All the men laughed, including Eye-Patch.
“We’re still fighting the Wars of the Roses over here,” said a young man who looked to be of Indian descent. “It’s still York vs. Lancashire, six hundred years later.” As he turned back to watch the screen, I noticed he sat in a wheelchair.
“You’re from America?” said Eye-Patch, scrutinizing me again. “You people don’t know shit about making whiskey.” He stumbled toward the TV, where something noisy was happening. After emptying the bottle with one last swallow, he threw it at an overflowing trash can in the corner. It missed and shattered on the floor.
The TV watchers gave an angry roar.
“Lost again, fuckers!” somebody shouted.
Chaos descended. Liam, who had been backing toward the doors, disappeared into the factory. A second later, the lights went out. A crash came from above as a rusty trap door opened and a ladder swung down, knocking the drunken Eye-Patch to the floor.
The men swarmed Eye-Patch. In the light from the streetlamp outside, I could see the dark little man grab the knife while two others held Eye-patch down. He roared in fury. They roared back, using a remarkable assortment of obscenities.
An authoritative voice came from above. “Excellent work, lads.” A flashlight flared, and a man’s legs descended the ladder. “Take him outside,” the man said, shining the flashlight on Eye-Patch’s limp body. “The Swynsby constabulary can find him accommodation for the night.”
Peter Sherwood’s grinning face appeared as he hung from the swinging ladder.
“And lads…Watch your sodding language. There’s a lady present.”
With raucous laughter they dragged the old man to the outer door. The man in the wheelchair led the charge to the cobbled street outside.
“Hello, Camilla Randall!” Peter said, “Catch the torch!”
He tossed me the flashlight. I directed the beam at the ceiling and saw Peter hanging from the ladder, wearing a tuxedo, complete with bow tie—a large, purple one. From the hole above him, he extricated a battered bouquet of daffodils and leaped to the cafeteria floor, landing with an athlete’s grace.
He offered me the flowers along with an irresistible grin and a bow worth of Errol Flynn himself.
“Welcome to Sherwood, M’lady.”
Chapter 10—Down the Rabbit Hole
I stood in the dark cafeteria—daffodils in one hand, flashlight in the other, alone with this tuxedo-clad man who had just knocked out an apparently homicidal creditor with a kick to the head.
My new publisher.
I didn’t know whether to scream or laugh. But since my face seemed to be frozen in a stiff smile, I did neither.
Peter, with a cheery grin, resumed custody of his “torch.” He let the beam linger on my boots.
“Those boots are brilliant, Miss Randall.” He extended his other hand. “Splendid to see you again.” He shook my hand with tea-party politeness.
“That man. With the eye patch. He had a knife.”
Peter laughed. “And I had no weapon of any kind. Which I believe gave me the moral advantage.” He looked absurdly sexy in the tuxedo: Keith Richards doing a Cary Grant impression. He peeked out a window and took a mobile phone from his pocket. “There’s a bloke lying on the pavement on Threadneedle Street,” he said. “Near the Merry Miller. Probably just pissed, but you might want to send an ambulance. Cheers.”
After this surprising show of compassion. He disappeared through the double doors, and a moment later, the fluorescent lights above hummed to life and the television blared. He laughed as I blinked in befuddlement. “I phoned Liam earlier and told him to throw the switch as soon as the match was over,” he said. “I didn’t want to electrocute myself when I kicked through a ceiling with who knows how many live wires running through.” He glanced up at the rusty trap door and precariously hanging ladder. “Luckily, the electrical system seems to be intact. I’ve been wanting to replace that filthy ceiling anyway. Somebody tiled right over that nice trap door. Victorian, from the look of it.” He kicked away a piece of disintegrating ceiling tile that had fallen to the floor.
On the television, a commercial showed a cartoon of cheery, bouncing bunnies. I felt as if I’d fallen down a rabbit hole and landed in some demented cartoon-bunny land myself. I’d come for Robin Hood and found the White Rabbit.
