"It must have been terrible for you. Especially after the way you cared for our pets."
"I'm OK, thanks. But they're not, are they?" He made his bottom lip tremble, the way he'd practised in front of the mirror. Forced out a tear, making no effort to wipe it away.
"Dear, sweet things." The new teacher went on. "What harm had they done to anyone? And what a totally sick thing to do to poor Mr Wardle." She then patted Louis' hair. Stood close enough for her herby scent to fill his nose.
"He was asking for summat though." Toby Lake interrupted. "He's a right bloody fascist."
Miss Udder straightened. Her nipples pressed against her open-knit top.
"Wait outside please, Toby, until I can take you to the Head myself." Her colour was up, her 38 D tits with a life of their own.
"What a berk, Miss," Louis said, worried that his plan for later might be derailed by the Sunnyview boy's absence. The orphan should have kept his gob shut. But that was Toby Lake for you.
"Creep," muttered Weaver, chin on his desk.
"Try and spare Louis' feelings if you don't mind." Miss Udder wagged a warning finger as she left the room.
"Thanks, Miss." Louis beamed her a smile and pulled the cap off his biro with his perfect teeth. He then opened his Biology textbook and feigned interest in the life cycle of the house fly, letting those wankers around him exercise their imaginations as to what kind of panties Miss Udder was wearing.
Once Lakey had been dealt with and returned to the fold, and she was again at her desk, the double lesson resumed with a discussion on induced labour and premature infant nutrition. Everyone was unusually silent, doodling foetuses in their rough book margins, wondering how something the size of a giant coconut could push its way out from what they'd goggled on their porn sites.
18
Louis Perelman and Toby Lake cut through to Wrecker's Brook from North Barton Wood's deserted picnic area where empty Vittel bottles and the like lay around the one overflowing litter bin. This way they avoided the Scrub End estate and possible nosy parkers.
The land sloped down to the outskirts of Scrub End, via a dry gulley filled with stained mattresses and other household waste. They continued until the sewage works could be seen on the right. Its caramel-coloured sludge beds highlighted by the sun's glare.
The younger boy carried his rod aloft like some native in the bush with a spear. An elegant affair, already set up with a reel and line.
"Why specs?" Lakey had quizzed when Louis met him round the back of Sunnyview. ”Especially those.”
"To see the fish better." Louis had then patted the boy's pockets expectantly. "Any grub?"
"Nope. The Witch was at her cauldron, sorry."
"D for effort my good mate. Try harder next time, eh? Anyone gape you in there?"
"I’m not daft."
Neither boy mentioned parents or the lack of them as they headed for the brook, yet Louis kept the other boy’s latest, cruel taunt alive in his mind. He had to.
He also let Lakey walk on ahead, watching how his trouser turn-ups dragged on the cracked soil. How his slight limp grew more pronounced with each step. There wasn't another human soul about, and the only sounds were the muffled slurps of the treatment plant and birds in the distant trees.
"How much further?" panted Lakey, skewing his body round to shrug his blazer off his shoulders, letting his backpack fall with a thud.
"Not far now," Louis encouraged. He’d kept his own satchel deliberately light. "Here, let's take them both for you."
The blazer smelt of toilets. Louis fingered the pockets and found a fifty pence piece amongst the dust. A start, anyway. As for the backpack, it felt as if it contained a body. The strap began to cut into his fingers so he dragged it along the ground.
"Good on you calling Waddle a fascist," he said, wincing. "Did you get detention?"
“Tomorrow and Monday.”
The trees were closer now. Their shade deepening as the two boys descended the bank towards Wrecker's Brook’s. Here, dried grass became earth so cracked just like in Meadow Hill that here and there, water seepage made a treacherous surface underfoot. As Louis had remembered, the brook itself was remarkably free- flowing. Nice and deep too, specially in the middle. He could tell.
"This is great," he folded Lakey's blazer and squatted down to study the current. "I bet the little fishies will all be lining up for your hook..."
"So you say."
"Scout's honour. This is the best place."
Lakey undid his backpack, and after exchanging his school shoes for a pair of cheap trainers, pulled out an Old Holborn tobacco tin and prised the lid open with his thumbnail.
"Shit, man!" Louis exclaimed as the compacted earthworm population inside wriggled into view.
"Smashing, aren't they?" The other boy picked up the biggest one and let it dangle by his lips before biting it neatly into six equal portions.
"Ugh."
"They taste of mince. Nice."
The baiting process took thirteen minutes exactly, but Louis couldn't watch. Instead focused on his pilot watch's second hand nudge its way round between the numerals. Each minute vital and so far not wasted.
"Done." Lakey then told Louis to stand aside before swinging the rod high over his left shoulder, narrowly missing overhead branches. The line curved over the brook, settling just short of the far bank, to be dragged downstream by the flow.
However, the boy’s trainers were slowly sinking; mud creeping over their padded tongues and his trouser turn-ups. Louis stayed silent, aware that his breathing was almost zero, the quietness suddenly alarming.
