The Third Rule (Eddie Collins Book 1)

by Andrew Barrett

  She held the candle beneath the web and watched the spider scuttling upwards, disappearing behind the doorframe. The light showed a row of black plastic spines stacked against each other at the wall side. Alice bent beneath the web and carefully – waiting to feel that thing drop onto her bare back and scurry up towards her neck – shuffled forward, reaching out her hand as she went.

  The spines were the edges of canvases stretched over wooden frames. She grabbed one, pulled the plastic bag away, and peered at the dark colours. She couldn’t make anything out though, no distinct shapes. There wasn’t enough room for that. But she could see fifteen or twenty of them, all about the size of an A3 sheet of paper. “I wonder how much these are worth.”

  You wouldn’t!

  Well, it would stop her having to rely on Christian for everything, wouldn’t it?

  So, what’s selling his paintings for money, if it’s not relying on him?

  I mean, I don’t have to go begging for cash, and if I ran low of stuff, I could go and buy the gear myself instead of being kept prisoner in a fucking shithole!

  Hey; you don’t wanna go stealing off your man. Please. You don’t wanna do that, Alice.

  Shut up!

  She looked around at the pictures, and then her shaking hand reminded her why she was here. Drugs. Where the hell had he hidden them? They had—

  She heard the corrugated iron over the back door creak and then grate against the floor. Directly above her head she heard gentle footfalls in the lounge. Her hands tingled. I gotta get out of here; if he catches me down here, no telling what he’ll do. But wait! What if it’s not him, what if it’s the police or one of those kids that hangs around at the end of the street with his hands in his pockets and eyes that could cut you in two?

  And then she heard him. “Alice,” he called softly.

  Relief stole away the anxiety, she stood quickly, turned and walked into the spider. It scuttled across her face. Alice screamed and dropped the candle.

  She slapped her face, her neck, her chest. And then she just stood there screaming in the darkness. Naked.

  Saturday 20th June

  Chapter Fourteen

  — One —

  “What were you doing down there?”

  She pushed the cellar door closed and looked stubbornly at him.

  He’d go out and earn the family a crust, and all the while she was… well, what was she doing? “Have you been looking at them?”

  She nodded slowly.

  The bags under her eyes looked deep enough to jump into, her hair was a tangled freak show, and here in the brightening light of a new day, she looked like something about to star in a horror movie. He stroked her chin with the back of his hand. “You didn’t touch the one on the easel, did you?”

  “It’s still under the cover.”

  Her voice was meek, almost afraid, and that was something he never wanted to invoke in her. “I only want you to be careful down there.” He put down the bag and then put both fists on his hips. “Actually, I’m lying. I don’t really want you down there; it’s dark,” he said hurriedly, “and—”

  “I had a candle.”

  His eyes closed, face blank. Finally, he sighed. “Where is it?”

  She shrugged. “Blown out, somewhere on the floor.”

  Great. Let’s start a fucking fire! “So it’s dark then?”

  She looked back at the floor.

  “It’s dangerous, Alice. And besides, even if you didn’t hurt yourself, you could damage things down there. Things that belong to me. Things I value.”

  When she looked up this time her eyes had narrowed; her lips were barely a line on a tight white canvas. “Things that you value? What about me, Christian, do you value me?”

  “Hey, of course—”

  “Then how could you go out and leave me with no fucking stuff?”

  “I’ve brought some for you, babe. No need to get upset.”

  It didn’t work.

  “Upset! I’m not fucking upset; I’m going fucking crazy, is what I am.”

  “Did you go down there looking for stuff?”

  She looked away again, stood there shaking, like a demure porn star. And then she was on the offensive again. “You can’t fucking blame me.”

  He held his hands out.

  “You left me no choice!”

  “You’re right,” he said, “you’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re a bastard to me, Christian. Sometimes,” she shouted, “I think you hate me. You want me to suffer because I’m on drugs. You want to punish me, and worse than that, you want to control me.”

