The Manor

by Keane Jessie

  Bloody doctors.

  But this new doctor thought it would be OK. He’d been so positive of that.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ she muttered. Then she thought of Charlie, her husband, forcing himself on Jill, and headed for the cloakroom to be sick.

  39

  Jill hurried down the driveway to the gatehouse, wishing she was a hundred miles away from the Stones and all the crap they brought with them. Even Terry was getting jumpy lately as they rose higher and higher in this dangerous world.

  Just a week ago, he’d taken her to one side and said he had something to show her.

  ‘Yeah? What?’ she had asked, expecting a gift, a surprise, something light-hearted and fun.

  But Terry looked grim. He’d taken her upstairs to the master suite and pointed out the cupboard set into the eaves.

  ‘You know I was talking to you about hide codes? Run codes? Because of the business we’re in, with Charlie,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ she asked again, puzzled.

  ‘I’ve fitted a bolt inside.’ He went to the cupboard and opened it. Inside, Jill could see the silvery gleam of the bolt. She looked a question at Terry. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘If anything kicks off, anything that frightens you, then you and Belle hide in here, OK?’

  Jill had gone pale as he spoke. ‘You’re scaring me,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t mean to. I just want you to know it’s here, that’s all. In case.’ Terry closed the cupboard door and turned to his wife, kissing her lips.

  ‘Yeah. Got it.’

  ‘You remember the passwords? Well, more of a passphrase. One for run, one for hide.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘What’s the “run” one then?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh for Christ’s sake Terry . . .’ Jill was busy today, she didn’t want to be wasting time with this. And it spooked her, even talking about it.

  ‘What is it?’ Terry persisted.

  ‘Chipboard.’

  ‘Right. And the hide one?’

  ‘If you want us to hide, you’ll ask if your pen is in the bag in the hall,’ said Jill.

  ‘Never forget that. OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  Now, hurrying back down the drive, Jill remembered all that and thought that she’d felt so much safer when they’d all been young and Charlie Stone had been into the hard game, not the drugs.

  Safer, and happier too.

  1970s

  40

  Charlie was one of the big criminal capos now, pushing the boundaries in every direction. He had forged a close connection not only with families up and down the country but also with the Matias crew who fronted a cartel in Colombia, so that Charlie’s gang could take care of things at the London end. For the last few years he’d been doing a brisk, steady trade in hashish through Morocco and Turkey, but he always wanted to push further.

  ‘I’m like a shark,’ he said. ‘Stand still and I die.’

  He’d started importing Thai cannabis through Gatwick airport, paying baggage handlers to remove cases of drugs.

  Now he used that same system – and others – to import his cocaine through his cartel associates in Bogota. Eighty kilos was worth about twenty mill on the streets, which was a big deal to the English gangs but chickenshit to the mega-wealthy Colombians.

  When even bigger loads were being imported, Charlie turned his attention to the docks in Southampton where he already had people set up on the take and knew he could get containers coming through unchecked.

  ‘The Matias bunch keep flapping over security, but it’s sewn up tight,’ Charlie told Terry. ‘I own the ports. I own the police. I’m in charge. There’s no problem.’

  Everything was working out nicely. These days, Charlie could only wonder at the modest beginnings of his life of crime. Now here he was – king of the entire fucking world, just like he’d always planned. Living a grand life in a grand mansion out in the sticks, but – he had to admit this was true – his heart was still back there on the old East End manor he’d been born into, wrapped up in the lifestyle he’d once known.

  He didn’t mix much with the locals out here, and Nula didn’t either. Their old mates from the manor came out sometimes, but they never stayed long.

  Their cash was welcome here, though. There was always somebody banging at the door asking for handouts. For the church spire. For the community centre’s new bogs. For the replacement of the village hall’s decaying porch. Charlie stumped up plenty at first, thinking that this was a route in and that it might please Nula to be part of it all.

