Billy was genuinely perplexed by the question. ‘Why do you think the drainpipes have upset me?’
‘You haven’t painted them,’ Greg replied.
‘You don’t have to paint drainpipes. They’re tinted black when they’re manufactured to save you the trouble. Besides, even if you did paint them, the paint would only peel off.’
‘Why’s that?’ Greg asked.
‘Because plastic expands and contracts with the weather. I’d have thought you’d have known that.’
‘The drainpipes are turning grey,’ Greg persisted. ‘The tint’s fading.’
‘Nonsense. It can’t be. It’s not a superficial tint – the whole pipe’s impregnated with the dye.’
There followed a period of toing and froing, Greg arguing one point of view and Billy the other, their voices rising and the exchanges becoming more heated and personal. Jean came out of the house to see what the commotion was and, uncharacteristically, took Billy’s side – simply because it was the opposing side to Greg’s.
‘What do you know about British drainpipes, anyway?’ she demanded. ‘You don’t even live in this country!’
It was at this point that Greg grabbed a Stanley knife from Billy’s open toolbox and cut the drainpipe deep enough for a grey centre to appear.
‘Now do you believe me?’ he said. ‘There’s no way that pipe’s been impregnated with dye.’
‘Flipping heck, Greg! I’ll have to buy another drainpipe now.’
‘Nonsense,’ Greg said. ‘Just stick a piece of electrical tape over the cut and paint the pipe black – like you’re supposed to!’
‘You’ll have to pay for a new drainpipe and the cost of its installation,’ Jean told Greg.
‘For God’s sake, Jean! Why do you always have to be such a fucking arsehole?’
‘I think you’d better leave,’ Jean said. ‘Billy, tell him to leave. I’m not having him talk to me like that, especially now that I’m pregnant. I might have a miscarriage.’
‘I think you’d better do as Jean says, Greg,’ Billy said, more than a trace of anger in his voice. ‘You always have to know best, don’t you? Always have to take things a step too far.’
Greg had said nothing, simply replaced the Stanley knife in his brother’s toolbox and left.
That was seven years ago.
The brothers had exchanged Christmas and birthday cards over the intervening period but, until Billy called with news of their father’s death, had never once spoken. Effectively, they were estranged. The rights and wrongs of painting plastic drainpipes had never been the issue between them, only a battle ground. The argument had been symptomatic of something else, something deeper – though just what that something was, Greg had no real idea.
It was his brother’s final words that had stayed with him over the years: You always have to know best, don’t you? Always have to take things a step too far. He didn’t understand the implied resentment of the first statement, but the explicit truth of the second he did. It could only have referred to his behaviour at their wedding.
Even he had to admit that it hadn’t been his finest hour.
Greg had known Jean long before Billy met her: they were the same age and had gone to the same independent school. Jean was there by dint of her father’s wealth and old boy connections, while Greg had sat the entrance exam – the same exam Billy had failed four years earlier – and passed well enough to win one of six scholarships.
Although in the same year, Greg and Jean had been placed in different streams and were never in the same classes. They both, however, belonged to social groups that ran into each other at weekend parties or in city centre clubs where licensing laws were lax and fake IDs went unquestioned. Even so, the likelihood was that Jean would have remained just a face in the crowd if Greg hadn’t been pressed by a friend to ask if she’d go out with him.
It was the ungraciousness of Jean’s reply that registered with Greg: ‘I’d rather die!’ she’d said. ‘Look at him! He’s got nostrils big enough to park cars in. It would be like going out with a double garage!’
At first, Greg wondered if it was just the awkwardness of the moment that had caused Jean to make such a boorish statement, and that her response was no more than a flustered reaction to an unexpected question. By the time he left school, however, he’d decided that it wasn’t: it appeared that Jean was insensitive and uncaring to all people she had no use for. Consequently, the day Billy introduced her as his fiancée, Greg was genuinely alarmed.
