Stickle Island

by Tim Orchard

  After breakfast Simp was gobsmacked and apprehensive, as Carter followed Julian into the kitchen, insisting, “Helping with the washing up is the least I can do.” The kitchen was basic and reminded Carter of the scullery in the terraced two-up two-down he’d grown up in. There was an old stone sink with a wooden draining board, open shelving on the walls, and worn cracked lino on the floor. There wasn’t a washing machine, and the ancient, New World electric cooker looked like it came from the 1930s. Carter had almost forgotten what it was like to be poor, and he didn’t like to be reminded.

  They stood side by side, Julian up to his elbows in suds and Carter like a docile crocodile, taking the cleaned plates and utensils to dry and stack. Julian chattered on, but Carter wasn’t listening. After a few minutes, he threw down the tea cloth, reached out, grabbed the vicar by the throat, and pushed him up against the wall. Carter was at least four inches shorter than Julian, but violence doesn’t have a size. The vicar flapped his arms, and little globules of soapy foam floated about the room.

  Julian scared easily and immediately thought it was about the fifty quid he’d won. He stuttered and choked and wanted to tell Carter that he could have the money back, but he couldn’t get the words out because Carter kept tightening his grip. His breakfast turned a slow somersault in his stomach. He’d been beaten up before and, not born to violence, he didn’t like it. He felt sick.

  Calmly, Carter said, “You could be wondering what someone like me is doing here. Well, like a lot of people, the storm’s disrupted my business, and I lost something and now I want it back.”

  It seemed to Julian that perhaps his feet weren’t touching the floor anymore. He had absolutely no idea what Carter was talking about. He felt like a child, inept, inadequate, and in the grip of a monster. He moved his arms and legs, but it didn’t seem like he owned them anymore. A curdled, eggy sickness was beginning to creep up his esophagus. He tried to plead but Carter wouldn’t let him.

  Carter said, “Don’t bother. Look, I saw where you went last night. You went to see the woman that runs the post office. Now that kind of thing may be all right with me, but I don’t know how it sits with your bishops and their conclaves or whatever, and anyway, I don’t want to be a snitch.” Carter’s smile became a sneer. “I’m not the complaining type.”

  All of Julian’s stomach was up in his throat now. Fear had his guts, and only Carter’s grip stopped a mess pouring from his mouth. Julian was a coward and he knew it. He would never be able to withstand torture. It wasn’t a failing—most people are just built that way and don’t like pain.

  Carter said, “So, tell me now, who on this island is a bit dodgy, you know, likes to smoke a bit of that wacky ’backy? Who do you know who’s a bit like that? Come on, help yourself and help me here. I don’t want to hurt you. It’s all down to circumstance. Come on, tell me.”

  The very idea of bishops triggered in Julian the memory of their last showdown and the way they had looked at him. Their scorn had crushed him. For the bishops, sending Julian Crabbe to Stickle was about as bad as a penance comes in the Church of England. It was like being cast into the wilderness, and it did start that way and that was what it was for the first few months. Now he didn’t want to be sent away again, sent somewhere horrible, somewhere where things he couldn’t deal with were constantly being asked of him. Stickle was home now, and more, he loved Penelope. He wanted to be left alone with his dying congregation; he wanted, if there was a God, to love it in his own way. He wanted to express love through Penelope and through all the little things he did every day, to be near to real life and to love.

  Like a good man of violence, Carter could read almost every skittering emotion on the vicar’s face, knew when to tighten his grip, when to relax it. The need to talk was in Julian’s pleading eyes, and Carter gave it air, just enough. Almost despite himself, with the first taste of vomit in the back of his throat, the vicar choked out, “D.C.”

  It was a word—no, it was less than a word, it was two letters—and Carter retightened his grip on the vicar’s throat, while he tried to understand the meaning and turn it to his advantage. It was the game. D.C. It was a name. He needed more. Time to be nice. With a soft smile, Carter lowered the vicar’s feet to the floor and, releasing his grip, straightened Julian’s dog collar, patted his shoulder, and said, “Now that wasn’t too hard, was it?”

