Maybe it was overconfidence, but three quarters the way through, I began to lose it. Robin started to nudge ahead again. I was running out of time. I could only do short words, words that didn’t give me much, all the while the letters were getting used up. It was slipping away from me. Two rounds later there were no more, just what we had on our racks and it was all over. He was ahead overall by nine points. I had four letters left. He had five letters or thereabouts. It was his turn. There was one word that I could make a stab at when it came to me. Three quarters down the board was the word inn. I could put the ER and get INNER. I’d have two letters left. I’d lose but respectable. Robin must have seen where I was looking cause he smiled, stretched out his hand and plonked a W in front of the I and an E and R and after the second N. WINNER. He sat back, his eyes going up to the shelf opposite.
I looked down. I had four letters left– a T, an R, a P and an E. I looked around hoping to find somewhere I could put my E and R. but could see nothing.
‘My game I think,’ he said.
And then I saw it, right around that W of his. They just fell in all around it, like it was destiny. T W E R P. TWERP. It was unbelievable. I’d use all my letters up, get ten points, leaving him three points ahead. But I’d finished and whatever was left on his rack would be deducted from his score. I didn’t know exactly what he had but I knew one thing. He had a Z in there. Maybe he was hoping to keep it for a big finale, trying to show off to Carol, too clever by half. Whatever, that Z meant he’d have fourteen points taken off his score at least, even if all the other letters were only worth one point apiece. Which meant I’d won. I’d fucking won. I’d beaten him at his own game. I placed the letters down, all careful, my mouth all dry, my heart jack-hammering like I was being hand-milked by a bare breasted beauty queen in the fast lane of the motorway. God, what a feeling that is.
‘TWERP,’ I said, trying to stop my voice from shaking. I’d won. I’d fucking won. I’d get the glory, I’d get the cup and later on, when I’d drunk my fill from it, I’d give Audrey’s Opera House the best production it had seen for years; three acts and no intervals. Fuck propriety.
Robin tickled his beard.
‘Twerp?’ he said. He shook his head. ‘You can’t have twerp. It’s not a proper word.’ Carol sprang in.
‘It’s not a proper word Dad.’
‘What do you mean not a proper word? I use it all the time. I used it only the other day. He’s a complete twerp, that’s what I said, wasn’t it Audrey?’
Robin waved me aside.
‘That doesn’t matter. You can’t use it. It’s slang. Slang isn’t allowed in scrabble.’
‘I don’t see why not?’
‘Because scrabble is a serious game for serious people.’
‘What’s more serious than slang? I can be very serious using slang. In fact I’m probably at my most serious when I’m slanging.’
‘It’s against the rules. You know that.’
‘Yes, you know that,’ Carol chirped in. ‘Stop trying to cheat.’
‘Who’s trying to cheat here? I’m just trying to put down an ordinary everyday word. Common parlance I think is the term.’
‘Quite. Common parlance, not proper.’ He leant forward, scooped up the letters and handed me them back.
‘My go,’ he said and without even waiting, he lays his letters out one by one, like the squares were there just for him, E A Z E N, laid them out in front of the very W that my TWERP had used.
‘WEAZEN’ he says. ‘That’s another eighteen points. Quite a finale, I think you’ll agree.’
‘What’s WEAZEN when it’s at home,’ I said. ‘Sounds like slang to me.’
‘It’s old English word meaning old, wizened, shrivelled, dried up in appearance,’ and he tipped the letters back into the bag. Audrey lifted the cup from the shelf.
‘To the Champ,’ she said and sat down next to him. ‘Nothing weazen about him.’ Carol gave him a kiss.
‘Isn’t he clever?’ she said
‘I’ll say,’ Audrey said, and ‘And good looking. Al tried to grow a beard once, but it came out all patchy, like it had been sprayed with weed-killer. Well, you’ve either got it or you haven’t. And Robin’s got it in spades. If I was younger and Carol wasn’t my daughter…’ she wriggled her bottom close to him. ‘Come on champ, Drink up’ and she poured the last of the wine into the cup. In it went, tinkle, tinkle, tinkle. Robin drank it, like a little baby at a bottle, all the while looking at me over the rim. I knew what he was thinking. He hadn’t just won the game. He’d won my whole fucking family.
‘Twerp,’ said Audrey. ‘I don’t know. Some people.’
That night I lay in the bed at the far end, wide awake. The rain had stopped. I could hear Robin and Carol messing about in the front. I’d never heard them so happy.
‘Listen to it,’ I said.
‘What?’ Audrey said.
‘They’re laughing at me. I can’t believe it. My own daughter.’
‘Get over it Al. No one likes a bad loser, ’and she turned over.
But I couldn’t get over it. I couldn’t sleep for thinking about it. Was it going to be like this from now on, Al behind the wheel but no longer in the driving seat, Robin smart-alec Parker humming his way round the bungalow and into Audrey’s affections? I kept seeing his face, the hurried way he’d handed me back my letters, plonked his own down. It didn’t seem right. Decency would have told him just to wait up, just to give a show of having to think, unless…
It was like a light bulb going off. Unless he wanted it over as quickly as possible. Unless he had something to hide, unless he was nervous about that whole last round.
