Plots and Errors

by Jill McGown

  Because then it would be just the family.

  SCENE IX – CORNWALL.

  The following day, Sunday, July 13th, 8.15 a.m.

  The Deck of Lazy Sunday.

  Elizabeth stifled an early-morning yawn as Josh headed the boat out of the little harbour for the shooting lesson that Sandie was so keen to have. Paul was determined to make her watch him every second, see for herself that he barely knew the girl. She was beginning to wonder if this whole thing had been some sort of bluff; it could be that Sandie really was Josh’s girlfriend, because there certainly seemed to be something almost tangible between them, and you couldn’t fake that. Their conversation was entirely routine, but you could tell when two people were intensely interested in one another, even if they were just sitting and chatting.

  That didn’t mean that Paul was here for a blameless weekend, of course; it just meant that she had got the wrong girl. She had asked Josh if Sandie was a red herring, if Paul was trying to throw her off the real scent, but he had pretended not to know what she was talking about, of course.

  Sandie was wearing the skimpy bikini again, and sat with Josh in the wheelhouse, as she had done almost all the time. Josh anchored the boat, which bobbed gently on the undulating water as he nailed up a makeshift target made out of a wooden box stuffed with an old mattress from the cabin he didn’t sleep in.

  Paul screwed in the silencer and handed Sandie the revolver, then turned her so that she was facing the target, the length of the boat between her and it. ‘Just take aim, pull back the hammer until it clicks, and press the trigger,’ he said. ‘Like you did before.’

  Sandie aimed; there was a dull report, but the target didn’t have a mark on it. She moved much closer, tried again, and missed again. All six bullets missed.

  ‘I wasn’t quite brave enough to take the place of the target,’ Paul said, taking the gun from her and reloading. ‘But I could have done. Now I’ll show you how to do it properly.’

  Elizabeth watched as he stood behind Sandie, and took a long time over placing her hands exactly how they should be on the gun, closed his hands round hers and pressed her finger on the trigger, their bodies coming together with the now-controlled kick. She glanced at the target; it had a small black hole in it. It happened six times; six muffled shots, six holes. All this Freudian imagery and proximity to a semi-naked female was giving Paul a buzz, that much was obvious. And Paul knew that it was obvious. It was meant to be. He reloaded, and looked over at her with a smile, as he began all over again.

  Paul had been the perfect choice for whatever behind-the-lines job it was that he had done in the army, too secret to be discussed even now. He had no conscience, no qualms about betraying those who trusted him, or about the damage his actions might cause to innocent people. No hesitation in lying, no guilt. A cruel streak that surfaced from time to time, as it was doing now. Look at me, he was saying. Look at me with my fancy woman. You can’t prove a thing. All you can do is watch me get turned on by her.

  If Paul’s father hadn’t dangled the prospect of a multi-million-pound pay-off, Elizabeth would have left Paul long ago. After all, she had been denied her conjugal rights for years, and that would be reason enough to divorce him; it would still leave her relatively well-off. But after years and years of continuing to love him, of hoping that he would settle down, that he would want her again, she was unwilling to give up now that the love had gone. Proving his adultery would make her very, very rich.

  She had met Paul at a Boxing Day party given by his mother, famous for her elegant dinner parties, which combined the best of both the centuries in which the Esterbrooks seemed to live. They had consummated the relationship that very evening, when everyone else was downstairs indulging in more decorous pursuits. But she still didn’t know why he had married her, because it had become clear early on that he had no intention of staying faithful to her.

  Josh, on the other hand, had come out of prison and had met someone, married her, and, Elizabeth believed, truly loved her. But it hadn’t lasted. It would be nice to think that Sandie really was his girlfriend, but any doubts Elizabeth had entertained as to exactly whose girlfriend she was evaporated as she watched Paul show Sandie how to shoot the revolver. He had taught her too, long ago, because he occasionally carried a gun off duty, and he thought anyone with access to a gun should know how to use it; he hadn’t taught her like that.

