Blackstoke

by Rob Parker

  Peter returned the smile, enjoying the moment. Was that a bit of easy banter between them? He thought it just might have been. ‘And Alice?’

  With that Alice herself appeared from the kitchen, dark eye make-up raccooning her eyes. She too had dolled herself up a bit too much for the occasion, resembling a teenage floozy on the lookout for an older man. It turned Peter’s stomach. He could ask her to change, but he couldn’t be bothered with the instant friction it would cause. Fifteen-year-old daughters would always be fifteen-year-old daughters.

  ‘Are we ready?’ Pam asked, fiddling with an earring in the hallway mirror by the front door.

  ‘Best foot forward,’ answered Peter, before grabbing a bottle of red from the previously clinking box. ‘I’ll pop back for another one between visits—save lugging it about.’ He checked that the bottle wasn’t damaged—a Les Porte des Prince Grenache. He had no idea what to go with, and his knowledge of wines was Peter Pan-like—locked in a long-term infancy, not that he’d like to admit it. Rather than looking at grape or region he tended to look at price band, and saw Tesco as the perfect place to scour for a new drop. Tonight, instead of going for a zero-to-five-quid bottle, he really pushed the boat out, going even past the five-to-ten-quid range he would usually go for on a special occasion. He had neighbours to impress in a neighbourhood that screamed faux-snobbery. The bottle needed to set the tone of the move, show their new life-colleagues what they were all about. Ten-to-fifteen-quid it was.

  They lined up by the door, and headed out into the cooling spring evening—and for the first time, Peter noticed it. A slight, sickly sweet odour, partially hidden by a waft of fresh-cut grass—the kind you taste more than smell.

  8

  ‘Well, that is extremely kind of you!’ said Wendy Fenchurch, taking the bottle and passing it over to Quint for his examination. He took his glasses out, which caused Peter’s breath to catch halfway up his gullet. He stood with Pam and the kids on the doorstop, half in and half out of the doorway, having presented themselves there like carol singers.

  Quint nodded, but didn’t offer a hand. Peter found it a little strange, but not everyone was a born-and-bred handshaker. This was a man of stiff movements, and an even stiffer moustache. Wendy, on the other hand, offered him a frail squeeze that smelled of cabbage soup and Chanel No. 5, before furnishing Pam with the same. Peter thought, despite the limp handshake, that she was in fantastic shape for whatever age she was, with her hair neatly pushed back by an alice-band, blue eyes alive and undimmed.

  ‘Have you settled in well so far?’ asked Wendy, as she pinched Jacob’s cheeks before he could dodge her, causing Alice to keep a mortified distance.

  ‘Yes, it’s been a dream,’ said Pam.

  ‘Well, if you need anything, do let us know,’ Wendy said, and to Peter’s amazement, Quint started walking off back down the hallway into the house, waving over his shoulder with one hand and carrying the bottle with the other.

  Before they knew it, the West’s were back on the pavement outside the Fenchurch property, staring at each other as if to ask what just happened?

  ‘I hope they all go as easily as that,’ said Peter. ‘We’ll be home in half an hour.’

  Even Alice cracked a smile, and they moved to the next house.

  ‘Let me just grab the next bottle,’ said Peter, as he jogged back to Iron Rise. The evening was settling lower now, lilac blues carrying the soft hiss of the motorway off the back of the estate. Still something felt amiss.

  Newness. The fug of the unfamiliar. It had to be that.

  9

  As soon as Jacob pressed the doorbell, and the ding-dong chime echoed somewhere within, the house erupted into a hellish cacophony of canine excitement. The rampant, urgent barking got closer, and louder, until the front door started rattling on its hinges. Jacob took a step back, and joined the rest of his family. He had taken a sneaky step ahead of his family, to be at the front when the door was answered. He had seen her yesterday—but he hadn’t seen her dog.