“I do apologize for the dramatics,” Peter said. “They weren’t entirely for your benefit, although I think it was rather a good entrance, don’t you?” He picked up a piece of broken glass bottle and tossed it in the vicinity of the trash bins. “I would have got rid of Barnacle Bill earlier, but he’s easier to handle with a whole bottle of whiskey in him than half. Usually passes out by then. Besides, I didn’t want to ask Liam to throw the switch until the game was over. The lads would have clobbered me instead of old Bill.” He gave me a sudden hug—quick and brotherly, but I couldn’t help reacting to his touch. He smelled of peppermints. “Are you all right, lass? How was your flight?”
“The flight was fine.” I wanted to tell him nothing had been close to fine since I’d landed on terra firma, but that seemed too obvious to state without being rude.
Peter brushed dust off his tuxedo. “It’s right nasty, up there in the attic. We haven’t had time to clean it. Although I did some brainstorming up there. It would make a brilliant flat. It has skylights and gobs of floor space.” He straightened his purple tie. “I wore this for your arrival. Ordered in some pizza and American whiskey, too, to make you feel at home, but I’m afraid Barnacle Bill availed himself of the treats.” He examined the mess around the trash container. “Sorry. Are you ravenous? Let’s get you some food. “I could do with a meat pie meself. Nothing like climbing about on rooftops and lying in rat turds to work up an appetite.”
I’d been a little hungry, but that evaporated with talk of rat turds. Mostly I longed for bed.
“I’d prefer to settle in now, if you don’t mind. It’s tomorrow morning for me.”
“But you’re in Blighty now, my dear.” He looked at his watch. “And here it’s only half nine. You’ll hate yourself if you go to bed now and wake at five AM. Come down the pub, lass. Brenda can fix you breakfast, dinner, supper—whatever you fancy. And you can meet Mr. Trask. Don’t you want to meet your fellow American scrivener?”
“Gordon Trask will be there?” Talking with a fellow American might make this seem less surreal.
“I assume so, since he’s terrified to walk about at night. Amazing about these macho authors. They’re generally big girl’s blouses when you meet them. Same with the whips and chains blokes. They all look like chartered accountants in person.”
A siren wailing down the street. Peter peeked through the filthy curtains—wildly flowered in a print of orange and hot pink that probably dated from the days of the Beatles.
“Here’s the ambulance. It’s all right then. They’ll get poor old Barnacle sorted.” He picked up a large purple umbrella and offered me his arm. “Come, m’lady. The brolly’s big enough for both of us. Let’s get you fed.”
He led me into the rain and put up the umbrella. I took his offered elbow, although the thought of where it had been made this less appealing than it might have been. But I was happy for the stability on the slippery cobblestones.
Peter blithely led me past the paramedics attending to Barnacle Bill, who still lay lifeless on the sidewalk.
“You’ll feel better when you’ve had a pint, lass. And I need to introduce you properly to the lads. I owe them a couple of rounds. Rather clever, I thought, calling them all on their mobiles to coordinate the maneuvers. I haven’t forgotten everything I learned while fighting for Queen and country in the Balkans.”
I digested this information.
“So that was you who called Liam in the car?”
He grinned. “Yes. I called from my perch up there. Awfully sorry I couldn’t welcome you myself. But as you saw, the old Barnacle had other plans for me.”
“So you’re previously acq
uainted with this…Barnacle person?”
“He used to captain my yacht in the Caribbean.”
Yachts. The Caribbean. Galaxies away from this soggy, nonsensical place. I felt as if I were watching a foreign film without subtitles. All I wanted was a bed. And a shower.
But instead I was walking down a narrow, treacherous street in the direction of beer—warm beer, no doubt; Plant had warned me of that—with a man I did not know, and at the moment, had very little reason to trust.
Chapter 11—The Merry Men
As we rounded the corner, we came to a pub called the Merry Miller—a storybook half-timbered building with thick, bottle-glass window panes and a tiny arched wooden door that looked as if it had been made for Hobbits. So did the low ceilings. But the place glowed with inviting light from a big fireplace near the bar.
“A seventeenth century coaching inn,” Peter said. “There are still some guest rooms upstairs. Gordon Trask isn’t terribly impressed with them, but then Mr. Trask isn’t impressed with much.”
