The Price of Love and Other Stories

by Peter Robinson

  “And rubber Johnnies?”

  “And rubber Johnnies.”

  “I remember. My dad used to take me to the barber’s with him sometimes when I was a little girl.”

  “Right,” Banks went on. “Well, as I said, I’d walked halfway to Cambridge and there I was, bold as brass, outside a barber’s on a street where not a soul could possibly know who I was.”

  Kay smiled. “What happened?” She moved her head and her hair tickled his chest.

  “Well, wouldn’t you know it, but this particular establishment didn’t have a discreet sales area. Oh, no. I opened the front door and I found myself standing right by the barber’s chair. He was giving a bloke a shave, I remember, and the place was full of grown men. I mean, every chair in the waiting area was taken, and I swear that the minute I walked in there they all looked up from their newspapers and every eye was on me.”

  “My God! What did you do?”

  “What could I do? I’d gone too far to turn back. I stood my ground and I said, in as deep a voice as I could manage, ‘Packet of three, please.’”

  Kay put her hand to her mouth to hold back the laughter. “Oh, no!” she said. “You’re joking?”

  “No word of a lie.”

  “What did he say? The barber.”

  “Not a word. He stopped midshave, straight-blade razor in his hand, and he went to his cabinet and got them for me. But you should have heard the other buggers laugh and cheer. You’d think Peterborough United had won a game. I went red as a beet.”

  Kay burst into a fit of laughter and couldn’t stop. Banks started laughing with her, holding her against his chest, and after a while, laughter turned to lust.

  XIV

  It was after two o’clock when Banks slipped the key in the door of his parents’ house and turned the lock as quietly as he could. He shut the door slowly behind him, without making much noise, and made sure the chain and bolt were on. The stairs creaked a little as he tiptoed up to bed. He couldn’t very well go and brush his teeth as he would have to put the bathroom light on and the tap would make noise. He thought he could just about manage to undress and crawl into bed in the dark. The bed would make a bit of noise, but that couldn’t be helped. Fortunately, he’d had the foresight to use the toilet before leaving Kay’s.

  The minute he got to the landing, he heard his mother muttering something to his father, who muttered something back. He couldn’t catch the words but knew they were about him, how late he was. He felt himself blushing. Christ, it really didn’t matter how quiet he had tried to be; she’d been lying awake until he came home, just like she used to do when he was a teenager.

  XV

  Despite his late night, Banks woke early on Sunday morning to the sound of rain blowing in sharp gusts against his bedroom window. The rest of the house was quiet, and he didn’t think his parents were awake yet. His first thought on finding consciousness was to wonder what the hell he and Kay had thought they were up to last night, but the more he remembered, the less he regretted. Blame it on Billie Holiday, if you will, on dancing, the old estate and the romance of the past, but whatever it was, it was something special, and he refused to feel guilty.

  He only hoped Kay felt the same way in the damp gray of dawn.

  Two memories assailed him almost simultaneously as he got out of bed and went over to the wardrobe for his overnight bag: that he had forgotten to give Kay her old copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and that he was certain he had seen a tiny, neatly folded square of silver paper in the bathroom waste bin. Perhaps Mrs. Summerville had taken to chewing gum in her final days, though he doubted it, or maybe Kay did, though he had seen no evidence of it last night, and he remembered that she had bought mints at the newsagent’s, not gum. Which left him with the strongest suspicion that Geoff Salisbury had been there some time over the past few weeks, leaving Banks little doubt as to where the hundred pounds had gone.

  What to do about him; that was the question.

  Banks stretched as he pulled out his bag and decided to start the day dressed simply, in jeans and a polo-neck sweater. He would change for the party later. Today was his parents’ big day, and Roy was due to come up from London. Banks resolved to be nice to Roy for his parents’ sake. After all, the bugger could turn on the charm when he needed to.

