December

by Phil Rickman

  Martin Broadbank had the not-so-absurd desire to lean across the counter of the yacht-varnished pine and bury his face in those wonderfully friendly knockers.

  Instead, he told her his name. On the offchance she really didn't know, he told her what his line of business was. He told her they appeared to be living in neighbouring villages. He invited her to discuss the possibilities of wider marketing of cheese-substitute flans and similar items. Over dinner.

  'And your husband, of course,' he added regretfully.

  'Oh,' she said.

  'Problems?'

  'No, I ... it could be a little difficult, that is …'

  She was silent for a moment, then she smiled. Behind the smile he could see a whole computer-game of criss-crossing emotions: a ray of hope zapped by dark apprehension, a trace of fear even.

  'Of course.' she said. 'We'd love to.'

  After his supper of cheese and water-biscuits, the vicar wandered across to his church.

  It was a smaller building even than the vicarage, probably never much more than a chapel, an outpost of the Abbey. And quite intimate, especially at night, soft, white moonlight washing through high windows, making pools on the stone floor around the altar.

  The vicar knelt in the silence before the altar and prayed for strength.

  'How are you going to get me out of this one, eh?' he said forlornly. 'I didn't want to come, but you - and he - put the arm on me and so here I am, and look at me. Shit-scared. I need help.'

  He waited, hands clasped, elbows on the altar. A wooden cross in its centre had an aureole of moonlight.

  The vicar listened to his heart.

  Half an hour passed. The only image he received was one of Isabel Pugh, poor cow, in her electric wheelchair.

  Eventually he sighed and got to his feet.

  'Not time yet, then? That what you're saying? A few things to work out?'

  Well, what had he expected? A golden light around him, a vision like Richard Walden's, accompanied by an overwhelming sense of joy encased in strength?

  He stood in silence and raised his eyes to the small window above the altar. The moon chose that moment to vanish into cloud, and it became very dark in the church. When the vicar opened the door, there was a quick push of wind, as if the night was elbowing him aside in its hurry to enter the church. The vicar felt empty, lightweight, ineffectual and stupid.

  It was going to be hard.

  That night, in bed, Martin Broadbank mused to his housekeeper, Meryl, 'Could be rather fun, don't you think? I do love surprises, confrontations, human friction. I'm almost inclined to invite old Sir Wilfrid, too. In fact, I think I bloody well will.'

  His housekeeper said, 'You think that's wise? He's not what you'd call a sociable old man.'

  'What's wise got to do with it?' Martin was feeling good. Five minutes ago, at the critical moment, his mind had seized an image of Mrs Shelley Storey with earth-shaking results. He didn't think Meryl would mind, this once.

  Meryl said, 'I know one thing. The Lady Bluefoot wouldn't care for him. I reckon she'd find him rather common, for a Sir.'

  'Mmmn,' Martin said. 'Well ...' This was Meryl's way of voicing her own dislike.

  And she's been very sweet lately, haven't you smelled it, in the drawing-room?'

  Tm really quite intrigued, you know,' he said, dismissing their house-ghost with his usual non-committal tolerance. 'What would Storey be like? How will the humourless Case actually handle him? Hey, you do know why he's a recluse, don't you?'

  'You're not God, you know, Martin,' his housekeeper reminded him. 'To arrange people like chess pieces.'

  'Because he actually killed his wife; it's quite a story. God? Who wants to be God anyway? God never has any fun.'

  Her third night at the Glasgow airport hotel and Moira Cairns, in a baggy, knee-length Bart Simpson T-shirt, was lying restlessly between a couple of pillows as hard as flour bags. And nurturing a low anger, maybe to keep the fear away.

  Three anonymous nights here were the kind of luxury - if you could call these pillows luxury - which, hardly having worked at all the past year, she'd have to start learning to do without.

  On the slippery side of midnight, she lay all alone in the double bed and held in both hands the single page of paper: plain blue Basildon Bond, not a whiff of perfume, nor even a hint of deathbed violets.

  Was this it? Was this the old witch's principal bequest - a sheet of folded chainstore notepaper with hex-words scrawled upon it?