  “Bollocks. I love you, baby. I…” His eyes drifted out of focus, “I wish you weren’t on the damned stuff in the first place.”

  “Alright, Christian. I get the idea. But stay the fuck away from the pictures, huh?”

  “I never said that, either.”

  “You didn’t have to!” She pointed a finger at him. “Give me the gear before I blow!”

  He rummaged inside the plastic shopping bag and brought out a small block of brown resin. He watched her eyes as he handed it over.

  “Is that all?” She stormed away into the lounge, found an old pair of knickers and twisted them, making a tourniquet.

  “When we finally make it out of here…” Her eyes snapped to him, syringe ready to break the skin on her arm, and he couldn’t make out whether it was a stare of impatience, of regret, or hatred. He didn’t like this Alice. “When we get out of here, we’re gonna get you sorted.”

  “And when will that be, Picasso?”

  “I just need a lucky break, that’s all.”

  “That’s what everyone says. Everyone needs a fucking break.”

  “Won’t be long now. This new one I’m working on…”

  She released the pressure on her arm, tossed the knickers back onto the floor and let the needle fall too. Her eyes rolled and she squeezed a handful of greasy hair. After a while her heartbeat returned to normal, the poison numbed her anxiety, and she looked at him with eyes that belonged to the real Alice. “How many pictures are down there?”

  He shrugged, brought the plastic bag over and sat cross-legged on the floor. “Don’t know, really. About twenty or so.”

  “Ever tried selling any of them?”

  From the bag he brought out sandwiches and shower gel. “I did at first, but I got nowhere. People weren’t interested, said they had new artists coming out of their ears, and that new stuff was always difficult to sell, or they weren’t taking on new clients… the list goes on. I got fed up of trying, and decided to carry on doing what I enjoyed: painting. I’m not a fucking salesman.”

  “So how’re you going to get us out of here, Mr Picasso?”

  “Stop taking the piss.”

  “You said you were going to get us out of here, but if you can’t get off your arse and go out and sell the damned stuff, how you gonna do it?”

  “I’m waiting.”

  “What for, a fucking invitation?” Alice pulled a sweater on, and stared at him. “They won’t come knocking on your door, boy, hoping there’s a fucking artist living here and hoping he has a fucking masterpiece to sell to them. God, you’re fucking thick!”

  Calmly, he said, “I’m waiting, Alice. I’ve nearly finished this one—”

  “And then what? You gonna haul it round the art galleries or something?” She gave him no time to reply. “Like hell you are. You’re gonna put it to one side while it dries and you’re gonna start another; another one that the critics will really love, another one that’ll get us out of here in no time at all.” She stopped. Stared at him, breathing hard, anger slowly dissipating. “Sometimes, Christian, you are so full of shit. I bet you have stuff down there that’s as good as you’ll ever paint. Why wait to see if you can paint any better? They are all you; they are just different pictures.”

  “Have you finished?”

  “Your ideals won’t help us out of this mess. I’m sick of living like a tramp, Christ
ian. And what are you going to do when he’s old enough to go to school, huh, teach him yourself? He should be going to a nursery already, not living in a place they should have pulled down a century years ago.”

  Christian looked away. “I’m not going legit,” he said. “I won’t—”

  “‘Be a number’, I know. I’ve heard it all before. But you’re not going to get by as a Great Unknown; you can’t live anonymously for ever.”

  “Why not? I’ve managed this far.”

  “Look around you. How far have you come, eh?”

  “I’ve got you,” he said.

  “Oh yeah? How long for?”

  He paused. “You going to leave me?”

  “What if we get sick, you need National Insurance for treatment—”

  “We’ll get by.”

  “Oh great. The wonderful Picasso says we’ll get by, well that’s okay then, isn’t it!”