  The door opened, and the barking spilled out onto the street. Jacob saw a sight that would probably live with him forever—the first tangible strut of a crush he could see lasting for years. Grace Milligan, with her fantasy-girl platinum hair in her cute, figure-hugging pyjamas, wrestling a dog almost as big as her. He could barely move, while the rest of his family had taken a step back, watching the massive, shaggy hound with trepidation.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, finally squeezing herself in the doorframe, spreading her legs wide to block the dog from the outside. ‘He means no harm, he’s just a bit excited.’

  Jacob was transfixed, but his dad stepped forward to make the intros.

  ‘We’re so sorry to disturb you,’ said Peter. ‘We just wanted to say hello, and to give you this.’ He stepped forward to hand over the wine, which the dog lunged for as if it were a missing chew toy.

  ‘Dewey, down,’ hissed Grace. Jacob noticed her flush. Another pillar to the temple of his infatuation.

  ‘What make is he?’ Jacob asked, his voice thick and slow.

  ‘Make?’ Grace asked, and laughed. Jacob felt very warm suddenly, and a little light between the ears.

  ‘Umm… Breed?’ Jacob replied, amazed his brain would let him find the right word, but seriously grateful it did.

  ‘He’s an Irish wolfhound,’ she replied. ‘And a big one too.’

  ‘Wow…’ murmured Jacob, not sure whether he was directing his adulation at the dog or Grace’s jiggling anatomy as she tried to keep both from escaping into the night air.

  ‘Well, you seem to have your hands full. We are the Wests, and we just moved in over there,’ his father said, while pointing back to the house on the diagonal opposite side of the junction. ‘We’ll see you around.’

  ‘It’s nice to meet you,’ Grace replied, waving to each in turn. ‘And thanks so much for the wine. Goodnight!’ She turned and manhandled the ragged grey dog back into the house.

  The family turned back to the street, a little more shell-shocked. This was going much quicker than they anticipated.

  10

  David Lyons gave Alice a blonde-haired infant, and she seemed willing to give it a try, while Olivia smiled, more than happy to be handed to this stranger. David and Christian had invited them in immediately, and suggested they open up the wine pronto. In fairness, that was how Pam had thought these visits would go. She just hadn’t thought it would take until the third introduction to get invited in. Christian gave her a glass, and fixed juices for the kids, and they stood in the kitchen, staring each other down.

  ‘To new neighbours,’ ventured Christian, offering a toast.

  ‘New neighbours,’ everyone else echoed, with an unintentional sombreness more reminiscent of a Viking feast honouring their recently departed. We’re in this together, chaps.

  Pam watched Peter closely. Pam knew before they arrived tonight that the couple next door were gay, but she didn’t think Peter had realised until they got there. Both athletic, fairly toned and mid-thirties, one blond (David), one dark (Christian). As she watched her husband, seeing his nostrils flare a little as he rehearsed everything he wanted to say in his head before saying it, she couldn’t help feeling a slight thrill at his discomfort. Served him right for ogling that girl earlier. And then there was Jacob, who looked like he’d gone from one extreme to the other—about to detonate his loins one moment to fathoming a sexual Rubik’s Cube the next.

  Pam looked at the baby and her admiration surprisingly sparked envy. The two parents seemed to rotate around the child, as if they were vast planets and the young one was the centre of their orbit. It looked effortless and natural. The way they looked at each other, easy glances of affection, no judgement in sight, made her flat out jealous. Had she and Peter been like this? She couldn’t remember.

  The conversation soon slid easily into the one thing that they had in common—the estate.

  ‘Have you met everyone yet?’ asked David. ‘They seem to be a decent bunch.�
��

  ‘I think we’ve met most on this little corner,’ answered Peter. ‘We just have one stop after this one—the big house.’

  ‘The Adams,’ said Christian. ‘Can’t seem to miss Fletcher jetting about this way and that.’

  Peter’s face pulsed realisation. ‘Not Fletcher Adams, the gobby MP?! Here?’ David laughed heartily at that.

  ‘Watch your mouth, Peter,’ she said in mock horror.

  ‘Oh, you don’t have to watch it round here,’ said Christian. ‘Obviously we don’t want the air blue around the little one, but please, where he is concerned, tell it like it is.’

  ‘You’ve met him?’ asked Peter.

