Chuckling, Mr Chapman shook his head. ‘Seventy,’ he said. He opened a drawer in his desk, brought something out. Mats swallowed a lump of panic, half expecting a gun, but it was a pastel. There was quiet for a moment but for the swish of pigment on paper. After a moment Mr Chapman raised his head, sat back, arms folded and regarded Mats. Then he reached his hand out for the phone. ‘Mebbe I should call a colleague in,’ he said, ‘to help with negotiations.’
‘No,’ Mats said quickly. ‘No need.’
‘No?’
‘I need time to think.’ Mats sounded unconvincing even to himself. ‘Look over my accounts.’
Mr Chapman shook his head and smiled, lifted a phone. ‘I’ll call that colleague.’
‘Fifty,’ said Mats’ mouth.
Mr Chapman, put down the phone and nodded, pressing his lips together. ‘Fifty grand, eh?’
Mats found his head nodding.
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Longer.’
‘See, I’ll be losing money for every day we wait,’ said Mr Chapman. He swilled his whisky thoughtfully. ‘Tell you what I’ll do, pal. I’ll wait.’
Matts watched him.
‘But you can’t have her.’
‘Where will she be?’
‘Working.’
‘But—’
‘If you dinnae want her working, that’s an extra £500 a day. Only fair recompense. A nice wee holiday for her, eh?’
Mats shifted uneasily. £500 a day? Is that what she earned? If it took him ten days, that would make it £5,000. Maybe she should work? But if he assented to that, he might as well be a pimp himself. Fresh air, he needed fresh air. Or cold water. If he just said no? If he just left? God, how simple his life would seem then. What problems had he thought he’d had before?
Chapman sat considering for a moment, and then leaned forward. ‘OK. Tuesday. That’s the best I can offer. 8pm. The King’s Arms, Toll Cross. Know it?’
‘I can find it,’ Mats said. ‘But Tuesday’s too soon.’
‘Take it or leave it. Best I can offer. Cash in twenties in a Tesco carrier bag. At 8 0’clock you order two drinks, a pint and a . . .’ he paused to think, ‘a vodka and lime, the lassies like that. You go and sit down, the bag on the floor by your feet. You wait, my colleague will come and sit down, lift the bag and once he sees it’s all in order, Rosa will come in and have a wee drink with you. Then it’s up to you.’
‘How do I know she’ll come?’
Chapman shook his head slowly. ‘Where I come from, pal, a man’s word is his bond.’
Mats swallowed the last of the whisky and hauled himself up from the fleshy clasp of the sofa.
‘Go to the police,’ Chapman added, ‘and not only will your missus know all about this, but I cannae vouch for her safety either, nor the bairns. And as for Rosa, well . . .’ He shook his head. ‘That would be a shame. A waste and a shame.’
He moved towards the door, ‘Cheer up, pal. All you need do is make that date and everything will be rosy, ha ha, rosy for you and Rosa. And the wifey at home will be none the wiser.’
Mats shirt was wet against his back. He noticed that Chapman had drawn a horribly convincing portrait of him: taut face, horrified eyes, brow gleaming.
‘Want it?’
Mats shook his head.
‘I’ll see you out.’ Smirking, the man extended his hand, but Mats did not take it. His own was dripping and he was afraid of what it might do. Afraid of the satisfaction he might get from smashing his fist into that smirk.
Down the stairs he went, past female voices, Sinatra, through the hot pinky scented murk where sat a couple of men, through the reception, deserted now, and out into the street. And once outside he ran to the main street where there were people about, buses; it wasn’t even mid-evening. He went into a pub, ordered a pint, stood and gulped it back almost in one.
‘One of those days, eh?’ Amused, the barmaid pulled him another. He waited, leaning his weight against the bar, feeling as if he might tip through, tip right through into the abyss where all that money wasn’t.
Marta
All day there have been bumps and thumps from downstairs, men’s voices, things being moved. In the kitchen, Marta quakes with fear and uncomfortable excitement. Every bang of a door, every shout, shoots a thrill through her veins. What will happen? Where will she go? The electricity’s off so it’s cold and dim and there’s no coffee. She and Lily, Ratman’s last girls, sit at the table, not allowed downstairs, Dario said.
