A Pack of Lies

by Geraldine McCaughrean

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  Copyright © Geraldine McCaughrean 1988

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted

  First published 1988

  First published in this eBook edition 2012.

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  ISBN 978-0-19-273294-1

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  for Teresa Heapy

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  The Man who came from Reading

  Chapter Two

  The Clock: A Story of Superstition

  Chapter Three

  The Writing Box: The Story of a Liar

  Chapter Four

  The Plate: A Question of Values

  Chapter Five

  The Table: A Story of Gluttony

  Chapter Six

  The Harpsichord: A Story of Honour and Trust

  Chapter Seven

  The Umbrella-Stand: A Story of Temper

  Chapter Eight

  The Mirror: A Story of Vanity

  Chapter Nine

  The Roll-Top Desk: A Question of Whodunnit

  Chapter Ten

  The Wooden Chest: A Story of Betrayal

  Chapter Eleven

  The Lead Soldier: A Story of Pride

  Chapter Twelve

  The Bed: A Story of Horrors Unspeakable

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Only Answer

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE MAN WHO CAME FROM READING

  She put down that she was interested in ‘looking after animals’ or ‘heavy engineering’. But when it came to doing her fifth-year project on ‘People at Work’, somehow she got a half-day visit to the town library. It was like drawing the short straw. Nobody ever put down that they were interested in ‘libraries’, but someone was always sent there. The Head Librarian was kind enough to offer a visit for one person each year. So the school made sure to send someone polite; someone who would smile a lot and not say, ‘But I put down Animals and Engineering.’ Someone like Ailsa. The rude, loutish ones who said they were interested in ‘bank robbery’ and ‘sex’ (because to them that was witty) got a terrific day on the pig farm where they could not cause much trouble. And Ailsa got the town library.

  She was shown the tickets. She was shown the large-print books. She was shown the newspapers and the telephone directories. She even read a story to a group of toddlers who sat and tore books to pieces at her feet. Around her the library echoed to the coughing of an old man reading Windsurfing Monthly, and to the scuffing, shambling tread of the public choosing books.

  Success with Cactus Culture; The Afghan War and its Implications for Trade, 1850-1900; The Collected Works of P. Edmund Grossmith; Double-Entry Bookkeeping in Guatemala. Who read these books? Were there days when people rushed in from the street nursing a dying cactus, or woke longing to declaim from their balconies the verses of P. Edmund Grossmith? Was someone even now gazing out of an aeroplane bound for Guatemala wishing they had spent longer reading up on their double entry …

  ‘Still raining, then?’

  ‘Do you have anything by Catherine Cookson?’

  ‘What weather!’

  ‘Can you recommend something funny?’

  ‘Raw cold, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m sorry. The dog ate it.’

  The voices came and went at the counter, while the rain hammered at the windows in an ecstasy of temper at being kept from so much fascinating reading.

  ‘Now, as a special treat, Angela,’ said the Deputy Librarian, ‘you may use the microfiche machine!’

  ‘Thank you very much, Mrs Millet,’ said Ailsa.

  ‘It’s a kind of big magnifying glass, and these perspex sheets list all the books there are in the library, but in teeny tiny letters. Put them in here and — hey presto! — the words come up on the screen big enough to read. It’s a bit like magic, isn’t it?’

  ‘Amazing, Mrs Millet,’ said Ailsa politely.

  ‘These letters here …’ Mrs Millet went on, whispering as confidentially as any spy passing state secrets. The magnified green letters swam to and fro on the computer screen. When she was left alone, Ailsa inserted another microfiche, but the book titles skidded into view upside down and inside out.

  She had it in the wrong way over. Ailsa yawned uncontrollably.

  Suddenly a chin rested on her shoulder, and a mouth said into her ear, ‘Leonardo da Vinci used to write like that, you know.’

  Ailsa’s hand jerked with fright, and the writing bolted across the screen, blurring with speed. ‘What, back-to-front?’

  ‘No, on a computer microfiche. It’s a little-known fact.’

  She could see his grinning face reflected in the screen, with eighty-four titles in the series,

  superimposed in green across his features.

  She eased her shoulder out from under his chin and turned to look at him properly, wondering if this was the kind of stranger she was supposed not to speak to. On the whole, she thought he was.

  He had on a green corduroy jacket worn bald in all the creases of elbow, armpit and round the buttonholes, and an untied green bow tie snaked from under his collar. His white cricket flannels were colour-matched to his jacket by the long, oval grass stains on both knees. His suede shoes, too, were like a badly worn wicket, with a lot of dark, bare patches showing. His dark, curly hair had receded to that point which makes men look extra-intelligent and shows the veins in their foreheads when they are excited, and it curled directly into a short, d
ark beard which isolated his face from the paler skin in the open collar of his shirt.

