by Gerald Wixey
His head began to spin, slowly at first. Like a roundabout at a fair picks up speed.
Then he looked at Celia’s breasts.
He shook Shirley, wake up, wake up.
‘What’s up – have you had a nightmare?’
Nightmare?
‘Help me, Shirley…’
21
Jack -1946
‘I don’t know what all the fuss was about.’ Wyn’s eyes are forgiving like a generous father welcoming a feckless son back into his life. Despite spending Christmas inside, his voice was calm and devoid of the emotion that he would have been justified in expressing. Even the words didn’t trade in resentment and acrimony. He asked the expected questions, how’s Peggy? Has Daphne been paid? Have you found a pub yet Harry? How’s the job going? Finally the question that had to be top of his list.
‘Shirley?’ His eyebrows formed a question mark as he gazed my way.
I shrugged, ‘Mother and baby boy both doing well.’
Wyn’s eyes fell to ground, I glanced quickly across to Harry.
He tapped his balding head, ‘What did you expect?’
Wyn stared at the clock, he sighed. ‘I wrote to her – several times in fact. The last one from Chelmsford jail.’
I said, ‘She wouldn’t have read it.’ His face swung my way, question marks still in place. I moaned softly to myself. ‘I never had chance to tell you, Ronny told the military police where you lived. Shirley never saw your letters either. He intercepted everything you, or anyone else come to that, sent to her. I’ve seen him a couple of times.’
Wyn closed his eyes, fighting back tears? Remembering Shirley? Plotting a suitable revenge for Ronny? He opened his eyes, the lightest of dews left after the lids had opened. Despite being knocked overboard into the icy cold water of the north Atlantic. He clung to the vanity that was his life-raft. Elbowing remorse into touch, trudging up the beach to dry land.
He spoke softly, just two words. ‘Lucky Ronny.’
‘He told her that you had run off with one of the girls, straight after the fight. Took all of the money and did a bunk.’
Wyn tipped his head a touch, ‘Which one?’
Did it matter?
Obviously it did, ‘Which one, it’s important.’ The first time he expressed any emotion since he walked back through the door an hour earlier.
‘The large girl, Jean, or Joan.’ I never said blonde one, most of them were blonde.
Trying to appear like the cat that’s got all of the cream. Not the one left with the saucer of water, he said, ‘Little Joanie.’ Wyn nodded like Joan would be a good choice to run off with. He confirmed this when he said, ‘She likes to play games – liked to be a naughty girl.’
He sat back, apparently satisfied with Ronny’s choice for his elopement partner. There we sat until the ancient grandfather clock burst into the room. The gears clanked and whirred, the chime took another beating as the hammers hammered out the hour.
******
Michael Parlane had given me the necessary glowing reference. The safe, security that reporting about life in a small town brought me a degree of happiness. Harry had signed the lease on a little pub at the end other end of town, soon to be a landlord, soon to have a landlady to help him. This hurt Wyn as well, oh he wished his brother well of course and meant it. After all Peggy was a gorgeous looking woman. But everyone had got what they wanted except him. He walked around with the hint of disappointment, a man that had just drawn an ace of diamonds, useless, when lined up with the full set of diamonds already in his hand.
I had worked hard, I did everything. Typed invoices, wrote reviews for pantomimes. Reports on local football matches. Whist drives, beetle drives, church bazaars, dart leagues, crib leagues, domino leagues. Shoplifters, road accidents, Magistrates courts, lost and found, cars for sale, houses to let, music lessons, French lessons. I even helped with the type setting. And all the time, something shadowy and overwhelming shifted within me. Self-pity disappeared and I swam slowly away from the plug hole of despair that had gripped me.
Instead of spiralling down and down, I began the steady climb up and away. Until I got a phone call from Michael Parlane. One frosty morning. My new boss let me handle all the calls by now. The noisy clatter of the chaos that was a national newspaper’s office rattled out of the speaker and down into my ear drum, causing a membrane stretching sequence of vibrations.
