by Judy Astley
‘Little bugger won’t know what he’s supposed to be doing. Typical.’ Mick flicked through the book, smiling at its contents. ‘Maths, page 48 numbers 1 to 6, leaving out no 5. I bet he doesn’t give it a thought!’ He laughed, ‘Are yours like that? Minds like sieves?’
‘Sometimes. Lucy’s quite good, pretty organized I’d say.’ She was still taking in what was becoming obvious: that Mick must have custody of his children. Presumably it was his ex-wife’s turn to have them.
‘I poured you one anyway, leave it if you don’t want it.’ Mick handed Nina a glass of brandy as she put down the phone. She hoped Emily really had written down the number she’d given her, not just pretended there was a pen conveniently handy. Mick’s hand had brushed against hers as he handed her the drink. ‘Come on through, let’s get more comfortable,’ he suggested, leading the way to a sitting room the colours of toffee and banana. Behind glass doors were the collection of books. ‘Sit there on the sofa beside the lamp and I’ll show you Five Go to Smuggler’s Top,’ he said with a grin. And then he was sitting beside her, very close, close enough for her to smell how clean he was. His arm was round her shoulder, pulling her close so she could see the book. As she was wondering if she would be able to get away with no more than an experimental kiss, just to check out what it was like with someone who wasn’t Joe, Nina’s eyes caught sight of the collection of photos on the desk by the window.
‘Oh. You’ve kept all your wedding photos out,’ she said, more or less involuntarily.
‘What? Oh yes, they’re always there I think.’
‘Didn’t your wife want them? Or did you have loads more as well? Sorry, perhaps I shouldn’t ask, that must come into the forbidden talking-about-the-ex category.’
Mick laughed, ‘No, actually “ex” doesn’t quite apply here. Carol’s in Hampshire at the cottage with the children. She often takes them for weekends, it’s so good for them to be out of London. All that riding and running in the woods.’ Nina looked puzzled. ‘Don’t worry,’ he murmured, stroking her shoulder hard with his thumb, ‘we’re quite safe. She won’t be back till Sunday night.’
Nina’s brain was unravelling what he was saying. ‘You’re not actually divorced, then? Or even separated?’
‘God no! Not likely to be either. Why bother? We have what you might call an arrangement. She asks no questions and I tell no lies. Very modern.’
‘Not really,’ Nina told him. ‘Didn’t that sort of thing go out with the Sixties?’ She stood up and put her drink down on the glass-topped table in front of her. ‘So what were you doing at a Knights Out singles dinner?’ she demanded. ‘Isn’t it against the rules?’
Mick was lying back comfortably, cockily Nina rather thought, arms behind his head and legs stretched out. ‘What rules? It’s a great place to meet people. Believe it or not I’ve got some of my best building contracts from women I’ve met at those events.’ He chuckled. ‘It’s just another way of networking.’ He stretched out an arm and pulled her hand. ‘And you meet the nicest people. Come on, come and sit with me and let’s get back to being cosy. You can’t chill out on me now, not after I’ve bought you that wonderful dinner.’
‘Hang on a sec,’ Nina told him. She went back to the kitchen, retrieved her handbag and took out her purse. ‘Here, sixty-five quid. Probably just about covers my share. Then you can’t complain you haven’t had your money’s worth.’
She scattered notes over his body, noted how satisfactorily astonished he looked, and was out of the door and halfway down the street before she’d even gathered her thoughts. Bloody men, she thought in the taxi, and then laughed to herself. Joe would love it, she could hardly wait to tell him.
Monica had come home in a minicab, ringing the doorbell instead of using her key. Her tactfulness embarrassed Graham and he’d started fidgeting to take Jennifer home soon after. The two women were having a complicated discussion about the best plants for hanging baskets and whether or not a bright multicoloured display was superior to something more subtle. Eventually, just as Graham was putting on his jacket and wondering if he’d have to sit in the car revving the engine before she’d get the hint, Jennifer decided she was ready.