  Christian knelt before her, wincing at the throbbing pain in his leg, folded his arms across her bare legs, and stared up into her dark wide eyes. “Hey, come on. We’re not so badly off; we don’t have to sign on at no stupid dole office, we don’t owe the State anything.” He could see he wasn’t getting through, “We can look people right in the eye and be proud that we live by our own means. I won’t be a slave to a regular job.”

  “You need freedom, don’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “So we can look people in the eye and steal from them in order to get by? There’s a fucking world of difference between living the Goode Life and stealing to exist in a fucking shit-tip.”

  “Hey, it’ll be fine, you’ll see.”

  “I sometimes wonder who’s on fucking drugs. Get real, Christian. And do it in a fucking hurry!”

  He couldn’t get angry at her, no matter how much she goaded him, he couldn’t do it. He smiled, stroked her leg some more. The night had gone well, and Mr Golfer had been good enough to buy a bit of food for them, indirectly of course, and had bought some tobacco for Alice, as well as the drugs, some drinking water and a few toiletries. And there was still 350 quid left. “Hey,” he said, “wanna see them?”

  “You going to show me your paintings?”

  He nodded, smiled.

  “Better make it quick then, before Spencer wakes up.”

  — Two —

  She followed him down the stone steps, seeing but ignoring his limp as the torchlight illuminated the steps before him.

  “Okay, babe, stand still while I connect the lights.”

  “You got lights down here?” So his ‘studio’ was the only place to have electricity; how could he value his studio above the lounge?

  “Of a fashion.”

  He disappeared into the corner, the feeble torchlight also vanished, and the blackness attacked Alice. She breathed quick and shallow, wide eyes frantically searching for movement, ears straining for sound, and then she heard him. “Hurry up, this is freaking me out.”

  “Relax, I’m hooking it up.”

  “Don’t you go getting no shock!”

  “Don’t worry,” he laughed. “It’s DC.”

  “Oh,” she said. “That’s okay then, I guess,” not knowing what the hell he was talking about.

  “I’m thinking of tapping in to one of the streetlights; see if we can have some mains power in here at last.” There was a flickering, she caught sight of a violet spark and then a glow above her head turned quickly white, spreading light right across the dusty room.

  “Wow, this is wonderful!” She spun around, staring at the small spotlights, the kind you’d normally find sunk into a kitchen ceiling.

  “They’re just 24v spots,” he said, “so don’t get too excited.”

  “You never said we had electricity.”

  “We haven’t.” He walked back around the corner, rubbing his hands on a rag, and looked dismayed now. “It’s just that all I have is an old truck battery and it’s no good for anything except a couple of bulbs really. I didn’t want you to think we could power a cooker or a fire from it.”

  “What about a TV?”

  He shook his head.

  “Why couldn’t you run a wire upstairs into the lounge, so we could have light up there?” She planted her fists on her hips and looked sternly at him.

  “I knew you’d say that.”

  “You were just keeping it all for yourself, weren’t you?”

  “No… I just thought that if we had light up there, you know, anything brighter than candlelight, it’d give our position away, and they would know where we were. Anyway, I thought you liked candlelight.”

  “I’m not a fucking pit-pony; I would like to see by proper light every now and then.” And then she paused, looked around a little more slowly this time, at the cellar and the way he ‘lived’ down here, how things were neatly arranged on the walls, on the shelves, in the drawers. And then she looked back at him, a smug grin on her face. “But I could come down here, couldn’t I?” She didn’t wait for a response. “In fact, we could all move down here and we could all share your light. How do you like that, Christian?”

  “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t like it.”

  “But we could have the light on all the time and—”

  “It’s powered off a truck battery. And when the light dies away I can’t just charge it back up again, I have to go and steal another. They’re fucking heavy, and I risk being caught every time I do it—”

  “But your paintings are worth the risk, right?”

  He shook his head. “Why do you always complicate things? If we had light on all the time, we’d flatten the damned thing in a day or two.” He nodded over his shoulder, “So far, that’s lasted two weeks—”

  “Well, there—”

  “Because I don’t use it all the time!”