  As Banks put his bag back in the wardrobe, he noticed a cardboard box on the far side. On his previous visit he had found some old records and diaries, which were still there, but now it looked as if there was more. Curious, he opened the other door and lifted the box out. The flaps were shut, but not sealed, and written across the top, in his mother’s inimitable scrawl was his name: Alan. More childhood stuff, then.

  On top, he found yet more old school reports, from the grammar school this time, most of them urging him to try harder and assuring him he could do better if he only put his shoulder to the wheel, and so on. The reports were actually handwritten back then, in black ink, and Banks occasionally had difficulty reading the comments. He remembered some of the teachers’ names—Mr. Newman, Mr. Phelps, Mr. Hawtry—but most of them were a blur.

  Along with the reports was a class photograph dated 14th May, 1967. There they all were, three rows of teenage boys in their school uniforms. Banks remembered several of the faces: Steve Hill, Paul Major, Dave Grenfell, his best friends, then Tony Green, John McLeod, the school bully, and Ian Marston who, so Banks’s mother had told him, committed suicide seven or eight years ago after his courier business failed. The rest of them he hardly remembered except for the odd feature here and there, such as a long, freckled face, a big nose, or prominent ears, but he couldn’t put a name to them. He had met up with Dave Grenfell and Paul Major on his previous visit, and he had found out then that Steve Hill had died of lung cancer, but what had become of everyone else, he had no idea. Others would be dead, some would be dying, some would be successful, some would be failures, some would be criminals, many would be divorced. There was one angry-looking kid glaring into the camera with a cocky expression on his face, black hair just a little bit too long, tie slightly askew, top button undone, against school regulations. Himself. Even more of a mystery than all the rest.

  Next came a few school exercise books full of sums and compositions. One of them contained some poems Banks had written when he went through that stage of adolescence in which poetry was an acceptable means of expression as long as you kept it to yourself. It was with excruciating embarrassment that he looked over them again now, with the autumn rain starting to spatter against his bedroom window.

  There were lines about the awkwardness of being an adolescent, love poems to Julie Christie and Judy Geeson, poems about how phony the world was. None of them rhymed, of course, nor were any overly concerned with metrics; the lines simply ended where he had decided to end them for no other reason than that it looked like poetry on the page. There were no capital letters, either. Still, Banks reflected, from what he had seen that wasn’t a hell of a lot different from the sort of thing most published poets did today. Awful lines and images jumped out at him, such as “I feel like a corpse / in the coffin of your mind.” What on earth had prompted him to write such a thing? About what? He couldn’t even remember whose mind was supposed to be the coffin. And then there was a poem marked “For Kay,” in which these immortal lines appeared:

  i skimmed across

  your life

  like a pebble

  on the water’s surface

  i sank

  quickly

  the tide went out

  What had he been thinking of? There was another image about her being “naked / on a sheepskin / by the crackling fire,” but as far as Banks could remember, they had never lain on a sheepskin rug, and electric fires, which everyone on the estate had, didn’t crackle. Poetic license?

  He remembered that first time up in this same room while his parents were out. The event was awkward and far less momentous for both of them than his imagination had convinced him it would be, but it wen
t well enough and in the end they decided they liked it and would certainly try it again. They got better and better over the next few months, stealing an hour or two here and there while parents were absent. Once they almost got caught when Kay’s mother came home sooner than expected from a dental appointment. They just managed to get their clothes on and tidy up the bed in time to tell her they’d been listening to records, though judging by the expression on Mrs. Summerville’s face when she saw her daughter’s disheveled hair, Banks didn’t think she was convinced. Kay told him later that that very evening she had got a lecture about the dangers of teenage pregnancy and what men think of women who haven’t “saved themselves” for marriage, though no overt mention was made of Banks or that afternoon’s events, and nobody tried to stop them from seeing each other.

