Playing Around

by Gilda O'Neill

  ‘Listen to that child’s language,’ wailed Tilly. ‘And in front of all these strangers. The shame of it. I’m going to pass out. I just know I am.’

  ‘Go and see to your mum, Jack.’ Angie picked up Martin’s top hat from the grass and led him over to a moss-covered, stone bench.

  ‘Sit down, Martin,’ she instructed him wearily. ‘You are really getting on my nerves.’

  He slumped down, his head falling to his chest. ‘Don’t you start on me as well, Squirt.’

  ‘Stop feeling so sorry for yourself, will you? This is real life. Not some game you can stop playing just because you don’t think it’s fair, or you don’t like the rules, or because you’ve got bored with it all. Get a flaming grip on yourself.’

  ‘Why should you care what I do?’

  ‘Because Jill’s having a baby, that’s why. Your baby. Your flesh and blood.’

  ‘She’ll be all right. What does she need me for?’ He glared at Jill’s brother, who was standing smoking and chatting, surprisingly amiably, with a very solemn-looking Stan Murray.

  ‘Her precious family can give her everything she needs.’

  ‘And what about the baby?’

  ‘That won’t want for anything either. Believe me.’

  ‘How about a father?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Look, Martin, I’d have given anything to have had a dad like the other kids in the street. I used to lay in bed thinking what he’d be like. Inventing little stories about where we would go out for the day during the summer holidays. Down to Walton-on-the-Naze and Jaywick and that. Like you and Jackie did with your dad. Like every kid should be entitled to. You don’t want your baby winding up like me, do you, making up lies at school about what we did and where we went?’

  ‘Why can’t you all just leave me alone? None of you have got a single clue about what I feel, or what I want. I’m not much more than a kid myself. Why should I have to go through all this? Whatever you say, it’s not fair.’

  Angie threw his hat down next to him. ‘I’m getting fed up with people being selfish. I’ve got more worrying me, Martin, than you could ever imagine in your stupid, narrow little world. You can’t begin to imagine the problems I’ve got, and yet I’m standing here trying to coax you and be nice to you. Well, I’m fed up with it. And as if that lot’s not bad enough, I’ve even got my mum flipping well sitting over there in that church. And I know she’s going to show me up and start queening it over everyone.’ She hauled him up by the lapels. ‘So just get on your sodding, stupid feet, and start acting like a bloody grown-up for once, and decide what you’re going to do.’

  ‘I don’t know what I want to do.’ He stood there, a picture of self-indulgent misery. ‘Help me, Squirt. Please.’

  ‘Oh no, you’re not doing that to me. The choice is yours. No one can make it for you. You, Martin. You make up your mind. Are you gonna be a grown-up or a stupid whiny kid for the rest of your life?’

  Before Martin could even think which choice he would make – adult or child – Jackie had stomped over to them, ploughing her way through the waving churchyard grasses, her dress clutched up around her knees.

  ‘Satisfied are you, Martin?’ She looked and sounded as if she were about to detonate. ‘Jill’s mum’s out here as well now. Crying her sodding eyes out. You’ve had your fun and now you’ve got to pay the price.’

  ‘Look,’ Angie said, her face almost touching his. ‘Just get in that bloody church, will you?’

  Then she turned on her heel and started dragging Jackie back towards the cluster of little bridesmaids, who were waiting for them, increasingly noisily, by the lychgate. But suddenly she stopped, almost tripping Jackie over, then turned her head and called over her shoulder. ‘And stop calling me Squirt, will you, Martin?’

  Despite the drama, the tears and the delay, Jill Walker eventually became Mrs Martin Murray at a ceremony that everyone agreed was as moving as it was beautiful, and, as the wedding party made its way across the fields, back to the marquee that had been set up in the Walkers’ garden, even Martin was smiling.

  ‘I know you were scared,’ Jill said to him, as they led the guests through the five-bar gate that separated the sun-dappled wood at the back of the churchyard from the Walkers’ manicured lawns, ‘but you won’t regret it, Martin. I promise.’

  She kissed him tenderly on the lips, and a cheer went up from the crowd behind them.

