Veil of Darkness

by Gillian White

  ‘She might be only nineteen,’ Marie with the varicose veins agrees, ‘but these days lasses younger than that know a damn sight more than their own mothers.’

  ‘That boyfriend of hers let her down badly.’

  ‘Oh, didn’t you know? He’s turned up again like a bad penny. A local hero, no less, bit of a lad from all you hear.’

  Kirsty spends the big day, Friday, in alternate states of fear and excitement, her hands clammy, her heart racing, waiting for Bernie’s return from London.

  Bernie is childishly indiscreet. If only she was more circumspect. How long will it take before she forgets and lets the truth slip out? Kirsty would have no alternative but to put a stop to Magdalene if her name ever came up, although a couple of thousand pounds among three is a sum not to be sneezed at, the chance of a car for her and the kids, some decent second-hand winter clothes, a few homely touches to that stark mobile home which would make all the difference.

  She has underestimated Trevor before and she is not about to do so again.

  Bernie comes home smiling broadly.

  ‘I felt so special, I’ve never felt that special before.’

  And they all understand what she means.

  But everything sounds too good to be true. Is this another example of Bernie getting carried away, letting fantasy get the better of her, or can the glowing reports of her lunch with Candice Love be anywhere near the truth?

  She certainly sounds convincing enough, and she went to London looking stunning in a nymphlike full-length summer dress, blue with white daisies.

  Innocence personified.

  ‘The train was late. I was hysterical. We had lunch at a bistro called Le Fromage Frais. She was really kind, but frightening, you know. Nothing normal like any of us. I could smoke, and when I ran out she asked the waiter and he brought me a packet of Gauloise.’

  Come on, come on, stop waffling. Kirsty’s urge is to shake her, but she doubts that would calm Bernie down. Quite dazed with happiness, her green eyes shine with anticipation, but anticipation of what?

  ‘Shut up! For God’s sake shut up!’ shouts Kirsty. ‘Did she believe you?’

  Bernie gives a coy half-smile. ‘Of course she believed me,’ she coos in her most coppery voice. ‘What is this? The inquisition? Why does nobody think that someone like me could write a book? I do come from Ireland you know, land of musicians and bards.’

  ‘But did she ask you about the plot?’

  ‘She asked what happened in the end.’

  Kirsty sweats on the answer. ‘And did you remember?’

  ‘Of course I remembered.’ Bernie turns lofty. ‘I’d only just read it, hadn’t I, and I had nothing else to read on the train, so I got halfway through it again.’ The crucifix round Bernie’s neck is nothing like the one Trevor wore, that sharp, cruel reminder of suffering, with Christ’s skinny legs pinned down by nails. Bernie’s is more like a chunky medallion, with soft aquamarine for eyes. You can almost forget what it signifies; the man on the cross could be her lover.

  ‘So, did she ask you about your background? How you came to start writing? That sort of stuff?’

  Bernie’s green eyes dance. ‘May God forgive me, I said I’d been writing since I was eight. To my eternal punishment I said I’d always wanted to be a writer. I told her Magdalene was my first attempt at a full-length novel and that it only took me six weeks. She seemed to like that.’ Then Bernie remembers, with a wink that only adds charm to her impish beauty, ‘And she did seem quite chuffed by the fact that I was so young and looked pretty. She ranted on about publicity and the fact that most of her authors look like elephants’ arseholes.’

  ‘How long is it going to take her to read the rest of the book? Did she say?’ asks a hiccuping Avril, halfway through her second Mars bar of the evening.

  ‘That doesn’t seem to matter. She’s been in touch with some editors already; she’s going to get the first five chapters off to them tomorrow. You should have seen her wicked leather jacket. I had to sign some letter saying that I agreed for them to be my agents. It must be quite a simple letter, I managed to understand it.’

  Bernie digs deep in her bag and hands the crumpled letter over. Out of the bag spill hundreds of Candice’s cards. ‘I took a handful.’ Bernie shrugs. ‘I thought I might as well. They were free.’

  ‘And what about you? What did you tell her?’

