The Hook

by Raffaella Barker

Jessica left the surgery and walked out into Lynton. A bus roared by flecking damp dust over her feet as she waited on the pavement. She looked at its wheels, black and dripping from a puddle. It would be so easy.

  She told no one about her visit to the doctor or her subsequent trip to the hospital for blood tests. She was biding her time. The results came through, but she hadn’t needed them. The consultant’s solicitousness was touching but unnecessary. She told Frank and the children on Hallowe’en. Someone else told Charlie.

  The family were sitting at the table after supper when Jessica said, ‘I am dying of cancer.’ No preamble, just five words.

  Christy couldn’t see anyone’s face or clothes, just the shapes of them silhouetted in a room fragmenting like a shattered windscreen. She remembered the car crash long ago. The sensations were the same, everything imploding, sinking inward to a black dot. In the car crash the radio had carried on playing, and the words of that song came back to her now:

  If you’ve got leaving on your mind,

  Hurt me now, get it over,

  Tell me now, get it over,

  If there’s a new love in your heart.

  They had all been expecting her to say she was going. Leaving with Charlie to lead a life full of satinwood furniture and sin. Christy hadn’t been to church since childhood, but she believed her mother was committing a sin and she hated her for it. Now it was different. She wasn’t going with Charlie after all.

  Aunt Vaughan, clad in a pink satin négligé, mules and diaphanous nightdress, swooped on Christy, chattering, black eyes darting over Mick as she kissed her god-daughter.

  ‘You’re so late, I couldn’t think what had happened to you. I’ve saved some mussels, so delicious, and I know you never have them at home. Come in, come in and have a drink.’

  She shook hands with Mick, her sagging face tightening into flirtation as instinctively as the schooling of features before a looking-glass; chin down, kohlrimmed eyes widened, a half smile lifting the red droop of her lips.

  ‘Well, Christy, he’s very handsome,’ she murmured, as Mick disappeared to the spare bedroom to deposit the bags. ‘He reminds me of someone, I can’t think who, but it will come to me. Jessica would have loved him.’

  She and Christy moved through to the sitting room where Spanish music tinkled from behind a screen. They sat down facing one another by the gas-coal fire. Vaughan’s pink mules sank into the depths of the carpet, and her dressing gown hissed as it met the drum-tight stuffing of the armchair. Christy lit a cigarette and tucked her feet up under her, twisting to look around the room, already feeling faintly sick as she absorbed the viridian energy of the walls. Layer upon layer of colour built up from pale silver in the hall through the kitchen bright as newly podded peas and on into the splendour of the sitting room where everything not green was gold except for Vaughan herself.

  She lay back in her chair like a prawn on a bed of lettuce and gave a little cry.

  ‘I knew I’d remember. Christy, have you noticed what you’ve done? Mick looks just like Charlie. Remember Charlie? Your father was so upset, of course, and Jessica paid no attention. I must say, charming as Charlie was, I did see Frank’s point, and of course it never really was resolved, was it?’ On she went, crossing and uncrossing her white ankles, waving her hands to amplify a story Christy never liked hearing, unravelling the lace of protection Mick and her happiness with him had woven since last seeing Vaughan.

  Mick came into the room and Vaughan’s voice flew with amusement.

  ‘Yes, yes, you even frown like Charlie. Dear me, how history repeats itself. Of course he didn’t have a scar but otherwise the likeness is startling.’

  Christy didn’t move; she closed her eyes, saw green and opened them again. Mick stroked her hair, silenced himself by Vaughan’s sing-song monologue. Christy couldn’t look at him. All her excitement at coming to London had vanished. Vaughan had spoilt it through tactless, pointless gabble; Mick had spoilt it through being stopped by the police. They were taking away her pleasure, her unique love affair, tarnishing every aspect so none of it was hers and none of it was safe.

  Vaughan tripped off to the kitchen to bring in the mussels and Mick knelt in front of Christy, leaning close to whisper, ‘Shall we go? I’ve got a few mates we could stay with, you know.’

  All the nausea and anger rolling through Christy slowed and collapsed into exhaustion and she shook her head.

  ‘No, it’s fine here; she’ll calm down. Please don’t pay any attention to her, she’s drunk. She’s imagining things.’

