by Gerald Wixey
I pointed at my old man. ‘If you hadn’t told Ron to put…’
‘No, no – listen, my boy.’ Wyn somehow persuaded my eyes back into his. ‘Yesterday’s history; that’s not to say you forget, but learn the lessons. Remember self-discipline my boy – revenge, regret, remorse, they’re all a surreptitious killer. They’ll drain your spirit and tear you apart. Yesterday’s history – tomorrow’s always a mystery – live for today.’
He glanced across to dad. ‘I know someone – a solicitor friend who’ll have the magistrates eating out of his hand. Don’t worry, my boy. It’s a choice thing, after all, Harry believes in the freedom to leave his car unlocked, safe in the knowledge that his trusty hound will efficiently immobilise it. It’ll be case dismissed and the dog will live to fight another day.’
An unfortunate choice of words to end with and it didn’t alter the fact that Dudley was effectively out on bail with a state execution hanging over him. I stood up and called the dog over. My old man growled, ‘Where are you going?’
‘Patrick’s.’
Dudley seemed to take all of this pretty well; better than me in fact. Despite the dog’s good humour, I disregarded Wyn’s sound advice. I didn’t know what exactly, but retaliation coursed through me. I wanted reprisal. Ron happened to be pulling some potatoes as we walked across the allotments. I shrugged, unable to take my eyes away from Ron’s Frankenstein stitches standing out on his cheek, like a six year old’s embroidery. He pointed at the dog and drew an imaginary knife under his throat. His hard little eyes drilling between my shoulder blades as I passed.
‘I’m going to flatten his allotment.’
Dudley looked up at me – don’t do that, let me tear his throat out.
‘Well thanks for that, you’re in enough trouble as it is.’
Dudley had never forgiven Ron for throwing a handful of gravel at him a few weeks ago. Just because Ron had left a basket of new potatoes in the car park – I mean, what an invitation. Dudley strolled over and laid a stream of steaming piss across the contents and got a fistful of gravel up the arse for his trouble.
We walked for a long time but Dudley didn’t run today, he just kept looking dejectedly up at me; his mood matched mine. I came back home, accompanied by broken dark blue clouds sliding towards the setting sun, a chill edge to a summer’s end of a breeze, it would be dark soon.
Tomorrow; a score to settle.
***
It was still dark when my Mickey Mouse alarm clock crashed into my dreamless sleep. Perfect; get out early, well before breakfast, and do what I had to do. We walked through the allotments just before sunrise, welcomed by a disorganized sky of slow-moving purple clouds that made the light somewhat peculiar. Neither night nor day, the mist had no colour, like a phantom; plumes steamed across from the canal, drifting over the meadow like a string of ghostly sheep. Rabbits were everywhere, a still and cold dawn.
There was no sign of anyone and Dudley, enlivened by the sharp and concentrated early morning smells, galloped, apparently randomly around the field. Blissfully oblivious to everything, apart from the cool air, his nose was welded to the grass in his endless quest for the rainbow’s end of a smell. He looked so happy, whereas I was filled with a restless anxiety as the long hot school holiday drew to its close.
We stopped on the way back. I stared at Ron’s neatly tended allotment. It was scorched earth time. I flattened everything. I jumped up and down on every square inch, from the potatoes, through to his broad beans, Ron loved his broad beans. An intensely agreeable squelch as I jumped on lettuces, and ate a few raspberries. I steamrollered everything, finishing up with his runner beans. The dog sat amazed, head cocked over, What are you doing? As I cracked the runner bean props, deeply satisfying snapping snaps echoed crisply, like ricocheting bullets around the allotment stillness.
Ron was paying.
Dudley sat down when we got home, I don’t feel too good.
He stared up at me, an accusing look, as though I had caused him to have a nervous breakdown.
‘Pull yourself together; no one saw us.’
***
I had watched Wyn get ready; he bought gin and two hundred fags off my old man and smiled at himself in the mirror. Wyn had carefully spread all of his fifty-odd hairs across his scalp and then another smile in the mirror again, still got it boy. I skipped outside and beckoned the others in close. By the time Wyn came out of the back door, he beamed – life is oh so sweet; he gave a cheery, valedictory wave our way and strolled down the hill.
