by Jessie Keane
To keep Shauna quiet, Josh went reluctantly over to the Pole place, where he found that Bubba, Linus’s eldest boy – with a huge gut straining against his red braces and a waxed moustache just like his dad’s – was interested in getting Josh back inside the ring for some English matches, soonest.
‘My dad spoke very highly of you, Mr Flynn,’ he said respectfully. ‘Said you were an iron man, a fearless fighter.’
‘I could be looking for some local stuff about now. But I’m not over here for long.’
‘For you? Damn sure. You’re still the heavyweight champion, still the king of the gypsy world.’
As two weeks stretched into a month, with Shauna inventing one reason after another for why he should stay, Josh fought four times in England. His last English fight, a twenty-rounder, was set in an open-sided farm building, with oil barrels marking out the four corners so that the roped-off ring measured twenty foot square. Extension cords dangling off the beams powered bulbs to shed light on the proceedings. The barn was packed, the summer heat inside it oppressive. People were staggering on hay bales to peer over the top of the crushing throng as Josh and one of the Pole cousins, Darnley Jones, squared up to each other.
Josh toyed with Darnley for the first round, got his measure in the second and third, then laid him out flat on the floor in the fourth.
The match was over.
Josh shook the referee’s hand and got a pat on the back and a large wad of cash from Bubba Pole.
‘I never seen anyone take down Darnley fast as that,’ said Bubba. ‘He’s like a brick-built shit house, our lad. You done good.’
Josh went off to his corner, where the second he had hired for the night attended to him.
There was barely a scratch to show for the encounter. Experience outweighed youthful enthusiasm now: Josh assessed each opponent, sought out their weaknesses, and exploited them. Let them tire themselves out, then he’d move in for the kill. After the fight, he was escorted over to the farmer’s house, where the man’s wife cooked him bacon and eggs before showing him to the bathroom so that he could shower and make himself presentable.
Searching for his shower gel in his bag, he found a note from Shauna.
I love you, Josh, it said.
Instantly Josh was grinding his teeth in fury. Christ, she was a grown woman, not a clingy girl. What the fuck did she keep doing that for? He thought of Claire and felt such rage bubbling up inside him that he felt he wanted to just kill that slag wife of his and have done with it. He tore the love note up and flushed it down the loo. Then he went back out to the farmer’s kitchen and thanked the family for their hospitality, and said goodnight. He stepped outside, breathing in the cooling night air, and got the shock of his life.
‘Josh? Josh Flynn?’ asked a quavering voice.
‘Who the fuck’s that?’ It was hard to see clearly by the porch light. The man standing there looked like a blob, a pale face, nothing more. Could be anyone.
‘It’s me,’ said the man, stepping forward so that the light caught him.
‘Christ,’ said Josh. It was Pally, Claire’s father.
95
Josh’s first thought was that Pally had aged, drastically. But then, hadn’t they all? Time skimmed by, and suddenly you were a father with two kids and a wife who made your skin crawl. But Pally looked ill. He looked as though something was eating him up from inside. Weight had dropped off his frame, making it narrow, and his eyes had dark blue shadows beneath them.
‘I heard you was coming here to fight. Hoped I’d catch you,’ he said. His breath sounded wheezy, like he was nursing bronchitis or something. ‘I’ve something to show you.’
Josh frowned. Pally didn’t only look ill, he looked vague, as if he was only half-aware of his surroundings and what he was doing.
I ought to tell him about Claire, thought Josh. But he had sworn to her that he wouldn’t tell anyone where she was or what she was doing. He had promised on the Sacred Heart. And truth to tell, he thought this was a can of worms best kept shut. Too much time had passed now. It was no good to start everything up again, and maybe place Claire or her folks under threat.
‘You’re a busy man, but I hope you’ll have time for this. Come. I’ve something you should see. Something you should know.’
Pally started walking. Josh felt half-inclined not to follow. He wanted to get home, fall into bed. But there was something about Pally’s manner that had him hooked. He followed.