  Kirsty and Avril wait impatiently while Bernie sticks a rollie together with the curled-up pink edge of her tongue. ‘She was fazed when I told her I worked in a bar. And then I went on about other places I’ve worked in Liverpool, even the strip club where me and my mate lasted for four days and got the push, and that Daddy is with Costain and Mammy works for Littlewood’s Pools. She seemed to like this better than if I’d come from some classy home, or been to university, or had posh connections.’

  ‘You didn’t mention my name at all, are you sure, not even by accident?’ And Kirsty is struck by the realization that she feels no scruples at all. All she cares about is pulling this off, and the others seem equally determined. Where have Avril’s reservations gone?

  ‘Jaysus. What d’you take me for?’ Bernie is scornful. ‘An eejit?’

  ‘So, what now?’ asks Avril, calmed and reassured as she awkwardly fixes her rollers. For every hair she wraps round the spool there’s three others stuck out at right angles.

  ‘We wait till Candice hears from those editors. And I suppose we wait until she’s read the rest of the book.’

  ‘But how is she going to get back to us if she can’t get through on the phone?’

  ‘I gave her the hotel fax number. So it’s up to Avril to deal with that.’

  ‘No problem,’ says Avril.

  ‘She’s going to fax us if she wants us to ring her.’

  ‘That should work OK.’

  ‘She understands how we live down here. I told her about the vampire Stokes and slimy Derek Pugh. She said they could star in my next book.’

  ‘She’s already talking about another?’

  ‘She seemed to think that would just come.’

  ‘Damn,’ says Kirsty.

  ‘Writer’s block,’ says Avril, fixing her pink hairnet. ‘And let’s face it, surely some authors only write one. You can’t expect ideas to spew over like the contents of the magic porridge pot.’

  Kirsty and Bernie ignore her. Avril often surprises them with nostalgic childish references.

  There is a new girl at the doctor’s surgery. She has been here on work experience before; they were impressed so they took her on. But before she reaches receptionist standard she must learn to be rude to intractable patients, sharp like a robot on the phone and quick with the doctor’s coffee. Until she reaches these dizzy heights she must deal with the everyday forms, drug-company blurb and enquiries that litter the mat every morning.

  For instance, here is a request from a surgery on the Wirral for the medical cards of two of Doctor Worthington’s patients. Well, we don’t hold the medical cards, the medical cards are held by the patient, but busy, secretarially over-stressed Gloria, having tried the mother to no avail, uses her initiative and rings the original home number to see if, by any chance, the cards are still there.

  Mr Hoskins sounds confused on the phone, slow, as if he’s only just up. Yes, he thinks that he probably has them and will drop them in this afternoon, but is the surgery certain that his wife does not have them with her?

  People can be so disorganized. Honestly, you just wouldn’t believe…

  They miss their appointments, stub out their fags in the porch geraniums, forget to reorder their drugs, vomit on the floor of the toilets, tear bits out of magazines and sit for hours for emergency appointments when they’ve got a splinter in their finger or a small head cold.

  It is shocking to know what diseases and infections some of the snootiest patients pick up, brazen as hell. And so many folk are depressed and suicidal, in total despair, on Prozac. Until she worked here she never realized how l
ucky she’d been with her body.

  This is all rather confusing. ‘I think somebody has already been in touch with your wife down in Cornwall, at the hotel where she works. She was sure the medical cards were not with her.’

  ‘No worries, love, OK,’ says the affable Mr Trevor Hoskins, ‘I’ll bring them in this afternoon.’ His breathing sounds more laboured than it should be, a forty-a-day smoker no doubt. He will soon regret his habit, gasping his last, drowning in emphysema.

  Eleven

  BAD EGG, GRAHAM STOTT, prowls the streets of China Town for the most likely victim he can find.

  Since his release from gaol three weeks ago life has not gone well for poor Graham. He was well miffed when his mum chucked him out with no more thought than she’d give a bad carrot. You’d have thought she’d give him a few days’ grace. After all, he is her first-born, and there was a time when she seemed to love him. A short time after this bad trip, Graham, bitter and hard-done-by, dusted himself down, grabbed a wash in a gents’ public bog, scraped the top layer of stubble from his chin and hitched his hungry way to the centre of the city, where he called on his father, Richard, at Burt and Sturgess, the gentleman’s outfitters where he has worked since the day after his marriage.

