“We don’t want to be late.”
Ray wound his window down further and pulled away from the curb.
AFTER RAY HAD helped John and his laundry basket up to the front door of their destination, and then returned to his car to wait a good ten minutes for another passenger that John had told him to wait for at the same address, he’d begun to smell smoke.
Peering through the passenger side window, Ray watched a thick plume of black smoke billow over the roof of the house that John had gone inside, and drift into the sky. The fire must have been burning in the rear garden. Over the sound of his radio, Ray was also sure he heard a short, sharp human cry issue from the rear of the property. But the scream was immediately followed and muffled by the laughter of a large group of people.
“Not the weather for a barbecue,” he said, in an attempt at humour and as a tactic for drawing out some information from his new passenger, when she eventually shuffled down to his car. “Lot of smoke back there. What’s it, bonfire? Festival, like?”
The ancient Indian woman in the rear never answered him. Once she and her Samsonite suitcase had been installed into the rear of the vehicle, she had merely passed a piece of paper between the seats. Printed in capitals was an address Ray recognised in Handsworth, near the park. He wouldn’t need the satnav.
As Ray pulled away, he glanced through the passenger side window so he could see into the space between the house and the equally vast neighbouring property. The sound of laughter and applause coming from the back garden continued. The scream must have been part of some Asian festival or tradition. The people who had initially crowded about the front door to welcome John and his laundry basket were all well-heeled Sikhs, as Ray had expected them to be. Though their smiles and greetings were warmer and more excitable than he’d thought possible for the arrival of a little scruffy man and his pet inside a laundry basket.
During the journey to Handsworth Park, the elderly Asian woman never looked up from staring at her withered hands that she held together on her lap. Bonfire smoke had caught in the folds of her Sari. Ray was struck with the notion that she didn’t like him.
After Ray parked outside the large semi-detached Victorian house, across the road from Handsworth Park, that the old Indian woman had requested, an expectant middle-aged white couple appeared in the doorway before Ray had applied the handbrake. They came into the street to help the thin, elderly Indian woman out of Ray’s taxi.
The couple looked alternative yet fashionable. Ray recognised the type, who had begun migrating into what had been an Asian and West Indian neighbourhood because the big houses and long gardens were half the price of houses in Moseley and Kings Heath. Two older children, both boys with long hair, skipped around the Indian woman’s case as if Father Christmas had arrived.
The mother held a toddler in her arms and, without looking Ray in the eye, said, “We need you to take another passenger. She’ll be out shortly.” She handed a twenty pound note through the window.
When Ray slipped a hand inside his jacket pocket to find fifteen pounds change, she said, “No, no, keep it.”
“You sure?” Ray said. “Only a fiver’s fare.”
“We need you to hang on for a few minutes. You know, keep the meter running.”
Ray shrugged. “No problem at all. You need a hand with that case?”
But the woman had already turned away and Ray could see her husband raising the Samsonite case over the threshold of the house with the help of his eldest son. The husband never looked at Ray either. The elderly woman was already inside; she had been in a hurry to get off the street.
More perplexed than he could remember being about his work for some time, Ray waited fifteen minutes for the next passenger to come out of the house. And while he waited, he heard another desperate wail, that he guessed was human, shoot up from the rear of the property he was parked outside. The cry was cut short by the burst of a firework, that howled and shatter-sprinkled above his car.
Ray climbed out of his car and looked at the sky. The firework had already dispersed into the cold black air. But he could smell smoke. Wood smoke and meat cooking.
The door to the house that he’d delivered the elderly Indian woman to opened and shut quickly behind another elderly woman with a tartan shopping trolley on little wheels. Her association with the family was almost as incongruous as that of the elderly Asian woman he had dropped off at the address. Maybe the new passenger was a cleaner and the family wanted Ray to drop her home now that the party had started and her work was done. There was lots of laughter and applause and excitable shrieking coming from the children at the rear of the house now. Someone shouted, “I don’t believe it!”
The woman who had come out of the house stood on the doorstep and pointed at the shopping trolley. “Give us a hand, please, driver.”
Ray went and collected the trolley. The top of the trolley was tightly secured with the elasticated cords used to fix objects on the roof racks of cars. The trolley was heavy and Ray was certain that as he raised it, something had flopped or fallen against one side of the case, then kicked itself upright. “Party they’s having, is it?” he asked his new passenger.
“Once a year you gets your chance. This year mine come round,” she said, but didn’t elaborate. A cloud of black smoke rose from the rear of the house, then billowed up above the red roof and dispersed into the darkness that smothered the park.
“Another pet in here?” Ray asked, nodding at the trolley as he wheeled it across the pavement to his car. “Sure it’s legal to have an animal inside? Can it breathe?”
The woman said, “It’s all I got and she don’t mind.”
He dropped the woman and her shopping trolley off at an address in Sandwell Valley, close to the large farm that was open to the public. Like the elderly Asian woman, his passenger did not speak during the journey, and had only broken into, “Here, here it is. This one, it must be,” as Ray pulled up outside a large white private house with high walls. “I can’t wait to see her.”
“Who?”