Alis is not dead. If she was, Marta would know. Surely something inside you goes cold when a friend dies? And there is still a warm knot like the knot of hands squeezed tight; she can still feel that.
Lily, wrapped in the brown cardigan with her feet pulled up beneath her, coughs and coughs. Dario comes in with bags of chips and cans of Irn-Bru. At least the chips are warm, gritty with salt; the strange sweet drink makes Marta’s teeth feel like they’re melting.
Ratman puts his head round the door, frowning, checking they’re there.
‘What’s happening?’ Marta says without hope of an answer. Of course there is none. He looks as if he hasn’t slept for days. ‘Are we being moved? Where?’ But he’s gone, shoes hammering down the stairs.
She goes up to the room where the girls doss on the floor. There’s a blanket nailed over the window in place of a curtain. Before she did not dare but now she tugs until the tacks come out. Cold grey light floods into the room. Outside the twigs at the top of a tree, just budding green, caught with rags of plastic, beyond it a wall with drain pipes, stains and small blank windows. Odd clothes are strewn about the room, a sock, a bra, magazines, a coffee mug full of fag ends, a comb with broken teeth. On her back on her mattress she stares at the ceiling, at a loop of dusty cobweb dangling from a torn paper lampshade.
She hugs a pillow, pulls her duvet over her, wishes for Alis to talk to. What would she think? She pictures her friend: coarse blonde hair, quick smile, narrow scoffing eyes. What does Marta know about her? They talked, but really it was only Marta who talked. She feels ashamed now; why didn’t she ask Alis more about herself? But she didn’t want to talk, she liked to listen, she said, and oh the sweet, painful relief of talking freely after home where Tata had thought their flat was bugged. Maybe he was right. He was so careful, so strict about what they said, even inside their own walls, and about how they behaved, who they mixed with. He forbade her from seeing Virgil. Behind her eyelids she tries to conjure up Virgil’s face, green speckled eyes, a wolfish smile, but he’s a blur. The stupid game they used to play in the wrecked car, his fingers on the steering wheel. What a child she was.
After that they began to fight, she and Tata. Always, she’d been his good girl, his favourite, but she could no longer bear to be in the same room as him. One day, she saw them on the bridge, Tata and Virgil together. She was rushing through pelting rain, hurrying to queue for bread. She stopped surprised; she didn’t know they knew each other. They were too far away to tell, but she got the impression they were arguing. Next day Virgil didn’t show up. And a few days later Tata too went missing. Nobody would say a thing, even Mama, though her face shrunk as if she’d lived five years in one night.
‘He’ll be back,’ was all she’d say with a bright and desperate look in her eyes. Milya got a slap on her leg for asking and asking where her Tata was, the only time Marta ever saw Mama hit her.
Tata and Virgil both disappeared and a few weeks later came the news that twenty men and boys had been taken to the forest and shot. And later they learned that they had been part of a cell organising defection. Maybe Tata had been planning to bring them out of Romania? That’s why he’d been teaching her English. Maybe he’d been working to make things better for them all?
Stop thinking it; stop thinking it.
Only a few months later Ceaușescu was shot.
And Tat
a missed it. Tata missed it.
That evil peasant man who starved and froze and murdered his own people, he and his wife were shot like dogs. Right there on the TV. It was a feast for the eyes. The puff of smoke and then the sight of the crumpling figures. Nicolae falling back, knees folding beneath him, a dark snake of blood slithering from his wife’s head.
But Tata was not there to see.
She pulls herself out of the memories, sits up and rubs her eyes, eyes that have stayed dry. At last her crying habit is broken. She will be like Alis; Alis never cries.
At the top of the stairs she stands and listens. All quiet now. Maybe the men have gone? Maybe Ratman has gone? Dario? Maybe everyone? She takes her bag from its hiding place under the mattress and goes downstairs. Beads clack on their strings as she pushes through into the lounge. On the table an overflowing ashtray, nubs of gum stuck in the rims of coke bottles. She goes through into reception, rattles the door. Locked of course; she pushes and wrenches the handle, gives up, begins to investigate the window catch.
