The Eavesdroppers

by Rosie Chard

  Scared girl: I’ll be here.

  Angry girl: You will.

  Scared girl: I will.

  STANLEY had never known Beryl to be so soft. He stroked her head, back and forth, back and forth, and decided he was happy. He’d spent the afternoon going round the big chemist’s up on Weatherton Street. He was in heaven in there, what with the expanding floss, the transparent blue gels and the coloured packs of interdental picks. How he loved his little mouth mirror with its ergonomic grip and shiny face. These days he dreamt of mint and woke up smelling of cloves. He’d even added a shake of toothpowder to his soup, which gave it a delicious tang and made his teeth feel fresh all day

  Earlier that morning he’d made his third appointment in three weeks at the surgery. The receptionist was against him of course. She had no idea of the revitalising power of clean enamel, but the dentist had understood. Yes, that man knew when a filling was needed. No qualms, no ‘ifs,’ no ‘buts,’ just a professional, ‘let’s not take any chances with that dark shadow Mr. Stipple’ that left Stanley with an even whiter smile on his face.

  He put his face to Beryl’s bars, smelling the metal. Even though the area beneath her was crunchy with droppings and a feather was loose in her back, she looked like a beautiful queen in a gilded cage.

  “I have something to tell you, Beryl,” he said.

  Beryl didn’t like preambles; she was a stickler for direct, concise language, but on this occasion he couldn’t get the words out without a little build-up. “So, I was in the dentist the other day, you know the place where they repair your teeth and I saw . . . someone.”

  Beryl twisted her head and began preening the feathers on her wing.

  “Didn’t you hear what I said? I saw someone I liked the look of.”

  She paused and gazed at him: a cold, grey stare.

  “But she won’t replace you, darling. She won’t ever replace you.”

  Beryl shivered, then stared at him. A cold, grey, judgemental stare.

  “Bugger you, Beryl,” he said.

  He went out into the garage, rummaged in a drawer and brought his hammer back into the kitchen. Then he wrenched Beryl’s half-pecked cuttlefish out of the cage, rinsed it under the tap and began to break it up, five pieces, then eight, then twenty. But his wrists began to ache so he returned to the garage, came back with a drill and held it to the cuttlefish. Beryl’s shoulders stiffened; she pecked at the bars of the cage, crabety crab, crabety crab. The drill whined; Beryl pecked crabety crab, crabety crab. Stanley found the pestle and mortar and drowned out Beryl’s noise with a grating and grinding that went on and on and on. At last the perfect texture. Stanley licked his finger, dipped it into the powder and massaged his inflamed gums.

  Stuff Beryl, he thought. She had no idea what pleasure he had.

  He looked back at her. He didn’t say it, but he thought it. I don’t love you any more.

  CHAPTER

  30

  I ordered tea but what turned up was a dark, coffee-like brew, tarry to the taste and already staining the inside of the mug. The cafe at Dungeness beach was frayed all over – sad old tablecloths and tired curtains, and each time someone opened the door a breeze swept round my ankles. Still, I liked it. No complicated choices of beverage, no line-up of fancies, just tea or coffee, sandwich or cake.

  The people, and there were people, seemed content with their lot: the sea – always over there – the wild cabbage growing on the shingle and the long, swaying washing lines all heavy with jeans and shirts and wiped-down motorbike covers. People’s hair seemed permanently windswept – a comb in a pocket, a hairband waiting on a wrist. I liked the place, and strangely, felt it liked me.

  Although the idea had dropped into my head quickly it had taken time to arrange the meeting with Raymond Watt. It’s hard to rush the Royal Mail, I discovered. The post office queue is a slovenly beast, threaded with customers with complicated requests and by the time I’d reached the front to buy a stamp I was ready to snap. Then I’d waited. I hadn’t watched for the postman from the window so much since I fell in love with my French pen friend at thirteen years old, but finally an envelope with the familiar writing, once so derided, fell onto my doormat.

