by Tim Orchard
Carter cursed. “Okay! Forget it! But I’m telling you, this island ain’t right. It just ain’t right.”
He pulled at the blankets until he’d recaptured enough to cover himself and scrunched down in the bed. As he lay there he asked himself what a man of God was doing, going out into the night when there was nothing to go out into the night for. The more he thought about it, the more relaxed he became. Seeing Julian Crabbe scuttling away was like confirmation that his bales were out there somewhere, and that, to Carter, was almost like getting his money back, and the thought of money comforted him, always had. And so, before long, he too was snoring gently.
12
Head down but eyes everywhere, Julian Crabbe came up the garden path and, when he reached the gate, gave a nifty look right and left along the village street. It was empty. It was always empty. Beyond the sanctuary of the garden, he made a nervous stuttering run to cover the bare fifty yards to the post office and skittered down the side of the building. It was a journey Julian made several times a week, but still, he couldn’t help looking over his shoulder, just in case. All clear, and so, with great care, he gently opened the unlocked back door.
In his natural innocence, Julian imagined their trysts were completely secret from the rest of the island’s inhabitants, and that was perfectly true, for less than a quarter of them. The deaf, the blind, and the plain stupid saw nothing—never had, never would—and it wasn’t their fault, blah, blah, but anyway, both these people were consenting adults. Man and woman fuck. Big deal! It’s hardly tabloid headlines, and anyway, it was hard to keep a man of God on Stickle. Even the deaf, the blind, and the plain stupid understood that much, and understanding leads to acceptance. A-fucking-men!
The back door opened into a little lobby with a coat rack against the wall and the stairs to the right. Another door, heavily locked and bolted, went through to the shop. Julian carefully removed his shoes and began, silently, to ascend the stairs, ears straining. When he could hear Penelope’s mother’s rhythmic snore from the opposite end of the corridor, Julian opened Postmistress P’s bedroom door.
Postmistress P was propped up in bed. The reading lamp was on and she had a copy of Henry Miller’s Nexus in her hand. When she saw Julian’s head in the crack of the door, like a tortoise poking its head uncertainly from its shell, she laid the book aside, removed her glasses, and waved him into the room.
A Liberty paisley silk scarf lay on the bedside table, and she hung it over the lamp so the light became soft and defused. The Penelope of the night was not the postmistress of the day. As Julian Crabbe came into the room, she threw back the quilt to reveal herself.
She took his breath away, always. Resplendent, this night, in a gooseberry-green split-crotch teddy coupled with fishnet stockings and a velvet bow tie. Her auburn hair was free of its plaits and flowed crinkly and light over her shoulders and breasts. The vicar wondered, briefly, as he ripped off his clothes, how he’d got so lucky.
Naked, he crawled toward her from the foot of the bed as Penelope lifted her legs and rested them on his shoulders. Julian kissed her slim ankles, her calves, her lovely soft thighs, and gently began to work his tongue into the split in the teddy…
Later, as they lay in a postcoital huddle, they discussed the two visitors. Julian Crabbe, still starry-eyed from the fifty-quid win, had noticed almost nothing about the men, only that they weren’t very good at cards. He said, “They seem pleasant enough, but I can’t imagine why they are here. It’s a bit like they took a wrong turn and found themselves stranded. Ha, bit of a shock, I think.”
Rubbing a hand gently over her lover’s stomach, Penelope said, “The big one seems quite nice but the other one, Carter, I think he may have mental health problems. His eyes stick out and he can’t stand still.” She paused, not able to quite articulate the mixed feelings she had about Carter and Simp. With a sigh and a tug at Julian’s pubic hair, she said, “They look a bit like criminals from the TV. Loan sharks or thugs or something like that. I met people like that when I lived in London. Usually they’re not very nice.”
Julian had come to the conclusion that Penelope’s past was on a need-to-know basis. Mostly he didn’t need to know, only to enjoy. God was good. He said, “One doesn’t like to judge.”
