Broken Places

by Wendy Perriam

  Then, all at once, as if inspired by his decision, he remembered someone he could ask to countersign his passport, and a solicitor, no less. Jeremy Hugh-Jones, a former neighbour in Kingston, had moved to a flat in Wandsworth some nine months ago, and had immediately asked his help, as local librarian, for a project he was involved in, tracing the history of clay pipes. In fact, the fellow had tried his patience, forever seeking him out and taking up his time – and not just in working hours. He might be retired and potty about pipes, but that didn’t mean everybody else was. So Jeremy owed him a favour and, although there was a danger of being recruited again as an unpaid research-assistant, it was worth the risk if it meant he’d get his passport.

  Just at that moment, the girls pranced out, leaving the photo-booth free. ‘We’ve warmed up the seat for you, Granddad,’ the taller one remarked.

  And, as he sat down on the, yes, warm seat, he actually managed the ghost of a smile. ‘Granddad’ was dead right – he had aged at least two decades overnight.

  chapter seventeen

  He watched as Jeremy poured the tea from a Victorian silverware teapot, circa 1869. Antique teapots were the fellow’s new obsession – so he had learned to his cost. Research on hallmarks and decoration-styles had been added to his research on clay pipes, and all in return for one rushed and squiggly signature on the passport-application form. They’d been talking teapots for at least the last half-hour, yet the wretched man showed no sign of desisting.

  ‘Did you notice the snake’s-head finial?’ He pointed to the top of the pot, where a silver serpent extended its tiny tongue. ‘Most finials in Victorian times were screwed onto the lid, but this one’s soldered, which makes it quite unusual.’

  ‘Really?’ Eric said, resolving to find some way of terminating this far-from-welcome relationship. The guy was obviously lonely, since he kept suggesting further meetings and seemed to assume they were now bosom friends.

  ‘And this octagonal-shaped body’ – Jeremy stroked the teapot lovingly – ‘was introduced in the early eighteenth century but continued to be fashionable throughout the Victorian era.’

  He passed Eric milk and sugar and cut him a slice of cake, with a further disquisition on the cake-plate, milk-jug and sugar-bowl, all hand-painted Early Worcester and apparently quite rare. Then, having stirred his tea, he settled back in his seat, with a sigh of satisfaction. ‘Well, I must say, this is nice, Eric – almost like old times in Kingston. Oh, by the way, what happened about your passport? Did you get it in the end?’

  Eric had assumed he would never ask. Clearly, in Jeremy’s estimation, passports were less enthralling than teapots, creamers, slop-bowls and the rest. ‘No,’ he replied, with some vehemence. ‘And I have to say, I’m in quite a stew about it. I’m due to leave eight days from now, which means I’ll have to cancel the flight if it hasn’t come by then.’

  ‘Well, you know these bureaucrats – they always take their time.’

  ‘But my interview was a whole nine days ago. And I told them then – and when I first applied – that my visit to the States was a family necessity, not a pleasure-trip, so could they please hurry up the process.’ The official conducting the interview hadn’t been exactly sympathetic – a suspicious, sullen type, who had taken a grim delight in nitpicking over everything.

  ‘Well, I can only wish you luck.’ Jeremy brushed a stray cake-crumb from his lip. ‘And do keep me in the picture, won’t you? In fact, maybe we could meet again, just before you leave.’

  ‘If I leave,’ Eric interrupted, quickly fabricating a raft of reasons why he’d be too busy to socialize, even if he didn’t fly.

  ‘My own flying days are over,’ Jeremy remarked; proving his thick skin by barely registering the brush-off. ‘Although I must have flown a good million miles in my time.’

  Eric gave an involuntary gasp. Shouldn’t the guy have died of terror way before a thousand miles, let alone a million?

  ‘But, a year ago, on a flight to New Orleans, the plane was struck by lightning just as we approached the airport. We flew into this thick yellow cloud and suddenly there was a terrific bang, and the whole plane shuddered and sparks flew off the wing.’

  Eric put his plate down. No way could he munch chocolate cake whilst digesting such atrocities.

