Secret Story

by Ramsey Campbell

  “She told me. She used to say you named the magazine after her.”

  “Did she?” Patricia tried to sound amused but not too much. “I’ll put that in. We’re publishing a tribute to her.”

  “What else are you going to be putting?”

  “I’m just starting my research. I only heard about the tragedy a few minutes ago. Please don’t talk if you’d rather not, but is there anything you think I should include?”

  “I can talk. I’m not surprised she went the way she did. It’d have been the drink one way or another if she didn’t get herself done in by some man to shut her up. I reckon you won’t be writing that, though.”

  “Perhaps not,” Patricia admitted.

  “Don’t you lot like the truth? Shouldn’t have had her working for you, then. You won’t want to hear why she was like she was neither.”

  “I’m certain I would, Mrs Garrett, if you don’t mind telling me.”

  “Being made to have a man when she didn’t think she could say no.”

  “I wish I’d known that. We could have talked.”

  “You’ve had some as well, have you?”

  “Not as bad, but I’d certainly have been sympathetic.”

  “Not as bad is right, I reckon. She was twelve and he was her dad.”

  “Gosh, I’m sorry,” Patricia said and realised she already had been twice. “That’s dreadful. What became of him? Did Shell—”

  “She only told me after he was dead. Got in a fight when he was drunk and six of them stamped on his head.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s . . .” Patricia had no idea what she was entitled to say, and felt she had presumed too much. “Do many people know about him and Shell?”

  “She used to say stuff about it in her act sometimes when she was feeling down. She never said it was her.”

  “Are there any recordings of her act, do you know?”

  “I’ve got none. Not heard of any either.” Mrs Garrett stayed discontented as she said “You’d rather have them than what I told you. Thought as much.”

  “Ideally I’d like to use both and anything else you think I should know.”

  “That was her secret, the only one she had. If it’s not enough for you, no use asking me.”

  “I assure you I wasn’t implying—”

  “Never mind the fancy language. You’re just doing your job and I’m being a sour old bitch. Let me listen to the news now. See if any of her friends have something good to say about my Shell.”

  “I’m sure I will have,” Patricia felt bound to undertake, but before she finished, nobody else was listening. She left the computer screen saving itself to the sound of waves and ran down to the kitchen, where Valerie was chopping garlic not quite in time with a Mozart march. “Shall we find out if Merseyside is saying anything about her?” Patricia suggested.

  At first it seemed there might be no room for Shell among the robberies and police raids, but then the newsreader announced that “tributes have been pouring in to Shell Garridge, the controversial stand-up comic who died earlier today.” “She was one of a kind. She did comedy like nobody else,” said Sharika Kapoor, and Tulip Bandela described her as the most fearless comedian she’d ever worked with—“she wasn’t afraid not to be funny.” As for Ken Dodd, he said “She’d have gone far. She’d have got Liverpool even more of a reputation.”

  “I was just speaking to her mother,” Patricia said. “She was raped by her father when she was twelve.”

  Valerie turned the radio down as the newsreader forecast even hotter weather. “If we’ve got anyone who can give that some insight it’s you.”

  “I know you believe in me, but honestly you don’t need—”

  “Believe in yourself, Trish. That’s a lot more important.” Valerie watched her as far as the door and said “Perhaps writing about her will let you feel things you haven’t wanted to admit you’re feeling.”

  Rather than wonder aloud how that would help her meet the deadline, Patricia retreated upstairs. The computer screen had turned as blank as her mind; only the watery sound reassured her the system hadn’t crashed. She revived the image and backtracked to her search for Shell to call up the next reference, the Scouselebrities site.

