by Dan Kavanagh
By one-thirty Duffy was squatting in some bracken about twenty yards from the grit-bin. He had excused himself from lunch, driven off for a pub sandwich, found a hiding-place for the van, and worked his way through some woods to his present uncomfortable niche. With an hour to kill he tried plaiting himself a camouflage hat out of ferns, like the one Jimmy had worn when he’d caught Duffy poking in Mr Hardcastle’s shed; but he couldn’t get it to stick together, not without cellotape or something. No doubt there was an art to it.
At two-thirty he heard footsteps from the direction of the drive, then saw Angela, unsuitably dressed for a country walk, come into view. She headed straight for the bin, dropped a brown envelope into it, didn’t look round (as he had instructed) and started off up the road to the right. Five minutes later, after only a certain amount of crackling undergrowth and shouts of ‘Oh, shit,’ she was by his side.
‘I don’t really like the country,’ she said, as she patted the ground testingly before sitting down. ‘Bloody prickly.’
Duffy grunted, and kept his gaze on the road. Five minutes later, she said, ‘It’s quite exciting, this, isn’t it?’ She gave him the eyes, and a half-smile too.
‘Shh.’ Mum’s the word, he’d said to Jimmy, and Jimmy had replied, ‘My mum talked all the bloody time.’ Angela went quiet.
At six minutes to three, by which time two cars and a motor-caravan had gone past, a bicycle came into view. It was an old-fashioned machine with stand-up handlebars and a basket on the front. The rider looked pretty old-fashioned, too, pedalling along with his knees and elbows out. On his head he wore a deerstalker. If this is anything to do with it, thought Duffy, if this is the postman, or even just a lookout, they’re definitely amateur. Probably want the money to pay for new bicycles. The figure got nearer, and was about fifteen yards from the grit-bin when Angela suddenly got to her feet, started waving and shouting, ‘Henry, Henry.’ She ran down the bank towards the road, crashing through the undergrowth and shouting ‘Henry’ in an increasingly hysterical voice. The cyclist, now five yards short of the grit-bin, looked up, saw her, cycled straight on and pulled up by the side of the road. Angela started hugging him, which was not easy given the presence of the handlebars.
Duffy swore, got up, kicked away his feeble attempt at a fern hat, and trotted down the slope to the road.
‘What are you doing in the woods with my fiancée?’ Henry bellowed, and then burst out laughing, as if he was sure there was a reasonable explanation. Duffy laughed back, and tried to think of one. He saw Angela about to open her mouth and quickly got in before she could screw things up further.
‘We were looking for Ricky’s body, actually. What happened to your car? Broke down or something?’ Henry had two cars, and his mother had one, and there was always the Land Rover in emergency.
‘Felt like the exercise. Nice day. Thought I’d pop over and see my gel.’
‘You are romantic, Henry,’ said Angela. She took his arm, and started leading him and the bike up the drive to Braunscombe Hall. Romantic, grumbled Duffy to himself as he followed them at ten paces or so. Romantic! Just because he won’t go to bed with you and rides a funny old bike and has a stupid hat on his head. If that was romantic, it wasn’t a difficult trick to pull, provided you didn’t mind behaving like a prat and a wally all the time.
Of course she’d screwed up the drop deliberately. She’d seen Henry coming and couldn’t bear to watch him delving in the grit-bin. She’d rather marry someone she thought was probably blackmailing her than not marry someone because she definitely knew he was blackmailing her. She must be really lost, thought Duffy, nothing but panic and terror gurgling through her all the time. He wondered if Henry knew the ins and outs of this girl who came over all story-book lovey-dovey whenever he hove into sight.
It must be Henry, mustn’t it? It looked like an amateur, it had to be someone who knew Angela or could find out about her, it must be someone local; and Henry had turned up at the drop at precisely six minutes to three. What did it look like?