  ‘Like reading, do you?’

  She shrugged. ‘Fairly.’

  ‘Fairly? Only fairly? Not unfairly? I like reading in bookshops – cover to cover – and then not paying. Are you on the Electoral Roll?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you on the Voting List? They won’t let me have any tickets here, because they say I’m not on the Voting List.’

  ‘I’m not old enough to vote,’ said Ailsa. ‘But I expect my mother’s on the Voting List. That’s how I get tickets. I expect.’

  His eyes lit up, and he seized her by both hands. ‘You have tickets? Can I borrow one? Or two? I’m in the middle of Wisden’s Cricketing Year Books, and it’s taken me three days to get to 1953, and it’s not such a jolly place to spend the night, this, and I don’t like to turn on the lights after hours in case some passing policeman mistakes me for a burglar.’

  ‘You mean to say you’ve been …’ But Ailsa did not have time to finish before the Deputy Librarian came round the bookshelves to quell the noise of raised voices.

  She took one look at the man and hissed, ‘You again! Look, I’ve told you until I’m tired of saying it - this is a place for quiet study or for the borrowing of books … Is he pestering you, Angela?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Ailsa and gave her polite smile.

  ‘Look here, young man, where do you live? Why can’t you go to your own local library? You’ve been hanging about here for days and days. Where are you from?’

  ‘Reading,’ said the young man, rather defensively.

  ‘Berkshire?’

  ‘Berkshire? If you like,’ he said doubtfully.

  ‘It is correctly pronounced Reading, to rhyme with “bedding”, not Reading to rhyme with “breeding”,’ whispered the Librarian.

  The young man narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Who is it lives there, madam, you or me?’

  The Librarian bridled. ‘I’m going to ask you to leave now. Council bye-laws permit me to ask anyone to leave for whatever reason!’

  His face fell. ‘What? Turn me out?’

  ‘Shshsh! Yes.’

  ‘What? Like Adam and Eve turned out of the Garden of Eden by the Angel with the burning two-edged sword?’

  Ailsa and the Librarian stared at him. ‘Young gentleman, are you endeavouring to be funny?’

  But he was not, for he suddenly fell on his grass-stained knees on the parquet flooring and grabbed the Librarian’s skirt. ‘Where could I go? It’s winter! It’s the football season! The cricket’s gone till May! What would become of me?’

  Mrs Millet’s hands fluttered up around her shoulders, but she recovered fast and said, ‘I’m going to call the Police now and have you forcibly removed.’ She could not actually achieve this, because of the man clasping her knees, but as soon as he let go and turned his attentions to Ailsa, she was off like a rabbit, her crêpe-soled shoes squealing down the big, echoing room.

  ‘You’ll help me, won’t you?’ he cried, walking across to Ailsa on his knees. ‘You won’t see me thrown out to wander the streets with nothing but traffic signs and graffiti to read and nowhere to lay my head at night! Where can I get a job? How can I get on to the Electoral Roll? I mean to say, how can a fellow make a living?’

  ‘Our shop needs someone.’ It had slipped out before Ailsa could prevent it.

  ‘What kind of a shop? Whose shop? Where?’

  ‘Second-hand furniture, mostly. My mother runs it. Dad died, and Mum’s no good at selling anything.’ There was a banging of doors at the end of the hall. ‘Oh do get out of here before the Police come! They’re only next door! Please!’

  He nodded, got up off his knees and opened one of the big sash windows. ‘I’ll be waiting for you outside. Be quick. You’re my salvation! You won’t be sorry.’ A blast of rainy air flapped the green corduroy as he climbed out through the window, and she could see the red stain where a cricket ball had been shined against his hip. She pulled the window shut behind him and sat down, trembling, at the microfiche. The Deputy Librarian and a policeman bustled into view.

  ‘Here he is, officer … been hanging about here for three days now … oh! Has he gone, Angela?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Millet,’ said Ailsa.

  Upside down and inside out, the green screen blinked the words at her,

  And she thought she had been on the Ws.

  She considered creeping out some other way, but there wasn’t one. There he sat, at four o’clock, on the concrete-slit bicycle-stand, and everything about him was a darker shade of green because he was so wet. Even his eyes seemed darker in the winter dusk. His suntan and beard dripped rainwater.

  ‘You’d better come and talk to Mum,’ she said doubtfully. ‘I can’t promise anything.’

  ‘Fine! Fine!’ he said, splattering through the puddles beside her as he practised his overarm bowling.

