The Herring Seller's Apprentice

by L. C. Tyler

  ‘Now?’

  ‘When else? Now. Listen, Ethelred, I know everything. You’ve finally slipped up. I know exactly what your game is,you pillock.’

  There was another pause. ‘I doubt that,’ he said.

  ‘I know who you’re off to meet.’

  ‘Do you? I bet you don’t.’

  ‘You bet I do,’ I said.‘The only thing I don’t quite understand is how you’ve got away with as much as you have.’

  ‘Unmerited good fortune,’ he replied.‘And the fact that I’m a writer of detective stories. That I suspect played a large part in it.’

  I may have given a snort of derision at this point.

  ‘You’re right,’ he continued, ‘perhaps that was not significant. But it has gone much better than I could have possibly hoped. I’ve had two massive strokes of good fortune – Peters’s death was the second, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘After all, it would have been most inconvenient if he had been able to deny that he had ever met Geraldine.’

  ‘Very But why did you do it?’

  ‘I suppose that I never stopped loving her.’

  A tosser to the end,’ I said. ‘What time does your plane leave?’

  ‘I have to check in around five o’clock.’

  ‘In the afternoon?’ I asked hopefully.

  ‘In the morning. The taxi’s booked for four.’

  ‘Cancel it. She’s just using you, Ethelred.’

  Another silence, then: All right. I’ll tell you what. Perhaps you do deserve an explanation, at least.We’ll talk about it all on the way to the airport. I’ll tell you what happened and if you can make me change my mind, I won’t get the plane.’

  ‘Don’t leave until I get there.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Good. But honestly, I despair of you. Ethelred Tressider, what are you like? Eh?’

  ‘I’m like my father,’ he sighed.‘I’m exactly like my father.’

  Another bizarre night drive, but this time primarily on the left-hand side of the road. I passed through the weird, empty, ochre, neon-lit City, over Blackfriars Bridge and along the South Bank. The Houses of Parliament appeared briefly across the dark water on my right, the long blank wall of Lambeth Palace on my left, and then I was off into the unending grot of south London. Somewhere around Chessington I hit open country again, and it was foot down on the accelerator, slamming on the brakes only momentarily for known speed cameras. Michael Schumacher would have been proud of me. Him and David Attenborough. This was, after all, a mission to Save the Penguin.

  There was a note on the front door of Greypoint House that read, ‘Don’t ring – door unlocked – come straight up.’ Kind of him to think of not disturbing the neighbours, I reckoned. Well, some prat had apparently kept them awake until one o’clock in the morning ringing the phone.

  When I entered the sitting room, three cases were standing neatly packed in the middle of the floor. Ethelred was tidying some papers away.

  ‘At least you’re still here,you pillock,’ I said.

  ‘I am a pillock of my word. I never tell a lie.’

  ‘But you tell the truth pretty selectively.’

  ‘That’s what writers do. As you will recall, I am a writer. To be exact, I am three writers,’ said Ethelred.

  ‘Then you’d think that one of you at least would have some sense.’

  ‘What are you saying? I’ll never get away with it? That was one cliché I did manage to avoid putting into the mouths of any of my characters.’

  ‘No, I’m saying you are a complete dickhead.’

  ‘All right. So tell me what you think you know.’ He gave me a funny look. If it had been anyone except Ethelred, it might have frightened me. But it was Ethelred. Just dear old Ethelred the Penguin.

  So, I gave him the lot, finishing with the telephone call from France,the yellow dots,the photograph albums and the jigsaw analogy. Though I say it myself, I was shit-hot stuff.

  ‘Not bad,’ he said when I had finished.‘There is some detail that you have missed – but then I don’t know the whole story myself, of course. I promised to tell you on the way to the airport, and so I will tell you everything I know.The taxi is cancelled, by the way. We’ll take my car. If you don’t make me change my mind,you can drive it back from Gatwick for me, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ I said.

  Ethelred smiled.‘Good.That’s settled then. Now, we’ve got a few minutes to spare. Would you like some coffee?’

  I shook my head.

  He looked a little disappointed.‘What about some hot chocolate then? I’ve got some Charbonnel and Walker’s.’

