Fish Tale (Cliffhanger Book 2)

by T. J. Middleton

  But first, there was the name. Just a Christian name, but it was a start. Maybe it was all I needed to know. Maybe this was the end too.

  I poured myself a one more glass and took the paper from out my pocket. My hand shaking so hard I could barely spread it out on the table.

  Six letters.

  E I L E E N

  I’d heard the name before, heard it not long ago, like it was still fresh in the air, heard it on someone’s lips in the back of my head too. Eileen. One N, one I, one L, and three E’s. Another triangle. Eileen. Her name was Eileen and she was there that day, in the wind and the rain, saying twerp into a mobile, carrying a thermos flask and a Bible on her way to the pimple. And she was laughing or crying, perhaps a bit of both, there despite the weather, determined to go to the top. And then I knew who she was, saw it straight away, saw her hurrying there, wanting to be there, needing to be there on that day, no matter what. It wasn’t a mobile phone she was carrying, it was a letter. It wasn’t a thermos flask she had in her bag, or if it was, it didn’t have coffee in it. It had dust. Human dust. Ashes. ‘Twerp’ she had said, not down her mobile to someone at the other end, but out loud, to the letter she was reading, the letter her son had written to her ten years before, on that very day. She was going to bury him, no, not bury, scatter his ashes up on the pimple, going to visit him there every year after too. She’d kept his ashes for ten years and then finally had summoned up the courage to go up there, to scatter the place, where he’d spent so many hours, where Carol and he had planned their future. I’d pushed his mum off, his mum who loved him, like he loved her, Robin her only son, like I was an only son to my mum. What if it had been my mum up there crying about me? She’d cried about me often enough God knows that, and then, suddenly it was too late for me to make amends. Too late now for me to make amends for Eileen too, too late for everything.

  Suddenly all the wind went out of me. How could I start off with Emily, knowing what I knew, knowing what I’d done. How could I smile at her and take her hand, be good to her, like I wanted to be, make plans, have a future. There was no future for me with Emily, not with all this. Perhaps there never was. OK, it wasn’t fair, not fair on me for finding her too late, and not fair on her either, for finding me at all. If I’d met her in the normal course of events, on the beach, or a tea party or even in an art gallery, when I was showing my fish, things would have been different. But I’d met her in prison. Of course if I hadn’t gone to prison, if I hadn’t done the things I’d done, I’d have never have met her in the first place and I was glad I had, Christ I was glad. But it was all over now, before it had ever started. I had to tell her, be truthful to her, as she would have been truthful to me, in the life we were never going to live. Better this way I supposed, because I’d have only fucked it all up, fucked her up in the process, and she didn’t deserve that.

  So instead of getting ready, having a shower and a shave, putting on a nice crisp shirt, I sat down and wrote her a letter, a long one, told her about Robin and Robin’s mum, and what I’d done, told her everything, told her I was sorry, that I thought she was great, no, better than great, that she was wonderful, and that I was sorry, sorry for stirring her heart, for cracking it a bit, but hers was too young to break fully. And I wrote that although part of me was sorry like that, part of me wasn’t sorry at all, that meeting her was the best thing that had happened to me in a long time, that I was sorry and glad at the same time, and that I wished her well, and if she could bear it, I’d like her to have that first fish that I made, that I’d go on making them, inside, no matter what.

  And after I posted it and bought the tube of glue, I put the scrabble set together, picked up a spade and walked up, out the back, up to the pimple. It was warm up there, warm and calm, dead quiet, like everyone had left the stage, for me to play my last part, and I thought if all this hadn’t happened I could have brought Emily here, and shown her what it was like, the dazzling clear beauty of it, how big it was, how fucking huge and wonderful and uncontrollable it was, like life itself. Then a cloud came over, and a slight wind came up, with a chill on it, like a change was coming, like the fairy tale times were over.

  I got out the spade and dug a neat hole, peeled the grass back careful so I could replace it neat. I dug down about three foot, then stamped the bottom flat. Then I took the scrabble set out and shook out the letters. It took me a while to find the right ones, to arrange them proper, so it looked like a gravestone might, to stick them down with the glue so they couldn’t move about, but I got it right in the end.