"Hell…" Toby Lake began to tilt. He tried repositioning himself, but failed. His left calf already covered by the brook, the other bound equally fast. His slight build no match for the bottomless mud. "Shit, help!" He yelled, unable to turn round. But Louis had retreated to sit on the blazer and inspect all its pockets. Stupid to have too many prints by the water's edge, he reminded himself. He wasn't that dumb and would have to somehow erase them.
He then found a receipt for twelve pounds’ worth of lead shot from the anglers shop in the Mall. That was a month's pocket money from Sunnyview. No way would he spend that on sheet music or amber resin.
"Grab the rod!” screamed Lakey. ”Pull on that for Chrissake!"
"I don't take orders, mate, specially from you."
"Jewboy shit."
That stung, but Louis was more than compensated by seeing Pure Fear. Wrecker's Brook certainly living up to its name. This business was taking no time at all, despite all the threshing about. The shrieks for help.
He found a tiny ball of paper and unravelled it.
LOUIS PERELMAN’S A GOONER In green biro.
"A gooner am I?” He shouted. “Great."
But how could Lakey reply? His body was now half submerged, slipping downstream, lowering all the while, bringing a foul mist to to the water so that when he finally vanished, he took the sun's reflection with him.
*
The rod stayed where it was. And the school shoes. That way it would look like Lakey had been careless, which in a way he had been, Louis reasoned, feeling his dick swell and subside as he also left the boy's emptied blazer where it was. He felt the box-cutter's handle in his own left pocket, undecided what to do with it. Then, judging where Lakey would be now, threw it in after him. Saw it spin like a red dart, trapped in an eddy further down.
*
5.17 p.m. and Louis joined the western edge of Greythorn Wood, avoiding by at least a mile, the likely police interest round Black Dog Brook. A gentle run brought him to the Mall car park where he handed over
Toby Lake's fifty pence for a copy of the local rag. He then doused his head in the public drinking fountain whose base was littered with discarded polystyrene cups. He filled one with water in case his hair dried up on the way home. Most importantly, he also had the second of Jez's knives snug in a Boots bag next to his wet trunks. Nearby, cars were speeding over the statutory fifty miles per hour limit. Most drivers were skinheads or wearing what The Fawn and The Maggot continually denied him. The baseball cap.
"You wait till I've got a uniform," Louis breathed after them, remembering that important Freephone number. "You just wait."
19
Dr David Perelman's last timetabling session in front of his office pc ended at 5 p.m. He'd texted Jacquie to say he wouldn't be needing a meal because of a Grievance Procedure meeting and subsequent buffet provided by the Institute. He felt no guilt at all. He'd been a martyr too long.
It was still obscenely hot, with car fumes adding to the city's already thick air as he made for the Market Hall. While a sunburnt surge of humanity was heading home, he strode out against the sweaty grain, almost five minutes late.
Out of the sunlight, the new Viva Cuba bar seemed blindingly dark. The salsa throb matching the throb of his heart. He prayed none of his Music Department colleagues were in the vicinity, and to that end chose the furthest area beyond the bar. Cool, discreet, with the whirring overhead fans making the plastic palms sway as if a storm was imminent. In many ways it was, he mused as a waiter advanced, menu in hand. And the way things were going, it would be sooner rather than later...
"In a moment, thank you."
He half-turned to watch the distant window and the pedestrians outside, and suddenly, there she was. Carla Kennedy. Her slender silhouette stalling in the doorway until she spotted him.
"Hi. Sorry I'm late."
Even in the half-light, she was stunning. Dave stared at her narrow hips clad in white, cropped pants. A clinging yellow top left her neat little navel exposed. Her bra-less breasts subtly defined under the tank top. She settled in a chair opposite him and crossed her long legs.
"What'll you have?" He asked. His usual sang-froid deserting him. "I mean, to drink?"
"Diet Coke'd be great. And you?"
He glanced at the menu. Chose the first thing he saw.
She suppressed a giggle at his choice of Tequila Sunrise, and in the silence that followed, toyed with the clutch of silver bangles that ringed her tanned arm, avoiding eye contact. Instead, she checked the café’s front window. "I hope Greg doesn't see me in here. He'll go ape."
Greg Willis, a mediocre yet conceited oboist a year above Clara, wasn't so much a boyfriend, she'd told Dave once. More a minder. Whatever, he was in the bloody way. Dave leant forwards, suddenly emboldened.
"I know where we could go," he said. "Say next Friday."
"The Starling hotel?"
He blinked.
"How come you know it?" A featureless block near the Hill Cross ring road. He'd done some research.
"A couple of girls on the course use it for... well..." Here, she stopped altogether.
"Go on. It's just you and me and that palm tree there." He reached out for her hand, but she withdrew it.
"They’re so in debt, never mind with tuition fees to worry about..."
"So no hiding place for us then?" He twirled his tiny paper parasol instead, then plucked out the maraschino cherry and pointed it at her mouth. She took it, letting liquid drizzle down her chin. He wanted to leap round to her and lick it off. In fact, that would be just the start...
"I'll ask around,” Carla said. “Suzy's bound to know somewhere else."
"Who's Suzy?"
"My best mate. American Studies. Off to Illinois next week. Lucky for some."
