by J. L. Merrow
I was fed up with the whole bloody lot of them.
Phil wrenched the car around, managing to scatter even the densely packed gravel on the Old Deanery drive. “Had fun watching them put me in my place, did you?”
“Put you in your . . . For fuck’s sake, Phil. All they did was ask about your family and stuff.”
“Yeah, and make it crystal bloody clear they thought you were slumming it with me.”
“Me, slumming it? You’re the one in the sodding designer shirt!” And he had his posh loafers on again. And the fancy watch with two sets of hands. I was in jeans, trainers, and a shirt I got cheap down the market.
If I’d known Mum and Dad would be there, I might have dug out the garden-party gear again.
“For fuck’s sake . . .” Phil screeched out of a junction, having glared the poor sod whose right of way it was into submission. “You’re missing the point.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sure you’ll be only too happy to explain it to me.”
“Jesus.” Phil zoomed up behind some old codger tootling along in a clapped-out Austin and thumped the dashboard. The old bloke turned off at the next junction. Probably because he wanted to live to tootle another day.
I stared out of the window as the streets of St. Leonards turned to open countryside. The fields were still brilliant green in the early summer sun, although they were definitely starting to go brown at the edges. All the people we passed were in shorts, sandals, and sunglasses, but the air-con in the car had me rolling my sleeves down against the chill. Or maybe it was just the frigid waves coming from Phil. Apparently determined to be a stubborn, pigheaded git, he drove in silence. Except when he was swearing under his breath at other road users.
I’d expected we’d be spending a fair proportion of the day over with Greg and Cherry, so we hadn’t exactly made any plans for the evening. Which was good, because there was no way I was going to waste the rest of my Sunday listening to a muscle-bound poser with a chip on his shoulder the size of Epping Forest snipe at me and my family. As we neared my house in Fleetville, I opened my mouth.
“I need to sort out the van—”
Phil spoke at the same time. “Got some work I need to be doing—”
Huh. “Right, then,” I said, chipper as I could. “Cheers for the lift, and I’ll see you around.”
There was a huff. “Tom . . .”
I pretended not to hear him. Amazing how distracted you can get, unbuckling your seat belt and opening the door. ’Specially if you don’t bother waiting until the car’s come to a full stop.
“See you, then,” I said, and slammed the door behind me without waiting for an answer.
I got the van sorted out and got my bills and stuff up-to-date. Caught up with the laundry too—well, all the stuff that was mine, anyhow. Thought about shoving all Phil’s designer socks and undies into a bin-bag and dropping them off at his place, but in the end I just left them at the bottom of the laundry basket. If he wanted them, he could sodding well come round and ask for them.
By evening, I was desperate to get out of the house. I thought about popping round the corner to get rat-faced in the Rats Castle—in fact, I’d pretty much decided that was what I was going to do—but somehow I found myself dialling up Gary instead.
“You busy tonight?” I asked after he’d given me his Leslie Phillips–style hel-looo.
“Mm. Funny you should ask. A hole does appear to have unexpectedly opened up in my schedule. I take it you’d be interested in filling said hole for me?”
“Yeah. Wanna meet up for a drink?”
“Do teddy bears like picnics? Ooh, that reminds me—how is little Tommy?”
“Little Tommy’s fine. Sitting on my bed as we speak.” At least, I assumed we were talking about the teddy bear. The way things were going, he might be the only one I’d be sharing it with for the foreseeable. “So are we having this drink or what?”
“Of course, darling. At the Dyke?”
“Uh, maybe not? Tell you what, why don’t we try the Four Candles? Haven’t been there in ages.”
There was a silence.
“Gary?”
“Still here, darling. That was just me not commenting on the fact that you’re clearly trying to avoid someone. Fine. We shall go find ourselves a cosy little table and gaze deeply into the river. In the philosophical sense, obviously, as the water’s running rather low these days. It’s the fish I feel sorry for, in all this global warming. They don’t even have a carbon footprint.”
“Yeah. Whatever. See you in twenty minutes?”
