Stranger Than Kindness

by Mark A Radcliffe

  Adam nodded and tried not to smile.

  Freaky Bob glanced up at him and grinned. ‘Stigma,’ he said, and Adam smiled. Freaky Bob paused for a moment. ‘How about I help you hang this self-important tosser out to dry and you make my mum a nice cup of tea?’

  The next morning Adam opened the shop early, aware of the fact he would close again at 10.15. However, at 9.45, when Grimy Nige and Jim arrived and he told them he had to close up in half an hour, Jim said, with Grimy Nige standing beside him nodding earnestly: ‘Mr Sands, we both know that we spend an awful lot of time in here not spending very much money. You have never made us feel anything other than welcome and we like being here. Near the books. Doing something helpful. How about we look after the shop? Please?’

  So Adam went to meet Alison wearing warmer clothes and carrying a short wet suit and two fishing rods. Alison was waiting for him by the boat. She nodded and smiled but she seemed more distant, her movements smaller, her body pulling in on itself. Or, thought Adam, perhaps that is my eyes.

  What cloud there was was in the distance and the sun offered a beautiful autumnal light. The tide was close to turning and the sea looked flat, although the boat could feel some movement. As Adam rowed Alison put on sunglasses and looked over his shoulder and out to sea.

  ‘What did your brother think of the basement?’

  ‘He liked it. He thought he could stock two thousand LPs down there and maybe another two thousand CD’s.’

  ‘And he could get that sort of stock?’

  ‘He already has most of it. He collects, not as a collector collects, you know, in order to own. He collects because so many people don’t want old records and even CD’s. He thinks he can look after them until someone comes along who wants them.’

  ‘Pretty good premise for a shop,’ smiled Adam.

  ‘Look, I’m not trying to rush you or anything.’ Alison took off her sunglasses. ‘But I know you would have to make some changes to the shop, to make it possible for people to go downstairs. I’m willing to pay for those and we’ll pay rent.’

  ‘OK,’ said Adam.

  ‘How much rent do you want?’ she asked.

  ‘£25 a week plus a share of the bills ought to do it.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem very much.’

  ‘We’ll start there, let the boy settle, take it from there. How well do you know David Cassells?’

  Anna meanwhile had risen early: it was still dark when she crept down the stairs in the small B and B and found her son waiting for her by the door. ‘What are you doing up?’

  ‘I’m coming to help. Laura is asleep and I thought it might be a chance for a bit of quality mum-and-son time.’ And he smiled, a bit like the smile he had on his face when he had overtaken her in height and hugged her for the first time, alluding to being the protector, to being grown up.

  ‘You don’t think this is a tiny bit ridiculous?’ she asked, smiling back and opening the door.

  ‘Oh it’s completely ridiculous, but I like it when you’re ridiculous.’

  It was cold outside and Anna slipped her arm through her son’s as they walked away from the seaside and toward where Adam had told them there was a large park.

  ‘I thought you were staying in Manchester because you didn’t want to come home,’ said Anna.

  ‘Funny the fears we keep to ourselves, Mum. I thought my biological father might be a raging psychopath.’

  ‘Well, to be fair the jury is still out, Tom.’

  Tom laughed. ‘I suppose in some ways it doesn’t matter, does it? Not in the way it would have mattered when I was a kid. If I had known who he was when I was eight, or if I knew what his story was, I would look for me in him before I was even me. I would look for the bits that demonstrate the genetic link and maybe even shape myself around them… Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘I think so. Adam said something similar.’ Tom nodded. ‘Are you very angry with me?’ she asked. ‘That you don’t know, didn’t know, were robbed of knowing…?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I think you could have trusted me more, I suppose.’

  “And is Laura your revenge for that?’

  ‘No mum, Laura is my fiancée, that’s a whole other thing.’

  ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘I know, but I love her. The secret… Maybe that was revenge, although I think we both needed to have something that was ours, and maybe you made me feel secrets are just normal.’ He squeezed his mothers arm to his ribs as they walked. ‘I don’t think you realize what doing your job cost you, mum.’

