by Judy Astley
Heather tried not to doze off. It was so silent, apart from the hoarse, irregular breathing of the old man, that she was sure she could hear a clock ticking out in the corridor. Unless that was Edward’s slowly thudding heart, she suddenly thought, jerking herself back from the edge of sleep. ‘Shall I fetch us some tea?’ she whispered across to her mother.
‘Please,’ Delia said. ‘But don’t be long,’ she added fearfully.
Heather wandered, almost on tiptoe, along the brightly lit corridor, past the ticking clock (a relief there actually was one) to where the night-nurse sat at her desk and concentrated on some intricate pink knitting.
‘Tea?’ she said, over the chattering needles. ‘I’ll get it for you, no trouble – you go on back.’
‘No, I’ll wait if you don’t mind. It’s nicer to be out of there, to be honest,’ Heather told her, pleased to be with someone who could almost certainly be relied on not to be in the next world with her next breath. While she waited for the tea, Heather looked at the framed paintings on the wall. No two were remotely alike, and she wondered if they’d been done by patients undergoing occupational therapy, or those grateful to have been successfully discharged. Perhaps, she decided, they’d been ordered in bulk from the local art circle, set a project on ‘local landscapes – a personal interpretation’. She was looking closely at a very pretty and colourful one depicting an intricate naïve scene of Oxford market when the nurse came bustling back, carrying a tray.
‘You go on ahead, I’ll carry this. Don’t want you keeling over with the stress of it all,’ she told Heather.
‘Do people usually keel over then?’ Heather asked, as she trailed behind the nurse back along the corridor.
Delia was at the open door waiting for them. ‘I think he’s gone,’ she said in a quavery voice. ‘He just growled and stopped, and now I think he’s not there any more.’
Heather squeezed her arm and walked past her into the room, half expecting the bed to be empty and the window open, as if the Grim Reaper had been in and claimed the old man’s body along with his soul. The curtains drifted feebly in the breeze, and that was the only movement in the room. Edward looked exactly the same, but somehow empty. Whatever it was, life force, soul, whatever, Heather could see had vanished. She imagined him now in committee with St Peter and his keys, St Michael and his clipboard, and with God at the head of a long and important table.
‘I didn’t do anything, he just went off. I didn’t even quite catch the moment,’ Delia was saying, flustered as if someone was about to accuse her of suffocating the old man the moment she’d got him alone.
‘Would you like the tea now?’ the nurse asked and Heather thanked God in his celestial boardroom for England’s silly rituals.
It was quite flattering to be sought out by Darren. The film crew were an obvious draw, but Darren didn’t seem to be showing any interest in the action by the river. Simon had been on the point of losing interest himself, giving up and going back into the cottage to brood sullenly over Tamsin’s Megadrive. Anything to take his mind off Kate and the way she hardly even looked at him any more. At least they used to be friends, now they didn’t seem to be even that. She looked through him, not at him; could hardly even be bothered to say hello. Darren came swaggering up the rectory drive as if he owned the place, followed at a respectful distance by his brother Shane and a couple of large and shambling friends. Simon had a fleeting moment of wondering if they’d come to beat him up, but they all looked excited about something and he assumed it was connected with drugs. They might, he thought, have something to sell him that would cheer him up.
‘Remember you said you could drive?’ Darren said, separating himself a little from the others who hung around under the apple trees smoking and scuffing at the ground in the dark. They should watch out for dog shit, Simon thought, quickly realizing it would be uncool to say anything so motherish.
‘Yeah. I remember,’ Simon confirmed, sensing with slowly growing dread that something was about to be required of him. ‘What about it?’
‘We need a driver. Simple,’ Darren said with a shrug and a broad grin.
‘Now?’
‘Yep, now. Right now. Well in your own time, the next couple of hours or so,’ he added generously. ‘For a little job. Nothing difficult.’
‘Illegal?’ Simon asked, horribly sure it was a stupid question.
‘Not very, not for the driver anyway. No worries,’ Darren said, offering him a cigarette.
Simon wanted the cigarette, but didn’t want the crime that went with it so he refused. ‘No, I don’t want to get involved in anything, you know . . .’
