Duty and Delusion

by Shawna Lewis

  “I left my notebook in the kitchen when I was speaking to the lady of the house. I’ll just pop back.” He strode round to the back door, out of sight, walked in without knocking and winked at his Uncle Ron.

  “Thanks for the beef, Aunty Maureen,” he said. “We’ll just give this bloke a little ride. Seems a right tosser. S’been a quiet night so far.” He retrieved the notebook from the dresser and disappeared with a wave.

  Back in the lounge, Ron told the group that the other gentleman had been called away suddenly. As Bel got up to leave, he followed her out and lingered in the hall.

  “That card,” he murmured. “Local radio always welcomes snippets of news.”

  She looked puzzled.

  “You know, such as ‘County MP taken in for questioning … criminal damage…’ Get my drift?”

  He turned away, leaving her to ponder his meaning as she climbed the stairs.

  She undressed and set a bath to run as she did her exercises. No need for the malevolent mantras tonight. There was no doubt in her mind that Miles was an obnoxious Hooray Henry who needed bringing down a peg or two, and on the dressing table rested her means of making that happen. There was a brief demur as the memory of Candy Dunne’s hearing affliction flitted through her mind, and then of the mistaken identity of the car’s owner… and maybe Bud hadn’t deserved it after all… but in all honesty, she knew she had to do it.

  Naked by the side of the steaming, scented bath, she took her phone and adjusted the setting to Number Withheld. She pressed the digits with the thumb of her right hand, not taking too much time in scripting her speech.

  It was soon answered.

  “Bronte FM.”

  “I have some breaking news. The Member of Parliament for a constituency in this county is helping police with their enquiries into criminal damage to a vehicle parked on private land. He was visiting Bronte FM’s coverage area for family reasons. The MP in question is an outspoken critic of what he sees as ineffective policing and lenient sentencing by the courts.”

  Questions followed.

  “Check it out,” was her only reply.

  Putting down the phone, she stretched out in the foaming bath and drifted into a reverie. Miles Baxter-Hatton: sorted. Comeuppance: delivered. A smile settled on her lips as her muscles relaxed until she was close to sleep. Thirty minutes later she stirred enough to climb out, wrap herself in a towel and fall across the bed, totally soothed and at one with herself.

  *

  Miles did not sit comfortably in the back of the police Range Rover, although the officers took him on a scenic tour of the country lanes of the county’s more westerly environs, all the while lamenting the darkness that prevented their passenger enjoying the best that rural England could offer. He noticed the road was gaining altitude. Pete explained that the Farm Watch squad had reported some suspicious low-loader activity in the vicinity of a tractor shed, so a detour round a few moorland lanes might just be worthwhile. Miles’s impatience to reach police headquarters and share his wisdom was quite understandable, the officers agreed, but these rural areas were hotspots for large-scale poaching and farm-vehicle theft. It would be more than their jobs were worth not to visit a few of the remoter agricultural buildings, since they were so close.

  The rutted tracks, potholes and forded streams were beginning to bring on Miles’s motion sickness, and he found it difficult to make sense of the chatter back and forth over the radio. Pete had reported in that they were bringing in a witness for further information, and would be back at HQ as soon as convenient, but an hour had elapsed since then. Dale once more tried to elicit Miles’s whereabouts on the night of the crime.

  “I told you. I stayed with a friend.”

  “You’re a lucky man, Miles. It’s a lucky man who has friends he can lean on…in times of trouble, I mean.” He paused, thinking. “Known him long?”

  “Yes. We were at school together.”

  “What school would that be, sir? Not one round here, I don’t suppose…”

  Miles named a famous public school in the West Midlands.

  “A boarder were you, Miles?” Was that a snigger coming from the front seat?

  “This friend: was he in the same year as you?”

  “No. Somewhat younger.”

  “Your fag, was he… sir? Ever read Roald Dahl on the subject of his public school days?”

