‘I am twenty-one years old,’ he says, kind of proudly, as if he is honoured to have lived so long.
‘I am eighteen, today.’
‘You said.’ Drover looks around for something to dry his hands on. There is nothing, so he uses his trousers.
He listens as the girl chatters on behind him and looks at his own reflection in the window. He sees his dark hair, cropped right down. He likes that look. It used to be longer. The last time he was in trouble and in a police cell it was down around his shoulders. If she saw him then, she might not recognise him now. But his ears stick out, they make him recognisable. It was one of the things he hated when he was younger. Other boys used to take the piss out of him for it. Boys and girls. He still has hatred festering about the names he was called, but then he sees his strong cheek bones, his eyes, and his cute little smile. He winks at himself confidently and thinks, You’re on top of this, man, you know what you’re doing. She might be police and she might be suspicious, but keep on bluffing and you’ll be fine.
‘Every year,’ Lily is saying over the sound of the kettle reaching boiling point, ‘we come here for our birthday. You see, me and Grandpa have the same… But you know that. Am I repeating myself, Peter?’
No, Drover thinks, you’re flirting. Ah, well, it might take Pete’s mind off his nerves and help him get through this. Drover sees that he has three-day-old stubble on his face. He remembers his last shave with a nearly blunt, yellow plastic Bic razor back at the squat. Cold water from a bottle and only soap for foam. Soon, though, soon, they’ll be out of here with that cash and he’ll be able to pay a barber to shave him every day.
‘My dad always told me that I was a miraculous birth.’ She’s wittering on now and Drover is happy to watch himself in the glass as he listens. He can’t rush her. This plan has to be played out naturally or the cop in the front room will know something is very wrong.
‘The timing was perfect,’ she says. ‘My mum made sure of it and insisted I came out when I did so I could be the same as Grandpa. She said it would be a lucky thing for all of us, so she had me cut out right on Grandpa William’s birthday. I was three weeks early.’
‘Can they make doctors do that?’ Pete asks, and Drover thinks that’s a fair question.
Pete’s voice sounds calm and normal. Drover is happy. He winks at himself in the window. Is that something in his eye?
‘Pam can make anyone do anything,’ Lily says.
‘Why do you call her Pam?’
‘Pam and Myles, that’s their names. They’re not Mum and Dad to me.’
‘I had a mum and dad,’ Pete says.
It is, Drover thinks. There’s something in my eye. His green eyes look different somehow, or is that a reflection of something behind him?
‘What happened to them?’ she asks.
‘Don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Oh, okay, Pete, whatever you want. Here…’
It sounds like she’s putting the water into a teapot, Drover thinks, as he turns to look behind. There is nothing on the wall there that can be reflecting in the window. He turns back to face himself.
‘Maybe we can have a drink later,’ Lily is saying, and there’s a tone to her voice that Drover recognises as serious flirting. He wonders how Pete will cope with it.
‘If you like,’ is all Pete says, and it sounds flat, like he doesn’t know what he is supposed to say.
Drover hears Lily tut and leans into the window to examine his eye. It looks yellow. His mind has moved on from concerns about Pam recognising him - so what if she does, he tells himself, I’ve not done anything wrong here, I’m a community volunteer - and he is now more concerned about what’s wrong with his eye.
No, both eyes.
‘I’ve never had a boyfriend before.’
‘That’s because you are too thin,’ says Pete.
‘That’s because Pam has been starving me. She won’t allow me to eat, weeks now, and won’t let me have a B.F. But, now I’m eighteen...’
‘Why can’t you eat? Is there something wrong with you?’
‘No, silly! She says it is for my benefit. You can’t question her. But, I know, really. I’ve sneaked in some stuff while she has been at work. Myles lets me have some bread and saves me some of his dinner when Pam is not around.’
‘Sounds nice, your dad.’
‘He’s a dork.’
‘My dad’s dead.’
Drover has yellow eyes. No, he doesn’t. If he moves his head to the side the yellow stays where it is. He scratches the window with a nail. No, it’s not on the glass.
And then he realises. There’s something outside. Outside, and far off. Two pin pricks of yellow light are piercing the blackness somewhere out there among the trees.
They vanish.
And reappear again. It’s not torch light, there’s no beam, and it can’t be a car. The back of the house practically touches the forest so no one is driving towards him. But, the lights are slowly becoming larger, and they are flickering on and off. People with lanterns, perhaps? No, it’s definitely a pair of something.
‘That’s not nice for you,’ Lily is saying. ‘I wonder what I will feel like when my dad dies. Hey, look at this.’
‘What’s that?’
The yellow lights are approaching the house and flickering because they are passing among the trees.
‘It’s a locket. Grandpa gave it to me one day when we were looking at the Family Book. It is very old and very valuable.’
‘Nice. Does he have any milk?’
‘In the fridge, silly. Would you like to wear it?
‘What, the fridge?’
Lily laughs. ‘You are funny. I like you. Would you like to wear my special locket?’