Five minutes later and we trotted off, following in my uncle’s footsteps.
Declan said, ‘Where are we going?’
Patrick smacked him on the back of the head. ‘Stupid.’
We went past the cherry tree; the earlier idea of climbing it and looking into the windows of the terrace appeared a precarious and unlikely option. Who suggested that?
Avoiding the path that went at ninety degrees to the terrace and directly through Shirley’s garden, we went to the end of the terrace and picked the path up that went past all the front doors. I had made us draw straws – we needed an orderly queue. We passed a succession of windows as a small, untidy rolling maul, tiptoed past Shirley’s front door and up to the small window.
What the…
We became a three-headed ruffian with six bulging eyes and three mouths gaping in mystified muteness. A collective, wide-mouthed stupefied crikey.
Tension ground way through us.
Shirley’s legs were over each arm of the easy chair, a silky coffee-coloured nightdress was pulled up above her heavy breasts, her head back against the chair, pushing back as if trying to escape from something nasty, her face knotted like a toddler about to burst into tears. One hand was on the back of Wyn’s head, the other covered her eyes. The sun hadn’t even got around the front of her house yet, why did she need to cover her eyes?
Wyn was kneeling in front of her, with his face buried between her legs. He was making funny noises, like he had a hare lip, or how you’d sound if you were trying to talk underwater. The sash window was open an inch or so, enough to hear her groans and his muffled noises – I heard her say, ‘Wyn – Wyn, coming, Wyn.’
The gin and cigarettes were on the floor by the chair, he must have been in a rush to do something – he’d still got his jacket on and the check cap was still on his head, albeit pushed back until precariously poised at some forty five degrees to his ears, similar to a cowman’s after he’d milked fifty cows. He carried on with his breathless mumbling; Shirley kept saying, ‘Wyn, baby,’ over and over. I felt someone had spot-welded me to the path, my tongue was hanging out from within a cavernous mouth a gibbering, paralysed, petrified wreck.
I was alone, oblivious to the fact that my two friends had moved. Rooted until Patrick came back and he dragged me away.
No, no – I want to look.
We walked along the path, our arms around each other, our efforts to suppress laughter failing as containment finally resulted in a sudden detonation of un-containable glee. We bellowed deliriously about the theatrical absurdity of it all, what were they doing? They must have heard us – well, Shirley at least, Wyn’s head had a pair of legs around them, his ears well and truly plugged by soft flesh.
A head came out of a window. ‘What are you doing? Up to no good, I’m sure.’ Bert Powell’s wife, furious and pointing at Patrick, ‘I know who you are – go on get away from here.’
We filed past her and the first in line, Patrick disgorged, ‘Fuck off,’ towards the lace curtain framed head, causing more madness amongst us.
‘I’m telling your mum,’ directed at me.
I looked the other way and rushed by.
‘Declan!’
‘Don’t tell my mum, Mrs. Powell.’
We wandered off. Every time one of us spoke it provoked a burst of shrieking hysteria that threatened all windows within twenty feet.
‘Your uncle still had his hat on.’
‘I know – and he never wears it indoors.’ We screeched some more.
Patrick attempted to introduce some measured analysis into our ranks. ‘She did look ill, he had a funny way of making her better though.’
Chapter 8
1972
‘Suffocated; looked to all intents and purposes, like a natural death. Frail old woman dies in her bed.’ Jack pointed a finger in my direction. ‘But it looks like murder. Don’t give me your usual guff about the usual suspects either.’
I showed Jack the palms of my hands. ‘Who, me, guv? I’ll keep my customary open mind as always.’
‘Hah!’ Jack leant in close and flashed a quick stare around an empty bar before saying, ‘Not a word to anyone, this has to be just between you and me. Declan’s inquest will be next week as well; two in less than a week. Exciting times, but don’t get your hopes up. The old lady’s is suspicious, but the whisper is that Declan’s death will be recorded as accidental, the only appropriate verdict available.’
‘Despite a radiator across his chest?’