  ‘And I promise I’ll make all this up to you, Jill.’

  ‘I should hope so. You can show willing by asking my mother to dance immediately after we’ve had the first waltz.’

  ‘Why don’t you go over and speak to her, Sal?’ Doris, still full from the wedding breakfast, but managing to work her way through a plateful of goodies from the evening finger buffet, inclined her head towards Violet, who was dancing animatedly with a puce-faced, guffawing, elderly relative of Jill’s.

  Sarah watched her daughter flirting outrageously with the no-doubt rich old man. ‘It’s been a long time since we’ve had anything decent to say to one another.’

  Doris sorted through her plate for another of the miniature boiled eggs that she had developed such a taste for in the past few hours. ‘Didn’t you pop round there about a month ago?’ She lowered her voice. ‘When that copper came sniffing round.’

  ‘Yeah, I did. I was going to talk to her about Angie. But it was so awkward I just left in the end.’

  ‘Remember what they say, Sal. This ain’t a dress rehearsal, girl. Don’t you go leaving it too late.’

  ‘You’re cheerful.’

  ‘Just honest, Sal. Just honest.’

  ‘You all right, Nan?’ Angie, with Jackie and her boyfriend, Andrew, in tow, bent down and kissed her grandmother.

  Sarah stood up and held her granddaughter at arm’s length. ‘Don’t these girls look lovely?’

  ‘I should say they do,’ Doris mumbled through a mouthful of mayonnaise-covered quail’s egg. ‘And to think I used to have a figure like theirs.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to introduce us to your young man, Jackie? Angie’s told me ever so much about him.’

  ‘Andrew, this is Mrs Pearson, Angie’s nan. And this is Mrs Barker, Mrs Pearson’s friend.’

  Flashing the dimpled smile that had made Jackie want to leap on him the first time she had set eyes on him, Andrew sat down and set about charming them as only a handsome young man could charm two ladies who had reached a certain age.

  Jackie rolled her eyes. ‘Watch this, Ange, he’s a right flipping professional.’

  Angie didn’t reply.

  ‘What’s up with you?’

  ‘I was just thinking that at least one of us got a decent bloke.’

  Jackie stepped back to allow a tipsy-looking middle-aged couple, who were experimenting with a strange variation of the Twist, gyrate unsteadily by. ‘Still haven’t heard anything from you-know-who?’

  ‘No.’

  Jackie didn’t know anything other than what Angie had told her: that she had broken up with her boyfriend.

  ‘Not even a note, or a bunch of flowers begging you to come back?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Do you miss him?’

  ‘Can we drop it, Jack? Please.’

  ‘All right, touchy.’ Jackie tapped her foot idly to the band’s rather good stab at ‘She Loves You’. ‘Don’t look now,’ she whispered excitedly, ‘but Jill’s gorgeous brother Guy’s staring at you again. He’s hardly taken his eyes off you all day. Shall I take you over so he can ask you to have a dance?’

  ‘No thanks, Jack, I’m going outside to get some air.’

  ‘Hi there. Jackie said I’d find you out here. I’m Guy. Jill’s big brother? I came to thank you for working your magic on Martin earlier. And to ask you for a dance.’

  Angie slowly opened her eyes and looked up at him. She had been sitting alone on the grass, in the cool evening air, in the ridiculously pretty garden, leaning against a fairy-light-bedecked tree. In her
mind she had been going over and over the past four months, wondering how so much could have happened. Some really exciting things, but also some terrible things, frightening things, and she was wondering how she would ever get her life back to some sort of normality. And, all the while, just a few yards from where she was sitting, people were dancing and laughing, acting as if they didn’t have a single thought in their heads other than enjoying themselves.

  ‘I’m sorry, Guy, you’ve caught me at a bad time. I’m off blokes at the moment.’

  ‘Not even a dance?’

  ‘No. Not even a dance.’

  He kneeled down on the grass, stretched out and rested his hand against the tree, trapping her against the trunk. ‘Someone must have hurt you really badly.’

  ‘Yes. He did. And a lot of other people too.’ She lifted his hand away. ‘If you don’t mind.’

