Duet

by O'Gorman, Brian

  Patrick set down his mug again. It was his special oversized weekend mug that he kept for hangover days. He was beginning to feel hungry which was probably a good thing. He decided to wait until the police had gone before he got the bacon out. It seemed somewhat inappropriate considering the circumstances to start doling out bacon butties to everyone.

  “Was he in there alone? Did he remarry or anything like that?”

  “He had an assistant. We went looking for him, but he was found dead a few months ago. The body of his neighbour was found at the scene too, it is an ongoing murder enquiry. We suspect that his boyfriend committed the crime, because his were the only other prints that we found and he hasn’t been seen or heard from since. Sounds like he has done a runner to me.”

  “I take it that my father was rich,” said Patrick sipping more tea. He was starting to get rather full and he needed food very soon to absorb some of the masses of tea he had sloshing around his insides.

  “Your father was one of the wealthiest men in this country Mr Hurst. The fortune he made from his CPU design set him up for a hundred lifetimes. He could quite easily have never worked again. The house in Layton Valley was custom built for him, but even with all that I’m pretty sure he had plenty of change from it. As far as we know Mr Hurst, you are the only living relative. He has no other immediate family, no brothers or sisters or any other children that we know about. I do know that Mr Hurst left a will with his legal eagles, so I’m pretty sure you will be hearing from them very soon.”

  “What about my father? Will there be a funeral or anything like that?”

  “That is up to you Mr Hurst. We are happy that there is no foul play involved which means that his body will be released. You can proceed with any ceremony you see fit. The state will pay for it as Mr Hurst was an employee of the government.”

  Patrick shrugged. He had never had to organise a funeral before. He was going to have to call in a few favours for people to help him out. He knew Jack would be at the front of the queue for that one, he always was. How much use he would be was an entirely different question.

  “If you want, I can pass your details on to the relevant people and get them to phone you so you don’t have to do any chasing around,” said Phillips. Amazingly, Patrick had almost forgotten that she was there.

  “Sure, that would be a great help, thank you,” said Patrick. He grabbed his magnetic notebook off the fridge door (a gift from his foster mother,) and jotted down his address and his mobile phone number. He tore the paper off and slid it across the table to Phillips. As she took the paper their fingers touched briefly. She couldn’t meet his eyes again and the colour had returned to her cheeks.

  “There, my mobile number is on there too,” said Patrick. Phillips looked at the piece of paper and blushed again. She folded it up and put it into the top pocket of her vest.

  “Right then Mr Hurst, we will be on our way. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” said Denton standing up. Phillips dutifully stood up and picked her hat up off the table. Denton started to walk towards the front door giving Phillips the chance to squeeze Patricks arm briefly.

  “Sorry for your loss,” she said.

  Patrick thanked her and for a moment their eyes locked on each other. There was something Patrick liked very much about this girl, but he couldn’t quite place what it was, perhaps it was just the fact that she was in uniform. He thought that it was entirely possible that he was turning into a sexual pervert.

  Phillips turned away and followed Denton through the door. Just before Phillips closed the door behind her she flashed him another little smile and waved at him. He waved back, feeling mildly like an idiot, standing there in his shorts and t-shirt that he hadn’t even bothered to wash for two weeks. The door closed and he was alone. His mind turned to food again and he routed out some bacon from his fridge. He left it on the side of the kitchen next to the cooker and took himself off upstairs. He went into the bathroom and decided on the spur of the moment to have a shower. As the hot water cascaded around him he put the fantasy of having Phillips half naked on his kitchen table back in his head again. He masturbated and just as he came to a climax his phone began to ring on the closed lid of the toilet. It was Jack, he always had the worst timing of anyone he knew.

  2.

  The funeral of Richard Hurst was attended by Patrick and his best friend Jack Samsun. He had decided to forgo all of the religious nonsense for a simple and short ceremony at Newtown crematorium. He sat with Jack, looking at the pure white coffin standing in front of him and wondering what his father had actually been like. He wasn’t even sure if he could remember what the guy looked like. There was a very foggy memory in his head from a long time ago, but he couldn’t be sure if it was actually something that happened or the remnants of a dream he once had as a child. There certainly was a million questions running through his mind all about the man in the box in front of them. He knew now that there was no chance of ever having any of them answered. He didn’t really care any way. He had a pretty good life, all things considered. No, he hadn’t had the best start but it had been going uphill for a very long time now. He had known Jack since he was five years old. Jack was like a bad fart in a cellar, you just couldn’t get rid of him. They had fought on more than one occasion, arguing about stupid issues such as girls, or politics and sometimes they had nearly come to blows, but every single time it happened they would be back on the phone to each other the next day, offering apologies and planning their next big night out. Career wise, he had finished his teacher training two years ago and was getting into the swing of the job very nicely. The paperwork was a bitch, but he didn’t mind grafting, it kept him busy and out of trouble. The money was certainly good enough for him to pay the rent and have plenty of money for weekend drinking sessions with Jack. Even at twenty-seven years old, they could still hang with the younger crowd. Now and again, Jack would suggest a lunch time start and Patrick would feel that little burst of adrenaline that told him things would get messy. They would usually end up somewhere outside of Newtown, sometimes the nearby city of Hemmington in a night club. The night would always end up back at Patrick’s house. Most of the time it was the two of them, sometimes they would have company. Sometimes they would be females, or sometimes it would be an old friend that they had run into on their travels. The house would be a terrible mess the next day, but Patrick didn’t mind, it was worth it just to blow off some steam.