Jack nodded, ‘It’s a mystery, not a mark apart from that. Bits of bandage left from when he had his face sliced open – poor little Declan, poor old Tommy. Still, he can have his wake now.’
‘Who’ll get called? Will I get the chance to point a finger?’
Jack laughed. ‘Unfortunately for you and fortunately for the rest of us, the coroner no longer has the power to name a suspect. And no, you won’t be a witness, anyway. What verdict’s likely?’ Jack answered his own question. ‘Natural death, accidental death, suicide, or murder. There’s no evidence of murder, or suicide come to that.’
‘Open verdict?’
‘Maybe, do you want come along?’
***
I stared around the darkly-lit, wood-panelled courtroom and glanced across at a couple of reporters from two daily newspapers. Jack had been moaning all morning. ‘Nosing around, ringing the office, casually bumping into me in the pub. Asking me questions, what was he like? What happened? But I told them nothing; this is my coroner’s report to write up, my dead body to gossip about. Not a couple of minor crime reporters from some cheap red top newspaper.’
We sat in gloomy isolation in the far corner, the entrance diagonally opposite: Jack liked to have every angle covered. Unlike Jack, I’d never listened to the coroner’s dull monologue. Jack had years of practice listening to the man’s unfortunate delivery, whatever the subject matter. I felt his wooden delivery rendered everything to a list of names in the phone book. On and on he rambled; words merged into one another until he read out the name of the father, that is.
I saw Tommy’s head twitch, then he confirmed his name. Bernice did the same, her flat monotone a good indication of someone grief-stricken and trying to retain some control over her emotions, or maybe someone heavily sedated; perhaps both. Both of their heads were bowed as the coroner briefly listed the injuries, of which there were few. The coroner stopped, raised his large head and addressed the parents again. He apologised for the lack of information, although this saved them the itemisation of any distressing detail.
‘Lungs full of water.’ He shuffled his notes, stared around the courtroom. ‘The boy wasn’t wearing glasses and for some reason he’d been carrying a large cast iron radiator. The weight and his poor eyesight both contributed to the accident. We can only surmise that he slipped and fell, still clasping the radiator; I’m issuing an accidental death verdict.’
Why couldn’t anyone see the obvious? The radiator was used to weigh the body down, how else could it have remained underwater and undiscovered for this long? I groaned and shook my head, vigorously enough to catch the coroner’s eye. I stood up and blurted, ‘But what about…’
Jack grabbed my sleeve and dragged me back into my chair as the coroner blinked a couple of times at this show of dissent. Bernice and Kathy both turned and stared at me briefly, one showing an obvious distaste at my intervention; Kathy showed nothing.
The coroner coughed and cleared his throat, ‘I’m releasing the body for burial.’
Once again commiserating, he then stood. Despite his dullness, he was a sentimental and sensitive man, and had tried to spare the parents more pain. He’d done that to the best of his ability and upset me in the process. Jack closed his notebook and watched the coroner sweep out with all the elegance of an oil tanker in choppy seas.
The usual murmurings came from the gallery, like a swarm of bees buzzing in the background. I glanced away to my left at the other reporters, shuffling out and avoiding Jack’s eyes; his feelings of bitterness towards them diverting any offers of a drink and halting the fraternal farewells; goodbye to the outsiders muscling in, because they see a story; possibly luridly macabre. We watched them off the premises, gone forever, Jack hoped; they’d lost interest. Not even a suicide verdict, what an anti-climax for them; what a crushing disappointment for me.
My glance went back to the grieving parents, both with heads bowed, sitting resolutely in the chairs. Kathy had her arm around Bernice, then Tommy stood and without the merest of words to either of them, he strode for the exit. I sat back and spread the fingers of my right hand and massaged my pounding head. I think Jack was relieved that I never stood and started to rave and scream denouncements directed at Ron or Kenny.
I sighed and Jack stared at me. What else did you expect?
***
I didn’t see Jack until the following Saturday evening. He glanced around, studied his watch, thought what phase the moon should be in and how many degrees the stars march across the heavens each hour. He sighed, brought his thoughtful gaze my way and gently directed me towards a common sense ending.
