by Mark Yarwood
‘What does she make of all the stuff you sell in this shop?’ I pulled the book from her face.
‘Nothing. She’s my mother, so we don’t talk.’ She looked at me calmly. ‘Now, put the closed sign on the door and get naked.’
‘Mate, maybe she’s dead.’ Kevin lifts the binoculars to his eyes and peers up at the window. Kevin doesn’t have the money for night vision goggles and I’ve refused to lend him the money to get any.
The other night, I thrust my own stick of rock into Janet in the room next door to her mother’s. It took a long time for me to arrive at my destination, as I was listening for noises in the room next door. When I did arrive, Janet was there, already waiting for me, panting like a dog with sunstroke.
My beard was shorter. I had begun to trim, ready for when it was about to come off. Janet’s chin was getting red and sore. There was a red patch like a strawberry underneath her mouth. She told me she liked the beard and to keep it. ‘Without it,’ she told me, a bit sadly, ‘there’d be no love hearts on my chin.’
Janet told me that she wanted to be free of her mother, free of her shop and all the crap they had to sell. Her paintings, the ones with our bodies imprinted on them, made during our messy multicoloured sex session, were her way out. Soon galleries around the country would want them for a high price.
I asked her what would happen if her mother died, wouldn’t she be free then? Janet looked at me as she put her hands behind her head, showing me a dab of purple paint on her elbow. ‘No, my mother will never die. She’s immortal. She’s been around forever. I’ll die before her.’
After screwing Janet, when I take a piss, I found flecks of paint under my foreskin.
I came out of the toilet and looked towards the closed door. I could hear breathing coming thick and fast, an old lady gasping for breath. I trod towards the sound and heard Janet come out of her room.
‘Where are you going?’ Janet asked.
‘I thought I heard your mother call out,’ I told her.
‘Probably begging the devil not to take her soul.’ Janet pulled me by my beard and pushed me onto the bed.
‘Mate, I think she killed her mother because she wants the shop,’ Kevin says in a whisper.
‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ I say. ‘I thought you liked Janet, anyway.’
He nods. ‘I love her. I want to help her.’
I remember the stick of rock on the kitchen table that read: I want to kill you.
‘I can’t see her anymore,’ Kevin says and keeps looking through his binoculars.
‘If she’s got any sense,’ I tell Kevin, ‘she’ll be in bed, like we should be.’
Suddenly, Janet’s in the darkness, standing underneath a light from a lamp. Kevin jumps to his feet and scrambles to go back down the road. I grab the back of his trousers, pulling him to a halt. Kevin drops to the road surface, trying to grip it to push himself up, but trying not to touch it at the same time. He kicks his legs back at me, getting me in the chin. I hear a popping sound and realise he’s released himself from his trousers. I watch his white pants fade into the night.
Janet comes into view, her hands on her hips.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Her eyes drop to my feet.
I see the binoculars. Kevin’s binoculars.
‘I wanted to see you,’ I say and smile.
‘Through some glass? That’s how you see fish.’ She folds her arms.
Kevin’s obsession is my downfall. His illness is my disgrace.
I’m not the pervert. Go down the road and watch the man running through town in his underpants.
As much as I hate Kevin right then, I cannot, for some elusive reason, tell her about his secret love.
‘Is this about my mother?’ she asks.
‘Your mother?’ I say, stalling.
She looks up at the darkened window. ‘Were you trying to see into my mother’s room?’
I am not the pervert in this town. I just brought him with me. I had to have him with me. Having Kevin round with me is a must. He makes me feel better about myself. Yes, Kevin is my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
‘Are you in love with my mother?’ Janet asks, her face showing no signs of joking. ‘Do you like women who can’t fight back?’
‘It’s not like that at all,’ I say and wonder how quickly I can turn and run.
Janet bends down, her eyes still on me, grabbing for the binoculars. When she stands up, she starts patting the glasses in her other hand, like it’s a heavy torch or police baton. ‘You were standing outside my house, looking up at my mother’s bedroom. Isn’t that stalking?’
