about what his wife had just said. It was odd. He had only found the bay in the first place because her illustrations had led him to it. That was a mystery the accelerating pattern of events had forced him almost to forget. But it was a puzzle, too, wasn’t it?
Jack thought the bay pretty cool on first impressions. He thought that living in the sort of place you generally only went on holiday would be great. He couldn’t see a downside, other than for the fact that it was all so hilly. The sea was flat, obviously. But the land behind the town rose steeply. The only flat patch was that big circle surrounded by standing stones they had passed on the way down. That was the only place you could realistically have marked out a football pitch. It looked like an ancient monument, though, so the prospect was unlikely. And they weren’t going to do it just for him.
As his dad drove down into the village, he still couldn’t quite believe that his parents had actually done this. They had been talking about it for as long as he could remember. It had got to the point where he had thought talk was all it was and that it would never really happen. At some point he had come to the conclusion that his parents talked about moving to the coast instead of doing it.
When Alec McCabe had shaken his hand and said goodbye, he hadn’t really believed they would go. Even when he had taken his old boots and Xbox and jigsaws he’d outgrown and a couple of Airfix kits he’d never got round to building to donate to the Oxfam shop, he hadn’t really believed it. But here they were. The car roof was down and the sun was hot in his face and the air smelled fresh and clean and strongly of salt and the sea. Some kids who looked about his own age were wobbling in wetsuits on windsurf boards just off the beach.
He thought then about Robert O’Brien. This was a day O’Brien had not lived to enjoy. He would never enjoy anything ever again; not windsurfing or riding his motorbike or signing autographs for fans. Jack thought for a moment about how rarely he considered death. People of his age didn’t, did they? They thought they were never going to die. Even on that bus in Peckham he had not really thought he was going to be killed. And at the time someone had been trying to kill him and making a pretty good attempt at it.
He thought that he should feel sorry about the death of Robert O’Brien. They were always being told in the R.E. lessons no one listened to at school that human life was sacred. Also it was usually quite shocking when someone young died and O’Brien had definitely been younger than his parents and they weren’t exactly old.
He didn’t feel sorry, though. He didn’t feel exactly happy about it, but he did not think it a tragedy or a waste. He would never have read another of his stories. They had been spoiled for him. During a game he would turn the other cheek, as they called it in R.E., because that was the sensible thing to
do. Off the pitch, he did not suppose he had a very forgiving nature. Maybe he should work on it. Alec McCabe had hinted at something like that and he liked and admired the big policeman.
The village was so picturesque it was like something out of a film. The shops were all old-fashioned. The streets were narrow and cobbled and there were flowers in hanging baskets above the shop doorways. People nodded and smiled as his dad drove the car slowly along. But there were not many pedestrians. Jack noticed that the shops were all shut, which was odd because it was a Sunday afternoon. He wasn’t worried about it. His mum had said there was plenty of stuff already bought for them to eat and drink when they arrived.
When they got into the new house there was a huge bunch of flowers on the kitchen table next to an equally huge bowl of fruit and he just beat his sister to it and they started wrestling over the grapes until their dad told them in his stern voice, which was not actually particularly stern, that they should remember their manners and share. They did share, wolfing grapes while their mum opened an envelope and read the note it contained.
‘We’re invited to a little gathering being held to welcome us at the Leeward at seven o’clock,’ she said; ‘seven till eight, totally informal, completely child-friendly, no obligation to go.’
‘We can’t really refuse,’ their dad said. ‘Then again it’s only an hour, why would we want to?’
Jack explored. Their new house was much bigger than their old one and his new room had an epic view out over the bay. His new bed was bigger than his old one had been. Everything in his room looked more serious and grown-up and he was delighted with it all. It only lacked a few team photos, but he’d wait until the new season for those, when the transfer activity had calmed down and the new Chelsea squad was complete and settled.
Livs was up to something. By now he thought she should have had him by the arm, pulling at him, begging him to go and look at her new room, excited by all her boring, girly new things, thrilled by her new wallpaper, which was probably floral and pink. But wherever she was, she was being very quiet. Having greedily gorged herself on them, maybe she was throwing up her grapes in one of the loos, sending a stream of purple vomit into the toilet bowl.