‘Okay.’
The fridge door opens and then closes. The yellow lights vanish and then reappear, but in a different place, over to the left, a way off and smaller.
‘Well, you can’t,’ Lily says. ‘I don’t take this off for anyone. Not even my B.F.’
‘Oh. What’s a B.F.?’
‘Boyfriend, silly. Mind you, I might let you wear it, but only if you were my husband.’
It’s another set of lights. The first ones are back. Now there are two pairs.
Now three.
‘I’d have to be dead before I let anyone take this locket from me. It’s very special. Other girls, and some boys, have wanted to have it, but, it’s like they say, not over my dead body.’
‘Dead body?’ says Pete.
Drover spins around. ‘What?’
‘Wasn’t talking to you,’ she says petulantly to Drover.
Thank Christ, Drover thinks, she’s talking about some stupid thing around her scrawny neck.
Lily is leaning against the counter holding up a small, silver locket that she is wearing. She is sliding it from right to left on its chain and smiling at Pete. What there are of her breasts are thrust forwards towards Pete who is putting the milk carton down on a tray.
‘Better get a move on with that tea, Pete. I expect they will be getting thirsty. Want to drink up and head home, I reckon.’
‘Oh, we’re not going anywhere,’ Lily says, and puts the locket back inside her jumper. ‘Not until we see grandpa.’ She moves an inch closer to Pete who tries not to look at her breasts. ‘If you treat me nicely I might let you touch it. Would you like that.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Where do you live?’ she is asking.
Drover pays attention. He can see Pete is flustered and now she’s really coming on to him. This could turn out bad if Pete bottles it.
‘We have a place, back in town, long way off.’
‘We’re homeless,’ Drover cuts in. ‘But we manage.’
‘We had a
place,’ Pete says. He is putting cups onto the tray and they clatter together, his hands are shaking. ‘But we got kicked out. We had to leave or else Liam would get in trouble again.’
Shit!
‘Again, Pete?’ Drover leaps in with false laughter. ‘You make me sound bad, mate. He means we’d get in trouble for not paying our rent. We used to share a place, see, but we couldn’t afford it so we had to move out. Anyway, that tea will be getting stewed.’
‘Drover got in trouble once…’
‘Pete!’
‘What was that for?’ Lily is smiling coyly at Drover now. ‘What did you do Liam?’
‘He’s talking tripe, Lily. Take no notice. He’s had a long day haven’t you, Peter?’ he emphasises Pete’s proper name; he always does that to show Pete when he’s displeased.
Pete stays silent and nods, but Drover can see tears in the corners of his eyes. He’s trying so hard not to blurt out the truth, he can’t help it. Poor kid.
‘Will you take the tea in, Lily? We’ve been working hard all day and our hands are unsteady.’
She doesn’t answer him. She stays with her eyes fixed on Pete as he checks that everything is on the tray.
‘Pam says that grandpa is going to give me something special today as I am eighteen. She says he has a gift for me.’
‘That’s nice,’ Pete says, and Drover thinks he sounds calmer now, less flustered. He has got the dumb kid back on track.
‘He might give me some of his fortune.’
‘Well off, is he?’ Drover asks, trying to keep things natural.
‘He might be.’
Pete picks up the tray and everything on it rattles.
‘Shall I help you, Pete? Let me do it for you. Would you want me to do it for you?’ Lily asks, and there’s something so pathetically suggestive in her voice that Drover turns back to the window to hide his laughter.
Two yellow eyes stare back at him from right outside.
‘Jesus!’ He leaps back.
The eyes close and vanish leaving nothing but blackness and doubt. But then comes the sound of something softly dragging past the window.
‘What now?’ Lily says.
Drover’s heart is pounding. He has no idea what it was, but there was something out there and it didn’t look human. No human has yellow eyes.
A trick of the light? His mind working strange tricks after all that’s happened? Spots before the eyes due to his lack of food and water? All kinds of explanations.
‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘Let’s get back to your mum.’
It’s the last place he wants to be but there’s a plan to be put into action, and, besides, he doesn’t feel so confident anymore. The yellow lights have gone but he is certain he can still hear that dragging noise. A ghost echo in his mind, perhaps? No, now he can hear something shuffling away.
There’s definitely something outside. It’s probably just some kind of wild animal, he tells himself, but he’s certain he doesn’t want to go out there and find out for sure.
Thirteen
MYLES IS CROUCHED DOWN looking in the cupboard under the bookcase. Pam is standing over him, one of William’s old books in her hand. She is slightly distracted by the money tumbling out of the cupboard.
‘You see? That’s why we’re doing this,’ she is saying.
Myles stares at the heap of bank notes. The room smelt of air freshener before and now it smells of money. There’s an almost perceptible mist curling out from the cupboard. Like the trail of a cartoon skunk, it is pervading the room and filling his nostrils with the wonderful stench of wealth. The residue of hundreds of different fingers, the insides of wallets, purses, trouser pockets, tills, envelopes, everything that has touched this great stash of money has left some kind of mark on it, and it stinks.
