A HAZY SHADE OF WINTER

by Simon Bestwick

  Was there a touch of sympathy in his voice, beneath all the hatred? He couldn’t have felt comfortable with that; better to have an enemy you could comfortably detest, than one you could understand, feel for.

  ‘My mother were never more than plain,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘Sounds pretty cruel, but it’s the way it was. You need to understand that. I’ve seen a lot of men married to plain women. Lot of the time, of course, he’s no oil painting himself. But you can bet he doesn’t dream about women who look like that. He dreams of Bo Derek or Gina Lollobrigida.’

  ‘Who?’ I said.

  He snorted a laugh, an abrupt thing of little warmth. ‘Showing me age. Meg Ryan, then, or Michelle Pfeiffer. Whatever. Not important. You get the idea. For that matter, I’ll bet the women didn’t dream of men like my dad, either.’

  Another sip. ‘Dad had his sights set a lot higher than her, I can tell you. She were just supposed to be the first of many, because she were the first one to say yes. He reckoned if he’d had the time, had the chances . . . well, that were the story of his life. Always making excuses, never doing anything about it. But then, you see, Mum got pregnant. Wi’ me.’

  I was struck by how northern he sounded, how little like the thin, cold voice that had stabbed at my ears like an icepick. As if he’d striven to erase any hint of his father’s voice from his own. George Fuller, I couldn’t help but think, would have considered his son’s speech common, and hated it. All the more reason for the son to cultivate it.

  On the sound system, Rod Stewart sang about Maggie May.

  ‘And that were that. You can bet your arse they had to get married. Me granddad on her side were an old sailor and a strict Catholic. Fists like bastard ham-hocks. Dad were never that big. He were strong, though. Not as strong as Granddad, but still strong. . . .

  ‘We lived in the same house all them years.’ The ferret face was tight; he wasn’t speaking to me or anyone in particular anymore. ‘He hated Mum, of course, for trapping him. He were teaching full time, as a career now. There was never any time for writing—too busy marking homework, changing nappies. And so much time picking apart what other people had done, he’d never time to put anything together on his own account. More of his excuses, Mum called ’em. He hated every minute of it. And he hated her too. And me, when I came along. Mum didn’t help much. She were one of them folk who’re never too healthy, and who’ll put it on sometimes to get what they want. It wan’t all him, I’ll tell you that for nothing. She manipulated him; she were weak, in her way, but she could twist people round her little finger, too. Weak people can be strong like that. And he hated her for it, but he couldn’t escape. Even after Granddad died. By then he’d no hopes of doing owt but teaching; Mum spent money like it were water, so there were never any chance of him saving.’

  The fly alighted on the table, crawled towards a dot of drying beer. I swatted it away.

  ‘She hated him as much as he did her. Wasn’t what she’d expected at all. She started conning herself, same as him—everything would’ve been great if she hadn’t got up the duff, she’d’ve got a better husband, better life, better everything. He tried to do better as a teacher, but he never did; he were stuck in the same post at the same school ’til the day he retired. I think he took it out on some of the kids he taught, to be honest.’

  Robert’s eyes had been gazing into the middle distance all this while. Now they refocused, on me and on the pub, and he smiled embarrassedly, hiding a blush behind another gulp of his pint that drained it to the bottom. I caught the barmaid’s eye and nodded at the glass; she pulled a fresh one and brought it over. I paid her and she went back to the bar. The glazier took another swallow, wiped froth from his top lip, and continued.

  ‘Left when I were fifteen,’ he said. ‘One of me mates from school had a spare room—his big brother’d moved out. Managed to wangle it for me to stop there. Well, Dad were glad to see the back of me. That left him and Mum, alone in that house. Hating each other for all the things they’d missed out on, blaming each other for all their failures . . . between the two of them, I dread to think what it were like. He seemed to hate everything, me Dad.’ He gave a short, bitter chuckle. ‘’Cept aniseed balls, of course. He were always sucking them. And the Rolling Stones, believe it or not. He used to like a couple of theirs. Hummed ’em now and again.’

  I swallowed hard. ‘Was “Paint it Black” one of them, by any chance?’

  He looked at me. ‘What do you think?’