  Smiling at the memory, Banks slipped the exercise book of poetry into his overnight bag, determined to remember to feed it to the fire when he got back to his Gratly cottage. As he moved it, a newspaper cutting slipped out from between some of the unfilled pages. It was a report in the local paper on the disappearance of Graham Marshall, a school friend of Banks’s, and the reason for his visit home in summer. Along with the article was a photograph of Graham, his fair hair, large eyes, melancholy expression, long eyelashes and pale face like some fin de siècle poet.

  A little shaken by the photograph, Banks moved on to the bottom of the box, where he found more old 45s, ones he had forgotten he had: Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” “Juliet,” by the Four Pennies, “Hippy Hippy Shake” by the Swinging Blue Jeans, the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City,” “Devil in Disguise” by Elvis Presley and “Still I’m Sad” by the Yardbirds.

  Banks put the box back and tiptoed downstairs into the kitchen for a cup of tea. His heart almost stopped when he saw Geoff Salisbury sitting at the kitchen table eating buttered toast.

  “Morning, Alan,” Geoff said. “I’ve come to do some cleaning up. Already took your em and pee a cup of tea up, bless ’em. It’s a big day for them, you know. Like a cuppa, yourself?”

  Banks felt like saying he would make his own tea, but he remembered he hadn’t been able to find the tea bags. Instead, he got himself a mug. “Thanks,” he grunted.

  “Not much of a morning person?” Geoff asked. “Still, I imagine after a late night like you had you must be feeling even more tired. Your poor old mum was lying awake worrying where you’d got to.” Salisbury winked. “Having a good time with that Summerville girl, were you?”

  So Banks’s mother had already told Geoff that her son had been out with Kay Summerville and had not returned home until the early hours of the morning. He knew all this, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock yet. Geoff Salisbury was starting to get really annoying. Even though Banks hadn’t had a chance to call Annie back about criminal records, he decided that now would be as good a time as any to go on the offensive and make a couple of things clear to him.

  “I’m glad you’re here, actually,” Banks said. “I’ve been wanting to have a quiet word with you.”

  “Oh? What about?”

  “Your sticky fingers.”

  “Come again?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. Don’t come the innocent. It doesn’t work with me.”

  “I understand that your job must make you cynical, but why are you picking on me? What have I done?”

  “You know what you’ve done.”

  “Look, if it’s that business about the change, I thought I’d already made it clear to you it was a genuine mistake? I thought we’d put it behind us?”

  “I might have done if it hadn’t been for a few other interesting tidbits I’ve heard since I’ve been down here.”

  “It’s that Summerville girl, isn’t it? If she’s been saying things, she’s lying. She doesn’t like me.”

  “Well,” said Banks, “that at least shows good taste on her part. It doesn’t matter who’s been saying what. The point is that I’ve been hearing from a number of independent sources about things sort of disappearing when you’re in the vicinity. Money, for example.”

  Salisbury turned red. “I resent that.”

  “I should imagine you do. But is it true?”

  “Of course it isn’t. I don’t know who’s—”

  “I told you, it doesn’t matter who.”

  Salisbury stood up. “Well, it does to me. I have enemies out there. You might not believe it, but there are people who have it in for me. Not everybody appreciates what I do for the decent folk around here, you know.”

  “What enemies? What do you mean?”

  “Never you mind. Now, if you’ve finished with your groundless accusations, I’ve got work to do. Your parents’ golden wedding might not be important to you, but it is to me. Arthur and Ida mean a lot to me.”

  Before Banks could say another word, Salisbury had gone into the front room and started up the vacuum. Irritated both by Salisbury’s reaction and his own fumbling accusation, Banks went across to the newsagent’s to see if he could pick up a Sunday Times.

  XVI

  Banks went to the Bricklayer’s Inn by himself for a quiet pint on Sunday lunchtime, taking the newspaper with him and promising to be back by two o’clock for lunch. It was his first real break away from everyone that weekend, and he made the best of it, even got the crossword three-quarters done, which was good for him without Annie’s help. On his way home, he took cover in the rain-lashed bus shelter by the gates of the derelict factory to call Annie in Eastvale. Though the shelter hadn’t been there all those years ago, Banks still couldn’t help but think of Mandy, with her Julie Christie lips and that faraway look in her eyes. He wondered what had happened to her, whether she had ever found that distant thing she was looking for. Probably not; most people didn’t. Though it seemed like another age, she would only be in her early fifties, after all, and that no longer sounded very old to Banks.

