Disordered Minds

by Minette Walters

  "It's only two hours by train," said Jonathan mildly. "I did the trip this morning. It wasn't that difficult."

  He was rewarded with a suspicious glare. "You making fun of me?"

  "No."

  "You'd better not be. I fought in the war so the likes of you could make something of yourselves. I got medals for it."

  Jonathan took a thoughtful puff of his cigarette. The sensible thing would be to move to one of the tables, but he was damned if he'd give the old brute the satisfaction. He loathed senility with a passion. It was rude, it was self-absorbed and it contributed nothing to man's advancement. Rather the opposite, in fact. It was a destructive force, both in families and in society, because of the insatiable demands it made on the next generation.

  The finger started jabbing again. "You listening to me?"

  Jonathan took a deep breath through his nose before whipping up his hand and grasping the frail wrist. "You don't want to do this," he said, lowering his hand to the counter. "I'm cold, I'm wet, I'm tired and I am not in the best of moods." He relaxed his grip. "I sympathize with your housing problems but they are not my responsibil-ity. I suggest you take them up with your MP, although he'll probably tell you to be grateful to taxpayers like me if you've been living on benefit all your life."

  "Don't you lecture me," the old man snapped. "I got rights. More'n you'll ever have. I'm a Christian, I am, and it's a Christian country ... or would be if we didn't keep opening our doors to heathens."

  "This man bothering you?" asked a burly, dark-haired man, appearing through the saloon door.

  Jonathan shook his head.

  "I wasn't talking to you, mate. I was talking to my regular. I don't tolerate assaults on old guys. Certainly not by jumped-up wogs in fancy dress."

  It was like a punch to the midriff. Jonathan hadn't been called a wog for years.

  "That's a bit strong," said the old man. "He'll have you in court if you're not careful, Roy."

  "What did he have hold of your hand for? Was he hurting you?"

  "No," Jim admitted fairly. "Didn't like me poking him."

  "Then I apologize. No insult intended," Roy said, raising a trap in the counter and moving behind the bar. "Should have called you a black." He stood with his arms crossed, eyes narrowed aggressively, as if pulling a pint for this customer was the last thing he wanted to do. "What can I get you?"

  "Nothing." Jonathan squashed his cigarette into the ashtray with a shaking hand and reached for his raincoat. "I'd rather take my chances in town." He took a card from his pocket and flicked it onto the bar. "If George Gardener comes in, tell him he can reach me on that mobile number. I'll give him the time it takes me to eat lunch, then I'll leave."

  The landlord's expression changed. "Christ! Are you Jonathan Hughes? Listen, mate, I'm sorry. You should have said."

  "What?"

  "Who you were, for Christ's sake. I've been expecting a white bloke. Does George know you're a darkie?"

  Jonathan took another calming breath. "Don't worry about it," he said, shrugging into the sodden coat and lifting his briefcase. "I'll chalk it down to experience." He retrieved his card and tucked it into his pocket. "On reflection, you can tell your friend I've changed my mind about meeting him. I don't like the company he keeps." He headed for the exit.

  The landlord called after him, "Hang on, mate..." But his words were lost in the wind as Jonathan flung open the door.

  After two hundred yards his furious pace slackened as a sense of proportion returned. He told himself to follow his own advice and chalk it down to experience. It wasn't the first time it had happened and it wouldn't be the last. His passport was scrutinized by zealous immigration officers every time he entered the country. He'd learned to bite his tongue, particularly since the events of 9/11, but it still maddened him. As a child his brain had churned with hatred every time he was slighted-ignorant racists ... low-grade trash ... foul-mouthed illiterates-but he had never said the words out loud.

  If Andrew was to be believed, he should have done it. Holding back anger during adolescence had led to repression.

  "You never stood up to your bullies, pal. You'll argue a point to death in an article or a letter, but you won't do it face to face. Christ knows why. You're aggressive enough ... on paper, anyway."

  "I confront my colleagues and students every day."

  "Where it's safe. It's not as if your students are ever going to hit you. You're two different people, Jon. A Rottweiler inside your department, an obedient whippet outside."

  "They're dogs."

