The Hook

by Raffaella Barker

  ‘I don’t keep them,’ he said, stretching by the window, reaching his arm back to scratch his shoulder blade then heaving his shoulders up and down as if he were preparing for some weight-lifting.

  Christy’s time was split now between work and Mick. If she stayed with Mick on weekdays, she rose while he was still sleeping and drove home along roads gleaming ink blue where the sun met the damp skin of tar. On those early morning drives where she saw no one, Christy played back her evening and her night with Mick, and when she reached home it was a wrench like leaving him again to become Christy the fish-farm manager.

  Frank was happy for her, but there were evenings when dusk hung on the lake and he was alone, and missing his wife enough to scream, even now, three years on. He didn’t want Christy or anyone to know that he couldn’t sleep, that he thought about Jessica every five minutes throughout the night. An air of unease stayed with him, only sublimated by work to the point of exhaustion. He could never know Jessica’s heart now no matter how he searched his own. He could never know if she would have stayed with him. He smiled when he read in one of Christy’s magazines that a man was supposed to think about sex every five minutes. Not love.

  Christy lost touch with her friends. She didn’t need them. One or two people telephoned, wanting to meet her before they went back to college, but she was busy. Mick’s work took him away at short notice; she didn’t like to commit herself in advance in case she missed the day he came home.

  Maisie teased her.

  ‘If you spend any more time with him you’ll start to look like him. You already sound like him.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, how can I? He’s Irish.’ Christy laughed but secretly she was pleased.

  Maisie had been away with Ben. He was back from the rigs for two months and Maisie made him take her on holiday.

  ‘If I don’t he’ll just stay in the flat with that motor bike and rot in its engine until he has to go back.’

  They returned home as the summer spilled into September, and Maisie came to the farm straight from the plane to show off her suntan. Christy was on the roof of the office with Danny, nailing down lead flashing, sealing it for winter. Maisie sauntered out to watch them, swinging her hair down her bare back, goosebumps rising on her arms because she was wearing a sundress and the air was cool. Christy’s muscles ached from heaving ribbons of lead and her fingers throbbed where the hammer had missed its target too often. Maisie looked pampered and cherished, Ben’s car keys hooked like a ring on her finger.

  ‘Come down, leave that stuff. I want to tell you about Spain. Ben gave me a necklace and I’ve brought it to show you. He’s coming in a minute, I dropped him off with Dad by the lake.’

  Danny’s hammer beat on the roof, its rhythm unchanging as if Maisie wasn’t there. He hadn’t spoken to her for weeks now: he was still waiting for her to apologise for the hair extensions. Christy wiped her hands on dirty jeans and climbed down. She moved to hug Maisie, leaning into the coconut scent festooning her sister.

  Maisie stepped back.

  ‘Oh don’t. You’re not in the mood, I can see.’ She spoke sharply, and her hands flew out to push Christy away.

  Christy straightened, flushing, aware of every trickle of sweat, every tickle of dust coating her unclean skin.

  ‘You’re right, I am filthy. I’ll have a bath when I get in.’

  Walking back to the house she stumbled and plodded, earth-bound and troglodyte, next to radiant Maisie.

  Ben and Frank edged round each other in the hall. Christy opened the front door and walked straight into Ben. His narrow hands steadied her.

  ‘Hi there, Christy. You look hot.’

  Christy kissed him; his cheek was smooth and smelt of cheap aftershave, he was as groomed as Maisie, leaning in immaculate repose against the wall, the toe of one polished cowboy boot extended in front of the other.

  Frank didn’t like Ben. He didn’t want his daughter to marry a welder on an oil rig. Ben said he would give up the oil rigs when they got married. He and Maisie would take the motor bike over to France and ride it round the world. Frank thought this was even worse.

  ‘Where is the security in that? All she would have is a motor-bike helmet. No house, no furniture, nothing.’

  Christy tried to soothe him, but seeing Ben and Maisie together always set him off again. ‘He is feckless and irresponsible. What does she see in him?’ he appealed to Christy after they had left.