Pally drove them in his battered old Jeep. Neither of them spoke. It was very dark out in the country at night, no street lights, but Pally knew his way and Josh looked ahead as the headlights cut through the blackness. He realized that he knew this route. He knew where Pally was taking him.
‘Pally . . .’ he started, dry-mouthed, wanting to insist that he turn this bloody thing around.
‘Nearly there,’ said Pally, and pulled off the lane and down a dirt track.
Josh knew this place so well. It was in his blood. He’d grown up here, on this site, with Claire and her parents Eva and Pally just over the clearing, and Cloudy Grey and Shauna’s lot, and his old drunk of a mother, God rest her.
Before Pally reached the clearing into the campsite itself, he pulled the Jeep off to the left. They bumped along over open meadow, the lights tilting crazily up ahead in the gloom, until they saw a small gathering of people standing beside a barrel-top wagon. Pally clamped on the handbrake but left the engine running and the lights on to highlight the scene.
‘You should see this,’ said Pally, and climbed shakily out of the Jeep. ‘Come on.’
The small group of people beside the wagon were turning, looking back in the glare of the headlights. Josh thought he saw Trace, Claire’s sister. And that looked like Claire’s old Aunt Lil, her mother’s sister. Pally’s brother too, he thought he recognized. No one else. At least, no one that he could see.
He climbed out of the Jeep and approached the group. They watched him in silence as Pally grabbed a tilley lamp, opened the door of the wagon and ascended the steps. Josh followed. He had to bend nearly double inside, he was too tall for these old things. Pally hung the lamp on a hook and suddenly Josh could see what was in here.
It was a corpse.
‘She passed three days ago,’ said Pally.
Oh shit, thought Josh. Now he knew what was eating Pally up; it was grief.
He found himself staring down at a little old woman on the narrow bed. It was Eva Milo, Claire’s mother. She could almost be asleep, but she wasn’t. Her face was serene and white as parchment. Her thin wrinkled arms were folded on her chest, and she was dressed in a plum-coloured crushed-velvet dress with a pearl necklace at her throat. There were gold hoops in her ears. Her white hair was carefully coiffed, and someone had dabbed a little rouge on her lips.
But it was what Eva was clasping to her that caught Josh’s attention and made his breathing stall. She was holding a white dress, billowing and huge; it was spread out over her waist and legs like a vast white blanket. It glowed with pearls and glittered with crystals in the lamp light.
Josh felt the blood turn to ice in his veins as he looked down at Claire’s mother.
‘Is that . . . ?’ he started, then found his throat was too dry, he couldn’t get the words out.
‘Claire’s wedding dress,’ said Pally, nodding. ‘Eva kept it all this time, in here in its plastic wrapper. She said one day Claire would come back and she would want it.’ Pally’s tear-filled eyes met Josh’s then. ‘Eva kept the dress, in case. She wouldn’t let anyone touch it, not even when she was so ill this past six months or so. Claire would come back, she said. But Claire never did.’
‘Pally, I’m sorry.’ He had to tell the poor old cunt right now, that he’d seen Claire, that she was alive and well. But he couldn’t.
‘Your girl, your Shauna. She wanted Claire out of the way so she could get her hooks into you, isn’t that so? She wanted it, and she got it. You might ask yourself about that. Shauna was in real
tight with Jeb Cleaver once, did you know that?’
‘No,’ he said. He felt a shiver clutch at his vitals. ‘I didn’t know that.’ He did, he knew it damned well, but he wasn’t going to discuss any of that shit with Pally. He thought of the other two Cleavers, Rowan and Ciaran, both of them dead at Shauna’s hand.
‘Think about it,’ said Pally, and unhooked the lamp and indicated that Josh should open the door.
Out in the fresh air, Josh stumbled down the steps in a nightmarish daze and watched as Pally followed.
Pally paused on the steps, blew out the lamp. Someone in the watching group – Josh thought it was Trace, Claire’s sister – moved. Close by, someone started playing a melodeon, a mournful sound in the still of the night.
‘You want me to do it, Dad?’ Trace asked.
Pally didn’t reply. There was a liquid glugging as Pally fiddled with the lamp on the top step, and the sharp chemical scent of paraffin hit Josh’s nostrils.
