by Bill Hussey
‘Sorry? Oh. Let me … let me see. You don’t have a fifty pence, do you? We used to have a woman come round with a trolley. She was difficult, too. I sometimes think she had an accident and they saved her brain and put it into this monstrosity. Like RoboCop. Except with coffee. To Serve and Percolate … Oh, fuck.’
She helped him pick up his change and managed, without difficulty, to order two coffees from the machine. With a half hour until her orientation with Jarski, they had gone outside and sipped their drinks on the wall behind the Magistrates Court. They exchanged opinions on the latest crime prevention policies and targets coming out of the Home Office, and found common ground in berating those bureaucrats who made a tough job even tougher. The usual cop-chat over, they soon ran into a conversational cul-de-sac. Then, taking her empty cup, he said something that had startled her.
‘Don’t worry about him. He’ll do great things.’
Suddenly their conversation seemed a blur. Had she mentioned Jamie? His lacklustre grades were preying on her mind, but she never mentioned Jamie to strangers.
From that first meeting, Jack Trent began to intrigue her. What lit the touchpaper? His looks? No, although he possessed strong features he could not be described as handsome. Nor did she think it had been his intelligence or sense of humour, she’d had wiser and funnier. But there had been something. An immediate impression of sincerity. A quality very rare in the jaded world through which she moved. It was that brand of honesty common among children. The kind that doesn’t stop a kid telling lies, but makes it difficult for them to disguise their natures. During their relationship, Jack most certainly had lied to her, but she had known (immediately? She couldn’t honestly have said that) that he possessed a good soul. And, much as she wanted to hate him right now, she still knew it.
Her mother had used that kind of term. Good soul, bad soul, and the simplicity of those labels used to make the psychology graduate inside her cringe. ‘Souls’ in her mother’s terminology, a complex patchwork of neural, psychological and chemical factors making up ‘psyches’ in her own, were neither good nor bad. Not even the clergy spoke about Good and Evil anymore. That sort of jargon was left to tabloid editors. When she met Jack Trent, however, she had been struck by the forcible impression that, beneath all his psychological ticks, there was a kind of purity. There was goodness.
After that first meeting, there followed a month of encounters so clumsily ‘accidental’ that she was certain he had orchestrated them. She found these awkward overtures charming. Still, she longed for him to get over his shyness and just ask her out. She had been about to take the initiative herself, when she heard that his father had died. She went to give her condolences and, before she managed a word, he had asked her to dinner.
They had been the only diners at the Basement Restaurant on Bates Street. Jack wondered if they might find Norman’s decomposed mother waiting for them at their table. As she had not seen Psycho, the joke fell flat. The food had been bland. The conversation faltered at times but eventually found a steady course. He deflected questions about himself and she respected his privacy. Yet she had been curious about him. Perhaps for the first time since she’d met Richard, Jamie’s long-gone father, she found herself really wanting to know the man who sat opposite her.
Looking back over the next two months of growing intimacy, it was odd that she had learned so little about him. Whenever she felt that he was about to open up, wariness would creep into his eyes and the conversation was turned around. At the end of the relationship, when he swatted her and Jamie away with those words, she had no real knowledge of Jack Trent beyond the few inconsequential facts he had let slip. Brought up in Cambridgeshire. His mother died when he was a boy. He’d had few serious relationships. He had loved his father deeply and he loved comic books. The scar between his eyes was a souvenir of childhood. He had sprayed a cousin’s Barbie doll with an aerosol and set a match to it, only to have the plastic beauty blow up in his face. Two months and that was all she knew. She had only really ever known his nature: his lovingness, his tenderness, his goodness. And it seemed now that she’d even been wrong about that.
It was the third date she regretted. The night when she let her guard down and allowed him in. They had kissed on the first two dates (the second consisting of a pizza followed by a tension-free thriller movie). Both were funny, awkward little kisses, but she had found them exciting, like her first. Now she wanted to feel him inside her. She asked him to dinner at the flat.