  All restrictions gone, Julian Crabbe’s face lengthened and distorted and, like a silent scream, a mini–tidal wave of puke forced its way past his teeth. It wasn’t exactly slo-mo, but Carter could almost see it coming. He sprang back and managed to dodge the worst but just wasn’t quick enough. A violent splurt of chrome-yellow vomit splashed down the front of his suit jacket.

  For a moment, Carter was stunned. It was like a violation, a finger poked in the ever-open wound of his childhood, but he wasn’t a child anymore in worn-out clothes he didn’t want to wear and getting a bath only once a week. That was long ago, in times he didn’t want to think about. These days he kept himself neat, clean; it was an ethos from his teen years. Clean living in difficult circumstances.

  Carter didn’t like the past. Carter went mad. He couldn’t stop himself. With a scream, he threw the vicar down onto the lino and pinned him with his knees. Carter raised his arms above his head and balled his two fists together. He was going to smash this fucker’s face.

  Simp heard the scream. He got up from the table and went through to the kitchen. He grabbed Carter’s upraised fists in one hand and put his other arm around his boss’s chest and pulled him kicking and cursing off the vicar. For a few moments Simp held him, like a mother holds a child, and crooned, over and over, “Leave it, boss, it’s not worth it.” He gave Carter two of his tablets.

  From his prone position, Julian Crabbe watched the tableau of the two men. He didn’t understand it, but then he didn’t understand anything very much. He figured, if you didn’t know what was going on, it was probably best to keep quiet. He’d read a book once by Franz Kafka, where a man wakes up and he’d been turned into a beetle. He felt like an upturned beetle now, or a crab, in name and perhaps nature. Show me my rock to crawl under, please. And like the chap in the book, he didn’t understand what was happening. He was scared. He didn’t know what to do, so he simply stayed where he was.

  When Carter had calmed down, Simp left him standing like a five-year-old in a corner and went over to help Julian Crabbe back onto his feet. It was cleanup time. There wasn’t much Simp could say. You couldn’t explain Carter to anyone. He said, “I don’t know what happened here. The boss is usually such a gentle man.” Julian began to tell him but Simp held up a hand. He didn’t have the words to explain and he didn’t want to hear. Julian dusted himself down and tried again, but Simp wouldn’t let him. Instead he gripped the top of the vicar’s arm and, taking the wrist with the watch on it in the other hand, turned it, checked the time, and said, “Time’s flying by. Your pensioners will be here in fifteen minutes.”

  Julian looked at Simp goggle-eyed. Who were these people? What had he done, what had he said? D.C. He started to stutter, to try to take it back, but Simp tightened his grip and gently tugged him across the room.

  To Julian, Carter looked like someone on heavy medication, which he was. Eyes like big blue saucers, his two hands held up limply, like a kangaroo’s in a boxing ring. His nose twitched.

  Simp said, “Look at him. Look at how upset he is.”

  No. To Julian he looked mad.

  To Carter, Simp said, “Don’t worry, boss, everything’s all right. The vicar here is a very reasonable man.” Carefully Simp slipped a hand into Carter’s jacket pocket and took out a wallet. “I’m just going to give the rev a few bob for his trouble, all right?”

  Carter seemed to refocus. He looked from Simp to Julian, back to Simp, and nodded slowly.

  The wallet was fat and Simp opened it. There was more money than Julian had seen in a long time. Simp took five twenty-pound notes and spread them in a fan. Julian was we
ak. He took the money and toddled off toward his elderly parishioners and their coffee, even though he didn’t like what had happened. He knew it wasn’t right. He knew he needed moral guidance. He knew he needed to talk to Postmistress P. Nevertheless, he resolved to go first to see the old dears and geezers, to look after them, to smile and give them the buns, scones, tea cakes, tea, and coffee they had supplied. All Julian ever did was act like a friendly waiter, going from person to person, feeding and watering them and listening to what they had to say about their swollen ankles and dicky hearts, their personal gripes and little triumphs. He knew them all and they were his work, his parishioners, and he even liked some them, but most of all, he wanted to lie in the comfort of his lover’s arms.

