Top Hard

by Stephen Booth

  "I've got some business to do downstairs. Phone calls to make."

  "Oh no, you don't. You're taking me out."

  "But - ."

  "No buts. Get your jacket on."

  Well, that's women. Give them an inch and they'll take a mile. Give them six inches and they think they own you. I reckoned Lisa had a big shock coming. She was really on her way out. I'd have to tell her soon, and let her know about Nuala. When the time was right.

  I put my jacket on. "Where do you want to go, then?"

  "A craft centre. It's time you bought me something nice."

  "Oh."

  So I had to take her to Rufford. Twice in two days? I was starting to look like a regular. I might apply for a season ticket.

  And of course I bought her something nice in the craft centre. Well, if that had been all that happened at Rufford, I could have put up with it. A bit of misshapen pottery, or a sweater with lumps of fluff sticking it out of it, followed by a small hole in my wallet. That would have been okay. Even when we had to go for coffee and cake in the Buttery restaurant, that wasn't too bad. It isn't the sort of place we have in Medensworth. We had to sit and behave ourselves, and talk quietly, without swearing too much, so as not to upset the old biddies and make them choke on their Darjeeling. I can put up with that, see? I'm not a complete yob.

  But accidentally bumping into Michael Holles-Bentinck-Cavendish while we were there? That was taking things too bleedin' far.

  First we'd taken a glance at the Abbey, to see how far the restoration had got. I was happy to see the plastic sheeting and scaffolding had gone off the Jacobean south wing, which is almost all that's left of the sixteenth century house. The north and east wings had to be demolished after the army had finished with them.

  "Thank goodness it was the south wing they managed to keep," I said, showing off. "It's the bit with Savile's cupola on it."

  "Salvin," said Lisa.

  "Eh?"

  "The architect who designed the cupola and the west front was called Salvin. He designed Thoresby Hall too."

  "Yeah. I knew that."

  So we did the craft shop bit, and I bought Lisa a set of hand-made bowls and jugs. They had no colour to me, just being a sort of patchy brown, like the stains left on your plate after a hot beef curry. But Lisa seemed to like them - and at that price, she damn well ought to think they were hand-painted by Picasso.

  This artistic reflection made me think about my visit to the sculpture park the day before. I broached the subject while we were in the Buttery. We were eating Battenburg and fairy cakes and drinking coffee strong enough to melt your false teeth into a plasticine model of the Peak District.

  "Lisa, love."

  "Yes, Stones?"

  "You know that Charioteer thing in there. What's that all about then?"

  "I don't know," she said. "It looks like a duck falling off a plinth to me."

  And then I saw him. He drifted in through the doors of the Buttery while we were only halfway through the cake. He was ponced up to his eyeballs and had a look on his face as if he expected all the old biddies to rush round him begging for his autograph and a sniff at his socks. Lisa had her back to the door, so I spotted him first. She saw my expression, followed my gaze, and did her double take. She was very good, an Oscar candidate if ever I saw one. Better than that soap actress shaking her tits on the telly, anyway.

  "Oh, it's Michael Cavendish, look."

  "Don't forget the hyphens," I said. "Don't make him sound as though he's just some ordinary bloke."

  She waved. Cavendish clocked us and began to walk towards our table. I shoved in the rest of the cake and stood up with my mouth so full that I couldn't say what I was thinking. But Lisa had her hand on my arm, hanging on to my sleeve. She'd grabbed my punching arm too. Sneaky.

  "Why, hello there, Lisa. What a wonderful surprise to bump into you here."

  "Amazing, Michael. But it's lovely to see you again so soon."

  They beamed at each other for a minute, while I reflected how they'd gone from Mr Cavendish and Miss Prior to Michael and Lisa since I last saw them together. That's what comes of getting interactive. Then Cavendish pretended to notice me for the first time. It was as if he'd just trodden in something unpleasant that the Golden Retriever had left behind on the terrace.

  "And your brother too. How nice."

  I've never heard anybody put so many different meanings into the word 'nice' without having to write their own dictionary. It made me choke so hard I spat crumbs of Battenburg onto his trousers. Judging from his expression, Cavendish took this gesture exactly the way it was meant.