  ‘So what are you doing in London, Mick? Are you here to make money or spend it?’ Vaughan staggered back in under a heaped tray, bearing most of the weight on the jut of her bosom.

  Mick took the tray and it shrank as it passed from Vaughan’s diminutive clutch into his hands.

  ‘I’m here to spend money on Christy. We’ll be going to the shops tomorrow and finding whatever she wants.’

  Vaughan clutched his arm as he put the tray down on a small table.

  ‘Goodness, I meant to ask you, did you see anything of the robbery this morning?’

  ‘What robbery? Where?’ asked Christy.

  ‘In Lynton, of course. Can you believe it? It was on the news.’ Vaughan shuddered and announced, ‘They had guns.’ She continued, ‘There was a raid on the main bank this morning. They said there have been a few violent robberies in the area. You’ve probably read about them.’ She gulped more gin, swilling it in her mouth and swallowing loudly.

  Mick brought a bowl of mussels over to Christy, bruise-blue shells half open like castanets clacking in time to Aunt Vaughan’s music. Vaughan shuffled behind the screen and turned the volume up, then singing along, she danced a few steps in front of Christy’s chair. Mick leant against the mantelpiece, his arm stretched along Vaughan’s candlesticks and photographs, one foot propped on the fender, looming among her fragile colours and small treasures. His face was expressionless: only his eyes moved, following Vaughan as she tripped and skipped across the carpet.

  ‘I do hate violence, don’t you?’ Vaughan shimmied up to the fireplace, her head hanging back, eyes rolling up to Mick as she danced on. ‘I’ve nothing against people robbing banks – after all, the insurance company pays – but to use guns is another matter.’

  Christy started laughing, Mick covered his face with his hands but his shoulders shook with mirth. Vaughan billowed on, her dressing gown raked back and resting across her elbows, her hands on her hips to accentuate the snakish steps she used to cross and recross the room.

  ‘She’s drunk that whole bottle of gin this evening,’ Christy whispered to Mick. ‘She has one every day. It’s amazing she isn’t dead.’ Vaughan spluttered into song again, Christy tugged at Mick’s arm, pulling him down next to her. ‘She’s pretty loopy after about six in the evening; all that stuff about you looking like Charlie is just mad.’

  Charlie had come to Jessica’s funeral. Christy saw him outside the circle of mourners, standing alone with his hands in the pockets of his long grey coat, all his muscles hunched, curving him forwards from his spine like a totem pole topped by his still shaggy hair. The hair was grey too, but maybe it always had been. She hadn’t seen him since Jessica announced her illness six months before, but it did not surprise her that he had come; Jessica would have wanted him there. She wanted anyone who had loved her to be there. It didn’t matter to her that Charlie’s presence might upset others: it was her funeral, her last chance for ever, and other people’s feelings were second to her own. She didn’t quite invite people, but in the weeks leading up to her death she told her visitors that they must be there ‘to make it a perfect day, a fond farewell, not a cold-hearted one’. This made the visitors cry, but Jessica was halfway to another world now, and so deeply barbed by her own pain that she could no longer be touched by anyone else’s.

  Christy didn’t speak to Charlie at the funeral. She would have done, but when she searched the sober-faced crowd he was gone and Jessic
a’s friends had formed a well-mannered queue as if at a wedding, offering damp kisses and condolences to the family.

  Vaughan was talking to Mick now, telling him about Jessica’s bravery, her dignity, her marvellous funeral. Christy closed her eyes and thought about Charlie. She wasn’t angry with him now, or with her mother for loving him. Jessica had paid with her life, Charlie with his loss. Now she had Mick, and she knew about love too.

  The thud and judder of traffic woke Christy early and she lay still as grey light slid in between the net curtains of Aunt Vaughan’s spare room. In the adjacent twin bed Mick slept on, the black stubble on his chin framed by frilled pillows, making him look like the wolf in ‘Little Red Riding Hood’. Christy got up and dressed, tiptoeing around the small room so as not to wake him, and crept into the hall. Vaughan’s bedroom door was open and from the warm darkness wafted the smell of stale scent and alcohol. Christy paused outside but heard nothing.