Judging by her gleeful expression, she was too excited to answer, and the woman clambered out with a groan. He received the impression his passenger had been utterly indifferent to the person who drove the vehicle she’d travelled in; the person responsible for her safety, let alone her enigmatic schedule. Nothing new there.
Ray wheeled the tartan shopping trolley up to the white house. It banged against his leg and he heard the scrape of claws against the trolley’s lining. The trolley stank of smoke. He left it outside the front door and returned to his car.
And so the curious nature and sequence of his afternoon and evening’s work continued. He’d made forty quid and was on a roll, but his curiosity about his passengers and their respective cases was beginning to stifle his delight at the abundance of work. So he decided to be more assertive with the next passenger: an elderly black man.
Ray helped the passenger position a large holdall in the rear. A little brass lock secured the end of the bag’s zipper. The interior of the car bloomed afresh with the fragrance of cold air and wood smoke. Ray climbed into the driver’s seat and cracked the window wider. “Where to, mate?”
“He say he gonna be here.” A piece of paper was passed between the seats.
Ray frowned. It was the very first address he had picked up John and the cane basket from, at the edge of Hockley.
In the rear view mirror, Ray looked at the man in the rear. The man met his eye without even blinking: stolid, unfriendly, obstinate, and somewhat entitled.
Ray glanced at the bag beside his passenger. It was the type of canvas sports bag that teenagers favoured. It had West Bromwich Albion’s badge at one end. “Baggies fan?”
“My son,” the man said, and looked out of the window.
Ray drove in silence, but struggled to keep his mind on the road. Just as well he knew them so well. “Not being funny, like, but do you mind if I ask you a question?”
As if he hadn’t hea
rd Ray, the passenger never moved his head.
“But I pick your mate up at this address that we are going to. And he gets in the car with his pet in a basket. And then we go to another house and another house, and each time it’s the same thing. Someone with an animal, I think, in a bag. So I’m guessing you got one in there, too, yeah? So what’s it all about, yeah? ’Cus I am clueless.”
The man never spoke for at least a minute. He just stared at the buildings they passed as they neared the city centre. And Ray found it hard to read the passenger’s mood from glances into the rear view mirror; though he suspected he intuited a grave sadness in the man’s eyes whenever the headlights of a passing vehicle flashed through the car at the same time Ray checked his mirror.
“Life is full of repetition,” the man eventually said. “Same bad things keep happening.”
The statement, because that is what it was, mystified Ray. Nor was it information he felt capable of responding to. “You all right, mate?” was the best he could do. “Ain’t none of my business, but I’m just wondering out loud what you’re all doing. Curiosity, like.”
“You realise it’s not just you. There’s others who been through the same thing.”
“What, like? You talking about John and that Asian woman, and that woman with the shopping trolley?”
The man briefly looked up from his morbid self-absorption, but never spoke.
Ray pushed. “The others, like? With the bags I been picking up here, there and everywhere?”
“Here, there and everywhere,” the man said and then sighed. “I don’t know them. Only met John once.” He pinched his fingers in his eye sockets as if he were stoppering tears.
As his curiosity became discomfort, Ray looked forward and drove through the dark in his own silence. He only spoke after he’d pulled up outside the first address. “Fifteen pound.”
The man paid him with a hand that shook with nerves, or palsy. “Help me with my bag, please.”
“Right ho.”
The two men held one strap of the sports bag each and carried what could have been a long, well behaved dog, zipped inside a holdall, up to the front door of John’s address. The passenger depressed the bell.
Though Ray heard nothing chime inside the house, John opened the front door within seconds. “You made good time.” John said this as if the passenger had driven the car. “She’s been in there long enough. Bring her through.” He ignored Ray.
With the bag wedged between them, Ray and his passenger squeezed into the hovel. There were more lights on inside the house now, though the place was still dim as if the shadow upon it would never allow the brightness of the lights to grow. When they passed through the room filled with boxed clothes, the last passenger paused and said, “All these?”
Over his shoulder, John said, “And more every year. Mostly kids. Nine and ten we find. Now, to the kitchen, if you please. And I’ll tell you where you can set her down.”
Ray struggled into the kitchen with the holdall. Whatever was inside the bag had begun to sniff at his trouser leg through the side of the canvass.
The kitchen was remarkably tidy in contrast to the rest of the house. A small table, with a floral pattern printed on its surface, stood at one side of the room with two chairs pulled out as if in anticipation of imminent use.
“He’ll come in through here, Glenroy,” John said to the passenger, once they were all inside the kitchen with the holdall.
“Here? You sure?” Glenroy asked his host.
Ray’s bafflement and curiosity compelled him to stay a little longer. He wanted to see what was inside the bag.
“Never fails,” John said, in a softer voice that Ray hadn’t thought the man capable of. “This was Wendy’s favourite place. And I always use it for those of you that can’t entertain at home. As long as this is your son’s bag, there won’t be any problem, I can assure you.”
Glenroy nodded and then looked at the back door. It opened onto a cold, darkness that flickered with firelight. “Through there?”
“We done? I gotta get on.” Ray said to both men. Neither seemed to hear him, or they were ignoring him. “Look–”
“Just set it down on the patio,” John said curtly to Ray, and stepped through the back door.