‘That was a lovely evening. We don’t have to end it yet, you know,’ Jennifer said to him as the car pulled up outside her block. She was looking at him with the same nervous seductiveness that had been there that night when he’d first come to her flat. He was tempted, but there was Mother at home, totting up the time he was spending out, working out what he’d have time to get up to. He felt uncomfortable, but he also wanted Jennifer. He wanted to claim her back from Monica, have her tending to just him, him and the needs that were nothing to do with his mother. ‘I’ll tell her I was out watching the owls,’ he said, grinning.
Later, back home and parking in the driveway, he looked up at Monica’s window and saw the light still on. He didn’t want to go in yet and be someone’s son again. He was feeling powerful, heady with the satisfaction of good sex, a long way from the need to sleep. He checked in his pocket for his ancient balaclava and headed for the Common. In the distance, far ahead where the stringy thickets and older beeches were, he could hear a barn owl – a blood-chilling noise, he always thought, like a small child being murdered. He sensed the direction it was travelling, then heard it screech high above as it settled on a branch. Things that fly were calming, made you feel that God put more effort into the winged creatures than he had into man. He’d given them a privilege and grace that earthbound animals didn’t have. His own privilege was to have the gift of enough stealth and silence to be able to get close and watch them.
They would never know he was there.
Chapter Seventeen
There were people on the Common, out from the roadside edge where the blackness was dense and inky. Graham could sense them before he could hear them properly. The bushes were snuffling and stirring with more than just breeze and there would be no low-slung foxes crossing his path tonight. Other times, he’d chanced upon couples with nowhere more comfortable to go, risking spearing their bodies with blades of twig growing through the bracken and taking home great weals of nettle-rash. Once he’d seen two men in leather and vests against a tree and dashed away, embarrassed, before they could think he was looking on purpose.
The hand on his arm startled more than frightened him.
Graham was in a bit of a dream, listening for the birds and thinking about future things, wondering if it was possible that Jennifer and he really could be more than just two people who lived not very far apart and liked each other’s company. Some of Mother’s bridge set had man-friends like that: men to go for theatre outings with and to show off with at the bowls club annual dinner. He wondered what he and Jennifer were called: they were too old to be boy and girlfriend. Perhaps they should be classed as lovers – they surely qualified, though he couldn’t imagine his mother actually using the word to the bridge club. He tried it, out loud, ‘My son’s lover, Jennifer.’ The word gave him a tingle, so sensuous and unfamiliar. The tingle was peaking just as the hand fell heavily on his arm.
‘OK. Come with me please, sir.’ The voice wasn’t expecting there to be any disagreement about this, in spite of the veneer of politeness.
Suddenly there were a lot of them, looming shapes and thick footsteps and torches dazzling into Graham’s face. There were crackling walkie-talkie sounds like on TV, and phrases from The Bill like ‘IT One male’, whatever that was supposed to mean. Graham broke into a nervous laugh, supremely relieved that he was not about to be beaten up but was in a protective circle of police. Something must have happened. He must have been about to walk into a crime.
‘Sorry if I’m in the way, I’ll just go home now if you like, back the way I came,’ he said, eager to be helpful.
A stern face was looking into his. This man was in jeans and a heavy jacket like the council bin-men but there was no mistaking his profession. He was brick-shaped, chunky. His hair was wild and wiry and his face h
ad a bitter sneer. ‘I think not, at this stage, don’t you sir?’ He was too close to Graham’s face. Graham could smell chewing gum on his breath, the same sugar-free type that he liked. Ridiculously, he found himself staring down at the man’s stomach, trying to gauge if it protruded enough to be the reason for sugar avoidance, or if like him he was being careful for his teeth. Graham shivered. He was starting to feel nervous. Perhaps they weren’t really police at all, just people dressed up and dangerous. They might have robbed one of the vast houses on the Common edge and be distributing the spoils. He took off the balaclava and tried to shove it in his pocket.
‘I’ll take that. Come on, let’s get going,’ the detective said, pulling it sharply out of his hand.
‘If I don’t go home Mother will be worried,’ Graham found himself saying as he was marched back towards the road by some of the uniformed retinue. Others, when he looked back, could be seen with torches weaving, like children with sparklers on Bonfire Night. ‘Live with your mum, do you? Yeah well that figures.’ The one with the sneer gave a short, knowing laugh.