That gave Penelope a laugh. She jerked hard at his pubes. “You Christians! It’s way too easy to say you don’t want to judge, but you Christians are the worst! Well, along with every other organized religion. That’s all you do, judge. You judge the individual and the masses. You judge, but I judge too, everybody judges. We do it automatically, instinctively. We judge everyone, against ourselves and the situation. It’s natural.” Then she started kissing him again and suddenly a lot of what she’d said seemed to make sense.
13
When D.C. was fifty feet away, Paloney stepped from the lea of a hedge onto the road. It wasn’t like he hadn’t done the whole thing before. He turned on the flashlight and swung the beam from side to side. Hardly surprised, D.C. pulled up beside the policeman and said, amiably, “All right, Phil?” Paloney offered his hand. D.C. ignored it, looked him straight in the eye, and said, ironically, “Fuck me, you almost frightened me to death.”
PC Phil Paloney knew all of D.C.’s runnings: when he went up to the Smoke to bring back the dope he sold and most of his other comings and goings too. It was his job and he liked to keep his eyes open, and on an island as small as Stickle it wasn’t hard. Being on Stickle was more like a type of community policing. All the time he’d been on the island, he hadn’t made a single arrest. What he’d tried to do was make friends instead of enemies. So far it had seemed to work and he liked it. He said, casually, “Well, I thought you’d be coming this way.”
D.C. spat a gob of yellow phlegm between Paloney’s splayed feet and laughed. “Fuck off. Seeing as I only live in the next fucking field and there ain’t exactly a lot of roads on the island, I fucking well would come this way, wouldn’t I? Why don’t you just wait for me up by the trailer?” D.C. shook his head. “All this palaver every time you want to visit. Leave me out! Hiding in the fucking bushes, like, who gives a fuck?”
Paloney pulled his bike from the hedge. “Well, some people do, and you wouldn’t want me to get the sack, would you? You don’t know who you’d get next.”
With a giggle, D.C. shrugged. “Whatever!”
At the five-bar gate into the field, D.C. dismounted and, unhooking it, waved the policeman through. They pushed their cycles over to the trailer, and as D.C. opened the door, Paloney reached inside his tunic and pulled out half a bottle of vodka. “I brought this along.”
With a flourish, D.C. said, “Enter, friend!”
When they were settled at the table, D.C. opened the door to the woodburning stove, tossed a couple of faggots on top of the dying embers, and slammed the cover shut. It wasn’t a cold night and they didn’t need the heat, but the red glow through the tiny glass windows was kind of comforting.
They sat opposite each other at the little fold-down Formica table, a shot glass of vodka each. Paloney took a lungful of smoke and passed the joint back to D.C. They were both smiling. D.C. said, “I know living on this fucking island restricts your social life somewhat, but I never imagined I’d end up liking a copper! How fucking weird is that?”
Paloney thought about the two wasted years in London with the metropolitan police. Colleagues had told him he was too honest. Mostly it had seemed to him he couldn’t do right and didn’t want to do wrong, and eventually he’d been transferred out of the way, to Stickle. He said, “What? I know I may be a bit of a failure as a policeman, but at least I haven’t lost my humanity, and anyway, a man doesn’t become another species because he puts on a uniform. That is what people call choice. It’s down to the individual, not the clothes he wears.”
Holding up his glass, D.C. said, “Philosophical fucker, ain’t you?”
They clinked glasses and sat in silence.
The young policeman knew D.C. went up to London
every month or so to bring back enough cannabis to supply the islands’ heads. No one thought of it as dealing, not even Paloney. It was more a social service than an outright moneymaking venture.
After a time, Paloney said, “Anyway, what do you think?”
It had been a long day. Quite a few things had happened, and while D.C. could have taken a punt, he figured he may as well make Paloney work just a little bit. Innocently, D.C. queried, “About what?”
Paloney eyeballed him, head cocked. “You know.”
“Do I?”
Paloney closed one eye and peered at D.C. “Sure you do, but what are we going to do about it?”
Speaking through a cloud of escaping smoke, D.C. said, “What? Come on, spit it out. It’s like twenty questions without the fucking questions! Even you must see the bizarrity of that! How am I meant to be able to guess what you want?”
Paloney flapped a hand. “Come on, bizarrity ain’t even a word.”