  By the time the old man finally arrived my plate was covered in crumbs and I was wiping cake grease off my fingers with a napkin. He sat down on the chair opposite me in the same way my dad would have, cautiously, as if expecting a practical joke to befall him. We looked at each other. The usual pleasantries that stagger out in social situations such as this seemed redundant and I found myself observing, by way of introduction, without even an attempt at a greeting, that the government’s new bedroom tax was wildly unfair.

  He viewed me coldly. “I have no interest in bedrooms.”

  I reorganised the cutlery on my plate in an effort to occupy the ensuing and interminably long hiatus. “I. . . .”

  “Has it begun?” he said, his face the grimmest of masks.

  A cup rattled on a saucer. “Yes. It has begun. That’s why I’m here.”

  He sighed, a slight release of air through his nose that left him looking kinder. “What’s happened?”

  I ran through the eavesdroppers in my head: Stanley at the dentist, Eve in the launderette, Missy in the toilet, Violet in the cafe, Jack going round and round beneath the streets of London. But now that I had to say it out loud it was hard to get it right. What had happened? “Some of them are in trouble.”

  A brow lined on the other side of the table. “What kind of trouble?”

  “It’s hard to put my finger on it exactly, it’s not all of them, but they seem to be taking it all a bit too seriously.”

  “Listening is a serious job.”

  “I know that, it’s just that I think it’s beginning to affect them.” I took a vigorous sip of my tea.

  “Go on.”

  “They’re having some . . . problems.” He didn’t reply; I tried to read his thought. “Serious problems.”

  He held my eye. “Are any of them being followed yet?”

  “How the hell did you know about that?”

  “Have they started following other people yet?”

  “No! Wait, you mean stalking? No, nothing like that that has happened, but one of them, one of the women–”

  “You have women?”

  “Er . . . well, yes. I have three women.”

  “And you let them go out alone?”

  “Yes, but . . . in public places.”

  “In daylight?”

  “Oh, yes. Always in daylight.”

  “So what’s happened to one of the women?”

  “One of them has a bandage on her arm. A cat . . . scratched it. And one of them overheard a conversation between . . . sort of . . . criminals.”

  He glanced across the room, leant towards me and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Mr. Harcourt. You must be frank with me.” He glanced across the room again. “Are they all still alive?”

  I struggled across the shingle, feet like lead, my shoes sucked down into the stones, then up and free again, crunching, crunching, crunching, then down. The wind scraped my hair off my forehead; the ducks flew up into the air with splashes of water, silent wings and feet hanging down loose.

  I slogged past the first sound mirror and on towards the long wall beyond, so long, so hard to reach with feet in the shingle. The long wall. Such a plain name for an object so forbidding. Rather than being round and sitting on a pedestal like its brother this sound mirror touched the ground and curved in a long, gentle arc.

  I stood at one end of the wall. Something made me want to measure it, so I paced its length – sixty paces that I almost lost count of – then I pressed my chest against the seaward side and looked up. At least forty feet of concrete towered above me. Then I stretched out my arms and spread-eagled myself against it. The wind rushed past my ears. I could hear my own breath. I could feel my heart thumping in my chest. And I could hear the hum of the concrete. Could the mirror still hear after all t
hese years? What was it listening to? Was it listening to me?

  I gazed out to sea. Someone had died. Someone had listened so hard that it had ended their life. ‘How?’ I’d pressed the old man. But ‘how’ was locked away somewhere, in his mind, in a file, in a long forgotten drawer. He couldn’t say. He wouldn’t say. It had been Raymond’s responsibility to close their ears, to cut them off. But the ears kept on flapping. ‘But how did you stop it?’ had been my most insistent question. ‘Your responsibility’ was all he’d said. ‘Your responsibility.’

  Bloody responsibility; I hated it. Bloody, bloody responsibility. I looked at my watch. Thirty minutes until the last train. I had to get back to London.

  Someone had died.

