Choice of Straws

by Braithwaite, E. R. ;

  After a while Maur came out of the bedroom, rushed past me and down the stairs. I let her disappear down before following. Dave was sitting on the sofa still wrapped in his toga like a sultan, Sandra was in the centre of the room under the lamp looking at her reflection in the mirror fixed in the flap of her handbag.

  ‘Dave?’ I heard Maur say. She stood near the sofa looking from him to Sandra.

  ‘All set?’ Dave asked, not looking at either of us. He got up and went over to the phone.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ said Maur, but he paid no attention, just went on carefully dialling as if he hadn’t heard her. When someone answered he asked them to send a taxi and gave our address. After he hung up he turned around and winked at me.

  ‘Christ, Dave, you mean to say you … ?’ Maureen cried at him, her voice full of surprise or disbelief or something, her mouth trembling as if near tears. I felt a bit sorry for her because, after all, she was okay, not like that white-faced bitch.

  ‘I’d better get dressed before the taxi comes,’ Dave said, walking around her and up the stairs.

  For a moment I thought she’d hit him, but she let him pass then, looking at me, said, ‘You’re rotten, all of you, just rotten. That’s what you are.’

  She sat down on the edge of the sofa, her back turned to us. Sandra shut her handbag and began messing about with the pile of records, reading the stuff on the covers. The taxi horn sounded outside and Maur got up and walked out, Sandra following. I asked if they weren’t waiting for Dave but neither of them answered and by the time I reached the door they were getting into the taxi. In another minute they were gone. Dave came down, still with the towel around him. The bugger hadn’t even started to get dressed.

  ‘Gone?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Suits me. Saves us having to go out.’

  ‘What happened down here?’ I wanted to know.

  ‘Don’t be a nit. What do you think happened?’

  ‘Christ, how could you? Both of them.’

  ‘What you bellyaching about? You didn’t want it. No sense in letting a good thing be wasted.’

  ‘Boy, you’re a real bastard, aren’t you?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask Sandra?’ Grinning his devil grin.

  I don’t know how Mum found out about it. Dave guessed that Old Spotty Frock, our sleepless neighbour from across the road, must have seen us bring them home or noticed them go, and said something to Mum. That woman would never miss the chance to get her own back on Dave and me for a little trick we played on her a long time ago when we were kids. You’d think anybody would forget a little thing like that, but not Spotty Frock. She has a memory like a ruddy elephant. And always in those crazy spotty dresses. Probably makes them herself, Mum says.

  We were about eight years old at the time, and Uncle Andy, Mum’s brother from the farm up north came to see us and as usual told Dave and me to look in his overcoat pocket and find a surprise. Always had this way of giving us things. Even at Christmas he’d not send us anything, then afterwards he’d come down, with all kinds of stuff in his pockets, sweets, motorcars, Meccano sets, anything. And once a little box with two white mice, but Mum made him take them back. Said she wasn’t having any rats in the house, no matter who brought them.

  Well, this time I was first to reach his overcoat hanging in the hall and reached into a pocket to pull out the smooth thing which seemed to come alive in my hand. Yelling with fright, I dropped it and, pushing Dave, ran away from the red-spotted green snake with the long quivery black tongue. Uncle Andy began laughing, then picked the thing up, making it twist and jump in his hand. Even though we realized then it was only a toy snake it took a lot of coaxing to make either of us touch it and finally hold it. Mum was furious. She told Uncle Andy off for frightening us and wanted him to take it away. Said it was horrid and disgusting, and you could see that although she knew it was just a wooden toy she was a bit scared of it. Wouldn’t touch it. Uncle Andy had to do a hell of a lot of pleading with her before she let us keep it, and even then only on condition that we kept it up in our room.