  We were silent for a few seconds. In the stillness, Rod Stewart gave way to Jethro Tull and ‘Thick as a Brick’; prog-rock heaven. Robert chewed on his bottom lip. Then he seemed to reach a decision, and suddenly pulled up the sleeve of his overalls to show me the inside of his forearm. An ugly trench of scarring was sunk deep into the flesh.

  ‘When I were eight years old,’ he said quietly, ‘My father did that to me with a red-hot poker. Frightened me into saying it were an accident, my fault. I were so scared of him I never told anyone how it happened. Not ’til now. To you. Who I’ve never met before. Strange thing, that. In’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I mumbled. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, and hoped it would be enough.

  ‘I can understand him,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to; I still hate him, I’ll never forgive him, dead or not. But he were powerless; he’d been used by so many people, he felt cheated and mocked and worthless. He wanted power, wanted to feel strong and in control. All he had were the kids at school, and me, and any little points he could score off Mum. That were it. She left him ’bout three years after I did,’ he added. ‘I don’t know where she went. I saw her once, her and her new fancy man. Came round to tell me she were leaving, and she’d get in touch. But she never did.’

  There was hatred in his voice then, but an underlying sorrow, too, which I suspect he wished he didn’t feel.

  ‘I never saw him again after that, either. He were alone in that house, all them years. And then he retired and it were just the house. And him, and his memories.’ He literally shuddered. ‘I can’t think of one thing worse than a life like that.’ He toyed with his wedding band. ‘I’m married. Funny, in’t it? You’d’ve thought me folks’d’ve put me off it for life, but they didn’t. Good woman, too. Couple’ve kids. I’m happy with her. So I feel like I won. He died alone, in the end, in that house,’ he went on, fists clenching with a kind of hateful glee. ‘It were a week and a half before they found the body.’

  ‘Christ.’ I felt ill.

  George Fuller’s son shrugged. There was something cold and hard about him now. I wondered how many others had seen this side of him, and how many liked him as well afterwards. ‘I was it for the funeral. No one else gave a shit. I didn’t, really, but I just wanted to see him planted. Be shot’ve him at last. He left a few odds and sods. I didn’t want any of ’em. Didn’t want anything’ve his. But I reckoned he owed me something, so I sold ’em for best prices I could get. I’d heard about that Mr Lloyd, up in Lakes. I were passing, on a job, so I dropped in to see him.’

  ‘And I went in a few days or weeks later and . . .’ I polished off my pint in a final gulp.

  ‘And now,’ he said, ‘you’re stuck with him. Doesn’t surprise me.’ He put down his pint and rubbed his face with both hands. ‘Christ, I should have known. If any bastard could cling on out of sheer spite, it’s him. On that journey—up to the Lakes, to Lloyd’s—I was sure I could smell aniseed in the van. Even with the windows rolled right down. Even thought I heard someone humming . . . humming that bloody tune.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s why I believed you, ’case you were wondering. Nowt would surprise me where he were concerned.’ He closed his eyes as if in pain. ‘I should have known.’

  Privately I agreed, but said nothing. Hindsight, I reminded myself, was always 20/20. ‘It’s my friend I’m worried about,’ I said. ‘If he got his hands on her. . . .’

  I saw his narrow features darken. ‘You’re right to be worried. The older he got, the more .
. . obsessed he was, by all he’d missed out on. Sometimes I wondered . . .’ He shook his head, grimacing. ‘Forget it. What do you want of me?’

  I thought hard. I thought about the book. George Fuller would have wanted it hidden where no harm could come to it. Somewhere safe. . . . ‘You said he lived in the same house from when he was married to when he died?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Where would he have put something for safekeeping?’

  ‘The cellar, I think. He were always frightened of snoopers. Wouldn’t hide anything outside the house, just in it, where he only had the two of us to worry about. He threatened to half kill me if I ever went down there—the only time I did was when he did that wi’ the poker—and Mum never would—she hated spiders and it were full of them.’

  ‘So if he could hide something somewhere . . .-’

  ‘. . . it’d be there, I reckon. Aye.’

