Jack of All Trades

by DH Smith

  Joanna stared at them both, aghast.

  ‘You are saying I have got to give up three million a year?’

  ‘If you want to stay out of the headlines,’ said Carol. ‘You have a journalist eager for a story. There’s a court case going to be filling the front pages whenever the police catch whoever. Business as usual could land you in jail.’

  Joanna slapped her hands to her head. ‘I’ve got to think about this.’

  ‘You’re loaded,’ threw in Jack. ‘What’s the damn problem?’

  She turned on him. ‘What would you know? You’re just a fucking small builder. I don’t know why you’re here in the first place.’

  ‘Piss off,’ retorted Jack.

  ‘I’ll consult you when it comes to windows and doors.’

  He stood up seething. Carol pulled at his arm.

  ‘Stay.’

  ‘You two lovebirds are ganging up on me…!’ Joanna rose and began striding around the room, sighing as if in pain.

  ‘Here we go,’ said Jack bitterly, ‘author of kiddies’ fairy books with fifty million in assets, weeping because she can’t screw more out of the poor.’

  Joanna turned and screamed at him.

  ‘Get out! How dare you! Get out of my house!’

  ‘I’ve seen your slums,’ said Jack, his arms resting on the back of the long sofa. Carol had a hand on his wrist, whether to support him or hold him back wasn’t clear. ‘I know the misery they cause.’

  ‘Get out! You self righteous bastard. You tuppenny ha’penny builder. Off my property!’

  She was glaring at the two of them, both standing, Carol’s hand gripping Jack’s arm like orphans before the wolf.

  ‘If Jack goes, I go,’ said Carol.

  The volcano exploded for the final time.

  ‘Clear out, the pair of you!’

  Jack and Carol left the room.

  Chapter 46

  Jack was collecting tools. Some were inside the summerhouse, others outside, around his two workbenches. He was never the tidiest worker. And this was set to be a long job. Or that had been the plan anyway when Joanna had retaken him on.

  ‘Can I help?’ said Carol.

  ‘Bring any tools inside out here,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’

  For a little while they worked silently, she bringing all his tools out to the terrace of the summerhouse, he putting them in his two toolboxes.

  ‘I’ve had the sack three times on this job,’ he declared. ‘First time Ward lost his rag, then he reinstated me. Then he changed his mind, and she takes me on until just now – and I am finally fired.’ He folded up a workbench and stacked it against the summerhouse wall and turned to her. ‘She has one hell of a temper.’

  ‘The other day,’ said Carol, ‘when Leon and she were going at it hammer and tongs, I swear the walls were shaking.’ She put down a couple of screwdrivers and a tenon saw. ‘You alright for money, Jack?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  He stacked his second workbench against the first.

  ‘I’ve got fifty thousand quid of hers. I’ll keep it at least until I get paid. May not do so badly in the end.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll survive.’

  ‘She’s a devil about money,’ said Carol. ‘She was brought up by her mother, you know, a drug addict.’

  ‘She told you this?’

  ‘I am – I mean was – more than her assistant. Dogsbody and confidant. She was telling me about her childhood. How there was never any money, often no food in the house…’

  ‘Then you’d think she’d have sympathy for others.’

  ‘The reverse,’ went on Carol. ‘It’s made her determined never to be poor again.’

  ‘Spare the violins,’ said Jack. ‘I can’t shed a tear for her Orphan Annie past.’ He was putting tools tidily in a toolbox to maximise space. And stopped for a second, biting his lip. ‘I think we should go to the papers. Blow the whole slum thing sky high.’

  ‘We should.’ She stood up and looked over to the house where Joanna could be seen pacing the sitting room. ‘Do we tell her what we are going to do? Give her a last chance?’

  ‘Does she deserve it?’

  ‘She’s only just inherited the mess.’

  ‘And is quite happy to continue Ward’s dirty work.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Carol. ‘If we weren’t here, she wouldn’t think twice about it. To hell with her.’

  A toolbox full, Jack closed it up and brought the other over.

  ‘I’ll miss Donna,’ he said. ‘I pity her stuck with Joanna. But I’ll be pleased enough to get away. What are you going to do?’