Billy and Jean had met at a charity gala. The event had been organised to raise funds for cancer research, and the accountancy firm where Billy worked had sponsored three tables. The firm had invited several of their more important clients and one of them was Henry Halliwell, the owner of a large chiropody practice.
Henry was accompanied by his wife and daughter, and Billy had been seated next to Jean. Fortunately – as far as their future together was concerned – Billy had no idea that Henry was a chiropodist and, when he did find out, it was too late. When Henry died two years after they married, Billy had to confess that he was more relieved than sad.
Though neither would have admitted to this, at the time of their meeting, both Billy and Jean were actively looking for spouses. Whenever they met new people of the opposite sex, each would mentally launch a profile page of their ideal partner and place either ticks or crosses in the appropriate boxes. That night, all appropriate boxes were ticked.
Billy, Jean decided, was a reasonably handsome man with no noticeable physical deformities. He was an accountant with prospects – or at least a trainee accountant with prospects – and wanted children. More importantly, he also struck her as being malleable: any marriage to Billy, she determined, would be a marriage on her terms.
Jean, Billy decided, was an attractive, almost beautiful girl, and he would have happily settled for less. She wanted children, came from a good family and displayed a distinct humanitarian spirit. He was touched by how willing she’d been to sacrifice her Saturday night for the benefit of others less fortunate than herself, and mentioned this.
Jean dismissed his idea that her attendance at the gala was an act of selflessness. ‘Cancer affects us all, Billy – not just poor people,’ she told him. ‘It’s affected me!’
‘I’m… I’m so sorry to hear that,’ Billy stammered, unsure if she herself or a close family member had suffered from the disease. ‘Would you like to talk about it?’
Jean drained the contents of her wine glass and Billy prepared himself for the worst.
‘I read an article in Reader’s Digest, Billy,’ Jean said, her voice faltering. ‘It was about a young woman in her twenties – my age – who died of the disease. It was the most moving and upsetting story I’d ever read and I cried for days afterwards. Mummy became quite concerned about me.’
Jean then refilled her wine glass and cut herself a large piece of cheese.
It wasn’t quite the story Billy had been expecting, but he was again struck by the sensitivity Jean exuded. Mentally, he placed another tick in her humanitarian box. What a stroke of good fortune it was to have been seated next to her!
‘My own mother died of a thrombosis,’ he said.
‘I’m very sorry to hear that, Billy, but let’s face it: she didn’t die from cancer, did she?’
Billy nodded thoughtfully, but held on to his belief that one premature death was no sadder than another – whatever the cause.
After the meal had finished and the speeches delivered, Billy plucked up his courage.
‘I know you might not think it appropriate, Jean – considering the sad circumstances of the evening and everything – but I wonder if you’d care to dance?’
‘I thought you’d never ask!’ Jean said.
And for the next year the dance continued.
Jean’s insistence that they delay full sexual
relations until their relationship was more defined – an insistence, Greg later told his brother, that had never been made to boys at school – probably spurred Billy’s proposal of marriage, as Jean had fully expected it would.
One cold November night, Billy slipped from the park bench they were sitting on and bent down on one knee, inadvertently placing it in a puddle. ‘Jean,’ he said, ‘would you do me the honour of marrying me and making me the happiest man in the world?’
Jean immediately accepted and six months later they were married. It appeared, however, that Jean had stopped listening after the words marry me, for Billy never became the happiest man in the world.
It was on their wedding day that Greg burned his bridges with Jean and soured an increasingly distant relationship with Billy. His outburst might have been construed by the generous as the concern of one brother for another or as a misguided expression of love, but even Greg had to admit that it was more likely the effects of the magic mushrooms he’d ingested that day.
Greg had been given no responsibilities for the wedding other than to show up, which for Greg, at that time of his life, was responsibility enough. Billy had asked his friend Bob Prickett to be best man, and all appointed ushers were similarly friends. Greg had no disagreement with this. He didn’t like weddings at the best of times, and the lack of any official role would allow him to slip away from the nuptials and meet up with friends in the Brown Cow. Indeed, his only reason for taking the hallucinogenic was to make the day pass more interestingly until that event could happen.