  But gradually the penny dropped. They were seen as dodgy newcomers, unwanted outsiders, and were asked repeatedly what line of business they were in. Charlie gave his stock answer to this one – he was importing wood for sofa frames, textiles for armchair covers, padding, springs from China, all that shit, and manufacturing and assembling furniture in his English factories. But the people around here never seemed convinced. The community withdrew from the Stones, and frankly Charlie was relieved.

  In fact, after having been in love with the idea of a grand country manor, of literally ‘lording’ it among the yokels, he now felt that the whole ‘moving out’ business had been a big mistake. Yes, he’d fallen for the idea of living it large in the country, but the reality was, he didn’t care for it. He caught himself longing for the dirty streets of the city with that exciting air of seedy danger. He missed the rough sleepers, the even rougher old spit-and-sawdust pubs, the place that he truly, in his heart, still called home.

  Now he was living a different life. He regularly attended charity events, kept up the pretence of being a legitimate businessman. In evening dress, him and Nula went everywhere in high society, to the royal enclosure at Ascot, the masked ball at Versailles, where once the Sun King Louis had reigned. Now Charlie Stone held court there, drinking Cristal champagne and eating beluga caviar. He attended the carnival in Venice, his costume – and Nula’s – extravagant in the extreme, their masks trimmed with gold thread.

  They took luxurious breaks in Cap d’Antibes at the summer home of their Colombian associate, Javier. He had an exclusive and breathtakingly beautiful seafront villa there and treated them as his honoured guests to lavish lunches and trips over to Monte Carlo, where his superyacht was moored up in the bay.

  ‘This is a bit of me, all this,’ Charlie said when he was laid out on the sun deck of Javier’s yacht. But inside, he was starting to wonder if it really was.

  Charlie was over the moon that Nula was pregnant again. Lady Luck was smiling down on him. He could have his longed-for son. Oh, he had Harlan, but Harlan was adopted. This boy would be his own flesh and blood, and a carefree life in the country was what every kid should have, he really believed that.

  So for now? He was staying put.

  41

  It was another hellish pregnancy. Low already, shocked to the core by what Jill had told her about Charlie, Nula plunged into carrying the baby and her moods were unfailingly dark. Only her journals gave some relief while she carried the child; she wrote in them almost manically, jotting everything down. She had to come off the tranquillizers she routinely took because of the baby.

  Her moods sank lower, and lower. This time, she was convinced, whatever the consultant said, she was going to die. She was sick, horribly sick, for most of this pregnancy; it was far worse than it had been with Milly and travelling around with Charlie was no help because every day she longed to say to him, I know what you did, you bastard. But she couldn’t say it. Didn’t dare.

  She felt like a bloated Zeppelin, engorged while this alien thing grew inside her, robbing her of vitality, cheating her of life.

  She was going to die.

  She knew it.

  But then, when her waters broke and finally the day came and she was transported to the hospital to give birth – and Charlie wasn’t there, again, as per fucking usual – it all went like clockwork. Four hours after she hit the maternity ward, their son was born. Her precious baby boy, her beloved baby
Jake.

  42

  ‘That’s it then, yeah? No more after this,’ said Charlie. Finally he’d pitched up at her bedside and now he held his newborn son in his arms.

  ‘Yeah. No more,’ agreed Nula, lying back dishevelled, exhausted and cut to ribbons. She had more stitches up her fanny than a fucking tapestry. But she was happy and in a private hospital bed, not out on the main ward with the rest of the oiks. She looked around. Harlan was there, staring at her with that flat emotionless gaze of his. ‘You didn’t bring Milly.’

  ‘No, I left her with Jill, I didn’t want you getting overtired. You been through enough. You can get out of here and catch up with Milly then. Won’t be long. Or I can bring her in tonight, if you want.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Nula. ‘That would be nice.’ Poor little Mills, she thought, watching Charlie – that arsehole – as he cuddled their son. Milly wasn’t going to get a look in, not now Charlie had his boy.