He watched those slender fingers around the stem of her glass and imagined them encircling him, playing him like she did her flute. Beautifully, tenderly, as he worked out when the Meadow Hill house might next be empty.
His optimism vanished when he realised that costly crescent of high-end luxury offered not a shred of privacy. If it wasn't Susan Linklater, it was the Zellers and the Booth-Collinses by the development's entrance in number 1. Ever vigilant, and more so now since the latest graffiti and that unsettling Neighbourhood Watch meeting.
"Anyway, how's your Louis?" Carla asked. "He was really pissing you off last week, I could tell."
"He's OK. But that's kids for you."
It wouldn't do to go on about him too much. The last thing a new relationship needs is the blight of domesticity. Yet, she seemed genuinely interested, and even the first time they'd chatted together in the Music Room after his Busoni lecture, she'd wanted to know more.
"My sister's boy gives them hell sometimes, and he's only seven." She volunteered.
"Right." Bleakly recalling that birthday treat in Burger King. How nothing had been the same since. He'd seen the dark side and hadn't known what to do. Still didn't.
"He's not mine,” he said, fixing her with his dark gaze. “He’s adopted.”
Carla barely blinked.
"So? Show me a real Mum, Dad and two kids."
"There's more to tell. D'you mind?" She had that effect on him.
"Not if it helps."
Dave leaned back on the rattan seat. It creaked like weary bones.
"Nor hers."
Her grey eyes widened.
"Who? Your wife?"
"Jacquie. My partner. It's a long story..."
By now, Carla was thinking hard.
"Tell me."
"Jacquie was married before, to a computer analyst in Silicon Valley. Clever bloke, apparently."
"The USA?"
"No. Swindon. Anyhow, with her desperate to conceive and failing, he had a fling with one of the women there." He took another drink.
"And?"
"She couldn't go through with the pregnancy. Wanted an abortion. He wasn't bothered either, or so he made out. But because Jacquie'd been so obsessed with having a child, she’d set her sights on this one..."
"Even though he'd been unfaithful? Even though it wasn't hers?"
"Nothing mattered except her saving this baby and bringing it up as her own. Anyhow, he left pretty smartly. A relocation in London somewhere, while Jacquie moved nearer her parents."
"Go on." As Dave signalled a repeat order from the waiter.
"She gave this Tina woman all her savings to go through with the birth. And that came in handy as the man she’d then married, soon lost his job. They paid off the mortgage, you name it. Jacquie wouldn't let me contribute a penny."
"My God. And the baby?"
The drinks arrived, but neither touched them.
"A boy. 8 lbs 3 ounces. Apparently, the Maternity Home nurses couldn't stop picking him up. He was the most beautiful creature they'd ever seen. Especially his perfect head. We called him Louis after Jacquie’s middle name, Louise, then Claus, for my father."
"So was it a Caesarean?"
"Yes. Or Louis would have been starved of oxygen.” He recalled the hospital test results still locked in his desk drawer.
"That explains his perfection. But I keep hearing about all these men in white coats who want the easiest way for them, without fear of litigation. It's nothing to do with women being ‘too posh to push.’ It's bloody hospital politics. Sorry, bloody's an unfortunate word."
Dave finally took a sip then set down his glass. "Appropriate, actually." Yet for a moment, had imagined Carla in labour. With their child. An earthly anchor for his dive into eternity. Like the end of a kite's tail, he thought.
"Louis must sense this, somehow," she said. "I mean, that Jacquie's not his real mother." She tilted the glass to her mouth and drank. "Has she told him yet?"
Dave shook his head.
"It's bad enough him knowing I'm not his real Dad. He holds that against me as it is. And hates his middle name."
A faint smile touched her lips.
"You can't blame him for that."
"Sure, but it's special to me. Anyhow, we promised to leave things till he was eighteen. Just to give ourselves a bit of space." He frowned, draining his glass.
"That’s a long time for a bright kid to wait, and who knows," she shrugged her beautiful shoulders, "he might hear the truth from the wrong person."
Dave reached over and held her soft, slim arms on the table.
"Look, the bottom line is, he'd have been flushed away down some drain if Jacquie hadn't paid up..."
"Ugh. I hate stuff like that." Carla grimaced.
"But that's what drew me to her, can't you see? Her sheer, bloody kindness. Except now, well... It's too much. She's smothering him, me, everything. To be honest, we've not slept together for over a year."
His best student bit her lip, embarrassed by this revelation.
"How's Louis' violin going?" she asked instead. "Could that be a possible career for him?"
"Another Menuhin? Maybe, except..."
"Except what?"
Dave spread out his hands in despair.
"Do you really want to know?"
"Course I do."
"I think he's ill."
"You're not serious?"
"I am."
The girl reached into her leather pouch bag for a mirror and lipstick, and although the light was poor, applied its sheen in two practised strokes. He wanted to kiss her, taste it. Hold her for ever and be taken away from the mess he was in...
She began to get up, the line between her breasts more pronounced.
"What time d'you want me for the soirée on Saturday?" she asked in an oddly business-like tone.
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