  She had hoped that her unscheduled appearance might throw Paul’s well-oiled machinery out of gear, but it hadn’t, and she had had enough. There were other ways of catching him out, ways she had regarded as beneath her at one time, but which were rapidly becoming more and more attractive as Paul became less and less so.

  Sandie, perhaps not quite so happy with blatant insults as Paul, announced that she had had enough tuition, and wanted to see Paul shoot. Paul walked to where she had stood for her first attempt, turned and loosed off six shots in rapid succession, showing off for his girlfriend, who applauded when the bullets peppered the target. But as Josh once again took the wheel to take the boat into harbour, Sandie followed him into the wheelhouse, standing beside him, her arm round his waist, and Paul clearly didn’t like that.

  He followed her in, and started looking in the drawer for something. ‘Oh, sorry,’ he said, as his bowed head brushed against her. ‘Was that your thigh?’

  Elizabeth decided to see if Angela needed any help at the cottage; she wasn’t staying here to be humiliated.

  SCENE X – CORNWALL.

  Sunday, July 13th, 8.50 a.m.

  The Wheelhouse of Lazy Sunday.

  Paul found the wherewithal to clean the gun, something he always did, and Josh never did. He was glad to have something to do; he needed an activity to take his mind off Sandie, after his erotic shooting session with her. It had been necessary, both to show Elizabeth she was wasting her time trying to prove anything, and to remind Sandie what was what. She was coming on to Josh, of all people; she’d been doing it all weekend.

  ‘Is it like driving a car?’ she asked, as Josh got the boat under way again.

  ‘Sort of.’

  Paul worked on the gun while Josh slowly negotiated the rocky coastline that they had explored in rowing boats as kids, on his way back to the harbour.

  ‘Can I have a go some time?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ said Josh. ‘I don’t trust women drivers.’

  Paul, though his opinion of those of the female persuasion was probably even lower than his brother’s, would never have said that. He had, after almost ten years of office diplomacy, had such blatant sexism wrung out of him. In his army days he wouldn’t have dared not be sexist, but you had to adapt. He had to, at any rate. He couldn’t be independent of the rest of the world like Josh; he relied on the rest of the world too much.

  Josh said that he was a slave to convention, and with prison-cell psychology put his desire for sexual variety down to the moral rectitude which governed the rest of his dealings with the world. It was true that it was the only area of his life that would not stand up to scrutiny, and that he was running the risk of losing everything if he got caught, but the risk was part of it; maybe all of it. Calculated risk-taking was in their blood; their father had taken risks to get where he had, and Josh had taken risks all his life, for even flimsier reasons than Paul’s.

  He made to put the gun away, but Josh, his eyes on where he was going, guessed what he was up to.

  ‘Leave it loaded,’ he said, without even turning round.

  ‘That’s dangerous.’

  ‘I want it dangerous. He could be out any day now. I’m vulnerable on this boat at night.’

  Paul shook his head. ‘You played a very stupid part in a pathetic little hold-up that went wrong,’ he reminded him. ‘Your accomplice was fifty if he was a day. He’ll be coming out to his state pension, not to kill you.’

  ‘Maybe. Leave it loaded.’

  Paul left it loaded. He was a year older than Josh, but their childhood together had been spent wit
h Josh giving the instructions, and Paul obeying them, sometimes to his cost. A little later he had worked out that Josh was not a good role model. A little later still, that he could always blame Josh for whatever it was he had done, and his father would believe him. He put the gun and silencer back in the drawer. ‘Doesn’t this drawer lock?’ he asked.

  ‘What use would a locked drawer be?’

  Paul shrugged. The need for risk-taking might be the result of some family gene, but at least his way of satisfying it was less likely to lead to fatalities than his brother’s.

  He could see the knot of people walking down the harbour, coming for the afternoon session, and he began to ache with almost adolescent anticipation, as he always did. He might even have to screw his bitch of a wife again if he wasn’t going to get it any other way.

