by Graham Joyce
I quickly pulled myself together and went back into the ballroom, ready to reclaim the microphone but Gail indicated to me that she was fine. Pretty soon we had a winner: a sixty-three-year-old school-dinner lady from Mansfield who was not only a grandmother but a great grandmother. And a big round of applause please.
After the show I cleared the gear away with Gail so that the afternoon tea-dancing could start. I apologised to Gail for making a hash of the show.
‘We’ve all dried on stage,’ she said. ‘It happens.’
‘You were brilliant. Thanks for giving me a way out.’
‘You’re sweet!’ she said.
Sweet, I thought. But was that all that had happened? I’d dried? Got stage fright? It felt like much more. It felt like something terrible was coming to get me. Some spirit of nemesis. We cleared away to leave the floor ready for the afternoon tea-dance and as I made my out I saw one of the barmen pointing in my direction. He was directing towards me a man in a scruffy beige suit. The man made his way to me across the ballroom floor, passing between campers who had commenced a slow foxtrot.
‘David Barwise?’ said the man. He had sandy hair and freckles, and a sad-looking face. His suit was crumpled and his collar was a little grubby. He had an offbeat air about him. He stared out at the world like a herring on a fishmonger’s slab.
‘Yes.’
‘Could we sit down somewhere and have a chat? I’m Detective Constable Willis.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘What’s it about?’
He put a finger to his ear to suggest the ballroom music was making it difficult for him to hear, and he gestured that we go out into the lobby. There we found a couple of hard chairs and sat down. He pulled a small notebook out of his suit pocket. A pencil was inserted into the metal spring binding the pages of the notebook. He took the pencil out of the spring and licked the lead tip. Then he leafed through the pages of the notebook, stopping when he appeared to find something interesting. His brow corrugated for a moment. Then he went back to flicking the pages until finally he arrived at a blank page. He laid the notepad on the table and wrote my name at the head of the page. ‘It’s about Terri Marchant.’
I blinked.
‘She’s gone missing.’
‘Terri the cleaner?’ I asked.
‘Yes, Terri the cleaner.’
‘Well you should ask her husband, Colin.’
‘We can’t find him.’
‘Well, he got fired from here.’
‘No he didn’t. He got suspended. But he’s gone missing, too, and normally that wouldn’t be a cause for concern but Terri’s brother says she’s taken nothing with her. Nothing from the flat she shares with Colin, no money, no clothes. All her things have been left behind. Which is odd. Do you know where she might have gone?’
I kept flashing on the night we had dumped the condemned meat, and the fact that Colin had worn gloves while I hadn’t. I wondered if I was being carefully set up. ‘Why would I know?’
‘Well, you’re a friend of theirs. So people tell me.’
‘I’m their friend? Who says that?’
‘Look, you’re a member of the same political party as Colin and Terri, right?’
‘You’re crazy. They are in the National Front. Or rather he is.’
‘Look, I’m not interested in your politics, son. But I’m told you’re in the same party.’
‘No I’m not! He’s like a fascist!’
‘I’ve told you, son. I don’t care if you’re in the Chairman Mao party. It’s of no interest to me.’
‘Chairman Mao?’ I said. ‘I think that’s the other end of the spectrum, isn’t it?’
‘You’re not listening to me: I’m not here to talk politics. I just want to ask you if you have any thoughts about where she might be.’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’
‘But you went to some meetings with her?’
‘No. Who have you been talking to? I went to one. One meeting, but with Colin, not Terri. And I didn’t even know what that was.’
‘You went to a National Front meeting without knowing what it was?’
‘Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Exactly.’
He smiled. If you could imagine a dead fish smiling that was how it looked. ‘There are some National Front members in the police force. One or two. But I’ve never been to one of their meetings by accident.’
‘Really? Well that’s what happened.’
‘So you’re saying you don’t know Terri Marchant.’
‘No, I do know her. She used to work here.’
‘Still does.’
‘Yes. I mean I know her. And I know Colin, her husband. But I’m not his friend. He’s a nasty piece of work.’
Willis chewed his thumbnail and stared hard at me for what seemed like a long time. ‘Was there anything between you and Terri?’
‘Why on earth would you suggest that?’
‘Don’t get excited.’
‘Excited? I’m not excited.’
He smiled. ‘Perhaps you have a guilty secret.’
‘Is that a joke?’
‘You tell me, David. You tell me.’
I was determined not to look away from his beady-eyed gaze. He weakened first. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘is there anyone else I might talk to?’
‘There are a couple of lads in the kitchen who were at that meeting you just referred to. Though Terri wasn’t there. I don’t think she’s a party member.’
‘She is.’ Willis consulted his notebook. ‘Pete Williams and Dan Hanson?’
‘Yes. That’s them.’
‘I’ve already spoken to them. Anyone else?’
I thought about mentioning that Tony was a party member but I guessed Willis already knew that. ‘No. What do you think has happened to her?’
Willis got up from the table. ‘They had a violent row. After that, no one seems to have seen her, though according to the brother Colin is still around. So we’re guessing.’
‘Who is the brother?’ I asked him. I didn’t even know that Terri had a brother. I wondered if that was who had told DC Willis that Terri and I had a relationship. Perhaps Terri had confided in him.