  Miles couldn’t say he had. (Dale had enjoyed the writer’s account of his boyhood when Miss Clements read to them every Friday afternoon in Year 8, although it’s possible that his enjoyment had been intensified by the young teacher’s warm eyes and short skirts.)

  “About this pilgarlic, sir. When did you first hear the word?”

  “I told you. It was a racehorse – won the Grand National in 1980.”

  “You must only have been a lad then, Mr Haxter-Batton.”

  “Baxter-Hatton. Yes, I was.”

  “Strange that you can remember something like that from your childhood.”

  “As I said earlier, I had the opportunity to use it on Countdown when I appeared. Got right to the final but was beaten by innuendo.”

  “And who was making the innuendo, sir?” The constable concealed a smirk.

  “No, no. You misunderstand. Anyway, are we nearly there yet?” He was getting tired of all this. His opinion of the police was sinking even lower. “I don’t have time for idle chat about racehorses. I think I’ve given you enough of my time and now I really must insist you let me out of this car.”

  “What, here, Miles? Miles from anywhere?” Both officers guffawed at the pun.

  “I’ll call a cab.”

  “Not many cabs round here. Doubt you’d get one to come up onto the moors, a lonely spot like this, on a Friday midnight. Not unless it was pre-booked and with a definite address.”

  This was Dale.

  The radio came alive again, this time to pass on intelligence from the police chopper. A low-loader had again been spotted, moving suspiciously along a narrow lane in the direction of another tractor shed. The team, who unbeknown to Miles had been driving in circles never more than five miles from Hepworth House, decided this was more important than the MP’s intelligence.

  “Sorry, sir,” said Dale. “I think this pilgarlic business will have to wait. We’re needed to prevent a crime. We’ll drop you off at Hepworth House and see if we can catch this low-loader.”

  They were there in minutes.

  Stiff and pale, Miles swayed as he stood on the verge and watched the Range Rover disappear. He relieved himself among the laurels, took his keys from his jacket pocket and vomited over his shoes. He had never been able to travel in the back of a car.

  *

  Next morning, in the dining room a small digital radio on the sideboard was playing popular music from the past few decades: easy listening, mostly. At 8am, the DJ interrupted the music with a time check and a reminder that listeners were tuned to Bronte FM, bringing them local news from coast to dales. This was Bob Oglethorpe bringing the latest stories from round and about.

  There was concern about the level of unemployment throughout the region, and an interview with someone from Jobcentre Plus. Next came bad news about the closure of a glass factory, once predicted of being capable of sustaining the local jobs market for generations to come but closed down within a decade. The third item cut through the muted conversations.

  “Reports are coming in that one of the region’s up-and-coming Members of Parliament, Miles Baxter-Hatton, was last night one of several people questioned by police. It is not clear at this stage whether an arrest was made. Details of the circumstances surrounding the case are sketchy, but reports from those close to the scene suggest an act of serious criminal damage was involved. It is believed that the MP, who represents the Uttering South constituency on the coast, was visiting the Dales area on family business. We�
�ll bring you more on this as it comes in.”

  Neither Marnie nor Bel heard the rest of the news. Bel was stunned into silence. But what had she expected? She avoided Marnie’s eyes.

  “Well, that’s a turn-up for the books! Wonder how they found out.”

  “Mm. Don’t know.”

  Bel’s tone aroused the other’s curiosity. “You know something, don’t you?”

  “Least said, soonest mended.”

  “Was it you? I know he was a right pillock, but… It was you!” She lowered her voice but couldn’t suppress the laughter. “I were expecting a nice quiet few days among refined people… the sort I never get to meet as a rule. Instead, I’ve got tangled up with some madwoman determined to cause trouble.”

  “I’m not mad,” shushed Bel. “Just shaking off the shackles of domesticity.”

  Though the thought was new to her, the words rang true, and the room was filled with their laughter. They laughed till they could taste their own tears.

  *

  On this penultimate day of the course, the sculptors focused on their work. The vague ideas they’d arrived with had either taken shape or been abandoned. For many, the joy had been in the peace and liberty to create; for others the satisfaction was physical. One or two had glimpsed possibilities for an artistic future.