She had not asked a man home in years, and had not made love in her own bed since Richard left over a decade ago. Since then, sex, both ho-hum and head-spinning, had taken place in either bachelor pads or motel rooms. After a while, these encounters merged into one big blur of limbs, genitals and Ikea furniture. Without knowing it, she had been ready for something more.
Jamie had gone for a sleepover at a friend’s. She’d drunk a lot of wine while Jack stuck to orange juice. The conversation had been impersonal but entertaining. She noticed his hands inching across the table. Then Jamie burst through the door, his words tripping over each other.
‘Hi,’ he’d panted, ‘Dan’sbeentakentohospital. Hismumthink shisappendixhasexploded. Hisdaddroppedmeoff. Anyfoodleft? Hey, who are you?’
‘J, don’t be so …’
Jack interrupted: ‘Nice Hulk T-shirt you got there, mate.’
‘Come on, Jamie, adult time,’ she said, trying to pull her son back by his rucksack.
‘Original Hulk?’ Jack read the motif. ‘Can’t be. Hulk wasn’t green in the first issue.’
‘Yeah, I know, he was grey. Cool. You know Marvel.’
‘Well, mostly Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko. Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Daredevil. I’m not much into Blade and that stuff …’
‘Crap … sorry, Mum. Blade’s the bomb. Reed Richards is gay.’
Jack laughed and a debate ensued about the various merits of the Marvel pantheon. It was during these exchanges that she noticed a change in Jack. The child, caged behind those pained eyes, was let out to play. The surge of panic telegraphing, Get Jamie Out … Get Jamie Out … Get Jamie Out … faded in her mind. For once, there seemed no need to protect him.
They moved into the lounge. She told Jamie that he needn’t drag Jack to his room; he could set out his action figures on the coffee table. J looked at her as if she had lost her mind, but didn’t argue. He and Jack sat cross-legged on the carpet, shared their views and quarrelled like a pair of excitable academics. Occasionally, they dragged her into the fray, finding common ground as they joined together to tease her ignorance of superhero lore. It was past midnight when Jamie gathered up his toys and obeyed the command to go to bed.
Jack staggered upright, rubbing the circulation back into his legs.
‘He’s a bundle of energy, isn’t he? Do you watch his E-numbers?’
‘No. I mean. You see, he’s not usually around when …’
They were in the hall. Jack brushed her hand with his forefinger. That deft touch imprinted itself in her memory as the first real token of intimacy between them. At that moment, the kisses seemed no more than polite formalities.
‘He’s going to be okay …’ Jack said. ‘Look, Dawn, if you don’t want me to, I won’t intrude on your home life. But I was thinking about a picnic. On Saturday. Maybe we could all go?’
The picnic. Three stark memories stayed with her from that day: the tingle-ache of her jaws caused by hours of laughter – Jamie whispering how much he liked Jack as they queued for lollies from a mobile ice cream truck – her and Jack under a weeping willow, its branches caressing the river while his fingertips caressed her arms.
Afterwards, Jamie had been bundled off to a friend’s and they returned to the flat together. All the worries and fears she had about letting a man into her life now seemed silly and inconsequential. She still knew nothing about Jack, but that didn’t matter.
She led him to the bedroom and undressed him, calming his trembling body with firm hands a
nd light kisses. His touch, when it came, made her feel strangely fresh and unused. She slipped his hands beneath her clothes. For a moment, he looked very young. And then his face changed. His skin felt cold against hers. His fingernails scratched as he pulled away.
‘I can’t … I can’t …’ His voice tight. ‘Too soon …’
‘Jack? What’s too soon? I don’t understand …’
‘It’s inside. Still inside. I … My father.’ He spoke the last words too quickly.
‘You’re still grieving?’
He sat unmoving on the edge of the bed.
‘It’s okay. Really, we don’t have to rush things.’
She felt him flinch as she rested her hands on his shoulders. He stood up and pulled his pants over his semi-erect penis.
‘We could cool things,’ she continued. ‘Have a break.’
‘No. Please, no. Dawn, I need this … I need you.’