  ‘I ran away from home, Tom. When I was sixteen. My brother was abused by a bloke and my parents—I loved my parents very much, especially my dad, I suppose—they sort of ignored it, they didn’t act and I couldn’t bear that. It made me sick and angry, so I left and I never ever went back. I told you they were dead because they were to me. They probably are now, but to me they were the moment I left and I think that was my secret, so everything that related to it became a secret.’

  ‘What about your brother?’

  ‘I heard, I met someone in a pub once who used to know Ian, he said he’d become unwell. Nervous breakdown, he said. I never had a clue what that meant. That was a long time ago.’

  ‘Is that why you became a nurse?’

  Anna shrugged.

  When they got to the park the mix of the rising sun and the low buzzing street lamp made the dew on the grass sing with light. Anna had never seen the dew so clearly, or simply never looked.

  ‘You know this is stupid, right?’ she said to Tom as they walked through a small metal gate in the iron railings into an undulating expanse of green that could, if it were flatter and more engaged, have offered six or seven football pitches. As it was, it simply sloped down toward some trees and what looked like an old chalk pit.

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘It’s actually mad.’

  ‘Well I don’t know about that, mum.’ Tom said. ‘But I think that sometimes it doesn’t do any harm to do something mad. To be honest, if you hadn’t been prepared to do that when you were around my age I wouldn’t be here, would I?’

  They got down on their hands and knees and started to gather dew from the grass and the fallen leaves and Anna began to laugh.

  After a while Tom said: ‘Mum?’

  ‘Yes, Tom?’

  ‘Do you think he is a better guitarist than me?’

  Anna laughed louder. ‘I don’t know, Tom, but he did say, coming back in the car, that if you two got on he might teach you to play guitar properly.’

  ‘Cheeky sod,’ said Tom. He paused, then added: ‘Unless he’s really good. Do you think he might be really good?’

  ‘Who is David Cassells?’ Alison was looking quizzically at Adam as he slowed his rowing and stared at her.

  ‘Really?’ he said, frowning.

  ‘Yes, really. Who is he?’

  ‘He’s a psychologist.’

  ‘Well, we don’t all live in a big house like The Monkees,’ she said.

  ‘He is a corrupt, sadistic, manipulative man who re-entered my life at the exact moment you came into my shop. Coincidences make me uncomfortable, so I thought I’d better ask.’

  ‘Where does he work?’

  ‘He works for someone called CREAK.’

  ‘They are like a research committee, aren’t they?’

  Adam shrugged. ‘Alison, I don’t quite get you and partly that troubles me and partly it interests me. Now, given that you want to rent my basement, which would require some ongoing contact between us, I’d kind of like us to be as open as we can be with each other.’ She looked uncomfortable. Adam put the anchor down and began to bait the fishing lines. ‘You look uncomfortable,’ he said.

  ‘Do you think I’ve been flirting?’ She sounded defensive, almost afraid.

  He shrugged. �
��Not indecently. Not in any way that need matter.’ He felt as if he were reassuring a Victorian woman who might faint at any moment.

  Alison was looking at the water. ‘I suppose you might think I was only after your basement,’ she smiled, slipping from embarrassed to self-aware. ‘Which is probably better than you thinking the basement became a reason to…’ She shrugged and nodded toward the sea.

  ‘To come fishing?’ Adam laughed.

  ‘Yes Mr Sands, to bob around on a boat in a fleece not catching fish and wondering if you are going to leap into the sea like Marine Boy again.’

  ‘How about…’ Adam began to take off his fleece and the shirt underneath. ‘I go for a swim, and when I come back I tell you a story.’ He took off his trousers and pulled his shortie wet suit over his trunks. He put some neoprene shoes on, slipped on his goggles, nodded to Alison and slid into the water. It was cold and it made him catch his breath as the water leaked into the zip and began to settle against his skin. He put his face into the water and began to swim. The coldness stung his cheeks but he stretched out his stroke slowly and felt his back lengthen in the water. He turned and floated on his back. The air was cold on his face, the sky a light blue. He had his breath now and he felt his fingers relax.