  Ambrose was playing a stronger role now: he knew when to suggest, when to back off, and when to step in with a decisive stroke of the grinder or chainsaw. His manner never changed – the man of wood in both senses of the word.

  He sat with Marnie on a log, smoking a roll-up (as usual of Marnie’s making and provision), contemplating her swaddled abstract and calling it a beautiful thing. She tried to conceal the elation she felt at his response: to think that she had created something beautiful filled her heart with a new gladness. They were easy company, recognising in each other a coasting attitude to life, a resistance to set boundaries and routines. Both were lackadaisical followers of ideas and dreams: neither had a regular income; each relied on happenstance to get by. For Ambrose, happenstance had brought some big breaks and valuable commissions. When these ran dry, he relied on a bit of craft teaching to adult learners and, when times got really tough, he’d do anything the job centre could find him. For Ambrose, life was about his art and whatever turned up.

  For Marnie there had been no high-end commissions. As a younger woman her face and figure made her a popular photographic model for some seedier publications, which did not pay well. A one-time erotic dancer, waitress, hostess in the city clubs and, for short periods, she’d been a kept woman. These relationships had never lasted, being based on convenience rather than affection, and never on love. She worried, sometimes, about coping in old age if she survived long enough, having rarely paid National Insurance. It was likely she would live in penury and die young. A few times, money had been so tight that she’d had to go on the streets. This neither horrified nor pleased her: it was a necessity to be dealt with, in the same emotionless way she had learnt to do everything else since her mother’s liaison with Joe of the paedophiliac tendencies.

  Yet Marnie knew she had much more to give and to receive. When she allowed herself to look into her heart, she imagined a caged starling yearning for the open sky, yearning to swoop and swirl in synchronicity with the myriad flock, to create that fluid, marvellous, mysterious beauty, acting as one with its fellows. Marnie longed to be one of the crowd, but the crowd always seemed to be in a place that Marnie could not reach.

  Ambrose rolled another Rizla as they touched on these things, languidly, neither wanting this pressureless week to end. Marnie spoke of the difference between her life and Bel’s; how she envied the other’s home, family and sense of duty. Marnie had never felt the call of duty – she had no one to feel dutiful towards – but felt the capacity was within her. She wanted to belong. To be needed.

  They discussed their habits when no-one else was nearby, acknowledging the range of substances that could be sampled within the Rizlas. Neither had a compulsive habit, but nor were they strangers to the softer drugs. They had both been lucky enough to grow up and move on before addiction conquered sense.

  At dinner that evening, Ron served the celery soup in sombre mood. Calling their Pete’s mobile had been a bit of a lark at the time, but his wife’s nephew seemed to think that the MP might want an investigation into why he was questioned and how the local radio station had got hold of the news. Worry about Pete’s career and his own reputation blunted the satisfaction he’d felt about bringing the pompous git down a peg or two. Belinda had also come down from her high and dreaded the possible repercussions of her actions. Marnie had had enough of the madness for now. She steered Bel’s thoughts towards home, asking more about the Lowe family members. She wanted to learn what a normal, average family was like.

  Over coffee in the lounge they chatted comfortably, defences down. Bel told of how she dreaded an empty nest once the children had flown, of her daughter’s over-sensitivity and desire to be a physiotherapist ever since she had broken her leg as a youngster. She spoke of Aidan’s love of the outdoors and rock climbing, and what fear she felt when he was up on the crags with his mates, even though she believed him to be a sensible lad. With greater dread, she dwelt on Mum’s precarious state of mind and how, in spite of Dad’s blind devotion to his wife, she was convinced that the marriage was a sham, because of Dorothy. Falling silent, Bel realised that her heart was pounding with fear. Her eyes were moist with unfallen tears. There would be so much loss to endure in the coming years. And she was no closer to knowing what to do about her father’s other woman.

