Snake in the Grass

by Dominic Luke

  Sandra was waving at someone. ‘Look! There’s Cally!’

  Indeed it was. Cally with her straight hair (it had been curly when she was younger), a red polo-neck jumper, blue skirt, pale green tights, flat prosaic black shoes.

  ‘Cally! Over here!’

  ‘The new girl,’ said Charley. ‘Stuck up.’

  ‘No she’s not,’ said Sandra. ‘You have to make an effort, that’s all. She’s shy.’

  ‘Inbred. The upper classes are always inbred.’

  ‘She’s not upper class.’

  ‘She’s up herself.’

  ‘Shut up, Charley. She’ll hear you.’

  Cally’s arrival caused an upheaval in the seating arrangements. Ash was sent over to perch on the edge of Charley’s chair. Cally squeezed in next to Sandra. Dean gazed at Cally. Calabria, he thought. Her name is Calabria. It said it all.

  Cally and Sandra were talking, but Dean could only hear Cally’s voice. ‘… what exhibition … oh, I see: I’m not really into painting and all that … well, riding mainly: horse riding … he’s called Phlogiston, he’s not mine really, he belongs to Grandma … I live with Grandma, my mother’s not, er, not around….’ What a voice. Sublime.

  It was Charley’s unaccustomed silence which roused Dean out of his stupor. It was most unlike Charley not to have elbowed his way into the conversation. Dean tore his eyes away from Cally, looked over at Charley, who had slid right down in his chair so that his bum was hanging over the edge. He had his head on one side, too – trying, Dean realized, to see up Cally’s skirt.

  Dean was aware of his fists clenching; he experienced an incomprehensible desire to punch Charley in the face.

  What was going on? Charley pissed him off a lot of the time, but Dean had never felt the need to punch him before – not even when Charley had made sarky comments about Dean’s spots clearing up ‘at long last’. (Charley never had spots, never exhibited any outward sign of his utter depravity. There had to be a picture of Charley in an attic somewhere that you’d need health-and-safety goggles to look at.)

  If I wasn’t such a freak, thought Dean, I’d be able to think up a really clever remark to put Charley in his place. But it was no use. He wasn’t a smart alec like that. It was difficult enough to talk at all, hidebound by his inhibitions as he was. Sometimes it felt like he was trapped inside his own body, would never get out. What was shyness for, anyway? Why had it evolved in the first place? (Cally was shy: Sandra had said so.)

  ‘There’s Miss Taylor!’ said Sandra suddenly. ‘She’s helping with the exhibition too.’

  Dean didn’t dare look, felt his cheeks begin to glow.

  ‘Miss Taylor!’ Charley was disparaging. ‘She’s whacko.’

  ‘Menopausal,’ said Ash knowledgeably.

  ‘Her clothes!’ Cally giggled.

  ‘I like the way she dresses.’ Sandra stuck her nose in the air. ‘She’s an individual.’

  ‘Charity shop chic,’ mocked Charley. ‘And she’s old. Past it.’

  ‘She’s not that old, Charley.’ Sandra knew best. ‘She’s only about forty.’

  ‘Forty’s, like, ancient.’

  ‘Grandma says she’s a misfit,’ Cally put in.

  ‘Miss Fit.’ Ash guffawed. ‘Fit Miss Fit.’

  ‘Destined to remain a miss for ever,’ said Charley. ‘Though Ash would still do her. Ash would do anything with a pulse.’

  ‘Shut up, Charley man, innit! Nobody would do an old bird like what she is!’

  Dean sank down in his chair, wondering if his cheeks were as red as they felt. He wished the panther would go away, wished they’d shut up about her. Why had she come in here anyway? Who was she talking to? Dying of embarrassment, he couldn’t bring himself to look at Cally anymore. Perhaps it was for the best. He didn’t want people to get the wrong idea, to think he was interested in her or something. He didn’t fancy her. He had a perfectly understandable scientific curiosity about her, that was all.

  But the others wouldn’t see it that way.

  Oh God, why didn’t the bell go? Anything to put him out of his misery!