‘What do you mean?’ Graham was becoming even more mystified, if that was possible. It was as if they knew stuff about him that he hadn’t been told about. He remembered when the boys at junior school had sniggered about how babies were made and he hadn’t known what on earth they were talking about and then they’d laughed at his ignorance. ‘Ask Mummy!’ they’d jeered. There wasn’t going to be any laughing here though, he felt sure.
‘Shut it, tosser.’ The man pushed his shoulder hard, sending him stumbling on the bracken. One of the dark shapes laughed. He was really frightened now. Something awful was happening and he had no idea what or why. He knew there might be evil people out there, he’d read the papers, but he wasn’t one of them. If that was what they thought, they’d made a mistake and he’d say so if any of them were up for listening.
It was very late in the night when Graham was allowed to phone Nina. She was asleep, dreaming that she was about to give birth but couldn’t find a safe place to do it. It wasn’t a biblical thing, like Mary looking for a room. She was more like a cat fretting to find somewhere that wasn’t public, where no-one knew her. She was walking on a busy midnight road, then in a restaurant full of men in shining green suits, then in a library that had no chairs, no carpet, no sympathy. When the phone rang she reached across to grab it and felt her stomach with her other hand, strangely disappointed to find it as soft and flat as ever.
‘Nina it’s me. I’ve been arrested. Can you come?’
Graham as ever was not wasting words. Nina sat up abruptly, which made her head spin. ‘What have you done? Have you been charged?’
There was a wobbly sigh from Graham’s end. ‘I haven’t done anything. It’s a mistake. But they won’t let me out because they think I’m . . .’ his voice went soft and he seemed to be having trouble with organizing how to put the words. Nina held her breath. ‘They think I’ve done something horrible on the Common,’ he said eventually, all of a rush. ‘You know, like that man in the local paper.’
Nina choked back a dreadful laugh which she recognized as nervous relief. It was all a mistake. ‘Oh, well they’ve obviously got that wrong. What about Mother? Does she know?’
‘That’s the thing, why I’m ringing. She’ll be worried. Can you think of something to tell her?’
‘The truth?’
‘I don’t think so,’ he said quickly. ‘She might think . . .’
‘No she wouldn’t,’ Nina reassured him. Though she might, of course. One thing was sure: Monica had never been known to settle to sleep until Graham was safely home. Even when he worked on the night shift she liked to say that she never closed her eyes when he wasn’t there, though whether that was actually true or not . . . Right now, she was probably lying in bed with the lamp still on, dozing over a book, the cat kneading its big paws on her legs.
Nina got dressed quickly and padded up the stairs to Emily’s room. She would have to go to Monica and tell her what had happened and leave Emily in charge of the house and Lucy.
‘Em? Can you wake up a bit?’ Emily stirred and grunted. Teenage sleep wasn’t like baby sleep with its milky soapy smell. Teenage sleep had a scent of cigarettes and slightly greasy hair, of make-up not well enough removed and the astringent tang of optimistic spot-treatment.
‘Emily? Please wake up!’ Nina shook her arm gently and Emily at last opened her eyes. ‘What?’ she demanded.
‘I have to go out to the police station and to see Grandma. Graham’s been arrested.’
‘You’re kidding?’ Nina now had Emily’s full attention. ‘What’s he done, broken into a secret air base?’
Nina thought for a moment then decided the truth was the simplest. ‘The police think he’s the man on the Common.’
‘You’re joking. They’re so wrong. Do they think I wouldn’t know my own uncle?’ Emily was wide awake now, climbing out of bed and reaching for her underwear. ‘I’m coming with you. It wasn’t him. The real one smokes, something strong and horrible. And uses fancy aftershave, I smelt him, I told them. They wrote it down.’
Emily was hurling on clothes faster than Nina had ever seen her. She felt touched that the girl was so angry on behalf of her strange, vague uncle. Shy Graham had hardly said a dozen words to Emily since she’d hit stroppy teenagerhood and gone beyond his field of comprehension. When she was little, though, he’d patiently taught her how to identify the planes that flew out of Heathrow across the Common, taken her to Farnborough Air Show on a special enthusiasts’ outing and helped her to build her own Airfix Harrier Jump Jet, when she’d said she liked them best because they looked like big naughty flies.
