He rubbed his cheeks and nose and forehead with his arm. This brought a sudden flash of memory. The first day at school when he was eight and they had held him down and rubbed at his brown face ‘to see if it came off.’
He rejected the memory but that only caused him to remember why he was running. If he thought about what had happened he became afraid. Terribly afraid. So afraid that he tasted copper in his mouth and felt like vomiting – or ‘bringing up’ as his grandfather had called it.
He was afraid of what the people could see: afraid of the eyes, the swivelling heads. Would they remember? Would they tell?
Is that the police? I want to report a boy running through Trafalgar Square. A black boy. All covered in blood.
But he wasn’t black. Not true black. ‘What we calls a quadroon,’ his grandfather had said. ‘You the colour of Daley Thompson. Can’t be bad.’
He ran under Admiralty Arch and along the Mall. The plane trees were still bare of leaves. The March evening was bitterly cold with a wind out of the east, so dry that he could feel his lips cracking. The sky was leaden and there were freckles of powder snow. The lights were on. Dusk had come to the West End.
He ran beside the windswept, paper-strewn expanse of St James’s Park with Buckingham Palace looming up in front of him. This wasn’t his London. He’d hardly ever been here. He swung right into Green Park and ran towards Piccadilly.
Leicester Square and Chinatown, with their amusement arcades, beckoned. But he knew he’d be finished if he went there. Too many eyes. Too many street kids who already knew him by sight.
Day . . . lee . . . Day . . . lee . . . went the trainers on the pavement. The moment he began to think of running, the fear oozed away, he was back in his world.
Let’s see. Who could he be. Arthur Wint or Herb McKenley. 1948. Gold and silver for Jamaica. What a year! His grandfather said he’d never seen anything like it. Wint with his long legs going into his ‘float’ after the first hundred metres. Jamaica one and two. The best four-hundred-metre runners in the world. His grandfather had said so – and his grandfather knew.
Or he could just be himself. Why not? Arthur Wint. Herb McKenley. Himself. And Garner Maitland. OK. Four-hundred-metre relay final. He, Terry Collins, running the anchor leg.
Into Piccadilly now and heading west towards Knightsbridge. Thud . . . thud . . . thud . . . went the trainers.
Terry! Why couldn’t they have given him a proper name? Garner Maitland. His grandfather. That was a name. Don Quarrie. Two hundred metres. Twenty-point two-three. Gold for Jamaica 1976. That was a name. Haseley Crawford. Gold. Hundred metres. Trinidad. That was a name.
Wendell Motley . . . Harrison Dillard . . . Jesse Owens . . . Lee Evans . . . Bob Beamon . . . Hayes Jones . . . Willie Davenport . . . Lloyd LaBeach . . . Norwood Barney Ewell . . . The litany of names acted as a kind of tranquilliser.
‘You take Harrison Dillard,’ his grandfather had said. ‘Finest high hurdler I evah seen. Doesn’t make it in the US trials. So gets in the team for his sprintin’ alone. Man wins the hundred-metre gold.’
Kipchoge Keino . . . John Akii-Bua . . . Edwin Moses . . .
So, OK, here’s the final of the four-by-four hundred. US, East Germany, West Germany, Great Britain, Russia, Cuba, Nigeria a-a-n-n-d-d – Jamaica!
Lead-off man, Arthur Wint. Garner Maitland running the second leg. Then Herb McKenley and Terry at anchor. Except he wouldn’t be Terry but Huntsman. He’d seen the name on a tailoring shop a few days before and it had stuck in his mind. Huntsman Collins. That was a name.
‘Now, Arthur, he was like a flagpole,’ his grandfather had said. ‘Longest legs I evah saw. And after the first hundred, mon, he floated.’
Floating across Knightsbridge now with the traffic heavy on the south carriageway of Hyde Park. In among the trees, thudding along Rotten Row, not knowing where he was going, what he was going to do; just running.
Running past the Albert Memorial and into Kensington Gardens. Jamaica on the inside lane. Trailing down the straight. Arthur in his float. Then the bend and the stagger unwinds and . . . ‘and there’s Arthur coming through like a train . . .’