It smells of heaven. More precisely for Myles is smells of freedom. With what is in this small cupboard, let alone what he knows to be in the rest of the house, he could start again. He could leave Lily with Pam and head off into the hills. He has his eye on a small, six-bedroomed house in the Scottish Highlands. It’s far away from anywhere yet not so far as to be inconvenient. There are five golf courses within an hour’s drive, there are some top hotels with fine dining and some wonderful scenery. He has already planned each room; he’s going to give each of the bedrooms a theme according to his favourite things. One will be dedicated to black and white films, one to the Beatles. There will be a room that’s all about golf and this will probably be his bedroom, and one dedicated to opera. The other two bedrooms will be the purple room, because he likes the colour, and the white room where there will be nothing but a black grand piano that he will never play. The house already comes with a library and a ballroom. All he needs is to get his hands on his father’s money.
But it is not as easy as just taking it.
His childhood had not been a normal one, to say the least, and not much of it had been spent in this house. He had lived in boarding schools since the pre-prep age and his father had been very keen for him to go to camps and on expeditions during holidays. He had vague recollections of his mother’s presence in the house at Christmastime, but they were elusive memories; she only featured in a few flashbacks, moving from room to room, never settling. There was also an old man at the edge of his memory who, as a young boy, Myles thought, was too old to be his father, and, yet, that was just what he called the man; Father. Slowly, as Myles became more aware of the working of the world around him, he came to realise that there was something wrong about this man, his father. It was when he finished school and came back to live at home for a while that something finally fell into place for him. He realised what was wrong with ‘Dad.’
His father, William, had always been the same age.
Or, at least, that is how it felt. Most children see their parents as old, and their grandparents as ancient, and Myles had been no different. But, when he stopped and thought about it, when he was allowed to think for himself because he’d finally left the public school system, he realised that his father had always been old.
In fact, he had always been the same age.
And then, one day, William had shown him a book he called the ‘Birthday Book’, and explained it all to him. It was then that Myles realised he was never going to get his hands on the stacks of cash that his father hoarded. Not unless he could find a way to do something about it.
And that’s when Pam came along.
He feels her kick him on the leg and looks up from his daydreaming to see her scowling down at him.
‘Put it back,’ she commands. ‘There are only a few more hours to go.’
Myles realises he has been running his hands through the cash and he throws it back into the cupboard. He knows how his father came by it and, although he wants it more than anything in the world, it has left a slimy layer of guilt on his fingers.
‘You’ll have yours soon enough,’ Pam says.
Myles closes the cupboard door and stands. ‘Maybe we should just go,’ he says, looking around the room and feeling uncomfortable. ‘Something doesn’t feel right.’
‘Go?’
‘Maybe if we just left things as they are he’d see sense in the end. I mean, all this, it needs to be in a bank.’
‘Myles, we’ve worked on this for more than eighteen years and tonight is it. The one chance.’
He sees her look at the dusty grandfather clock ticking laboriously away as it counts down time and he knows she is right. His heart sinks. He feels sad for his daughter.
‘Maybe we could just take some and go,’ he says. ‘He has so much that he won’t miss some of it.’
‘You say that every time and every time you know exactly what would happen.’
‘I know exactly what is going to happen tonight as well, but that doesn’t m
ake it any easier.’
‘What, you’re having second thoughts? Now?’
‘Third and fourth actually. Aren’t you?’
‘No,’ Pam says, simply, and slams shut the book. She slides it back in its place and pulls out another one.
‘You’re not sure how this should be going are you? Not now it’s actually happening.’ He heads back to the whisky bottle.
‘I’m fine,’ she says, but she is looking through the book. Something he just said has added to her unease. She is not sure, not one hundred per cent sure, and she needs to be.
Myles pours himself another unmeasured measure and swigs. The whisky burns his throat and the slight indigestion it gives him somehow makes him feel more confident.
‘I’m going to go and find some, take it from one of his old hiding places while he’s out,’ he says. ‘He won’t notice. Will he?’
‘If he does?’
‘I mean, not with everything else, tonight.’
‘So you are staying, now? I thought you wanted to go home.’
‘I don’t know, Pam,’ he says. He is starting to slur his words but he thinks he can keep them under control. ‘It’s like, well, the last years it’s been so far away and off, out there in the distance. It’s like tonight has been one of those trees in the woods, right at the back and remote, and no matter how fast you walk towards it there’s always another one to take its place. You never get there because it’s always over there, in the distance. Over there, right, over, far off. But then, suddenly, you know, you’ve crossed that safe distance and that tree is right here, now, and it’s time. You know?’
‘You’re drinking too much.’
‘You know what I mean? It’s tonight, Pam. We have to do it. Once we start we have to do it. Tonight.’
‘I know that. You know that, and he probably knows that.’
She puts the book back and takes another.
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