The Four Candles in Brock’s Hollow is a nice enough pub, but a bit commercial, trading on its prime location in the middle of the village. It’s the sort of place that, if you were driving through the village looking for a place to have lunch with the family, you’d go, Oh, that looks nice, and stop at. From the outside, it’s your typical Olde English Pubbe, white-painted and framed with black timber, although it loses points for not having a thatched roof. There’s a small beer garden, a play area for the kiddies that’s knee-deep in bark chippings to fend off any potential lawsuits over grazed knees, and as Gary said, it’s slap bang by the river, which is always good for a bit of duck spotting. You can get a decent enough meal there, but it’s overpriced for what you get.
I managed to drive the short way down Four Candles Lane without meeting anyone coming the other way and having to have a staring match until one of us caved and backed out again—always a pain—and parked in the pub car park. Unlike a lot of pub car parks, it’s large enough that there’s never any trouble finding a space, which would be your first clue to how commercial the place is.
There were a few people having a quiet drink out the back, but no one I knew, which was how I liked it right now. I headed straight into the bar. They’d done the place up a bit since I’d last been in there—repapered the walls in deep crimson and taken down the nostalgic photos of Brock’s Hollow in Ye Olde Tymes to put up a job lot of prints of farm animals. It might have made the place a bit more colourful, but to my mind it was now even more generic and soulless than it had been before. They’d also split off half of it into a proper restaurant bit, leaving the pub area a bit cramped and poky.
Of course, I probably wasn’t in the right frame of mind to appreciate it properly.
Gary, bless him, had already got a round in. He was sitting at a table in the corner, Julian at his feet, next to a little square window that faced out onto the river. Just like he’d promised. I took a peek outside when I joined him and saw a couple of lads fishing from the bridge, plus one solitary moorhen on the water. The ducks must be on their break.
“You all right?” I asked as I dropped into my seat. “Cheers for the beer.” I showed my appreciation by glugging down almost half of it.
Gary gave me a look over the rim of his martini glass. Either they’d put a cherry in it or that was some genetically modified breed of bright-red olive. “Bursting with health. Which is more than your liver will be if you keep that up. What’s he done now, then? Come on, spill. Metaphorically, obviously. These trousers are dry-clean only, and Julian’s just had his bath.”
“Did I say Phil had done anything?”
“Did you need to?”
“Point.” I took another swig from my pint, this one a bit smaller. Compared to the beer at the Dyke, it tasted over-fizzy and not fruity enough. Unsatisfying. “We had a row, all right?”
“About?”
“About him storming out of a family meal and basically calling my mum and dad a couple of snobs.” Gary opened his mouth to speak, but I hadn’t finished. “Like he’s not desperate for the weather to turn cold so he can drag out the cashmere sweaters again.”
I filled Gary in on the Sunday lunch from hell. “I’m not even sure who I’m more pissed off with,” I said at the end, and took a long draught from my glass. I was on to my second pint already. At this rate, I wouldn’t be fit to drive home. “Greg, for shoving his reverend bloody nose in and setting us
up like that, or Phil, for being such a stubborn, pigheaded git, or . . .” I swallowed. “Or Mum.” My insides knotted up just saying it. “I mean, I’m not saying what he said about her was right. Just, you know, maybe she could have made a bit more effort.”
Gary hmm’ed. “You realise she was only using Phil as a distraction.”
“What?”
“Your mother. She clearly didn’t want the conversation turning to matters parental. ‘The best defence is a good offence,’” he quoted sagely.
I had a flashback to Carey telling me how he felt like he had to pre-emptively throw his weight around to get anyone to take him seriously.
I dragged my mind back to the subject at hand. “What, like I was going to bring the subject up over Greg and Cherry’s dinner table?”
Gary shrugged expansively, throwing his arms wide, and nearly knocked my pint over. Well, what was left of it. “Who’s to say what a man might do, confronted with the knowledge that his whole life has been a lie?”
I picked up my glass quickly. “Okay, firstly, my dad is not my whole life. And secondly, I got confronted with it months ago, didn’t I? I’ve had time to get used to it now.”