I got up and went real quiet into the kitchenette. They was talking low voice.
‘I suppose I could always let him win once, just to ease the tension,’ he was saying.
‘Don’t you dare, Robs. I love you beating him. It makes me feel all tingly inside. No one’s ever done that before. Beaten him like that, crushed him day after day after day. This evening was just the best. I’m feeling more tingly inside than I ever thought possible. What do you say? Game on?’
Some dads might have crept away at this point, but I was on a mission. I inched my head round real quiet. The blankets were all in a heap but I wasn’t interested in that. I was looking at the shelf to the side, where the scrabble set stood, the scrabble set, the cup and the thing I was after, his dictionary
‘Oh God, Carol,’ Robin said suddenly, ‘Twerp. Fucking twerp,’ and a foot came out of nowhere and started banging against the wall. Everything started to slide off. I stretched my arm out. The dictionary dropped into my hand. I knew then, what I would find.
I took it into the kitchenette and switched on the light. I flicked through to the T’s, first time I ever used a dictionary in my life. It weren’t difficult though. Scrabble had got me used to letters. Tuque, turn, I turned the pages quick, eager to get to the chase. Then it was all the words beginning with TW. Tweet, tweezer, twenty, t’were and there, bold as brass, twerp. It was a proper word all along. He’d done me over. And he knew it.
I went back to bed, switched on the light, gave Audrey a prod.
‘Audrey, wake up. I’ve got something to show you.’
Audrey pushed me away
‘For God’s sake Al, give it a rest. Besides, who wants to look at yours. It’s far too weazened.’ And she rolled back to sleep, laughing. Humour, it’s the glue that keeps a marriage together isn’t it?
I waited for twenty minutes, then slipped out of bed again and put the dictionary back on the shelf. Carol and Robin were dreaming love’s young dream. I took his tartan slippers to the chemical loo, pissed in them, then put them back beside the bed. Back between the sheets I put my arm around Audrey, gave her a squeeze.
‘Night, night, sweetheart,’ I said, slapped a kiss on her neck. I slept easy then.
The next day we woke to a new dawn. The mist had cleared, the sun was out. I made everyone a cup of tea. At breakfast
Robin sat writing to his mum in his bare feet while Carol washed his slippers in the sink. Audrey took Monty outside and gave him a good walloping. Happy families wasn’t in it. When he was finished Robin wanted to go for a hike, but Carol still had her sprained leg and Audrey didn’t care to go out in public until her eyebrows had grown back.
‘You go, Al,’ she instructed ‘You could do with the exercise.’
Who was I to argue?
‘Why not,’ I said. ‘A couple of sandwiches, a can of beer, the scrabble set for a quick game up top. Sounds good to me.’
‘Sounds good to me too.’ Robin was all smiles. ‘Scrabble up a mountain. That would be a first. We’ve never done it up a mountain, have we Carol?’ Carol shook her head.
‘And don’t forget to post your letter,’ Audrey told him. ‘I hope you told her about last night, your brilliant performance.’
‘I was a mite inspired wasn’t I?’ he agreed, and turning to me smirked. ‘Have you got your mobile Al? Mine’s run out of juice. I’m such a twerp.’ I said nothing, patted my pocket.
We drove over to this National Car Park. Crinkle Crags was the place he wanted to see, way up in the hills. I tugged on some good old boots and a fisherman’s jersey. Nothing gets through those. Robin had his Norfolk jacket on and a cap like Sherlock Holmes used to wear. We set off, Carol waving Monty’s paw at us from the camper van steps. It was a long haul though, first past a farm, over a footbridge and then starting the climb. I hadn’t done much walking before that, not like that, one foot in front of the other, and it was harder than I thought. Still I wasn’t going to tell clever clogs that. He was an old hand, I could tell. It was OK to begin with, the path quite broad, the slope hardly worth bothering about, but then before you knew it, things got a whole lot tougher. The path narrowed, got steeper. Suddenly my feet started to drag. Putting one in front of the other wasn’t easy anymore, in fact it was bloody difficult. My whole body began to weigh something terrible on my legs, like I was carrying a rucksack full of concrete. Robin kept on looking back at me.
‘You all right?’ He’d say. ‘Not getting too much for you?’
‘No no. It’s these boots. They need breaking in.’
We marched on. He had this map of course, they all do don’t they, wrapped in plastic. Every now and again he’d stop and point out some rock in the distance. I’d nod, thankful for the rest, though I hate that, people telling you things like they’re theirs. Great Knott, Brown Howe, on and on he went, like they were personal friends of his. It almost made me want to go over to one and give it a good kicking. It was a rock. End of.
A good hour we had of this, the two of us getting further away, climbing higher and higher, Robin peering over his map, yacking away. A group of three had overtaken us half an hour in, but apart from that it was like we were the only people on the earth. That’s a funny feeling to have, to be so small in such a big place, and yet, to be the ones striding over it. The only ones. No prying eyes. No laws. No future. No past. Gives you all sorts of ideas.
