Mercury Falling

by Robert Edric

  She laughed at the remark. She pushed what remained of the money back beneath the sheet, and as she did this, the material swung loose to reveal one of her breasts to him. It took her a few seconds to pull the sheet back into place and hold it at her shoulder.

  ‘I was asleep,’ she said.

  ‘I see.’

  She picked a shred of tobacco from her lips.

  Duggan came back to Devlin and waved the money in his face. ‘She’s the bookkeeper,’ he said. ‘You want to watch her – one word from her and the pair of them would cut you into little pieces. You know what I’m saying?’

  Maria smiled at Devlin. ‘It’s true,’ she said.

  ‘Tell him what happened to that car dealer over in Bicker,’ Duggan said.

  ‘He looks like he’s got a brain in his head,’ Maria said. ‘Let him imagine it.’

  Duggan laughed as though it were the funniest thing he’d ever heard. Devlin imagined the money in his hand had something to do with it. Then he went back to the lorry and threw the tarpaulin and ropes back on to it.

  ‘How much did you give him?’ Devlin asked Maria while they waited.

  She shook her head. ‘That’s between you and him.’

  Devlin nodded to the cisterns and wire and piping all now scattered along the verge. ‘It can all be traced,’ he said.

  ‘So what?’ she said. ‘This is where we found it – all dumped by the roadside.’

  ‘Where will you sell it on?’

  She shook her head again. ‘You ask a lot of questions,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you’re not as smart as you look.’

  Devlin wondered if this was a compliment or an insult. ‘Duggan says the same,’ he said. ‘About the questions.’

  She turned her back on the others. ‘Seriously, you want to watch him.’ She drew hard on the last half-inch of her cigarette. ‘First sign of any serious trouble and he’ll push you in front of him.’

  It was something else Devlin had already worked out, but he appreciated hearing it from her. He could say nothing in reply to this warning as Duggan and the brothers came back to them.

  ‘He’s been trying to take a squint underneath the sheet,’ Patrick said loudly. ‘Dirty little bastard.’ The man pinched Devlin’s chin and then held a finger into his cheek. ‘I’m only kidding,’ he said. ‘You look like you’re going to piss yourself.’ He looked around at the others. ‘He’s trembling,’ he said.

  Devlin slapped Patrick’s hand away and then swiftly wrapped his fist around the pointing finger, bending it backwards until the man cried out. It was an instinctive reaction to the provocation and only as the two of them stood there like that did he start to consider the consequences of what he’d just done. At the very least, he imagined, the other brother would grab him and pull him away.

  But Colm remained where he stood, and, to Devlin’s surprise, he laughed and said, ‘Go on, break it. He needs teaching a lesson.’

  ‘You don’t even want to be thinking of doing that,’ Duggan said.

  Devlin heard the fear in Duggan’s voice.

  He squeezed Patrick’s finger tighter for a moment and then released it.

  Patrick clasped his hand beneath his arm for a moment and then tested bending the finger. ‘You going to let him get away with that?’ he said to Colm.

  Colm said nothing for a moment. ‘He got the better of you for a few seconds, that’s all.’ He nodded to Devlin and then held out his own hand to him.

  Devlin did the same and the two men shook.

  ‘I’ll have a word,’ Duggan said to Patrick, but then Patrick also laughed and held out his other hand to Devlin, releasing the last of the night’s small tensions.

  Then Maria surprised them all by pulling out a single note from beneath her sheet and giving it to Devlin.

  ‘What you doing that for?’ Patrick said to her, as amused as he was angry at the gesture. ‘We already paid Duggan.’

  ‘You were a pound short,’ Maria said, making no attempt to hide the lie.

  ‘Wouldn’t be the first time you’d come up light,’ Duggan said. Then he pushed Devlin towards the lorry. ‘We’re off,’ he said. ‘He’s got a hard day’s work in the morning.’

  The summer dawn was already brightening the sky in the direction of the sea.

  As he went, Devlin half turned and held up the note to the girl.