  I can’t rightly remember who first had the idea of trying it on Old Spotty Frock, but this day Dave and me had been watching her from our bedroom window. Every few minutes or so she’d come out of her front door, walk up the concrete path to her gate and look up and down the street, probably just to see if anything was happening that she’d hate to miss, like whether Mrs Davis’s poodle had soiled the pavement near her gate, or how long the laundryman had been in at Mrs Palfreyman’s. And if nothing really breathtaking was happening, she’d pop back indoors for another ten minutes or so. Mum thinks she’s always looking up the street in case her husband comes back. He left about seven years ago, went off to work as usual one morning, and she never set eyes on him again. Mum thinks she nagged him so much that he just up and ran off, but Spotty Frock still thinks he might turn up again.

  I don’t know who first had the idea. Perhaps we both had it at the same time. Anyway, around six o’clock that evening, while it was still light, we tied some of Mum’s black sewing thread to the snake’s head, then, when no one was looking, we hid it behind a little patch of weeds in Spotty Frock’s garden, so that when we pulled the thread it would come skating across the path. We passed the thread through the privet hedge which separated her place and the Wilsons’, then crouched down behind the hedge to wait. Before long we heard her door open. As soon as she was on the path heading for the gate we began pulling the thread, slowly, peeping at her. She didn’t notice anything until she nearly stepped on it, then she let out the most God-awful scream you ever heard, but instead of rushing back indoors as we’d figured she would, she jumped high over the snake and was through her gate and into the street in a flash, yelling as if the devil himself was after her.

  In no time at all everyone was at their windows to see what all the commotion was about, and there we were, Dave and me, standing behind the Wilsons’ hedge with nowhere to run to. Dave went right on pulling in the thread until the snake got itself stuck in the hedge and I had to reach through and clear it. Old Spotty Frock must have rumbled what had happened, because she came at us, yelling what she’d do if she laid hands on us. But what with her screaming and everything, our Dad must have come outdoors to see what was happening, because he got to us before she did. Didn’t take him long to see what the trouble was. In no time at all that little old snake was nothing but a few broken bits of wood and rubber and we’d been made to apologize to Mrs Betts, which was Spotty Frock’s real name, right there in the street with all those millions of eyes looking on. And afterwards we got a real pasting from our Dad indoors.

  Anyway a few days after they returned from holiday Mum caught me upstairs by myself and with no beating about the bush started in on me about how in all the years we’d lived there nobody’d been able to point a finger at any of the Bennetts, and she didn’t want any goings on in her house when she wasn’t there. So in future would I please not treat her house like some cheap hotel—all with her voice carefully quiet, the way it was when she was mad about something. And not a single word to Dave who’d got the most out of the evening …

  When I had everything straight I put my jacket across my shoulders and went quietly past Mum’s bedroom to the bathroom. Using a nailbrush and soapy water I carefully cleaned the blood smudge from my jacket, scrubbed my hands clean and brushed my teeth. Back in my room, I opened the window overlooking the street, pulled up a chair, lit a fag and sat down to look out for Dave. From there I could see all the way up to the church and the corner he’d have to come around whether he took the train or hitched a lift along the Southend Road. Worry had settled like a heavy weight in the pit of my stomach. It was now nearly half past one and where was Dave? If he’d caught the Central Line at Leytonstone he’d have been home long ago, unless—well, supposing he’d fainted on the train and they’d taken him to hospital or somethin
g like that? He’d have at least told them to telephone and let us know what was happening. Or perhaps he’d decided to hitch a ride, and at that time of night not many people would want to stop for a hitchhiker. Probably still waiting somewhere along the road, hoping. Or supposing he’d fallen down somewhere, in some corner where nobody’d seen him? Oh Dave! Jesus Lord, help him.

  Outside everything was quiet, you could hear sounds from a long way. Not a house light anywhere, the sky black except for the edge where it met the world, which was yellowish, probably from the amber street lights over Romford way. I’d forgotten about my cigarette until I felt the heat as it burned down to my fingers; then it was a red star trailing a few sparks as it fell into the garden. Sure Mum didn’t swallow that tale about a girl down Welham Drive. She knew we didn’t bother much with any of the local talent. A couple of dates and they started behaving as if you were engaged to them or something. Lights flashed up and down, glinting yellow, off the church windows and the shops at the corner arcade, and a car came around the corner, slowly. I thought, Here he comes. But at the same slow pace it went on past our house. Much later came the far away slam of a door, then silence.