  Charlie was so happy he felt he could burst with it. He couldn’t believe it. His own son. Milly was great, but she was a girl. It wasn’t the same. You couldn’t have girls involved in the business; it was too rough. Then he looked down and saw Harlan staring up at him with that cold questioning expression he always wore.

  ‘Look, Harlan. Your baby brother!’ he said, grinning. Well, sort of, thought Charlie. Not even a half-brother really, because Harlan wasn’t blood, not like this little fella.

  He knew it was mean, what he was feeling. Wrong. But shit – would they even have bothered to adopt at all, if this tiny miracle had occurred before all that adoption bull crap happened?

  Now Charlie was wondering vaguely how difficult it would be to give a kid to the care system. Bloody nigh impossible, he reckoned, given all the twists and turns he’d gone through with those official bastards. Or maybe he could palm Harlan off on one of the girls on the manor? Well, it was a fact that Harlan was a funny little fish, cold as a fucking haddock really. He’d never exactly warmed to the kid at all.

  Yeah, because you thought that was it for you. No son, only this thing to fill in the gap. You’d accepted that.

  Oh, he’d treated Harlan well enough. Bought him the best gifts at Christmas and on his birthdays, gifts that matched Milly’s in expense. He was careful to do that, to try and play fair, treat the kids as equals. But Harlan’s reactions were always muted. Fucking kid always seemed to be watching you, somehow. As if he didn’t understand normal reactions but was sort of copying yours in the hope that his own would look right.

  ‘Can I hold him?’ Harlan asked, his eyes on the baby.

  ‘Nah,’ said Charlie. ‘Not yet, he’s too little. You might drop him.’

  Harlan nodded and looked at Nula. Nula held out her hand. She wasn’t mother of the year, not by any means, but she could see how Harlan must be feeling right now. Yes, he might be a bit strange, maybe even sadistic – she could never forget him and Nipper burning the cat’s fur on the day they’d opened the petting zoo – but of course he was going to feel cast aside. Charlie was in raptures over the new baby. He had never been like this with Harlan, not even when he’d been a novelty, freshly adopted.

  Nula forced a smile and said: ‘You’re going to help us get the nursery furnishings finished, aintcha, Harlan? Now that we’ve got it all decorated nicely.’

  In fact Nula had felt so insecure, so uncertain about the baby’s arrival that she’d left all of this until the last minute. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to jinx it. It was that she didn’t believe that she and the kid would pull through. But here they were – to her shock – safe and well.

  Harlan said nothing, and Nula felt a twinge of irritation. If the kid was just a bit livelier, a bit bubblier, then she felt that her arsehole of a husband would respond to him better. There would be similarities then, at least. But there were none. Harlan’s attitude niggled her more than she cared to admit, so God alone knew what it did to Charlie.

  ‘Can I hold him when we get home?’ asked Harlan.

  Nula shot Charlie a look. To Harlan, she said: ‘We’ll see.’

  43

  When Charlie left the hospital with Harlan, Terry was waiting back at the house with Beezer. They both looked grim.

  ‘We got trouble,’ said Beezer.

  ‘Oh?’

  There was a container coming into Southampton Docks from Ecuador, full of balsa wood. The wood had been hollowed out to accommodate the true payload: one metric tonne of cannabis and nearly two hundred kilos of cocaine. The cocaine alone had a street value of fifty million pounds sterling.

  ‘Customs and Excise been watching for months, our boys down there reckon,’ said Beezer. ‘Now they’ve seized it.’

  ‘And?’ demanded Charlie.

  He felt sick with anxiety. This was bad. But he was bewildered. There was no way this shit could touch him or anyone near him, they were all rigorously careful. He was careful beyond measure. He told his crew – not Terry of course, Terry was different – only what they needed to know; nothing more. Then even under duress they couldn’t blab. He didn’t make calls from his house and neither did any of his men, he was meticulous about that. They all used public phone boxes in obscure places, they were all cautious to the point of obsession.

  And yet this had happened.