  Once the ceremony had ended, Patrick had the intention of heading off home and crashing out in front of the television, but Jack suggested that they go for a quiet pint before he did so. He protested at first, knowing what a quiet pint meant to Jack. They were going to end up putting away more than one and they both knew it.

  “Come on bro, we can talk about your Dad and all that shit,” said Jack.

  Patrick mulled it over. His quiet night in front of the television would probably involve thinking things over in his mind, which would probably lead to him feeling irritable or sad, which would likely give way to him going up to the shop for a few beers, which would inevitably end up with him being drunk and wanting to phone Jack for a chat anyway. He guessed that this way, at least he was cutting out a lot of the bullshit. Besides, it was summer holidays and he didn’t need to be at work any time soon. He had a shit load of planning to do for the new term but he never touched any of that until the last week of the holidays anyway.

  “O.K. Jack, you win, but just one mind,” he said knowing full well that they had never had just one in the entire time that they had known each other.

  Jack clapped him on the shoulder, “Alright. I will go and phone us a taxi and have a smoke, you comin’?”

  “Yeah, why not,” said Patrick. He had been trying to give up the cigarettes for over two years now, but it just wasn’t going to happen. He might as well reside himself to being totally hooked on those little white sticks of joy.

  They went outside the crematorium and lit up a cigarette each. The ground was
littered with cigarette ends. Patrick wondered how many people had come out here having been reformed smokers and got right back on the habit. Emotional trauma could get you like that. He wasn’t feeling emotional, he just felt like the whole thing was some sort of bizarre dream that he would soon wake up from.

  They waited for about ten minutes for the taxi to arrive and to take them down to the Millstone pub. The Millstone had been their stomping ground since they had both turned eighteen and there was no way that they were ever going to give the place up. It was like an old habit that they couldn’t break. The place was pretty run down these days. The wall paper was peeling off at the edges and before the smoking ban had been put in place the sheer amount of cigarettes smoked within the confines of the building had turned the walls and the ceiling a dull shade of yellow. The barmaid, Lizzy was the only thing that seemed to be consistent. She had a wonderful habit of wearing very snug denim jeans that highlighted her arse and her genitals in equal measure. Jack had once told Patrick that he had fucked her one night when the Millstone had been subject to a lock in when the management had changed hands. Patrick had asked where the fuck he was when this had been going on and Jack had told him that it had been on a night where he had taken a girl by the name of Hettie back to his house and spent most of the night with Hettie trying to coax an erection out of his flaccid penis which had been wilted by six pints and four whisky chasers. Jack had described how Lizzy had taken him upstairs to the flat above the pub whilst the owners were busy being drunk with the last of the regulars that had also benefitted from the lock in and took him into the bedroom. He had described in great detail how the tight jeans had held in a little pot belly that Lizzy had from being a long term drunk. He had described her sagging tits, that looked more like a pair of socks with a pool ball stuffed inside them. He told Patrick that she had stripped him off and climbed on top of him. She had fucked him until she had run out of breath and then he had flipped her over and given it to her as best he could. He said that her vagina was the loosest he had ever been inside and that he had only managed to keep going for so long because it didn’t actually feel like he was inside her. Patrick had laughed at this revelation until tears had run down his cheeks. He wondered how much of what Jack told him was actually true. He didn’t always tell Jack every little detail about his sexual adventures and with good reason. Jack tended to become a little loose around the mouth once the beer had started flowing.

  They arrived at the Millstone just after four and had sunk three pints as the clock turned five. Lizzy served them each time, still dressed in her figure hugging jeans. Patrick still like to look, no matter what Jack had said to him about her. Slack Alice or not, he wouldn’t have minded finding out for himself. It was his round, and Lizzy pulled the foaming pints for him and he brought them back to their table. They were just in a nice buzzing stage of the beginnings of drunkenness when Jack decided to open the can of beans.

  “So, what about your Dad eh? That was a turn up for the books. Why don’t you ever talk about your foster parents Patty?”

  Patrick sighed and drank off a quarter of his pint. “Look, I don’t talk about it because it doesn’t even matter anymore. I did all the counselling and all that shit, so why bring it up?”

  Jack shrugged, “I dunno, I just thought you should share it is all. I have known you for a long time, and sometimes I just get curious.”

  Patrick put his glass down and levelled a finger at Jack, “Look, if I tell you, you don’t go telling anybody alright? It’s private stuff.”

  Jack held his hands up, “Have I ever betrayed your trust?”

  He had him on that one, Jack was a lot of things but he was not a gossip. He had kept everything to himself that Patrick had chosen to tell him. He drank off another quarter of his pint. “Alright. Well, none of it is to do with Jane, she has always been good to me. She protected me in ways that you wouldn’t believe. It was all Derek. He was the one who made things bad for me.”

