by David Bowker
“Just a friendly visit.”
“Why?”
“Friendliness.”
I heard sighs and grumbles. A key turned, and the door opened to reveal Gordon, in his dressing gown and slippers. His bare ankles were snow-blindingly white, and he was wearing a particularly unlovely pair of green paisley pajamas, in a material that I believe is known as winceyette. For a man who couldn’t punch his way out of a colostomy bag, Gordon glared at me with considerable hostility. When he saw I was uncowed, he backed down a little and tilted his head to one side like a drooping lily. “Well, look. I was about to watch a television program, so this isn’t the best time.”
“Can’t you record it?”
“Well, no, you see. I’m recording something on the other channel.”
“What time’s the program on?”
“Nine o’clock.”
“But that’s forty minutes away.”
“I know. But I need to make a cup of coffee and find the Radio Times.”
“And that’ll take you forty minutes?”
Experiencing a rare moment of self-awareness, Gordon gave a high-pitched laugh. “No. I suppose not. You awkward sod!” Then he stepped back to let me into the hall, already hatching a contingency plan. “I suppose I could always make the coffee now, to save time.”
I followed him into the kitchen, passing the living room, where a television blared at geriatric volume. Gordon’s idea of making coffee was turning on the kettle and spooning brown granules into a mug. In the middle of this exacting task, he heaved himself onto a stool and sat there, panting.
“Are you okay?” I said.
He nodded and waved his hand to indicate that for the next few moments, he would rather breathe than talk.
“Well, what it is,” I said, coming straight to the point, “is that Caro has no money and she’s worried that your marriage to Eileen will affect her future.”
When Gordon nodded and smiled, I thought my charm offensive was working. I was mistaken. “Oh,” he said, “She is, is she? Well, why won’t she tell me this herself?”
“She’s too proud,” I said. “You know how it is with families. Simple things aren’t said, then as time passes they become complicated things that are more or less impossible to say.”
Gordon stared at me as if I were talking utter bollocks. He may have had a point.
“Now, listen, Rodney,” he said, waving his forefinger like a conductor’s baton.
“Who’s Rodney?”
But Gordon was too busy talking to listen. “My daughter hasn’t been as hard-done-to as all that. I don’t suppose she’s ever mentioned her trust fund to you?”
“No.”
“Well, when Caroline was twenty-one, a trust fund we’d set up for her matured. Since her birth, we’d been paying in so much a year, I forget the exact sum. It was around four thousand per annum. So when she came of age, what did Caroline do? She cashed in her trust fund and got a lump sum of about eighty-five thousand pounds. Now, she could have used this as a down payment on a flat or a small house. After all, she had a good job at the time, so repaying a small mortgage would have been perfectly within her means.
“Instead, what does she do? She resigns from her position at the magazine, travels round the world, buys a new car, treats herself to new clothes. In six months, all the cash had gone. Not a penny left. All right, you might argue that what Caroline does with her money is her own affair. Fine. But by the same token, what I do with my money is mine.”
I was surprised by his story but tried not to show it. “Okay,” I said. “I admit it was a shame for Caroline to squander her trust fund. But come on, most twenty-one-year-olds would do the same. What does anyone know at that age? She’s still your daughter. I don’t see what point you’re making.”
“My point is this,” said Gordon, slopping hot water into his mug. “Caroline is an adult, and she hasn’t exactly made a success of her life. I regret that, of course, but fail to see that it’s any of my doing. I’m seventy-three, and at a time of my life when a man couldn’t reasonably expect further happiness, I find I’m about to be married to a wonderful lady. Caroline isn’t here to look after me when I feel ill, Eileen is. My only real responsibility is to my wife and myself.”
“So Caro’s right, then? You don’t intend to leave her the house. How would her mother have felt about that?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business. Or hers.”
“You can’t see why Caro would find your attitude hurtful?”
“I’ll tell you what’s hurtful, shall I? My daughter’s attitude to me. When I was young, I didn’t expect my parents to leave me a house.”
