The Hook

by Raffaella Barker

  Danny was so certain, so sensible. Christy closed her eyes and saw herself like rot, gnawing away at Mick until he stopped being good and strong and fell to dust at her feet.

  Chapter 7

  Danny should have been a girl. That’s what Jessica said until he was six when suddenly he became her favourite because he was a boy and he could never outshine her. Maisie and Christy were becoming far too pretty far too soon. When Danny was small Jessica would not accept his maleness. She sidestepped his gun toting, dogged in her belief that she could change him by spreading before him a future strewn with flower presses and magic sets. But he turned sticks into guns and cardboard boxes into tanks, he took avid pleasure in squatting by flattened frogs and hedgehogs on the road. He put them in his flower press.

  Jessica had no brothers nor indeed sisters herself and had fallen in love with Frank because he was gentle, and not like the barking red-faced youths her parents had encouraged her to meet at shooting parties and on skiing trips. Her life now was as neat and feminine as the floral wallpaper she had hung in her living room, except for the presence of Danny. By the time he was six she knew she could not steer him, and instead she changed her own course. She was fascinated by the man she could see Danny would become. His maleness ceased to be a threat and became an obsession.

  She had schooled Frank and bent him to her will, their lives ran as she wished them to and he complied. Danny was different. He played with her. He flirted with her. When he wanted her to let him go to a football match with Frank he didn’t argue his point. He just looked at her. She could not resist him. She always gave in with Danny. She admired him for opposing her and for his pleasure in getting away with it.

  Frank remonstrated.

  ‘You can’t have one rule for the girls and another for Danny; it isn’t fair on any of them.’

  Jessica tossed her head.

  ‘I don’t. Anyway, the girls are older, they should know better by now.’

  And despite her inconsistencies, Jessica’s children loved her, she was sure. Jessica was thirty-five when she looked in the mirror one morning and knew she wanted more.

  Mick wandered along a shingle path and stopped, facing away from Christy. He never came too close when they visited Jessica’s grave, and he didn’t speak until they were back in the car again driving out past terraced houses and the liquorice lines of the railway track. It was the new car. Christy couldn’t see how it was different from the old car, but Danny and Mick had both told her it was perfect. The best car around for now.

  ‘I’m going away tomorrow for a few days, and I asked Danny if he’d be wanting to go with me.’ He stopped at traffic lights and rested his hand on Christy’s knee.

  She looked away, excluded, repulsed by his bitten fingernails.

  ‘You never take me,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not your sort of thing, Christy, and anyway, you’re working. He’s going to help me do some research. We’re going to Reading. I’ve got some people to see there.’

  She wanted to know who he was seeing, why he needed a new car, why he never took her with him, but she didn’t ask. It was better to glide on the surface, darting between these half-submerged questions without touching them. The leaping joy of being with him, of having a boyfriend, had steadied. There were parts of him she didn’t know, places where she couldn’t reach him. He was attentive and thoughtful, he gave her presents and bought her dinner whenever they went out. He wanted her with him in his house and he was dependable. But Christy wanted more. She became captious and determined to see into his soul. But by now she knew if she asked too many questions he would close himself off for days, leaving her scrambling in confusion. He loved her, he hadn’t said so but he would soon, and this fuelled her crusade. In time he would be open, quite open. As she was with him.

  They took Hotspur to the sea and walked along the ragged shore beneath the stony bulge of the sea defences. Above them cliffs crumbled soft sugar brown and Hotspur dashed up, pausing then hurling himself back down to the sea. Pebbles round and tight like roe shored up in hills and valleys along the wide beach and in the distance their smoky purple met the sea beneath a ribbon of foam. September sun crept in and out of fleeting cloud casting bruises on to the sea. Mick flicked stones into the water sending Hotspur into a spin of hysterical pleasure. His face was sleek and wet like an otter and he panted at Mick’s side, barking and leaping to and fro but determined not to set foot in the sea. Christy sat behind them on banked stones, her arms clasped around her knees and her face turned up to the sun.