  It was considerably more informative than Shell’s. Michelle Garrett had been born in 1978 in Toxteth. She’d first made a name for herself at Paddington Comprehensive, where she had edited and mostly written a single issue of an alternative school magazine called Tamp, and was proud how many parents and male pupils had complained to the headmaster. In 1997 she and her fellow polytechnic students Tulip Bandela and Sharika Kapoor had formed Cuntry Folk, a feminist song and comedy trio. In 1999, when her colleagues insisted on renaming the group Sisterhood of Wit, she had changed her name to Shell Garridge and left for a solo career. She’d played Debbie the Docker in the pilot episode of an unshown television series, Don’t Call Us Ladies, and Buttonless in a Christmas musical, Panto without Pants.

  Dudley Smith could have talked to Shell about causing controversy at school, Patricia thought. Perhaps finding common ground would have helped them overcome their differences. She felt as if Dudley was loitering in her head. She moved him on by scrolling up to Tulip Bandela’s entry, and was starting to email her when her mobile rang.

  “Is that the reporter? I forget your name.”

  “Patricia Martingale. It is.”

  “Mary Garrett,” Shell’s mother said. “I got your number off the phone. I was short with you before.”

  “Please don’t worry about it, Mrs Garrett. Anyone would understand why you were. If that’s all you’re ringing about—”

  “It’s not. You got me thinking and I rang the pub where Shell was last night. Just spoke to them.”

  Patricia felt eager without knowing why. “Yes?”

  “I’ve got you something.” Perhaps she wasn’t hesitating for effect, but that was how it seemed to Patricia. “I’ll tell you what I reckon you should do with it,” Mrs Garrett said.

  ELEVEN

  “Why are you looking like that, Dudley? Have you been killing off somebody else?”

  At first all he could see was the light that was shining into his eyes. He knew Vera by her voice but couldn’t tell how many of the crowd had halted to watch him. Then the edge of the roof of a block of shops took the sun out of his eyes, and he saw her outside the locked door of the job centre a coffin’s length away. Nobody but she appeared to be concerned with him. “What do you mean?” he demanded just loud enough for it to reach her.

  Her thin wrinkled face put on a smile that flirted with apology. “Trust a woman to see you’ve been up to something at the weekend. You haven’t found yourself a girlfriend, have you?”

  Amusement tugged at his lips, and he saw no reason not to let it. “You’re right, I was out with a girl.”

  “Were you really? You’re not just making up one of your stories.”

  He didn’t understand her disappointment, which seemed insultingly close to disbelief, until he noticed that Colette was joining them. “That’s not the kind I write,” he said.

  “We hope it will be, don’t we, Colette? We’d like to see our Dudley write a nice romantic sloppy smoochy love story.”

  “Don’t listen to them.” Trevor had arrived too and was rubbing his hairline as if to polish it brighter or drive it even further back on his skull. “You write whatever you need to write if it gets you a better job,” he said.

  Colette shook her face clear of her long black hair. “I didn’t say he shouldn’t.”

  “And this old busybody didn’t either.” Having vainly waited for someone to contradict her description of herself, Vera said “We don’t want to change you, Dudley. All I was saying to begin with was you looked pleased with yourself.”

  He had reason enough, not least that none of them could suspect why. He was happily aware of the poster on a newspaper seller’s stand: LOCAL COMEDIAN DEAD IN RIVER. Several of his fellow commuters had been reading the paper on t
he train, so that he was able to observe that she was said to have been drinking before her accident. No doubt her condition had not only made her take the wrong route in the storm but also rendered her incapable of escaping from the vehicle before the waves had caused the door to knock her unconscious. Dudley was grinning at all this, since Vera had given him an excuse, when she said “I hope you’ll be bringing in your story for us all to read.”

  “Everyone can see it when it’s published.”

  “Aren’t even your friends going to get a free look?”

  “Don’t be doing him out of his royalties,” said Trevor.

  Dudley managed not to admit that he wasn’t expecting any. Until that moment it hadn’t occurred to him that his mother had rushed him past this detail of the contract too. He was struggling to conceal his rage when Colette said “I’ll buy it if you tell me what to buy.”

  “There you are, Dudley,” Vera said. “Now say she isn’t your friend.”