“Did they have a house to leave?”
“No. But that’s beside the point!” Gordon was getting cross. “When I was a student at the LSE, there was a fellow called Dimbo Witters. His name wasn’t Witters, nor was it Dimbo, but that’s what we called him. Poor old Witters. His one topic of conversation was how his mother had remarried and Dimbo had been done out of his inheritance. Well, I always thought it was terrible to be so bitter. It’s not how I want Caroline to feel.”
“You mean you’re going to make sure she’s provided for?”
“I mean I don’t want her to feel slighted when she isn’t.” He glanced at his watch and rose from his seat. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, my program will be on shortly. I’ve watched the whole series, and I don’t want to miss it.”
I gave Gordon a long, slow appraisal. With his white hair and neat maritime beard, he ought to have been a handsome old man. The raw materials were there. Had a different spirit inhabited that promising frame, the effect might have been pleasing. As it was, Caro was right. All the old man radiated was selfishness, negativity, and slow, brooding madness. Not content with disinheriting his only child, most definitely against the wishes of his dear departed wife, Gordon actually expected to be loved for this most unfatherly act.
“And the loan for a new car is definitely out, is it?”
“Loan, my foot!” said Gordon. “We both know I’d never see a penny of that money again.”
It was time to leave. Gordon was beginning to grate on me. In the hall, I turned to deliver a parting shot. “Oh, by the way,” I said. “You broke off my car’s wing mirror.”
“I beg your pardon?”
I explained what had happened. He denied it. I informed him that Caro was a witness. “It’s not a big deal,” I said. “If you pay for a new mirror, I’ll be happy and you needn’t lose your no-claims bonus.”
“No! No!” said Gordon. “I won’t be pushed around. I refuse to be pushed around.” And he started walking up and down the hall with his hands behind his back, rather like the duke of Edinburgh on a Commonwealth tour, confronted by a particularly monotonous display of tribal dancing.
“I’m not pushing you around,” I said patiently. “You’re moving all by yourself.”
Gordon turned to look at me, his eyes slits of malice. “Listen, you arrogant, self-opinionated little bastard. You come here, playing the little-man-about-town, telling me what I should do with my own house and my own money. When that fails, you try to squeeze money out of me by blaming me for something you know perfectly well I had absolutely nothing to do with. Well, you can just piss off back to whatever housing project you crawled out of…”
As he delivered this speech, Gordon’s face changed color three times. Red, dark purple then a deep pace. When he finished speaking he looked like a portrait by Francis Bacon. Then Gordon staggered and fell over backward. He landed heavily, with a great whumph, sending a cloud of dust into the air. The dust came from Gordon, not the carpet.
I took a few moments to react. Then I shocked myself by laughing. It was a completely spontaneous laugh of childish jubilation for which I refuse to accept responsibility.
Gordon remained motionless on his back, his beard tilted at the ceiling and one slipper hanging off its foot. His eyes were closed, so I leaned over to tap his face. “Gordon?
Gordon?” I slapped his face a little harder. “Gordon? Are you all right?”
He made a faint rattling in the back of his throat. Then he was silent. I felt for a pulse in his neck, found none. Caro’s father was dead.
I rushed through the house, searching frantically for a phone. I found a cordless in the kitchen, picked it up, and prepared to dial 999. Then I considered. If I called an ambulance, the paramedics might save his life. Caro would never forgive me. I would never forgive myself.
So I replaced the phone on the kitchen table. I walked down the hall, stepped over the old man on the floor, and quietly let myself out.
CHAPTER 8
MAN AND WHORE
WHEN CARO eventually answered the door of her flat, she was all smily and off balance. That afternoon, she had treated herself to some Liquid X. Now, five hours later, she was serenely blasted. Dazedly, I told her the news about her father. She clutched my jacket and kissed me. “Really? You really think he might be dead?”
“He didn’t look too well when I left him.”