Duffy didn’t know why he was following them back to the house. He didn’t know why he sat with them in the family room, occasionally picking pieces of bracken off his trousers, for half an hour or more. Maybe he was expecting Angela to apologize; maybe he was expecting Henry to confess. The atmosphere during that half-hour was hardly relaxed. Angela was ignoring Duffy, as if to say, you bloody suspect Henry, don’t you, you’ve got the nerve to suspect Henry, haven’t you, why don’t you piss off? Duffy was ignoring Angela in return, as if to say, you knew, didn’t you, you suspected, I bet you recognized his voice, perhaps he didn’t even put on a fancy foreign accent, that’s why you insisted on coming with me, that’s why you screwed up the drop, you bloody guessed, didn’t you? Henry sat making polite remarks in both directions, but with a slight frown, as if to say, what were these two doing in the bracken in the middle of the afternoon, and if you really were looking for a dead dog, shouldn’t you have had a stick or something so that you could bash down the brambles?
‘Got to see to the van,’ said Duffy, and left without anyone saying goodbye to him. He stamped across the gravel and up the drive. He marched past the pre-weathered salamander clinging to its pre-weathered globe. For once he was too cross even to notice the smell of the countryside. He got to the grit-bin and wrenched open the lid to retrieve Angela’s envelope. There was nothing in the grit-bin apart from grit. ‘Bugger,’ said Duffy.
It was a half-hour walk to fetch the van, which didn’t improve Duffy’s temper. He drove carelessly back to Braunscombe Hall and as he turned in at the gates he had to pull sharply over on to the grass to avoid Henry, who was pedalling down the middle of the drive, back erect and knees pointing out sharply like a frog’s.
‘Sorry,’ said Duffy, even though it was a 50-50 case.
‘Maybe you are after my fiancée,’ said Henry cheerfully, then turned round in the saddle, without wobbling, and added, ‘Don’t forget your lesson.’
‘Right.’
When Duffy got back to the family room, Angela didn’t wait for him to sit down. ‘You bloody think he did it, don’t you, you nasty common little person. You bloody think he did it, don’t you?’
‘If you were so sure it wasn’t him, why didn’t you wait till he got past the grit-bin? Another ten yards and everything would have been clear.’
‘There, you bloody do think he did it, you common little person.’ Duffy didn’t answer. ‘Anyway, I was pleased to see him. Fiancée’s prerogative,’ she added rather smugly.
Duffy was glad he didn’t have to handle these mood-swings in more than a business capacity. One moment she was coming to a bad end and wouldn’t get up the bloody aisle, let alone the bloody nave, and the next moment it was all sweet Henry and ‘Here Comes the Bride’ stuff. Was it pills, or was that just what she was like? Or was she even worse without the pills?
‘Henry didn’t stay long,’ he said as neutrally as he could.
‘What the fuck’s that got to do with you?’ There was a hostile silence. ‘If you must know, he didn’t have any lights on his bike.’
It was a good two hours before dusk, and Henry’s ride couldn’t have been longer than forty minutes, but Duffy thought he would let that pass. ‘I think you could have let him go the extra ten yards,’ he said. ‘You see, I went back and checked the grit-bin. The envelope’s gone. So it couldn’t have been Henry.’
‘You incompetent little man,’ she shouted. ‘Why didn’t you stay in the wood? Then you could have seen who took it.’ Duffy thought this hadn’t seemed a plausible option at the time. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, suddenly cheerful, ‘what’s another two thousand?’
‘Hang on,’ said Duffy. ‘You don’t mean you put real money in the envelope?’
‘Of course I did.’
‘Christ. You weren’t meant to.’
‘What do you mean? You told me we were doing the drop. So we did the drop. And you were meant to hang about in the trees and catch them. Wasn’t
that the idea?’
‘You said you’d decided not to pay. You were meant to put newspaper or something in the envelope. I thought that was obvious. Haven’t you ever seen any films or anything?’
‘You screwed up properly, didn’t you?’ But her tone was still cheerful, as if the fact that Henry wasn’t the blackmailer had made everything all right again.
‘You screwed up. Well, we both screwed up. This is hopeless.’ Not just hopeless, amateurish. An amateur blackmailer, an amateur blackmailee; and he hadn’t exactly been quick off the mark himself, had he?
Before dinner he ran into Sally at the foot of the stairs. As she was brushing past him he said, ‘Oh, er, I understand you do the drawing.’