The mushrooms had been given to him by the same large-nostrilled friend Jean had earlier dismissed. Under his direction Greg first froze and then boiled the fungi – to rid them of as many toxins as possible, the friend had explained – and then, to kill the taste, mixed the residue with dandelion and burdock cordial. Greg had tripped on psilocybin before, and on both occasions his experiences had been happy ones. There was, therefore, no reason for him to believe that the hallucinations on the day of his brother’s wedding would be any different – and certainly the day had started well enough.
After drinking a small glass of the dandelion and burdock mixture, he took a leisurely bath, dressed in his suit and went downstairs, where his father and Billy were discussing the day’s arrangements in the lounge. He sat down at the breakfast table, buttered a slice of toast and then, while spreading marmalade over it, was suddenly overcome by the sparkling and bejewelled properties of the preserve. Reality, he sensed, was in the process of discarding its threadbare clothes and changing into something a little more alluring.
He chewed the toast slowly, savoured its flavour and sensed its texture, wondered if scorched bread had ever tasted better. He drank the most flavoursome cup of coffee he’d ever drunk, and then went to the bathroom to clean his teeth; he heard every deafening brush stroke, felt every bubble of toothpaste explode in his mouth. He went downstairs again and walked into the garden, stared at the trunk of a cherry tree for five minutes and then studied the grass. The world – as Louis Armstrong was proclaiming from the kitchen radio – was indeed wonderful. Why, he puzzled, was Billy about to spoil it by marrying Jean?
‘Come on, Greg. We haven’t got all day, lad,’ his father prompted.
The ride in the back of the wedding limousine was a 3D journey through Wonderland, and the inside of St Christopher’s Church was no less spellbinding. Greg was transfixed by the carved woodwork and rich ornamentation, the twinkling colours of the stained glass windows and the spidery intricacies of the plaster cracks. He watched as the words in his hymn book bounced to the music, and smiled when a small frog ate all the punctuation marks. Louis Armstrong’s words again came to mind: the world was indeed wonderful.
And then, all of a sudden, it became anything but!
Without warning the euphoria dissipated, and a terrible feeling of dread washed over him. His visions darkened, and he entered a strange world of nightmare. The church was no longer a church, but a dank and threatening cave. His brother was now an oscillating crow, and the vicar the grimmest of Grim Reapers. No mutation was more marked or alarming, however, than the change he saw in Jean. Her bridal gown had turned black and raggedy, and the mesh of her veil writhed with trapped and fetid bugs; her face was leprous, eyeless, and two large fangs protruded from her mouth. Blood dripped from them, trickled down her chin and pooled on the floor, until she and Billy – now losing his feathers and looking more like a plucked turkey – were standing in a small lake of red haemic liquid.
It was unfortunate that the vicar – still masquerading as the Grim Reaper – chose this moment to ask if anyone knew of any reason why Jean and Billy shouldn’t be joined together in holy matrimony. Greg did, and felt compelled to share his knowledge.
‘I DO!’ he shouted. ‘JEAN’S A VAMPIRE!’
The congregation turned to Greg. His outcry had been heartfelt and his expression, they noted, was equally sincere. Unsurprisingly, they next turned to Jean and scrutinised her for any telltale traces of vampirism, only returning their attention to Greg after he’d started to hyperventilate. They then watched as the groom’s brother toppled sideward and cracked his head on the hard edge of the wooden pew.
The ceremony was halted while his father and two ushers carried Greg concussed to the choir vestry and laid him on the floor. Fortunately, before anyone had time to call for an ambulance – which, in turn, would have brought the police – Greg’s eyes opened and his breathing slowly returned to normal. He looked at his father and his father looked at him. The love between them was palpable, the moment special.