  HERE LIES THE SPIRIT

  OF

  ROBIN PARKER AND HIS MUM EILEEN

  REST IN PEACE

  And after it was set good and hard I laid it down in the grave, put the box and what was left of the letters beside it and filled it in, firmed the grass back down as best I could. One day, thousands of years from now, perhaps another Robin might discover it, thinking this Robin a King or something, and his mum a Queen. Well his mum was a Queen, so I guess that made him a King after all.

  And that’s where I am now, have been ever since, waiting to see what happens next. It’s a good view from the pimple, not only the sea in front of you, but behind, looking down at the line of bungalows and the village below. Emily turned up a half an hour after I finished, parked her car, skipped up to the door, to ring the bell. After a while she came round the back to see if I was there, peering in the conservatory at the shark, then going down to the pond to look round there. She stayed for nearly an hour, bless her, but eventually she got in her car and drove away. Drove away fast too, like she was put out. Well, no one likes to be stood up. Then, after a while, the moon came up and the stars came out and I lay on the pimple staring to the sky, listening to the waves of black nothing rolling below. Was I cold? I’ve no idea. I guess I must have been, because I woke up shivering, crying too.

  The sun’s well up now. A couple of hours ago Alice appeared doing her contortions on a mat on the back lawn. Poor old Alice, She’d put such faith in me and there she was, arms outstretched, thinking the best of the world, not knowing what I’ve done. I can see the police car coming slowly down the lane. Its light isn’t on, but that doesn’t mean nothing. Sure enough it’s pulling up outside the bungalow. Sure enough there’s a party of plods stepping out, adjusting their hats, like they were going to a party. I feel like shouting down to them now. Here I am ma. Top of the world. But I don’t. I just wait. They’ll come for me in their time. If I’m still here.

  An extract from T.J. Middleton's

  Ship Ahoy!

  It was four o’clock, Sunday afternoon. I was in the rest room with Johnny Caracas. He was hunched over the table, a lick of his oily hair hanging down, blocking my view of the board. It was all I could do to stop myself from nipping down to the cabin and fetching up Emily’s curling tongs and weld it onto his forehead. It was the semi-finals of the Inter-deck Scrabble Tournament and he was on the way out. Johnny might have been a dainty little whiz on his size nines, but faced with the cruel reality of ninety-eight letters, two blanks and a stop clock fast running out of time, he was all left feet. I was waltzing all over him, thirty-four points ahead, a blank in reserve and a crafty S up my sleeve, just in case he got lucky. I know, but there was a crate of port and an outsize box of multi-flavoured marzipans up for grabs, and I’m a sucker for marzipan.

  He put down ED on the end of PLASTER and banged down the clock button. PLASTERED. Not bad for him, but not good enough.

  ‘That’s what I’m going to be when I win the cup,’ I told him, giving the bag a good shake. Emily came in, all hot and flustered, waving her arms about like a lobster in a pot.

  ‘They’re all waiting for you,’ she said. ‘Mrs Durand-Deacon is getting sunstroke.’

  I gave her a look. There was a lot at stake here.

  ‘No need to get steamed up about it Em. Stick her under an umbrella. Shove her in the pool.’ I tapped the board. ‘The honour of E deck and all that.’

 
She have me a look. There was a lot at stake there.

  ‘Now Al,’ she said. ‘Right this minute. Johnny wouldn’t take advantage, would you Johnny?’

  Johnny pressed his greasy hands together and glanced up at the bag. He tried not to, but he just couldn’t help it.

  ‘Who? Moi?’ he said.

  I got up, handed it to Becky behind the bar, and followed Emily out the room. You might think that out of character, Al Greenwood obeying orders like some testicularly disadvantaged mummy’s boy. But I’d learnt my lesson. I did as I was told. It was easier that way.

  We’d been working on the Lady Diana for three and a half years, Miss Prosser and me. In public she was Emily, Emily my dear, Emily my own, sometime just plain Em, but once in our own little cabin, or back at the bungalow, I called her Miss Prosser, especially when the mood was on us. She liked me calling her Miss Prosser. I liked calling her Miss Prosser. It kept it alive. What we’d done for each other.