  He knew that there are certain things that I cannot resist.‘Just a big one then,’ I said.

  I drank it while he got together the last few things he wanted to pack. The hot chocolate was really very good. Once or twice I thought that it had a slightly bitter aftertaste, but I drank it all. Obviously.

  Twenty-eight

  Are you sitting comfortably?

  Another journey in the rain, I’m afraid, Elsie. It’s enough to make you want to leave the country, eh? The trip should take no more than forty minutes – but that should be enough time, I think, to give you the full story. The corner we’re coming up to now, by the way, is the one where Peters crashed. They’ve removed the wreckage, of course, but you can see the spot in our headlights now – look, just there where the earth’s ploughed up and the grass is scorched. A hundred and twenty miles an hour? Not even his Porsche could manage that. We’ll take it at a slightly more sedate fifty, I think. We’ve plenty of time. All the time in the world, really. Well, you have anyway. Just settle back and listen for a bit. Heating too warm? No? Good.

  If there’s one thing I tried to avoid in any of my books it’s long concluding chapters in which everything is explained. But you deserve the complete version, so forgive me just this once.

  You are right in thinking that you have worked out some key elements in the plot, but that of course was your difficulty all the way through – you thought that it was just one story, whereas in fact it was three, linked only in the most tenuous way. To use your analogy, you had the pieces of three different jigsaws in your box, and that’s why you’ve been struggling to make sense of them.

  So which story shall I begin with? How about Mary Jones’s story? It’s a rather sad little tale, but perhaps the most straightforward of the three. So, yes, let’s begin with that one.

  You will remember Mary Jones from Crimewatch: the rather plain lady consultant who vanished in Bournemouth. Of course, I don’t know all of her story and the only people who can fill in the missing details are dead, I’m afraid. But we do know that she was a rather unhappy and lonely person, with few friends, a failing consultancy business and a large overdraft. She arrived in Bournemouth one day towards the end of September to pitch for some work with a company there. She had, you will recall, allowed a couple of hours for the meeting, which in fact ended after fifteen minutes. Poor Mary. She must have realized that she was on the road to bankruptcy. So what did she do? Oddly enough, I can tell you almost exactly. She did not visit any of the local galleries. She did what any self-respecting woman facing bankruptcy would do – she went shopping. First she went to one of the department stores – she was caught on camera there. (Fame at last, eh?) She bought a bright red Italian suit. Then, at the same shop or elsewhere, she bought some expensive Italian shoes. She paid cash, withdrawn from a cash machine that day. I suspect that she had no choice but to pay cash, because her Access card had already been taken away from her, but that’s just speculation on my part. She probably also bought some new lipstick and eye shadow; I don’t think that she had owned either of these things before and she would certainly use both before the end of the day. Finally, she went off to a hairdresser’s and had her long mousy hair cropped short and dyed blonde. The makeover was complete. Did she feel better for it? Did she have a new confidence that everything was going to be OK? I hope so. I
do hope so.

  Then what? I have to start guessing at this point, but it goes something like this. She finds a cafe somewhere near the railway station to wait for her train. She orders a cappuccino and pays with her last remaining banknote. She pockets the change and sits, aware that a man at the next table is eyeing her appreciatively. This never happened before the makeover. She glances briefly in his direction: he’s rather good-looking. Dark wavy hair and a gap between his front teeth. He smiles at her. She looks straight ahead of her again, not in fact totally displeased, and takes a sip of her coffee. She takes out the novel that she has brought with her – Professional Misconduct by Amanda Collins – and pretends to read about the exploits of the dashing Mr Colin Cream MBBS FRCS FDSRCS (Eng).

  Then suddenly there he is, standing at her table – not Colin Cream, but somebody almost as good.

  ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ asks the man. (Let’s call him George Peters, because that was his name.)

  ‘I don’t think so,’ says Mary. It’s an obvious chat-up line, but Mary doesn’t get chatted up too often.

  ‘Your face is very familiar. Do you work for the BBC?’

  ‘Me? No! Do you?’

  ‘Oh yes. I’m a producer,’ he says.

