‘Look at them all. Cunts. Don’t fancy any of them.’
Dick was the driver of the van. They sat three abreast, with Derek squashed in the middle and Bob on the passenger side, each looking through the dirty windscreen while they waited for the cars blocking the end of the drive to disperse. The congregation was slow to move.
‘I never could fancy anything wearing a hat,’ Bob grumbled. He was grateful that Derek blocked him from proximity to Dick, because Dick smelled slightly. Bodily fluids shown insufficient water: dead meat. ‘And all those mothers are the same shape.’
So they were, like tulip bulbs in coats, chatting by car doors in cheerful voices, full of virtue. A good congregation for the day, drawn by the age of the church building. The service had more meaning if they had to make a special expedition to reach it: the modern churches in town, with their lack of adornment and tradition, were less popular despite access from so many more doorsteps. The vicar here had a nice way of reminding his parishioners that God was still on their side whatever the evils of their society. The church had style and a noisy choir. Also the prettiest graveyard where all the agnostics wanted to be buried and the vicar did not mind that either.
‘Do you suppose he gets a bonus for every person he pulls inside on Sundays?’ Dick queried, looking at a portly figure in a cassock scurrying towards a Ford Fiesta. ‘Like Dan does at the bingo place?’ Dan was another itinerant from the hostel, not party to this enterprise.
‘I doubt it,’ said Dick. ‘His wife looks like a baked potato.’ Then he began to giggle. The giggle smothered itself into a series of snorts as Dick put the van into gear and moved off sharply, making all three bump back against the hard seats. Bob winced.
‘Didn’t we do well, though?’ Derek crowed through his laughter. ‘I can’t believe it. She invites us in, shows us round, turns on the music. Makes tea in the best china …’
‘China’s not worth much,’ Bob grunted, ‘unless it’s really special and you get a whole set of it.’
‘Gives us the guided tour! All you have to do is play with her.’
‘Whose car is in the garage, is what I want to know,’ said Bob. ‘And who was that girl in the drive?’
‘George never mentioned anyone else. Only his old princess.’
‘Look, Derek, we’ve seen other people going up there. She ain’t all alone all the time.’
‘No one permanent. Stands to reason the old dear has some help, doesn’t it?’
‘Of course. So she should.’
There was muttered agreement, as if it were abhorrent she should not. Moral outrage at the thought of her being on her own. Disgraceful. Derek lied with fluent ease, not wanting to put them off. He had been persuading them into this for weeks.
‘Nothing we can’t cope with. So? When?’
Silence. A grunting of gears as the van whined uphill, protesting an unhealthy engine. Dick it was with the cash-paying job of driving vans for the abattoir. He had access by night to bigger, better wagons than this.
‘What’s it all worth then, Bob?’
Bob, with his bent back and uncertain future, knew values better than anyone after years in the trade hanging around John Cornell. Derek was learning fast.
‘Depends on where we take it. Coupla blokes in Leicester would give us twelve thou.’
‘It’s worth much more than that!’ Derek yelped.
‘ ’Course it is. But you have to sell cheap.’ The contempt in his voice was apparent. What a pair of wankers. Bob had done this kind of thing before often enough, and had never been less sure of his companions. Derek giggled again: he was a petty thief and a queer, despicable on both counts. Dick had plenty of muscle, access to vehicles and those were his only virtues, Bob thought uneasily.
This was a rum way to augment dole payments, but then John Cornell wasn’t going to give him a pension and would not pay him when he was sick, although his son had been round with money out of his own pocket, called each week. That made Bob uncomfortable, but the discomfort was like the pain in his lumbar region, intermittent, variable, better than it had been the day before. Dulled by contempt for his companions, who acted like cinematic villains planning a farcical murder. Pain also dulled the planning stage. It could not compete with the fact that the contents of the living rooms of that house would fetch three times what he had quoted, although two-thirds of that would belong to middlemen. Four thousand each if they were lucky, not a fortune but already organized and relatively risk free. Bit of a scam, taking stuff from someone who would never be able to describe you. If they did not rob her someone worse would, and the gypsy in him did not distinguish between a lot and a little. The big time was for others.