D.C. countered with a pointy finger. “So what? English is a live language—words get added to the Oxford Dictionary every few years. Where do they come from? Someone made them up, that’s where they come from, and they end up in common usage and that’s how they get in the dictionary. What do you want, that we should be like the French and try to weed out every new or foreign word?” He moved his hands through the air like he was opening books and ripping out pages. “Not to be too harsh, but French is practically a dead language. Look, who really speaks French but the French? English takes in everything. We adapt and bastardize, and English is spoken everywhere in the world because of it. That’s obvious, but anyway, that’s not the point.” He stopped talking for a moment, and even though he knew what Paloney was on about, he held his hands out just like little Oliver asking for more. “Just tell me straight, what the fuck are you on about?”
Paloney laughed. D.C. often made him laugh, when he wasn’t annoying him. “I may be a plonker, D.C., but I ain’t stupid. Nice grass by the way, very fresh.”
Paloney was still smiling, but both men knew things were in the open now. With a cough, D.C. got up from the table and, taking the joint with him, paced the length of the trailer, back and forth, before coming back to Paloney. “How did you know?”
The policeman told him, “Saw you on the beach after the storm. I wasn’t sure, but later, when I saw those two down from London, well!”
D.C. nodded. “Oh, those two, yeh, I saw them all right. I hear they’re staying with the vicar.”
Serious now, Paloney said, “Look, there are things I can ignore, okay, but we can’t have people like that on the island. This island can’t become a staging post for drugs. Just tell me the truth, do you know them?”
“Fuck me, what do you take me for?!” Like a man whose reputation was pristine, D.C. eyed Paloney with disgust and flicked the joint straight at him. “You cunt. Of course I don’t know who they are, but it don’t take a genius to see what they are.”
The joint hit Paloney on the chest and fell on the table. The policeman dusted himself down and picked it up. “Watch the uniform.”
They poured out two more shots and rolled another joint. They left things on a shelf to be dealt with later and talked about the books they were reading. Paloney was reading The Demon by Hubert Selby Jr. and D.C. was reading Thackeray’s Vanity Fair for the third time. D.C. talked about a bloke he’d met one time who couldn’t understand why anyone would read a book more than once. But as he pointed out, what can you say to someone who doesn’t understand everything is different all the time and that is what makes a book so brilliant? Words slide into your brain and mind, and the words’ effect changes, depending on your emotions. A passage, a sentence, a word even, can be meaningless one month, but read a month later can devastate. D.C. said, “See, I don’t believe we make many rational decisions. I reckon most decisions are emotional; we just dress them up in a rational coat and hat. But anyway, in the end, who gives a fuck? Because it’s all transient. But you better talk to Petal about that thing. I think it’s already out of my hands.”
Paloney said, “I’m trying to talk to you.”
D.C. shrugged. “Petal’s got ideas. Look, what came ashore could be worth like two million or something, and Petal wants to do something, like change things, you know, for the island, for the community. Fuck me, if it was up to me I’d piss off, sell the lot, and never be seen again.”
With a shake of his head, Paloney laughed and held up his glass. “You’re so full of shit.”
D.C. grinned and they clinked glasses, knocked back their vodka, poured more. D.C. said, “So, better speak to Petal.”
After a bit more chat, they agreed to speak to Petal together.
Later, riding home in the quiet, Paloney could hear the rhythmic click of the pedals and the swooshing crunch of tires against the asphalt. Somewhere off to his left, beyond the hedgerow, the mesmeric hoot from a hunting owl came and went. On the verge, under an overhanging tree, a trio of baby rabbits sat on their haunches undisturbed and watched him pass like spectators at a race.
There was a sweetness in the air and Paloney drank it down. Blossomy smells—sukebind, fuchsia, and such—and all mixed up with a trace of ripening soft fruit. The air filled his lungs, rushed into his bloodstream, and bubbled in his brain, like the best drugs do. He thought of Albert Hofmann on his bike, and he looked up.
Night on Stickle, especially in the summer, was pure and peaceful, as good as a world new minted, and overhead, rippling chunks of buttery moon seemed to float independently from one another, segmented by bands of thin, deep purple clouds. Out in the universe, way beyond the moon, planets burned and froze, exploded, imploded, and stars fluttered and winked.