  Mick threw a last flint for the dog and knelt down beside her.

  ‘A seashore for your thoughts,’ he said smiling, balancing two round pebbles on her knees.

  ‘I was thinking about you, wondering about your family.’ If she didn’t ask a direct question she might catch him out.

  Mick lay flat beside her and closed his eyes, his scar a fine colourless ridge like a hook caught beneath his skin.

  ‘We never had anything like you’ve got, Christy. My dad worked in a brewery and Ma was a nurse in an old people’s home. They’ve retired now, and there’s no money. They were never there when we came back from school, and it didn’t take us long to realise that they would never know if we didn’t go to school at all. None of my mates went anyway. There wasn’t much to do during the day there, so we used to nick cars and bikes, anything to get you out of that place, even for half an hour.’

  They lay side by side, feet towards the sea, listening to waves crashing on stones. Christy shaded her eyes and looked up at no-colour sky. Autumn sharpened the air and stretched shadows down over the sea scent of salt and wet sand. Danny was going back to college next week. Maisie was already in the latest look for the new season, her tan scrubbed off, her hair pinned high and tight like a Victorian governess. Christy twisted to look at Mick. He had placed two pebbles in the sockets of his eyes and straightened himself as if he had been marked and discarded by the sea.

  ‘Don’t. You look dead, Mick.’

  She took the stones off his face and pulled him up. She couldn’t bear to think of him filling his childhood with petty crimes and danger; she wanted to make it all right, she wanted it not to have happened like that.

  ‘Is your sister still living there?’

  ‘Yeah, she works in a day-care centre, and at night she goes home to Ma and Da and cooks for them. She’s older than me, five years older. I don’t think she’ll get out now.’

  Hotspur bounced towards them from the sea, his mouth full, the hairs on his chin dripping in a goatee beard. He came closer and Christy saw that the beard had claws, wildly twitching then falling still for a moment.

  ‘He’s got a crab. God, he’s disgusting.’ She got up and called the dog.

  He came to her, eyes bright with pride, tail spinning. The crab waved at her, Hotspur dropped it and barked a challenge, stretching down on his front legs, enjoying the game. On the ground the crab pulled itself together like a puppet ready for action. Christy suddenly couldn’t pick it up. The grey-blue shell gleamed and the claws snapped. She pushed it with her toe and the sea caught it, whirling it to and fro until it vanished beneath a slapping wave.

  She turned back to Mick. He was sitting up, his arms loose and long at his side. He grabbed her hand and pulled her down next to him.

  ‘Christy the emancipator. You’re too kind-hearted, sweetheart, you’ll never get through unless you toughen up, now, will you?’

  She giggled and lay back against his shoulder.

  ‘I’m not. I just don’t like seeing a disadvantaged crab. If you were caught in someone’s mouth I’d get you out as well.’

  He rolled over on top of her, pinning her flat on the cobbled surface, holding her tighter, tighter.

  ‘I love you, Christy.’

  He’d said it now.

  This time when Mick was away, Christy wanted to go out. Bolstered by mutually declared love she shed her skin of transparent shyness and swam out supple and strong, gleaming
beauty and confidence in every gesture. At the trout farm the fishing was slowing down now the days were not so warm, but there were still restaurant orders to fill, and the smoke house was sulking. Everything came out scorched. Christy’s clothes were pungent with the salt-dry smell of over-smoked fish, her hair frizzed from too much time spent leaning into the oven, and she was convinced that her face was beginning to take on the leathered sheen of dried fish skin.

  Frank gave her the weekend off and she caught the little train into Lynton. The two short carriages filled up as the train paused at village stations and clusters of women in tight shoes crowded on, their wrists creased around the handles of too many deflated shopping bags. Fields marooning church towers gave way to car-parks and net-curtained windows as the train drifted into Lynton. Leaning too far out of the window, Christy watched the spaghetti chaos of rail tracks unravel until three strands remained and she was too close to see them run up to the platforms and stop.