‘Jack?’ a familiar voice, ‘You got the job then?’
‘How can you work in that racket?’
Small talk drifted back and forwards across the phone line, I glanced at my watch a couple of times waiting for the gossip, or the question that caused this conversation to develop.
‘Listen to this one.’
Here we go.
His behaviour was grandiloquent to the point of triumphant. ‘Did you know that Major Watkins was seen in Chelmsford glass house?’
I said nothing, difficult to speak when someone’s punched you in the kidneys.
‘Jack, you there?’
I nodded, always a useful gesture down the phone.
‘Have you seen him?’
Me?
‘Jack? I thought you said they were dead?’
‘I’ve not seen him for months.’ Apart from yesterday, pretty much true. Now I had become wary, ‘Why?’
A couple of hefty sighs came down the line my way, ‘Why do you think? A couple of low-life’s are after the three of you. But I guess you knew that. Anyway, I’d quite like a chat with him myself.’
I was about to ask why, when he answered the question himself.
‘Interesting character, impersonating an army officer during wartime. Up-market brothel keeper and someone brave enough to take on the thugs.’
I nailed one of accusations, Wyn’s perfect lie to the military council that helped keep the sentence to a minimum. He hadn’t given himself that pseudonym. The newspapers had and made a mistake in the process, putting the wrong name against the wrong face. This fact checked out, his father had fought with distinction at Mons, on the Marne and at Ypres. And come up through the ranks like he did, to reach Major. It only happened a handful of times. No doubt, their father had been a First World War hero. But he had never seen Harry fight though. Furious that his favourite son had chosen boxing before rugby.
Still Wyn’s indignant version was believed and his sentence adjusted accordingly. Impersonating an officer became one of simple avoidance of military service. The master liar had managed a rabbit when it was needed most. Three years, became three months inside.
A few minutes silence, frustration hummed out of the phone, Parlane’s sharpest knife blunted by Wyn’s intrepid lying.
Finally he said, ‘Take care.’
I replaced the receiver and smiled to myself, rather like a blind man would do when someone threw a farthing into his begging bowl.
Take care?
Spoken like it was a threat. Two months not looking over my shoulder blown out of the water as the shadows returned. Self-pity bounced back, no slow swim back towards the plug hole of despair. Instead I began the vertical descent. No spiralling, just down, down and further down the ice face of hopelessness. I sat at my desk and even tried the adult trick that Wyn had mastered years before. Forget the phone call ever happened. Forget anything nasty or untoward ever happens and get on with life. A neat trick and one beyond my limited powers.
Did that make me a realist or a coward? Not the first that’s for sure.
*****
A couple of days later, I left the office just before five. The afternoon dead as the rabbits lined up on next door’s butcher’s slab. It had been snowing for a couple of hours. Separate trails of footprints twist across one another. Big flakes flutter down, halo’s around the street lights, drifting and blurring the footprints. It just needed a good wind now and we’d be entombed in the house for a day or so. As soon as the thought crossed my mind, all the chaos of the last few months rushed back.
Entombed, incarcer
ated, buried.
‘Stop it!’
I quickly looked around, no one close enough to wonder why I was shouting at myself. That’s when I saw him, a few feet away from me. Drifting as aimlessly as the snow. Snow on his hat, a membrane thin layer covering his glasses. I followed him, twisting the knot of my tie at the same time, as if to remind myself that this wasn’t a dream. I was alive, at the moment. I watched as Eyeless stopped, he gave up the unequal struggle and took his glasses off. Staring myopically into the whiteness, a half blind snow leopard looking for its evening meal. Emboldened by my prey’s disability, I watched him with all the frostiness of an aloof teacher staring down at a recalcitrant pupil. He twisted and turned, helpless and practically sightless. I looked around for something heavy to put across the back of his head.
Nothing, just snow and the wind beginning to whip the snow into swirling, irregular swarms. Whipping around Eyeless like angry bees swarming after a threatened queen.