And then Maitland . . . and McKenley . . . and Huntsman Collins . . . Don’t drop the baton . . .! Clean change . . .! Now just hang on tight . . .!
The cheers were still ringing in his head when he found himself in strange territory and stopped running.
It was dusk now and he was alone. A pond glittered over to his left. A statue stood tall on his right.
Where was he?
He ran back a little way, found a deserted path along the Serpentine and followed it. The water was grey and forbidding. Pieces of stale bread flung to the ducks during the day had broken up into small waterlogged pieces. He came to the statue of a small boy. In the dim light he could make out the words PETER PAN on the stone plinth. Something stirred in his memory. Yes, he had it. A crocodile. And Captain Hook. And the Darling family. He forgot momentarily about where he was and why he was there and stood staring up at the statue feeling an ache in his heart. His grandfather had read him the story when he had first come to stay with them. That’s what he desperately wanted now, a family like the Darlings. Somewhere safe and loving.
He could not form this into coherent thoughts but that is what the ache meant.
Behind the statue was a wall. He would be out of the wind on the other side. It was not a high wall and he climbed over it, dropping softly down on the other side. Instantly, he found himself in a strange new world.
The wall enclosed an area of about half an acre. Shrubs and trees had been planted to hide and disguise it further. On one side was a large gate and on the far side to Terry stood a bulldozer.
In the enclosed area were enormous heaps of grass cuttings, piles of paper bags, newspapers and discarded Styrofoam cups. Thin wisps of smoke were rising from some of the grass heaps. It was one of the park rubbish dumps, but a relatively clean one. Terry looked at the grassy mounds with an appraising eye. It was just possible this place might temporarily answer his need.
He went over to a mound of grass and touched it. It felt dry and faintly warm. Now if he had some food he—
‘What d’you want, sonny?’
He whirled.
A man in overalls was sitting on one of the grass piles. He had a bottle in his hand. Now he screwed back the top and placed it in his pocket. He rose and picked up a rake. There was something menacing about him in the evening wind. Terry was momentarily stunned. Unable to move his legs.
‘Don’t you know the park gates are closed at dusk? Can’t you read? There’re notices everywhere!’
He was in his late forties with a tired face and tired eyes. He wore, over his overalls, a black donkey jacket and a scarf. On his head was a flat cap.
‘What are you doing, anyway? This isn’t open to the public.’
‘I been running,’ Terry said.
‘Jogging? At your age? You think you’re going to get a heart attack?’ The man looked at him for a moment and then his face softened. ‘Still, I work here and I’m as late as you. Come on, I’ll show you something. Just between the two of us, OK?’
‘OK.’
The park employee made his way along the Serpentine. On the other side of the darkling water Terry could see thickets of bush and trees.
‘That’s where the ducks sleep,’ the man said, pointing to the weedy growth.
He led Terry to the iron railings along the north side of the park. In the middle of a large rhododendron bush he hid his rake and then he moved a loose railing, sliding it to the right. It created a gap just big enough for the two of them to slip through.
‘Remember what I said,’ the man said. ‘You never seen this.’
‘Yeah. OK.’
The man disappeared in the direction of the Lancaster Gate tube station, the bottle making a bulge in his back pocket. Terry ran across the Bayswater Road. Now the streets were unfamiliar. He had never been here before. Everywhere he looked he
could see Mercedes, BMWs, and Jaguars. He stood uncertainly, not knowing what to do but knowing he had to do something.
Chapter Three
While Terry was running through London, a woman called Maria Dunlap was having tea with a friend. They were in Maria’s home near the village of Liss on the Hampshire – Sussex borders.
The house was a large and rather grand red-brick Edwardian villa, with Tyrolean woodwork, and a steeply pitched tiled roof. It had fourteen rooms on two floors if you counted the billiard room, sixteen on three if you counted the attics. It had been modernised five times in twenty years but the servants’ bells, although they no longer worked, still hung in their mahogany and glass case above the kitchen door. It stood in two acres of garden at the end of a gravel drive and was hidden from its neighbours by overgrown hedges of laurel.