  VIOLET had taken the skin off her heels from walking. But even the ruin of her seventh pair of stilettos was nothing compared to the feeling of elation she had got from the chase. She’d allowed herself to call it that. Her previous life, of waiting to be sought out by men, was now over. She was now the seeker. More than that, she was the pursuer, the bloodhound that sniffed and followed and never gave up. But bloodhounds need food and for now she was back in the all-night cafe, chomping on a bacon sandwich laced with ketchup, planning her next move.

  Her first night beneath his tree had been hard. The damp in the air had made her colder than she’d ever been and a man had shouted ‘great arse’ out of a passing car, but it had been worth it. She’d caught glimpses of life inside the house. His life. Not once, but three times. His shoulder had glanced the window. Heartbeat up. His hand had pulled the curtain and his silhouette had seemed to open the door and sniff the air, as if detecting a new scent in the garden. She’d sensed that final action coming, so she’d moved quickly behind the tree and observed undetected. She’d always been good at stealth. She should have been a detective. She was a detective. How she enjoyed the details she was collecting. She knew more about this man than she knew about her own mother.

  A clatter of plates brought Violet back to the present. She wiped the remains of her bread round the edge of the plate and put the reddened dough into her mouth. She glanced at her watch. Time to go back. Her vigil awaited her.

  A couple of shouty teenagers were occupying the end of his street when she turned the corner, but when they saw her they linked arms and disappeared into the dark. She walked up the road, her heels tapping on the pavement, her trousers softly chafing between her thighs. Lights were on in an upstairs room. She adjusted the clasp at the back of her bra and leant against the tree. She was the tree, leaning and listening, absorbing the sounds around her. It was surprising how many noises gathered beneath her leafy canopy. Then a new sound took shelter close to her ear and for just a fraction of a second, she thought she could hear what was being said inside the house.

  CHAPTER

  31

  My message took an eternity to write. I’d never learnt to text on my phone with thumbs. The movement reminded me too much of the stunted flippers of a baby seal, so my typing was usually one-fingered and slow and the message evaded me for several minutes. The spellcheck repeatedly replaced ‘tomorrow’ with timorous and ‘Violet’ with bio, but finally the urgent call to convene was out in cyberspace.

  Stanley, Jack, Violet, Eve. I’m calling an urgent meeting tomorrow afternoon at 3 o’clock. At my flat. Not the office. At my flat. Please let me know if you can make it. I need you to confirm. Please confirm you can come. Bill H.

  The train back to London was soporific, stopping at every station, dragging its wheels over a vibrating track. I imagined my message lodged inside their mobiles, waiting to be opened and read. I regretted my use of the word ‘urgent’ only after I’d pressed send. They’d worry. Missy would wring anxiety from her handkerchief and Jack would purse his lips into a very straight line.

  The bins at Victoria Station were overflowing when I arrived, yet I could only find a small jam-stained scrap of paper to write Missy a note. My pencil was stubby but had enough lead to write: Missy. We have an urgent meeting at 3 o’clock tomorrow. Please be there. At my flat. You have the address. Kind regards. Bill Harcourt.

  I was relieved to see that Missy’s lights were all out when I reached her building. It seemed odd that a twenty-something woman would be in bed so early, but it suited my intent of sliding the note into her postbox unnoticed. Please let her find it, I thought as I slipped back into the dark street. Please.

  “Say that again!”

  “I’m going to cancel the eavesdropping project.”

  “But, Bill, you’re only two months in!”

  ‘I know. But it’s . . . going wrong.”

  “What’s going wrong?” said James. “I know there were teething problems but I thought they were getting really good at it.”

  “They are getting good at it. But they’re also getting in more . . . trouble.”

  James stood up and closed the office door. “What sort of trouble? Is Jack still being followed by that geezer?”

  I ran my hand through my hair. “No, no, it’s not that . . . God, James, it’s so messed up. They’re all doing crazy stuff.”

  James bit his lip. “Go on.”