Before I could ask him to elaborate, Liam shouted from a big booth in the corner. “You owe us a pint, Peter.”
“Brenda, pints all round for me brave lads!” Peter shouted at a large red-haired woman as he ushered me through the crowd. He seated me next to the wheelchair man.
“So what was all that about, Peter?” said Mr. Eyebrows. “That geezer said you owed him money. Do you?”
Peter’s eyes twinkled.
“It’s not impossible. I left Tobago Bay with some haste last year. I don’t know how he found me here.” He took out his pipe and filled it from a leather tobacco pouch. “He’s mostly harmless, except when he’s on the piss.”
“I don’t know why Meggy let him in. He were right bladdered,” said the man in the paint-spattered hoodie. He had a number of piercings in both ears and one in his nose.
“It’s hardly fair to Meggy,” said the man in the wheelchair. He gave a professorial harrumph. “She’s a machine operator, not a bloody guard dog.” He extended his hand to me. “I’m Pradeep Balasubramarium, Miss Randall. Your editor.”
“We just call him Professor,” Peter said. “Got a Ph.D. from Cambridge, he does. No idea why he’s slumming with this lot.”
The Professor gave my hand a shake.
“Sorry I didn’t introduce myself over there. I didn’t want to let on that you were one of our authors, or that lunatic might have taken you hostage. He’d been threatening to abscond with my chair if we didn’t tell him where Peter was, so I was lying low.”
“I coulda taken him in half a minute, knife or no knife,” said a big man with a scarred face and an accent even less comprehensible than the rest.
“And killed the poor old sod,” Peter said. “We don’t need corpses bleeding all over our canteen floor, thank you very much.”
Another homicidal lunatic. And here I was, cheerfully joining him for beer. Maybe I’d completely lost my own mind and I was back in Manhattan, hallucinating.
The pierced man offered a hand.
“I’m Tom Mowbray—the art department. You’d better like your cover art, because I’ve got no time for alterations…”
Further conversation was thwarted by a burst of noise from a small stage at the end of the pub. An M.C. with hair slicked into a ratty pony tail announced in a Cockney accent that music was about to commence. Karaoke. I might have preferred Barnacle Bill.
I was grateful for the arrival of the beer. It was indeed room temperature—not a problem since the chilly room was about the temperature of American beer. I took a sip and found it pretty yummy. Peter ordered meat pies for both of us.
Brenda was a worn-looking woman in her fifties, with quantities of dyed hair and a figure that must have been spectacular before gravity took its toll. She didn’t look particularly pleased to see Peter.
“So are you going to settle up the account now?”
“What account? We’re just getting started,” said Peter.
“For the Yank. Three week’s lodging and meals.” She handed him a sheet of paper scribbled with numbers. “I’d prefer cash, if you don’t mind.”
“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Brenda me love.” Peter gave her a wink. “I’ll have the money for you when he checks out.” He looked around the crowded pub. “Where is the illustrious Mr. Trask, by the way? I want him to meet Miss Randall here.”
“Gone,” Brenda said with a sniff. “Without so much as a wave goodbye. I cooked his bloody breakfast and carried it up to his room this morning, but he’d cleared off in the night. I had to charge you for the full English, by the way. He’s got to have them egg substitutes. Cost me three times as much as proper eggs.”
Peter’s face distorted as he slammed the table in fury. “Bugger! You lot know anything about this?” He surveyed the table with a suspicious eye. “Trask never signed that bollocksy new contract. We’re screwed, mates. Bloody screwed.”
There it was—that feral thing I saw in Peter the night we met.
I tensed. So did everybody else.
Or maybe that was because an emaciated young woman with maroon hair had joined the MC to sing something that had been awful when the Captain and Tennille sang it in the nineteen-seventies.
The singers who followed were worse, but the meat pie was flaky and filling, and eventually the beer dulled my anxiety. But it also made me sleepy. When Liam got up to sing, I could hardly keep my head up, although he did a rousing rendition of the Animals’ 1960s anthem, “We Gotta Get Outta This Place.” By the last chorus, the entire pub was singing along.