Jesus, he’s going to . . .
‘Goodbye, old girl,’ said Pally, and a match flared and then the long chiffon folds of the wedding dress erupted in flames.
Josh had a horrifying sight for a moment – the dancing fire in the foreground and the dead old woman lying there at the back. Then the flames roared higher, and he couldn’t see a thing. Black smoke billowed out and the heat blazed fiercely. They all had to step back, it was searing. There came a smell of cooked meat and Josh found himself holding his breath in case he threw up.
The barrel-top wagon and its contents burned briskly, and soon the flames went dancing away into the night sky, carrying Eva Milo’s poor tormented soul up to the heavens. Josh looked around for Trace, Claire’s sister, but she was gone.
96
Josh crawled into bed at gone one in the morning. Shauna stirred, turned toward him.
‘I’ve missed you, Josh,’ she said, and he saw the glint of her eyes in the moonlight.
Josh’s mind was a whirl, trying to sift through all he’d heard and seen tonight. ‘I’ve only been gone a few hours,’ he said.
‘Not just tonight. Before. When you were away so much in the States. I hate it every time you go there. I miss you.’
Well, I don’t miss you.
‘You smell smoky,’ she said, sniffing his shoulder.
‘Do I? Don’t know why.’
Pally’s words were echoing around his head. You might ask yourself about that, he’d said.
‘That right, you were in tight with Jeb Cleaver?’ he said. He couldn’t help himself.
Shauna was silent. He couldn’t even hear her breathing. Then there was movement, and she switched on the bedside lamp. The room filled with light. Josh screwed up his eyes, wishing he’d said nothing. He was tired and he needed to sleep. But the thing had been circling in his brain ever since Pally had uttered the words; he couldn’t get it out of his head. He’d been so dazed by it all, so shocked. He’d never confronted her about any of this shit. Anything for a quiet life, that was him. But now he felt he had to speak.
‘What?’ she said, sitting up, staring down at him.
‘Jeb Cleaver. You and him had a thing going.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘It don’t matter who told me. Did you?’
‘This is bollocks! I think we went on one date, back in the day. Years ago. He spent the night chatting to his mates while I played the juke, bored out of my skull. Then he cut up nasty ’cos I wouldn’t go out with him again. I wouldn’t even let him in the trailer, locked the door on him, and he was there for nigh on an hour, knocking and shouting. I s’pose you were out fighting or you’d have seen. You’d have certainly heard. He left a half-eaten box of chocolates outside. And he kicked old Sand, our dog. I must have been mental to go out with him even once. But I was young and stupid. And it was just one date – God’s truth, Josh – then never again,’ lied Shauna, thinking Shit! How had he found that out?
Josh was silent, taking it in, thinking that she lied so easily. It came naturally to her.
‘Josh, you have to believe me,’ Shauna said in exasperation. ‘It was nothing. Now, who told you?’
But Josh turned his back to her. ‘It don’t matter. Turn the light out, will you, Shauna. I’m done in.’
Josh couldn’t sleep, not after that. As the luminous dial on the bedside clock read 2.05 a.m., in his mind’s eye he saw the flames of Eva Milo’s funeral pyre. Pally’s devastated face swirled in front of him as the man set light to what remained of his wife and to his daughter’s wedding gown, and sent them on their way together.
Now he was starting to see the whole picture. Shauna had been more tied in to those Cleaver bastards than he had ever known, and they had grabbed Claire, killed her dog, raped her, told her to go and never come back – on Shauna’s instructions.
The clock dial showed 3.14 a.m. when he started remembering the older Cleaver brothers, Ciaran and Rowan, coming into the kitchen at their old house overlooking the river. They’d brought shotguns, looking for him, intending to maim or kill him; 1978, that was the year – he’d never forget it. Shauna had saved him that night, no doubt about that. And the awfulness of what him and Shauna had to do afterwards – clearing away the bodies in the dead of night, praying that no one would see them at their grim task. Then sitting in the kitchen afterwards, exhausted, blood on the walls, blood and brains on the floor. It all had to be cleaned up, cleared away.