“Have you?” He leaned forward to fix me with what was clearly supposed to be a significant look. On Gary, it was more like a leer. “Or have you simply been enjoying that North African river cruise?”
“You what?”
“In de-Nile?
“I haven’t been denying stuff, all right? Just sort of . . . not dealing with it. I’ve been busy, haven’t I? With stuff.” Gary raised a doubting eyebrow. “Work and stuff. And,” I added, wagging a finger at him as I got into the swing of it, “your wedding’s taken up a fair bit of my time. Getting kitted out with the formal gear, writing my best man’s speech . . .” Okay, so technically I hadn’t actually started that one yet. But, you know, I’d been thinking about it.
Mostly I’d been thinking I didn’t have the first bloody clue about making speeches.
“Ooh, I can’t wait to hear it,” Gary gushed. Then he frowned. “I hope you’re not going to mention anything too indelicate. My mother will be there, you know.”
“Gary, your mum already knows all your sordid little secrets. Because you tell her them.”
“Mm, but she’s getting very forgetful these days.”
“Yeah, well, unless she’s forgotten you completely, I don’t reckon she’ll be shocked by anything I come out with.” I drained my glass. “Right, my round. Same again?”
“Please. And perhaps a glass of ice water as well. And perhaps a top-up for Julian’s bowl.”
“I’m surprised they even let you bring him in here,” I said as I stood up.
“Oh, Madge at the bar is a total sweetie.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Madge?”
“Madge,” Gary confirmed, ruffling Julian’s neck fur. “She knows how important it is for a big, handsome dog like you to stay hydrated, yes she does. Now tell me straight, darling,” he added, looking back up at me. “Is this weather going to hold until the wedding day?”
“How the hell would I know?”
“Oh, you know. Your thingy. The watery bit.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Rain is water, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but . . .” I shook my head. “I’m getting the drinks in, all right? You want a weather forecast, get on to the BBC.”
I ended up getting a few rounds in that evening. Probably a few more than was really good for me, if I was honest, which I didn’t feel much like being right then. Gary matched me drink for drink, but after a while, he gave up on the martinis and stuck to the ice water.
I thought about doing the same, but, well, beer’s something like ninety percent water anyhow, right?
“I just dunno,” I said glumly, toying with my pint glass. It was half-empty, which seemed deeply significant just then. “Me and Phil, I mean. What if it’s, you know, run its course? What if, I dunno, he was only into me for the finding-things bollocks—”
“Or for your actual bollocks,” Gary put in helpfully.
I ignored him. “And now the whatsit, novelty’s worn off? I mean, look at him. Well, he’s not here, so you can’t, but imagine him. Remember him. Whatever. He’s tall, he’s good-looking, he’s got more muscles than Popeye after a whole bloody field of spinach. He could have anyone he wants. Christ, I bet he’s with some other bloke right now, shagging his brains out.”
“Mm. Not quite, darling.” Gary smirked.
I frowned, irrationally annoyed on Phil’s behalf. “He could be if he wanted to.”
“I don’t mean to deny the physical attractions of your beloved, who I’m sure has the pulling power of a Sherman tank. However, in this particular instance, I’m quite certain his virtue has remained intact.”
“Because he’d never cheat on me?” I blinked a bit of stray emotion out of my eye. Must be a leftover from the head injury.
“Because, darling, he’s with Darren, who would never cheat on me.” Gary beamed and poked a cocktail stick under my nose. “Want to pop my cherry?”
I stared at the lurid excuse for a fruit speared on the plastic stick. “Not hungry,” I muttered. Then I thought, Sod it, and ate it anyway.
“There’s a good boy,” Gary said. “So you see, your Philip’s virtue is quite safe, as he’s currently moistening the shoulder of the truest man in Hertfordshire.”
Gary dabbed delicately at his eyes, which had actually gone a bit misty—he wasn’t just faking it. I tried to picture Phil crying on Darren’s shoulder. Leaving aside the ridiculousness of the whole Phil crying bit, he’d have to bend down so far to reach it he’d probably topple over. I frowned. “What’s he got to cry about, anyhow? He’s the one who’s being bloody unreasonable.”