  "I don't suppose you've given any more thought to my proposal, Lisa?" he said, dismissing me from existence.

  "As a matter of fact, I have," she said.

  "Wonderful. Do you mind if I sit down?"

  "Have my seat," I said. "I was just leaving."

  "Leaving to bring us some more coffees, of course. Michael takes one sugar, Stones."

  "Thanks a lot, old chap."

  Well, you can't spin out the act of buying three cups of coffee for long when there isn't even a queue at the counter. You can count your change a few times, but that gets boring after a bit. The sums aren't big enough to be really interesting. I was sort of hoping Cavendish's coffee would be cold by the time he got it, or he'd suddenly find he had to rush off to an urgent appointment with his tailor.

  It's not that I was jealous, you understand. But people like him have this strange effect on me. Basically, Cavendish was the walking symbol of a disease that society will never cure. Genetically, me and him are at opposite ends of a seesaw, and it seems to me like he's the bigger boy who always has all the weight at his end. With people like this, I get the impulse to lighten their load a bit in any way I can. Childish, I know. But if you've ever sat in the air on the end of a seesaw opposite a great, grinning fat lad, you'll know what I mean.

  When I turned back to our table, I could see Lisa and Cavendish smirking at each other, and nodding. A warm bile rose into the back of my throat. I could taste the sourness of that damn coffee coming back again.

  I picked a few condiments from the counter, then stopped off to smile at a couple of middle-aged biddies, all slacks and cashmere sweaters. They looked at me like a Yorkshire terrier bitch looks at a Great Dane. I like you, big boy, but you might hurt me. That was okay. I was only after their savouries.

  "Do you mind if I borrow this?" I said, all charm, using my bold stare.

  "That's quite all right," said one of the biddies. Another conquest, then.

  I put the little jug of tartare sauce on my tray, then moved away to the next table where a family with two kids had been eating chips - or french fries as they're called on Sundays.

  "Have you finished with this?"

  "Yes, mate."

  The tomato sauce went on the tray with the rest. A few steps further on, a bearded bloke in walking gear was tucking into a nice healthy salad.

  "All right if I take that?"

  "Be my guest."

  I've always liked proper mayonnaise. One that's really runny and doesn't need to be scraped out of the neck of a bottle with a knife. I put it on the tray and, as an afterthought, loosened the top of the vinegar bottle next to it. Ease of access - that's the buzz phrase, isn't it?

  Now all I needed was some cream. Ah yes. I made a small detour to the old couple's table, who saw me coming and were just leaving anyway. Now all the ingredients were at hand.

  Lisa and Cavendish hadn't even noticed I'd been away so long. They were grinning at each other like idiots, and I had the feeling something had been agreed while I was out of the way. That suited me. I hoped the proposal Cavendish had mentioned was marriage. I was even prepared to go to the wedding and cheer from the back, as long as I didn't have to be best man and pretend I was his friend.

  "Michael has offered me some part-time work," said Lisa, barely looking at me as I hovered with the tray.

  "Oh?"

  "H
e wants me to trace any living relatives he has. Other descendants of Bess of Hardwick. He wants to organise a family gathering, perhaps a Cavendish society of some kind. Don't you think that's a terrific idea?"

  "Utterly bleedin' marvellous."

  A family gathering? It was the last thing I'd want with any of my relatives. Most of them wouldn't be allowed out to attend it anyway. But people like Cavendish take a different attitude to family. It seems to matter. Well, of course it does - because that's the way they've kept their wealth and property and privileges over all these centuries. That's how they stay better than the rest of us, with their titles and public schools, and their poncy accents. They're all passed down from father to son, like syphilis.

  Presumably Michael Cavendish wasn't interested in finding any relatives who happened to be poor, or were born on the wrong side of the blanket. He didn't want to find himself meeting Alf and Mavis Cavendish of 16B Grime Street and their kids Darren and Tracey. My guess was that he hoped to find some rich ones who could do him a good turn, for the sake of the old bloodlines, don't you know. And having Lisa involved would be a bonus. Well, good luck to him. I couldn't give a toss what they got up to. Not a toss.