‘It’s possible that he slipped; you’ve told me enough times how you all used to try and carry that old radiator. You know how he was in a little world of his own most of the time. He could have struggled with the weight and slipped, falling into the water with it across his chest.’
That’s the trouble with Jack; he made everything sound so plausible. I held the palm of my hand up. ‘I don’t see that at all.’
But I did; it did make sense. I didn’t want logic; I had to have someone to blame, how else could I keep my hatred for the pair of them honed razor sharp.
‘It explains why they never found the body when the canal was dragged, all the divers could ever feel was a five-foot radiator. They certainly couldn’t see anything in that mud hole.’ Jack raised his eyebrows in a gesture that said, closure.
I needed to change the subject. ‘Tell me.’ I leant in close to Jack and glanced down at my watch. ‘It won’t get busy for half an hour or so – I can guess how my old man, Wyn and you made your money; it doesn’t take a genius. I’ve seen the newspaper cuttings, heard the gossip. Betting on a fixed fight, double crossing the double-crossers. But how did Ron fit into the picture?’
I nodded down and picked his empty glass up. He got his wallet out but I shook my head. ‘No – down payment for the storyteller.’
‘Harry won’t like you giving his beer away.’ He lit his cigarette and smiled at the same time. ‘It was my idea, and probably the reason your uncle enjoys a bet so much. He never used to have a wager back then. The trouble is, the first time you do have a bet and then win so big, it sets you up for life, you think you’re unbeatable.’
‘Ron?’ I wanted the concise version.
‘As for Ron,’ Jack dragged deeply on his cigarette. ‘Ron came up to London as soon as he was demobbed. He got Shirley’s address from her mother; Shirley worked in Wyn’s club. You know how he always enjoys a complicated life style… Well, Wyn gave Ron a job, cruel thing to do really, Shirley was a few weeks pregnant by then. You know that Shirley and Wyn were an item for the last few months of the war?’
No, I didn’t.
I felt years of pressure exhaust from my chest, irrational thoughts of a young boy proving to be just that. I shook my head; I didn’t want to know any more, and yet I did. My heart
thumped erratically away as I glanced up at Jack.
‘Does that make Kenny…’ I trailed off, unable to ask the obvious question. I tried again, ‘In my darkest moments, I worried that he might be my half brother. I always thought that Shirley and dad were too close, somehow.’
‘We’ve all been through a lot together, of course they were close. Not that sort of close, though.’ Jack shook his head. ‘You needn’t have worried on that score, but he’s your cousin, that’s for sure. The trouble is that deep down, I truly believe that Ron has always known that too.’ Jack hissed, appearing agitated. He sighed my way and said, ‘Ron got Wyn out of the way back then; I don’t think that even Shirley ever knew what happened. We don’t know for sure either, I think he told the authorities that Wyn was a deserter. Then Ron told her that Wyn had run off with one of the hostesses in the club. Instead, he’d got three months for desertion. Look, you’ll have to ask Wyn or Shirley. It all got a bit nasty. ’
I said nothing, unable to take it in. I’d suddenly gained a cousin and an uncle who’d done time. We sat in silence until the sound of a cigarette being stubbed out in a lightweight metal ash tray disturbed my reverie.
Jack looked down at the mangled cigarette end, ‘Don’t forget that we watched a man crack up in front of our very eyes twelve years ago.’ Jack pointed at me. ‘You saw more than most, I guess. When Wyn walked back into Shirley’s life, well… Ron must have been in turmoil. The final straw in many ways.’ Jack shook his head, ‘Ask Shirley, I’ve told you too much. Harry and Wyn will have my guts for garters. You and Shirley talk the night away often enough; ask her about it.’
Jack pushed his empty glass my way as Stopcock Arthur meandered over the threshold and said what he always said. ‘I’ll get these. Are you having one master?’ He looked around the bar, ‘Where’s Tommy boy, then?’
I didn’t mean to be rude, but I wasn’t giving him my undivided attention. My concentration focused on its two usual targets. Swinging like a pendulum backwards towards wartime London and forwards to Kathy, I blinked a couple of times as Arthur looked deep into my eyes, hello – anyone in?