  She glared at the two bland plant pictures on the wall, especially chosen for people who hated art. Yet she'd come here precisely because it was so damn bland, every room alike. Well removed from both a croft house on Skye and the one palatial mobile home among the jumble of patched-up caravans on a scruffy, statutory gypsy site an hour's drive from here.

  Round about now, Donald and the nieces would be arranging the Duchess neatly in her coffin - her big day tomorrow - and praying to God the old besom would not sit up suddenly in the night and rebuke them for doing it all wrong.

  And tomorrow Moira would drive back to the site, for maybe the last time, and would have to react to her mammy's final challenge.

  How?

  Twenty-five years ago, she gave me the glamour on a plate, handed princess-potential to a dowdy kid. Twenty-five years ago, she touched me with her glitzy music-hall magic and while all that glitters may not be gold, it sure as hell still glitters.

  So where's the damn glitter in this?

  All she leaves for me is a bleak reminder of the worst of times, two words she surely got out of my own head when I was not taking care. And scrawled in pencil on a sheet of … not even her usual gilt-headed parchment but the stuff you can buy pads of at any newsagent's.

  This was not the Duchess's style. Had the letter been given to her by anyone but Donald, she would have been suspicious of its origins. But, hell... even in a scrawl, the character of the hand was plainly the Duchess's.

  Written in pain? Written in anger? Frustration?

  The bedside lights seemed to dim in acknowledgement all around her, the sheets on the bed suddenly felt deathbed-stiff. She scrambled out in a hurry, fumbling for the dressing-table lights.

  Sitting at the dressing-table, breathing rapidly, she spread out the paper, held her head in her hands, her elbows on the linen mat, and she stared hard at the words: Breadwinner, deathoak.

  This was the point: no glitz.

  The note said to Moira: Listen. I am a woman. I am frightened. I make no pretence of being able to deal with this. There is no crest on this paper, no perfume, because against this thing the glamour is no defence. I am on my own with a stub of pencil, one sheet of blue Basildon Bond and my terrible, terrible fear.

  This humble, scrawled message, without grace, without elegance, was therefore the heaviest warning the Duchess could give her.

  There was a small noise from behind her. Like an affirmation. Like yes.

  Moira spun in time to see one of the bland Trust House Forte plant pictures tumble the final few inches to the carpet. When she picked it up she found the glass had split from corner to corner.

  III

  All Dead

  Shelley had her back to the window this time, talking to somebody. Probably the man himself.

  Be dark soon. They didn't like the Weasel coming round in the dark, but the days getting shorter reduced his options.

  Lights were blinking on in the village. It looked like a much bigger place at night; you could see all the lights from up here, the pub and the church hall and that.

  Previously there'd been trees, mostly saplings and half-grown conifers planted by the developers, this specialist firm that built the house around the shell of a ruined barn in '92. In a couple of years the new trees would have been blocking the village lights, giving Tom and Shelley more privacy.

  Except Tom didn't want that. Privacy, sure; this had to be important, he never came out. But he couldn't be shut in by nature, needed to see the lights at night.<
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  Also, for some reason, he didn't like big trees.

  So the trees had gone, the young ones dug up and given away, the others chopped, a big fence put in. Shelley hadn't been happy about all this, and some local conservation type also kicked up, raising, at the same time, the issue of Weasel's mobile home. To cool the protests, they'd agreed to conceal the caravan with bushes and larch-lap, but they were still getting hostile looks from the green-anorak brigade.

  Tom didn't care. He never had to see any of them, on account of never going out. He'd found his place and he wasn't moving.

  The Weasel saw Tom's hulking shadow blocking out the kitchen light, waving its arms about like King Kong.

  He remembered standing on this very spot about a year ago when the house was only half-built, watching the dowsers, two serious geezers gliding around the site with their forked twigs and their, whatdoyoucallems, on strings - pendulums. Seeing if it was safe for Tom to live here, with no ancient vibes and stuff.

  Poor paranoid bastard.

  'No bleeding way,' Tom Storey said. 'And this, darlin'... this is my last word. OK?'

  She didn't reply. Tom's tone turned threatening. 'I said ... is that OK?' Spittle at the corner of his mouth.