And then, Greg spoke… and the special moment passed.
‘You’ve got wings growing out of your shoulder blades, Dad. I think you might be an angel.’
‘Good God in Heaven, Greg!’ Lyle replied. ‘You’ve been at those damned drugs again, haven’t you?’
The wedding continued without Greg, who remained in the choir vestry contemplating a chair leg. Jean became Billy’s wife and, reluctantly, Greg’s sister-in-law. It was generally agreed, however, that Greg’s strange outburst had marred the day, and Jean for one never forgave him.
The only person to disagree with prevailing opinion was Uncle Frank. To his way of thinking, Billy’s marriage to Jean had been one of the best days out he’d ever had.
Bricks
Jean and Billy lived in a small town in the Wharfe Valley, fifteen miles from where Billy and Greg had grown up. The distance was short, but the world there entirely different.
It had been Betty’s idea for her daughter and son-in-law to move into the family house after Henry died. Although she’d quickly come to the conclusion that the house was too big for one person, she’d been unwilling to either sell or move to a smaller property. The obvious solution, she decided, was to invite Billy and Jean to share the house with her. It would be a win-win situation for them all: the arrangement would allow her daughter and son-in-law to move out of their dingy semi-detached house, while allowing her to remain in Spinney Cottage.
It wasn’t so much the lifetime of memories that tied Betty to the Tudorbethan house, as the actual bricks and mortar. In a town renowned for its exclusivity, the Halliwell house stood in grounds of more than two acres in one of its most select areas. It was a house and address most people would have killed for and was, for Betty, the visible affirmation of her standing in life – a concrete testimony to the distance she’d placed between her past and present lives.
As long as she remained in Spinney Cottage she would forever be Mrs Betty Halliwell, the wife – now widow – of a successful professional man and respected magistrate. Never again would she be mistaken for Betty Stott, the awkward girl who’d stood behind her parents’ counter on a small wooden box and wrapped portions of thick seam and honeycomb tripe for shabbily-dressed customers, most of whom had been half-deaf from working in the textile mills. It was the image of their hands, however, hands she trie
d never to touch, that remained with her and occasionally brought nightmares: gnarled hands, liver-spotted hands and hands with missing fingers. (Although Betty never developed full-blown cheirophobia, the odds were always stacked in favour of her marrying a man who specialised in feet rather than hands.)
When Betty introduced the idea of living together, Jean had jumped at the idea. Billy, however, had been less sure, and silently doubted the wisdom of any arrangement that would leave them indebted to Jean’s mother and susceptible to her interference. Betty, however, had foreseen and prepared for such reservations. She had, she told them, no intention of interfering in their lives any more than she already did, and certainly didn’t want them interfering in hers. What she proposed was to convert a part of the house into a self-contained granny flat with its own entrance, and transfer the ownership of Spinney Cottage to Billy and Jean. There were, however, certain stipulations: they could never sell the house while she was alive and, similarly, they could never turn her out of the flat against her will.
‘But what if Billy and I get divorced?’ Jean had teased her mother. ‘What if Billy runs off with a floozy?’
‘Like that’s going to happen,’ Billy had laughed.
‘Our family doesn’t believe in divorce, Jean, and neither I’m sure does Billy,’ Betty had replied flatly.
Billy and Jean’s house sold quickly – ‘I told you pebble dash was a winner,’ Billy had said to his wife – but it had taken longer than expected for the necessary alterations to be made to Spinney Cottage, and there was an overlap of some two months when the three of them lived together under the same roof.
Against all odds, Billy found that he liked his mother-in-law’s constant company, and was appreciative of the times when she did interfere in their lives, as nine times out of ten it was with him that she sided. When, after its completion, Betty disappeared into the granny flat and was thereafter seen only rarely, Billy actually missed her.
‘You’re sure you won’t come in for a coffee, Betty?’ Billy asked, after they’d returned from the funeral.
The Last of the Bowmans Page 4