The patrons were still applauding Liam when a taxi driver appeared and the Professor took his leave.
“Nice to meet you, Miss Randall,” he said over his shoulder as he wheeled himself toward the door. “Unlike this lot. I have a home to go to.”
“Our American guest looks knackered,” Liam said as he resumed his seat. He gave me a smile. “Planning to stay upstairs?”
I looked to Peter for a cue. He shrugged, obviously still upset about Mr. Trask’s departure.
“They have a vacancy, as you heard.” He picked up Brenda’s bill. “Your compatriot thinks Sherwood is a forest of money trees.” He stuffed the bill in a pocket. “So what do you say? Upstairs? Or our humble accommodations at the Maidenette Building? ”
Before I could speak, the M.C. came to the table and shook Peter’s hand.
“Good to see you again, Mr. Sherwood. I hear your Yank has flown the coop.”
Peter gave him a dark look. The MC turned his smarmy smile on me.
“But you’ve brought someone new. Who is this young lady? Does she sing?’
“You’ll thank me if I don’t.” I extended my hand. “I’m Camilla Randall—just arrived from San Francisco.”
He squeezed my hand a little too long. “Alan Greene. I like San Francisco. Visited last summer. Unfortunately, I forgot to pack me spangled dress and boa.” He put on a stagy lisp. “I was so underdressed—the only dates I could pull were with women!”
Brenda the barmaid appeared on the little stage, her apron off. She glared at Alan and grabbed the mike, sending out a wail of feedback.
“Duty calls!” Alan made a dramatic leap back to the stage to join Brenda in a duet of “I Got You Babe” that could have given Cher grounds to sue.
“How long do they keep doing this?” I shouted when the noise let up a bit.
“They’re supposed to quit at midnight,” said Liam. “But it depends how many people Alan has signed to sing. You don’t want to give that bloke too much encouragement. He’ll talk your ear off, that one. And every word a lie.”
“He may call himself Alan, but we call him the Baron. As in Munchausen,” said Mr. Eyebrows. “He wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him on the arse. I doubt he’s ever been to San Francisco. Or anywhere but the East End. He’s just Brenda’s toy boy…”
A blast of Europop silenced him as a red-faced man in a rugby jersey stumbled onto the stage. My Tinker Bell watch said it
was after ten. I turned to Peter.
“I think it’s time I got to bed. I’m sure the Maidenette Building will be lovely.”
I had no idea what I’d find back there, but at that point even mutant zombies wouldn’t scare me as much as the prospect of two hours of off-key “Sex on the Beach.”
Chapter 12—A Two-Headed Shilling
As we walked through the soggy night, huddled under the purple umbrella, I could feel tension radiating from Peter’s body. I wished I didn’t find him so attractive. I knew how badly that could cloud my judgment. Look at how stupid I’d been about Jonathan. Everybody in the business knew about his taste for street prostitutes but me.
When we passed the spot where Barnacle Bill had been rescued by the paramedics, Peter ran to pick up something from the trash-strewn street—a coin, glinting in the light from the street lamp.
“Ever see a shilling?” He tossed the coin to me. “That was legal tender on this island for centuries before we got decimalized by the damned Europeans.”
The coin was delicate and silvery, not like the thick brown pound coins I’d been given when I exchanged my meager funds at Heathrow. I tried to sound interested although I was now soaked as well as exhausted.
“I don’t believe I’ve seen a shilling before.”
“You still haven’t. This one has two heads, see…” He flipped it over. “Her Majesty’s beloved countenance on both sides. ‘Heads I win/Heads you lose.’ Comes in handy when tossing for who pays the pub account.” He pocketed the coin. “Old Barnacle has had this as long as I’ve known him. Must have fallen from his pocket. I’ll take it to him when I pay his fine in the morning.”
As I pondered this startling bit of kindness, Peter’s mood went dark again. He unlocked the door to the cafeteria and pushed it open with an angry shove.
“What a bloody mess.” He pointed to the bits of ceiling plaster and rust that covered the linoleum floor. “That old pirate mucks things up wherever he goes.”
Randall #03 - Sherwood Ltd. Page 4