  "Don't split hairs. You'll write damning critiques of your colleagues-it's made you a hero with your students-but you shy away from confrontation on the street. You spend a fortune on flashy suits to get yourself noticed, then hunch your shoulders and wear old men's glasses in case you are. You go to the opera, but you always go alone because you think an invitation might commit you to a relationship. It's a pity you didn't deck a skinhead when you were fifteen. You've been suppressing your feelings for so long you don't have any anymore."

  "What makes you think it was whites who were the only problem? The Jamaicans and the Chinese were just as bad, and they ran in bigger gangs." Jonathan's face hardened at some distant memory. "They were illiterate and stupid, and none of them could speak English well enough to be understood." He gave a cynical shrug. "You try being half Iranian, half Libyan in that kind of environment ... with a dark skin, Caucasian features and an English name that no one believes you're entitled to. Trust me, you keep your head down and work like crazy to get yourself out of it. The last thing you do is take a swing at anyone."

  "For an anthropologist, you have a great dislike of people, Jon."

  "It has nothing to do with anthropology. Abstract science doesn't generate hate."

  "Then what does?"

  War, thought Jonathan. His anger and aggression had increased by leaps and bounds since his passport had started being questioned. At the back of his mind was a constant fear that if he lost it, he would lose everything. As always, he patted his breast pocket to reassure himself it was there. The gesture was so automatic it had become a nervous tic.

  A car drew up to the pavement beside him. It was an ancient Mini Cooper with its backseat piled high with books and files. "Excuse me ... excuse me!" a woman called in a shrill voice as she wound down her window. "Are you Jonathan Hughes?" The voice rose to hideous vowel-strangled stridency. "Excuse me ... excuse me!"

  Jonathan ignored her.

  He heard the gears crunch as she set off in pursuit on the wrong side of the road. "Please stop!" she shouted, pulling round a parked car to draw ahead of him. "Oh, help!" Her wail reached him as a van appeared out of the sleet in front of her and she slammed on her brakes.Jonathan screwed up his eyes in pained disbelief and waited for the inevitable to happen. She was lucky. The reactions of the van driver were as quick as hers and he stopped his vehicle a yard from her bumper. His views on women drivers, mouthed through his windshield with his finger pointing skywards, were inaudible but intelligible, and none of it was complimentary. In particular, he didn't like fat women drivers. With a shake of his fist, he reversed up and pulled away.

  Jonathan bent down to look through the window. "You'd better pull over before anyone else comes," he said. "I'll wait."

  She was red-faced and shaking, but she had the presence of mind to do as he said. "God, that was stupid," she said, opening her door and climbing out. "I am so, so sorry. What must you be thinking?" She was zipped into a padded red coat with Wellingtons on her feet and a lime green woolen hat clamped to her head like a Roman helmet, none of which did anything for her figure or her complexion. She looked like a squat garden gnome and Jonathan wondered if she ever bothered to consult a mirror. He put her age at about sixty.

  "What do you want?" he asked.

  "I'm George Gardener." She offered an apologetic hand which he shook reluctantly. "I can't tell you how embarrassed I am about this. I could murder Roy and Jim for being so cra
ss. I'm not going to make excuses for Jim-he's rude to everybody-but I'm afraid Roy thought you were a crack-cocaine dealer." She pulled a wry face. "The police keep warning us about London-based gangs moving in and he thought you were one of them."

  "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

  The color deepened in her roughened cheeks. "I'm just trying to explain why he said what he did."

  "I thought crack-cocaine dealers were Jamaican Yardies. Do I look like a Jamaican?"

  "No, but ... well, you have a very English name and you don't look like an Englishman either," she said in a rush.

  Jonathan was unimpressed. "And you have a very male name, Mrs. Gardener, but I didn't insult women because I was expecting to meet a man." His mouth twisted cynically. "Does your friend assume all white men who enter his pub are drug dealers?"

  She hesitated, considering the wisdom of answering. "As long as you don't mind my quoting him, then yes, he would ... if they were flash bastards in smart suits ... and the police had told him the gangs were white. People like that don't go into his pub." She wrung her hands. "Please don't be offended. Roy wasn't being racist, he was just trying to explain why he hadn't recognized you. He works very hard to keep drugs out of that pub, which is why most of his customers are elderly and he doesn't make any money. It's not a trendy place. The young wouldn't be seen dead in it."