  I was going down a long tunnel, bright as day and full of the noises of trains coming and going, though all I could see was the sparks from wheels on rails. I wanted to get off the tracks before a train came but there was nothing I could climb on, the walls were white and smooth. Then suddenly the tunnel opened out into a station crowded with people, and I ran towards it, to get on to the platform, but they all turned, pointing and staring at me, and I saw they were black, all of them. Then from the tunnel behind me came the rush of wind and the noise from a train coming fast, and I tried to climb on to the platform, but my hands were slippery with blood and none of those black people would help me up though I shouted, begging them. The noise from the train grew nearer, then there was Dave at the far end of the platform, pushing through them, shouting, I’m coming, Jack.

  My fingers could find no grip on the steep, sloping platform, the black faces stared down, hating me in my helplessness, and Dave was pushing through them, calling to me as the train came nearer, nearer, then his hand was on me just before the spinning wheels caught me.

  Chapter

  Three

  ‘JACK, JACK!’

  The hand and voice were real enough as I opened my eyes to safety and the sight of her beside me, small and frail in the greyish light of early morning, sitting on the edge of my bed.

  ‘Wake up, Jack.’

  ‘What’s up, Mum?’ And sudden, clear remembering. I looked around to Dave’s bed, half hoping.

  ‘Tell me, Son. Where’s Dave? Where is he? Tell me.’

  Echoes of the dream, the despair in her voice and the sight of Dave’s empty bed all worked together, and something gave way inside me. I knelt beside her, my head in her lap, and wept out the whole terrible story. Not a sound from her. Long after I’d finished, not a sound. I looked up at her, so tiny in the frayed old dressing-­gown, her hands crossed over her chest, gripping the lapels tightly, the grey eyes staring through the windows at nothing. Seeing her like that I wished to God it had been me, instead of Dave, and something told me that he wasn’t coming home again, not ever.

  ‘Get up, Son,’ she said to me. I pulled myself back into the chair by the window, not thinking, not feeling.

  We sat like that, saying nothing, not even noticing that the street lights had faded out to misty daylight, and that gentle stirring of things waking up. Mum was the first to react when the doorbell rang, and was half-way down the stairs before I even realized what was happening. I wanted to rush after her but my whole body felt heavy and unwilling.

  From the top of the stairs I heard the strange men’s voices and hers, rising with surprise and panic, saying, ‘What is it, where’s my Dave? What’s happened?’

  Half-way down the stairs I saw them, huge beside my mother in their khaki raincoats, two serious-faced men, each with a trilby hat in his hand. At the sight of them I knew, in my mind, in my stomach, in my weak, trembling legs, that it was about Dave and he was dead. I went down and stood beside Mum, holding her.

  One of the men said, ‘We’re police officers.’

  ‘What do you want? What have you come for?’ I asked them, but then Mum spoke.

  ‘You said you wanted to know if Dave lives here. Why? He’s my son.’ And I could feel the trembling in her, thinking to myself how thin she was, bones like sticks. Poor little Mum.

  ‘Could we speak with your husband, please?’ one of them said.

  Mum told me to call our Dad, but she was shaking so much I led her to a chair and eased her down into it, before going upstairs. Dad was half-way down, trying to get his arms into the sleeves of his dressing-gown and grumbling about what the hell was going on, his white hair sticking up all over his head. He pushed past me without listening to what I tried to say.

  Downstairs he stood in front of the men, asking, ‘What’s all this?’

  One of them, the round-faced, baldy one with the little moustache started, ‘Mr Bennett.’

  ‘Yes. What’s all this about? Who are you?’

  ‘We’re police officers enquiring into an accident which occurred soon after midnight last night on the Southend road near Gallows Corner, involving a motor vehicle. There were two persons in the vehicle. We have reason to believe that one of them was a Mr Bennett of this address.’