  In the cab, Duggan said. ‘Christ, boy, you just escaped a fate worse than whatsit. I reckon she’s took a shine to you. Did you see the look on that bastard Patrick’s face when you had his finger? Believe me, there’s a few pints in that little story for the foreseeable.’

  They manoeuvred on to the road and drove back towards Holbeach.

  After a long silence, during which Devlin felt himself falling asleep, Duggan said, ‘Seriously, you want to watch yourself with that pair. She keeps a bit of a rein on them – the money and everything – but you go poking too hard and you’ll find out exactly where you stand. And next time, I might not be there to help you out.’

  ‘Is that what you did, then?’ Devlin said.

  ‘We go back a long way. It counts for something.’

  If you say so.

  Then Duggan laughed and started to sing, keeping Devlin awake for the rest of the journey home.

  7

  FOR A FURTHER month through that late summer Devlin and Duggan went out every second or third night to conduct more of Duggan’s business. It seemed to Devlin that Duggan knew every thief and dealer and opportunist within a fifty-mile radius of the flooded-out farm.

  It was a rule of Duggan’s never to return home with anything iffy on the lorry. He was by nature a careful man, and he repeatedly told Devlin what a risk he was taking simply by allowing Devlin to accompany him on all these excursions. It was all veiled threat and warning with Duggan, and Devlin understood this.

  On occasion, when a deal fell through or when Duggan was beaten below his lowest price, he would stop the lorry in some isolated spot and offload whatever he was carrying on to overgrown verges or into the dilapidated outbuildings of other abandoned farms, to be collected later.

  ‘Watch and learn,’ he also frequently told Devlin. And so Devlin watched and he learned, and if his time with Duggan, the man’s father and his wife had lasted beyond that final warm month of the year, there was little doubt in Devlin’s mind that he would eventually have made himself into the sort of man Duggan had long since become. It was an uncertain kind of reasoning – Devlin understood that, too – but it was exactly the kind of reasoning that served and motivated him best. They all lived in an unsettled world, and a world which, despite what the newspapers and radio announcers kept telling everyone, was still uncertain of the way ahead. The real trick, Devlin reasoned during his month with Duggan, was to find the best path through that maze of uncertainty and opportunity and to make sure that you maintained at least some kind of forward momentum, however weak or faltering. Looking after Number One – that was all that counted in Duggan’s world.

  ‘Dawn of a New Age?’ Duggan once said to him, pronouncing the capitals and spreading his hands in a mocking theatrical flutter. ‘Don’t make me fucking laugh.’ The war might be long gone and the country might finally be getting up off its fucking knees ten years later, but they were still hard times for most. Hard times for most and yet at the same time a world of golden opportunity for those men – those self-made men – who understood how to take advantage of those times. That was what Duggan called himself – a self-made man.

  He told Devlin that their elders and betters had had their chance and that they’d squandered it. Now it was up to men like Duggan and Devlin to seize whatever opportunity presented itself. Was he right or was he right? Devlin knew better than to disagree with any of it. It still rankled that Duggan shared as little of the profit of all this boundless opportunity as possible, but what choice did he have?

  Uncertainty, doubt and anxiety were strange notions to Duggan; all that really mattered to him was making money, getting one over
on others and looking after that Number One.

  ‘All you really need is to know the man you’re dealing with better than he thinks he knows himself,’ he told Devlin. Weaknesses and strengths, that’s what counted. Know them and you’re halfway there. Know the man and you know the deal. People have secrets and weaknesses. People are greedy. Do unto others before they do unto you. That was a particular favourite and Duggan always laughed when he said it.

  Duggan’s kingdom stretched from Wainfleet to Anwick, and from Walcott all the way down to Peterborough and Wisbech. Weigh up the pros and cons, make a decision and stick to it. Simple as. And from Spalding they went as far east as King’s Lynn and Downham Market. Men knew men who knew men, and once all those interconnections – stealing and selling and buying and selling – were made, then those men were all dependent on each other. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.