‘Why did you tell her we were George’s friends?’
‘There’s no harm getting George in trouble. I wonder what she sees in him? His body, I expect. She made us extra welcome, didn’t she?’
‘She might remember what you said,’ Dick said.
‘No, she won’t. She won’t remember fuck all. She talks jumbo. Get a move on, Dick: he passes this way about now. Got eyes in the back of his head, Derek says.’
‘You’ve got a big mouth. Don’t know how you feed it.’
Dick put the van into high gear. Bob shook his head. The way they went on, you would think they were bank robbers planning a heist, not a bunch of men down on their luck. Such a palaver, and far too much chat.
‘Soon,’ he said. ‘Before the competition arrives.’
Which it would. He could scent houses like that, marked for plunder.
George had always considered that men talked too much, as if there was anything worth saying. He adored the sensation of silence so profound it became a buzzing in the ears, filling out the vacuum of the skull until becoming deliciously oppressive. He did not use silence to dream or fantasize: he simply dwelt in it and could not remember afterwards what he had thought in his soundless cave with nothing but the hum, or why he had enjoyed the interlude. Silence of that kind was rare: churches with open doors and dim interiors, offering this kind of reward, were rarer still. George had found the church at the bottom of Serena’s track on his earlier wanderings. The door had been shut.
He compromised. The countryside was not as quiet as the grave; there was a motorway at the bottom of the valley, things moving in the undergrowth, the panting of the dog and the rasp of his breath in his own ears, eugh, eugh, as he marched uphill with his arms swinging so as not to break step and slow down into a stroll, which did nothing for his muscle tone at all. Sometimes the glory of the day was such he accelerated into a run, but he ran without grace and it was better to march. Enjoy the semi-silence, knowing that this contentment was the plateau from which he could be propelled, once in a while, into a thirty-second moment of being happy. He coughed. His chest hurt.
George kept his own timetable. Which they, meaning the rest of the hostel, knew about vaguely in the restless fashion of a place where people talked and shouted and screamed and whispered and conspired all the time, as if making up for the noise in the outside world from which they were alienated. We are not wicked men, he had once told Derek, simply lost.
He stepped inside the kitchen, awkwardly aware that he did so at more or less the same time every day, although refusing to admit it, his face glowing with perspiration. Today, silence had been evasive. Too many other people out walking with a cacophony of dogs and greetings. Serena welcomed him when he collected Petal by screaming at him about fireworks and where had he been, he should have been there. George had felt supplanted. Four p.m., as usual, and he hated his own predictability, his readiness to tend the fires, mop the quarry-tiled floor if it were not already done, sit and chatter to Serena if Isabel was not around. Which she was. Sorting out the top cupboards in the kitchen – the ones that almost met the high ceiling and could not be reached without standing on a chair – reorganizing, cleaning, what she did every day to make her useless improvements, irritating and pointless. Looking at her stretched on tiptoe, George fel
t a pang of envy which was oddly like desire. She had no bum on her: the black-clad legs went on for ever and he realized for the first time why men would find this almost childlike womanhood compelling. He told himself he was admiring the strength of those legs and the way she could twist and bend while his own solid trunk could never manage such a variety of movement. He had endurance: his body could move mountains, while hers could twist like a snake.
‘George, can you grab these before I drop them?’
She could turn right round on herself, so her feet pointed one way and her head another, handing down to him a red vase and an old condiment set covered in dust, the sort of thing cupboards tended to contain. Items too good to discard but without current use, hidden from view and ready to be retrieved in a spring clean, exclaimed over and finally put back into obscurity. A little like some of the items Serena had given him and he had sold. Derek had guided his hand and knew about those things. George refused to think about that.