What can I say? Kevin wanted to see your mother? ‘I wanted to see your mother.’
The binoculars rest in her hand. She steps closer, close enough so I can smell toothpaste on her breath. On her cheek, I can see a small tick of paint, which I have to stop myself from peeling off. ‘Why?’
What can I say? Kevin wanted to know if she was really ill or if you had murdered her? ‘I wanted to know if she was really bed ridden.’
‘Is that why you tried to sneak into her room the other night? You think I’ve got her tied up or something?’
I have an involuntary shrug and that’s all it takes.
I flinch when the binoculars are raised and hold my arms over my head. Janet hammers them into my arms and back, catching my head every now and again. I move quickly away and she follows and begins kicking my backside, pushing me around and screaming.
‘You think I killed my own mother?’ she shouts and I see lights come on along the lane. The binoculars slam against my back and I’m crouching, huddled in fear and the blackness of my curled arms.
Someone calls something out from the warm light of a doorway and Janet screams, ‘Fuck off you old twat!’
My hair is gripped and I find myself being pulled into her house and booted up the stairs. My eyes glance to her mother’s room as Janet opens her own bedroom door and pushes me in. She rips open my shirt and I hear my buttons bounce off the bedside table, while Janet suddenly bites hard on my neck. This is a hate bite and it’ll shine angrily for days.
On the bed, I lie and let her unbutton my jeans and pull my fearful soldier out of my pants.
Someone call the police.
When I get home, Kevin is standing in a corner of the lounge still in just his T-shirt and underwear. He jerks as I come in and looks in horror behind me. My ripped shirt tells him everything.
‘Mate, what happened?’ Kevin moves some dirty plates from the sofa and sits down.
‘I don’t know,’ I say and realise that when a woman is that pissed off with you and she still screws your brains out, then she definitely has something to hide.
‘Mate, did she try and kill you?’ Kevin looks at the fiery mouth on my neck and the scratch marks on shoulders.
‘You know what Kevin, I think she definitely tried to.’
Chapter Eleven
The man is standing in the doorway to my tiny office, holding a sheet of paper in his hand, his unshaven face smiling slightly. In his other hand is a briefcase which has a worn and battered look, much like its owner’s face.
‘You better give me my money or I’ll kill you all. I mean it, I’ll burn down the building and all of you in it.’ The man looks up and raises his eyebrows.
My door is always open, always unlocked. Nobody in this village expects anyone would walk in without an invite, so why should I?
The letter he’s holding, I’m pretty sure it’s one of the ones Kevin sent to the company. The man puts the letter into his briefcase and takes out another.
‘You’ll all die unless you pay me what I’m owed,’ the man reads and gives a slight chuckle. It’s a throaty laugh that comes from smoking too many cigarettes. I can smell eau de tobacco from here.
In the good old United States of America, if someone breaks into your home you can shoot them dead and get away with it. Honest officer, he was going to kill me. Any US cop will tell you to make sure the intr
uder falls inside your house. If they end up outside, drag them back inside. It makes the paperwork easier.
There’s paint under my nails. I’m sitting at my desk, ready to write something, anything, and I see the mixture of a multitude of paints. They’ve combined under my nails to make a colour that’s somewhere between brown and dark purple. The artist’s mud. I still haven’t got all the paint out of my hair. I’ve cut out lumps of hair, but still there they are- my sins showing on my scalp.
‘This paper is the same paper used by the company,’ the man says and tucks the sheet back into his briefcase. ‘You stole letters and envelopes from your employer, then used them to write threatening letters. That’s pretty fucking stupid.’
And now I feel like getting out my degree in Marketing and PR. I feel like telling him who led the company quiz team to so many victories over so many years. Stupid is not a word to describe me. Vain, yes, but not stupid, not by a long shot.
