by Ted Lewis
I lit a cigarette.
“It’s over,” she said. “Finished.”
THE SEA
THE DUNES IS FULLER than I’ve ever seen it. Which isn’t surprising, as I’ve only ever seen it empty.
The show hasn’t started yet but most of the seats are informally filled, people having turned some of them round, facing away from the stage, so that they can support their beer on them.
Everything’s set up on the stage, ready to go; Howard’s engaged some half-wit to get in his way behind the bar.
Eventually Eddie makes his entrance, looking even less like a great entertainer in his stage gear. He joins me at the bar so that he can mingle with his public, allow them a brush with the famous.
“What does he look like?” Howard says to me, while Eddie’s momentarily distracted by an OAP. “Montague Burton’s answer to Des O’Connor.”
Eddie disengages himself from the OAP and returns to my side.
“Well,” he says, “quarter of an hour to curtain up.”
“If we had a curtain,” Howard says.
“How do I look then?” Eddie says. “What do you think of the gear?”
“You look a treat, Eddie,” Howard says.
“I got it for the Season, really,” he says, “only I thought I’d give it an airing.”
“Your top of the bill,” I says to him. “You fixed her up for the season yet?”
“I wish I had. She hasn’t made her mind up. If she doesn’t soon, she won’t get booked anywhere else.”
“You’re joking,” Howard says. “With that voice?”
“Well, maybe,” Eddie says. “I just hope I can persuade her to stay, that’s all.”
“And talking of staying,” Howard says. “Mr. Carson was asking me where she lived.”
Eddie looks at me.
“Just out of interest.”
“Just out of interest,” Howard says.
“Er—well,” Eddie says. “I’m not sure. I think she’s got a van on the park. She’s done a couple of gigs with us and that’s where she’s asked us to drop her off. But I’ll ask her definite if you like, when she turns up.”
“No, don’t bother, Eddie. I was just making conversation.”
“It’s no bother, honest.”
He looks at his watch.
“Eddie—” I say, but he cuts me off.
“Better go backstage and check they’re not all arse about front.”
Eddie ostentatiously makes his way through the audience towards the stage.
“A Star is Born,” Howard says, watching him go. “Every minute.”
Howard picks up my glass.
“Let’s have another,” he says. “We’ll be needing it.”
The show is unbelievable, which is of course entirely to be expected. The acts range from the deathly to the embarrassing. Once, Howard puts his hands to his face and asks me when it is safe to look again.
It isn’t until towards the end that she comes on.
Before she does, Eddie gives her an introduction which leaves the audience in no doubt of what he thinks about her.
“That’s sunk her for a start,” Howard says.
“… and so without any more ado from me, Miss … Lesley … Murray.”
And then, after the introduction, she appears, and she looks completely different to any of the previous times I’ve seen her; she isn’t wearing the Afghan or the dark glasses or the T-shirt or the jeans.
And she isn’t wearing her hair the same way either; it isn’t even the same hair. It’s tucked up beneath a blonde wig that curls gently inwards at the nape of her neck.
It is this, more than anything else, that makes me realise who I’m looking at.
The clothes help to define her, of course; the style of the dress, the leather boots; they help to draw together the strands of her persona. The clothes make her movements different. And the makeup, altering her mouth, and around her previously unseen eyes.
But it’s the wig, the way it falls at her neck, the way its forward waves redefine the shape of her face. I’m farther away from her than when I’d seen her the first time, but I’m certain.
I am looking at the girl from the Monastic Habit, the girl who’d been talking to the man with the crossword puzzle.
THE SMOKE
COLLINS SAID, “THE LOCAL lads are very interested in Ray Warren’s disappearance.”
“Are they?” I said.
“And his missus. Well, you know what I mean.”
“And?”
“Going at it like a bull at a gate, they are.”
“Bulls,” I said.
“You what?”
“They,” I said, “it’s bulls, at gates. Forget it.”
Collins attempted to forget it.
“They’re leaving no stone unturned, so to speak,” he said.
“Which means they know he worked for me and all the rest of it, yes, all right, get on with it, Dennis, for fuck’s sake.”
“Well,” Collins said. “I haven’t got a great deal of influence at that branch.”
I was beginning to get sick and tired of Dennis, the money I was paying him.
“What do you mean, Dennis?” I asked him.
“Like I say,” he said. “Parsons is the top man down there. You know what he’s like.”
“That’s right,” I said. “I know what he’s like. Is that what I pay you for? To tell me I know what Parsons is like?”
Collins didn’t say anything.
“What I pay you for, Dennis,” I said, “What I pay you for is not to come here and tell me how little influence you have in the world today. I pay you to come and tell me what you’ve sorted, after you’ve sorted it.”
There was a short silence. Then Collins said, “It might help if I knew what was going off.”
“They’ve fucked off,” I said. “That’s what. They’ve fucked off.”
Collins looked at me.