  And, of course, if the book was an anchor for whatever portion of George Fuller’s consciousness, spirit, whatever I chose to call it . . . if it was, as I had described it to myself, one of the two terminals of the battery for him (the other being me), there would be a whole vast reserve of power, of strength, for him to draw on—like plugging the battery in for a recharge. All the years of hatred, of pain, fear, bitterness, loathing, disappointment . . . to go there would be to face the lion in his den.

  Which was exactly why it was the only place the book could be, and why I had to go there.

  PART THREE: PAINT IT BLACK

  XI. Saltash Row

  Jethro Tull faded out and the Beatles took over with ‘Eleanor Rigby’. George Fuller himself couldn’t have picked a better tune for his life story, I reflected.

  ‘I need to go to the house,’ I said. ‘Whatever’s left of him’s there.’ Robert was already shaking his head.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. No. I can’t go back to there. Not now. Especially now. It were bad enough when he were alive, but if . . . no. I can’t. I’m sorry.’

  I gritted my teeth in frustration. ‘Then at least give me the address. And the keys. You owe me that much.’

  He glared at me. ‘Owe you? I owe you a pint, mate, and that’s yer lot.’

  ‘You took the books to Lloyd,’ I said. ‘You turned him loose on me. Far as I’m concerned, that makes you partly responsible at least.’

  He glared a moment longer, and then caved in. ‘All right. They’re at my flat. Come wi’ me.’

  We got up and made for the door. As we reached it, Paul McCartney’s vocal cut out abruptly, halfway through. A beat of silence owned the bar for a moment, pregnant. You could feel it; everyone looked up, suddenly waiting for what was to come, even the old man drowsing over his brown ale. Then the popping crackle of vinyl waiting to speak. The first few notes of a sitar. A drumbeat, harsh, angry, urgent. Guitars crashing in. And then Mick Jagger’s voice, singing ‘Paint it Black’.

  Terror seized my companion’s face, and he started to run. I was only a heartbeat behind. He was twisting the keys in the ignition the moment he was behind the wheel; I hadn’t even got the van door shut before he roared off out of the pub’s car park as though his father was hot on his heels in pursuit, a heated poker in his hand.

  Blackpool has two main districts; the North Shore and the South Shore. The North Shore has all the glamour parts, if you can call them that; the South is more functional, residential, strewn with houses and the cheaper hotels. George Fuller had lived, with his wife Trudy and his son Robert, on the South Shore, almost his entire life. At number 10, Saltash Row.

  The bus rattled and bumped its way over the road surface as I made my fourth or fifth attempt to use my mobile to ring Alison. I got the same recorded message as before: ‘It has not been possible to connect your call. Please try again later.’

  I swore and shut the phone off. All I could do now was wait. It wasn’t pleasant. I didn’t know how much power I was facing, if it would grow or diminish if I delayed. Reading the book had woken him up and his strength had grown; enough for him to snatch the book out of harm’s way, at least. But that must have weakened him; I hadn’t seen him for the rest of that night. Had the distance placed further limitations on him? If so, none of them would apply now. But I felt we were fast approaching the point where little or nothing would. By the time I contacted Alison, he might be strong enough to make good on his threats to her, wherever she was. Could he find her except by using me as a focus? I didn’t know; perhaps not. But did I dare risk it?

  I gripped the rail of the seat in front. I was nearing the stop and still couldn’t decide. If anything went wrong, Alison would be completely defenceless. If I could only leave a message on her phone. . . . Her answering service I could have lived with, but I couldn’t even reach that. I had to decide soon.

  The bus turned a corner; a Methodist chapel caught my eye. Robert had told me to look out for it. I got up and went downstairs. When I stepped off the bus, a stiff breeze sprang up, dispelling the clinging summer heat. At any other time, on a hot, sweltering day like this, it would have been welcome. Now it only made me shiver. But the real chill lay far deeper than this.

  Up ahead a small cul-de-sac branched off from the main road, terraced houses hunched along it without a break, like the walls of a dead-end gully. A rust-rimmed sign stood at the corner; the words SALTASH ROW stood out black against the cracking white paint. I looked behind me, at the chapel, and for the first time in my life since I was twelve years old, I wished I believed in God. But I didn’t, and it was too late to start now, out of fear rather than faith.