  Johnny had got us the jobs. Outfits like ours were always on the lookout for characters who can help the time pass for the sorry Herberts who fork out good money to go on these things. Emily and me, we fitted the bill perfect. Me, I gave a series of lectures on you-know-what, their history, how to keep them, the psychological benefits derived there from. I had a number of colour pictures to go with them. Well, there’d be no point banging on about the beauty of the koi without a decent set of photos. Some were of mine, taken down by the pond, Miss Prosser standing in the pool in her one-piece, holding them in a washing-up bowl, looking quite a catch herself, and some taken at Detective Inspector Adam Rump’s place. He didn’t like it much, me muscling in on his fish, but felt obliged, thanks to me getting his prize fish back from a nasty case of fishnapping, (I didn’t tell him that I’d nicked it in the first place.) and he had the best carp collection this side of Salisbury Plain. I still had Torvill, natch, though not looking quite as fresh as the day I found her stabbed to death on my kitchen floor. I didn’t tell the punters about that of course, only the feelings that a superstar fish like her can inspire. Emily worked the laptop for me, and passed Torvill down the aisles for them to look at up close, making sure they didn’t disrespect her in any way, touch her up or pull her stuffing out. She might have been dead for seven years, but in her hey-day she was all fish, right down to her gills.

  Emily had a proper job too, giving art classes to any of the passengers on board—out on the sun deck if the weather permitted, or down in the ante room behind the ballroom if there was too much of the old up-and-down. Oils, watercolours, pencil sketching, anything they wanted. She was a good teacher Emily, I knew that from my days in the nick, when knocking seven bells out of lumps of clay was all that kept me from a spell in the funny farm. Well, you’d be a bit near the edge too, if you’d been sent down for something you didn’t do. She pulled in a fair-sized crowd, Emily, a good deal more than I did, if the truth be told. Sometimes I’d be lucky to get half a dozen showing up, even on a ship carrying four, five hundred, while she’d have three, four classes on the go every blessed day, ten, fifteen, up to twenty in each. Stick a paintbrush in their hand and everyone thinks they got a bit of Picasso in them. Koi require a more realistic type of commitment. So I had to think of something extra or face the chop. So I had this brainwave, how I could spice up her classes with a live demonstration of what I called Texas-chainsaw sculpting. The powers that be had been a bit wary of it at first. Fair enough, the idea of a wrongly convicted murderer let loose amongst their clientele with what is in effect eighteen inches of petrol-powered samurai sword, did present them with legitimate health and safety issues, but they soon caved in when they saw me in action. I’d become quite a dab hand at it since I first started. Stripped to the waist, chainsaw in one hand, beer can in the other, I could knock out a decent man-eating shark in twenty minutes flat, twenty-five if you wanted some bird stuck in its molars, having her leg bitten off. They loved it, the punters, specially the women. Couldn’t take their eyes off me, twirling that blade about like it was a pirate’s cutlass, oil spewing out the blade like a randy sperm whale. Did they want a piece of it or did they want a piece of it? We used to laugh about it, Miss Prosser and me, the look in their eyes, the way they crossed their legs and fiddled with their hands. They always wanted to buy the end product off me too, stick it on their patio, or have it leering at them while they were taking a bath, but we didn’t give them the satisfaction of that either. Keep them hungry, that was our motto. We cooked up a little ritual, her and me, gave each shark a name, depending on who they looked like, Henry Kissinger, Chairman Mao, whoever, painted the name on and slung them over the side, watched them float away on the briny. Just like old times. Last trip I’d done one that turned out to be the spitting image of Bono, pillock specs and all. Half the ship we had, helping to push him over, and you know what, when he hit the water, he rolled on his back and sank without a trace. If only real life was like that.