  ‘Can’t I just sit with you for a while?’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t, but it’s your garden.’

  He settled down next to her. ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘Nothing really,’ she lied. ‘I’m just passing the time until we can go to the hotel for the night.’ She flushed scarlet, the moment she registered the embarrassing double meaning in her words.

  Then she smiled, as Guy, to his credit, hadn’t even hinted at a suggestive remark.

  ‘I’m sorry if you don’t care for the way I’m preparing your case, Mr Fuller.’

  ‘You’re sorry if I don’t care …’ David erupted from his chair, and grabbed the table that stood between him and his lawyer, Thomas Frazier. He was that close to raising it above his head and smashing it into the little prick’s face, but he knew he had two warders sitting behind him, willing him to lose his temper. That knowledge quickly brought him back to his senses. He held up his hands in surrender and sat down again.

  ‘I apologize. It’s this place. It’s getting to me.’

  Me too, thought Frazier, as he ran his finger round his neck, loosening his collar, wondering, yet again, what on earth had possessed him to opt for criminal law when he could have been working in the overpaid and coddled corporate world alongside his father in the City.

  ‘But, let’s face it, Frazier, you’re not exactly getting results, are you, moosh? I’ve been stuck in here for nearly a month now on these ridiculous drugs charges, and, if you don’t pull your finger out, they’re going to try and stuff me with something far worse.’

  ‘Mr Fuller—’

  ‘Don’t waste your time Mr Fullering me. You just get up off your arse and get something, anything, on Burman. Then maybe he’ll shift his arse and start helping me the way he should have been all along.’

  ‘Mr Fuller. I am doing my very best.’ He took out his handkerchief and wiped his sweating palms. ‘But I should warn you, if this continues: these outbursts, and these ridiculous demands to see me at weekends – do you know how far it is from Hertfordshire to Brixton, and how heavy the Saturday evening traffic can be? And as for treating me as if I were an amateur detective. It’s quite ridiculous. I’m afraid if this continues, I’ll no longer be able to represent you.’

  David gritted his teeth. ‘I said, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I think that’s all we need to discuss for now. I’ll be in touch.’

  It took all David’s will not to smack him across his pathetic, pasty face.

  Disappointed as the two warders were that they hadn’t been given an excuse to give that cocky bastard Fuller a good hiding, they were content in the knowledge, as they led him back to the remand wing, that he would soon be getting a visit to his cell that they would have paid good money to have witnessed – had they not already been paid good money to stay well away from it.

  David stretched out on his bed, with his hands clasped under his head, staring up at the ceiling. He’d always known that just because a bloke had a snotty accent, it didn’t make him clever, but that lawyer, he was as thick as shit. First thing Monday morning he’d get something done about him. It was only a shame it was a Saturday or he’d have got on to it right away.

  As David thought about how much he’d like to kick the stupid berk right up the jacksy, he heard the sound of approaching footsteps outside his cell, a key turning in the lock, then someone asking from the doorway, ‘David Fuller?’

  David ignored him. He hated the screws as much as he detested that stinking lawyer, almost as much as he hated being locked up in this rancid pisshole for twenty-three hours a day.

  But at the sound of the door closing with a slam, David sat up.

  It wasn’t a warder. Standing in the cell were two heavily built men, men who had only recently come on to the wing, but who were already swaggering about the landing as if they owned the place.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked, now completely alert.

  ‘We’ve been requested to remind you that gossiping isn’t very nice, Mr Fuller. And to make sure you remember who your friends are.’

  David stood up. ‘I ain’t got any friends.’

  The man who had not spoken walked slowly across the tiny room towards David, but didn’t stop until he was behind him.

  ‘Not even Mr Burman?’ asked the other man.

  ‘Never heard of him.’ David knew he was trapped. He looked over his shoulder. The bloke was just standing there.

  ‘That’s funny, cos he’s sent you a message. And, if you don’t understand it, your life’s gonna be hell, chum. Absolute fucking hell.’

  With that, the man standing behind him grabbed David’s arms and twisted them hard up his back, and the other man began smashing his fists into David’s handsome face.