  To begin with, most of those others were suspicious of Devlin. But Duggan vouched for him, and Duggan’s word was a powerful thing in that world. As the weeks progressed, Duggan gave the orders and Devlin did more and more of the donkey work.

  There was nothing Duggan wouldn’t steal or buy if the opportunity arose. There was no profit, however small, he wasn’t prepared to grab and then increase. He kept his ear to the ground. The bush telegraph never stopped humming. A few pints here, a few pints there, that ear to the ground, a few quid slipped into somebody’s pocket, a few favours called in, a nod and a wink and those opportunities just kept on coming.

  One of Duggan’s biggest earners was all the flood defence and new drainage work being carried out in every direction. Empty fields turned into storage depots overnight. Machinery and building materials were delivered and re-routed and used up and gone and no one ever seemed to keep a proper tally. Ministries of Building, Housing and Agriculture and the MOD – all of them competing with each other, and all of them too busy with the work at hand to chase up and make good any discrepancies on their dockets and rosters. It was a world in which Duggan and all the others like him walked like shabby princes.

  On one occasion, Devlin accompanied Duggan to a field five miles beyond Friskney where forty donkeys stood grazing in the darkness. Actual donkeys.

  The man who appeared out of the night to talk to Duggan looked like another gypsy, and after a brief conversation Duggan handed over the folded notes from his breast pocket. It was a trick of his always to have the money to hand and to take it out and hold it close to the face of the man who was arguing for more. Most deals were completed with spat-upon palms and Duggan was always careful to wait until the other man had either gone or turned his back before pulling a face and wiping his hand clean. Protocol, he explained to Devlin – another of his favourite words. Watch and learn, watch and learn.

  Following the exchange, the gypsy disappeared back into the night as quickly as he had come out of it.

  ‘Now what?’ Devlin asked Duggan, standing at the gate and looking over the inquisitive donkeys, most of which congregated close to where the two men stood. Duggan called them ‘Jerusalem racehorses’. ‘We’re waiting,’ he told Devlin. Devlin wondered if the animals had come from the beach at Skegness. He had ridden on them as a small boy during the only family holiday he remembered. There was probably still a photograph of him on one of the creatures in a drawer or a tin somewhere. He wondered if their appearance in the field beyond Friskney had anything to do with the end of the summer season at the resort. It was still a year of four quarters in places like Skegness, three of them much harder and more precarious than the other one. The holidaymakers might be back for the three months of high summer, but the rest of the year was hard and empty for the place.

  An hour after the departure of the gypsy, another lorry arrived and a second man came to Duggan. There was further negotiation and this time the new buyer took money from his own pocket and held it in Duggan’s face. Spit and shake and walk away. Business completed.

  Back in the cab, Duggan gave Devlin five pounds and told him to consider himself lucky. ‘I do,’ Devlin said. He didn’t. He asked Duggan to tell him about the deal.

  ‘Forty sold and ten bob profit on each one. Six of the poor bloody creatures I gave him for nothing. At least, that’s what I told him. All in the delivery, the dressing-up, see? I’d expected eight bob on each, eight and a half at best, and so the two bob extra over forty ups the ante and lowers the odds, see? Seller wins, I win, buyer wins. What could be better than that?’

  When Devlin asked him who the man was and why he would want to buy forty donkeys in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, Duggan resorted to the usual ‘Ask no questions’ line. ‘Ours is not to question why, ours is but to do or die. That’s a poem, by the way. I bet you never had me down as a poet.’

  They passed the next afternoon and evening in one of the Sutton Bridge pubs spending Duggan’s profit. As usual, Duggan drank until he could neither speak coherently nor stand, let alone drive the pair of them home.

  Several days after the sale of the donkeys, Duggan came home and dropped a bloody sack on to the table. Duggan’s father, woken by his son’s noisy arrival, tipped out the contents to reveal a dozen large joints of dark meat. Blood and dust coated the pieces, attracting the room’s ever-present flies.

  ‘Best beef, that,’ Duggan said. Alison Duggan took the joints to the sink and washed them.