She comforted him that night, as she comforted Jamie when he had bad dreams, stroking his hair until he fell asleep.
A month passed. They spoke little about what had happened. At first, Dawn believed that there might be some deeper, darker connection between Jack’s behaviour and his father’s death. She had known enough victims of child abuse to understand the length of those shadows. How often the trauma was never fully addressed until the death of the abuser. Was that the truth behind his pain? As the weeks passed, and he began to open up, the idea seemed less and less likely. It was true that victims of abuse often love their abusers but, from the softness that entered Jack’s voice when he spoke about the dead man, Dawn could tell that his father had been undemonstrative but very loving. He had never so much as slapped Jack across the legs.
Time went on. In retrospect, it was strange, but only rarely did she think about what had happened after the picnic. Jack started spending a few nights a week at the flat. Often the three of them would have evenings out. Sometimes it would be a movie; usually an action film, during which Jack and Jamie would whisper wows at each other as CGI superheroes tussled on rooftops. She would roll her eyes when they suggested go-carting or a football match or bowling, but she loved every minute of it. Some evenings she and Jack would curl up on the sofa together and watch a sick-chick-flick (Jamie’s terminology), and she would catch him watching her out of the corner of her eye. His expression made her feel warm and safe.
They took long walks together, wandering through the cathedral grounds until they reached the steps cut into the catacombs that led down to the canal. She remembered cool breezes blowing up from the estuary; an arrow of swans gliding downriver; the sun’s last rays heliographing across the water. Only looking back did she realise how little they had talked. But on those walks she felt that she understood what mattered about him. She had been happy, and had loved his happiness, which seemed so bright and child-like. She asked him once, only out of politeness it seemed, if he wanted to talk things through.
‘Soon,’ he said, waves of wine-dark light from the moonlit canal reflecting on his face. ‘I can feel it … I can feel it fading. In my mind …’
And, whatever it was, he had seemed to be tackling it. As time passed, his kisses became more prolonged and more passionate, his caresses more assured and more intimate. She had wanted him so much, but she respected his need to take things slowly. Happy as he seemed, however, there were still occasions when he would become withdrawn and melancholic. One such instance was when she asked him about his mother. His face blanched to the lips and he’d made some thin excuse to leave. As the weeks passed, those unexplained changes in mood became fewer.
Summer ended and Jamie’s football practice started again. They’d gone to cheer him on at his first match and, as a commiseration treat (Jamie’s team had lost 6–2), Jack had suggested a pizza.
‘That’d be great …’ Jamie murmured.
‘But?’
‘The guys are going to camp out at Liam’s farm tonight. Can I go?’
‘I don’t know …’ Dawn began.
‘Ah, let him go,’ Jack said. ‘Here’s thirty quid, J. Takeaway for the valiant losers is on me tonight.’
‘Hey, we weren’t that bad,’ Jamie frowned, tucking the money into his pocket. ‘If you wanna see a loser, how ’bout this?’
Ferreting in his bag, Jamie withdrew a neat little drawing of Reed Richards, aka Mr Fantastic, in full stretch mode with ‘Wuss Man by JH’ scrawled at the bottom. Jack held it at arm’s length and grimaced. Dawn looked at him, and wondered whether his mock outrage was an effort to disguise the fact that the gift had truly moved him.
‘Go on then,’ she sighed.
Jamie high-tailed it out of there, calling over his shoulder, ‘Thanks, Mum! See you later, Jack!’
‘I had an ulterior motive in getting you all to myself,’ Jack said, after they arrived back at the flat.
‘Oh, yes? Are we going to play superheroes by ourselves tonight?’
‘I was thinking maybe we could …’
He was blinking back tears. She knew then that the reason he had not made love to her ran much deeper than the death of his father.
Moments later they were naked, clambering onto the bed, kicking off the sheets as they went. Their kisses pressed, full and rough. She watched him move down her belly until his head met with her pubic hair. His tongue lapped in waves across her vagina and tickled her swelling clitoris. She squirmed, gripped by the little fires of pleasure igniting through her body. She placed her hands over his as they pawed at her nipples, causing a dull but pleasurable ache. Now he retraced the path he had taken, his hot breath never more than an inch from her flesh. They kissed and he left the taste of her sex on her palate. She turned him over and took his cock in her mouth. His body shuddered and she felt the muscles in his legs flexing and relaxing in time.