I argued, told her it was ludicrous, but Caro insisted on seeing the body. “I have to be sure. That sack of shit has ruined my life.”
I drove back to Gordon’s house with Caro beside me, giggling inanely whenever we passed over a bump in the road. We parked a few doors away and walked to the front door. Caro was about to use her illicit door key when I seized her arm. “What if Eileen’s home?” I said.
“Nah. She’ll be raising the dead till the early hours.”
“What if she isn’t?”
“Mark, relax. She isn’t here. Do you see a car in the drive? Fucking stop it.”
“I think we should ring the doorbell. Just in case.”
Caro made an elaborate show of impatience but pressed the bell anyway. After a sensible interval, she inserted her key and opened the door. That was when we had our first surprise. The hall was empty.
“I thought you said he was lying on the floor?”
“He was.”
“Well, where is he?”
The television was still roaring at deaf-bastard volume. Caro tiptoed down the hall, peered stealthily into the living room, and then pulled back sharply, her back against the wall. She beckoned to me. I walked over and glanced through the doorway. Gordon was sitting in front of the television, watching a comedy program.
His feet were propped up on a low stool and he had a plate of cookies in his lap. While the canned laughter thundered, Gordon munched cookies and cackled at the screen. As I watched, he raised one gray haunch and emitted a leisurely fart.
* * *
THE SHOCK of seeing her father alive canceled out the effect of the X, bringing Caro miserably down to earth. On the way to my flat, she was inconsolable. “He isn’t dead,” she lamented, weeping against the car window. “You promised me he was dead and he isn’t. What kind of unfeeling bastard are you?”
“Caro, I swear he was dead. He didn’t have a pulse. You can’t get much deader than that.”
Driving down Sheen Lane, we found our way blocked by a police barricade. There were lights flashing ahead. A column of pale gray smoke climbed the sky. At the barricade, a uniformed constable stepped over to the car and leaned into my window. “You’ll have to turn round, sir.”
“Has there been a bomb?”
The officer didn’t answer, just repeated what he’d said.
“But I live here,” I protested.
“Sorry.” (He wasn’t.) “You’ll just have to park as close as you can and walk back.”
We did what I was told, leaving the car in a narrow street of terraced houses and walking back to Sheen Lane. There were two fire engines parked outside my shop. It took me a few seconds to appreciate what this meant. I left Caro behind and started to run. Even from fifty yards away, the heat was insufferable. Bright flames roared through the broken windows and the blistering eaves. Even the sign that said MARK MADDEN RARE BOOKS above the door was on fire. Many of the letters had been obliterated, so that it now read MAD ARE BOOKS.
Caro caught up with me and squeezed my arm.
“Oh, no. Oh, no,” she said.
My love understood what I had lost. My home and business. All my beautiful first editions gone. My whole life, turned to cinders and ash. It was all my life deserved.
* * *
A CONSTABLE questioned me briefly, finding me so stunned and tongue-tied that he had to ask Caro if there was anyone who could stay with me. Caro volunteered herself for the job, but the constable, perhaps seeing that Caro was in as bad shape as I was, wasn’t satisfied with this. He phoned my dad, who came to collect us in his refrigerated van and drive us back to the family home. Dad was very quiet and reflective, reminding me that the business and the premises were insured so that I’d be fully compensated.
Caro sat next to me at the kitchen table. My mum gave us both brandy and hot water and told us not to worry. “The most important thing is that you’re both safe. Yes, you’ve lost all those books and you’ve lost a home. But what if it’d burned down while you were in there? It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
Mum, always the nurse, was constantly looking for the positive side to any situation. I could imagine her cheering up patients who had suffered grave misfortunes in the same warm, brisk manner. Yes, you’ve lost all your limbs in an accident. But at least you’ve got all your own teeth.
My father, stuck for anything to say, offered to make us a curry. It was the only meal he could cook. Neither of us had eaten, so we said yes. Dad looked grateful.