  Sometimes, he thought, it’s OK to just take a chance. If your instinct tells you someone is good, then let them be good until they stop being. He would fish for a while and he would tell Alison, the cute but odd psychologist—traditionally at least two of his least favourite things—about the boy who told Anna about the dew, about the boy he saw as he held a dead man who was hanging from a tree and ask her… No, not ask her: see if she asks if her brother could have some tea. He turned again, looking first out to sea toward the horizon and then spinning slowly round toward the boat, only to see Alison swimming breaststroke toward him. She was grinning and breathing heavily.

  ‘It’s not that cold,’ she said. ‘And I’m not even wearing a wetsuit.’

  Adam, Anna, Tom and Laura were ready. They all had wine. Laura and Tom had commandeered the piece of floor next to the record player and Tom kept looking at the guitar on its stand and trying not to pick it up. When the doorbell to the shop rang, Adam looked at Anna, who nodded. She went downstairs and he went to the kitchen to continue to cook and to create the illusion of more space. Anna returned and said ‘It’s, er, Freaky Bob and his mum.’ Freaky Bob nodded at everyone and stood in the middle of the floor being enormous, with his tall, thin-faced and wide-eyed mother standing just behind him.

  ‘It’s not grand, is it?’ she said smiling.

  Adam took the five steps from the open plan kitchen to where Freaky Bob stood. ‘Sit down mate, you make the place look small.’ And then, to his mother: ‘What do I call you?’

  ‘Mrs Simpson is fine,’ she said waving regally.

  ‘I’m Adam,’ he said.

  ‘Of course you are, dear.’

  Freaky Bob sat down on the three-person sofa, leaving space for one other person. ‘I suggest a sweepstake, Adam,’ he called out. ‘BBC News. We all draw a number from one to six.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Anna.

  Freaky Bob smiled. ‘Just pick a number, we all put a fiver in, winner takes the pot.’

  Anna looked at Adam, who smiled and nodded. ‘OK,’ she said ‘I’m in.’

  ‘I’m in too,’ said Mrs Simpson. ‘Freaky Bob, cover my stake please. You know I don’t carry money on my person.’

  ‘OK, mum.’

  The doorbell went again and Tom jumped up. ‘I’ll go.’

  ‘What exactly is the sweepstake for, er, Freaky Bob?’ asked Anna.

  Freaky Bob folded his enormous arms and smiled, which made his eyes disappear. ‘There will be a story about your Dr Cassells, and the bet is to see if it will be the first, second, third, or if it will trail in last after the funny one and the football results.’

  Tom reappeared with Alison.

  ‘Jonathan will be along later. He says please eat without him,’ she said. ‘Believe it or not, he’s gone to a record fair in Whitstable.’

  ‘Hello.’ Anna stepped forward and put her hand out. ‘I’m Anna.’ Alison smiled and shook her hand and Laura poured wine.

  ‘I told him about your tea… idea.’ Alison was looking from Adam to Anna and back again. ‘He said he would love to try a cup, please,’ she said quietly.

  ‘You know what’s silly?’ said Anna. ‘We have no idea what we are doing, do we? I mean I’m not knocking it, it’s just that, well… supposing tea made from fresh dew works, right?’ She paused waiting for someone to say ‘Oh for goodness sake we’re all fucking insane!’ but nobody did so she continued: ‘Suppose it works, or it could work but it doesn’t if the person drinking it is on medication, or…’ she pointed at the wine, ‘has drunk alcohol or—’

  ‘Has grey hair or blue eyes or too many vowels in their name,’ said Adam, nodding. ‘I know, but this isn’t a randomized controlled trial is it?’ He was talking quietly and staring at the floor. ‘At best it’s whimsy, at worst it’s despair. It’s mad, we’re mad, we know that. I don’t think it matters.’

  They were quiet until Anna said: ‘Jonathan? Your brother?’

  ‘My father’s name,’ said Alison.

  ‘Apparently I’m named after my grandfather,’ said Tom. Anna reddened.

  ‘I think that’s kind of cool,’ said Laura.

  ‘Did you name me after dad, mum?’ Freaky Bob said loudly.

  ‘No dear, his name was Reginald. You know that, you met him that time.’

  ‘I know mum, I was just joking.’

  Mrs Simpson turned to Adam and smiled and said: ‘As if I would take up with anyone called Freaky Bob. Will you be making tea, dear?’