  FIFTEEN

  LEAVING HER CAR in the car park where the open-air swimming pool used to be, Lydia walked past Basil’s latest monstrosity – an arcade of empty shops to join all the other empty shops ornamenting the town – and then, dodging marauding packs of half-term kids, she slipped into Boots to buy a pregnancy test kit.

  ‘It’s not for me,’ she told the girl on the till, whom she remembered teaching a year or so back. ‘It’s for a friend.’

  ‘Would you like any stamps or top-ups?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Have you got a Boots card?’

  ‘No.’

  Would you like a Boots card?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Pease check the amount and enter your PIN number.’

  ‘You don’t need to say “number”.’ Lydia did her best to be enlightening, continuing where she’d left off in college. ‘The N in PIN stands for number, so you don’t need to say it again.’

  The girl’s smile didn’t falter. ‘Thank you. Next, please.’

  Nice to know, thought Lydia as she exited Boots, hurried past Waitrose, that some things never change. There had always been something impenetrable about that girl. You might as well have banged your head against a brick wall.

  Popping into Wetherspoons, she climbed the stairs to make use of their prize-winning toilets, too impatient to wait until she got home before using the test kit.

  Sitting on the toilet lid, she awaited the verdict.

  It can’t be the menopause, she told herself: I’m not nearly old enough. But wouldn’t the menopause be preferable? Or maybe itwas simply down to stress: Prize, Richard, that sort of thing.

  She was most definitely not pregnant.

  She looked down, removed her hand that had been shielding the indicator.

  She was pregnant. Pregnant.

  Stuffing the test kit paraphernalia into her bag, she flushed the toilet, let herself out of the cubicle, washed her hands, looked at herself in the mirror. Blooming? Glowing? Pasty would be nearer the mark. Gaunt. Bags under her eyes. Those pernicious grey hairs.

  Going down to the bar, she ordered a gin and tonic.

  ‘Would you like to double up for an extra pound?’ asked the girl behind the bar.

  ‘Yes. Why not. A double. No, on second thoughts, make that a double double.’

  ‘A double double?’

  ‘A double double. Two doubles. Two times two.’

  ‘In the same glass?’

  ‘That’s right, you’ve got it.’

  ‘With ice and lemon?’

  ‘Spot on.’

  ‘And tonic?’

  ‘And tonic.’

  ‘One bottle of tonic or two?’

  Oh Lord, this could go on for ever. Didn’t I teach her, too, at one time? Didn’t do her much good. But this girl here, and the one in Boots, they hadn’t got themselves pregnant: they had more sense, so the last laugh was theirs.

  Finally in possession of her drink, Lydia threaded her way between tables to a sofa in one corner, sank down feeling suddenly weary, as if hours and hours had passed since she’d been sitting in the toilet with the test kit.

  They weren’t very reliable, anyway, those kits.

  It was probably a false alarm. A mistake.

  A mistake? You bet it was a mistake!

  She turned to look out of the window. The pavement was glistening in the February dusk (it had started drizzling), reflecting the bright lights of Waitrose opposite. People passed in and out of the supermarket, pushing trolleys and baby buggies, laden down with shopping bags, juggling car keys and purses, perusing shopping lists. A fat woman eating a Mars bar turned to yell and scream at a reluctant toddler who was grizzling and rubbing its eyes. (That will be me in a couple of years’ time.) An elderly lady with a walking stick stopped to talk to the Big Issue man. The Big Issue man’s dog looked miserable, rain dripping off its nos
e. (He’s still got his dog; it’s not fair.)

  ‘You shouldn’t be drinking in your condition.’

  The sudden voice made her jump, choking on her gin. It took her a moment or two to realize that there was no one there – no one near enough to have spoken directly into her ear, anyway. The voice was a disembodied one. Her mother’s ghost.

  That was all she needed.

  ‘Why don’t you just mind your own business,’ she hissed.

  ‘This is what happens, my girl, when you carry on like a trollop.’

  ‘Do you think, just this once, you could be supportive in my hour of need?’

  ‘Supportive? Ha! That’s a laugh. Why should I support you? When have you ever supported me? What did you ever do for me when I was alive? What do you do for me now? You don’t put flowers on my grave, you never visit. You’re an ungrateful, unnatural child.’