  ‘But they can’t tie any of the shit to us,’ said Charlie, looking to Terry for confirmation.

  ‘They can’t. That’s true. But . . . it means we got a leak somewhere. We need to tighten up.’

  ‘I’d better get down there,’ said Charlie.

  But there was nothing to find. All the dock workers and Customs men in his pay pleaded their innocence. He kicked a few about just to make sure, applied pressure – but there was nothing. No clue as to how this had happened. It pissed Charlie off.

  While he was down on the south coast, trying to find out what the fuck was going wrong, Charlie decided to cheer himself up by chasing a long-held dream of his. The Southampton Boat Show was on and he was walking up and down the pontoons – which moved a little as the tide lapped them – not eyeing up the ordinary yachts, the ones any fucker could afford, oh no – he wanted a superyacht. A huge beast of a thing with every modern convenience on board. He wanted it all.

  Terry, who was accompanying him, was sceptical of the idea of Charlie on the open waves. Charlie, bobbing around on the water in a dinghy, tugging at sails, wearing a lifejacket over his beer belly and a sailor’s hat? Unlikely.

  ‘Yeah, yack it up, arsehole,’ said Charlie, when Terry laughed at the idea.

  You wouldn’t laugh so much if you knew I’d shafted your missus, would you? thought Charlie, grinning back at his mate.

  But this wasn’t an actual yacht – these things were massive floating palaces.

  They walked around the deck of one. There was a swimming pool on board, and a jacuzzi. Thirteen crew were needed just to sail the thing. There was a helicopter perched on the upper deck.

  ‘I’m going to learn to fly, too,’ said Charlie. ‘One of them things. Always fancied it.’

  Terry said nothing. He’d heard an old, old saying: there are old pilots, and there are bold pilots. But there are no old bold pilots. Charlie came into the bold category. He’d be lethal to himself and others, flying a helicopter. ‘Sure, Charlie,’ he said.

  An hour later, Charlie was shaking hands with the salesman and the deal on the yacht was done.

  ‘I’m gonna call her Lady of the Manor,’ said Charlie.

  ‘After Nula?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Charlie, feeling a stab of guilty disappointment at mention of his wife’s name.

  Nula was a bit, well, mental these days, and he had no patience with it. He didn’t like it. Then he thought of Terry’s old lady and wondered if he might one of these days take another bite out of that apple. It was tempting. Really was.

  Forbidden fruit.

  All right, the leak had troubled him. But nevertheless everything was pretty rosy. Here he was, Charlie Stone, backstreet boy, and now he owne
d a superyacht just like Javier’s. The manor was expanding, day by day. Soon, it would cover the entire world. And he would be its king. So who the hell was ever going to dare to tell him no?

  44

  Within days, Nula was out of hospital and resting up in bed. She wasn’t breastfeeding the baby – Christ, she’d gone to enough trouble to get a good set on her, without causing even more problems in that department. So after expressing some milk for him for the first couple of weeks, the kid went on the bottle and Nula set about getting rid of the baby weight.

  Young Milly adored the new baby, constantly cooing over him and bringing Belle up from the gatehouse to admire him.

  ‘He’s so tiny and sweet,’ said Belle, chucking the baby under his chubby chin.

  The girls took turns holding and feeding and even changing Jake, then they were pushing him around the grounds in his pram. Harlan kept his distance. The same au pair who’d looked after Harlan now had the newborn to cope with too. She complained and kept taking time off. Finally Nula sacked her.

  ‘Where’s Janine?’ Harlan kept asking. He’d liked Janine – Nula thought he’d liked the au pair a lot more than he liked her, in fact.

  ‘Never mind her,’ said Nula. ‘We got a new one coming, a better one. Chrissy from the village. She’s a nice girl, you’ll like her.’

  Chrissy, it turned out, was a peach. She settled Harlan down, read books with Milly, and she made sure that Nula was never troubled with nappy changes or night feeds. Everything, suddenly, was running smoothly.