  He looked away, shut his lips tight, clearly regretting it. He was like a big, stupid dog, growled at you then wagged his tail apologetically.

  She watched him glaring over her shoulder out of the wide kitchen window at the lights in the village houses which might have been a hundred miles away across what she always thought of as his moat. It was after five and going rapidly dark. Shelley knew she was going to hate the long nights.

  Tom said, more quietly, 'Toffee-nosed gits in monkey suits?' He sniffed hard. 'You go.'

  'Honey ...' Shelley sighed, wiping her hands on her butcher's apron. 'I think - I really think you're living in the past. Dinner parties are - I mean, nobody's going to turn a hair

  if you show up as you are now. Obviously, I'd prefer you in a suit, you know? Just for once?'

  'Oh.' Tom faced her now, unsteadily, across the heavy pine kitchen table. 'You would prefer me in a suit.' His big hands flat on the tabletop, but quivering. 'I ain't got a bleeding suit, have I? In fact, I ain't never ...'

  'I'll buy you one,' Shelley, steeling herself for the inevitable response, took a tin from the Welsh dresser, began spooning out the decaff.

  'Like fuck you will!'

  'Tom.' Shelley swallowed. 'It's not been a wonderful year, all right? If things don't show a clear improvement by the end of January, Cirencester's got to go, and it's a good shop, potentially.'

  'So you close it down. How you gonna sell it? Nuffink moving, nowhere.'

  'No, look ... what I'm saying is, Tom, I need this. It's on a plate. I'll probably never get a chance like this again. I need Broadbank. He owns seventeen supermarkets and he's expanding. He's a gift.'

  'So go, doll, just go. What's your problem?

  You are my problem, she wanted to scream at him. You have been my problem for much of my adult life. She turned away, but could still see him reflected in the shiny hotplate covers on the Aga, his yellow-white hair sprouting in harsh tufts and his mouth vanishing into his moustache. The face was distended by a big scratch he'd once made with a saucepan, in anger.

  He tried to smash Agas with stainless steel saucepans. He'd never laid a finger on her. He was forty-seven years old. He was a child.

  Shelley said calmly, 'He rang again, Tom. He suggested Tuesday. He said he was particularly looking forward to seeing you. He said a friend of his was coming who's ...' Oh God ' …who's a long-standing fan of yours.'

  'Oh well,' Tom said. 'That's different, innit?' She saw the table starting to rock under the pressure of his great hands. 'You know how I love to meet my old fans. Autograph an album or two. Talk about the classic gigs, how I used to know the actual Lee Gibson.'

  'Tom, please ...'

  'No more congenial way to spend an evening, sweetheart. Analyse the techniques of Clapton and Knopfler, discuss the merits of the Telecaster against the Les Paul. Explain in detail why I ain't done a gig in ten years. Oh, what jolly fun, what …'

  'Stop it!'

  'Anyway.' Tom's mouth smiled. 'Let me make it simple for you. What you do is, you ring him back, tonight, and you say, Mr Broadarse, you say, my husband has asked me to convey best wishes to you and his express desire for you to go and stuff yourself right up …'

  'You f—' Shelley slammed the coffee tin on the dresser. Bit her lip, stared at the floor. 'Oaf.'

  Tom was swaying, fish-eyed. Shelley said, 'You know what this is, don't you? This is clinical agoraphobia. You're a very sick man, Tom, you know that?'

  'You just don't...'

  'Understand. I know, I know. It's all you ever say.'

  She turned away from him. In the Aga's covers, she saw him start to shake and splutter, a big vein burrowing under his forehead like a sand-worm.

  'And one day,' she said softly into the stove, 'you will have to leave.'

  'The men in white coats? That what you're saying? Gonna have me committed, are we?'

  Tom,' she said through clenched teeth. 'You are ill.'

  'Piss off. Day after day I get this shit. Night after bleeding night.' He was trembling badly; sometimes she wondered if there was something seriously, physically wrong coming on. Parkinson's or something.

  'Tom ...'

  'Shut it! I don't have to take this ... bleeding sixth-form psychology. You don't know nuffink. You ain't been frew nuffink.'