“I’m telling you,” I said. “They’ve fucked off. That’s all there is to it.”
Collins began picking at his thumbnail, concentrating on it as though it was the most important thing in the world.
“If I may say so …” he said, but I cut him off.
“I know, Dennis. People have gone missing before. This is not like that; on those different occasions you’ve always been put in the picture.”
“Not entirely always,” Collins said.
I didn’t say anything for a moment or two. Then I said, “Look, Dennis, just get your fire extinguisher out and get over there and turn it on them. Christ, they’re nobodies. Traffic artists.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Collins said.
“Too bloody right. And don’t come back until you’ve done it.”
“I ought to say Farlow’s been fanning the flames with Parsons.”
“Of course he has. That’s what he’d do, wouldn’t he? I don’t pay you to tell me that either.”
Collins stood up.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, “but if you decide to use the post, put a first-class stamp on it, will you?”
THE SEA
I SIT IN THE car, on the other side of the promenade, opposite the caravan park. There is no sign of life whatsoever.
After the show finished and she’d won, she’d gone backstage, got out of her gear and disappeared. Eddie’d told me that. He’d also told me he’d asked her where she lived, on my account.
So I’d made my excuses and left, as the Law says about the obscene exhibitions they’re forced to attend all in the line of duty.
I’d got in my Marina and driven straight down the promenade to the caravan park and I’ve been waiting here ever since, but either I didn’t beat her to it or she’s gone elsewhere.
I light a cigarette and consider my stupidity, why I hadn’t thought of it before; not the fact that she was almost certainly the same girl as the one in the bar in Grimsby. That I couldn’t have realised, not until I’d seen her up o
n the stage. No, it’s not that, it’s the possibility that has come to me since; the possibility that she could be Press.
It came to me while I was watching her doing her act in the Dunes, while I was wondering what possible reason there could be for her Mablethorpe disappearance, in both senses of the word, and her appearance in Grimsby.
If I hadn’t been entirely out of my mind the previous evening, and what I can remember is indeed a fact, then it all fits. And if it was so, she’d been clever. She hadn’t immediately tried to pick me up. She’d done the opposite; even to rejecting what she’d imagined was my advance in the arcade, then just being around, creating a bit of interest.
And when she’d appeared at the bungalow, even then she’d started off by playing it cool; but when she’d seen the state I’d been in, my final collapse had made it even easier for her; she hadn’t even had to pretend to be seduced. She hadn’t even had to steal the photograph of Jean. All she’d had to do was to have taken out her little pocket camera and take a little snap of it, along with one or two of me, dead to the world, and the bungalow’s interior, to make up a set together with the daytime ones she’ll have taken of the exterior of the bungalow and me going in and out of it and walking up and down the beach.
I can just see the headline: MY NIGHT OF LOVE WITH MISSING PORN KING. And the outline: “How could I ever have imagined that a casual evening’s sex would lead to …” Etcetera.
I wonder which of the Sundays it would be. The idea sounds more like one of Craig’s front pages than the others.
Anyway, even if I’m wrong, she’s not from the Law; if I’m right, the last thing Farlow and the others want is it splashed all over the front pages that I’m not dead or living in Australia. The last thing they wanted was that. That would mean they’d have to reopen things they won’t want reopening.
As for the others, well, like I say, I wouldn’t be sitting here in my motor considering things.
Of course, I realise, after Eddie’s discreet enquiries she’s probably halfway down the motorway by now. But for that, she’d probably intended sticking around a day or so more, so that we could have been photographed together.
But if I’m right about her, she’s got enough. And if she’s gone there’s nothing whatsoever I can do about it. It’s only half-past nine now: I could be all over the breakfast table by tomorrow morning.
Unless she’s not clocked. Unless. All I can do is to sit here and hope she hasn’t. And isn’t.
THE SMOKE
I ASKED PARSONS IF he’d like some champagne. To my surprise he accepted.
“Well,” I said, sitting down. “I won’t ask you what I can do for you.”
“No,” Parsons said.
He drank some of his champagne.
“Very nice,” he said.
“We like it,” I said.
“We?” he said. “Oh, you mean you and the wife.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“To you and the wife, then,” Parsons said.
This time we both drank.
“Anyway,” I said, “I’m in no hurry, but we may as well get down to it.”
“Yes,” Parsons said. “Why don’t we?”
I allowed him his pause for effect.
“I realise I’m not on my patch—”
“We both realise that,” I said.
“Yes. But Ray Warren and Glenda Hill were.”
“Were?”
“Let’s just say they’re not there at the moment.”
“You can say what you like. Because whatever you’re going to say will be a waste of breath.”
“Very probably.”
“So why come all the way over here to waste it when you could be wasting it in familiar surroundings?”
Parsons smiled. It was the kind of smile an RSM gives to a new arrival of squaddies.