  Christy turned away to hide her smile. Frank liked Mick. She had got something right where Maisie had got it wrong, and she felt a swoop of triumph. Ben would never give Maisie safety. Christy couldn’t imagine wanting anything else.

  ‘No, Dad, that’s mean, you can’t think like that. They’ve been together a long time, he really cares about her, it’s just that he isn’t here much. He isn’t ready for a base yet.’

  ‘Well, he isn’t ready for marriage then. I just don’t think Maisie will be happy.’

  He broke off, as Danny came in, a film of sawdust and grime coating his clothes and his hair.

  ‘Danny doesn’t think much of him either.’

  ‘Of who?’ Danny perched on the edge of the sofa, his feet parked far apart and his elbows on his knees as he leaned to switch on the television with one hand and pour beer into a glass on the floor with the other.

  ‘Maisie’s beau.’

  ‘He’s better than Maisie,’ was all Christy heard before the cricket commentator joined them in the room, his voice amplified and crisp against the soft thwack of the cricket ball and the rattle of applause.

  Maisie was dying to come to court and see the action, but she couldn’t because the police thought they might use her as a witness. She was thrilled.

  ‘I can’t wait to give evidence, it’s like being in a film. I hope they don’t ask me to say anything awful about Mick, though. Mind you, I never liked him.’

  ‘Maise, please don’t start.’ I was so tired of hearing her, clear and pure as a church bell in recollecting her prescience. She told Dad that she’d always thought there was something fishy about Mick.

  That made me laugh.

  ‘Come on, Maisie, we’re all a lot more fishy than Mick, literally.’

  One Friday the police decided they didn’t want her to give evidence for the prosecution. The next day I went to see Mick in the prison where they were keeping him in the high-security unit. If the defence wasn’t going to call Maisie either she could come to court with me on Monday. Mick would know if she was needed. I visited him every weekend during the trial, like I had ever since his arrest. It all took so long. He was on remand for six months before his case was brought to court. They wouldn’t give him bail. They said he was too dangerous. He didn’t look dangerous to me. I could not reconcile the side I knew of Mick with the evidence shoaling up against him. I pushed away the thought of all that potential guilt when I visited him, I had to.

  Going to the prison was my ritual now, like going to Mum’s grave. Instead of going to Mum’s grave. Driving there I could spot the other girlfriends and wives getting off buses and out of cars and taxis to converge in a fluff of fake-fur coats and powder at the blue steel door. When I first started visiting Mick I was amazed by the other women. They had earrings and lipstick and low-necked dresses. Most of them didn’t wear tights and their bare legs puckered purple above scuffed stilettos. The few in dirty jeans and old sweatshirts were signalling the end of their interest in their captive husbands. I never saw them more than once or twice again. The dolled-up ones were constant.

  Mick loved me to dress up to visit him.

  ‘You’re the only colour in here, Christy, and the only smell that makes me happy.’

  I used up a lot of scent in that time.

  Once the trial started our visits galloped. It was like being an astronaut getting into the part of the prison where Mick and I could face one another through a wall of glass. Electronic wands had been whisked around me five or six times between the entrance and this inner sanctum.
I stated my name and business like a parrot, I stood in three different passages with a door locked behind me before the one in front could unlock. I was always surprised not to be given a bullet-proof outfit at the last door. The building was new and clean, not like I would have imagined it. The corridors were wide and well lit; some had posters on the walls, others had high windows through which you could see a slit of sky above more walls. It was more like Heathrow Airport than a prison. And in the middle of all those tons of breeze blocks and concrete was Mick. We had an hour usually.

  He was nervous on that Saturday. The prosecution were near the end of their case now and the defence would begin to present theirs next week.

  ‘This is it now, Christy,’ he said, leaning forwards to be close to me through the glass. ‘It’ll all be over soon now.’

  ‘Is Maisie going to be called?’ I didn’t want to talk about when it was all over, it made me uncomfortable. The future was suspended for him like the rest of life. ‘She wants to know because if she’s not called she can come with me to court.’

  He grinned and put his hands on the glass as if he were touching my face.

  ‘She’s way too sexy to have in the witness stand, she’d be a confusing sight for everyone, you know.’