  ‘Hi, Dad.’

  Even as a small child it had always hurt Graham to visit his father here. Burt and Sturgess has stooped his father, lined him and virtually effaced him, as he spent his working life ingratiatingly serving the gentlemen of the city with their bowler hats, pinstriped suits and chill-proof undergarments. Among rows of brown drawers, behind oaken counters, Dick Stott lives out his life with a tape measure around his neck, which is more constricting than leg-irons.

  And why the hell does he do it? Why has he laid down his life like the generation before him? There will be no medals for him, no little white cross in the corner of some foreign field.

  Has he laid it down for that mean little house with the stiff woman in it, for children ungrateful and angry, for a five-year-old car and a caravan, for a video recorder and a microwave? For sex on Saturday and a joint on Sunday? For a garden full of chrysanthemums and a crazy-paving path with weeds persistently growing through it?

  What of travel? What of adventure? What of love and lust, wine and music and dancing? How come Graham has missed out as well, as if, from egg to embryo, he has lacked the gene to lead him to the secret.

  Since his opt-out from school in the fourth grade, when Graham had the wit to see that he would never be one of the chosen who drive fast sports cars and pull the birds with their high-flying lives in the glass skyscrapers of the world’s great cities, Graham’s concrete future flanked him with its multi-storey car parks, garish arcades and underpasses where he went with his mates for a quick shag, a beer or a smoke. Here yesterday’s youth threw cans, graffitied the walls, exchanged their dreams and watched them spiral away on the ring roads around suburbia’s smog.

  ‘Graham?’ exclaimed his father, looking furtively round. It would not do for Mr Sturgess to see such an uncouth yob in the shop.

  ‘I went home,’ said Graham, lolling against the polished counter, worn smooth by years of sliding tweeds. There was a chance that mother might not have mentioned his visit. ‘And that was a waste of time.’

  ‘I could have told you that. I’ll be off in an hour,’ said his father underhandedly, ‘why don’t we meet in the Kardomah?’

  Oh yeah, the Kardomah. Don’t say that stuffy old dump was still going? With a pang of pain Graham remembered that his father and mother considered it appropriate to fraternize reputable eating places. No dark, smoky wine bars for them. No public bars in red-carpeted pubs, perched on stools in the daytime like losers. No burger bars, no pizza huts, no pancake parlours, no spud-u-likes, nothing remotely suggestive of anything more titillating than the nine o’clock news or the weather forecast.

  ‘I need cash,’ demanded Graham, seated in a booth where the plush velvet hangings enveloped him in the smell of ground coffee.

  ‘But I don’t have any cash,’ said his dad.

  ‘Just a few quid to see me through.’

  ‘I would if I could, son, believe me.’

  ‘Can’t you go to a hole in the wall?’

  ‘You know your mother. She won’t touch that sort of thing with a barge pole.’

  ‘I’d pay you back,’ Graham lied.

  ‘I know you would, son. I know you would.’

  ‘Only I’ve nowhere to kip tonight.’

  His father’s sad eyes moved off him. ‘There must be places.’

  ‘Hostels? Hostels for the homeless? Old tramps and piss heads?’

  ‘Cheap hotels. They must have given you some money, son. Surely they wouldn’t have thrown you out without a penny to your name?’

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s any point in you talking to Mum? Changing her mind? Just for a couple of days?’

  Richard Stott sagged in his chair and his cheap work suit sagged around him. ‘She has taken enough, Graham. Her nerves are shot. Try to understand. She is not a well woman herself, and she’s got young Avril to consider. What you must do is look for a job, a steady job with prospects.’

  It is like a tribal initiation, savage cuts made by old men on the young. I suffered, so if you want your own hut, your own spear and a wife, you must follow in my footsteps. But once Graham believed his dad was a king, with his tools, his balsa-wood models and his paintbrush. ‘Oh yeah? A job? Like yours, Dad?’

  Balls. He should have kept his mouth shut. What was the point, after all? What triumph was gained from watching his father lamely search for excuses? Richard knew what he was, he understood about sacrifice; he, presumably, had been young once, with all the passions, hopes and dreams… but it all boils down to a Bluebird caravan and shepherd’s pie when he gets home.