  Seeing the clouded eyes, Marnie regretted making her confront the future. Like herself, Belinda had come away for respite, and there was one more day of it ahead. As a diversionary tactic she ventured,

  “Tell me more about your village hall.”

  Another bag of tucked-away concerns was unzipped: the state of the wiring – who knew how old it was? How to find the money to have it updated? The constant pressure to find regular hirers who not only left the place clean and tidy but also paid up on time; of who would take over her role if she fell ill or just packed it all in. How important it was to her not to be the last of the long line of volunteers who had kept the hall going since the second decade of the twentieth century.

  “Once you’re back at home, Bel, may I come over some time and have a look at it? Maybe I can come up with some ideas.” Marnie’s mind had been working.

  Bel raised her eyebrows quizzically. “Are you thinking of setting up a business?”

  “No, no. I don’t want to go inside ever again. But I know a lot of people in the leisure and entertainment business and it might help to get ideas from a different perspective. I expect a village only needs one or two keep fit and dancing classes. Maybe there are ways you could branch out. And you’re only fifteen miles from the city, which isn’t that far.”

  They tapped each other’s numbers into their phones. Bel needed sleep: criminality was an exhausting business, she realised. Bidding goodnight, she left Marnie alone in the room. With closed eyes, Marnie sank back into the soft, floral cushions. She liked it here and wished she could afford to stay longer. OK, so it wasn’t the Ritz, but it smelt good; it was clean and comfy and homely. The food was decent, the people friendly. What more could anyone ask for?

  She too faced the future with dread, but her dread was of not being able to afford the rent on her bedsit, and of what she might need to do to find it. Things were getting tougher all round, but Marnie had glimpsed something better and, eyes closed, she let her mind play on ways she might make it her own.

  The door opened quietly. Soft footsteps trod the carpet. Thinking that Bel had come back, she murmured, “Forgotten something?” without opening her eyes.

  She heard the squish of cushions close by, peeped, and saw Bud sinking into the armchair on her left. She thought about rousing herself. I
t was their first meeting since Miles’s exit with the police.

  Unaware that he was being watched, Bud stretched out and closed his eyes. A tear gathered at the corner of his eye. For all his hunky-thug appearance, Daryl was a sensitive man, prone to melancholy even in better times. One of the few permanent features of his life had gone. Although the marriage of his parents had been short, Al had been a constant presence, sometimes at a distance but oft-times close at hand when trouble called. He had tried to do right by the only son he was allowed more than perfunctory access to. After the mistake of his first marriage and Amelia’s urge to rise up the matrimonial ladder to a more prosperous status, he had become dour and ungiving. Two failed marriages promised a lonely old age, but by keeping faith with Daryl he had maintained the emotional insurance payments.

  For Bud, three legal stepfathers had come and gone, plus countless casuals. From his mother he had inherited a restless spirit, but he lacked her recklessness and needed some stability in the background of his life, and Al had been its only source. For that, if for no other reason, Daryl was bereft. The meeting with Miles the other night had only emphasised the loss.

  At their father’s insistence, the half-brothers had met on an annual basis throughout their childhoods – blood being thicker than water was one of his maxims. The meetings had never been welcomed by Amelia, Edward or Miles but each year, on his birthday, Al had arranged a day out for the three of them. When the boys were younger, they might go to a theme park, bowling alley or ice rink, always followed by a pricey meal. By the time they were both adults, this had mostly reduced to just the meal. Since Miles’s election to represent the Uttering South constituency, Bud and Al had travelled to London, to be granted a lightning tour of the House of Commons or some other sightseers’ haunt, followed by a very rushed but exotic and expensive sandwich at a backstreet gastro-pub somewhere near Parliament Square.

  By the time of his death, Al could not recall how he had come to fall in love with Betsy in the first place. In those heady sixties days, free love had just been invented. Although the newsreels simultaneously celebrated and condemned the new libertarianism, for Al and Betsy, as for so many others, the much-vaunted sexual freedom had led straight to matrimonial imprisonment and the shackles of teenage parenthood.