  I looked forward again, and tried to quell the panic-urge to run like hell from this place. Walked to the corner. And turned it. Down Saltash Row.

  All the houses looked the same; I’d expected number ten to leap out at me, black and silhouetted, but it didn’t. There were a couple of FOR SALE signs dotted along the road’s length; I only realised I’d passed Fuller’s house when I glanced at the house alongside me and saw the number fourteen.

  I backtracked. There it was. The wind quickened, and the estate agent’s sign, a thin board, swung to and fro like a hand slapping at a face.

  Just a plain terraced house; a pebble-dashed front and a red door. White window frames. There was nothing to distinguish it from the rest at first. It was only when you looked more closely that you saw it. The gate, when I pushed it open, was flecked and pitted with rust. The garden was weedy and overgrown, the grass dim-coloured and straggling, and it had clearly been untended for a long time, long before George Fuller had died. The red paint of the door and the white of the window frames was cracked too, flaking in places. Weeds jutted up from the gaps in the path’s paving-stones. The house was a shell, a suit of armour, for protection and nothing more. The home of a man who’d retreated into himself to tend his hatred like a fire that kept him warm. That’s what I felt; perhaps it was in the house’s fabric, or simply the result of what I knew, applied to what I saw. To this day, I still don’t know.

  I fumbled in my pockets for the house keys, finally pulled them out. There could be no more delay now; it was decision time. Go in or wait; which was it to be?

  I dug out my mobile and made a last attempt to call Alison. ‘Please be there,’ I whispered. The number was in my phone’s memory, but I dialled it in, digit by digit, like a ritual to win favour with whatever capricious gods took responsibility for Vodafone. ‘Please answer the phone. Or please, have the answering service switched on. Please. Please. Please.’

  ‘It has not been possible to connect your call . . .’

  ‘Bastard!’ I cut it off furiously and swore again, then calmed myself with a mental count to ten and made another attempt. Please, please, please . . .

  ‘It has not been possible to——’

  ‘Shit!’ One more try. One more.

  Please——

  ‘It has not——’

  ‘Fuck!’ I cut off again, fist clenching on the mobile until I thought the casing would crack. I wanted
to fling it away, to hurl it to the floor and stamp it to pieces. I did none of those things. I clipped it back onto my belt and looked at the house keys again.

  Go in and risk the worst Fuller can do, risk leaving Alison defenceless against him. Stay out, giving him time, might be just as big a threat to her. I would have given anything to have her with me then, to see her, just to hear her voice, but I was alone.

  I took a coin out of my pocket. Heads I go in, tails I wait.

  I flipped it. The coin fell to the path. I bent to pick it up. Tails. That was settled, then.

  I looked up at the house. From this angle it seemed to loom over me, its grimed, empty windows lightless and dull as a corpse’s eyes. Now it looked as I had expected it to look, like the younger, drabber brother of the sacrificial temple or medieval palace, drenched in all the cruelties of its past. The torments had been those of the suburbs, the middle classes, less gruesome, but subtler and infinitely prolonged, as hideous and atrocious in their own right as any other. I felt as though I was standing near a live power-line; the same sensation of force, a built-up charge awaiting release upon the unwary. I took a step back, I could hardly breathe; all I wanted was to run.

  So why I did it I don’t know. Perhaps he exerted some compulsion over me; he was almost certainly strong enough by then. Or perhaps I was too afraid to wait another minute after all, afraid that any chance of stopping him was receding by the second.

  Whatever the truth, I know this: I stepped forward and put the key in the lock, then turned it. The front door swung open before I could touch it. The hall inside was dim and grey, as though it was always dusk there.

  Crossing the threshold, at first I smelt only dust, rooms long unaired, stale smoke. Then, as I walked forward, other scents broke over me like a wave. The smell of old man; it’s a distinctive one. And then aniseed. So strong it was almost suffocating. There was a handkerchief in my pocket; I took it out and pressed it over my mouth and nose. I took two more steps forward, and then the door swung shut behind me and would not reopen. As I gave up the unequal struggle and stepped back, his high, gloating titter filled the hall.