‘John Talbot. I think he’s another of your blackshirt chums.’
I ignored the jibe. I remembered John Talbot. I’d met him when Colin introduced me to Norman Prosser at the meeting. He was also the man who’d seen me coming out of the pub with Nikki the day we’d gone into town. So that was Terri’s brother. It was a tight circle.
A couple of young girls in backless tops and tiny shorts waddled by on high-heeled shoes carrying glasses of lager. Willis watched them go. Then he looked at me. ‘You have an easy life,’ he said. I didn’t know whether it was a description or an instruction.
He nodded, almost microscopically. ‘So you had nothing to do with her?’
‘Who?’
‘Terri.’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I barely knew her. If I were you I’d be asking myself who exactly suggested that I was her boyfriend when I’ve had nothing to do with her. Who would want to deflect your interest on to me, I mean. If I were a detective, that’s the question I’d be asking myself.’
‘I don’t know why you’re getting steamed up,’ DC Willis said. ‘I’m just trying to work out what’s gone on here, that’s all.’
‘But you’re saying I’m her boyfriend!’
‘I’m not saying that at all. I’m just asking a few questions. I’m just looking for help. That’s all. You’re reacting like someone with a guilty conscience.’
‘In that case,’ I said, ‘it must be possible for people who are not guilty to behave as if they are guilty. Have you thought of that?’
He looked at the page of his notebook on which he had written my name and nothing else. He closed the notebook, inserted the pencil back into the spiral binding and put it in his pocket. Then he stood up. ‘I think about it all the time,’ he said. ‘Thank you for helping me.’
I watched
him walk out of the ballroom lobby. I don’t know where he went or who he spoke to after me. I stayed in my seat for a while afterwards, trying to think. The slow foxtrot in the ballroom had given way to a rumba.
Early evening I had to supervise the theatre for a screening of The Sting, a film with Robert Redford and Paul Newman that had come out a couple of years earlier to great acclaim. But because it was repeated every week I had by now seen it a good few times and it held no surprises.
Distracted, I made my way across the car park to the theatre. I should have been paying more attention to where I was going, but as I passed in front of one of the parked vehicles someone sounded a horn loud enough to make me jump out of the way. It was just Pinky, climbing out of his car with a lot of shopping bags.
‘You’re in a world of your own,’ he said. He came over to me and pulled a carton of No. 6 cigarettes out of one of the bags and shoved it into my hands. ‘Here, have one of these. Say nothing. You okay?’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Sure.’
‘You don’t look okay.’
‘No, I’m fine. Thanks for these.’
I went off to the cinema and did my usher’s job. I sat away to the side of the auditorium, gnawing my hand. The fact is that I’d been trembling since my run-in with the police officer. My guts were in a state of riot. I was falling apart, and I still hadn’t a clue about what had happened to Terri.
I knew I needed to get some help.
After the film was over I went to the Tavern singalong bar. It was there that you could find many of the kitchen staff drinking. I found Williams and Hanson, the two skinhead kitchen porters with whom I’d travelled to the National Front meeting. Williams, the buck-toothed one who’d called me a poof, looked up from his pint and scowled.
I spoke to the other one, Hanson. I handed him the carton of No. 6 cigarettes. ‘I came by these but I don’t smoke. Split ’em with your mate.’
Williams looked baffled and showed me a bit more of his teeth, but Hanson was very glad to have the ciggies. ‘Nice one, mate. Can I get you a pint?’
‘Another time. I’ve got stuff to do.’
‘No worries, mate.’
‘I wondered if you’d seen Colin or his missus.’
Hanson turned to his pal. ‘We ain’t, have we? Ain’t seen them for a good few days. His pal shook his head. It was clear they knew nothing. ‘Been a copper here asking about them.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Well, if you see Colin tell him I’ve got some ciggies for him, will you?’ I knew perfectly well they wouldn’t see him before I would. ‘Or his missus. if you spot her or hear where she might be, give me a shout, will you?’
‘No problem, mate.’ Then, as I made to leave, Hanson raised a thumb in the air. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘You’re all right, you are. Sound.’ Then he turned to Williams. ‘He’s sound, he is.’
Williams said nothing. He lifted his pint to his lips and took a sip through his prominent teeth.
17
She completely done me in
I told Pinky that I had a doctor’s appointment and that I’d need a couple of hours off.
‘Haven’t got the clap, have you?’ Pinky said.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Joke,’ he said. Then he looked away. ‘At least I think it was a joke. We’ll cover for you. See you later.’
I put my civvies on and took a green double-decker bus into town and visited a doctor’s surgery that dealt with temporary workers from the holiday camps. I waited about half an hour in the reception area flicking between copies of Vogue and Practical Wireless magazines before finding a newspaper. A fourteen-year-old Sikh boy had been killed in a racially motivated attack in the Midlands and one of the senior figures in the National Front had made a statement saying, ‘That’s one step closer to a better country.’ I was still reading the report when a rather haughty secretary told me to go through to the surgery
A white-haired GP with half-moon specs and a white coat over a tweed jacket grunted that I should take a seat as he finished making notes in his last patient’s records. He took so long over it I was able to observe his impressive, large troll-like ears. When he’d finished he sniffed and wheeled his chair round to face me. He said nothing, just peered across the top of his half-moon specs. He also had huge flappy jowls, like a species of bloodhound. I started to tell him that I was having trouble sleeping but he cut across me.