  Yes, OK, I really am making the dialogue up now, but something of the sort did take place somewhere in Bournemouth that afternoon. Maybe he didn’t then offer to buy her another coffee – perhaps it was a glass of Chardonnay or a half of lager. Maybe he told her he was a professional footballer or that he was in advertising. But let’s stick with coffee and the BBC for the moment.

  So, Mary drinks her second coffee and they chat for a while.

  ‘Do you live in Bournemouth?’ asks Peters.

  ‘No, I’m just here on business. I’m getting the next train back to Margate.’

  ‘Really? What a coincidence. I’m going that way myself this afternoon,’ says Peters, his eyes opening just slightly too wide in surprise. ‘We’re filming near there tomorrow. I could give you a lift. Forget the train. You can travel by Porsche door to door.’

  ‘Don’t be silly – I’ve got a return ticket.’

  ‘Throw it away.’

  ‘What a waste! I couldn’t!’

  ‘You could. Honestly, it’s going to be faster than having to change trains in Portsmouth and Brighton, or wherever it is. And anyway, I’d really enjoy your company.’ He smiles. There’s that gap between the teeth again (just like Colin Cream). He looks nice.

  Funny, with hindsight, to think that with her long mousy hair and no make-up he would have ignored her completely, and she would now be alive and bankrupt and asleep in a single bed in Margate. But Peters likes blondes. I mean, really likes blondes. So what happens is this.

  ‘If you’re sure …’ she says.

  ‘Oh, yes, I’m sure.’

  She smiles too. She in her turn rather likes this dark-haired man – so different from the librarians and accountants that she has (only very occasionally) been out with before. There is just a hint of danger about it all – a hint of danger that the new Mary in a bright red suit feels is rather fun. ‘So this is what blondes get up to,’ she thinks.

  Then off they go, along the south coast on a sunny September day. Does she enjoy speeding along in a sports car? Does the wind blow through her new blonde hair? Do they stop somewhere later for a drink or a candle-lit supper? Again, I really hope so. It would be nice to think that she was happy on her last evening.

  Somewhere near Worthing they turn off the main road.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asks.

  ‘Have you ever seen the moonlight on Cissbury Ring?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s magic. Really romantic. I’ll show you. It won’t take long.’

  Romantic? Yes, please, she thinks. I like romantic.

  The moon is bright. The car speeds along the Sussex lanes. This, thinks Mary, makes up for everything else. This, in my new Italian red suit and my new red Italian shoes, is the beginning of a new life. The life I was always meant to have.

  At what point, I wonder, did she realize that it was all going horribly wrong? On the muddy climb in those new red shoes up to the top of the hill? Or not until his hands closed round her throat? Poor Mary.

  Now, unlike Mary, I am back on firm ground again. The following day a man walking his dog finds the body in a depression that was once an old flint mine. Nearby is a damp copy of a cheap romantic novel.

  A little while afterwards Mary is lying on a table in a brightly lit room that is all white and chrome, not that she is in a position to notice her surroundings. A middle-aged gentleman, who would have been a total stranger to her in life, comes in. He is accompanied by a young policeman. They are in their different ways apprehensive about what they have come to do. The young policeman is not used to this type of work. He is uncomfortable with the dead and even more so with the bereaved, and he just wants it to be over as quickly as possible. The middle-aged gentleman’s worries are less easy to pin down. When he sees the body a look of shock momentarily passes across his face, then he smiles.

  The policeman notices neither reaction. He wishes to catch nobody’s eye for the moment. ‘We immediately assumed that it was your wife,’ he says. ‘But we do need you to confirm the identification.’

  ‘I see,’ said the gentleman.

  ‘So, you are able to identify the body, sir? I understand that it’s been some time …’

  ‘I would know my wife anywhere, officer,’ says the gentleman quickly and firmly. (It is true, he would – though, as it happens, this is not she.)

  ‘You’ve no doubt about that?’

  ‘None at all.’ (This too is true – he is certain that, if he ever saw his wife, he would know her. Anywhere.)

  The young constable breathes a sigh of relief. ‘We are very grateful to you for identifying the body, sir. I realize that you and she have been divorced for some time. We might have asked her sister, but she does live some way away and it would have been …’

  ‘Very distressing for her?’