Dario appears, bare chested and shivery. On his chest and abdomen the skin is milky and hairless as a baby’s.
‘Go up.’ He jerks his chin towards the stairs. In the bleak light she can see a rash of spots at the corners of his mouth, spindly black hairs on his upper lip.
‘What’s happening?’
He blinks at her, peels a bit of gum off the top of a Coke bottle and puts it in his mouth.
‘Tell me, Dario.’
He stretches the gum between his teeth and chews.
‘You gave Ratman the pastels, didn’t you?’
His eyes are as blank as the TV screen.
‘You told him about crazy Norwegian? Did you go to his house?’
He blows a grey bubble and she can see his tongue waggling inside it.
‘You are a true shit,’ she says.
He draws in the bubble. ‘Everyone is shit,’ he says. ‘Shit, shit, shit, then dead.’
She stares at his teenage skin, his pretty nose, his eyes that might as well be dead already, and hate won’t come; only a wash of tiredness.
‘Let me out, Dario,’ she says. Probably he’ll go straight to Ratman and tell him this too. ‘Please,’ she says, ‘please. Just let me go.’
A truck, maybe collecting rubbish clatters outside, rattling the windows.
‘Go up,’ he says.
‘Please.’
He only chews, looking at the stairs and she gives up, passes him, climbs right up to the sleep room and lies down. No tears, but like beads tumbling from a necklace onto a shiny floor, her heartbeat scatters.
Mats
He gets the last seat on the late plane, which turns out to be by the window over the wing so that his long legs are cramped unbearably. The woman beside him, in the aisle seat, prefers not to swap.
‘Get panicked if I’m hemmed in, me,’ she says, taking out of her bag an enormous piece of crochet. Expertly, she begins to waggle a hook through the dense hairy wool. ‘For my father,’ she says, ‘ninety-one tomorrow.’
Smiling politely, Mats turns away his head. No chat. Please. Rain streams down the window. He shuts his eyes, listens to the steward going through the lifebelt and oxygen procedures, the brace position. As if the brace position would save you if the plane went down.
If only it would go down.
No.
But think of all the trouble it would save. No more worry about money or Marta or anything else ever again. What would they say about him? How disappointing his life would have turned out to be. Imagining his weeping mother, Nina, the disgusted face of his father, all in a row at his funeral, he finds his eyes filling, sniffs back the tears, straightens his shoulders. Man up.
If only he could stretch his legs.
Lucky it’s the weekend. He’ll fly back on Sunday night or early on Monday, go straight to the office. When the lie that Far was ill slid so smoothly from his tongue, Vivienne was helpful, sympathetic almost. No, not almost but actually sympathetic, genuinely, he must be fair to her. Maybe she really is getting better? Getting back to the self that he must once have loved, since he married her. He gives such a long, audible sigh that Crochet Woman notices and touches his arm.
‘All right, lovey?’ she says.
He smiles tightly. ‘Lots on my mind.’
‘Want to talk it over?’ She peers over the top of miniature reading specs. She has wildly grizzled hair and a kind, deeply grooved face. ‘Talking to someone who’s not involved, it really can help.’
‘Thanks anyway,’ he says.
She laughs gruffly. ‘Well you know where I’ll be for the next ninety minutes.’
He nods, peers out of the window at the bridges spanning the tea-coloured Forth before the plane banks and all he can see is heaped grey cloud. Rain starts, running horizontally across the glass like wavering thoughts; but he must think in straight lines now.
What can he say to his folks? What possible reason can there be for needing that sum of money, immediately? Gambling debts? But Far would be almost as shocked by that as by the real reason. Vivienne needs an operation? What’s wrong with the famous NHS – he can hear those words in his father’s mouth. And anyway, how could he keep up such a lie? Investment opportunity? Far might go for that, especially if there was a profit in it for him. His standards are so high. Fiercely Christian, fiercely moral, he made his fortune through business, through going without, through never wasting a single penny. He’d never lend money for an investment without knowing every detail, of course he wouldn’t. Mats fidgets his legs, restrains himself from another sigh.