  ‘Don’t worry about me.’

  ‘You’ve lost your job. You won’t get a reference.’

  ‘You can give me one,’ she said with a light laugh. ‘What are you doing this evening?’

  ‘I was thinking of looking at Jupiter,’ he said.

  ‘You thinking of moving there? Bit drastic.’

  ‘It’s a trifle cold,’ he said. ‘And the atmospheric pressure would squash you flatter than a poppadom.’

  They were sparking, the arc joining them. Unemployed and free. Until penury bit.

  ‘Want to come? See the Big Red Spot and the Galilean moons.’

  ‘That sounds wonderful. How can I not come?’

  ‘Be chilly,’ said Jack. ‘Bring a coat. I’ll bring a telescope.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to it. And we won’t mention Joanna.’

  He couldn’t help what he next said. He simply didn’t want to lie, even if it gave her a get out.

  ‘I slept with her, you know.’

  She shrugged. ‘Half the world has.’

  ‘You don’t care?’

  ‘Some. She’s sexy, but I don’t think it’s done her much good.’ She was looking over his shoulder, shaking her head. ‘And to cap it, here comes the whole HR department with our leaving papers.’

  Jack turned about, and saw Joanna crossing the lawn towards them. He rose, and with Carol watched her come in on them. Half an hour before she’d been a screaming banshee, but over the green of the lawn she was smaller, in her designer jeans and cowboy boots.

  She stopped a few feet away.

  ‘Come to say goodbye?’ enquired Jack.

  ‘No,’ she said. There was a weariness about her. ‘But to say I’m sorry. All that,’ she gestured with a flap of her hand, ‘was uncalled for.’

  ‘You insulted me,’ he said.

  ‘I’m a cow. Everybody knows that.’ She closed her eyes for a few seconds. ‘I’ve been thinking while the two of you have been out here. You’re right. There’s a reluctant confession. Those houses’ll be the ruin of me.’

  Jack looked at Carol who was biting her lip.

  ‘I phoned Timms,’ she went on. ‘I told him to shut down the loan scheme.’

  ‘What did he say to that?’ asked Carol wide-eyed.

  ‘He was appalled. He kept asking me if I was sure. Yes, I said, I am totally sure. Close it and write to everyone on the books and tell them that’s the end.’

  ‘It’s the right thing,’ said Carol.

  ‘Done for the wrong motive,’ said Joanna with a weary sigh. ‘I am simply preserving my reputation.’

  ‘It’s still the right thing,’ said Carol.

  ‘When you two left…’

  ‘You threw us out,’ said Jack.

  ‘I had a think,’ went on Joanna, ignoring the correction. ‘At long last, you might say. About the journalist and what he knows, I doubt he’s the only one, plus you two, who know far too much and could blabber to TV and the papers. Then there’s the cops scrabbling about in Leon’s affairs. I thought what on earth am I hanging on to? It’s all going to go bang – and I’ll blow up with it.’

  ‘Your husband was a rat,’ said Carol.

  ‘And so am I,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen the light of the great socialist dawn. Simply realised where my interests lie.’ She half smiled. ‘Stupidly, quite stupidly, I rea
lised I enjoy being Bluebell Woods.’

  ‘At the party, I kept running up to your office to get your fairy books,’ said Carol. ‘You were surrounded by eager parents.’

  ‘It’s my claim to fame,’ she said. ‘I gave them life. Maybe they are junk, or maybe not so junk… I don’t know. All I know is I wrote them. Came up with the characters and the stories. Between lovers whose faces I can’t remember, between bouts of drink and drugs, Bluebell Woods made a fairy land, where good always beats bad. And Rainbow, Snowdrop and Anemone, in their battles with the gnomes of the Dell and Squirrel Grinder, made Bluebell Woods. And I don’t want her to die. It’s the only way I can be loved.’

  ‘In fairy love,’ mused Carol.

  ‘Pathetic, isn’t it?’ said Joanna. ‘So accept my apology and work for me again. Both of you.’

  Jack laughed. ‘I’ve put most of my tools away.’

  ‘I’ll help you get them out again,’ said Joanna with a slight smile.