  ‘What’s your name? I ought to know it, to tell Mum.’

  He answered without a moment’s hesitation, ‘Berkshire.’

  ‘You’re a liar, sir,’ thought Ailsa. But nice, polite girls never say that kind of thing aloud. It is not in their upbringing.

  ‘Oh Ailsa! You and your lame dogs!’ was Mrs Povey’s reaction to the news of a young man awaiting a job in the shop. She ran her fingers through her grey, permed hair, and her weary face forgot to repel all those lines of irritation and sadness that had settled there since Mr Povey’s death. It had been a day spent worrying about money problems, with not enough trade in the shop to distract her attention from them. Now she stood dithering in the small, dark living room behind the shop, wondering whether she could send this young man away with a few sharp words, or whether she ought to be polite. She really did not have time to spare on being polite. But then this was the selfsame woman who had made Ailsa the girl she was. A woman brings up her children the way she was brought up herself, and politeness had run in the family for generations. It was like some dreadful hereditary defect. ‘Well, I suppose I’d better have a word with this young man. Where did you leave him? What’s his name?’

  In the shop, Ailsa hesitated. She could not somehow bring herself to introduce the young man they found crouching behind a sideboard, rifling the second-hand bookshelves. But he grinned and reached up a large, dark-haired hand and shook Mrs Povey’s vigorously. ‘Berkshire’s the name. MCC Berkshire. You didn’t tell me there were books, Ailsa! Books!’

  ‘Only second hand,’ she murmured.

  ‘Only? That’s the best kind! My waking hours are entirely at your service, Mrs Povey!’

  ‘Ah, well, I’m afraid … I think Ailsa doesn’t quite understand the economics of running a little business like this. I’d certainly like someone to help …’

  ‘And here I am! Fateful, isn’t it?’

  ‘… but I just don’t see how I can afford to employ anyone, what with national insurance stamps and pension schemes and all the statutory things there are these days …’

  ‘Oh, I’ll work for nothing! Don’t you worry about the money side. I haven’t got any, either. Don’t think another thing about it. A bite of lunch and free run of the books you’ve got in stock. Have you thought of opening up that side of the business? I’m good with books.’

  ‘It’s the furniture they come in for,’ murmured Mrs Povey, looking sidelong at her daughter. ‘Oh but this is nonsense. You can’t work for nothing, Mr Berkshire. Nobody works for nothing.’

  ‘It’s better than walking the streets in this kind of weather, but if you like, you can let me sleep on this. It’ll save me paying rent somewhere.’ He had run down the length of the shop and thrown himself on to a great creaking brass bed which rolled on its castors up against a chest of drawers. Whatnots and hat-stands were set rocking, and a stuffed parakeet swung on its perch, and an unwound clock chimed one. ‘Think of the added security! Better than a burglar alarm any day.’

  ‘Yes, yes, this is all very kind of you, Mr Berkshire,’ said Mrs Pove
y, shaking her head, ‘but are you really interested in selling furniture to people? Wouldn’t you find it awfully dull, a person of your … your …’ She was left struggling for an appropriate word.

  ‘You mean, am I any good at selling things?’ he said, making her blush with embarrassment. He got up off the bed and took both her hands in his and kissed them fervently. ‘Put me on trial, madam! Don’t make up your mind now. Try me for a week or two. I can sell things, don’t you worry. After all … I sold myself to your daughter, and now even you are wavering on the brink…’

  ‘Mother! I never really thought you’d take him on,’ said Ailsa in disbelief, as they sat down to dinner that night. ‘I thought you’d know how to tell him “no” in a nice way.’

  Her mother sighed and signalled that Ailsa should speak more quietly, in case MCC Berkshire heard them in the shop below. ‘I’m afraid young people get awfully desperate for a job these days. It didn’t seem right just to send him away. He was so very willing … Such a good-looking boy, too,’ she added vaguely.

  ‘What’s that got to do with it? He’s weird.’

  ‘Shsh, dear. Well, yes, he does seem a bit eccentric … or is he just lively’? We’re not very lively you know, we two.’

  ‘We might be murdered in our beds, Mother!’

  ‘Might we?’

  ‘Oh Mother!’ snapped Ailsa in exasperation.

  Mrs Povey stirred her tea till it slopped over the rim of the cup. Her face crumpled into as many seams as a treasureless map. ‘It’s all very well for you, Ailsa. You start these things and you expect me to finish them. Eat your supper and don’t nag, there’s a good girl.’

  They ate on in silence until the guilt felt equally shared again. Their eyes kept drifting towards the floor, as they both pictured the dark, cluttered shop below.