He flexes his toes within his shoes, moving his feet up and down, his legs scream to be straightened. Tries closing his eyes. If only he could just rest his mind, worn thin and grainy with repetitive thoughts. At intervals spurts of adrenalin rush his veins. Relax? Who’s he kidding? Thoughts flock and squeal through his brains.
The mortgage on the house is huge, no question of extending it, he’s only just making the payments as it is. Should not have bought the expensive house in the expensive suburb, got carried away with the idea of being a family man. Of providing. Can’t borrow fifty grand, not at short notice; the interest would be impossible.
He tugs his earlobe, pinching and pulling, a childhood habit that has made one lobe longer than the other. He hates the slightly frailer feeling of that flesh between his fingers, a ragged sensation that reminds him of how afraid of his father he used to be. Still is.
The trolley’s in the aisle and his companion nudges him. He accepts a paper cup of cool, dreadful coffee and two wrapped biscuits.
‘Can’t stomach coffee,’ says the crochet woman. ‘Sends me berserk.’ Instead she has a little plastic pot of orange juice. She pierces the lid with her crochet hook.
‘Fly often?’ she says. ‘Me, I visit once a month.’
‘Where do you live?’ Mats gives in and learns about her extensive family, spread between Norway, Scotland and London, her husband’s obsession with golf, her eldest grandson’s staggering musical talent, her daughter’s dreams of starting an alpaca farm.
‘Have you seen their eyelashes?’ She flicks her fingers up to mime them, giving a goofy alpaca grin.
He smiles. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to laugh without this dread that feels like concrete lodged in his gut? He can’t remember how it feels to be light-hearted. This crochet woman might have sorrows in her life, she might have trials but she isn’t racked with guilt, he would place a bet on that. If he was a betting man, which he is not, but then he’s not a man who visits prostitutes either, not a man who cheats and lies and puts his family in danger.
He fakes a yawn. ‘Going to try and sleep before we land.’
‘Sure,’ the woman nods cozily. ‘Me, I never sleep on a plane. Sort of a superstition. I shut my eyes, the plane drops from the sky!’
&nb
sp; Smiling, he shuts his eyes. He’ll go mad if he can’t stretch his legs out, but if he asks her to get up it’ll lead to more chat. Imagine her reaction if he tells her he’s slept with a Romanian prostitute, got into this situation with a pimp, needs £50,000 right now. What would she say to that?
There is one person he can tell, of course. For sure, she’ll be crisp, sarcastic, practical. But she’ll know what he should do. This thought both soothes and excites him. Nina can be relied upon to find a solution; Nina of the cool head. Prematurely he begins to feel relief in the thought. He’ll find time to see her. It will be so good to see her. Tomorrow he’ll arrange it. No need to mention the loan to his folks, not until he’s talked to Nina.
Behind his eyelids, which he feels obliged to keep closed, he begins to drift, picturing her long neck, her white-blonde hair piled high, soft tendrils tumbling, little ears . . . and then he thinks of Marta, her tender neck, her mass of dark curls, the fear in her eyes. Her neck on the line because of him. As if someone has pumped their foot on the gas, he’s flooded with adrenalin again.
He finds himself panting now, hyperventilating. Is this a panic attack? ‘Excuse me,’ he says to Crochet Woman, undoing his seatbelt. She rolls up her work with maddening slowness, winds the wool round the ball, pokes the hook into it, stows it all in her bag. And then she heaves up her bulky body so he can squeeze past into the aisle. A shudder of turbulence causes him to lurch, the seat belt signs ping back on, but he makes his way to the toilet, stretching out the backs of his knees. He can’t get his breath. Sweat beads his brow. He feels he could punch someone or scream. A stewardess asks him to go back to his seat but he ignores her, locks himself into the toilet, stands with his forehead pressed against its plastic interior.
He breathes and breathes, easing the sickly scented toilet air down into his lungs until he’s got a grip. Hunches to stare at himself in the curiously vague mirror, looks into his own eyes and makes this vow: once all this is over I will be a good and faithful family man.
The Squeeze Page 12