  ‘Once or twice,’ replied Christian. ‘Enough to wave to him, and smile. He’s always been very charming where we are concerned, and very engaging. But I know for a fact that he voted against the legalisation of gay marriage.’

  Now it was David’s turn to berate his other half. ‘Chris, come on…’

  ‘Well, it is what it is. I’m just calling a spade a spade here. Plus his personal life seems an utter cluster-you-know-what.’

  Pam smiled. She liked these guys.

  ‘They are married?’ she asked

  ‘Yes, and I might add that Joyce is lovely. An utter saint. You two should get on very well,’ responded David. ‘Oh dear, here we are. First meeting with our new neighbours and we come across like a proper pair of gossiping queens.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Peter rushed in as though it were a compliment: ‘You’re not even camp!’

  Pam cringed, inwardly horrified, and a second of silence seemed to last forever. Peter looked like he wished the ground would not just swallow him up, but chop his tongue out on the way down. Mercifully, Christian burst out laughing.

  ‘No, that’s right!’ he said. Thank Christ, thought Pam. ‘It’s too much of an effort keeping up that charade for too long!’

  ‘I didn’t mean to say anything out of turn…’ scrambled Peter.

  ‘Oh you didn’t, don’t be daft,’ replied David. ‘We are self-aware enough to know that our relationship might irk some people, and I know it confuses them when they see us out and about with Olivia and we aren’t mincing about all over the place.’

  ‘If anything, it really winds us up when we see that,’ says Christian.

  Pam caught sight of Jacob, who hadn’t a clue what to do or where to look. This was as far from his comfort zone as he’d ever been, she imagined, but she also appreciated that this was good for him. She’d always wanted broad-minded children, and this would go a long way to help—but even then she caught herself, and, worried that, in thinking such a thing, she was leaking a deep-seated prejudice all her own.

  ‘Well, I don’t know about you, hun, but I’m actually quite excited about meeting them now,’ said Peter, conspiratorially. He had noticeably mellowed now, and seemed chuffed to have a couple of decent blokes about.

  The baby started crying, suddenly rowdy of voice and wriggling against Alice.

  ‘Oh, I think she’s bored of me,’ said Alice, holding Olivia out like a prized salmon to be photographed. Pam handed Peter her wine, and took the crying baby, eager for a hold for herself, to remind herself what this part of the parental journey was like—while Peter just stood there with a glass in hand, just as he always had.

  11

  ‘Are you a football man, Peter?’ asked Fletcher, thrusting a glass of wine at him. Peter was grateful the question was so broad and mundane, since he had managed to get himself rather worked up about Fletcher asking him his political allegiance. Peter couldn’t even remember the party Fletcher represented, making catering an answer to his political leanings all the more difficult. And the last thing he wanted to blunder into was a lecture, which still could have been on the table, should he play his cards the wrong way.

  ‘I was brought up an Everton fan,’ said Peter. ‘But I’m largely happy to see any North West side doing well. You?’

  Fletcher, a tall, angular man of salt and pepper hair and unfair facial definition, settled back into the luxurious armchair, stationed in prime viewing position for the inordinately large flatscreen TV. The way he sat in it let you know it was his domain, and his domain alone. Peter doubted even the curious-looking twins sitting over there on the floor would dare sit in it. He thought Joyce might. She seemed to have a bit about her. She looked every inch the whip smart, rock-solid, loyal-to-the-last politician’s wife, but with a poise and voice that showed she was much more than mere window-dressing or a voter-friendly check box tick.

  Pam and Joyce sat on a sofa in the window, looking more than a little like sisters with their matching dark hair, wine glasses perched on knees—and more than that, they seemed to be getting on like the proverbial burning dwelling. The same couldn’t really be said for Jacob, Alice and the identical weirdos. They looked all about the same age, sort of anywhere between twelve and fourteen, with Peter’s kids bookending the twins. It looked uncomfortable, with the twins watching TV under apparent hypnosis, with Jacob and Alice waiting for someone to say something, anything.