  Ain't been frew nuffink. How many thousand times had he thrown this at her? Never spelling it out. Never saying, you can't see the things I can see. Certainly never itemising the things he could see and she couldn't.

  'No.' Shelley crushed three fingers of her left hand in her tight fist. 'You don't have to take it, this is true. And neither do I …'

  She looked up. Tom had gone quiet.

  Shelley saw that his daughter was watching them solemnly from the doorway.

  'Dad,' Vanessa said. 'Weasel's here.'

  'Just what we needed,' Shelley said. 'Get rid of him.'

  Through the kitchen window she saw him at the door, a sinewy little man with a smile which somebody, Dave Reilly probably, used to compare to a vandalised cemetery. Except at weekends or when invited, Weasel never came up to the house after work. He sat in his caravan and played music and probably smoked dope; it was an understanding and a good one.

  So this was not Weasel's time, and he knew it, but here he was, leering grotesquely through the window, an LP record under his arm.

  The anger fell away, and Shelley - big, busty, bustling Shelley Love - felt suddenly rather fearful.

  Vanessa. ..

  The kid opened the door for Weasel, gave him a grin, not quite so wide as usual.

  Triffic little girl, nearly fourteen years old now. Beautiful kid. Not in the usual sense, but because of what she was.

  This was the reason Shelley stayed with Tom, despite all his shit. Vanessa was everything to Shelley.

  Everything but her own child.

  'How are ya, Princess?'

  'All right, thank you, Weasel.' Vanessa was wearing black jeans and a big white sweater with a black cat motif, her brown hair was cut short and curly and she wore plastic rainbow hoop earrings that matched her big glasses.

  'Dad and Shelley have had another row,' Vanessa said solemnly.

  The Weasel smiled. These kids, their minds were less subtle. Operated on less wavelengths, not the same range, something like that. Anything bothering them, they came right out with it, hearts on their sleeves.

  'Come in, then. Weasel,' she said impatiently.

  The Weasel was as careful about Vanessa as Tom was, both of them blaming themselves. Obviously the big crash would never have happened if Tom hadn't been left without his personal roadie that night. If Weasel hadn't been in hospital with hepatitis; (occupational hazard). And if ...

  'Fanks, Princess.'

  ... What the he
ll; she was all right, was Vanessa. Everybody liked her; how many people could say that?

  He followed her inside and stood outside the kitchen door while she went in. 'Tell your old man,' he said.

  When the doctors told Tom that the baby they'd pulled out of Debs before she died was Down's Syndrome, the big guy had gone on this six-day bender, hoping to drown himself. The chick in Publicity at Epidemic Records had pulled him out and into a private clinic Max Goff paid for - guilt money, Max feeling responsible too, poor dead megalomaniac.

  Everybody felt responsible for Vanessa; the kid would've grown up some kind of icon in a glass case, but for the chick in Publicity, who threw in some love on top of everybody else's money. The chick was called Love, very apt.

  Had a cool head, too, over those enormous bristols, enough common sense to unscramble Tom's finances and nail Epidemic to the wall for compensation. And then - having negotiated herself out of a job and realising Tom wasn't going to be earning rock star's money for a good long time, if ever again - she'd invested the loot in a health food shop in Cheltenham, where she was born, and they'd lived over the shop for a while and tried not to look back.

  The Weasel, meanwhile, coming out of hospital to find himself skint and jobless, had drifted back into what he'd been doing before, which, basically, amounted to rescuing wealthy overprivileged people from the soul-destroying consequences of their own acquisitiveness - this was how Dave Reilly had described it when they were pissed up one night, the Weasel, delighted, getting him to write it down.

  But the Old Bill was still calling it burglary. When he was finally nicked, after a good run, around the end of '87, he was looking at eighteen months.

  Served twelve. Time for a new start. When they let him out of Wandsworth, he'd figured his best bet would be a small shop, nothing too ambitious.

  So he's jemmying away round the back of a little tobacconist's when the alarm goes off, right? Suddenly, a great light is shining down on him - this super-powerful wall-mounted security spot. But it has the same effect as if this was the Damascus bypass ... hey, man, what the fuck am I doing here?