  Jonathan could well believe that. He wouldn't frequent the Crown and Feathers if he were paid. But he wondered at her naivety and was tempted to repeat the conversation from his point of view. There was no question in his mind that Roy was as racist as they came, but there was little point arguing about it. "All right," he said with a curt nod. "I am not offended."

  "Then you'll come back?" she asked eagerly.

  "No. I'm freezing to death and I'm not a beer and sandwiches man, Mrs. Gardener. I'll find somewhere with a more substantial menu."

  She sighed. "It's Miss actually, but I can't stand being called Ms. I'd rather you called me George."

  Why wasn't he surprised? No man in his right mind would want this earnest little bumpkin with her terrible fashion sense and bulky body.

  "Roy made a hotpot specially," she told him. "He's a good chef-truly-and he's given us one of the private rooms. There's a fire going. The only reason I chose the Crown and Feathers was because Roy knew Howard Stamp." She placed a small, pleading hand on his arm. "It all went wrong because my car wouldn't start. It's the cold. I should have put newspaper under the hood last night, but I wasn't expecting a freeze. You wait: statistics say that at least two of my constituents will have broken a hip by this evening and fifty percent of the rest will be shivering in blankets to avoid upping their heating bills. Those are the pensioners like Jim."

  Jonathan might have said that Bournemouth was holding fewer and fewer attractions for him, but he hesitated when she mentioned Howard Stamp, and she saw the interest in his face.

  "Oh, brilliant!" she said, clapping her hands like a born-again Christian. "Hop in and I'll drive."

  He almost abandoned it there and then. "I'd rather walk, thank you."

  "Oh, come on," she said, shepherding him round the hood. "I need Roy to charge the battery for me, so there's no point leaving the car here. You don't want to pay any attention to what that van driver said. My eyesight's fine and I've had a license for years. Also, I don't usually drive on the wrong side of the road."

  She didn't seem to understand "no" and, with resignation, he folded his tall frame into the cramped passenger seat. She was sorry she couldn't adjust the seat, but the Mini doubled as a filing cabinet and there wasn't enough room. Jonathan's knees were almost touching his chin and he smiled rather sourly. The only thing he was grateful for was that none of his students could see him. Slumming it wasn't Dr. Hughes's style at all. George chattered like a little bird back to the pub, parked in a courtyard at the back, then solicitously helped him unfurl in order to march him upstairs to the private room where he was forced to accept the landlord's apologies.

  It didn't go as well as she'd hoped. Roy Trent wasn't the type to eat humble pie, and Jonathan, who struggled with his own racism in a way that whites would never understand, was immediately reoffended to be called black. Despite his dark skin, he never thought of himself as black, only as an Arab. His irritation increased as George urged him forward, butting against his back with a large plastic carrier bag that she'd retrieved from the back of her car. She looked like a tramp, the landlord-the chef-looked as if he hadn't washed his hands in weeks, and Jonathan's fastidious nature recoiled at the whole idea of breaking bread with them.

  "I could probably take the racism ... I don't agree with it, but I suppose I understand the history. It's the snobbery I hate. You have such an inflated opinion of your intelligence, Jon. You think it puts you above everybody else ... but clever people do not set out to patronize everyone they meet..."

  *4*

  Inside, the two men eyed each other like a couple of silverback gorillas preparing to fight over a ripe female. Roy Trent, at a disadvantage because he was on his knees trying to bring the fire to life, or because he genuinely cared for the fat little gnome behind Jonathan, capitulated first. "Listen, mate, I'm sorry," he said, shoveling coal into the grate. "I saw this big black geezer gripping old Jim's hand and giving him the evil eye, and I thought, shit, he's dressed up like a dog's dinner and he's talking like Laurence bloody Olivier. I mean, it's not normal, is it? We all know Jim's a miserable old sod, but we tend to switch off and let him get on with it. It's George's fault really. All she told me was that an author was coming-some fellow who'd written about poor old Howard-so I was expecting a puny little critter in an anorak. I mean, Howard's hardly front-page news, is he?" He flicked Jonathan an assessing gaze. "The real trouble is, you don't have a foreign name. I mean, Jonathan Hughes-what could be more English than that? Now, if you'd been called Mohammed or Ali, there wouldn't have been a problem." He stood up, wiping his coal-blackened hands on his trousers. "Apology accepted?" he asked, proffering his right.