  ‘Ronald, may I introduce Chantalle Turner.’ Peter Burman with his mannered middle-European accent and his flash of gold teeth, gave a stiff little bow, as he gestured to the girl who was standing by his side. ‘She will be sitting with you this evening.’

  Delighted by his lovely, and very young, dining companion, Detective Chief Inspector Ronald Leigh helped her into her seat.

  There were eight seats all together, spaced around the big mahogany table that took up most of the private dining-room in the exclusive, and very discreet, club in St James’s, that Burman had invited him to for ‘an evening of pleasure and maybe a little business’.

  ‘Charmed, my dear,’ said Leigh, thinking how exactly Burman had matched his taste for buxom redheads.

  ‘Will you excuse me for one moment?’ Burman backed away from the table with another little bow, and left the room to speak to the uniformed man at the reception desk.

  ‘Messages,’ said Burman, holding out his hand.

  ‘One just arrived, sir.’ The man handed over a letter, wishing he had spat on it first.

  Burman ripped it open and tossed the envelope, without a glance, on the counter, then turned his back on the man, went over to the fireplace, which despite the unseasonably warm weather was, as usual, burning logs, and read the note.

  Satisfied that his orders to pass on a message to David Fuller had been carried out that evening, Peter Burman tore the note in half and threw it into the fire.

  Chapter 17

  ‘BOBBY, I’M TELLING you, I can’t stand it here no more.’

  Maureen was sitting with her husband on the balcony of their villa, with their two Alsatians, Duke and Duchess, and Denise, her parrot, thinking about pouring her first gin and tonic of the day, and it was barely half past twelve. Half past ten back home. If she was there, she would just be going down Rathbone market to sort through the bargains, to have a laugh with the stall holders and to have a big, steaming plateful of pie, mash, stewed eels and liquor for her dinner. Christ, she could go a plate of pie and mash. If she saw another bit of battered squid in a harbourside flaming restaurant …

  ‘But, Maur, what’s not to stand?’ Bobby gestured to the picture-postcard view in front of them. ‘Blue skies. Lovely warm sea. A beautiful home. Plenty of dough to spend on whatever takes your fancy.’

  ‘I fancy pie and mash.’

  �
��Maureen …’

  ‘Bobby …’

  ‘What’s really up, babe?’

  ‘I told you. It’s this place. It’s driving me out of my brain. I want to go home. I want to go down Rathbone Street. I want to see me friends. Speak to people who know what I’m going on about and who know how to have a joke. I don’t even know where Cyprus is on the flipping map.’

  ‘I’ll buy you one.’

  ‘I don’t want a map.’ Maureen clapped her hand to her forehead. ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘How about the animals?’ Bobby ruffled Duke’s silky black ears. ‘They’d have to go into quarantine. And you wouldn’t like that, would you?’

  Maureen pursed her lips and glared at him. ‘Don’t make up ridiculous excuses, Bob. If you managed to get that bloke to fetch them over here for us, then you know, as well as I know, that you’d find a way to get them back again.’

  She went over to her husband, sat on his knee and put her arms round his neck. ‘Please, Bob,’ she said in a girlie little voice.

  ‘Sorry, babe, we can’t. But I have got a surprise for you. I was saving it till later.’

  She loosened her hold. ‘What’s that?’ she asked flatly. ‘You gonna plant another palm tree?’

  ‘No.’ Bobby sounded hurt. He’d taken a lot of trouble making the garden nice for her. And he thought the palm trees looked great. ‘Jeff and Jean are moving over here. Mr Burman’s letting them have that little place just along the track.’

  ‘Terrific.’ Maureen threw up her hands. ‘I never liked them two at home. Especially her, the mouthy cow. Why should I like them over here?’

  Bobby didn’t know what to say.

  ‘So, this is it, eh, Bob?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Trapped in sodding paradise.’

  Bobby flinched at the sound of Maureen swearing. She was doing a lot of that lately. It wasn’t like her. ‘You should get a hobby, babe. Knitting or something.’

  She jumped off his lap and stomped through to the kitchen to make herself a very large drink.