Two Dark Tales

by Charles Lambert

  *

  By the second visit, a month later, they’d talked about money in a series of phone calls between Cees and Omar, with Gordon at an anxious distance. ‘Shouldn’t we have something in writing?’ he said to Omar when a figure was decided that suited them both. ‘And how exactly would that be an advantage for us?’ said Omar patiently. ‘I suppose it wouldn’t,’ said Gordon, but this didn’t make him feel more comfortable. He had a dream of walls falling on his head as he slept, but didn’t share this. Omar didn’t have time for dreams: he was too busy working. But did it make it worse, if you were dreaming within your dream, so to speak, or better?

  Cees gave them a cheque over dinner. Jenny wasn’t with him this time. ‘She’s leaving it to me,’ he said, when they asked. Gordon was sorry: her presence softened the impact. Cees watched Omar fold the cheque into three equal parts and slide it into his wallet. ‘So you’ve found the owners?’ His tone had changed. They had become employees.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gordon when he felt Omar’s eyes on him. They had agreed that it would be Gordon’s job to deal with Cees from now on, although coerced might have been nearer the mark, thought Gordon bitterly, coerced, emotionally bullied, morally obliged; anything but agreed. ‘There are four of them, all in their sixties, apparently. Four brothers. Their father built the house for them the way it is so that each one could be independent of the other three.’ Flea had discovered this from the land registry and by nosing around. Flea’s share for the job had been fixed at twenty per cent.

  Cees nodded. ‘That makes it more complicated, right?’

  ‘Well, yes. All four have to agree to sell.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘So far only three of them want to. But they’re putting pressure on the fourth.’

  Cees emptied his glass. ‘Have you found any other places I can see?’

  They spent the next two days driving an increasingly demanding Cees around the countryside. The first place they saw was too small. The second had a quarry within hearing distance. The third looked wrong in some way that Cees couldn’t be bothered to define. It was clear that he would not be happy unless he had what he wanted, and that what he wanted was not open to discussion, and that it was their job to find it. On the third day, they went back to the original house. Flea was waiting for them with four old men, standing in a line like garden gnomes. Cees shook all their hands, moving along the row, clearly charmed by their authenticity. ‘This is so cool,’ he said twice to Flea, who grinned and nodded both times. Cees then told Gordon to ask about how much land came with the house and whether the low brick structure to the left was a pizza oven. The answer to the second question was yes, but Flea looked worried and waved his hand in a hushing fashion when Gordon repeated the first question. Too late; the nearest old man had been listening. He came across and stood within inches of Gordon. ‘The house is not for sale,’ he said, in a dialect so thick Gordon could barely understand, his small brown wrinkled face set in a mask of resistance. Flea stood between them and began to address the old man angrily in the same dialect while Cees went into one part of the house, came out of it and went into another. Gordon wanted to go home. Cees would ask him what the man had said and he would say – Well, what would he say? That they were wasting their time? That the old man was talking nonsense? That there was land with the house, but he didn’t know how much? No amount of money is worth this quagmire of compromise and deceit, he thought, although so far no one had really lied to anyone. Whatever he said now, he imagined, that would come later. Lying would be part of the job.

  Omar had wandered away. He came round the side of the house and waved to Gordon. ‘Bring Cees over here,’ he shouted, the wind catching his words. ‘I’ve found something.’

  Twenty yards beyond the house the rough grass parted to reveal a raised terracotta cowl of pale brick, as though a massive sphere had been sunk almost entirely into the ground. Cees and Gordon walked across. Omar was pointing towards a round hole, an arm’s length across, at one side of the cowl. ‘Look in there,’ he said. They looked.

  ‘It’s water,’ said Cees.

  ‘It’s a cistern,’ said Gordon.

  The water came to within a few feet of the cistern’s roof. It was dark, still. It must have gathered there from the surrounding hills, thought Gordon, unless the cistern was fed by an underground spring. How wonderful, he thought. They stepped back a little, in unexpected unison, to allow more light into the hole. There was a rapid movement on the surface of the water.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ said Cees. The water was still again.