  When we wasn’t working, Miss Prosser and I were back in the old coral, her painting watercolours of the cove and the boats and the few crusty old fisherman still left with a lobster pot to piss in, while I monitored the little art gallery we had down by the beach, her pictures all priced up on the walls and a couple of my six-footers grinning up on the rails outside. We had a little boat too, called the Miss Prosser, natch, nothing fancy just twelve-seater with a decent outboard motor big enough to take trippers round the bay or out to the Pimple and back for a spot of fishing. I used not to like the sea much, now it’s like I never lived without it. I found Emily by the sea, lying on a beach white and shiny like a stranded mermaid, and the sea’s been with us ever since. Sometimes me and her would take a trip ourselves, chug our way to the bay a couple of miles down the coast, a bird sanctuary it is, dead private ‘cause you can’t get down there from the cliff top. We’d throw off our clothes and wade ashore, not a stitch on, spend the afternoon swimming and sunbathing, prancing about like we was in the Garden of Eden, her drawing pictures of the birds or what-not, me, lying back on the sand, staring at the sky, wondering how I got this blessed. Often as not she’d draw me too, awake, asleep, before, after, whatever took her fancy, I didn’t mind as long as they didn’t go up on the gallery walls. What’s private’s private. She liked drawing pictures of me. I liked it too, liked having them around. It made me more me, if you like, gave me a perspective I never thought I had. Pictures are funny that way. All they are is bits of flat paper, but they have a kind of depth that can take you a long way back.

  I went up top. We were a few days off Southampton, but we could have been in the tropics for the heat coming off the deck. It was jam packed, everyone stripped down to the bare essentials, and then some. You had to be dead careful where you was treading in those conditions, look but not look, if you get my meaning. Not that I had the eyes for that sort of thing anymore. It’s like working in a chocolate factory. After a while you become sick of the sight of it, even when it’s offered up on a plate, unwrapped.

  Emily’s lot were tucked the far end, away from the swimming pool. There were twelve of them, sat in their deck chairs in a semi-circle, the area where I was doing the chainsawing roped off. Safety regulations. Mrs Durand-Deacon was bang in the middle, some old biddy fanning her face with a newspaper she must have picked up at our last port of call. That was the real reason she was feeling a bit poorly. To be fussed over. There’s always someone like Mrs Durand-Deacon on these cruises. ‘Oh Waiter, I think I’ve got a fishbone stuck in my gullet. I can’t swallow properly. Oh Steward, There’s a terrible smell of effluent coming from my hot water tap. The fumes make me feel quite faint. Hello? Is that the Purser? I’d like to speak to the captain. Does he have to take the corners so fast? I feel quite…what’s the word?’

  Lonely. That’s the word. Unloved, that’s another. Poor Mrs Durand-Deacon. She probably started off all right, probably was quite a good sort, but something happened to her along the way. She didn’t deserve to end up like this. No one does. I’ve come to see
that now. I might not like her kind much, but I’ve come to see that now. I walked through them, stepped over the rope and held out my hands.

  ‘Sorry to have kept you ladies, but the truth is I got lost.’

  They laughed. Everyone gets lost on cruise ships like these. It’s having the carpets all the same colour.

  ‘Mrs Durand-Deacon. I hear you’ve been suffering too. That naughty old sun. What say I cut him down to size?’

  More laughter.

  ‘Seriously though, I’m going to have to do something extra special for you lot, considering how inconsiderate I’ve been. Something special for you too, Mrs Durand- Deacon. How about a giant squid, its arms all wriggly, ready to drag you down?’ I’d never done a squid in my life, but I wasn’t worried. She shook her head. ‘No? How about a whale then, one of them hump backs?’ More head shaking. I knew what she wanted. It’s what they always wanted.

  ‘What’s it to be then Mrs D-D?’ She took a gulp, like she’d just swallowed one.

  ‘A shark.’

  ‘A shark!’

  ‘A man-eating shark. One of those white ones.’

  ‘A man-eating shark. One of those white ones. Someone caught in it perhaps?’

  She nodded like her head was going to drop off.

  ‘My husband! Gerald!’

  Hysteria all round. A murderous lot, cruise goers. They all think it you know, some time in the voyage. One little push and all their troubles would be over.

  ‘A great white it is. With Gerald having his vitals nibbled.’

  I got ready. The block of wood stood on a pair of trestles. It was about eight-foot long. The chainsaw sat on top, blade tucked away safely in its plastic cover. A spare blade lay curled like a sleeping boa constrictor on a table beside it, next to a pair of goggles, (safety regulations) a pot of paint for the sign painting, an alcohol-free can of beer (more safety regulations) and a fire extinguisher, just in case the shark or the chain saw or Mrs Durand-Deacon started to spontaneously combust. Load of toss those regulations. I mean I’d never had an accident once.