  “I never have,” he retorted as he turned entirely to Colette. “It’s out this week. The Mersey Mouth.”

  “Isn’t that—”

  Had she recognised someone behind him? He swung fiercely around to discover that the interruption was Mrs Wimbourne. “Haven’t you dealt with that yet?” she said with the start of a frown.

  His movement had roused the ache in his crotch. “What?” he mumbled through his teeth.

  “Please do not grimace at me.” Not until his lips were entirely shut did she add “You were meant to be contacting your publishers.”

  Did she intend to embarrass him in front of his colleagues? He was trying desperately to think how to silence her when he realised they would witness how unreasonable she was being. “What was I supposed to say again?”

  “I’m quite certain you know.” Presumably her pause was designed to force him to confess. “You had to tell them they may need to get along without you,” she eventually said.

  “That’s a bit mean, isn’t it?” Trevor protested.

  “I wasn’t opening a debate, Trevor. Nobody’s one hundred per cent safe in their jobs these days, not even me. If I were you I wouldn’t do anything that could make it less secure.”

  It wasn’t clear to Dudley how much of this was aimed at him. As she produced keys from her grey metallic bag and unlocked the door Trevor mouthed “A bit mean” behind her back. He attempted to bow her in after Vera and Colette, but she flapped her fingers to urge him through the doorway. He was heading past the rows of bucket chairs when she said “We haven’t heard your answer yet, Dudley.”

  “I thought you had to get in touch with someone.”

  “I shall be today. He was on holiday last week.” She shut the door with a vigour that jangled the window, then snapped the bag shut, apparently as aids to sharpening her voice. “Are you telling me you’ve made no attempt to inform these people how things stand?”

  “There’s no point. I’ve sold them my story. I can’t stop them bringing it out.”

  “Dear me, are you really so helpless?” Before he could warn her that he was anything but, she said “I’m surprised you want to give that impression to Colette.”

  “I don’t want to give her anything.”

  Vera sent him a quick reproachful pout over the booths as Colette retreated fast into the staffroom. “Just keep your mind on what you’re being told,” Mrs Wimbourne said. “I’m sure whoever you have to deal with will listen to reason if you say it’s jeopardising your job.”

  “You don’t know if it will be yet. I don’t believe it can.”

  “Shall I tell you what certainly can? An attitude like that.”

  He felt as if she was determined to rob him of all his achievements—and then he saw how he might transfer some of the powerlessness she was trying to impose on him. “Will you take the responsibility, then?” he said.

  “I rather think that ought to be yours. For what, may I ask?”

  “All the money they’ll want. They’ve printed my story. It’ll cost them a lot to take it out now.”

  “You aren’t saying they’d propose to claim it back from you.”

  “It’s in the contract if I stop them publishing my story.” Since the lie seemed to be reaching her, he added to it. “I’d have to pay them back a lot more than they’re paying me.”

  “It sounds as if you ought to have taken some advice before you signed anything. How much have you received?”

  “It isn’t till I’m published,” Dudley said, reverting to the truth. “Five hundred.”

  “That’s the competition prize, I take it.” She wasn’t nearly as impressed as he would have expected anyone who heard to be. “And how much so far for the film you say they’re proposing to make?”

  “Nothing till it’s made. One per cent of all the profits.”

  “I should think I know as little about such matters as you do, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re taking advantage of your inexperience.”

  Dudley felt as if the heat was massing inside his skin. He had to hold his rage in like an aching breath until he knew how her presumption would make her act towards him. He released it silently as she said with visible displeasure “Let me explain the bind you’ve got yourself into and hope the powers that be will see it your way. Now you’d better be getting ready for work.”

  She waited for him to raise the flap in the counter for her. As she waddled into the Ladies’ Vera emerged, followed by Colette. “You weren’t being very nice before, were you?” Vera murmured at him. “Watch out you don’t get scratched again.”

  “What do you mean, again?” he objected, though he knew.