  ‘I’m not simply a tradesman you wave money at, Joanna.’

  ‘Got the message,’ she said, nodding. ‘Are you back on board?’

  He sighed. ‘It’s easier than carting all this out to the van.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘And Carol – are you back on side?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Now we have something decent to tell that reporter.’

  Joanna smiled fully, with evident relief.

  ‘I wondered if the two of you would like to come out to dinner with me this evening. I know a lovely little Italian restaurant…’

  ‘Can’t,’ said Carol. ‘We’re going to see Jupiter.’

  ‘Is that a film?’

  ‘No, it’s a planet,’ said Jack. ‘700 million kilometres away.’

  Chapter 47

  Jack put the last window in. And over lunch, which he had in the kitchen with Donna, he ordered the floorboards for the back room of the summerhouse. The best they could do was deliver tomorrow morning. He’d screwed that one. He should have ordered them yesterday. That’s what happens when you’re thinking about sex; you forget the floorboards.

  ‘Carol says you’re going out this evening,’ said Donna with a knowing smile.

  ‘Must’ve been the good word you put in for me,’ he said.

  ‘I just said Jack fancies you.’

  He wasn’t sure he liked that. True as it was.

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said – I know.’

  He shrugged. ‘Well, she knows now.’

  ‘Going anywhere nice?’

  ‘Up a hill, to look at the stars.’

  ‘That’s romantic,’ said Donna. ‘I hope it goes well for you.’

  ‘Thank you, Donna. And thank you for an excellent lunch.’

  ‘I enjoy your company,’ she said.

  He gave her a peck on the cheek. And left her.

  So windows done, but no floorboards. Nothing more he could do at the summerhouse. He’d buy the door, put it in, then off to the cop shop. And then to Mia’s school with her fairy books. Busy afternoon.

  The timetable began to rock almost at once. He got to the building suppliers in Walthamstow, but they didn’t have the door in stock. They could get it in a couple of days. Forget it, he said. And he didn’t like the others they had. He should have phoned first. The amount of time he wasted chasing and waiting for materials. That’s the way the day goes. In queues, waiting for some vital piece. Doors or floorboards. Any little sodding thing.

  Jack drove around various suppliers and at the third got his door.

  He drove over to Dan’s with it. There wouldn’t be time to fix it, not with being due at the police station, but he’d be one step closer – all the gear there, ready to go.

  Except Dan wasn’t in. Jack waited outside the house for quarter of an hour. He didn’t want to leave the door in the hallway. There were too many people coming in and out of the house, and he’d lost the first one there. He looked at his watch, Dan might be ages. And so he drove back to Joanna’s, leaving the door by the summerhouse.

  Carol waved to him from the lounge window. He blew her a kiss.

  Not so bad a day after all.

  He set off for the police station.

  Henderson took him into a small interview room. Boyd joined them. And the questions began. That bloody money, what he’d been up to with Joanna, his tools – the weapon. The same questions, the same answers. In the end he told them his theory, that Ward was setting him up. They didn’t dismiss it totally, but with Henderson bumping into Joanna last night – there was an air of disbelief. At one point he wondered whether he was about to be arrested.

  ‘Someone gave you fifty thousand quid,’ said Henderson.

  Jack shrugged, he couldn’t deny it. ‘To do what?’ he said.

  ‘To kill Ward,’ said Boyd.

  ‘And leave my tools there? Is that what you think?’

  ‘So account for the money,’ said Henderson.

  ‘I can’t.’

  The two cops looked at each other. Plainly they didn’t believe him about the money. They made more of his ‘affair’ with Joanna than it was worth, as if the two of them might be in cahoots. But in the end, they didn’t have enough on him. It was close, but they let him go.

  He was shaking as he walked out of the police station, free. In that little room, going over and over the same ground, he’d been waiting for them to throw in a curve ball. But it never came. And here he was, in the sunshine. He looked behind him, half afraid they were going to pull him back in. But he got back to his van unmolested.