  ‘A snake,’ said Omar. ‘I saw it before you got here.’

  ‘A water serpent,’ said Cees, sounding impressed for the first time.

  Flea had joined them, with one of the old men, a different one this time, thought Gordon, although he wasn’t sure. He’d tried to find names for them, like the seven dwarfs. Grumpy. Smiley. Stubborn. Senile. This one – Smiley? – was pointing up the hill behind the house. Flea beckoned them over. ‘You see that cave?’ he said to Gordon, in Italian.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ said Cees. ‘Translate for me.’

  The old man spoke, followed by Flea in Italian, and Gordon in English. A pilot, he told Cees, had been shot down not far away during the last war. He had dragged himself to a cave, the lip of which could just be seen from where they were standing, and hidden there, his leg broken, wrapped in his parachute for warmth, drinking the condensation on the cave walls. When he was almost dead with hunger, an aunt of the old men had seen him and brought food and wine. The family had kept him in the cave, for his own safety. He had learnt Italian, his leg had healed, and at the end of the war he had had an affair with a local woman – whether this was the aunt or not wasn’t clear. Cees listened to this, nodding wildly. He loves it, thought Gordon, the blood, the pain, the happy ending, the whole bloody soap opera of it. No wonder he works in advertising.

  That night, in bed, half asleep, he felt something move at his feet and thought of the snake. He pulled his legs up to his chest with a trembling cry, threw back the duvet. Omar woke up.

  ‘What the fuck?’ he said.

  ‘There’s something in the bed,’ said Gordon. He turned on the light. He was shivering.

  ‘For God’s sake.’

  ‘I felt something move,’ he said. But already the conviction in his voice had gone. There was nothing there. He must have been dreaming.

  Three of the old men were keen to sell, Flea confirmed. He was growing more anxious, and insistent, by the day. They’d fixed a price, he told them, playing with the frayed edge of his cuff; they wanted to know if Cees was prepared to pay it. But if the house isn’t for sale, said Gordon, what do I tell him? Isn’t it all a bit hypothetical if one of them won’t play ball? Omar interrupted him. Tell them he’ll be making an offer in the next few days, but he needs me to fax him some documentation first. Flea looked startled. What sort of documentation? You know, said Omar, something from the land registry. He wants to know where the boundaries are. It isn’t that simple, said Flea, after a moment, his face in characteristic wheedling mode, the land up there has never been registered. Omar threw his hands in the air. Gordon went into the bar to pay for what they’d had and order another round of beers, then found he had no money. He’d been thinking about the snake, about his dream, except that it wasn’t a dream. The snake must live in the water, he thought. It was mixed up in his head with the wounded pilot, dark and bleeding in his cave, cloaked in parachute silk, like a half-sloughed skin. He’d found flakes of what looked like skin in the bed the following morning, flakes of human skin the size of postage stamps, but said nothing. They must have come from Omar, who hated all medical stuff, as he called it, on principle and would refuse to answer. I have no money, he thought.

  When he came back to the table, they were talking about the neighbouring farm, the half-built one with the barn. ‘So the access road is shared?’ Omar was saying. ‘By that farm halfway up?’

  Fl
ea nodded, then shrugged. ‘It shouldn’t be a problem,’ he said.

  ‘Shouldn’t be, or won’t be?’

  Flea shrugged again. ‘When does he get here?’

  ‘Cees? This weekend.’

  ‘OK. We’ll sit around a table and sort the details out, OK?’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Oh, me, the family, you two. Him.’ He’d given up on the name, Gordon noticed. Cees had been reduced to Him.

  ‘Including the one who doesn’t want to sell?’

  ‘Yes, we’ll meet at his house.’

  ‘Has he said why he doesn’t want to sell yet? It isn’t doing him any good, is it?’

  Flea shrugged. ‘He says the house should never be sold. He wants it pulled down.’

  ‘I expect he wants to build some reinforced concrete monstrosity on it,’ said Omar.

  ‘Where does he live anyway?’