Maria hated the shiny leaves so much that she sometimes discussed with Richard, her husband, the possibility of having it taken out and a beech hedge planted in its place.
Sometimes he said, ‘Fine. Good idea,’ and sometimes he said, ‘We’ll lose our privacy, but if that’s what you want then do it.’
That’s as far as it ever got. He was too busy and she was too . . . too what? Tired? God knows, it wasn’t that she didn’t have enough time to organise it, but somehow it never got done.
The English were very private, she thought. But then the Germans were even more so. And being half English and half German she should have been doubly private. In fact, she had always been gregarious, outgoing – until she came to live in this house the year before.
It had been a mistake, especially since she had lost the very reason for coming here. She had wanted her child brought up outside London. It was she who had insisted they leave the London house and find something in the country. At that time house prices were so high they had sold their house in Hampstead, the one that Richard’s father had left them, to an American multinational, and had been able, with the money, to keep the mews house in Bayswater for Richard to use, and to buy this villa in the country.
They were having tea in the small ‘winter’ sitting-room on the ground floor where a coal fire burned cheerfully. Maria was in one of the two leather armchairs, her legs drawn up under her. She was wearing black jeans and a loose white polo-neck sweater. Her thin, triangular face was shadowy in the half light of dusk.
In the other armchair was one of her oldest acquaintances in Britain, Jean Carradine. They had been at school together in Hampshire, had never been close friends and now, even though Jean lived less than twenty miles away, saw each other infrequently.
The afternoon had been taken up with whatever-happened-to-so-and-so conversation, with special emphasis on marriages. Many were on the rocks and both women gained secret satisfaction from the fact.
Jean was Maria’s age, thirty, but there the resemblance ended. Jean had had two children very young, a boy and a girl, both were at boarding-school. Maria had none.
Where Maria was rakishly thin, Jean had a kind of serene plumpness. Where Maria’s eyes were filled with worries and doubts, Jean’s gave the feeling that her main concern was what to give the children for their birthdays.
As they talked and as the cigarette butts grew in Maria’s ashtray, the light had gone out of the afternoon and grey dusk had crept into the room.
Maria had been fearful of putting on the lights, fearful of moving in her chair in case she precipitated an answering move from Jean. But now they could hardly see each other and finally she stretched to the big table lamp and switched it on.
Jean’s reaction was instant. She looked at her watch. ‘Is that the time?’
‘It’s early. When does Jeffrey get back from the City?’
‘Oh, not before eight.’
‘Well, it won’t take you more than half an hour to get home. What about a drink?’
Jean shifted in her chair. ‘I don’t . . .’
‘Come on, just one.’
The telephone rang in the hall.
‘Excuse me.’
Maria went out and picked up the receiver. It was a man wanting Richard. His voice sounded foreign.
‘I’m afraid he’s not here,’ she said.
‘It is about business.’
As if it was ever anything else, she thought.
‘He’ll be back next week,’ she said.
‘He has an office in London?’
‘That’s right.’ She gave him the address and telephone number. He thanked her politely and rang off.
She came back into the sitting-room feeling deflated. For a moment she had convinced herself it was Richard and that he was telephoning to say he was coming home.
‘What about that drink?’ Maria said.
‘All right. Just a sherry, then. A small one.’
Maria gave her an amontillado, and poured a gin and tonic for herself. Now that she was on her feet she put on the other lights in the room and drew the curtains. ‘That’s better. It shuts out the dark.’
The thought twisted in her stomach like a knife. Soon Jean would finish her sherry and refuse another and she’d go off to get Jeffrey’s dinner and Maria would be left in this large empty house – in the dark.
Dusk. Nightfall. The very words frightened her. Things happened in the dark that did not happen in daylight.
They talked about Jeffrey’s ulcer and how ulcers weren’t so much of a problem these days with the new drugs. And then Jean finished her drink and rose, smoothing down the pleats of her Jaeger skirt.