She turned. With her big black eyes and lolloping curls she could be a good-looking girl if she wanted to, Duffy thought; all she needed was to get some focus into her eyes, like now. ‘So?’
‘Well, just wondered if I could see them.’
‘Who’s your favourite painter?’
‘Have you got any of them around?’
‘Who do you prefer? Picasso or Braque?’
‘I understand they’re very nice.’
‘Matisse or Renoir?’
‘It must take a lot of skill to make a dog look like a monkey.’
‘Jackson Pollock or Pelé?’
‘Pelé’s a footballer.’
‘That’s right,’ said Sally as she walked off. Half-incredulous, she muttered to herself, ‘He’s asking to see my etchings.’
Dinner that evening was no more lively an affair than the previous day. Duffy sat well away from Angela, and diagonally across from Lucretia. It looked as if she’d washed her hair. Duffy persuaded himself that she didn’t really look posh; no, posh wasn’t the word for her, she was more … sort of… classy. Those clear-cut, slightly carved features, the half-smile, yes, she was doing it again. Once or twice he would catch her eye and she would look back at him. What did that glance mean? Did it mean, frankly you haven’t got a prayer, or did it mean, why not give it a go? Mrs Colin had said that Lucretia did less fucky-fuck than Sally; but that could still mean a healthy and democratic amount of fucky-fuck.
When the coffee had been handed round and Mrs Hardcastle had retired, there was the scrape of a chair. Damian was on his feet, a glass of wine held in front of him as if he were preparing to toast someone. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I give you “The Dogs”.’ Sally clapped; Taffy looked perplexed; Duffy glanced across at Lucretia, whose eyes were elsewhere. He looked back and up to Damian, who was addressing him. ‘The tune, for strangers to the house and lower-class persons generally, is “The Church’s One Foundation”.’ Damian cleared his throat and began:
‘The dogs they had a meeting,
They came from near and far;
And some dogs came by aeroplane,
And some dogs came by car.
‘They came into the courtroom
And signed the visitors’ book,
And each dog took his arsehole
And hung it on a hook.’
Damian’s creamy baritone was briefly lubricated with a sip of wine. Sally was looking up at the singer expectantly; Taffy seemed to be examining his cutlery.
‘The dogs they were well-seated,
Each mother’s son and sire,
When a naughty little mongrel
Got up and shouted “Fire!”
‘The dogs they were in panic,
They had no time to look,
So each one grabbed an arsehole
From off the nearest hook.’
The tune was growing on him, thought Duffy. He wasn’t sure about the song.
‘The dogs they were so angry,
For it is very sore,
To wear another’s arsehole
You’ve never worn before.
‘And that is then the reason,
The dog will leave his bone,
To sniff another’s arsehole,
In hope it is his own.’
Damian drew out the last line, with lots of wobble on the final vowel, closed his eyes in a mock excess of emotion, drained his glass and bowed. His face glowed and the end of his nose twitched slightly. Sally clapped again, and Taffy, like an old clubman, tapped the edge of the table with the flat of his fingers and murmured, ‘Very amusing.’
‘Glad you liked it. My old school song.’
‘Where was that, then?’
‘The Kennel Club, O Taffy.’
Damian’s performance seemed to put everyone into a good mood. If it worked that well, Duffy thought, maybe they should play it instead of ‘Here Comes the Bride’ when Angela went trotting up the nave. But no one talked about the chances of that event taking place, or about Angela’s ordeal in the woods, or Ricky’s death, or the spontaneous combustion of Sally’s car. For at least an hour, everyone seemed keen to pretend that this was just another jolly evening on the Buckinghamshire/Bedfordshire borders. How did they manage it? All this cheerfulness was starting to make Duffy feel depressed.
The whisky got taken seriously for a while, and then people began to sidle off to bed. Duffy, without knowing how much was his cunning and how much was her complicity, ended up in the family room with Lucretia. They seemed to be alone.
‘What did you think of the song?’ she asked.
‘I thought it could have done with a bit more saffron in it.’
‘You’re funny, you know.’