Then at last we’d got somewhere, scrambling up on hands and knees to the top of this black looking ridge, like the bad end of a comb, the ground miles below us, the green all drained and far away, like we’d never come from there. For while neither of us spoke. It was taking some getting used to.
‘Bad Step this is called,’ he said at last. ‘Do you still fancy a quick game?’
‘Rather. I feel as if I am improving in the scrabble stakes.’
‘Still some way to go though. Rack management. That’s what it’s all about. Can I borrow your mobile?’
‘Damn I forgot it.’
‘Really, Al. You should always take a mobile on hikes like this. I was going to ring Carol, tell her we’ve arrived, take a picture.’
We just stood there, looking across.
‘It puts thing in perspective, don’t it, being up here,’ I said. ‘What matters, what doesn’t. All the little jealousies that us humans have, our little hates and resentments. I mean what are they in the bigger scheme of things Robin, tell me that?’
‘We petty men,’ he said.
‘I couldn’t have put it better myself. And with that in mind, I got a confession to make.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. I pissed in your slippers last night.’
‘What do you mean, you?’
‘I mean me. I pissed in your slippers last night. Everyone thought it was Monty. But it wasn’t. It was me. I pissed in the right one and then I pissed in the left, or it could have been the other way round, I can’t remember. Anyway the point is I pissed in them, filled them up. Any idea why?’
‘Al, is this some sort of joke? Because if so..’
‘Cause I was pissed off Robin, that’s why. I’d just borrowed your dictionary and looked up the word twerp, found out that it was proper word after all. You cheated. You did me out of the game and you did me out the cup. You made me look a twerp, Robin, a fucking twerp and I’m not happy about it.’ And I lunged over and grabbed him by the neck.
‘Al, believe me I never…’ I pulled his beard.
‘Never thought to have a look? Never thought to act decent and proper? Never thought to say “Yes Al that’s fine, you win, cause twerp’s a proper word, just like beard and pimple and terrible accident.”’
‘Al I didn’t mean…’
‘Yes you did! Yes you did! That’s trouble Robin. You did! I swear to Christ, if it hadn’t been for that…Oh God, Carol, Twerp! Fucking twerp!’ and I ran with him hard to the edge, span him round, his arms out like Christ on a tightrope, his feet dancing like Fred Astaire with the runs, and pushed him, pushed him hard in his Norfolk jacket and his eyes went wide and he opened his mouth, this long high note coming out like a thin stream of wailing piss, a sound I’d never thought a body could make, more like a bird than a man, unreal. Higher and higher it went as fell back, higher and higher ‘til I couldn’t hear it, but I swear I knew it was still there, calling to the world he was leaving.
It took me twenty minutes to get down to him. His face was laid on a rock like he’d fallen asleep, a line of blood running from his ear to his mouth, one leg laid flat on his back all wrong, like a puppet with his strings cut. I reached into his inside pocket, the big one halfway down the side, and there it was, his little travelling set. I couldn’t resist it. I took it out, waved it in his face.
‘Four letters,’ I said. ‘D E A D. That’s six points by my reckoning, but as this is a red letter day I’m going to give myself a triple letter score. 18. My game I think.’
And that was the end of Robin. Carol didn’t take it very well when I came back without him, but that’s life. It don’t always work out like you planned. Ten years he’d been dead, and now Carol wanted to rake it all up again. Well, let her try. There was nothing she could do, nothing anyone could do. The policeman who questioned me about it, hadn’t liked me much. The bruising round Robin’s neck had given me a couple of tricky corners to turn, but nothing I couldn’t handle.
And the scrabble set? It hadn’t been difficult to hide in the confusion. I simply went to the loo and shoved it to the bottom of the chemical toilet. When we got back home I washed it in the power-shower, then hid behind a pair of loose bricks in the garage. When Carol moved to Australia I kept it in the Vanden Plas’ glove compartment for a while, had a game every now and again with Blind Lionel, Wool’s foremost unisex barber, but stopped that after Audrey and me went out for a curry one evening, and she kicked the drawer open while on manoeuvres afterwards. Luckily she was too busy to notice. I hadn’t thought about that set for years – but now? Thanks to Carol’s phone call, I had to see if it was still there. I wanted it to be still there.
I walked through the conservatory, into the garage. The last time I’d been in there proper, Adam Rump had been crawling all over the Vanden Plas, finding the scratch on the boot, pulling out Miranda’s yellow oilskin. They hadn’t bothered with the rest of the place much after that. They’d got what they wanted. The Citroë
n was in there now, bonnet facing out, that radiator grill looking like a dog panting to be let off the leash. It looked good having a swank motor back in there.
I gave it a pat on the headlamp and edged past until I came to the shelves. There was still stuff here that hadn’t been touched for years, broken flower pots, old cans of paint, one of those weed killer sprays that Audrey used to strap to her back and go on shock-and-awe missions in the garden once a month. Up above on the rafter, before the storage recess that went back half the garage length, hung the old tin drum that Carol used to bang around the house as a kid. I’d forgotten about that. The sledge what I made for her was somewhere there too. That’s the trouble with ferreting around attics and the like. They stir all sorts of memories.
Fish Tale (Cliffhanger Book 2) Page 6