Darren glanced at his shuffling group of friends. One of them had climbed a few branches and was investigating the treehouse.
‘My little sister’s den,’ Simon called to him. ‘Be careful up there.’
‘He won’t fall, not Bugsy,’ Darren reassured him, misunderstanding his concern.
Simon had no doubt that Bugsy, who was five feet five and built four-square like a pallet of bricks, would be safe enough – he was more concerned for the treehouse.
‘I just wanted to help you out,’ Darren was saying persuasively to Simon, having led him out of earshot and towards the deserted front of the cloth-swathed rectory. ‘That girl, Kate, I just saw her going home. That old man was with her, the one that’s staying here, and he was strolling along holding her hand.’
Simon groaned. ‘Bastard, jerk,’ he murmured.
‘Exactly,’ Darren agreed. ‘And when I say holding her hand, I don’t mean like some little kid that needs taking across the road. She obviously likes things – men – that are a bit different, if you know what I mean. She needs to see you that way, not some old sod. She thinks you’re just ordinary. You want to show her you’re not.’
Simon considered for a moment. ‘I’ll have that fag now if that’s OK.’
‘Fine,’ Darren said, grinning across to the others, ‘and then you just come with us and we’ll show you what we need you to do.’
It was a pity she’d gone home, Simon thought, it would have been good if she’d seen him, ambling along comfortably next to Darren with his hands tucked into his jeans. He felt a bit embarrassed about the gloves – all he’d got was padded stuff for skiing, packed away somewhere in a tea-chest in the rectory attic, and Darren had said to be sure to bring thin ones, so he wouldn’t get clumsy. Also, he’d said they’d stay on better. ‘You know, like johnnies’ he’d said with a nudge and a smirk. The pink rubbery Marigolds, purloined from the cupboard underneath the Garden Cottage sink, had a mixed aroma of Jif and J-cloth that was so strong it reached his offended nostrils all the way from his inside pocket. This made it impossible to pretend, as he would have quite liked to, that he was out with the SAS on a clandestine moonlight rescue mission. Like trained soldiers, the group of boys was moving fast and surprisingly quietly. Simon had never seen Darren and his mates when they weren’t taking up maximum space and acting up with maximum volume. Now it was as if they’d been turned into street foxes, slinking along silently and with purpose. He still hadn’t much of a clue what they were all up to, but he felt quite heady with importance. Whatever it was they wanted to do, they obviously couldn’t do it without him. Eventually, at the far end of the small modern development at the back of the High Street, Darren came to a halt against a wall, out of the range of the street lamp.
‘Look, Neighbourhood sodding Watch,’ Shane sniggered, pointing up at a poster clipped to the lamp post.
‘Gives it an edge,’ Darren said, grinning evilly. Simon felt nervous, suddenly wondering if it was all a ploy and he was actually about to be beaten up for being just too posh. But they could have done that as they passed the rec, could have dragged him beyond the swings, given him a thumping (or worse) and left him for dead behind the cricket pavilion.
‘This one,’ Darren was saying, pointing across to where a green VW Polo was parked on a slope in front of its garage. The gardens were all open at the
front, with no fences or gates for thieves to have to contend with, but providing nowhere but a few tatty laurels to hide behind as a result. Simon stared at the car, trying to put together the awfulness of what he was slowly realizing he was about to do.
‘It’s one we prepared earlier,’ Darren explained with another wolfish grin, putting a firm hand on Simon’s shoulder to help him not to have a sudden change of mind. ‘It’s already open, Bugsy just needs one second for hot-wiring, then we’re all off, OK? Any questions?’
‘Off to where?’ Simon’s voice came out more squeakily than he expected.
‘It’s only round the corner, Harbutt’s Hi-Fi. You don’t even have to look where you’re going, we’ll tell you what to do. You just listen and do it.’
The words ‘do it’ were accompanied by a punch on the shoulder that was not to be argued with. Simon, thinking about Kate in the way that drowning men are supposed to think about their mothers, would rather die (and at that moment this seemed like a real option) than not do as Darren asked. He didn’t, he reminded himself, even have to break into the car, all that was done for him, although he wouldn’t swear that the police would appreciate the difference. He crossed the road behind Darren, terrified that bedroom lights would go on along Meadowside and that furious junior executives would stream out in Paisley pyjamas, armed with umbrellas and lawn rakes. Some fast fumbling went on under the Polo’s steering column and then Simon, in the shaming Marigold gloves, climbed in to the driving seat and immediately set off much too fast, skidding out of the cul-de-sac into the main road.