‘Right.’ Had that been a compliment? He could scarcely check with her, could he? Instead, for no reason except that it came into his head, he told her about the football team he played in, the Western Sunday Reliables. He told her about what it was like to be a goalkeeper, the sort of opponents they came up against, the speed of their young striker Karl French, and his hopes for the forthcoming season. He went on about all this with some enthusiasm, then found himself stopping and feeling awkward. ‘I suppose I should have asked if you’re interested in football.’
‘I suppose you should,’ she said, with a half-smile. ‘I’m afraid I’m not.’
‘Why not?’
‘Boring, I suppose. All that putting the boot in. I mean, just not interesting enough.’
‘Right. Well, tell me about some restaurants then.’
‘You don’t want to know about restaurants.’
‘Why not? Perhaps I could take you to one. In London. You know, up the West End.’
She didn’t answer. He got up from his chair and started slowly walking across towards her. Boy, she looked classy, all cool and blonde and wreathed in cigarette smoke. ‘Did you wash your hair today?’ he asked.
Lucretia burst into laughter, ‘I can afford to have it done, you know.’ Her response froze Duffy halfway across the carpet, one foot hovering in the air, as if he might put it down on a pressure plate and set off the whole alarm system. She gave him a more or less friendly gaze, compared that is to her fashion-page fuck-off glance.
‘Look, I may as well say it, so there aren’t any misunderstandings. You’re quite funny, but I don’t find you at all sexy.’
Duffy’s foot did not descend. Instead, he shuffled round through 180 degrees before placing it back on the carpet. Then he walked slowly to the door. As he grasped the handle, he turned and said, ‘Is that funny as in funny ha-ha or as in funny peculiar?’
‘I’ll let you know, Duffy. I’ll let you know.’
As he crossed the hall he thought he heard a chuckle, a creamy baritone chuckle. He lay in bed and reflected that in a single day Angela had called him common and incompetent, Damian had called him lower-class, and Lucretia had called him not sexy. He slept badly and six hours later, before anyone else had risen, he was trundling south on the M1 through the morning mist.
When he got back to the flat he felt he needed a bath. No, he needed more than that: he wouldn’t mind strapping himself to the top of his Sherpa van and putting himself through a carwash. All those lovely big brushes scratching away at the muck he felt encrusted with, and lots of water squi
rting, and then big floppy mops polishing him back to normal. He had breakfast and lunch on one plate at Sam Widges, then collected the remains of Ricky from Jim Pringle (who was disappointed that Duffy didn’t want him stuffed and mounted). At three o’clock Carol found him bent over the end pages of the Standard. He got up, kissed her, patted her bum, smiled and trotted back to his chair.
‘Bad as that, was it?’ After all these years Carol did not deceive herself that Duffy’s behaviour was the result of her new hemline, or that touch of scent behind the ears.
‘Romford, Walthamstow or Wimbledon?’
‘What?’
‘I’m taking you out.’
‘Really that bad? You all right?’
‘You ever been beaten up with words? It seems to last a lot longer, somehow.’
A few hours later, in the van, Carol finally asked, ‘Where are we going?’
‘Walthamstow. To the dogs.’
‘The dogs?”
‘We’ll have a nice meal. Bottle of wine.’
‘Why are we going to the dogs?’ Carol was mystified.
‘Because they wouldn’t go there.’ Duffy gripped the steering wheel. ‘Because they wouldn’t go there.’
‘Sure,’ said Carol, not asking, not wanting to know. ‘But Duffy, you don’t like the dogs, do you?’ She looked across at his profile, lower lip jutting and a frown that wasn’t caused by the traffic.
‘I’m going to learn to like them,’ said Duffy. ‘I’m sure there’s a lot to be said for dogs.’
They parked up the street from the stadium and joined a crowd that was peaceful and anticipatory. A pair of coppers stood on the pavement outside, but they were strictly for decoration: doing the stadium was an easy option. You didn’t get football yobbos here; there was even the odd East End family outing complete with permed gran and a couple of kids. Duffy began to relax. No chance of running into Damian or Lucretia here; no chance of catching Henry on his antique bicycle, Jimmy doing his Army crawl around the track, Taffy trying to poach the hare.