  It was at this point that my hand slipped and the whole trayload of coffee, milk, sugar, tartare sauce, tomato ketchup, vinegar, mayonnaise and double cream went flying. If they'd all landed together on a plate in a nice pattern, I could have got an Egon Ronay commendation for it.

  But you can never tell with liquids how far they're going to travel when they spill. Sometimes they fly across the room in a huge splurge without you even trying. There were three cups of coffee on the tray that hadn't been touched, so there was plenty to hit Cavendish's shirt when they landed. The milk and vinegar followed pretty closely, and the other stuff made dramatic streaks and splashes of colour on top. Very modernist. Never mind Egon Ronay, give me the Turner Prize.

  Cavendish sat there stunned for a minute. He was figuring out the correct etiquette for the situation. It probably doesn't happen too often when the vicar comes for afternoon tea at a gentleman's country residence. Then Lisa picked up a couple of paper napkins and began dabbing at his chest as if she was trying to stop the bleeding from a shotgun wound. I wish.

  I suppose some folk would have said 'sorry' at this point. But I couldn't remember how to pronounce it properly. That's the result of a second-rate education, you see. Terrible. I can't play croquet either.

  Trust Lisa, though - she had to do it for me.

  "I'm sorry about my brother," she said, dabbing away. "He's a bit uncouth."

  "It's all right, really," said Cavendish, though you could see it wasn't. The look he gave me said that if Lisa hadn't been there he would have called up the grooms and footmen and had me horsewhipped.

  "That's the trouble with family," I said. "It isn't always quite what you'd like it to be, is it?"

  I walked out of the Buttery and through the courtyard into the Abbey gardens. Maybe I'd go and stare at the ducks on the lake for a bit. Maybe I'd climb up the tower and spit on the stone paving below to see how far it splashed. There are plenty of other ways to enjoy life, if you know how.

  Naturally, we didn't speak on the way home. I put some U2 on the cassette player to drown out the silence. It was The Joshua Tree, starting off with Where the streets have no name. It seemed quite appropriate as we reached Medensworth and turned into First Avenue.

  Then I saw another figure I recognised. He was lurking at the corner of the street, like a bungling spy from a John le Carré novel, the one who gets horribly done in by the Russians. This bloke has a particularly crawly line in lurking. You can see him do it any Sunday at St Asaph's, creeping round the people he wants to get in with, giving the evil eye to those he doesn't.

  It was bad enough having to get used to the cops watching me, and Craig's boys as well - not to mention someone trying to wreck my business. And Cavendish had left a really sour taste in my mouth, worse even than the coffee. But this was the limit. Bleedin' Welsh Border with his nose stuck out, sniffing the air, clocking my every move. One of these days I was going to do something that he'd find really interesting. Just watch me.

  * * * *

  It was a big Mercedes van, fifty-five hundredweight - that's five thousand five hundred kilos in foreign money. It was white, with a blue flash down the side that said 'Inter Euro Transport'. The company claimed to have offices in London, Paris and Brussels.

  When I pulled up, Metal Jacket and two other boys, the Harman brothers, were standing around looking shifty. They didn't say much, just opened the back doors for me to have a look inside for myself.

  The van was full of numbered boxes labelled 'Aero engine components'. Some of the boxes had been ripped open, and I took a peek. They contained lumps of metal moulded into shapes whose purpose I couldn't even guess at. I was quite prepared to believe they really and truly were aero engine components.

  This was a pisser. These boxes were supposed to contain toasters, hair driers and portable CD players. Maybe a few steam irons and electric can openers. There wasn't much call for aircraft parts on the Sunday market.

  "What is this shit? No, don't tell me, Metal, I can see. Spares for a Jumbo jet maybe. Have we got a Jumbo jet stashed away somewhere that needs spares, Metal?"

  "No, Stones."

  "Were you planning on nicking one from Woolley Services?"

  "No, Stones."

  "Then what the bloody hell use is all this lot?"

  I slammed the door shut, a bit harder than I'd intended. The boys flinched as the noise echoed around the workshop. The van stood where the Citroen BX had been not too long ago, and it was just as unwelcome.