  ‘Tea a little later, Mrs Simpson, when Jonathan gets here. Now we eat. We caught this fish earlier.’ Adam smiled at Alison.

  ‘Is it a big boat?’ Anna winked conspiratorially at Alison. ‘Does it have staff and sails?’

  Alison laughed. ‘I wondered that. It has two oars. I’m not convinced they match.’

  They ate. Freaky Bob told them what the Roswell files said and who had killed JFK. They believed him. Alison talked about her work as an educational psychologist and how she was still adjusting to living in a corner of Kent. Tom and Laura talked about how they had hidden their relationship from their respective mothers for the best part of five years and how they had had sex in Anna’s kitchen three years ago. Anna didn’t smile but took some small comfort from the fact that she had changed her worktops since then. Adam talked about Greece and Tom asked him how much money he had made from the songs he had sold. Adam shrugged. ‘I get a cheque each year,’ he said. ‘It gets smaller, I get older.’

  ‘Have you heard him play guitar?’ Freaky Bob asked Tom. Tom shook his head. ‘Plays like an angel,’ Freaky Bob muttered. ‘But anyway it’s nearly time for the news. Have you got a piece of paper?’ Adam gave him a sheet of paper from a notebook beside the records and Freaky Bob tore it into strips and wrote a number on each piece of paper. He folded them up and Adam handed him his hat to put the paper in. ‘Everyone put your fiver in’. Everyone obediently put £5 on the table and Adam collected it together and put it under the near-empty wine bottle. Then Freaky Bob passed the hat round and everyone took a number out.

  ‘I got 0,’ said Mrs Simpson.

  ‘Still in with a chance mum, the story might not have made it to the BBC yet,’ said Freaky Bob.

  ‘I have six,’ said Tom.

  ‘Four,’ said Laura.’

  ‘I have one,’ smiled Adam.

  They put the small television on and waited.

  ‘Can I just say,’ said Anna, ‘that I have no idea who you are, or why you are called Freaky Bob, but you have got me so that I am completely believing the fact that there is going to be a story about David Cassells on the news.’
r />   Freaky Bob looked hurt. ‘It’s my name,’ he said.

  The dramatic rush-to-attention news music began and the newsreader narrowed her eyes even further and said something about an explosion at sea on an American cruise liner and then something very serious about the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the still-failing economy and then: ‘A leading government advisor on mental health care is suspected of leaking research findings in an apparent act of contrition following his own attempts to bury the results and smear the lead researcher responsible for them.’

  ‘Oh my, we have a winner.’

  ‘Ohh,’ said Alison. ‘Is that the one we were waiting for? I have that. I have number three.’

  Freaky Bob bathed in the afterglow as they waited for the full report. Adam was smiling and nodding. Anna was just staring at him. ‘How did you…?’

  ‘Let’s hear the story, then I’ll explain,’ he said.

  ‘He’s very clever,’ said Mrs Simpson. ‘He can mend anything. I wish he’d get himself a girlfriend.’

  When the news expanded its headline it did so with a picture of Cassells and one or two raised eyebrows from the newsreader. It seems that Dr David Cassells—Chief Operating Officer of CREAK, a government quango, yes they called it that—responsible for co-ordinating and disseminating key medical research, had tried to cover up a piece of research that seriously draws into question the effectiveness of anti-psychotic drugs and raises the possibility that other, less invasive treatments might be more effective. Cue a picture of heroic rock star and the initials CCT on the screen. The newsreader dropped her eyebrow and said that while a spokesperson for the pharmaceutical industry welcomed the findings they expressed concern at the statement issued by Dr Cassells. ‘Unconfirmed reports tonight suggest that another member of the research team was injured recently in a house fire that the police are treating as suspicious. Dr Cassells was not available for comment but police this evening said they would like to talk to him urgently.’

  ‘How the bloody hell did you do that?’ asked Anna.

  ‘It was quite easy really,’ said Freaky Bob. ‘Once Adam had connected me to the computer when he was in his office I never logged off of it. I had access to everything and I could send anything I wanted from his hard drive. He had the report. All I had to do was send it to the BBC and one or two newspapers. I chose the Sunday Times and the Morning Star, with a letter.