  He lay back in the seat, breathing free air. Who else was in the frame? Joanna, beyond that he couldn’t think, but he just had an inkling that Ward’s nemesis had crawled out of the slums. His dirty deals, his enforcers… Jack looked at his watch. Too late to go to Mia’s school. And he was damned if he was going to drive over to Alison’s and drop the fairy books off.

  His interview at the cop shop was bad enough, without adding her bile. The working day for good or ill was done. Home.

  He’d barely got in the door when his home phone rang. His first thought was Carol cancelling their date, but he saw it was Alison’s number.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, waiting for the hit.

  ‘What a state you’ve got Mia in over these fairy books!’ yelled Alison. ‘We waited outside school for half an hour. She’s in bits. Bring them over right now!’

  ‘Drop everything and do it this instant?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Bell. You make promises, you deliver.’

  He might have done it, if it had been anyone but Alison on the phone. As soon as she shrieked at him, it set up instant resistance.

  ‘I’ll bring them tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve got a child throwing a tantrum,’ she yelled. ‘Your child.’

  ‘Never give in to a tantrum,’ he said, like the best parenting manual.

  ‘That’s so easy for you to say, Jack, when I’m the one suffering it. That was always the way with you. Cop out of your responsibility.’

  ‘I’m seeing her this Saturday, Alison,’ he said wearily. ‘This weekend is mine. I’ll make it up to her.’

  ‘She says she doesn’t want to stay with you this weekend.’

  ‘Then there’s not a lot I can do, is there?’ He sighed, imagining Alison’s smug face. He was sure she enjoyed telling him off. It was the only mode in their relationship now. ‘I wish I had never seen those bloody fairy books.’

  ‘And whose fault is that?’

  ‘Mine, of course it’s mine,’ he yelled. ‘It’s always fucking mine.’

  ‘Don’t bully me with self pity, Jack.’

  With an effort, he quelled his tone.

  ‘Tell Mia I shall get them to her tomorrow.’

  Mia came on the line. ‘I don’t want your fairy books, Dad. They’re crap. I never wanted the fairy books. I hate you!’

  ‘I am very sorry, Mia. I meant to get there. Really. I got so tied up, and traffic and everything… I am so sorr
y.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ yelled Mia. ‘Bring them now!’

  ‘You said they were crap.’

  ‘Bring them now!’

  ‘I’ll bring them tomorrow. I promise you.’

  ‘Now!’

  ‘I’ll bring them tomorrow, Mia. I promise.’

  He closed the call and took the phone off the hook so he’d get no ring back. He switched his mobile off. And fell back on the sofa exhausted. He stretched out staring at the ceiling for the next ten minutes. He didn’t care about his relationship with Alison. That was ruined anyway. But Mia yelling, I hate you – that was bruising. She was just a child, but that didn’t stop the skewer twisting in the wound. He’d better get her those books tomorrow.

  Today had been a bitty, screwed up day. He’d done hardly anything at the summerhouse. No floorboards. Couldn’t do Dan’s door. Mia hated him forever. He was prime suspect for Ward’s murder. Heaven knew what they were digging out even now. Everyone was cutting slices off him. The only good thing was Carol.

  When he’d showered and dressed, he put his phones back on. No one had rung. Cops and Mia had given up on him – which was some relief. For now at least. He made beans on toast, put some cheese on top – and began thinking about Jupiter.

  Chapter 48

  ‘It’s a few hundred yards’ walk up the hill,’ said Jack.

  He had picked up Carol outside her block of flats on the Isle of Dogs at about 9 o’clock when it was just getting dark. And driven out to Chingford. It was a fair way, up the A12, actually going very close to Homerton, but he wasn’t going to stop to face the wrath of Mia and Alison, then north up the A11, shaving Chigwell and Joanna, but sweeping past before turning off to Chingford. It was a long way from home, but it needed to be, to find even lesser light-polluted skies.

  Carol was wearing a woolly hat and matching scarf, a long black and white check coat and walking boots. He was pleased she was taking it seriously; clear summer nights can get surprisingly cold, especially standing around.

  They’d parked in a small clearing surrounded by trees, the only car there. Jack had the telescope, the legs of its mount hoisted over his shoulder, and the hefty battery in a shoulder bag. She carried the thermos and blanket.