On this man’s face is a thousand violent stories. This man is a survivor. This is probably the ex –copper I’ve heard so much about.
‘You shouldn’t have kept writing these letters, not after they warned you off.’ The man folds another letter and files it away in his bruised case.
All the words on those sheets of paper, the ones threatening to destroy them the company and blah blah blah, are not mine. They are the obsessive and compulsive crazy poetry that comes out of someone like Kevin. Bless him. They never treated him very well, none of them. When he took an hour getting their lunches, instead of twenty minutes, because he was stepping in and out of the cafe God knows how many times, or avoiding the cracks in the pavement, they didn’t understand the reasons why. They didn’t understand that if the food touched his hand he had to throw it away, or, if he didn’t his best friend from school, Neil, would die. He hasn’t seen Neil for ten years. He could have got some rare cancer and died anyway. Neil could have been hit by a bus. It doesn’t matter in Kevin’s brain.
‘You should have stopped right then, right when they warned you.’ The man shakes his head and puts down his briefcase.
In Janet’s shop, there’s a stick of rock that says: kiss my anus.
In Janet’s world they could easily be words of filthy love, but right now they seem appropriate.
Why don’t I tell him about Kevin? Why don’t I go on my knees to the company and plead and say it was Kevin who wrote those letters? I keep asking myself these same questions. My thoughts written by his hand on my computer. Maybe that’s it. Maybe in my eyes he is a defenceless animal. It’s not his fault. Like stalking all those office temps was not his fault.
‘This isn’t really a matter for the police anymore,’ the man says and looks about my office. He walks out and looks around the lounge, with me slowly following. ‘It’s gone beyond the police now.’
My friendship with Kevin, or rather my feeling sorry for Kevin, has come down to this one moment. Trust him not be even present for my murder. No, not murder. Let’s hope for just a brutal beating and a few days in hospital. Perhaps I can sue the company, get one of those win- now- pay- later lawyers they are always advertising on TV.
‘This isn’t anything personal,’ he says. He takes of his coat and carefully lays it down on the sofa. ‘This is a nice place.’
I suddenly ask the man why his does this sort of work. Didn’t he use to be a policeman?
He shrugs. He tells me this line of work pays better and, believe it or not, you don’t get to beat people up when you’re a policeman. Not on a regular basis, anyway, he tells me.
I’m dying so Kevin might live. I could be a kind of Christ or some kind of martyr. Maybe they’ll make me the saint of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder suffers. Kevin’s sins are my salvation. God bless Kevin. I’ll have to make a stick of rock for him that reads: You crazy idiot, you killed me.
The man looks me over and rolls up his sleeve. ‘Want me to stay away from your face? Do you want it all in the body? At least then, when you wake up from your coma, you’ll stand a chance with the nurses.’
I watch him laugh and think about rushing him. But then, I remember I’ve never won a fight in my life.
‘What’s going on here?’ a large figure asks from behind the man.
When I look beyond the lump of muscle in front of me, I see the scarred face of Billy Wallis standing in my doorway. Now Billy Wallis’ ugly, scarred looking mug is the face of a loving father or a close uncle that visits a lot.
‘This is none of your business mate,’ the man says and turns to me.
Billy Wallis walks in and stands between me and the man. He folds his arms and gives the man a good view of his cut up face. ‘Perhaps it is my business.’
The man opens his mouth, but Billy holds up a solitary stubby finger to his craggy lips. ‘Perhaps this young man is my son.’
The confusion grows on the man’s face.
Billy reaches out and lightly adjusts the man’s tie. ‘He could be my son. He’s not, but he could be. Perhaps I’m his uncle.’
Family, Billy says, is very important. They are the people you should be willing to die for, to kill for, if necessary. He looks the man over. He tells us, both of us, about his brother who was beaten to death by the gangster brothers, Ted and Rob Harding, some thirty odd years ago. He points to his own patchwork face, traces a finger along the trenches dug into his countenance, telling us about the time Ted and Rob’s gang members attacked him with knives. All he had, he says, was his hands to protect him. When he holds up the back of his hands, the scars on them seem to connect with the ones on his face.