  A slime of squalor lay across the kitchen. Onion peelings curved like toy boats bobbed on the cooker beside a tower of saucepans and bowls. Water cobbled with mussel shells half filled the sink and Christy prodded at the plughole through a swirl of tea leaves as she filled the kettle. She opened the window and noise and air flooded in, drowning the depressing glug of drains unblocking and diluting the brackish smell of old fish. Christy’s tea tasted of brine. She spat it back into the cup and began clearing up. Vaughan, with the sixth sense of the slovenly, came into the kitchen as the last plate and spoon were dried and stacked on the table.

  ‘Good morning, my love. What an angel you are to have cleared up; thank you.’ She opened a carton of grapefruit juice and grimacing horribly drank from it at length. ‘This stuff is so ghastly, but one must have vitamin C.’

  Christy leant against the sink, her face in shadows, her hair streaming light from the window behind her. The Vaughan before her now had so little to do with the Vaughan whose commands and ice-hard discipline had frightened her as a child. Drink had softened her, gnawing away at her hard heart as rot eats an apple until she was left soft and puffy when touched, sweetly rancid and sad in a way that was more frightening than her sternest demeanour had ever been.

  She squinted at Christy, wiping grapefruit juice away from her lips with the back of her hand.

  ‘You look more and more like your mother: dear me, how sad. I must say, I walked in on Mick in the bathroom. Most attractive in a brutish way, isn’t he?’

  Christy sighed.

  ‘You said that last night, Aunt Vaughan, remember? When you said he reminded you of Charlie.’

  ‘Did I? Heavens, it’s so easy to forget things these days. But what does he do? He looks like a gangster with that huge coat. Of course, he wasn’t wearing it in the bathroom, but he still looked as though he was. You know what I mean, don’t you?’

  Christy was spared the trouble of answering by Mick’s appearance in the kitchen. He had his coat on.

  ‘Good morning, Vaughan,’ he said, looking at Christy. ‘I think we should be going out now, sweetheart. Are you ready?’

  Vaughan ushered them into the hall, jangling sets of keys and babbling.

  ‘Where are you going? Shall I meet you for lunch? What time will you be back? Here, these are the keys; you use this one for the front door and this little bent one to get into the building.’

  They closed the front door behind themselves and Mick whistled.

  ‘Phew, I never thought I’d be getting you out of there, not till she was unconscious again anyway.’

  Christy laughed, carefree now Vaughan was safely out of sight, holding hands with Mick as they walked down the street to the car. She wanted to take the tube or the bus.

  ‘Come on, we’re in London, we’ll be stuck in traffic jams with the car,’ but Mick shook his head.

  ‘We’ll need it for your shopping, you know, and I don’t like to leave it here, it might be towed away or nicked or something.’

  From Vaughan’s flat in Islington it was less than a page on the A to Z to reach Camden Market where Maisie had assured Christy she would find everything she could ever want. Christy steered Mick faultlessly through the one-way system and to a car-park in the derelict husk of an old building.

  He was impressed.

  ‘Not many people are any good at map reading. I could get you a job with that skill.’

  She moved closer to him, protected from the streaming jostle by his arm across her shoulders. Christy hadn’t been to London without Maisie before; she hadn’t ever felt like coming on her own, it was too great a step to take. Wandering through the market with Mick, lingering at a stall to run her fingers through a rack of stiff clothes or a table strewn with hats made of pink velvet, she felt serene and happy. This was what people with boyfriends did. There they were, all around her, couples holding hands, walking in step with one another, laughing over an extravagant pair of ballooning trousers or screening one another from the gusting wind while two cigarettes were lit.

  She could smell the boot stall before she saw it. New leather gleamed dark in a corner of the market where racks of boots formed a three-sided room covered by swagged awning and carpeted erratically with stepping stones made of flattened cardboard boxes. No one was there, not even the stall holder. Just boots shackled to the stands. Christy sat down on one of the low stools and took off her shoes.

  A short round man scuttled into the stall, stuffing the last billow of a doughnut into his mouth.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ He winked at Christy and his eye vanished into a fold of flesh itself almost obscured by the greasy mop of ringlets growing from one point on top of his head.

  Christy told him her size and he unlocked half a rack of boots, his hands a whirl among the chains.

  ‘Try what you like, miss.’ He turned as Mick came in and gave a small cry.