  Jonathan, well aware that he'd been purposely maligned, grasped the hand firmly in his and bore down heavily on the man's metacarpal bones. "As long as you accept mine."

  There was a flicker of irritation in Roy's eyes but he answered pleasantly enough. "OK. What do you want to apologize for?"

  "Making wrong-headed judgments about whites," said Jonathan. "It's a bad habit of mine. You all look the same to me."

  "Go on, I can take it. What's the punchline?"

  "Germans are well educated, the French are well dressed, the Irish have talent and Americans are polite." He shrugged. "As the British are none of these things, I invariably make mistakes in my dealings with them." He removed his raincoat and hung it on a hook beside the door before smoothing his jacket and hoping the shiny patches on the elbows wouldn't be noticed. "I apologize for the suit. I wore it as a courtesy to the person I was meeting-" he felt George stir uncomfortably behind him-"but I should have realized how inappropriate it would be. Of course, if your pub had been called the Pig and Wallow, there wouldn't have been a problem-I'd have had an idea what to expect-but the Crown and Feathers suggested a classier establishment."

  There was a long pause while Roy thoughtfully massaged his fist. "Just for the record, so you don't get it wrong another time, you can't tell a pub by its name, mate. The Pig and Wallow could be the best inn you'll ever come across."

  Jonathan smiled slightly. "Thank you for enlightening me," he murmured. "Being black and foreign does make the vagaries of English naming traditions very difficult to understand."

  Roy jutted his chin aggressively. "You left out our good qualities. We don't take life as seriously as the Germans ... we don't bellyache like the French ... we don't emigrate at the drop of a hat like the Irish ... and we don't worship money like the Americans." He tugged his old jumper over his beer gut. "I'll concede the bad dressing, though. So what nationality are you?"

  "As British as you, Mr. Trent."

 
"Except I'm English."

  The room was a small one with a table laid for two and a couple of leather armchairs on either side of the fire. Jonathan motioned to one of the chairs, inviting George to sit down. "May I take your coat?"

  She clamped her arms over her chest. "No, I'm fine."

  He wondered what she was wearing underneath. Pajamas? It wouldn't surprise him. Nothing would surprise him today. "Do you mind if I sit down?"

  "Please."

  He crossed one elegant leg over the other and put on his spectacles. "If you're asking what my racial roots are, Mr. Trent, then my father's family is Iranian and my mother's family is north African. I have an English name courtesy of my paternal great-grandfather, who was called Robert Hughes, and the reason I'm British is because I was born here and hold a U.K. passport. I attended a London comprehensive school, won a place at Oxford and am now a research fellow in European anthropology at the University of London. I speak English, French and Farsi fluently and can get by in German and Spanish." He steepled his hands under his chin. "So what are your racial roots? I'd say there's a lot of Welsh in you."

  "None at all," said the burly man suspiciously. "My parents are both Dorset folk."

  "Interesting. Yet your Celtic genes are so strong."

  "How do you make that out?"

  "Body shape, stature, eye color, facial type. A true Englishman would have Anglo-Saxon characteristics. He'd be taller and fairer, with blue or gray eyes and a finer bone structure. You have strong Celtic features-wiry dark hair and brown eyes-and your body shape is endomorphic. It's why the Norsemen called the Welsh trolls, because they were short, dark, hairy men with big bellies." He glanced at George as she made small tut-tutting noises. "I'd say you're at least seventy-five percent Welsh, Mr. Trent."

  That's rubbish," said the other man crossly. "You can't tell an Englishman just by looking at him. I'm fat because I eat too much. It doesn't make me bloody Welsh."

  Jonathan touched his hands to his forehead in obeisance. "I do apologize. I hadn't realized being Welsh was such a problem for you. It's another area of the English psyche that I've never understood. I thought it was the Scots and Irish you didn't like."