Coriolis Effect or inertia?
Why not just call it the beginnings of a blizzard.
Masks of snow covering the occasional car as it went silently around the market square. Snowflakes chasing after the rear lights causing a kaleidoscope of rapidly changing shades of redness. Eyeless struggled towards the Bear hotel and I watched him stop under the arch, wipe his glasses, place them back on his nose and then scan the wintry scene.
Did he just stare at me?
Probably, but I’d become a man of the shadows and I drifted home, pursued by nothing other than thousands of snowflakes. I wrenched the door and it opened with a deep sigh of appreciation. I looked behind me, how quiet it had become in the garden. Snow, that natural sound insulator. Silence, apart from the irregular moan of wind in the trees. Wailing away, as if the blasphemous night was preparing itself for the end of the world.
Teddy - 1946
He liked this part of Spain.
This part of its coast had over 200 beaches and shared two different bodies of water: the Mediterranean and the Menor Sea. Which has an outstretched piece of land called La Manga. Murcia is the capital of the province and got its own University.
The Mediterranean bathed region of Murcia, is not only known for its beautiful beaches, but also for a great number of natural beauties still to be discovered. It is precisely its natural charms and contrasts that makes Murcia outstanding from other regions.
Natural open spaces that look like the most desolate deserts share common ground with lush fertile green lands like the valley of Segura and the valley of Guadaletin: modern residential neighbourhoods reaching out to connect with small medieval towns.
‘Fuck this.’
He threw the travel guide into the sea.
Then the dreams stopped.
Even the one where the baby was thrown out of the third floor window.
Despite the heat, he shivered.
‘Where’s Eyeless?’
His Uncle Jim said he’d vanished – gone.
Eyeless was too stupid to lie low, dead probably.
Did he catch any regret or satisfaction radiating from his uncle? Everybody likes the return of the prodigal, although he wasn’t Jim’s son, he was treated like a long lost, adoring son.
He liked the sun, but missed the bars and cafes. The gossip of criminals, the stares of the policemen and the drunks. Old men sat at Formica coated tables, sucking on their roll ups and drinking warm tea.
The women cooing away at him.
‘Oh it won’t cost you Teddy boy.’
The bitter street smells, urine mixed with overripe vegetables.
Here, he had sun and he used its therapeutic properties well. Good old Uncle Jim gave him a camera. He spent most of his time clicking away down on the beach. Watching couples, intimate couples mainly.
Discreet couples that sneaked kisses and touches.
Even better when he fitted a zoom lens.
‘I understand you Teddy.’
Good old Uncle Jim.
‘You’re just like all the other tearaways, any little slight and you’re off. Someone looks at you the wrong way and it becomes a matter of honour.
Revenge is the way you settle any debt.’
‘Leave me alone.’
‘You fucking listen, why do you think I’m living out here? Same as you, we settled our disputes amongst ourselves. We didn’t need a court of law, men of honour? Teddy, its all bollocks.’
‘Leave me alone.’
‘You can’t go home.’
‘What?’
‘Never probably.’
‘Never?’
‘Take some photo’s – that’s a good fucking camera. I took it from some old Jew-boy who owed me.’
‘You told me you bought it.’
‘Just take some pictures, lie on the beach. Take it easy.’
‘I want to go home.’
22
Jack - 1980
I always found Inspector Mably a decent sort. A bit dour, but we got on well enough. As he delighted in telling us the other day, two days into his new career and we were his first interview all those years ago. He interviewed the three of us, constantly staring at Harry’s bruises and Wyn’s expensive suit. Of course we’d got our story ironed out by then. No evidence apart from blood in the snow and a witness who heard a murderous encounter. But old Bert had actually seen nothing. The whole scene had been played out in a blizzard and vague shadows and a deep layer of snow.