  ‘And somehow I just lost my nerve. Now I prefer to stay at home.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Eric echoed.

  ‘Although, one way and another, I’ve survived a good few horrors in my time. I remember one occasion, in 1975, there was a fire in the undercarriage as we landed at Heathrow. In those days, inflatable chutes weren’t available, so I had to climb down this sort of ladder-affair, then hold it out, with the help of another passenger, for the others to escape. We were surrounded by dense clouds of smoke, and I was choking so much I could barely breathe. The cabin crew were useless – in fact, more panicked than the rest of us.’

  Eric fought an overwhelming instinct to bolt out of the flat before any further disasters could be added to the list.

  ‘And, the following year, when I was coming back from Athens, we were caught in a violent thunderstorm. The plane was thrown all over the place and everybody yelled blue murder. Mind you, snowstorms can be even worse. I’ll never forget the one in ’83, when I was on my way to Boston. The turbulence was so horrendous, I assumed we were about to crash, and just sat there with my eyes shut, calling on the Lord for help. And what with engine-failure, which I’ve experienced on three occasions, and—’

  No, he couldn’t fly – Eric knew that now. Thank God the passport hadn’t come: a blessing in disguise.

  ‘And, of course, it’s much more dangerous nowadays, with these confounded terrorists. OK, they foiled that plot in 2006 to blow up ten separate aircraft, but the buggers are bound to be planning more carnage – and on just the same grand scale, I bet!’

  Eric’s hand was shaking on the cup. He needed a stiff drink – or three – not this watery Earl Grey. But he was due at the prison this evening, for Simon Brett’s visit to the book club and could hardly greet the author half-cut.

  ‘And another thing – standards are much lower now among most airline staff. You won’t believe this, Eric, but the other day I heard of a case where the pilot was actually rogering his co-pilot while they were over the Atlantic. But who was there to care, when most of the stewards are high on cocaine – or worse?’

  Eric fought a wave of dizziness. He had been relying on those very staff to help him through the ordeal, but if they were crack-heads or sex-fiends – or even both at once – what chance was there of survival? He longed to rush straight round to Mandy’s flat, bury his head in her breasts, and beg her to kiss his fears away. But how could he even admit to such fears without losing her respect – maybe losing her, full-stop? In fact, during the last few weeks, he’d had to invent a string of crises at work, as an excuse to see her less. Much as he craved her company, he couldn’t take the risk of breaking down and confessing his mega-cowardice – when he was off his guard in bed, maybe – and revealing himself as the snivelling wreck he was.

  Desperately, he shot up from his chair, strode over to the display-case and indicated one of the clay pipes. The only way to stop this bloke discoursing on catastrophes was to return him to his favourite subject. ‘Is this a new acquisition?’

  Needing no second invitation, Jeremy joined him by the case and reverently withdrew the pipe: an elaborate specimen, with a decorative stem and a bowl in the shape of a lion’s head. ‘Yes, and what a beauty! See that detail on the mane? The bowl measures a mere inch-and-a-half, yet the carving is exquisite.’

  ‘Lovely,’ Eric agreed, glancing round the cluttered room, which seemed more museum than home; stuffed as it was with cabinets and display-shelves; every inch crowded with collectables. Even when the guy had lived in Kingston, he’d been patently eccentric, and these new retirement passions had only emphasized the trait.

  ‘Eric, I’ve just had a thought – why don’t you join the Society f
or Clay Pipe Research, now you’re becoming so involved yourself? We could go to their meetings together, then.’

  ‘Well, as I said before, I am extremely busy, what with—’ All at once, he exploded in a sneeze, followed by another and another. ‘I do beg your pardon,’ he tried to say, only to interrupt himself with yet more resounding ‘atishoos’.

  ‘You should have told me you had a cold,’ Jeremy said, his mood swiftly changing from affable to peevish. ‘And I’d have postponed our little tea-party until you were free of germs.’

  ‘It’s not a cold,’ Eric retorted. ‘I’m just … atishoo … allergic … atishoo … to … atishoo-ooooo.’ He gave up the attempt to explain, as a dozen more successive sneezes rendered it impossible to speak. Little tea-party indeed! He’d had no desire to come here in the first place, especially on his one day off – and not even a complete day off, with his book club engagement this evening.