  I leapt back from the screen as if his hands had scorched me through it.

  ‘If that’s how you feel, get Maisie to come and see you every week. Get Maisie to run around after you and buy you clothes and batteries and make you tapes. Get her to stand up for you in pubs when people you don’t even know bad-mouth you.’ All the frustration was welling over now. I stood up, shaking, and turned to go.

  Mick bashed on the glass like an ape at the zoo.

  ‘Christy, sweetheart, I love you. Please come back.’

  His shouting pain pulled me back to face him. The guards shuffled their feet, turned their faces to one side trying to merge with the walls. My mouth was bitter with rage and embarrassment, but I couldn’t walk out of the door. I moved closer to the barrier; my breath smudged Mick’s face, softening him. I wiped the glass clean again. I wanted to break it and hit him.

  ‘Well, what did you mean then?’

  He was almost crying and his scar was white as lint on his flushed forehead. Guilt crept across my anger. I had deliberately misunderstood him, of course he didn’t fancy Maisie, he didn’t even like her, but I had been sensible and capable for so long now. I wanted to sob and scream and have him console me. What use is a boyfriend if you can’t even touch him? I sat down again and blew my nose.

  He sat down too, big and defeated behind the screen.

  ‘You can go if you want to, Christy. You know I can’t stop you.’

  A bell thudded through the walls. It was the end of the visit. The guards stepped forward out of the walls, one to take me out and away, the other to lead Mick back to his cell.

  Mick turned in his chair.

  ‘Please, just a minute more.’

  ‘All right, lad, but make it quick.’ The guard on his side stepped back and nodded to the other one.

  Mick’s voice was low and urgent.

  ‘Don’t do all this from pity, Christy. I can handle this mess if you want to split, but I can’t be helping you make decisions. Maisie doesn’t need to be a witness. End of story. I was joking, having a laugh, you know that girl.’ His voice wavered, he wasn’t in control, he was almost pleading.

  My anger swelled, but the guards came forward again and Mick stood to be handcuffed and led back to his cell. I didn’t move until he had gone.

  In my head I carried on arguing as I joined the halting queue of women leaving. Getting out took hours, even longer than getting in, or maybe it just felt longer. Driving away I relished the smooth acceleration of the car on a fast road. Mick and I didn’t have momentum let alone acceleration. We were stagnant; each visit began with expectation and ended too soon, and every word we said to one another was overheard by guards. I had never been able to talk to him about the arrest or what he had done. We couldn’t talk, we couldn’t argue, we couldn’t even kiss. Every time I went I decided to stop seeing him, but I couldn’t do it. The news on the radio had a report about some hostages being released. I turned it off and cried for as long as it took to drive the ten miles home.

  I wanted to have fun that night, and to be apart from anyone who knew Mick. I went to a pub in Lynton where people from the college gathered and I got drunk. When the pub closed a group of us went to someone’s bedsit, I don’t know whose. We made cocktails of Bacardi and milk which were disgusting. A boy with fair hair in a sweep down one side of his face came up to me. I recognised him. He was called Daley Jennings and he had been a bully in the year above me at school. He tried to kiss me without even saying hello. I ducked away from his wet mouth and his bad breath and locked myself in the bathroom. Sitting on the basin examining my hazy face, I was ashamed. If this is the best I can do on my own I can’t criticise Mick. I’ve forgotten how to behave without him. I needed to be sick to be sober and to get home. Crouching by the lavatory I pushed my fingers too far down my throat till I retched. No one paid any attention when I left. Daley Jennings was asleep with his mouth open, folded double like a clothespeg across the bottom stair.

  Christy lay in the bath. The water had cooled to match her blood so if she moved she could feel a line of warmth around her body as if she had drawn it with a red felt pen. In her mind Mick and Ben stood side by side, arms out straight like the cut-out dolls she had loved as a child. They were dressed. Ben wore a yellow T-shirt, a little shiny and a little too tight, and some blue-and-white-striped dungarees. He often wore dungarees. She put Mick in a navy cotton shirt and the nasty tracksuit she had once seen him wear. She shut her eyes for better concentration. This was good. Mick was handicapped by the tracksuit. She could now be objective. In her mind she wanted each of them to smile, and then say hello. She wanted to compare them for dependability. The Ben doll licked his lips before he smiled, and his chin sank into his neck above the gold chain Maisie had given him. Creepy, but then maybe he’s shy, Christy thought, and moved over to the Mick doll. He looked straight at her and his smile was warmer than the bath. She lay in satin water until the bathroom turned grey around her, thinking of life with Mick and his dog Hotspur.