  Flea gave an infuriated sigh. ‘In the house that shares the access road.’

  ‘So that’s why he doesn’t want to sell,’ said Omar, looking meaningfully at Gordon. ‘It’s a private road as long as the house is empty. Who knows what goes on there? Perhaps he’s running a club for weekend swingers.’

  ‘I don’t like that house though,’ said Gordon later that day. ‘There is something odd about it. Why would anyone build a house in four separate bits like that? Without any connecting doors?’

  ‘You obviously don’t come from a large family,’ said Omar.

  ‘It’s as though they had to be kept apart.’ Gordon shuddered. ‘As though they’d kill each other if they weren’t.’

  ‘And my point was.’

  ‘I know,’ said Gordon. ‘I know you hate your brother. But it’s more than that.’

  ‘Anyway, you don’t have to like it. Cees has to. And he clearly does.’

  ‘I’m not sure Jenny does.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think she has much say in it, do you?’

  ‘No,’ said Gordon, ‘probably not.’

  ‘I mean, he’s the one with the money, isn’t he?’

  Gordon looked at Omar. ‘Which is what counts, isn’t it?’

  Omar turned his head from the screen, returned Gordon’s look. They might have been complete strangers at that moment, thought Gordon, standing in a queue perhaps at a ticket office, waiting to be served, if it hadn’t been for a certain hardness in Omar’s eyes that seemed to recognise him, and to understand what damage had been done.

  Cees was delighted by the idea of sitting around a table. ‘It’s like one of those films they used to make,’ he said, ‘when Italians made films worth watching.’

  Jenny was less thrilled. ‘They won’t give us stuff to eat, will they?’ Gordon had already noticed how picky she was, how she’d strip the finest thread of fat from her prosciutto and snip out the hard part of the tomato. She’d push her fork into the buffalo mozzarella that Cees insisted on eating at every meal and watch the milky serum ooze out with an expression of enthralled horror, then cut it into pieces small enough to hide beneath scraps of lettuce.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Omar. ‘Home-made salami, ham. They do this fantastic thing with boiled-up fat and innards. It’s like black pudding, but greyish. We’ll have to eat it, or they’ll be offended. They won’t let us leave the place until our plates are clean.’

  Jenny giggled anxiously. ‘You are joking? Only I’ll be sick if anyone actually makes me eat anything.’

  ‘She won’t eat food unless it comes in a packet and she can read the RDA information,’ said Cees. ‘She’s scared it might have too much salt, or carbs, or whatever. She’s had her colon pumped. She doesn’t know jack squat about genuine food.’

  ‘Very funny.’ Jenny stood up. ‘The word’s “irrigated”.’ She pulled on her jacket, then looked at Gordon. ‘I want to go and see what’s in that second-hand shop in the square. Do you want to come with me, just in case?’

  ‘Just in case you want to spend my money,’ said Cees.

  ‘I do have my own money, honestly,’ said Jenny as she left the room, more for Gordon’s ears than anyone else’s. She paused. ‘Just not as much as he’s got.’ She giggled again. ‘You know what it’s like, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, but he wondered how she knew he knew, and how much she knew.

  ‘Did he tell you about the snake?’ he said as they turned the corner into the square.

  ‘Snake? What snake?’

  ‘The snake in the water cistern, up at the house.’

  ‘No,’ she said. She was silent for a moment, long enough for Gordon to feel guilty, and then self-righteous.

  ‘I expect it had just fallen in,’ he said.

  ‘It was actually in the water we’ll have to drink?’ she said. ‘I mean, is there even proper water there?’

  ‘There must be,’ said Gordon. ‘There’s that other house on the access road. They must have water, mustn’t they?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she said, still doubtful.

  ‘Omar was taking the piss,’ he said. ‘About the food, I mean. You won’t have to eat anything you don’t want to.’

  She nodded. ‘I hate snakes,’ she said.