But Shauna saved me.
The memory was lodged there, at the back of his brain. He’d come in the back door that night, and Rowan Cleaver had been waiting for him at the door that led into the hall, holding the shotgun.
Josh looked at the illuminated dial on the clock again: 4.35 a.m.
And here was a strange thing. Their younger brother Jeb had never come back at the Flynn family, never pursued the matter of his two missing brothers. Or had he? Had Jeb – who had already done vile things for Shauna – had he come back here while Josh was away, made a deal with her?
Josh thought he had.
What he also thought was that Shauna had probably kept – and still kept – Jeb at hand to do any dirty work for her. And he shivered in alarm as he thought of poor old Pally and Trace and – Jesus! – Claire, over there in New York. One thing he was certain of: Shauna must never, ever know about him and Claire.
Rikker dovo adrée tute’s see, he thought in his old Romany tongue as he drifted off into a restless sleep.
Keep that a secret.
97
‘I’m going back to the States,’ said Josh at breakfast a few days later.
They were alone in the kitchen, him and Shauna. Connor was in London at the flat he kept there, and Aysha was out for the day with her husband.
‘What?’ demanded Shauna, dropping her knife and fork with a clatter. ‘Do you have to?’
‘Come on, Shaun. You know the pay’s better there. The crowds are bigger. It makes sense.’
‘No it don’t,’ said Shauna. ‘We need you here, Josh. Your family needs you.’
Josh said nothing, carried on eating. His family didn’t need him. His kids didn’t, anyway. Connor was a coper, he’d handle anything. And Aysha? Poor little cow, he felt bad for her. But they had both said their piece on her wedding day, and that had cleared the air. Now she was a married woman with a kid of her own on the way. As for Shauna . . . well, he wanted to be away from her. The further, the better. He wanted to think all this shit through, without her nagging at him. And he desperately needed to see Claire.
He couldn’t even look at Shauna now. Because of this woman, he’d lost his true love. And because of her love of money he’d killed a man, been untrue to himself.
Committed to her, tied to her by Connor’s birth, he’d tried so hard to give her everything she wanted. But really he’d always known that nothing would ever be enough for her. He’d got a fortune for what he’d done in the New Forest – but it had eaten into his soul, killing Andrew Meredith. He’d crossed a red line that day, gone
against his own instincts, and it was all her fault. Everything was.
‘Is this about some bastard telling you crap about me and Jeb Cleaver?’ she asked, her eyes alight with fury.
‘No. It ain’t.’
‘You’ve been in a funny mood ever since you came back from the States.’
‘No, I’m OK.’ Josh pushed his empty plate aside and picked up his coffee cup.
Now Shauna’s eyes filled with tears. Her lips trembled. ‘Don’t you love me any more, Josh? You used to love me . . .’
‘Don’t give me that bullshit, Shaun. I’m just going where the work is, that’s all.’
‘Then . . . I could come with you,’ she said.
Holy shit.
The thought of this poisonous bitch getting anywhere near Claire again . . .
‘No. Not a good idea. I’m going, and I’m going alone, OK?’
Josh stood up, went over to the sink and threw the coffee in there. He couldn’t drink it. He felt suffocated, like he was drowning; his throat was closed.
It’s her, he thought. Christ, I’ve got to get away.
‘I’m off out,’ he said, and headed for the door. ‘Jobs to do.’
Behind him, he heard his wife start to cry, huge theatrical sobs – the kind she was best at.
It was only when he was on the plane back to the States that he felt he could breathe easy again. Shauna had crushed the life out of him in those final days back home, and her screams and wails of protest had gone on right up to the wire. He watched an in-flight movie, a murder mystery, and his mind drifted; he saw again the flames of the gypsy burial, Pally’s bleached-white face, Trace looking at him with hatred – and why wouldn’t she?
‘More coffee, sir?’ asked the hostess, and he nodded. She refilled his cup. The drone of the plane’s engines was soothing, reminding him that he was leaving Shauna far behind.
Shauna.
His wife.
Mother of his children. Well, child, anyway.