  Later Christy and Danny went into Lynton to meet Mick. Danny was supposed to go and play pool with some friends, but somehow he didn’t say goodbye in the pub where they met, and bought Coca-Cola for Mick and beer for himself, occasionally remembering Christy, until closing time. Christy liked sharing Mick with Danny. She slouched on the red banquette, trickling smoke up past her narrowed eyes.

  ‘Come on, Christy, stir yourself, girl. Play pool with us.’ Danny handed her a cue and a block of dusty chalk. ‘Naylor versus Fleet and Naylor is a two-man team, OK?’

  ‘Let’s have a bet,’ said Mick, and he pulled a fan of money from his pocket.

  Christy could see the note he laid on the edge of the pool table from the other side. It was foreign-looking, big and pink.

  ‘You’ve got to bet English money,’ she protested, and Mick picked it up and brought it round the table to her.

  He was too close for her to see him properly; she stood back from him, bumping into the table with him still too big in front of her. He waved the money, fanning her nose, and his eyes were slits staring out of a stranger’s face.

  ‘It is English, sweetheart. It’s a fifty.’

  Christy’s heart thumped.

  ‘Don’t be silly Mick, we can’t match that. Why are you doing this? And why have you got all that money?’

  Mick’s face in the dim pub had shadows she didn’t recognise.

  ‘I took it out of the bank,’ he said, and shutting the fan he ran his thumb across the corner. This whole stack, as thick as a pack of cards, was made up of fifty-pound notes.

  ‘Why did you take out so much cash?’ she whispered. His nail purred across the stiff paper, he knew she was angry and he laughed.

  Mick tucked the
money back into his jacket and grabbed Christy, hugging her hard and whirling her round off her feet so her shoe caught a table and another customer’s calves.

  ‘Because I can,’ he said into her hair. ‘I can take out as much as I want and there’s still more when I go back.’

  Danny came over.

  ‘Come on, let’s get this game up and running.’ He saw Mick’s money and raised his eyebrows. ‘You’re very sure of your skills,’ he said. ‘Christy and I will pay in kind if we lose, OK?’

  ‘Not me,’ said Christy, now white and hot.

  ‘I don’t play if I can’t pay.’

  Mick embraced her again.

  ‘Come on, sweetheart, your presence is worth twice that for half an hour.’

  Danny didn’t seem worried about winning Mick’s money. Christy sighed and picked up her pool cue again. Maybe it would all make sense later. She played the first shot. The game was over soon. Mick took too many risks, the balls spun and bumped and sometimes went in, he seemed to want to lose. Danny played slowly and set up his shots with care. Christy had hardly anything to do. When Mick handed her the fifty-pound note she couldn’t look at him. Danny took it.

  ‘Let’s get some drinks.’ He moved away to the bar.

  Christy in her corner seat lost sight and sound of the surrounding crowd. Mick was all she could see. Mick and his money in the smoke-deep bar.

  Driving with Danny back to Mick’s house late, Mick’s car flickering red lights far ahead, Christy was silent. Danny was not.

  ‘It’ll be great tomorrow. I’m going with Mick to buy a new car. That’s what he had all that money for, you know. He told me not to say anything to you, but as you’re so sulky I think you should know. Now will you pull yourself together?’

  Christy rubbed her eyes and dug into her bag for cigarettes.

  ‘I wonder why I wasn’t supposed to know.’

  Danny swung the car down the track towards the cottage, his thin hands tight on the wheel.

  ‘It’s obvious, Chris.’ He spoke gently, as if he was the grown-up and Christy a child. ‘He wants you to trust him and he saw that you didn’t. He’s probably upset. You should apologise.’