  ‘Why would you want flowers? You always hated flowers.’

  ‘Oh-ho! Trying to be clever now, are we? Well, you’ll see. You’ll understand what I mean when your child grows up and abandons you, leaves you high and dry, neglects you!’

  ‘I’m not having a child. I’m going to abort it.’ Lydia spoke without thinking, as she so often had when speaking to her mother. Her mother knew (had known) just how to tip her off balance.

  But an abortion: she hadn’t thought of that until now. It would solve everything.

  Her mother’s ghost’s voice was cold. ‘Well! That’s you all over! Selfish.’

  ‘Oh, go away. You’re dead. I can’t hear you.’

  ‘I don’t know what I did to deserve a daughter like you.’

  ‘La-la-lah. La-la-lah.’

  ‘In fact, I don’t believe you are my daughter. You’re a changeling.’

  ‘LA-LA-LAH. LA-LA-LAH.’

  ‘I wash my hands of you.’

  ‘Good.’ Lydia scrambled to her feet, felt a bit wobbly, leaned on the low table for support. The gin had gone straight to her head. That was what came of forgetting lunch. But she couldn’t be expected to remember everything. Her head was crammed full as it was.

  Another double double. That was the solution. Blot out her mother’s ghost. Blot out everything, if she was lucky.

  She managed to negotiate her way to the bar and back, sank thankfully onto the sofa, listened suspiciously but – heaven be praised – there was no further sound from the ghost.

  She looked out of the window again. It was raining heavily now; the street was empty, litter the only evidence that people had ever been there. The Big Issue man had gone, along with his poor dog.

  Prize had hated getting wet.

  ‘Hello.’

  Another unexpected voice. This one, however, was a masculine voice – diffident, quietly spoken – and belonged to a real, live body, not a ghost.

  ‘Mind if I…?’

  He sat in the big comfy chair opposite, placed his pint of real ale on the low table. It would be real ale, of course.

  Terry, she said to herself: his name is Terry.

  ‘I don’t like to impose, but there’s nowhere else to sit.’

  Was this true? She glanced around, found that the pub was crowded, noisy, the bar busy with queuing customers. When had all that happened?

  Focusing her eyes on Terry, she racked her brains for something to say, but found her gaze drawn to his beard. It reminded her of the vet (‘It’s only an animal, Mrs Taylor…’). But Terry was nothing like the vet. He was not bald, he had a thick thatch of hair on his head. She could see raindrops in it, glistening silver. His face, she thought, looked rather square, ruled off by the margins of his beard and the hair falling across his forehead.

  Oh, Lord, this was ridiculous. She must say something.

  ‘Have you had any luck getting the roads resurfaced?’ (That would do.)

  ‘Don’t get me started. They’re more slippery than snakes down at that council. The Tories are bad enough, but the officers….’

  He was off. Her opening gambit had been successful. Not that she was the least interested in roads or the council, but Terry was quite loquacious on the subject, which meant she wouldn’t need to think of anything else to say. Her brain was in no state for thinking.

  His voice – rumbling, growling, grumbling – was strangely comforting after the shrill and piercing tones of her mother.

  ‘… roads are down to the county council, of course, but council officers are the same everywhere, they have their own agenda….’

  ‘Oh? Really? Hmm.’

  ‘… bamboozle and stall you …’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘… planning policy is conjured from thin air, developers ride roughshod …’

  ‘I see, yes.’

  ‘… mistakes costing millions are quietly swept under the carpet—’ He stopped, peered at her. ‘Sorry, but are you all right? You’ve gone a most peculiar colour.’

  ‘I’m pregnant.’

  For a split second she did not realize that she’d said it aloud. It had been reverberating inside her head ever since she’d done the test – pregnant, pregnant, pregnant. Now it had slipped out by mistake, stopping Terry in his tracks.

  The gravity of her words slowly sank in. She hadn’t got to grips with it herself yet, and already she was announcing it to all and sundry. She might as well tell the whole pub while she was at it, why not? Did all women get like this as they drew near to forty, lurching from one crisis to another? This, though, was the last straw.