  The small crowd of people on the harbour resolved themselves into individuals, and one of them was his mother. That was all he needed. That was all he bloody needed.

  SCENE XI – CORNWALL.

  Sunday, July 13th, 8.55 a.m.

  Penhallin Harbour.

  Angela smiled at Elizabeth as she was helped on to the boat. ‘I thought I saw you at the supermarket yesterday,’ she said. ‘What made you finally decide to see what it was all about?’

  Elizabeth shrugged. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I just thought Cornwall might be nice on a weekend like this. I can’t say I’m enjoying myself.’

  Elizabeth looked a little strained, Angela thought, and she wished that she didn’t. But she couldn’t remember a time when there hadn’t been family tensions, and so far they were at least still all on speaking terms. She saw the girl who had been with Paul and Elizabeth in the car, sitting on her own in the wheel-house. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked. ‘She came down with you, didn’t she?’

  ‘Sandie Townsend. She works for Paul – he says she’s Josh’s girlfriend.’

  ‘Really?’ Angela looked more critically at the girl as she sat perched on the cabinet, two strips of material just about preserving her modesty, her long legs crossed. Intelligent face. Neat figure. It would be nice if Josh could find himself a girl.

  The divers were coming on board now, and Angela watched them all with the practised eye of a novelist. The show-off, the serious holiday-maker, the earnest hobbyist, the . . . she frowned. The one talking to Josh at the door down to the cabins defeated her. He was very young, and had a quite beautiful face spoiled by a selfish mouth, and an even more beautiful body spoiled by a horrible tattoo of a spider on his left shoulder, as she discovered when he divested himself of all but his swimming trunks and began to pull on his wetsuit.

  ‘And who’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s Billy,’ Paul said, joining them as she asked.

  ‘He’s very young to be able to afford this sort of weekend. Never mind all the state-of-the-art diving equipment he’s got with him. How old is he?’

  ‘Fifteen, I think.’

  ‘So he must still be at school?’

  ‘I doubt if Billy’s seen the inside of a classroom since he was ten,’ said Paul. ‘He’s in business for himself. He’s a rent-boy – you know? A prostitute?’

  ‘I know what a rent-boy is,’ said Angela. ‘And he earns enough to spend his leisure time like this?’

  ‘He’s some sort of friend of Josh’s, so he probably doesn’t have to pay for anything.’

  ‘When you say a ‘‘friend’’ of Josh’s, what exactly do you mean?’

  ‘Well, he was in prison, remember. They get up to all sorts in there.’

  ‘And where does Sandie fit into this picture?’ asked Elizabeth immediately.

  ‘I think she believes she can turn Josh around.’

  Angela had no feelings on the matter of anyone’s sexuality, as Paul knew, or he wouldn’t be being so frank, but she knew Josh, and he needed a woman’s influence, not some rent-boy’s. If this girl was interested in Josh, perhaps she could give her some help.

  ‘You know,’ she said to Elizabeth, ‘I think I’m going to go back to Little Elmley now. There’s quite a lot of work to do on the family album – if you’re not enjoying yourself, would you like to come back with me? We could have dinner – Paul can bring Josh home.’ She looked across to where Josh stood deep in conversation with Billy. ‘Josh?’ she called. ‘Elizabeth and I are going back now to do some work at Little Elmley – Paul will take you and Sandie back. Ask Sandie if she would like to come to dinner.’

  ‘I’d like that very much, Mrs Esterbrook,’ said the girl. ‘Thank you.’

  Good. Angela left the boat, unsure, as she always was when she interfered with Josh’s arrangements, if she had done the right thing. He was so perverse, so likely to do the very opposite of what you would expect. Just like his mother.

  SCENE XII – BARTONSHIRE.

  Sunday, July 13th, 7.00 p.m.

  The House at Little Elmley.

  Angela and Elizabeth had spoken about anything and everything on the journey back except family matters. Neither of them had mentioned Paul’s belief about Josh, neither had mentioned Elizabeth’s belief about Sandie. And that was just how Angela liked it. If things weren’t endlessly discussed and worried over, they sometimes simply resolved themselves.