‘Have another,’ Maria said. ‘You don’t have to go just—’
‘I really must.’
She fetched Jean’s coat and they made their way to the front door. Caesar came out of the kitchen to see what was happening. Caesar was a large Alsatian Richard had given her as protection and company when he was away. Maria had never come across a dog with so little personality. It neither liked nor disliked her and she felt the same about it. All it wanted from her was food. It was supposed to be a guard dog but never barked when anyone came. It would put its head out into the passage and then slink back to the warmth of the kitchen. Apart from anything else, it smelled.
They stood in the front hall, chatting.
‘Are you going away?’ Jean said.
Maria shook her head. ‘Richard’s gone to Lisbon.’
‘For Easter?’
‘It’s business.’
She must have spat the word out for Jean’s eyes suddenly widened.
‘Yes,’ Maria said, ‘the Easter weekend. He has to go on the Easter weekend.’
‘Jeffrey’s parents are coming,’ Jean said quickly. ‘Otherwise . . .’
‘No, no, I didn’t mean . . .’ She was embarrassed now.
‘Never mind, I’m sure it’ll be worth it.’
‘Worth it? Who for? For me or him?’
‘I mean business-wise.’
‘Would you like it if Jeffrey said he was going away for the whole weekend?’
‘Oh, he’d never do that,’ Jean said comfortably. ‘The bank closes for the Easter weekend.’
Maria got between Jean and the door and stood with her back to it. ‘You know how many weekends Richard has been here in the last six weeks? Two. That’s all. The rest is work, work, work. Two weekends! And most of the week he’s at the house in London.’
‘I’m sure it’s only temporary.’
‘Oh, you think it’s temporary. What if it’s permanent? And me stuck down here! What if he’s got another woman?’
There. It was out.
Jean’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Come, Maria.’
‘It’s true. I’m sure he has.’
Jean smiled, a dimpled plump smile. ‘You’re sure it isn’t imagination? Don’t we always think of that when they’re late or away?’
Maria suddenly hated herself. She saw Jean now as a kind of vegetable, a marrow perhaps, and she was ashamed. But she had been nursing the thought for so long that it had simply burst through her guard.
‘I’m sorry,
’ she said.
‘But if you want to talk about it . . .’
Maria could hear a quickening of interest in her tone.
‘No. It’s as you say. My imagination. Forget it.’
She switched on the outside light and opened the door and a few moments later stood in the icy wind waving to Jean and watching the red taillights of the car disappear down the drive.
Now she was alone. Really alone. It was Wednesday evening and she wouldn’t see Richard again until Monday night. Five nights.
She locked and bolted and chained the front door. Caesar came out of the kitchen again to see what the commotion was. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘Come, Caesar.’ She held out a hand. She needed the dog’s friendship and she offered her own in exchange. But Caesar stood in the doorway and watched her.
‘All right, don’t!’ She went back into the sitting-room and began to clear away the tea things. She must stop feeling sorry for herself, she thought. There were hundreds of thousands of women like her – divorced or widowed – who would be spending this Easter weekend alone. And probably thousands whose husbands were having affairs. What made her angry was that his woman had started phoning him here, at home. Her home. There had been three calls in the past few days. The woman had asked for Richard and when Maria had said he wasn’t there and could she take a message the voice had said no, no message, and the receiver at the other end had been replaced.
Don’t think about that.
All right, what would these hundreds of thousands of women be doing? They’d certainly be doing something. But what?
Would they be going to the movies or theatres or restaurants by themselves? She had never been to a theatre by herself. There had always been Richard in recent years, and before him, Jack.
Except Jack wasn’t a theatre person unless it was something like Oh Calcutta!. But they’d had other things to do, other fish to fry.
A lump suddenly formed in her throat as she looked back down the vista of her life to this golden time. Did everyone have a time like that? Had Jean? Had she had a lover like Jack? Had she been taken motor-racing and yachting and nightclubbing when she was nineteen?
Dirty Weekend (Macrae and Silver Book 1) Page 2