“Come on, we got to get this done,” Glenroy said to Ray.
“What?” Ray asked.
“Once you have helped me outside with this, it’s over,” the black man said.
Ray carried the bag out of the kitchen and into a small paved yard that cringed beneath what could have been a viaduct. And his attention was seized by the size of the pyre in the yard, set against the far wall. Beside the pyre of bracken and wooden pallets was an oil drum that belched black smoke. Upon the top of the pyre was an old vinyl car seat. A small set of metal steps, the kind you see in warehouses or large libraries, had been positioned at the foot of the pyre and led to the seat.
Glenroy muttered, “Dear God.”
“This part is always difficult,” John said, to soothe the nerves of the elderly man.
“What is this?” Ray asked, looking from one man to the other.
They ignored him.
John touched the passenger’s elbow. “Glenroy, believe me, you won’t even notice the fire as soon as you see your son. Just go and find yourself a seat at the table and he’ll be here shortly. I suggest you sit with your back to the garden to avoid distractions in what will be a very precious time. You will probably hear a bit of fuss out here, and then your son will arrive and embrace you. There is no need for you to see this part of the proceedings, though some clients prefer to make the offering a joyous occasion.”
Glenroy nodded and headed for the kitchen.
The undisclosed connection between fire and the contents of the bags, suddenly made Ray eager to get back to his car. Besides being just too weird, the sinister implication of such a backyard installation was not lost on him. He thought of the black plumes of smoke he had seen at every address that evening, of the photo on the dining room wall, and of the distant screams. Ray turned to follow his last passenger out of the yard.
“Not you, driver.” John said into the back of Ray’s head, in a tone of voice that made Ray tense. There followed the sound of a zipper being quickly undone in the cold air of the cement yard. “We’re not done with you yet.”
Ray had heard enough. “What’s your game, eh? I’ve been driving–” he said as he turned to confront the man standing behind him. But then lost the ability to speak, and the strength in both of his legs seemed to drain through the soles of his shoes, at the sight of what had climbed out of the sports bag and now stood upright. Something that had travelled in his car all evening. And it wasn’t a dog, or a cat, or any kind of pet.
“Now.” John raised both hands into the air and made a series of rapid gestures as if he were performing sign language. “You either take your seat unassisted up there” – John nodded at the summit of the unlit pyre – “or she will be forced to seat you.”
The back door closed and Ray heard a key turn in the lock. He turned his head and watched Glenroy take a seat at the kitchen table.
“The duration of the event is mercifully short,” John said. “A bit longer than it took you to knock Glenroy’s son from his bicycle on Rocky Lane.”
“I... I... I...”
“Yes, yes, that’s all very well. But there are consequences, and it’s getting late and you’re the last one this year and there’s no time for any fiddle, so please take your seat.”
“What...”
Within the ebb and flow of the firelight and what illumination it offered, even though the thing on the patio was as tall and hairy as a fully grown male chimpanzee, what had been inside the sports bag was not an ape. For as long as he could bear to look at it, Ray could see that it wasn’t a primate, because there were trotters on the end of its short rear legs. And though the thing’s face was horribly reminiscent of a pig, it wasn’t a pig either, because it stood upright like a child.
The little figure shivered in the night air.
When it grinned at Ray, he whimpered and stepped towards the garden fence.
John’s brusque voice penetrated his shock. “You’ll only feel the flames for about three seconds, driver. Nothing more is required of you, then she’ll bleed you out. So I always suggest that you raise your chin, or you will burn for longer than is necessary in this particular ritual. Now, to your chair please, driver.”
Ray turned and fell at the fence. It was old and sagged with rot. He would kick it down, run.
“Soon as I drop my hands, driver, she will be released. I can assure you that you will get no further than my yard.”
“Wha...?”
“Hit and run,” John said with all the pomp of a scout master. The firelight from the oil drum flickered across the lenses of his spectacles and Ray could no longer see the old man’s eyes. “She followed the scent of your callousness. A challenge. Guilt, shame, and even pride are more established spores. And she’s had three of you today and reunited three mothers with their children, albeit for an incredibly short time.”
“What is–”
With the impatience and irritation that John had shown him that day, the scruffy old man cut him short. “She became a good friend of my wife. After Wendy was killed on a pedestrian crossing not far from here in 1994. And her killer sat in the chair far longer than you will tonight, driver. So be thankful that time has mellowed me. Time ever heals, they say. You even start to forget. This is how I remember. Now, shall we begin?”
Ray gripped the top of the wooden fence. “Fuck off!”
John dropped both of his arms. The palms of his hands slapped his hips.
RAY BEGAN TO scream even before he sat buckled into the car seat at the summit of the pyre. And when John stuck a blazing taper of rolled newspaper into the base of the bracken, that had been soaked in the petrol, whose fumes now clung to his face, Ray looked to the kitchen as if to appeal for mercy.
He saw his last passenger, Glenroy, through the glass panel in the kitchen door. And over the kitchen table the old man embraced another darker and more indistinct figure. One who had already buried a face, that Ray could not see, on its father’s shoulder.
End of the Road Page 23