  However, at least Jeremy’s concern about catching something lethal provided a convenient escape, since when he said he’d simply have to leave, to avoid whatever allergen was lurking in the flat, the guy put up no resistance and ushered him swiftly to the door.

  Having said a brief – atishoo – goodbye, he wheeled his bike along the street, deciding not to ride it, in case the jolting sneezes rocked him from the saddle. After ten explosive minutes with no let-up, he began to worry that he would trumpet all through Simon’s talk. If only he were normal – someone not prone to allergies or panics; a bloke like Trevor, maybe, whose only fears were budget-cuts or failing to meet targets.

  Finally, however, the sneezing petered out and, having mounted his bike with a sense of huge relief, he pedalled on to the prison. Reaching it at half-past five and thus with time in hand, he decided to go for a walk on the common, not only to calm his nerves, but to give him a chance to do some quick revision on Simon’s latest paperback, Blood at the Bookies. In truth, he’d never been a fan of crime fiction but, even were he reading Tolstoy, the weighty issues on his mind would have fatally distracted him: the mix of hope and angst each day as he checked the post for his passport; the fear of Christine’s fury if he was forced to let her down; the dilemma over Mandy. Would a ‘brave’ façade ensure her lasting love, or should he opt for honesty and make a clean breast of his terrors? And there were lesser concerns, as well. Who would run his reading group, while –if – he was away? Would any of his colleagues want to cope with the depressives, who could be unpredictable, if not downright cussed?

  With a muttered curse, he yanked his mind back to murder suspects, betting shops and plot-twists; wishing someone would be kind enough to dispatch him in a betting shop. Death, however gory, seemed, at present, the only possible way out.

  ‘So how do you do your research?’ asked Doug – a hulking fellow, with a jowly, pock-marked face.

  Eric, sitting next to him, suddenly noticed that his copy of Blood at the Bookies itself was stained with blood, and that there were jottings in blue biro scrawled across the pages.

  ‘Well, my favourite method is taking people out to lunch,’ Simon replied, jocularly. ‘Much more fun than slaving away in a library! I’ll choose someone who knows the subject well and question them over fillet steak and strawberries, with a glass or two of wine, to keep the conversation flowing. For instance, for Death Under the Drier, I lunched with the owner of a hair-salon and asked her to dish me all the dirt – you know, what the staff get up to, who are the vainest customers—’

  ‘And who are they?’ Rashid asked.

  ‘Asian men, I’m afraid to say!’

  Everybody laughed, including Rashid.

  ‘Then, for a novel called Dead Giveaway, I took out a TV producer and picked her brains about television talent shows. And she told me they had an “Ugly Wall”, to display photos of contestants who were desperate to appear but just didn’t have the looks.’

  ‘I’d be on that wall, then – that’s for sure,’ Doug commented.

  More laughter.

  Eric dared to relax. Simon’s talk had gone down well and now questions were coming thick and fast. Only one of the men sat silent; a young, anaemic-looking chap, whose arms were crossed tight across his chest and who’d been staring at the floor since he had shuffled in at the start. He seemed to be giving off signals saying, ‘I’m not part of this. Count me out’, and had even failed, so far, to interact with any of his fellow members. Eric decided to talk to him, in private, at the close of the proceedings, in an attempt to get through his armour, and maybe offer him a book or two, to keep and read in his cell. These prisoners were all trapped, but reading might provide some means of mental escape, however limited. In fact, he’d been heartened to learn from Linda Lewis, when chatting to her before the men arrived, that previous book club choices included not just modern crime novels and thrillers, but authors as demanding as Dickens, Orwell and Scott Fitzgerald. Linda had also told him that although some members, such as Kevin, often failed to finish the book, others made detailed notes about the characters and contents that would put most scholars to shame.

  ‘I do try to check everything carefully,’ Simon continued, pushing his specs back up on his nose. ‘But mistakes can still get in. For example, in The Stabbing in the Stables, there’s an injury to a horse, but it changes midway through the book from the front right knee to the left. I only realized when the book was published, and by then it was too late.’