The man and I, we look at each other, both of us bewildered by the old man’s tale.
Billy keeps on talking, his East London accent painting a picture of a violent tale of revenge. With a bathtub, a car battery and someone’s gonads, he says, you can have a real fun evening. Removing someone’s teeth, he tells us, with a pair of pliers, makes for a bloody, but enjoyable night.
The man doesn’t want to look into Billy’s fleshy eyes anymore, with their crystal blue shine.
This story is for me as much as it is for the man.
Why is Billy Wallis here anyway? What does he want? I had tried to forget about my night at Maggie Parks’ house and the fact that he kidnapped me and took me there in the first place. The question is: what does Maggie want with me?
In the story he tells us, Billy is now standing in a car park, having tied Rob Harding to the end of a car, face down. His brother Ted is being held, restrained by a couple of Billy’s friends, made to watch as the driver of the car drags his brother along the tarmac at high speed.
I look at my own hands, remembering what it was like to fall in the school playground and graze my palms and my knees. I shudder.
Billy, after taking all the letters out of the man’s briefcase, makes a little fire in my kitchen. He tells the man that there will be no further action. The man nods and looks like he wants to cry.
There should be a stick of rock for Billy that reads: Best fake dad in the world.
My new gangster best friend tells the man never to come back and to get the message across to his employers. He says, to the man, perhaps he better get another job.
I make Billy a cup of tea, all milky, the way he says he likes it. I let him sit in the armchair in the middle of the room. I don’t know what to say, so I thank him, tell him how much I appreciate what he’s done for me. He waves away my words.
I’m thinking, wondering what does Maggie Parks want with me? Then I shiver.
‘There’s no need to thank me,’ Billy says. ‘Truth is, you should be thanking Mrs. Parks. She’s the one who sent me here. She likes you. She thinks you’ve got a good heart.’
I try and smile. There are some people who you would prefer hate you.
‘She also knows that you’re in financial trouble,’ the ex- East End gangster says and takes a sip of tea. ‘She’s no stranger to that situation. She thinks you can help each other out. She’ll pay you for your time, so
don’t worry about that.’
Maggie Parks paying me for my time. Just imagine it. I feel vomit clambering up my throat. ‘But I thought you just said she doesn’t have any money…so…?’
‘With your cooperation, she’ll have a lot of money,’ he says and winks. This doesn’t look like a manoeuvre he performs often, as the rest of his flinches and creases.
He sips his tea and puts the cup down on my coffee table. ‘If something should happen to her home, then the insurance company would pay out big. Say that it went up in smoke and fell into the sea, then both of you would be laughing.’
I expect him to laugh at any moment. I’m thinking about sending Maggie Parks a stick of rock that reads: Set fire to your own house and don’t bother leaving as the flames lick your crumpled body.
‘She wants me to set fire to her house?’ I ask. ‘They’d never fall for that. They’d know it was arson.’
‘Not if it looked like an accident,’ Billy tells me and relaxes a little, looking at me through the two thin slits in his jagged rock face.
‘They’d know,’ I say.
‘Not if someone drove a boat into her home.’ He picks up his milky tea and sips it, his eyes still fixed on me. ‘Not if it looked like they lost control, and headed straight into her cliff side home.’
Staying calm, I watch Billy drink his tea before I bother to talk. ‘You want me to drive a boat into her home, so it’ll look like an accident?’
Billy Wallis nods.
‘But I’ll die,’ I say.
He shakes his head. ‘Not if you jump ship.’
‘And what if I say no?’ I ask.
‘You don’t have much choice in the matter. If you don’t, something bad will happen to you. And you need this as much as Maggie.’ Billy finishes his tea.
‘I see,’ I say and watch him stand up.
‘We’ll talk soon,’ he says and heads for the door.
‘Okay.’