  ‘Good, good. We should be proud of our heritage in the footballing hierarchy,’ said Fletcher, in a voice that didn’t plead acquiescence so much as bludgeon you with it. ‘How has the move gone? Settling in okay?’ Fletcher took a long swig of wine—the wine Peter just bought in—and swilled it south with a slight grimace. Peter couldn’t help but notice it and tried his damnedest not to blush.

  ‘Good, I think. Painless so far, as these things go,’ he replied, then chugged a bit of wine himself to see if it was alright. Tasted just like it did at the Lyons’ place, but they hadn’t made any funny faces.

  ‘Touch wood,’ said Fletcher with a broad smile, and knocked on the wood frame of the chair arm with a rude fist. The twins echoed with a ‘touch wood’ of their own, and rapped the tops of their own heads with their knuckles. If looks could kill, Alice would have already killed them both, buried their bodies and built a hasty patio over their graves.

  ‘Anything I need to know about the estate?’ Peter asked, hoping Fletcher hasn’t noticed his daughter’s petulance. He’d have to have a word with her later.

  ‘Not really, aside from what I’m sure you already know,’ Fletcher responded. ‘It’s a nice neighbourhood, no trouble. It’s a respectable quiet, appropriate neighbourhood. It’s why we are all here after all, I assume. There comes a point in life when you want to live comfortably, and extend those same comforts to your family. Not that I’d particularly share that information with my constituents, you understand.’

  ‘It’s West Lancashire, isn’t it? Your constituency?’

  ‘Yes that’s right.’

  ‘But you live here in… um, where is this?’

  ‘Warrington North.’

  ‘Warrington North, right.’

  ‘I learned pretty early in this ongoing campaign of a life that it’s best to live somewhere where the people can’t vote you in or out. It lets us, as a family, be ourselves a little bit more.’

  Peter found the frankness of the admission fascinating. This wasn’t the scripted bureaucrat he had seen numerous times on television, stoking the fires of… whatever it was, he couldn’t remember. Best get into my current affairs, Peter thought. ‘I can understand that,’ he said. ‘Makes sense.’

  ‘More sense than you can imagine. I wouldn’t be able to go for a pint in my local boozer, or even stop for petrol without it being a gamble as to whether the people in there gave you their votes. It brought out the worst in me, and brought out the worst in them, I’m sure. Never again. Lesson learned.’

  It might have been the wine, but Peter felt full of brio and candour of his own. ‘There’s an adage for it, isn’t there? Don’t shit where you eat?’ he whispered, for the sake of the children.

  Fletcher guffawed animatedly, and sounded just like one of those hecklers in the background at Prime Minister’s Question Time. ‘Very good. Nail on the head.’

  ‘So, how about your famil
y. Do your political commitments leave much time for them?’

  ‘Not the most. The twins are somewhat self-sufficient,’ said Fletcher, looking almost wistfully at the identikit teens stationed on the floor. ‘They’re in their own world half the time. It’s Joyce I feel for.’

  ‘Behind every good man is an even better woman, that sort of thing?’

  ‘You’re an educated man, Peter. Funny too. We’ll get on famously,’ Fletcher said. Peter found that a bit strange. A summary of why they would get along, delivered so soon after meeting. I can’t be that funny, he thought, given that he was struggling with a comeback. In fact, he felt a little fuzzy. A little liberated maybe. Loose lips sink ships, but if you can’t trust your friendly neighbourhood politician, who can you trust?

  Peter almost laughed out loud at the thought, then realised he might just be funny after all.

  12

  It was the third time the doorbell had rung, once after the other, filling the house with that infernal ‘Ode to Joy’ mono-serenade that had been pre-installed when Grace moved in. She caught sight of the digital bedside clock, saw it was 7.45am, and groaned. It was her morning off, with only afternoon cases scheduled for the day, plus she’d polished off that bottle of red she was gifted the night before, all in a solitary sitting. The doorbell thrusting angrily through her hangover was about the last thing she needed.

  She closed the door as she exited the bedroom, shutting Dewey in, who was asleep across two thirds of the bed, before heading downstairs to the front door. She threw it open immediately, and was greeted by an extremely angry, extremely flustered Quint Fenchurch. The kindly retiree façade was nowhere to be seen.