‘Hey, I thought you could drive,’ Shane complained scornfully.
‘Leave it, he’s just nervous,’ Darren, in the front passenger seat retorted quickly.
Simon was glad he wasn’t expected to speak, terrified that at any moment he would hear his own voice blurting out a confession of just exactly how limited his behind-the-wheel experience really was.
‘Stop!’ Darren ordered suddenly and Simon stood on the brake pedal, forgetting about the clutch and stalling the engine.
‘Wanker!’ Bugsy yelled in a panic. ‘Now I’ll have to get it started again!’
‘Sorry,’ Simon murmured.
While Bugsy restarted the car, Simon tried to imagine what was going to happen next. He assumed he would wait in the car, engine running, while the others dashed round the corner and speedily did their out-of-hours shopping, probably via a broken window.
‘OK drive. Just past the shop and then reverse it, quick as you can,’ Darren ordered.
‘Reverse it to where?’ Simon asked, mystified.
‘Through the fucking window, cretin,’ Bugsy said.
Simon grinned through the mirror at him, pretending he could see a joke.
‘That’s right. Through the window – you drive it hard, backwards. We pick up everything we can and then we all piss off. Thirty seconds, max,’ Darren said proudly.
The sound of so much glass breaking all over and round the car in the still dark night was really very thrilling, Simon had to admit. It stopped him feeling quite so sick, anyway. He concentrated on keeping the car from stalling again while the others frantically hurled in as much stock as they could gather. It reminded him of a supermarket trolley-dash he’d once seen on an early morning TV show, competition winners, greedily snatching at anything in their path, all dignity gone. When they’d finished, and thrown themselves breathlessly back into the car, he pulled the severely dented car away from the shattered shop-front with a roar that wouldn’t disgrace Damon Hill and as they raced out of the village on to the Didcot road, Simon wondered if he was the only one with an erection.
‘Not bad,’ Darren told Simon.
‘Yeah, ace,’ Shane echoed. ‘Wanna CD Walkman?’ he asked, handing over a package from the back seat.
‘Got one already,’ Simon replied, wishing immediately that he hadn’t.
‘Oh yeah, I nearly forgot. You don’t need to do this do you, rich boy?’ Shane sneered. ‘Mummy buys you everything you want. I bet you’ve even got a TV and video in your room.’
Simon, who had, denied it. ‘Don’t be stupid. OK I’ll have it, thanks. Actually I could do with another CD player,’ he said. ‘Where shall I put the car?’
‘Take it back to the owners if you like. Then they can check out the damage in the morning,’ Darren said loading a pile of loose CDs, the CD Walkman and a clock radio into Simon’s lap. ‘Otherwise you can drop us off behind the rec.’
Kate heard the crash just as she was getting ready for bed. She’d been quite enjoying having the house to herself. She didn’t count Jasper who was snoring on a rug in the kitchen, or Suzy who had collapsed into bed with yet another Arthur Ransome book and was likely to fall asleep with her light on and her teeth unbrushed. Not my responsibility, Kate thought as she smoothed Body Shop oatmeal cleanser across the bridge of her nose where spots might just dare to consider appearing. She liked the efficient little cosmetic rituals that involved sweet-smelling pots of gloopy stuff. She didn’t really care whether they worked or not, she was just happy to be part of the grown-up sisterhood, linked worldwide by the daily application of magic potions. She switched off the bathroom light and, outside in the night the crash happened right then, as if she’d triggered it. She stood still on the landing, listening carefully in case any tremendous noises were going to follow the first one. She’d heard glass, and imagined it strewn all over the road. Along with the glass, only a millisecond later, her imagination had added large chunks of car, lots of blood and the twisted limbs of her mother and grandmother.
‘What’s happening?’ Suzy emerged from her room and asked Kate.