“Reasonable is as reasonable does,” Gary said sagely. “More drinkies?”
I’d had so many drinkies I was weaving a bit when we finally stood up from the table at kicking-out time. “Don’t think I’d better drive home,” I muttered to the Gary on the left. The one on the right kept looking at me funny.
“Of course you shouldn’t, darling.” Left-hand Gary beamed. “You can sleep with me and Darren.”
It was almost tempting. Then I remembered. “Phil,” I said sadly as we walked to the door.
“I’m not sure we’ll be able to squeeze him in as well. We’ve got a very large bed, but there are limits.”
Something hot and heavy kept pressing against my legs, making it hard for them to go in the direction they wanted to. On the other hand, that did seem to mean I ended up going in a more or less straight line. I looked down to see Julian’s enormous furry body flanking me. Maybe he had a bit of guide dog in him. Actually, come to think of it, he could probably fit in an entire guide dog and still have room for a rare steak and a couple of doggy treats. I sniggered a bit, picturing it.
“Good night, gentlemen. Safe journey home,” someone—Madge?—called out, and I half turned in their direction and nearly tripped over the step down to the door.
“Oops-a-daisy,” Gary said, catching me by the elbow and steadying me. “Time for Bedfordshire. Come on, let Uncle Gary take you home and tuck you up.”
I fumbled for my phone. “Gonna call a taxi.”
“Sure?”
I nodded. “Don’t wanna . . .” I grimaced, and made a vague gesture. “Phil.”
“Ah. Yes, I suppose there is a teensy possibility he might still be with Darren. We’re continuing to avoid him, are we?”
I grunted something that could have been taken as a yes. It wasn’t that I was avoiding him, exactly.
I just didn’t want to see him, that was all.
Monday morning seemed to start around three hours too early for my liking, but the cobwebs had more or less cleared by lunchtime. Lucky I’d remembered to drink about a gallon of water before bed to stave off the hangover I probably deserved, or I might not have been so chirpy. Dehydration would have been a bugger in heat like t
his.
Normally, workdays, unless I’m meeting someone for lunch, I’ll just have a sandwich in the van. Saves time, not to mention money. Today, though, I had a two-hour block between jobs—Mrs. H., in Hatfield, had asked me to come round an hour later than I’d booked her in to fit her new dishwasher, seeing as Mr. H. had taken the day off unexpectedly and was taking her out for a romantic birthday lunch. There had been the strong implication, when she’d called me, that he’d finally got her hint that gifts of domestic appliances weren’t going to get him his conjugals in a hurry.
It was all right for some. The way things were going between me and Phil, I’d be lucky to get a cheap card for my upcoming birthday.
Anyway, I had time to kill. I could have gone home, but the cats would’ve given me funny looks and let’s face it, I’d have the whole evening to spend sitting on that sofa on my own. Didn’t really appeal. So I decided to treat myself to a pub lunch. Again. At this rate, Harry was going to think I’d moved in and start charging me rent. Still, at least Marianne would have a smile for me—if I managed not to put my foot in it this time by bringing up the subject of her ex—and if Harry wanted to know how the case was going, I could take pleasure in directing her to bend the ear of one Phil sodding Morrison.
I got the local cab firm to give me a ride up to the Dyke, planning to walk down into the village and retrieve the Fiesta from the Four Candles car park after I’d eaten. It’d be a bit of a trek, but I was in the mood for some fresh air and exercise.
“Want to come in for a quick one?” I asked Al, the driver, when he dropped me off.
“Nah, cheers mate. Against my religion, innit?”
I stared at him. “Al, you don’t have a religion. Unless private enterprise counts.” As well as driving the cabs, Al also ran a thriving sari concern that Mrs. Al manned the till and did the books for, and the kiddies helped out in after school. They were all nominally Catholic, but I hadn’t noticed any of ’em beating a path to St. Thomas’s church on a Sunday.