  ‘It was corrected in the paperback, though,’ Beverley remarked. As prison library assistant, she was deputizing for Abi tonight; himself too busy to come. ‘I read them both and noticed.’

  ‘Good for you!’ Simon said, approvingly. ‘I deplore mistakes, but I love attentive readers!’

  ‘I was wondering, though, why you use amateur detectives, rather than professionals?’

  ‘Well, there’s a long tradition of amateurs, going back to Sherlock Holmes and Poirot. And, actually, it’s easier for me, as author. My knowledge of police procedure is limited, to say the least, but my two amateurs aren’t very genned-up, either. So I hope they and the readers can go on a sort of journey together, finding out things by stages, which makes the exposition less plodding – or so I like to think.’

  ‘I didn’t believe in their friendship, though,’ Xavier objected. ‘They’re so different in basic temperament, would they really have hit it off?’

  ‘They live in a small village, remember,’ Rashid observed, ‘so presumably there wouldn’t be much choice of friends.’

  ‘Same as us,’ said Jake. ‘The only company we have is our cell-mate.’

  ‘And I’d run a mile from mine,’ Doug grimaced, ‘if I only had the chance.’

  ‘You don’t make friends in here, anyway,’ Stewart remarked, with a touch of bitterness. ‘You come in on your own and you leave on your own.’

  Like children’s homes, thought Eric, aware that during his peripatetic boyhood the prospect of having a best mate had to remain in the realm of fantasy, as either he, or one of the other kids he’d just dared to get to know, was moved on yet again. Besides, when you lived in an institution, there was a sense of not belonging, which clearly Stewart felt as well. Indeed, Stewart was the only man he recognized from the previous meeting in January, so, if even book club members changed so radically, no wonder the guy felt adrift. The librarians provided an anchor, of course, as did Linda herself, who brought to the group her experience and expertise as a university lecturer. She also served as an important link with the wider world outside – as he did, too, in fact – a reassurance to these men that they hadn’t been forgotten by that world.

  ‘What I didn’t like,’ Jake observed, returning to the subject of the book, ‘was the humour. I just don’t find the subject funny. I mean, we’re not in here for a petty bit of shoplifting, or dealing a few Es, you know. However much we’ve fucked things up, we have to live with what we’ve done and that’s no laughing matter. OK, we did the crime, we’ll do the time, but prison’s not exactly Butlins – right?’

&n
bsp; Eric glanced across at him – a harmless-looking bloke, dressed not in the usual grey tracksuit, but in smart brown trousers and sweater. Whatever Jake had done, he would never dream of judging him – nor any prisoner, come to that – without knowing what had driven him to crime. After all, he himself might well have murdered Uncle Frank, had the abuse gone on much longer. And, as a boy, he had nicked a lot of stuff and also done his share of drugs – usually pressurized by older kids, or even used as a decoy. Growing up in care, you had to submit to the bullies in order to survive, and, if it involved law-breaking and a few bad trips, well, that was just the system. The fact he’d escaped both serious addiction and a prison-sentence was due more to chance than to any virtue on his part. And many of these men could have suffered childhoods far more gruelling than his, and then sought revenge through violence, or oblivion through drugs, so who was he to take the moral high line?

  Simon was expounding on comedy, seemingly unfazed by Jake and Xavier’s criticisms. Keen to redress the balance, however, Eric weighed in with some praises; glad now of his ‘revision’ on the common, since he could quote specific details. Anyway, quite apart from his fiction, Simon deserved an accolade, having turned up well on time, gone to obvious trouble with his talk and been endearingly good-natured and self-deprecating throughout the whole proceedings. Not all authors were so amenable, alas. Some of those he’d invited to speak at library events had been late, or rude, or woefully unprepared.

  He just wished the numbers were higher. A mere seven men were here this evening, despite the fact this was one of the biggest gaols in Europe. He’d also welcome the chance to be more involved with the group; to arrange regular author-visits, or maybe bring in a performance-poet or set up drama workshops, but, with all his other library work, he had neither the time nor the funding.