‘Thanks.’
The kitchen table was half covered with similar detritus. Isabel jumped lightly off the chair and brushed her hands down her legs. George decided he quite liked women to look like this, slightly dirty and dishevelled and doing something useful: dressed in their best was another matter. His own determined reaction against liking Isabel was becoming definitely rearguard, until she opened her mouth.
‘Some men who said they were friends of yours called on Ma this morning. Or so she says. Do you know who they were?’
His heart plummeted like a stone into water, ripples of ice-cold alarm extending to the fingertips that clutched the vase and then put it down with exaggerated care. He turned his back on her question, unable for once to sustain a split-second silence, moving away and turning on both taps at the sink to wash his hands aggressively.
‘Oh, I don’t think so, Miss.’
The sound of Serena’s radio came from somewhere, echoing. George looked into the garden, longing for interruption.
‘Well, that’s what she said they said. Where do you live, George?’
‘In town,’ he babbled. ‘Got a bedsit. Used to look after my mother, see? Used to work at the factory, got laid off. Don’t know many people, don’t want to. I like my own company, see?’
‘Have you got a phone number there, George? Just in case?’
‘No, I haven’t. Just in case of what?’
‘In case your friends come back.’
‘They weren’t friends of mine, I told you.’
There was not a word of a lie in that. She was looking at him curiously, debating how far to push. Serena could not live without George. They needed George. She could not afford to irritate him.
‘I saw them on the track. Three men in a white van,’ she added conversationally. ‘Very dirty. I could have written my name on it.’
George laughed. It came out like a yelp. The dog nuzzled his hip and he wondered if she had bothered to bark at the strangers. Probably not.
‘I certainly don’t know anyone with a dirty van,’ he stated more clearly. ‘I wonder what they wanted?’
‘They were lost.’
‘Oh. Well, you can’t leave her alone for long, I suppose. She’ll always let people in, you know, always did. Comes from being so friendly. There’s no telling her; I’ve tried that many times I can’t count. Tell them to come back at four, when I’m here, I’ve said to her, but she won’t. She’s cunning, you know.’
He could hardly believe his own words. Here he was, on the brink of criticizing his princess, entering into a kind of conspiracy with Isabel and all because he could not say these men are not friends of mine, but they may well be your enemies and I have led them here. Could not say, look, there’s a simple explanation: I live alongside cons in a hostel for ex-cons, being a con myself, and you would banish me from this place if you had any inkling.
Isabel sighed and smiled. He almost smiled back.
‘Don’t I know she’s cunning? Did she tell you she ate the soap?’
The sound of Serena’s radio, swinging from her hand, moved nearer the kitchen and George knew the meaning of reprieve. He forced back into being all the former detestation for Isabel Burley. Nothing had been quite right since she arrived. He had not let intruders in here, she had. Her letters. Her presence. Her bloody stupid kindness. And all those surplus words.
3.15 in the morning
Here we are again, Serena Burley said to the frayed and frantic patterns on her drawing-room sofa. Wouldn’t I just respect God if only he would concede he was an idiot. Like I am.
She was in love with those firework flames. Things, spitting into the air with all that sound and fury, raining down blessings and hidden messages. She had loved them to pieces, willed them to go on and on delighting her. And she knew that the witching hours grew briefer and less sure, because only an old mad fool would stand here in the dark and cold, craning her neck upwards in the hope that the fires would all start again, or leave a permanent imprint of themselves on the sky. They had blinded her. She wanted them back, missed them and hated them for what they did to her. Reminded her of what it was like to feel transfixed with wonder, taken her eye away from the main chance. Made her want to live. She should have swallowed one of those rockets and have done with it. Eating soap did not work.
Serena hit her shin and recognized the possibility of a bruise. The kitchen was a detestable place and she resented the fact that she seemed destined to spend so much time in here. Mab was the person for kitchens, making jam and other disgusting concoctions. Madame Burley, sometimes known as memsahib, preferred to be a lily of the field: they sowed not, neither did they spin, and they never fucking cooked.