Old Bert was young Bert then and he’d heard the disturbance. Ran up to the police station, swearing that he’d seen a body and heard gunshots. Blood curdling screams and a madman swearing. Mably had interviewed us and Wyn’s charm carried the day. The fact that Bert was three sheets to the wind helped as well. The blood disappeared with the heavy rain that came before sunrise. Nothing left and no doubt about it, we were lucky – although the worry never left me. Harry’s temper worsened about then too and all the time Wyn smiled and breezed through life like nothing had ever happened.
We stood, Stuart restless, shifting his weight from left foot to right and back again. I just stared as Mably studied the old newspaper cutting like an archaeologist would an Egyptian transcript. A dusty old event changing manuscript. But then that’s what it was. He rubbed his eyes, another long day. His hands came together, fingers forming a pyramid. He sighed, collapsed the pyramid and started to tap his teeth with his thumb nails and stared down. Finally he pushed the newspaper to one side and pulled an A4 file towards him.
Mably stared up at me and then, rather reluctantly I felt, looked at Stuart. ‘I want to speak to Jack alone a minute. Do you mind?’
Stuart raised his eyebrows at me, I shrugged and nodded. He stood and wandered out. Rather like a child turning up for a friend’s birthday party, only to be told that he hadn’t got an invite.
‘What’s wrong?’ I said,
‘Everything that’s what’s wrong. Bloody lawyers with yet more bad news, evidently there’s no forensic evidence, we can’t charge him.’ I wasn’t sure if he meant Patrick. Mably stared fixedly down at the report, ‘Why can’t they just speak English? Listen to this. The plaintiff is likely to file a writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum. This is a legal proceeding in which an individual held in custody can challenge the propriety of that custody under the law. The prisoner can then be released or bailed by order of …’
I sighed, Mably sighed. An outbreak of sighing gripped the pair of us. I said, ‘Why don’t you want Stuart in here? He’s as much a witness as me.’
Mably nodded, ‘You know the history, ten years ago and – well it was bad enough her being involved with that little Irish hooligan.’
Her being his daughter, girlfriend of Patrick’s at one time and a brief fling for Stuart.
Mably’s face took on the appearance of a verger talking about his only daughter’s deflowering. ‘He used to get her home at all hours, then there was that fight in the Indian restaurant. And just to make things worse, a few weeks later and I catch…’
Her
in bed with Stuart.
I said, ‘They were young – it’s what they do.’
‘You sound just like my wife. I find it difficult to remain impartial when those two are close by, both of them trouble.’ Mably straightened his tie and dragged his shoulders back, and tried to focus on the here and now.
‘He’s grown up these days.’
‘Has he now.’ Mably’s mouth turned down, ‘Get him back in then.’
‘Before I do, what happened to Patrick?’
Mably groaned, ‘He attacked one of my officers, difficult to restrain him, but they managed it eventually.’
We stared at each other, finally I said, ‘They never learn, it wouldn’t look good in the newspapers. Another beating in a police cell.’
‘I try and tell them.’ Mably shook his head, ‘They’re as thick as shit.’
‘I’m sure we can keep it quiet, shall I get Stuart?’
Stuart sat down alongside me and we watched Mably as he lined his pencils up again, rearranged his out tray, leant back and smiled. He’d been spent fifteen years policing in Oxford, coming back twelve years ago as the towns’ Inspector. Mably spun around in his chair and brushed his thick grey hair back with the palm of his hand as he twisted the squeaking chair from side to side. Mably rubbed his hands together and addressed me as he came back to the matter in hand. ‘You both knew her?’
Stuart shook his head and I nodded, ‘Vaguely, a nice enough woman.’
‘I have to ask you this Jack, what were you doing around there?’
I corpsed like a poor actor in a school play, my mouth hanging open.
‘We heard that she left the Wheatsheaf with a man.’ Stuart took the baton on smoothly enough. ‘A few days ago and no one’s seen her since, we were worried.’
Mably looked eager, he leant forward, his Springer-Spaniel intensity bubbled away nicely, ‘What did he look like?’