  She looked away, folded her arms, and she heard him sigh and shuffle his feet. He could be such a selfish bastard at times. And before her little voice, the voice of conscience, came to rebuke her on Christian’s behalf, she turned again, feeling the grit beneath her bare feet.

  “Do you want to see them or not?”

  She looked up into his eyes. “I want to see them.”

  The smile burst back onto his face, and with the excitement of a kid discovering his first hard-on, Christian took hold of her hand and dragged her across the room, around a wooden easel in its centre that was draped with a sheet of plastic, and right up to the rickety door she had encountered only an hour or so ago all by herself.

  “They’re in here.” His eyes shone in the yellowy tungsten light. He opened the door, casually brushed aside a huge spider’s web and bent towards his treasure. “I’ve dreamt of showing these to you for ages,” he lifted three or four plastic wrapped frames in each hand, and ushered her back out into the main room. Gently he placed them on a bench against the wall at the far side of the room where the light near the easel shone the brightest. “If you don’t like them, you will tell me, won’t you?”

  She shrugged. “Have I ever lied to you?” She felt him briefly searching her eyes, and then he straightened and clapped her on the shoulder.

  “Well, here goes.” With the care afforded to a baby, Christian unwrapped the first of the paintings from its plastic sheet and leaned it against the wall. And then he strategically positioned himself where he could see her reaction.

  For a long time, she gazed at it. She brought her hand up to her face. Her eyes seemed to grow bigger as they studied the art. For what must have been half a minute she did not breathe, only stood there, half naked, cold but unaware of everything as, like Mary Poppins falling into the chalk pavement picture, she fell into the picture before her. Silence hung in the air like a delicate web, and at last she exhaled and turned to him.

  “Well?”

  She looked back at the painting, enchanted, engrossed, lost within the world on the canvas. “It’s…” She studied it further, speechless for a moment longer. There was a lake, illuminated by moonlight, calm, placid, surrounded by a dark fore
st. Into the lake, protruding like a pointing finger was an old wooden jetty, dilapidated, neglected. Ghostly light danced beneath it, reflected from the shimmering water. And up on the shore stood a log cabin, a red light illuminating the shabby curtains, door open giving a glimpse into the old kitchen with a steaming pot on the stove, wisps of grey smoke twisting gracefully into the still air from a chimney hidden by the sunken spine of the shingle roof. And above it all, encircling the large moon, was the Milky Way. It seemed more like a photograph than a painting; there were stars glowing with varying intensity, curls of gas clouds way out into the universe, all clearly visible and all beautifully captured in their translucent colours, like a rainbow stirred by God’s hand. And in the centre of the painting, standing on the edge of the jetty, was a lone female whose silhouette was draped in a light lacy gown that billowed gently around her in a breeze you could almost feel. Her hands were curled around the smooth old wood and she gazed thoughtfully out into the lake.

  For a moment, Alice could hear the woodland creatures, could feel the breeze on her damp cheeks and could smell the pine in the air, could hear the gentle rippling of the water against the mossy legs of the jetty. Alice was enraptured.

  She tore herself away from the scene, wondering who the woman was, and what she was thinking, who lived there, where the lake was. Eventually, she looked with tears in her eyes, up at Christian. Alice wondered why she was crying, but a glance back at the scene told her why, and she felt no embarrassment. He stared at her, satisfied it seemed, by her reaction.

  He brought her to him and encircled her tightly. “You like it?”

  She could only nod. “Show me more.”

  Carefully, he wrapped the Lakeland back into its plastic sleeve and brought out another vision for her to feed greedily upon. And as before, she stood almost aghast at the depth of his love of art. Christian’s paintings didn’t seem like normal paintings at all; they didn’t appear two-dimensional; they had clarity, real depth and a quality of life she had never seen before.