  Using the washing-up water and the dishcloth, Simp cleaned the puke off Carter’s jacket as best he could. The two men didn’t talk. Simp had been here before and now sometimes it was too much. Often it was too much. These days he looked about at other people, at their lives, and how times had changed, and he wondered if he could ever have another life and what form that life would take. While he scrubbed, Simp watched as Carter paced back and forth across the room. He could see by the way Carter moved that he was trying to give it, to get the attitude back, but to Simp, Carter looked like a subdued version of himself. Smaller wouldn’t be the right word to use, and everybody has triggers. Everybody is sensitive. The past bites everybody on the arse at some time.

  15

  As usual, that morning, the inhabitants of Stickle Island went about their business, which wasn’t much, and they did it under soft blue skies. Stickle in June was all sweet and dandy, smelling of blossom and brine, and green for the eyes everywhere and all the birds singing.

  Early, because of his nature, D.C. went to the beach as usual, but he wasn’t really looking for firewood. Instead he mooched up and down, thinking. Although D.C. was a Petal pushover, he was worried. With around two million quid in contention, nothing was fixed, and people mostly saw pound notes, so there was a chance she would have a job bringing the whole island with her, and not just because of the money. He knew a lot of people—sensible, intelligent people—were against drugs.

  On the rest of the island, all the old-timers were up and ready to rock, early. The ones who could drive ferried the ones who couldn’t, and they all brought their Tupperware containers chock-full of cakes and buns and sandwiches. They set up the Cona coffee machine and the tea urn. Everything was well under control even before the vicar arrived.

  On their farm, the Newmans were about their business too, with cows and sheep and things like that. Later they went to the barn and Si showed his dad the bales of dope. They talked again about the meeting and then there were phone calls too, between Julie and John, and phone calls between Petal and Si, and phone calls between Petal and Dick.

  In the meantime, between dawn and nine A.M., Postmistress P opened shop and was behind the counter, everything she should be. At the dock, kids caught the ferry to school, as kids should. Petal went over to Dymchurch at the same time and stood outside the library, waiting for it to open. By ten A.M., Julian Crabbe made an appearance for his elderly parishioners, rubbing his hands together and giving it his best shot despite everything and happy there was money in his pocket.

  On the Sticks’ farm a half dozen hands arrived and started the cleanup. Some slept in and turned up late, unconcerned. What was all the fuss about anyway? Nothing was happening now, the storm was over already! But they worked hard anyway, mostly for Dick. They re-staked the fruit bushes, picked and boxed everything that was salvageable. They cut away and began to replace the plastic sheeting on the ruined polytunnels. They hoed away at this and that and they were all good hoes. Sure, Henry Stick was about, like an overseer, but they all knew it was Dick who figured things out. He didn’t quibble if they were late and he’d share a joint with them, and, better still, he paid their wages in cash, and if you were on the dole, as most were, cash was a good word. Everybody knew where they stood with cash.

  Carter and Simp came out into this lovely world, and looking about, Carter said, “Whatever happens, we ain’t missing that ferry this afternoon.” Simp breathed deeply and took in the remains of the dew on the grass, the blackbird singing, and the fresh way the air shriveled his headache into nothing. In that morning, at that moment, Simp didn’t care much about what Carter wanted or what there was to lose or gain. Seeing his boss earlier in the kitchen had sort of sickened him. He didn’t mind violence—sometimes he even enjoyed it—but rage, uncontrollable rage, of the sort he’d seen over and over with Carter, he still didn’t understand. The older he got the less he liked it, the less he wanted to deal with Carter’s mental problems. Sometimes, these days, it seemed he was more carer than minder. Anyway, it was one thing dealing with people in the business, but these people, people like the vicar, were civilians. It didn’t feel right. He’d go with Carter and do whatever needed to be done. He wouldn’t like it, but your job’s your job.