  That wife of Josh’s had given him a considerable knock-back running out on him as she had, and if Josh had made, well, alternative arrangements while he was in prison, which was, after all, during the period when men were supposed to be at their most sexually active, then falling back on them was only to be expected, if he thought that women couldn’t be trusted. Of course, his wife might not have left him if he had told her about his past, but then . . . how did you go about that? It must be difficult to tell people you’ve been in prison for manslaughter.

  Perhaps, she thought, as she and Elizabeth prepared dinner, she ought just to see if Sandie knew what was what before it happened again. It was worth risking the possibility of serious discussion to see if Elizabeth knew what Josh had told Sandie about himself. ‘Has Josh told this girl about being in prison?’ she asked.

  Elizabeth sighed. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘But you don’t honestly believe that she’s Josh’s—’

  ‘What I believe,’ said Angela firmly, ‘is that Josh needs a woman, and Paul already has one. So let’s hope that things work out the way they should, shall we?’

  Elizabeth sighed again, but the discussion had been averted, and Elizabeth carried on dicing vegetables with perhaps a little more venom than was strictly necessary. This was what Angela liked doing best; preparing food for dinner-guests. And she would have preferred not to have help, but someone else had to do the things she found really difficult, like chopping vegetables. For this reason she had trained the young woman she actually employed to do things her way, but she could hardly complain if Elizabeth did them her way. So she didn’t complain, but she was relieved when she could tell Elizabeth to go and put her feet up, to have a drink out on the terrace, and she had the kitchen to herself.

  When the others arrived back from Cornwall, Paul joined Elizabeth on the terrace, but Josh wanted to show Sandie round before dinner, and whatever status Sandie had had to start with, Angela felt certain that Josh would not be spending this amount of time with someone in whom he had no interest. Besides, you could tell that they were entirely wrapped up in one another. Josh wasn’t gay; he just needed a little encouragement, and she felt sure that Sandie would provide that.

  SCENE XIII – BARTONSHIRE.

  Sunday, July 13th, 8.10 p.m.

  The Grounds of Little Elmley.

  ‘This place is absolutely huge,’ Sandie said, as Josh gave her a guided tour of the exterior. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen the same part of the house twice.’

  ‘I know. See what bottled gases can do for you?’

  Josh liked bringing people in by the front door and out through the kitchen; from the front, it looked like a reasonably large house, but from the rear, you got the full impact of the extensions that his father had had built
on anywhere and everywhere, every time he had thought of something else he needed space for.

  It had once been the manor house of a very small village, but by the middle of the twentieth century the village had been reduced to a handful of houses, and those had been flooded to create a reservoir. The area still retained the village name of Little Elmley, but this was the only house still extant, so that was the house’s name now, incongruous though the adjective was when applied to this rambling house that went on forever, and the acres of land in which it sat.

  As they walked round, he gave her the authorized family history. His father had come to Stansfield to oversee the building of the head office of Industrial and Medical Gases across the road from an existing IMG bottling plant. This personal visit to the town had meant that he discovered Little Elmley, just thirty miles away. Firstly, he had bought the house because he could the more easily indulge his diving hobby in the reservoir which had been thought necessary to provide back-up during the war, but which in the end had not been needed. Then, bit by bit, as his empire grew, he acquired more and more of the land surrounding the house. A wood here, a meadow there, until he owned it all. Every blade of grass. His final coup had been to buy the reservoir itself.

  He had brought his sons up so that they were as much at home underwater as they were on land; Josh and Paul had been into every house in Little Elmley, immersed by water since before they were born, and marine life flourished where once children had played and women had washed and cleaned while their men worked in the woods and fields that surrounded the isolated house.

  ‘You actually own the entire village?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Josh. ‘But I will.’

  SCENE XIV – BARTONSHIRE.

  Sunday, July 13th, 8.10 p.m.