  DC Winsome Jackman answered his ring. “Is DI Cabbot not in?” Banks asked.

  “I’m afraid not, sir,” said Winsome. “She’s out on the East Side Estate interviewing neighbors about that sexual assault.”

  “Do you know when she’ll be back?”

  “No, sir. Sorry, but you’ll just have to make do with me.”

  Banks could hear teasing humor in her voice, the way it tinged her lilting Jamaican speech. Did she know that Annie and he used to have a thing? He wouldn’t be surprised. No matter how much you try to keep something like that a secret, there are always people who seem able to pick up on it intuitively.

  “DI Cabbot did leave a message for you, though, sir,” Winsome went on.

  “Yes?”

  “That man you were asking about, Geoffrey Salisbury.”

  “Right. Any form?”

  “Yes, sir. One conviction. Six years ago. Served eighteen months.”

  “What for?”

  “Fraud, sir. To put it in a nutshell, he tried to swindle a little old lady out of her life savings, but she was a lot smarter than he reckoned with.”

  “Did he indeed?” Banks said. “What a surprise.”

  “Sir?”

  “Nothing. Where did this happen?”

  “Loughborough, sir.”

  That wasn’t very far away, Banks thought. “Thanks a lot,” he said. “And thank DI Cabbot. That’s a great help.”

  “There’s more, sir. DI Cabbot said she’s going to try to talk to the local police, the ones who handled the case. She said it looks like there might be more to it than meets the eye.”

  “What did she mean by that?”

  “Don’t know, sir. Shall I ask her to ring you when she’s been in touch with Loughborough police?”

  “If you would, Winsome. And thanks again.”

  “No problem, sir. Enjoy the party.”

  XVII

  Roy didn’t turn up in time for Sunday lunch, which was pretty much what Banks had expected. They ate without him, Ida Banks fretting and worrying the whole time, unable to enjoy her food,
Arthur trying to calm her, assuring her that nothing terrible had happened and that Roy wasn’t trapped in a burning car wreck somewhere on the M1. Banks said nothing. He knew his mother well enough to realize that anything he said regarding Roy would only succeed in adding fuel to the fire. Instead, he ate his roast beef and Yorkshires like a good boy—and a fine lunch it was, too, especially if you liked your meat and vegetables overcooked—and counted his blessings. In the first place, his mother was far too distracted to go on at him for being late home last night, and in the second place, Geoff bloody Salisbury had buggered off home and wasn’t eating with them, though he had promised to come back early to help set up for the party.

  The phone finally rang at about half past two, just as they were starting their jam roly-poly, and Banks’s mother leaped up and dashed into the hall to answer it. When she came back, she was much calmer, and she informed Banks and his father that poor Roy had had a devil of a job getting away on time and the rain had caused some terrible delays. There was also a pileup on the M25, so he was stuck in traffic there at the moment and would arrive as soon as he could.

  “There you are, you see,” Arthur said. “All that fretting for nothing. I told you he was all right.”

  “But you never know, do you?” she said.

  Banks offered to do the dishes and his offer was, to his surprise, accepted. His father had a nap with the open newspaper unread on his lap, and his mother went for a short lie down to calm her nerves. When Banks had finished the dishes, he sneaked a couple of fingers of his father’s Johnnie Walker to calm his nerves. He had no sooner downed it than the explosion went off.

  At least that was what it sounded like at first. Eventually, Banks’s ears had adjusted enough to discern that it was music coming from next door. Heavy metal gangsta rap, music only if you used the term very loosely indeed. Banks’s father stirred in his armchair. “At it again,” he grumbled. “Never get a moment’s peace.”