  She picked up her glass, gulped gin and tonic, looking at the blank expression on Terry’s square, bearded face. ‘Well?’ she said. ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’

  ‘I … er … that is … I mean, should you be drinking, in your … condition?’

  Anger surged. ‘That is none of your business. Who do you think you are, my mother?’

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to … I’m … sorry.’ He looked like he meant it too.

  Anger drained away as quickly as it had come. She said in a flat voice, ‘It is me who should be sorry, I shouldn’t have told you, it has nothing to do with you.’ Words kept coming. She couldn’t stop them. ‘I don’t know why I mentioned it, why I blurted it out. I am going mad, that’s the problem. It’s no laughing matter. You don’t realize. I have conversations with my microwave, I imagine I can hear my mother’s ghost, I do the most ridiculous things, I had sex with an eighteen-year-old boy by the side of the road. Why am I telling you all this? You are a total stranger, a—’

  ‘Not quite a stranger,’ said Terry quietly.

  ‘Not quite? Well, we are colleagues, I suppose. I wouldn’t want you to think I am like this all the time. I’m not. Usually I have more control. It’s because my dog died. My dog died. And then I threw his basket away. Why did I do that? Why? I have nothing to remember him by. I tried to paint a picture but it came out all wrong. But what use is a picture? It’s him I want, him, Prize, my darling— Oh, goodness, I seem to be crying. Oh, how silly, all these tears. And I don’t appear to have a tissue. Fancy coming out without a tissue. I really am going … going—’

  She was scrabbling in her bag as tears slid down her cheeks, leaked into her mouth, dripped off her chin. Whatever would Terry think? Oh, but he wasn’t there, he had gone, and no wonder. No, wait a minute, he was back.

  ‘Here.’ He handed her half a dozen white napkins. ‘They’re quite clean. I fetched them from the bar.’

  ‘Thank you, that’s very kind, you really shouldn’t have bothered, so very nice of you.’ She dabbed her eyes, tried to smile, but she seemed to have forgotten how to, her mouth was all twisted. ‘He was only ten, my dog. No age. It was cancer. There was nothing anyone could have done.’ She dabbed again, thrust the sodden napkins into her bag, straightened her skirt. ‘I’m so sorry. It’s ridiculous to get like this over a dog.’

  ‘A bereavement is a bereavement. It doesn’t matter if it’s animal or human. It hurts just the same.’

  ‘Yes, you are right. How clever of you. How perceptive.�
� Could it really be true, a man who understood, who sympathized? But she had not really thought of him as a man until now. He seemed curiously sexless, an odd sort of creature, diffident one moment, bombastic the next, and yet there was a sort of gentleness about him that one didn’t notice most of the time – perhaps because he was so maladroit. One didn’t notice him much at all, come to think of it – not really. He looked so mundane.

  But that was because he was mundane, she told herself, snapping her bag shut, pushing her drink away from her. All he’d done was fetch some napkins and she was making him into some sort of saint. She’d be falling into bed with him next, if she didn’t watch it. She’d already made some deplorable errors of judgement – telling him about the baby, her mother’s ghost, Prize. If she didn’t leave immediately, there was no knowing what might happen.

  She got up.

  He half rose out of his chair. ‘Are you sure you’re…?’

  ‘Yes, quite sure.’

  ‘You don’t want me to…?’

  ‘No need. I am more than capable. I had a silly moment of weakness but it’s passed, it’s over. I shall be fine now. Thank you so much for the napkins. Goodbye!’

  She flung the last words over her shoulder, couldn’t get away quick enough, weaving through the crowds to the exit. Outside it was still raining. She hurried through the deserted streets to the car park where the open-air pool used to be, got in her car, slammed the door, pulled on the seat belt.

  Now. All she had to do was pilot her way home and she’d be safe. She could go to ground in her little cottage, forget about Terry, forget about everything; shut the world out, cocoon herself in blankets.

  But when she reached home, a nasty surprise awaited her. Richard’s rusty car was parked on her drive. Richard himself was loitering by her door.