  She cooked the pieces over the following days and Devlin ate what he was given.

  ‘He thinks it’s them donkeys,’ Duggan said, causing his wife and father to laugh at Devlin. ‘What does he take us for, savages?’

  In addition to all his dealing and thieving, Duggan also let out pieces of land scattered around the farm, and once a week he and Devlin went to meet the men who owed him rent. Few of the men appeared to undertake any kind of farming on the land, but Devlin knew enough by then not to ask. The men were always prompt with their payments, and several invariably whispered in Duggan’s ear, after which money was handed back.

  One night, approaching the farm following a visit to the tractor yard outside Pinchbeck, Duggan said unexpectedly, ‘You set your eyes on anybody yet?’ He kept his gaze straight ahead as he spoke.

  It seemed to Devlin to be an uncharacteristic thing for the man to say. ‘No one in particular,’ he said. He thought immediately of Barbara Collet and her two-month-old daughter. He had visited prostitutes in Colchester before his imprisonment – the barracks and Army bars had been surrounded by the women – but nothing other than his two or three months with Barbara Collet since.

  ‘Looks to me like you’re having a drought,’ Duggan went on, clearing his throat. ‘Young shaver like yourself, it’s hardly natural. I’ll let you into a bit of a secret, shall I? I see a tasty old girl over Grantham way when I’m in that direction. Distant, see? You don’t want to go messing in your own back yard. Been seeing her on and off these past ten years, nearer twelve.’

  It was only twenty miles away, but distance enough in that neck of the woods.

  Devlin wondered why Duggan had told him this.

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ he said. If nothing else, it was a new understanding between them, these two men of the world. He resisted telling Duggan about the baby girl.

  ‘You got to take things where you find them, that’s my motto,’ Duggan said, again sounding uncharacteristically uncertain of himself.

  Devlin wondered if the backhanded remark wasn’t intended as a warning of sorts, but could think of nothing to say in answer that might make things clearer to him.

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said.

  The lights of the farm appeared in the darkness ahead of them and it was the last either man said on the subject.

  8

  HE STOOD WITH a group of labourers waiting for the grading shovels to warm up. The drivers pulled the tarpaulins from the machines and then poured paraffin over the engine blocks, setting these alight and then waiting a few seconds for the vaporous blue flames to burn off. Some of the engines started first time
; others were kicked and sworn at while the waiting men watched.

  Thompson came to them, a sheaf of papers in his hand. He shouted for the men to listen to him. Work would be listed and men allocated. He was only going to say it all once, he called above the noise of the engines.

  ‘Right, gather round. Some nice little bits and pieces today. Listen for your name, do what you’re told, and no complaints. You’re mostly casuals – you know the score by now.’ He took a pencil from his pocket and licked its tip.

  The men around Devlin spoke in low voices. Few of them had any time for the foreman.

  Thompson allocated half of them to the grading work. Meaning they would work alongside the machines, keeping them clear of the mud and vegetation that built up around them and pulling free anything more solid which threatened to get caught in the machinery and cause delays. The previous week, a man working with the graders had got both his arms caught in a roll of barbed wire that the machine pulled up out of the water. He’d been in Boston hospital for two days and then lost a further five days’ work.

  The foreman looked more closely at the men. Most of the labourers avoided catching his eye. He had his favourites and was vindictive towards others.

  ‘You.’ He was pointing directly at Devlin.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘That’s what I said. Name?’

  Devlin told him, surprised Thompson had already forgotten him.

  ‘Well, you’re new to me, Devlin, but you look as though you might have leadership qualities, am I right?’

  The men around Devlin shuffled a few paces away from him.

  ‘I said am I right? And before you answer that, it’s only fair to tell you that I’m not a man who likes to be proved wrong. Am I making myself clear to you?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Devlin said. Hedging his bets.

  ‘Good. You see that lot’ – the man pointed with his pencil to a distant group of workers waiting beside a single-decker bus a hundred yards from the drain where the marsh bank ran towards it.