‘Dawn … I want to …’
She lay beneath him, breathing shallow expectant breaths. Their eyes met and she saw written in his the enormity of what was happening. Why was this so important to him? It was just sex after all. Yet it was as if something crucial in his life hung upon this moment.
He was inside her, moving in slow, timorous pulses. She grazed her fingernails across his back: a gesture of reassurance. Tears fell onto her neck and breasts and ran in the light, oily sweat that covered her skin.
‘Jack …’ She drew breath. ‘Jack, don’t cry …’
Her vagina tightened. She put her hands to his face and wiped sweat and tears back into his hair. She barred his eyes with her fingers. The first flutter of orgasm made her mouth run salty. And then … she froze …
Jack had shivered to a stop inside her. It was not his climax. It felt like a death rattle. Between her fingers, she saw the colour drain from him.
‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘What …’
‘I can’t … It’s … God, please,’ he whispered and withdrew in the same moment.
He dressed without looking at her. Before she could bring herself to speak, he had left the room. The report of the front door made her cry out. She sat huddled on the bed for a long time. The telephone rang at last.
‘This, it has to end. I’m … I’m sorry. If it was just you … It’s Jamie …. What I mean is, I don’t want to bring up somebody else’s … I shouldn’t have left like that … I’m sorry, but if we went through with things, you’d think I was serious … Maybe I would be if it wasn’t for the … the boy …’
She hung up. Those words …
Now, sitting in the car and shooting sideways glances at him, she choked a little. It made no sense. Jamie had been his reason for ending it.
Six
‘Old Priory,’ Jack said, drawing Dawn out of her thoughts. ‘Looks like a set from an old William Castle movie.’
He pulled the car into a gap in the line of dogwood shrubs that led up to the rectory, and they both got out. Dew dripped from the vines that crept across the Georgian façade and flew from the lion’s head knocker. They waited for a moment beneath the portico, exhaling plumes o
f steam and wiping the mist from their faces. A short, stocky priest with a pinched face opened the door. Across from the house, the church bells tolled thick and heavy through the damp air.
‘You’re the police then,’ Father Garret said. ‘Come in. Filthy day.’
He stepped back into the vestibule and let Jack and Dawn shuffle past. Portraits lined the corridor. Beneath each was written the name and date of incumbency of the priest depicted. Daguerreotypes of heavy-whiskered Victorians filed away into obscurity. A colour photograph of a leathery-faced man named Brody headed the group.
‘Good men all,’ Garret said, opening a door to their right. ‘With the possible exception of Father Brody there. He was somewhat …’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Come in, dear.’
Dawn felt the accidental touch of a nicotine stained finger on her neck. She resisted the urge to flinch away. The study which they entered had all the cheer of a funeral home, with little in the way of decoration other than religious iconography. Father Garret sat behind his desk while Dawn and Jack squeezed onto a tattered sofa.
‘Well, Father,’ Jack started, ‘we shan’t take up much of your time. Now, in your statement you said you saw Simon Malahyde at roughly two a.m. Tuesday morning.’
‘It was precisely two a.m. I heard the church clock toll.’
‘How did he seem to you?’
‘Hard to say. I caught only the briefest glimpse of him as he passed in his car.’
Jack fidgeted and got up. He walked around the room, ran his fingers over the surfaces and straightened the crucifix on the wall. He rested his hand on an old-fashioned radiator beneath the window sill, splaying his fingers between its ribs. To Dawn, it seemed that the priest kept a close eye on Jack’s every move.
‘Why were you out so late, Father?’ she asked.
‘Hmm? Oh, I was walking. Insomnia, you see?’
‘What did you do after your walk?’
‘I came home and read.’
‘In here? This room faces the road. Did you see Simon pass again?’