  Ciccio sat outside the second-hand shop in an armchair, smoking a roll-up, his free hand tucked inside the waistband of his trousers, beneath the rucked-up hem of his vest. A matching armchair and sofa, covered in grease-dulled gold moquette, were stacked on the back of a truck parked next to the shop. He nodded at Gordon as they walked past him into the shop. Ciccio’s wife glanced across from the quiz show she was watching on a portable TV, its sound turned off, perched on a pile of dismantled kitchen cabinets, her feet dangling an inch or so from the floor. A stuffed giraffe was slumped against the wall behind her, its legs buckled under the body’s weight, like something drunk.

  ‘I don’t think you’ll find anything here,’ said Gordon.

  ‘I’m not really looking, I just needed a bit of fresh air.’ She picked up a broken picture frame with a photograph of a kitten in it. ‘He’ll choose anyway. He wants everything in brushed steel. Well, not everything. Not the bed. I hope not, anyway.’

  ‘Brushed steel? In a house like that?’

  ‘Don’t ask.’

  ‘So he really intends to buy it?’

  ‘God, yes,’ she said. ‘And when he makes his mind up, that’s it, really. Stand back.’ She acted this out, raising her hands in a mixture of resignation and alarm. Ciccio’s wife, whose name Gordon had never learnt nor wanted to learn, stood up with a loud sigh and told Ciccio to get back into the shop, to stop being such a lazy sod, couldn’t he see there were customers. Gordon called out to him not to worry, they were just looking. Ciccio’s dog, an Alsatian with unnaturally short legs, struggled to its feet and trotted across to be stroked. Gordon looked round the shop for a single thing he would like to own, but found nothing.

  ‘They’ll be waiting for us,’ he said. ‘We’d better get back.’

  They sat around the table in varying numbers as family members came and went, but the core group of the four brothers, Gordon and Omar, Cees and Jenny, and Flea seemed to have been there for hours when Cees finally lost his patience. It was Omar’s fault for not translating everything. And Jenny’s fault for not eating everything. And Gordon’s for saying he’d had enough of the filthy home-made wine after his glass, a scratched and not particularly clean tumbler intended for water, had been filled up a half-dozen times. ‘Voglio la mia casa,’ Cees shouted, his voice slurred, his accent execrable. ‘What did he say?’ asked Jenny, the first time she had spoken above a whisper all evening. ‘He says he wants the house,’ said Gordon. ‘His house.’ She sighed. ‘So what’s new?’ she said. She glanced round the kitchen. ‘I tell you something, Gordon, I didn’t expect anything like this,’ she said. She looked at the cracked Formica units and the crates stacked on top of one another along one wall, at the plastic bowl used for the salad, at the wipe-clean tablecloth with its border of dancing Smurfs. ‘It’s not exactly country, is it?’ Gordon took a slice of sal
ami, picked the casing off it, popped it on top of a piece of bread. ‘It passes for country round here,’ he said. Cees had stood up and was swaying slightly as he walked towards Stubborn, the owner of the kitchen, who seemed unexpectedly pleased to have provoked such activity. Cees waved his fist. For a moment, Gordon thought there would be blood, but seconds later Cees and Stubborn were wrapped in each other’s arms in a staggering bear hug. Flea nudged him, winked. ‘Is done,’ he said.

  An hour later, Cees, Gordon and Omar were outside Stubborn’s house. Jenny had gone behind the barn, to vomit, according to Cees. Flea was inside, talking business. Cees was trying to tell them how important it was in business deals to strike while the iron was hot, but he couldn’t quite remember the expression. His anger had begun to build a second time, after the euphoric embrace with Stubborn, which had seemed to solve everything. Gordon was about to suggest they go and look at the house by moonlight, to clinch the deal, when Jenny screamed.

  Gordon moved first. Cees stumbled over something in the grass, something sharp judging by the yelp of pain he let out, and Omar was still busy helping him to his feet when Gordon reached Jenny. She was kneeling by the barn. The side nearest her was open, a wall of closely packed bales. She pointed up to the middle of the wall. Gordon couldn’t see at first, his eyes adjusting to the half-light. When he did see what had scared her so much, he laughed. ‘It’s a dog,’ he said.