  Mum covered her face with her hands, crying softly, ‘Oh God. Oh Jesus God.’

  Dad walked backward from the men until he came up against the stairs and lowered himself to sit, his face slack and grey, his mouth open, moving. Then he looked up at me and the words came out.

  ‘Your brother. Isn’t he upstairs?’

  ‘No, Dad, he didn’t come in last night.’

  ‘But how?’ He was too stunned to say more.

  The other detective, with the reddish face and ginger hair, took something from his pocket and put it on the low table near where Mum sat, a large white handkerchief which he carefully poked open with a long yellow pencil till we could see the thing inside. Right away I recognized the handle of Dave’s knife sticking out from the brown, curly piece of burnt leather. I couldn’t help saying ‘That’s Dave’s,’ and the man looked quickly at me, then pushed the pencil under and turned the lot over to show the other side, and the little shiny silver shield with

  David Lee Bennett

  103 Raleigh Gardens

  Upminster, Essex.

  inscribed on it.

  ‘What’s that?’ Dad asked.

  ‘This was removed from one of the bodies,’ the man said, and I wanted to scream. ‘The vehicle overturned while apparently travelling at high speed towards Southend, and the two occupants, both male, were trapped underneath when it caught fire.’

  ‘But why do you think it was our Dave?’ Dad asked him, ‘What do they look like, these two occupants or whatever you call them? Didn’t you look in their pockets or wallets or somewhere to see who they were? And what the hell’s this that you brought here?’ Pointing at the table.

  ‘I’m afraid it has not been possible to make any sort of identification,’ the baldy one said. ‘You see, the bodies were too badly burnt. This knife has so far been our only clue. We’re checking the car’s registration to find out who the owner was. Did your son drive a car?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You recognize the knife?’ the ginger one asked me.

  ‘Yes, it’s Dave’s.’ I bent over the table and reached for it, but the man stopped me, covered it up and replaced it in his raincoat pocket.

  From another pocket he took a black notebook, saying, ‘I’d be obliged if you would give us any information at all that would help with our enquiries. A description of your son and what he was wearing when last you saw him, anything like pieces of jewellery, wrist-watch, anything done to his teeth, anythi
ng that might help.’

  ‘He was like Jack here,’ Dad interrupted, ‘just like him. You see one, you see the other. They’re twins, see, identical twins.’

  Now they both looked me over, slowly, from head to toe, the way you scrutinize a piece of cloth when choosing a suit. At first I felt awful having them looking at me like that thinking that they were detectives and remembering about the night before and the Spade. Then the thought came to me that it was that black bastard’s fault, what had happened to Dave, and I hated him, and wasn’t afraid of them any more. I looked right back at them, noticing now that Baldy’s moustache showed a scar on his upper lip where the dark hairs didn’t quite meet.

  ‘Did your brother wear a ring, something like yours?’ Baldy asked me. So I told him we’d each been given a signet ring by Mum and Dad last March on our eighteenth birthday. Mine was inscribed J.L.B. for Jackson Lee Bennett, and Dave’s D.L.B. for David Lee Bennett. The Lee part was from Mum’s maiden name, Madge Lee.

  ‘Was your brother wearing his ring when last you saw him?’ he wanted to know, and I told him we never took them off, not ever, as far as I knew, since the day we’d got them. So he made some notes in his book and asked me other questions about Dave’s height and weight, and if we’d had anything done to our teeth, and I said no, we’d never had any fillings or extractions or anything. Both of us had these riders, the two front teeth overlapping each other a little bit, but in the Juniors when the school dentist had wanted us to wear braces to straighten them out Mum had said no.

  Then he asked me what had Dave been wearing when he left home last night, and if I’d seen him with the knife. And right away I thought I’d play it safe, so I said I didn’t know because I was busy with some drawings I had to do and didn’t see him when he went out, but if I looked upstairs in our room I could soon tell him what was missing, but he said not to bother for now.