  The old woman limps towards him, but Graham is invisible in the night, squatted down in some lawyer’s basement, teeth bared, senses charged.

  He hopes she has been to bingo—the old Odeon has long since been converted to a mass of gobbling money machines that straddle the carpets in armour of chrome and silver. Through the foyer where he went as a child, popcorn in one hand, Coke in the other, it is now a vast open space done up tastelessly in reds and gilts, like the soulless debating chamber of some Eastern-bloc country.

  Her handbag is heavy, it weighs her down. It’s more like a hold-all; she probably takes her valuables with her, her specs and her medication, her tissues and snaps of the grandchildren. He waits in the shadows of the basement steps, wound up like a clockwork toy whose spring is about to snap, but quietly patient. Since his meeting with his father, Graham has spent too many nights in basements like this, on cold, ungiving pavements, disturbed by the community-mad, the derelicts and the dope heads.

  When the old biddy draws alongside, Graham steps up quietly behind her. The Stanley knife glistens in his hand. He holds it against her throat, inadvertently shocked by her birdlike frame, so lightweight and fragile under the coat, and the elderly smell of face powder.

  She squawks but offers no other resistance. In two swift movements he snatches her bag and shoves her against the wall in order to give his flight impetus; she is merely the punch bag he can bounce off. All he wants is her dosh, her winnings, some hope. All he wants is some time to find the right people, men who don’t care where he’s been, what he’s done, men who might consider him useful in the dark underworld of the city.

  With a tight-lipped grimace Mrs Stott thrusts the evening paper aside with its grisly front-page picture of the local pensioner who has been in a coma for the last seven days. Probably a happy release now she’s gone. Mugged for £1.39. The poor old biddy would never have slept easy in her own bed at night if she had lived. These animals roaming the streets of every city in the land ought to be put down like dogs—no nonsense.

  ‘I wasn’t going to mention this, Avril,’ says Mrs Stott to her daughter, during one of the prearranged telephone calls they have twice a week, to Avril’s incre
asing dismay, ‘but I’ve had a visit.’ She draws in her breath dramatically. ‘From Graham.’

  ‘Then why did you mention it, Mother?’ Avril knows very well why Mother has brought up the subject, she is only surprised how she has kept this disturbing news to herself for so long. Mother wants sympathy and condolence and reassurance from Avril that it was not her lack of parenting skills that drove young Graham off the rails.

  ‘There is no need to take that attitude, Avril. I can’t imagine what’s going on down there, but every time I speak to you you seem more distant, harder somehow, not like my Avril at all.’

  ‘And I wish you wouldn’t ring Mrs Stokes up behind my back,’ Avril decides to add while she’s at it. ‘Apart from being unnecessary, not to mention shaming if any of the other members of staff found out, it’s time you stopped checking up on me.’

  Mrs Stott’s voice takes on a manipulative wobble. ‘But, Avril, I do these things because I care. I wouldn’t be a proper mother if I didn’t care.’

  ‘So what happened with Graham?’ Avril would rather switch to this subject, repetitive though it might be, than paddle around in the slush of her mother’s emotional turmoil.

  ‘He looked just the same.’ That hard edge is back in her voice. ‘Prison hasn’t changed him. Came here thinking he could just move back in and start using his father and I again. Huh! He must think we’re daft, and his language is still as bad—cursing and swearing in my own kitchen.’

  ‘So you sent him on his way, did you, Mother?’

  ‘Don’t take that bored tone with me, Avril. What has got into you lately? You of all people know how much I suffered over all those years with your brother in the house and his dishonest, coarse, aggressive ways.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure you did the best thing by turning him away.’

  ‘As you know, I’m a bag of nerves as a result of those dreadful times, I sleep badly, my blood pressure’s up and Dr Hunt says I must take things easy. But there’s your father to look after, poor Fluffy and this house, and then, on top of all that, Graham comes along as cocky as you please. They should have warned me. The shock could have killed me. I mean, there he was on my doorstep like the proverbial bad penny.’