  “We can see he’s been in a bit of a fight since the last time we saw him, can’t we, Colette?” Vera said, only to have to indicate the scratches on the back of Dudley’s hand. “Was it something you said, Dudley, or did you try and push yourself too far?”

  “She was being a bitch, that’s all.”

  “We don’t like that, do we? Us girls have to stick together.” As Colette tried on expressions to convey agreement Vera said “Are you teasing us, Dudley? I thought you must have been in an argument with a cat or a bush on the hill where you live.”

  He felt as if he’d strayed into a trap he couldn’t even identify. “You don’t think I could have been out with a girl, then.”

  “Not one that’d do that to you. I wouldn’t have thought you’re the kind to do anything to make her, either. Still, it’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for, isn’t it, Colette?”

  Colette appeared to take this and much else as an invitation to be one. With more frustration than she could conceal Vera said “What were you wanting to ask Dudley outside when our leader interrupted?”

  “You know your magazine, that’s if you’re still going to be in it—”

  “I am. Nobody can stop me.”

  “Wasn’t that the magazine Shell Garridge was meant to be writing for?”

  “Still is as far as I know, or has she annoyed someone so much they’ve got rid of her?” With a show of panic he had to be careful not to smile through Dudley gasped “You don’t mean something’s happened to the magazine.”

  “Not the magazine. She’s dead. She drowned in the river.”

  He’d wanted to enjoy keeping his secret from the office staff, but he’d neglected to prepare a reaction to the news. The best he could improvise was “How’d she do that?”

  “They don’t know yet. She’s supposed to have driven off the promenade. I don’t see how she could have even in all that rain, someone like her.” This sounded too close to an accusation for his taste, and so did “You don’t seem very upset. Didn’t you ever meet her?”

  “No.” At once he regretted his caution, which made him appear far too insignificant. “Of course I did,” he said. “She wanted to meet me after she read my story.”

  “Was she as great in person as she was on the stage?”

  This threw him sufficiently that he retorted “I didn’t think she was much either way.
”

  “Some men wouldn’t like what she was telling them,” Vera reassured Colette. “You ought to have tried to understand her viewpoint, Dudley. It might make you more of a writer.”

  “She gave me some ideas all right.”

  “I hope you’ll thank her when you write them. Thank her in print, I mean.” As he struggled to contain his response Colette added “So where did you see her?”

  “I told you.”

  “You didn’t, you know, and Colette means where did you see her perform.”

  He could think of only one answer that seemed safe. “On television.”

  “What was she doing on there?” Colette said. “She used to say she was against it because it didn’t really let women have a voice, only what men wanted to hear.”

  “I don’t know,” Dudley said and grinned at more of the truth. “I switched her off.”

  “I don’t think there’s much to laugh at when she’s just died,” Vera said.

  “There wasn’t while she was alive,” said Trevor.

  “That’s only your opinion,” Colette told him.

  “Then let’s hear yours, sweetheart. What was so great about her? That she made chaps like Dudley uncomfortable? Look at him. I’d say she still was.”

  As Dudley wondered desperately how to fend off Trevor’s assistance that had turned into anything but, Colette said “Are you remembering when you met her?”

  “What did she do to you, Dudley?” Vera was eager everyone should hear.

  “Nothing. She couldn’t.”

  He didn’t know what else he might have said to end the nagging that was picking at his brain if Mrs Wimbourne hadn’t marched out of the Ladies’ in the wake of her perfume. “Are we all ready for today’s adventures?”

  At least she was drawing attention away from him—unwelcome attention, not the sort he deserved. He had almost reached his booth when his mobile set about performing the theme from Halloween. “Cut whoever that is short if it isn’t an emergency,” Mrs Wimbourne warned him. “We’re open in less than five minutes.”

  “Dudley Smith,” he said as if he was speaking from his private office.

  “How are you this sunny morning?” Walt must feel that the question had answered itself, because he immediately added “Did your weekend bring any ideas?”