  Maisie’s hairdressing salon was in the centre of town, near the fountain where she and Christy had spent aimless hours as teenagers, swapping insults with boys they half knew as a prelude to being snogged by them in the station waiting room. As Christy walked by she noticed a row of girls giggling, sitting on the wall around the fountain, their feet obscured by piles of plastic bags full of cheap dresses bought this morning at Dorothy Perkins for the party tonight. Relentless, unchanging Saturday behaviour: Christy was depressed by the sameness of it. Two youths, crew-cut and dressed in shapeless dirty jackets and trainers, sat down near the girls, lit cigarettes and began to swap loud remarks about the slappers they had been with last night. She turned away, not wanting to see the girls toss their hair and beckon with shining eyes and gestures until the youths sidled close to them and the insults began. She suddenly wished Frank had taken her further away when Jessica died, to a new town where experience could start again. But then she would never have met Mick. Mick could take her away. They could live in London maybe, or in a little cottage with gingham curtains. He could do that kind of thing, he was free. He could give her his life to share. There was nothing to tie him to anyone but her.

  Wrapped in fantasy, Christy entered Maisie’s salon. Music pumped over the whir of hairdriers. Maisie winked at her but went on parting and combing wet white hair on the head of a friend of Jessica’s. All Jessica’s friends came to the salon where Maisie worked, and they all requested Maisie. With them came a trail of quiet tweed and pleats, button-down shirts and shiny handbags to match the shoes. Jessica had never looked like them, never been one of them, but they were fond of her and determined to help still, three years on. They weren’t comfortable in this setting of chrome, bright lights and big music. They had to submit to having their hair washed in sinks shaped like dog bowls and the mirrors had atrophied snakes and spears twisted in the frames, but they came for Jessica’s sake. They must support her daughter, it was all that could be done.

  Maisie was furious.

  ‘God, I’ve got bloody Marjory Perkins and then Elizabeth Moore today,’ she whispered to Christy when the white-haired chairwoman of the WI had gone, leaving a small tip and a faint aroma of talcum-powdered goodness behind her. Maisie washed brushes vigorously and carried on. ‘They all ask for me and I spend my whole time doing sets and rinses. I can’t stand it, I never have time to do anyone young, and those old bags just go on and on about poor dear Jessica and poor dear Frank, was it wise for him to start that trout farm, until I want to chop their stupid tongues off, or at least give them peroxide instead of brunette rinse.’

  ‘Well, you can do me if you like,’ Christy offered, ‘but don’t cut too much off. I don’t want it to look any shorter, or any different.’

  Maisie threw her scissors and combs into a tall jar of blue liquid and wiped her hands on her skirt.

  ‘No bloody thanks, but I’ll meet you for a drink after work. Why are you here anyway?’

  Typical Maisie, thought Christy. I don’t know why I go on trying to please her.

  ‘I’m coming to stay with you tonight. I thought we could go out and have fun. We haven’t been on our own for ages.’

  Maisie was delighted.

  ‘Is Mick away? Oh good. We can go to a party or something and get really dolled up. It’s Anna’s hen night; she won’t mind if you come. I’m sick of bloody boyfriends after Ben being back here for all that time. You should see the state of the flat. He’s bought another motor bike, or some bits of one anyway. He’s a right pain and he wouldn’t take me to London when I asked him to.’

  A discreet cough interrupted her and the broad figure of Marjory Perkins loomed in the mirror, or as much of her as would fit. The sensible shoes and broad calves were cut off by the table, and the beige mackintosh sleeves, one dangling a handbag, the other caught tight by the hook of her umbrella, were set too far apart on either side of her solid frame to be seen in the mirror.

  ‘Hello, my dear, I’m so glad you had an appointment for me. Alan has a directors’ dinner this evening, and I haven’t had a moment to see poor Frank since I don’t know when . . .’

  Maisie pushed her down into the chair and engulfed the kindly tinkle of her conversation in a white towel.

  ‘God save me,’ she whispered, rolling her eyes.