“I realise that Ray and Glenda are probably cemented up in some City redevelopment by now,” he said, “but that won’t stop me trying to trace the cement back to you.”
“Feel free,” I said. “I’m not stopping you.”
“No,” he said.
“I mean,” I said, “I don’t have to remind you of all the thousand bits of luck you’re going to need to build even half a case that even then would depend entirely on association.”
“Yes, I know,” he said. “I know all about that. Actually, although Ray and Glenda are central to my being here, it’s one of the side effects I’m really here about.”
“Really? And what would that be?”
“ ‘What’ is correct. When one’s talking about Collins.”
“Collins?”
“I don’t like Collins talking to me.”
“You’ll be surprised to know that makes two of us.”
“I don’t like him coming over to my branch and suggesting holidays in the sun, etcetera.”
“You should take them; then you’d have more chance of finding Ray and Glenda.”
“That’s what you’d like me to believe.”
“Whether you believe it or not makes no difference whatsoever.”
“Quite,” Parsons said. “However; Collins. Don’t send him over again.”
“I won’t; not now you’ve told me how stupid he’s been.”
“Yes, he has, hasn’t he? That’s always surprised me about you and him.”
“He’s not always been stupid.”
“Not always; but ultimately.”
“You have to be very stupid to have his kind of bank balance. If you wanted to be that stupid you could have one yourself.”
“I know. I should never have taken the Mensa tests.”
“Resign. Take the money instead.”
“I can’t,” Parsons said. “That’s my great trouble in life.”
He finished his champagne.
“Like some more?” I said.
He stood up and put the glass down on the table-top.
“No, thanks. I’ve got to be going. I just dropped in to tell you about Collins. What I felt about him.”
“You could have phoned.”
“I would have,” he said. “But I wanted to see you. Extra motivation and all that kind of thing.”
“Well,” I said, “any time you feel like being motivated …”
“Thanks. I’ll do that as soon as possible.”
After he’d gone I picked up the phone.
THE SEA
THE MAN WHO TAKES care of the caravan site lives in a low box by the site’s entrance. There are a lot of caravans but only one or two of them are illuminated.
I knock on the door of the caravan-site man’s house. He’s a long time answering. Yellow light from the hall behind him mingles with the sound of the TV and drifts into the night air.
He doesn’t ask me what I want. In fact, he doesn’t say anything at all. So I tell him.
“Could you tell me which is Lesley Murray’s caravan?”
“Lesley who?”
“Lesley Murray.”
He thinks about it.
“What’s he look like?”
“It’s a she. Lesley. Young bird.”
He shakes his head.
“No.”
“You certain about that?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t have to check your book?”
He shakes his head again.
“There’s only three vans occupied at the present. Weekenders.”
“She couldn’t be staying with any of them?”
“No, I know them all. They’re all regulars. Retired people. Their own vans. I’d know if she was with any of them.”
“Well, she did say that this was where she was staying.”
He looks at me.
“She’s shot you a line, then, hasn’t she?” he says.
“You’re absolutely certain she couldn’t be on here without you knowing?”
“No, I’m checking all the time. Hippies are always trying to get into them, the bastards.”
“Well,” I say, “t
hat’s that, then.”
“Yes,” he says. “Better luck next time.”
“Thanks.”
He closes the door.
I go back to the car and get in and drive back to the Dunes. Although the show’s over, the audience and most of the performers are still there living it up, being entertained by numbers from Eddie and his group.
I fight my way through to the bar and when Howard gets me my drink I get him to give me a couple of quidsworth of two-bob bits then I go into the lobby in the vain hope of getting James on a Saturday night. At this moment he’s probably in his box, halfway through his hamper, halfway through the full production of The Ring.
But I dial his number anyway and of course he’s not in.
And it’s not a clever idea to phone O’Connell myself.
So I put the change in my pocket and go out of the Dunes and back along the mini-promenade and get in my Marina and reverse and point it in the direction of Grimsby.
There’s one or two possibilities I may as well pursue until such time as I can raise James and ultimately O’Connell. For instance, if she’s been sent up here the way I think she has, there’s the possibility she may have been staying at one of the town’s two decent hotels or its new motel. And following that, there’s the possibility that she might be still hanging around; they might have shipped the stuff down earlier today, the original intention maybe being to wait until she’d progressed in her relationship with me until they printed. But if there was a possibility I tumbled, they might have told her to clear out of it and satisfy themselves with what they’d got. And another possibility being that she hasn’t necessarily tumbled to me having clocked her for what she is; after her charade at the Dunes, just to keep up appearances, she could easily clear off to her hotel and relax the remainder of the weekend, not knowing, of course, I’ve already clocked her in Grimsby.
But everything is academic. If the material is with the paper, then all the thoughts in the world won’t make any difference; the bungalow is blown. I’ll have to stay in Grimsby tonight before entering into any of my other contingency arrangements.
For the moment I’ll just fill in the time between now and James.
THE SMOKE