‘Which camp are you working at?’
I started telling him and he opened my notes on the desk in front of him. He interrupted me again.
‘It says here you’re a student. What kind of student are you?’
I thought the question sounded hostile. I began to tell him what I was studying at college and he spoke across me for the third time.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘what’s your problem?’
I suddenly felt cross with the man. ‘You’re the doctor,’ I said. ‘I was hoping you’d be able to tell me.’
‘Can’t help you unless you tell me what’s wrong with you, now can I?’
‘I started telling you and you shut me up. Is this your idea of having fun?’
‘You’ve woken up,’ he said. ‘You’ve come to life.’
I had a family GP at home. I nearly told this patronising old bastard what a nice, sensitive and compassionate human being my family GP was. Instead I tried again, carefully explaining that I hadn’t been sleeping at all well, for some time, and that on some nights I was only getting maybe an hour or two.
‘I’m not going to prescribe sleeping pills, if that’s what you’re thinking, sonny.’
‘Did I say I wanted pills? I don’t want pills, I want some help.’
His brittle manner seemed to relax. ‘I get all sorts of young men coming from these camps wanting all sorts of pills,’ he said. ‘Do you use drugs?’
‘Emphatically not.’ That one occasion in the archery hut might have caused me to blink.
He blinked back at me. ‘Drink?’
‘Moderately.’
He asked what I meant by that and I told him. He seemed satisfied. He asked if I was getting enough exercise. I described my daily routines and he concluded that wasn’t a problem either.
‘Are you anxious about anything at the moment?’
‘I’m anxious all the time. For no reason.’
‘For no reason?’
‘I’m generally anxious. But I never used to be.’
‘Roll your sleeve up. I’ll check your blood pressure.’
Of course I went along with all of this. He told me that my blood pressure was perfectly fine. He looked in my ear with his otoscope and found no signs of anxiety there. He also actually got a hammer and tapped my knee to test my reflexes – something I only thought happened in comedy films. He listened to my breathing with his stethoscope.
‘There’s nothing obviously amiss,’ he said. ‘What happens when you try to go to sleep?’
‘Nothing. I lie awake for long periods. Then if I fall asleep for a few minutes I get terrible nightmares.’
‘Oh? What are the nightmares?’
I heard myself say, ‘Things to do with children. And a man in a blue suit. It doesn’t make much sense. I feel like I’m seeing ghosts. Obviously there’s no such things as ghosts and obviously I know that but they keep coming. Plus I’m having dreams which are much more vivid than ordinary dreams though I expect that has something to do with the fact that I’m not getting enough REM sleep.’
‘REM sleep?’
‘Yes REM sleep. Rapid Eye Movement sleep. If you don’t get REM sleep it sends you crazy and I’m not sleeping so I’m not getting REM sleep and it’s vital for survival to the extent that prolonged REM sleep deprivation leads to death in experimental animals. I don’t know if they’ve studied humans, I mean they probably have but I don’t know of the conclusions. Of any studies. You probably know all this; you’re a doctor.’
The doctor stroked his chin and regarded me steadily. ‘Have you done anything you feel guil
ty about?’
‘No.’
‘What about your parents?’
‘What about them?’
‘Do you feel bad about leaving them? About having left them behind?’
‘What’s it got to do with them?’
‘You’d be surprised. Look, it’s not my area. I can refer you to a mental health practitioner.’
‘Right. You’re shuffling me along.’
Now it was his turn to sound cross. ‘Look, I’ll prescribe some mild sleeping pills. But it’s not going to become a habit, so don’t think it is. I’ll give you four.’
‘Four? Four pills?’
He looked over the top of his spectacles at me then scribbled on his pad at super speed before tearing off the top copy. ‘Cut out the drink altogether. No coffee either. Take one an hour before bedtime and then go for a walk before turning in. That’s what I do when I have trouble sleeping.’
I thanked him and I got up to go. As I was leaving I heard him say, maybe to me, maybe to the closing door. ‘We’re all anxious. What is there not to be anxious about?’
I got back in time for lunch at the canteen. Before I went in to eat, one of the campers tugged at my sleeve. He wanted me to line up with his family for a photograph. The man held up his instamatic and I quickly slapped on my happy face for them.
It was one of the features of being a Greencoat. The holidaymakers always wanted you to be photographed with them. I might as well have been dressed up in a cuddly bear suit for all they knew of me. Would my smiling face define the holiday for them? Would I help to fill in a hole in their memories? Even people to whom I’d never spoken pulled me into their snapshots. I often wondered what they would think when they reviewed these photographs, maybe years later. Would they only see the bright smile? Or would they recognise a troubled young man behind it all? But the photograph was a detail in a holiday story, where I was a theatre prop, a bit of scaffolding on the stage. I crossed from my story briefly into theirs and back again.