“You’ll have to stay here,” said Mum. “I know it’s a mess, but you can have your own room back.”
“It’s all right,” said Caro. She reached over to take my hand. “Mark can live with me. I want him to.” She suddenly smiled ecstatically, in that crazed way she sometimes had. “In fact, hasn’t he told you?”
“Told us what?” said my parents in unison, like characters in a very bad play.
“We’re getting married,” said Caro.
“Are you?” said my mother, then had to sit down.
“His house has burned down and you’re getting married?” repeated my dad. “I’m sorry, but the timing doesn’t feel quite right, to me.”
Caro’s announcement had left me more surprised than my parents. Mum and Dad looked at me, eager for my comments. I didn’t know what to say. What can you say when you’re in love with a mad person?
* * *
IN THE morning, Caro and I had breakfast at Jeff’s café, gazing across the road at the smoldering shell that had been my home and business. There were black charred fragments scattered all the way up Sheen Lane, all that remained of my precious books.
Caro, muching Melba toast, tried to cheer me up. “Did you know that Melba toast was discovered by Dame Nelly Melba when she accidentally caught her piss flaps in a toaster?”
“Yes,” I said gloomily. “I already knew that.”
Jeff felt so bad about the tragedy that he gave us breakfast free of charge. “I remember my dad telling me about the blitz in the war,” said Jeff. “People losing everything they’d ever worked for in a single night. Terrible thing.”
Over fried potatoes, mushrooms, and bacon, Caro explained the marriage idea. “The last twenty-four hours have probably been the worst of our lives. My father didn’t die and you lost everything you own. So I suddenly thought, How do we salvage something from this? How do we save our lives from being a total disaster? And straight away, the answer came to me. We’ll get married.”
“So you love me?”
“I’m not going to lie to you,” she said. “I’m not sure I love anyone. But, on the plus side, you’re probably the least vile person I’ve ever known.”
“Oh, thanks.”
“We could give it a try. We might be lucky for each other.”
“We haven’t been very fucking lucky so far.”
“So you don’t want to marry me?”
“Yes,” I said. “I do. But just for future referen
ce, it’s customary to tell the other person before you announce your engagement.”
* * *
ON THURSDAY, Caro refused to get out of bed. She was too depressed, knowing that in twenty-four hours her father would officially write her out of his will. In my own heart, soaring happiness warred with the powerful suspicion that the world was a seething ball of worm-ridden excrement.
The girl I’d worshipped since school wanted to marry me. On the other hand—the hand with no fingers—I’d lost my house and business, and until the insurance settlement came through, I had absolutely no means of financial support.
I was sitting in the front room of the flat, listening to the planes flying over, when the intercom buzzed. I answered it, and a man’s voice said, “Hello, I’d very much like to speak to Miss Bigun.”
“There’s no one of that name here,” I said.
He immediately sounded disheartened. “She doesn’t live here anymore?” “No,” I said.
By the phone lay a stack of bills and final demands, all addressed to either Ivy Bigun or someone called Chile Concarne. It was obvious to me that Caro hadn’t learned her lesson and was still obtaining credit cards in false names simply because she could.
I went to the window and saw the caller, who looked far too old to be a bailiff, returning to his car. He sat outside the house for a few minutes, watching the windows. Then he drove away.
My mobile phone rang. I picked it up and a deep, officious-sounding voice said, “Mr. Madden?”
The caller identified himself as Detective Constable Flett. He had a few routine questions to ask me about the fire at my shop. Would it be convenient for me to call in at the Richmond police station that afternoon?
“Is something wrong?” I said.
“It’ll be easier to tell you about it face-to-face,” said Flett coldly.
“Easier for who?” I asked.
“Whom,” said Flett.
* * *
I WALKED into Richmond and entered the police station. When I told the desk sergeant I’d come in to talk to Flett, he tried to put me off. “He’s very busy. I’m sure he’ll pop round to talk to you in due course, sir.”