  As they got in the car and tootled off, instead of thinking about what they were doing, Simp thought about being young, about when he’d been sent down to that farm because his mum was in the hospital. Happiness is a strange thing. For some, leaving his sick mother to live with strangers should have been heartrending, but, in fact, it had been the best summer of Simp’s life. It was easy. People had liked him and had taken care of him, and although he didn’t understand why, he’d fitted in. By the end of the summer, when his mother was already home convalescing, he didn’t want to go home, and now, as he breathed in the morning air, he knew why. Somehow, suddenly, this Kent countryside felt more like home than South London.

  He rolled down the window because a mild miasma of puke hung around Carter, plonked in the passenger seat. Not nice. It was obvious Carter could smell it too, but he just sat there, nose curling, building back his ego. Not really wanting to talk, Simp stuck a soul compilation into the tape deck. “The Tears of a Clown” came on, then “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”; next was “Me and Mrs. Jones.”

  In his seat, Carter rolled his shoulders, gave Simp a snide look, and sucked air through his teeth. “What a pathetic pair of tossers! Did you ever listen to the lyrics of this?”

  Simp looked out the open window at the passing hedgerow.

  “Listen. They meet every day at the same café. How fucking boring is that? Every day, and ooh, they both know it’s wrong—fuck me, all they do is hold hands and listen to their favorite fucking song and go home! Oh no, right, I forgot, they meet same time, same place, the next fucking day. Exactly what is it they’ve got going on? Fuck all, if you ask me!”

  Simp reached over and ran the tape on to the next song.

  Carter said, “There’s a bloke here called D.C., let’s find him.”

  16

  D.C. wasn’t exactly surprised when the BMW stopped outside the gate to the field. He stopped chopping kindling and faced the two men, machete dangling loose in his hand. As they unhooked the field gate, he pointed the machete at them. “Close that.”

  Carter held up his hands and Simp, watching D.C. the whole time, pushed it shut and dropped the latch. Simp had met many D.C. types during his career, and they could be good, they could be dangerous, but violence was Simp’s living, and although he may get hurt, this guy would be dead. He moved away from Carter’s side and set himself at an angle to D.C.

  As he watched the two men approach, D.C. backed off until he felt the sun-warmed aluminum of the trailer against his shoulder blades and managed to put the woodpile between himself and Carter. The big man was coming forward slowly. Blood was singing through D.C.’s veins, he glanced down at the machete in his hand and wondered what he really was. The way he saw it, there were people who saw everything as a tool and there were people who saw everything as a weapon. He’d tried to alter himself, tried to be different and was still trying. The two men attempted to stare him down, but it didn’t happen. D.C. took a proper grip on the machete, and while waiting to take out the big m
an’s ankles, he thought about his garden and the pig and how much he would miss making his own bread. He didn’t need to kill anybody, just bring them down, but…

  Simp came forward knowing the machete was his. It would come at him and only the moment was win or lose. Everything he’d ever done worked up through his blood and he waited in his mind somewhere else, like D.C. waited.

  Carter was volatile, unpredictable, but he was also smart and had been a criminal all his life. Mostly he knew the time for violence and the time for talk, even if he hated it. So, holding his hands out, palms down, he pushed gently against the air as though testing the firmness of a mattress, and backing off a pace or two, he said, “Let’s talk, you know, have a bit of a chat.”

  Simp was a lump of a man and he made it crowded in the trailer. He perched his arse on the edge of the unlit woodburning stove and was quiet, but he took up space. If he stretched his arms, he could easily punch out all the windows. He listened.

  The first thing D.C. said to Carter was “You’ve got puke down the front of your suit.”

  Simp stifled a laugh as Carter stiffened but managed, unusually, to keep his temper. His pills were working. They talked, but bets were hedged. D.C. made tea and threw a few of last year’s magic mushrooms into the pot, just to soften the edges. Nothing got resolved. Both men knew what was being talked about. They drank tea. Things went around and around. D.C. didn’t own up to knowing where the bales were; instead he told them to look about outside. He said, “If the bales are there you can have them.” He watched through the window as they slowly scouted the perimeter of the field, poked in the ditches, checked out the henhouse, and searched under the trailer. When they returned, D.C. poured more tea.