  Where to start? The deluded version or the real version? The deluded version was easy to live with. I took a deep breath “Eve turned up the other day looking all done up . . . all . . . like a . . . a prostitute. Missy has fucking bandages all up her arm and Stanley. . . .”

  James shifted in his seat. “And Stanley. . . .”

  “ . . . Stanley seems to have fallen in love with a child.”

  “Oh God.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He hasn’t–”

  “No! No, I’m sure he . . . hasn’t. It’s all in his mind.”

  “Sure?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Have you told–”

  “No. I haven’t told Wilson.”

  He leant back in his chair. “How did Missy get the bandages?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “No need to shout.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Did you even ask her?”

  “She said it was a cat.”

  “Huh?”

  “She said a cat scratched her.”

  James frowned. “I can’t take all this in. Did you say Eve looked like a prostitute?”

  I laughed, just for a second. Then I explained. Not every shameful detail but what I could bear to retell. He listened diligently, nodding and smiling kindly, and then winced before pointing out that it probably wasn’t the whole story (how did he suddenly get so clever?) but only my side of it. Before I had a chance to challenge this statement he spoke again. “What about Violet?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did she get into any trouble?”

  Violet. I took a minute to trawl through all our encounters in my head.

  “Well? “ James insisted. “Did she show any sign of problems?”

  “She . . . never really changed. She’s been pretty consistent throughout.”

  James cocked his head to one side. “Bill.”

  “Yes.”

  “Just thinking . . . in all this, you left someone else off the list of names. Someone important.”

  “Oh, yeah? Who?”

  “You.”

  I didn’t let the word, this ‘you’ word sink in. I just let it slide down the outside of my body. “James . . . there’s something else I haven’t told you.”

  “Go on.”

  “I went to see that bloke again.”

  I waited.

  “Can I assume you mean the man down at Lydd?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He shifted his shoulders into an uncomfortable-looking shape. “What did he say?”

  “He was a bit peculiar.”

  “In what way?”

  “He told me one of the original eavesdroppers, you know the ones who operated the sound mirrors during the war, that they’d . . . well, one of them, they’d . . . sort of died.”

  “Died? How?�
��

  “He wouldn’t say exactly, he got a bit cagey.”

  “He must have said something!”

  I felt vaguely queasy. “‘Careless talk costs lives.’ That’s what he said.”

  James stared at me across the empty space of the office.

  It had seemed wrong to have the final meeting in the office. There would be an expectation that everything was alright. Also, I didn’t want to risk an encounter with Wilson in the corridor – the grizzled look, the demand for an update – so I’d invited them all to my flat. But I hadn’t counted on the excitement it would cause. Violet emailed me back quickly and told me she was going out to buy a new dress, an announcement I didn’t have the guts to reply to, while Stanley promised the re-emergence of his Teddy Boy suit not worn since his days as a spiv down The Old Kent Road in the 1950s.

  I remained in my armchair after the bell rang, facing the door. But the inside of my body couldn’t stay still. It squeezed sweat to the surface; it forced extra blood through my heart and it stabbed a miniscule pain into one of my eyelids. My ears sought out some reassuring sounds but all I could hear was the rumble of my neighbour’s washing machine, the patter of rain on the roof and in the distance, the bite of a drill into wood. I got up and let them into the building.

  A moment later feet sounded on the stairs. “Come in, come in,” I said, opening the door.

  To my surprise they were all there at once, pecking order intact – Violet and Stanley at the front, Eve and Missy behind them, yet Jack, back-of-the-bunch Jack, wasn’t at the rear, but standing to one side looking straight at me, a relaxed smile on his face.

  Not questioning how they’d managed to choreograph the simultaneous arrival, I ushered them into my flat. They were damp from the rain and I suppressed an urge to get out a towel and rub them all down like dogs. I’d set out some nibbles – nuts and raisins and cheese biscuits – and before I’d had time to take their coats they were digging in.