  ‘Exactly, sir. Very distressing.’

  The conversation continues for a short time, then, at the young constable’s suggestion, they leave, and the sound of their voices fades away down the long corridor. The lights in the room are switched off and Mary is left alone again, as she was for so much of her life. Some time later she is cremated under the name of Geraldine Tressider, but that is to jump ahead in our tale.

  OK so far, Elsie? Are you beginning to feel sleepy? I’m not surprised with all the driving you’ve done over the past few days. Tip back the seat if you like, you’ll be more comfortable. Just listen to me droning on and to the hypnotic swish of the windscreen wipers. That’s right. Close your eyes if you like.

  So, who next? I think it must be time for Ethelred Tressider. You may remember him too? A hack writer of no importance. Three hack writers, to be precise. Let’s tell his story.

  At what point did I realize that I was turning into my father, I wonder? There was no sudden revelation on the road to Damascus. For a long time, in fact, I truly believed that I was doing what I had always wished to do and had the respect and, up to a point, admiration of my peers. I wanted to be a writer and that was what I was. It was only over the years, as the prizes failed to come in, as the reviews (good or bad) became shorter and less frequent, as even the local bookshops stopped inviting me to sign books, that I gradually became aware of ambitions that would never be fulfilled: aware that there are … well … writers and writers. On a good day, Elsie, I obviously blamed you for luring me from the straight-and-narrow path of true literature in pursuit of a modest but comfortable income. But on a bad day, I knew that I had nobody to blame but myself. Like my father I was living a mere caricature of the career that I had intended, becoming more and more ridiculous as the years went by: a strange stooped figure, whom the village children would advise to get a life, since it was so obvious that I did not have one. It is said, Elsie, that Cardinal
Newman, having left the Church of England and met with nothing but reverses in the Church of Rome, was one day found silently weeping outside the church at Littlemore, where he had in happier times been the incumbent. I never returned to bestow my tears on the railings of the tax office, but I would sometimes wonder whether I might by now have been a senior inspector of taxes and I would note, with a strange fascination, each civil service pay increase.

  I suppose that I might have continued, almost indefinitely, prodding an increasingly reluctant Fairfax into action once a year, alternating this with a tale from the ever-fascinating world of oral and maxillofacial surgery. Master Thomas would have investigated the strange death of Richard II, and perhaps entered the service of the House of Lancaster. The wily and untrustworthy Henry IV would have had a use for him. He might not have been too old perhaps to accompany Henry V to Agincourt in some capacity. For him, unlike Fairfax and me, all sorts of opportunities beckoned.

  Slowly, I began to form a plan. I would break free. One day I would simply vanish, taking with me nothing but my laptop computer and a change of clothes. I would starve in a garret and write a masterpiece. So what stopped me, Elsie? The practicalities of it all, I suppose. Of course, it was an attractive idea: walking out one early summer morning, the misty sun just a finger’s breadth above the horizon, with nothing but a knapsack and the dusty open road ahead. But I would leave behind a tangle of unpaid bills, mortgages and standing orders. There would be books that I would miss, pictures, photographs – all becoming damp and mildewed in an empty flat. I wanted to flee and become a different person, but the person that I was said I couldn’t go.

  Then Geraldine came back. She arrived on my doorstep quite suddenly one morning and announced that we were going to have lunch together. That I might have anything better to do would not have occurred to her. She knew that there was nothing better to do than have lunch with her on a fine spring morning.

  And suddenly I was eighteen again.

  She never explained why she had come back, she never apologized for any minor inconvenience she might have caused me in the past – that would have been totally unlike her. In fact she began, over that first lunch, to describe her latest project, suggesting casually that I might like to invest several hundred thousand in it. When I said that I did not have hundreds, let alone hundreds of thousands, to spare, she burst out laughing and said that that was as well, because I would never have seen the money again. She then described how she planned to milk a number of mugs of whatever she could get, before fleeing the country and her accumulated debts. It was an amazing act of trust, under the circumstances. It was one of her random moves, and she sat back to see whether I would take her queen or resign the game. But, of course, she knew which I would do.