‘Ready. Let’s go, then.’ Emily was at the door looking back at Nina.
‘But what about Lucy? We can’t just leave Lucy, and I really don’t think we should take her,’ Nina said, thinking fast. ‘I’ll call Joe. He’ll have to come. I hope he will. Or there’s Henry. Yes, I’ll call him.’
‘Henry’s gone to that all-night darts-and-piss-up thing in Southampton,’ Emily reminded her. ‘Get Dad. Graham’s a grown-up, and he didn’t do it, so he can wait another hour.’
Joe felt absurdly pleased to have been summoned. It felt like such an awful long time since he had been of any real use to anyone. It had been lonely, not being needed, as if he’d lost his place in the world’s scheme. Catherine didn’t need him, not really, not unless he counted her impregnation plans, with which he was absolutely not going to co-operate.
‘Where are you going? What’s happening?’ she murmured sleepily as he stumbled around the hated floral bedroom, trying to find his shoes.
‘Nina’s. She’s got to go out and she needs me there for Lucy,’ he explained.
‘I need you here,’ Catherine whined. Her hand stretched out and got hold of his arm. Her silver-polished nails gleamed on his skin.
‘No you don’t,’ he told her firmly. He would tell her a whole lot more in the morning, he decided. It was time.
Nina drove fast to Monica’s house. It was after two and no-one was around. Cats darted into hedges as she approached and as she drove past the Common she could sense the activity of night creatures out there beyond the trees going about their hunting and mating. It was no place for people, in the dark. They, with their pathetic limited eyesight and clumsy crushing tread, could only be intruders.
‘She might be asleep, not worrying at all,’ Emily suddenly said as they turned the last corner into Monica’s road.
‘No, I don’t think so. You know what she’s like about Graham,’ Nina said. ‘If anything, she’s probably already been on to the police by now.’
‘Then she really will be worried,’ Emily pointed out.
‘No. She’ll know it was a mistake. She shouldn’t be on her own, but we’ll have to go on to get Graham out, if they’ll let him go. God they’ll have to . . .’
‘Will Gran know it’s a mistake? They’re always someone’s son or husband or boyfriend. S
he might think they’re right. I’m the only one who knows for sure that they’ve got it wrong.’
As they pulled up outside Monica’s house, Nina could see immediately that she’d been right about her mother. Lights blazed at every window, a sure sign of emergency for Monica was habitually thrifty, and the front door stood open to the cold night air as if Graham was really just a lost kitten who she hoped would simply wander back in.
Nina and Emily walked cautiously up the path and into the hall. ‘Mother? Are you there?’ Nina called tentatively, suddenly nervous that these signs of activity might just be one enormous coincidence and that she might be interrupting a ruthless burglary. Or perhaps the police were already swarming everywhere, upturning beds, rifling through Graham’s collection of plane magazines in search of damning pornography and a stash of girlish knickers.
‘Nina is that you?’ Monica in her pink satin dressing gown emerged from the kitchen. Her face was alight with anxiety and a certain triumphant excitement. ‘Jennifer’s here with me,’ she announced importantly, ‘so I’m all right.’
Nina looked past her into the kitchen and saw a stout brisk woman bustling with cups and saucers and the kettle. So this was Graham’s new friend. She looked capable, motherly, happy. She seemed to know her way around the kitchen, opening and closing drawers with practised confidence. Her body, Nina thought, resembled a very large pair of scones stacked one on top of the other. Her cream Aran cardigan was having difficulty staying fastened across her large breasts.
‘Hello Nina,’ Jennifer said with a bright smile and no sign of real anxiety. ‘Sorry to be meeting you in such dreadful circumstances. Would you like some tea?’ Jennifer was clearly in charge and Monica looked as calm as was possible. The pair of women were already a unit, bonded by their concern for this all-important male who shared their lives. Nina felt oddly depressed. Jennifer wasn’t going to represent an invigorating escape from smother-love for Graham, just an extension of it. It was simply life as he knew it, what presumably made him happy or at least contented.