Serena made her words in the stainless-steel draining board, presently filmed with cleaning fluid. I have changed my mind about Isabel, she wrote. She is secretive and devious. Without quite knowing the whys and wherefores of what she does, she has sanitized this place. That’s what she does all day, removing implements like knives and scissors to the nether regions of shelves where I cannot reach.
Serena could not work out if Isabel behaved thus on account of reading all her own messages about wanting to die. She doubted it. The clearest of messages left on windows and tables and paper were cleaned away with daily savagery. Serena stamped her foot. She could not kill herself with a fork; she had not got the strength. She would never die of normal cold. She was far too hardy.
She put her head under the cold tap and found it a nasty experience. The darling daughter lacked insight. She was supposed to give purpose, not take it away. She had the means. Once or twice, the child had flown at her father, flown at Mab and knocked a tooth out. Mab was patient, gloating about what the child had in her. Isabel flies at people and impales herself on them, Serena told the dog. Like a moth with a light.
The draining board was splashed and the words were gone again. Supposing darling Isabel could be made to detest her mother as much as her mother loathed herself? There was always the chance she would indulge in a sort of lethal lashing-out. Then she would have to go, leaving Serena with darling George and a wider range of choices, unless Serena was dead already. This was all too complicated for mere words. Serena decided she preferred the idea of being able to orchestrate her own demise.
There were grazes on her knees from where she had fallen over in worship of the Catherine wheels. Time to go back to bed with a saucer of milk and a nice strong man. Fading away like the wallpaper.
Moving slowly, swearing softly, kissing the unloved things goodbye.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Seven weeks. Home, sweet home and no one watching.
‘Dear Joe,’ Isabel wrote in a letter that would not contain a single exclamation mark, covering a few sheets of paper she would probably never send. The fire spluttered safely behind a guard. Serena liked to sit close in the evening, crowding it, resentfully, otherwise quiet and preoccupied. The television in the corner muttered, creating a kind of absent conversation. A man ran across the screen waving a gun, his m
outh yelling an order.
‘I think this was my vision of home,’ Isabel continued. ‘A fireside in winter and the thought of not having to leave it and go out in the cold. Sitting by the side of someone comfortable. She’s being very good …’ Isabel paused. Joe would not want to know this. His notion of home would be warm bed, food, and bugger the fires. Never mind what he might want to know: she was uncomfortably aware that he would have no curiosity about her life at all. She wrote to put things into words, making a letter out of the words was merely an excuse for writing them and it seemed timely to write. To make something of the time.
‘We are strange here, Joe, and yes, sometimes comfortable, but not often. I can hear people asking, what do they do all day, the way I used to wonder what mothers did when their babies slept all the time. They don’t, Joe, not old babies either, and you can’t have conversations with them or expect reasonable conduct … You can’t even tell them about the dangers they face. (I wish she was not so secretive about the post, hiding the bills.) And the difference with an old baby is that you can’t shout or slap, either. I learned the basic rules about don’t run in the road from my Aunty Mab, because I was afraid of her. I can’t make my mother afraid; I should hate it. And I wasn’t ever afraid of her; it was more complicated than that. I was so proud of her. She made everyone else’s mother look so drab and fat while she was exotic, did exotic things, lived in exotic places, married an exotic kind of man … which may be why I’m almost content to hole up with her like this, because I don’t quite like the idea of anyone else seeing her in a state which is neither proud nor anything like the way she was. Does that make sense?’
Serena coughed loudly, a stagey kind of cough, not exactly a plea for attention, but a preliminary. Isabel had the vision, coming from nowhere, of Mother removing the fireguard and sitting on the coal, squatting on the flames without any sensation of pleasure or pain. Serena’s glasses remained dirty, despite a daily wash. She preferred them that way.
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