  “What did he do?” said Jack.

  Patrick took a deep breath.

  3.

  Derek Boston liked things HIS WAY. He didn’t like changes in routine, he didn’t like to play second fiddle to anyone or anything and he certainly didn’t like children. He had fallen on his feet when he had married Jane. Jane couldn’t have children, which meant that in the bedroom he could have HIS WAY and there would be no consequences. That kept things very simple for Derek, a nice straightforward and easy life for him. Of course Derek knew that women didn’t like to keep things simple, they always wanted things THEIR WAY. This had happened in the past, just when he had got a good routing going with a woman they would want to change THINGS. They would want to get married, or even worse than that they would want children. Derek’s criteria for a good relationship was broken into three parts and Jane was a two out of three, a rarity for Derek. She did things HIS WAY in the kitchen and HIS WAY in the bedroom, but Jane fell short on criteria number three which was HIS WAY on the inclusion of children in the relationship. There had been discussions about adoption, Derek had protested. There had been discussions about I.V.F, Derek had protested. There had been a discussion about fostering and Derek had started to listen when Jane had mentioned that a foster child could only be temporary. Derek had continued to listen as Jane had run through it all and showed him the paperwork. She had started gently sucking on his cock whilst he had made HIS DECISION. He waited until he was near to his climax and then he told her he would agree because it was only temporary. Derek then told her that he wanted HIS WAY right there and then. Jane had agreed. A full thirty-two seconds after he had penetrated her, HIS WAY was all over. Derek told her afterwards that he wanted HIS WAY wherever and whenever he wanted. Jane hesitated. Derek waved the fostering forms under her nose. Jane agreed. Derek had lain awake for a good hour afterwards. He was feeling good, he like things HIS WAY.

  All in all, Derek was a happy man for the next few months. Every morning before he set off for the factory, his breakfast was made, his dinner was in its little plastic box ready for him to take to work and before he left the house he got to have HIS WAY. When he got home from the factory, his tea was ready and his newspaper was folded up next to the plate ready for him to read through. He would have half an hour at the paper, whilst he drank two cups of sugary tea, brought to him by Jane. Sometimes he would have a go at the cross word whilst Jane gave him HIS WAY orally from under the table. Then Jane would emerge, wipe the seamen off her face and set about cleaning up after him. Then she would run him a bath and he would relax in the hot water for an hour. If he hadn’t had HIS WAY at the table then he would have it whilst he was soaking in the bath. After the bath he would sit in his armchair and watch television for the rest of the evening. This was how Derek wanted things, just to his liking. He had gone along to the foster agency interviews, he had smiled politely and invited them into his home. All the time, he was thinking about how he would have HIS WAY once they were gone. After a while they received the news that they were getting a child to come and stay with them. It was the first time in many months that Jane had even bothered to have a proper conversation with Derek, other than to ask him what he wanted to eat or how he wanted HIS WAY. Derek had immediately tried to take the wind out of her sails by reminding her that it was only a temporary arrangement. He had made the most of his perfect routine until the day that three year old Patrick Hurst had come into their lives.

  Derek’s routine went right out of the fucking window. The moment that Patrick arrived he was eating Derek’s Food, watching Derek’s Television and leaving no time for Jane to look after Derek and HIS NEEDS. Derek’s tea began to arrive late, Derek’s dinner box wasn’t packed up on time and Derek couldn’t have HIS WAY until Patrick went to sleep. Sometimes Patrick would have a nightmare whilst Derek was having HIS WAY and Jane would jump up off him, leaving his throbbing member sticking up like a mutant fleshy flag pole. He would listen to the fuss she was making of him and would shake his head. She was going to make the k
id soft and a soft kid would make a soft adult, and that would never do. How would he look after himself once he was grown up? Derek had no idea. He turned on his side and finished himself off, leaving the sticky remnants of HIS WAY on her side of the bed. Afterwards he turned over and thought to himself how he needed to teach that boy a lesson or two about Derek Boston and how he like things HIS WAY. A smile broke out on his grizzled face as he began to doze.

  The very next day was a Saturday and Derek Boston liked to sleep in on a Saturday. Derek Boston worked his arse off all week and he needed to rest at the weekend. In fact, HIS WAY was more important than ever during the weekend. But today, the little shit Patrick had got up at six am and put Derek’s television on and turned the volume up. He had woken Derek up with the noise from the television, so Derek decided that it was time for Patrick’s first lesson. He had sat and the edge of the bed feeling the churn of anger deep in his belly, and savouring it. He could have let it out on Jane, who was sound asleep, despite the noise drifting up the stairs. He could have dragged her out of bed by her hair and told her to go and sort that fucking kid out. But today he was the one doing the sorting out. It was him that was going to make this kid into something they could all be proud of. He went down the stairs as quietly as he could. He was going to give Patrick the surprise of his fucking life. He went slowly through the kitchen and stood in the doorway of the living room. Patrick was sat cross-legged on the floor, his eyes transfixed on the television screen. It was on so loud that Derek wondered for a moment if the kid was fucking deaf. Well, he was about to put that to the test.