  "But Stones, it was supposed to be - "

  "I know what it was supposed to be. I know what you told me it was supposed to be. But where did the information come from?"

  "The driver, Stones."

  "The driver?"

  Metal shuffled his feet. "He told us what he'd be carrying, and where he always stopped. It was a gift."

  "You're joking."

  He wasn't joking. He thought he'd pulled off a real coup, and this was how it had turned out. He thought he was making up for the cop car, and this is what he'd brought me. I suddenly felt sorry for him.

  "Who was this bloke, this driver?"

  "He's name is Sid Jones."

  "Jones? Oh yeah."

  "That's what he said. You don't ask too much, you know... "

  "Yeah, all right, I know."

  "Chocky met him some place."

  Metal indicated one of the Harman brothers. The other tried to look as though he suddenly wasn't there.

  "It was in the truck stop at Markham Moor," said Chocky. "I just got talking to him, like we do."

  "See?" said Metal. "So Chocky told me, and I went with him to check the bloke out. He seemed straight up, Stones. And there were no cops about when we lifted the van."

  "You sure? Are you certain they're not sitting out there now getting ready to walk in with the cuffs?"

  "Positive. We gave the car park a good going over. I'm dead sure there was no tail. We did the job proper, Stones."

  "Right."

  Okay, these things do happen sometimes. And it wasn't unusual to find a driver keen to earn a bit of extra cash by co-operating with lads who wanted to lift his vehicle. But this was the third screw-up in twenty-four hours. Not to mention the Citroen. That was three loads lost.

  Like Oscar Wilde said, to lose one is bad luck, to lose two looks like carelessness. But the third piss-up starts to smell like some bastard's got it in for me. And that's not on, Lady Bracknell.

  * * * *

  The Rev was out and about in front of the church, shepherding his cassocks or something.

  "Ah, come to put in a few hours on the churchyard, Livingstone?"

  "That's right, Rev. We thought it was looking in need of a bit of a tidy-up round the graves, like."

  "It is, it is. You know where the tools are, don't you? Would yo
u like to log your hours in the book. For income tax purposes, of course."

  The Rev will have his little joke. But I put my name and Dave's in his workbook and signed us in as having arrived at 8am.

  "Eight o'clock? Well, dear me, you've been at it two hours already. You must be getting thirsty. I'll put the kettle on in the vestry, shall I?"

  "That'd be just lovely, Rev."

  Dave came back clutching a spade, a fork and a hoe in one hand, and an electric strimmer in the other. He held them effortlessly at arm's length, as if they were mere illusions. You could tell from his face that gardening wasn't his favourite occupation. His expression suggested he'd just sat in something cold and squashy and knew it was about to start leaking through the seat of his trousers.

  "It's just for a bit, Donc. Got to get your hands dirty. Gardeners always have dirty hands, don't they?"

  Dave dropped the tools and looked at his hands, vaguely puzzled. I could see why - his hands were hardly a model of cleanliness at the best of times. But he said nothing. I think there was a shallow level of understanding there, even if he didn't show it.

  I set to work with the strimmer along the edge of the grass, while Dave brandished the fork viciously at some flower beds that had done nothing to deserve it except burst into a splurge of tasteless yellow and pink.

  The graveyard was pretty tidy, actually. It looked as though the Rev or one of his parishioners had been working on it recently. But we cracked on at such a pace that we soon had an impressive pile of debris in the wheelbarrow and several feet of earth glistening and freshly turned. Personally, I was sweating a bit already, and I was glad of the strong tea the vicar brought.

  "Have you had a successful week?" asked the Rev, twinkling at me over his glasses. Sometimes he gives the uncomfortable impression that he thinks I'm a sort of boy scout who goes round helping pensioners and blind people cross roads all day long. The only time I've ever done that was when I was a teenager, and then it was a rich old biddy whose mock crocodile skin handbag was a good bit lighter by the time she got to the other side.

  "You could say that, Rev."

  "Good, good." He beamed at me and then at Dave. "What are we put on this earth for, if not to help others, eh?"