  ‘I remember you, fella. You was trying on boots for hours in here, wasn’t ya? You bought a good pair too, if I remember.’ He peered down at Mick’s feet. ‘Not wearing them now, though, are ya?’

  Mick stepped back, slipping on a wet wedge of cardboard.

  ‘Woops, mind yer don’t fall there, fella.’ The little stall holder put out a hand to steady Mick.

  ‘I haven’t been here before.’ Mick’s voice was almost a whisper. Christy glanced up from trying on, startled by the odd way he was talking. ‘You must have got me confused with someone else.’

  Grizzled curls spun as the man shook his head.

  ‘Na, na, mate. It was you. I remember that mean old scar of yours.’ His money pouch bounced with his belly as he laughed. ‘It wasn’t so long ago. You must be a busy fella to have forgotten.’

  ‘What do you think of these, Mick?’ Christy waved a foot sheathed in black biker’s leather and jingling with zips.

  He scowled.

  ‘You don’t want that sort, do you, sweetheart? I was thinking we’d be buying something a bit pretty.’

  The stall holder watched both of them, jocularity forgotten as he saw a sale ebb away. He picked Christy’s foot up, hands cupped beneath her heel as if he were raising a trophy to be photographed.

  ‘They look dead smart,’ he pronounced.

  ‘I thought I was allowed to choose.’ Christy bristled with embarrassment, pulling her foot away from the man’s hands.

  Mick sighed.

  ‘How much are they?’

  ‘Well.’ The man had his head on one side, observing the boots with doting fondness. He pursed his lips then nodded. ‘Yes, I’ll do it. To you, two hundred and fifty quid, cash, of course.’

  Christy bit her lip and started unzipping the boots. She hadn’t realised how expensive they would be and she trembled with irritation at her own stupidity.

  ‘Put them back on, I’m not carrying them.’ Mick handed the beaming stall holder a stack of notes still bound by the white bank wrapper. ‘Something tells me you aren’t going to be beaten down.’

  Both Christy and the fat man thought he was addressing them and they answered in u
nison. ‘Oh Mick, you mustn’t. I never thought they’d cost –’

  ‘You know that from last time, don’t ya, fella? You’ll be able to wear ‘em together now. I like a unisexual boot.’

  Mick pulled Christy away and out of the stall and marched her off through the market, his face clouded and angry. This was not how Christy had imagined their day’s shopping. Trotting to keep up, her old shoes banging against her side, the new boots squeaking and jingling, she pulled at his sleeve.

  ‘What’s wrong, Mick?’

  ‘That bloke wound me up. I’m sorry.’ Mick forced a smile and hugged her.

  Christy squeezed his hand and whispered, ‘Thank you for the boots.’

  Vaughan was crestfallen when they came back to change.

  ‘I thought we’d have a lovely evening together. Do you really want to go to a party in some dreadful dive?’ She had Christy at bay in the kitchen, her face too close, her eyes unblinking pits of loneliness.

  ‘Mick’s already said we’ll go. I’m sorry, Aunt Vaughan. This is the first time we’ve been away together and Mick planned it all. But you’ll have Hotspur.’ The dog wagged his tail.

  He was enjoying London. Vaughan let him sleep on her bed. She turned to stroke him and Christy sidled past and into the spare bedroom where Mick was stretched out on one of the beds with his coat on. He hadn’t even taken off his shoes and he was pretending to be asleep. Christy had floated on a stream of pleasure all day. Mick shed his odd behaviour as soon as he had paid for her boots. A dress followed lunch in a café and Mick telling her she was beautiful.

  In the afternoon they had separated for a while. Mick said he had to see someone in a bar. She took the underground into the West End and found the perfect birthday present for him. It lay in a dark-green box carefully hidden among her new clothes. Christy didn’t know what had made her go into the shop; the entrance was guarded by a liveried doorman and inside glass cabinets displayed tiny items sunk into heavy velvet. The pen was in a side cabinet presided over by a pale youth, without eyebrows or lashes. He took it out for her, rolling it over and over in his hand as he explained its virtues. She wasn’t listening, she gazed at the silver streak on his palm and knew she would buy it, no matter how much it cost. Mick would keep it in his top pocket and wherever he went it would be with him, a memento of her, a solid silver wand to charm the thoughts out of his head.