Kate, scared-frozen with her hand on her bedroom door-knob, looked at her crossly. ‘How should I know? Do you think I’m psychic?’ Then she felt mean, it was hardly Suzy’s fault she’d interrupted a horrific stream of imaginings. ‘Sorry. I mean it was probably just a car backfiring or something. Go on back to bed, Suze. I expect we’ll find out in the morning if it’s anything else.’
Suzy was too tired to argue, and tottered straight back to bed quite willing to find anything Kate said, as resident grown-up, conveniently comforting.
Kate, though, couldn’t comfort herself. She was too scared, and too undressed now, to go out into the road and find out exactly what had happened. Outside was now eerily silent, and her mind went on doing its worst – her mother and Delia were now lying and dying unattended, while the indifferent village slept and ignored them. Perhaps the car had gone off the road into a ditch, the corner just before the church was pretty sharp, and maybe no-one would see them down there. Her heart was beating hard inside her, and she pulled her old towelling dressing-gown tight round herself and crept downstairs, wondering what to do. Her mother, she remembered, had her phone with her, so she went into the kitchen where Suzy would not be able to hear her and worry and dialled the number. A cool voice told her that the number she was calling was temporarily switched off. Did that mean, awful thought, that it was lying in pieces in the ditch under the car? Under her mother?
Kate opened the front door warily, hoping it wouldn’t creak and disturb Suzy. She could tell her she was letting Jasper out for his late-night pee. It was too much, the responsibility of being the house adult suddenly – why was her father so many thousands of miles away? Her ears strained for the expected sounds of ambulance and police sirens. Surely someone should be there by now. All she could hear were the normal sounds of the few passing cars outside, someone driving much too fast was shrieking their tyres round the church corner, and someone else was revving up a motor bike. Kate came back in and went back to the phone, deciding that the thing to do was to phone Margot. Her fingers were shaky as they dialled the rectory number, and only when Iain answered did she remember that Margot would be fast asleep in the Garden Cottage and not in her own palatial home.
‘I heard a crash, and I’m scared it might be Mum coming home and missing the corner,’ she told him, on the basis that one older person
would do as well as another.
‘I’ll be right round, don’t worry. I’ll check out what’s been happening on my way,’ he told her.
She felt instantly reassured, in the same childlike way that Suzy had been. Suddenly she knew it wasn’t her mother, just because she was about to find out what the damage really was. She knew she felt better when she realized she was in front of the hall mirror, brushing her hair and smudging the last trace of the oatmeal cleanser away from the side of her face.
‘Everything’s fine, well almost. It was a bunch of yobs ram-raiding the hi-fi shop,’ Iain reported only minutes later. ‘The police have just arrived. No sign of the villains, of course. They’ll be long gone.’ He grinned at her, watching her face relax into a hugely relieved smile.
‘I am sorry to drag you out,’ she said, ‘it’s just that Mum’s not answering her phone, and she might be driving all upset or something, and not be concentrating, and I sort of imagined . . .’ Kate felt she was starting to crumble and her voice was giving way.
Iain had his arms round her, gathering her in and softly rocking all the worry out of her. His mouth gently brushed against her hairline as he soothed her, until she realized that she wasn’t feeling exactly soothed at all, but was a long way from calm, in a completely pleasurable way.
Abruptly, as car headlights lit the drive, Iain pulled away and Kate was left startled. ‘I’d better disappear,’ he said quickly, kissing his index finger and putting it to her lips. ‘Sleep well,’ he added, with a strange, lopsided grin.
He’s teasing, she thought, feeling her face fall into a glare as he made for the kitchen and the back door. She could hear the car doors slamming outside and went to open the front door for Heather, just as Iain changed his mind, returned and, with his hand warm on the back of her head, planted a less than gentle kiss on her mouth.
‘Happy dreams,’ he ordered for her and fled through the back door.
Kate waited at the front door, hoping her mother would assume she was trembling from the cold night air. They looked exhausted, and Delia was clutching a handkerchief so Kate knew the papery old man had died. She waited patiently to be told, but her mother had a suspicious and wary look about her, grasped Kate’s arm firmly and pulled her into the kitchen. ‘OK, tell me. Who did I just see leaving by the back door?’