As he entered the village, a young fox, tail resplendent, ambled nonchalantly across the road in front of him and disappeared through a gap in the hedge beside the post office. There was a faint light in a bedroom window. The world was gorgeous, unpredictable, and sublime, and he thought about Postmistress P and the vicar and thought, Good luck to them.
14
When Julian Crabbe knocked on their bedroom door it was nearly 8:30 A.M. Both men were on their backs snoring gently. It was sweet really. Beneath the covers, Carter and Simp were holding hands. At the knock, both sat up with a start, released their grip, and looked dubiously at the other, a little worm of doubt. Carter was out of the bed in an instant, as if someone had passed an electric current through the mattress.
It wasn’t that waking up holding Simp’s hand had angered him, but it wasn’t that it hadn’t either. The fact was that he awoke most mornings ready to shove the rest of the human race aside and take whatever he wanted. It wasn’t that he hated people or the rest of the world; it wasn’t even anything he had a proper name for. Call it energy, desire, whatever, it was the thing that got him up in the mornings. Not this actual morning! Leave it out! Every morning. It had nothing to do with holding hands.
Simp still lay back, comfortable in the bed. The sour taste of the amontillado was still in his mouth and he wished he had a toothbrush. Carter, fully dressed now apart from his suit jacket, was flexing his shoulders in a mirror on the wardrobe door. Carter looked angry, but Simp reasoned his boss mostly looked angry. It didn’t bother him. He looked at the hand that had held Carter’s close up, turned it back to front, looked at the scarred knuckles and the red-blue veins beneath the skin. How on earth had it happened? He said, “What’s the plan?”
As he slipped into his jacket and turned away from the mirror, Carter said, “Most people ain’t got the courage of their convictions—that’s what most people are like, but that ain’t me, do you get me? Something’s wrong here, I can feel it. We are going to find my fucking grass and teach whoever the fuck has it, and anyone else in this piss-poor place—animal, vegetable, or any other dodgy, dog-collared fucker—not to fucking fuck with me.” Simp pulled himself out of bed, stretched, and as he did so, Carter pushed past him and blew air through his teeth. “Don’t fucking hold my hand again, right!”<
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By the time Simp came down the stairs, Carter was already sat at the table and he could hear the vicar rattling the pans out in the kitchen. There was a smug, self-satisfied smile on Carter’s chops. He gestured with his head toward the kitchen. “I figured out where the rev went last night.”
Indifferent to Julian Crabbe’s private life, Simp raised an eyebrow. Until that moment, he’d forgotten about Carter waking him in the night. He pulled a little face, nothing drastic.
Carter continued: “He’s knocking off that postmistress, I’d lay money on it!”
That made Simp laugh out loud. The vicar seemed like an okay guy, but come on! He was a long drink of water and she looked kind of scary. He wondered how they made that work and he thought, for just a moment, of reminding his boss that he’d lost the best part of fifty quid to that long drink of water. Instead he said, “What makes you think that?”
Like there was something nasty running under his nose, Carter raised his top lip and sniffed. He tapped a finger against his temple. “Because I thought about it. I used my brain. That’s why I’m in charge.” He paused and nodded a couple of times as though, after the hand holding, the balance of power between them had been restored. He went on. “When we went in that post office yesterday, those two flew apart like…” He searched his brain for things that flew apart. Nothing. “Anyway, where else would he be going at that time of night? It’s obvious, if you bother to think about it.” Carter thought some more and said, “Like magnets. They flew apart like opposing magnets or atoms.” Simp smiled like he was interested.
At that moment, Julian Crabbe backed into the room and Carter put his finger to his lips. There were fried egg sandwiches and a pot of tea on a tray. As he sat down, Julian dispensed big smiles at them both and rubbed his hands together. “Sorry to have to wake you so early, chaps, but as I explained last night, it’s the pensioners’ coffee morning and I have to get to the church.” He looked at the watch on his wrist and gave a little shake of his head. “Time tramps on.” He pointed to the egg sandwiches. “Poor fare, I’m afraid, but this is a poor parish.”