  Christy laughed and left the salon. She wanted to buy a present for Mick. It was his birthday on Hallowe’en; six weeks away but she was determined to have everything organised well in advance. She thought she might give him a surprise party at the cottage, his present would be bestowed beforehand in the morning, if only she could find the right thing.

  The new shopping mall with its piped music and warm air was a good place to start. Christy joined the trail of slow-moving shoppers at the entrance and with them began to wander through the arcades. It was like being under water; all sound was softened and dulled and the faces turned towards shop windows were expressionless and pale green, reflecting the glass roof and the mossy carpeting. She realised she had been standing in front of a men’s clothes shop for five minutes without taking anything in. The clump of shoppers she had come in with had moved on through the hall. She could see the red anoraks of one couple bobbing back and forth in a shoe shop. She watched the two bending and rising then stopping as they tied laces and looked at one another’s feet, incongruous in pristine shoes beneath old jeans. In a minute they would sail out again and on, extra plastic bags banging against their calves.

  Christy suddenly didn’t want to buy Mick something big. It had to be small, not heavy but visibly expensive, something she could slip into her pocket, or into his when she gave it to him at breakfast on his birthday. She wandered into an electrical shop, past a bank of televisions like windows in a tower block, busy and unheeding of their neighbours but displaying uniform scenes in lurid colours. Green turf on a smaller television at the side attracted her and she watched a race start, the horses breaking in kaleidoscope pattern as the flag went up, then reforming in a long tight chain as they found their positions as near to the front and as close to the railings as they could manage. The jockeys perched above their backs like harlequins in a parade, still and faceless as the horses hurtled towards the final straight. The front runner was drawing ahead now, its body lengthening, the muscles standing out on its quarters so it seemed to be pulling the others behind it on an invisible string. A few people then a mass came into view at the railings and the horse slowed as it passed the post. Christy wasn’t watching the race though; she crouched by the screen, willing the camera to move back from the winner whose jockey was punching the air in victory. She had seen Mick. It must have been him, tall and dark with his long black coat on, standing beside the finish. Her heart bumped in her chest as though she had caught him in bed with someone. Maybe it wasn’t him. It couldn’t be. The camera was slow, so slow to move back to the course. There was no sound, she didn’t know where the race was, she didn’t know if they would show it again.

  The picture changed; it was the track and the horses again. Second
and third place were decided by a photo finish. The finishing post jerked into view, the mass of green and brown and blue jackets behind the white railings appeared as they had before. She knelt in front of the television trying not to blink, searching the shunting picture for Mick, but the black coat wasn’t there. She thought she saw it moving back in the crowd, but her eyes were hot with staring and she wasn’t sure. The picture changed again, a different race in progress, a different track. She could tell because the railings were curved at the top. Pink and stiff with embarrassment and fury, she stood up and walked out of the shop without looking at the staff, afraid that they were watching her and knew she had seen her boyfriend where he hadn’t said he would be.

  Christy only told Maisie because she knew Maisie would dismiss it. They were getting ready to go out, clothes washed up around the bed where Maisie lay painting her fingernails.

  ‘What a bastard,’ said Maisie. ‘He’s probably got another girlfriend and a few children you don’t know about. You shouldn’t let him get away with it, Chris.’

  Cold like a river streamed through Christy. ‘You mean you think I did see him? You don’t think it was a mistake? Maybe it was someone else who looks like him. It’s not likely to be him, is it?’

  If she hadn’t told Maisie she could have forgotten it, pretended she’d imagined it. She would never have mentioned it to Mick because he would think she was so crazy about him she’d started seeing things. Maisie was meant to back her up and say she was daft. But Maisie knew it was Mick. She hadn’t even questioned it. She accepted it and moved on to her toenails.

  It must have been him. She must ask him. She would die if she didn’t ask him now, this minute.

  Maisie stood up, splaying her toes, and waddled across to Christy.

  ‘You can’t have him taking you for a ride like this. You’ve got to talk to him, get some explanations. Treat him mean, Christy, or you’ll be trampled.’ She patted Christy’s back and kissed the top of her head.