Plender

by Ted Lewis

  The two of them went out and left me alone with Peter. He seemed to have gone to sleep. I looked at the mess on the floor. It had to be cleaned up before any of the staff saw it. I found a pair of football shorts in one of the lockers and went into the washroom. Mouncey and Croft were by the sink cleaning themselves up. I had to shake my head to stop them going in and out of focus. I made my way over to one of the bowls and turned on the tap and dropped the shorts in the bowl.

  Croft leant against one of the other bowls.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he said.

  “Got to clean up,” I said. “Before Price sees.”

  “Silly fucker,” said Croft. “Let Price find him.”

  “Naw,” said Mouncey, “come on, we ought to. Else we’ll all be in it if he gets caught.”

  The shorts must have blocked the plug-hole because the water began to overflow on to the floor.

  “Look what you’re doing, man,” said Mouncey.

  I stared at the water as it flowed over the side of the sink.

  “Give us it here,” said Mouncey.

  He took the shorts out of the bowl.

  “Come on,” he said to Croft. “Let’s go clean up.”

  They both stumbled out of the washroom.

  “Hey, wait,” I said. “I was off to do that.”

  “So fucking what,” said Croft.

  “You’re too pissed up,” said Mouncey.

  “No, I’m not,” I said, detaching myself from the bowl. “Wait on.”

  “Greasing bastard,” said Croft.

  I followed them into the changing room. Peter was being propped up by Croft and Mouncey was busy swabbing the floor. Peter seemed to be recovering again.

  “Sorry about this,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “S’all right,” said Mouncey. “I’ve nearly finished.”

  “You’re real mates,” said Peter. “Real mates.”

  KNOTT

  Kate stopped the Hillman at the entrance to the car park.

  “Well, it’s there,” she said.

  I looked at the Mercedes, standing alone and gleaming white on the black-wet tarmac.

  “That’s Daddy’s car,” said Nicola.

  Kate said, “What time am I to expect you back?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  I’d fallen asleep in the car on the way back from Kate’s father’s and now the only effect the drink had on me was to heighten the sick emptiness in my stomach and to make the paraphernalia of the world around me depressingly over-real.

  “I’ll expect you when I see you, then,” Kate said. “I imagine you’ll be spending the evening talking over old times. After you’ve thanked him for stealing your car at the dead of night, that is.”

  I opened the car door and got out and said goodnight to the kids. Kate started to drive off as soon as I closed the door.

  I stood there, looking at the Mercedes. Rain swept over it and raced across the car park. To my right I could hear the river chopping away in the blackness.

  I walked over to the car.

  The doors were locked. I went round to the back and looked at the boot. A part of my mind took in the fact that there was no trace of where the damage had been but the rest of my mind was looking beyond the metal to the black space where Eileen’s body had lain, bent and twisted and dead.

  Or still was?

  A deep shudder convulsed my body. The urge to see came over me again. Independently of my mind, my hand, like a magnet, stretched out towards the handle of the boot. Cold freezing drops of rain soldered my fingers to the metal. I pressed the button. There was a click and the lid sprang upwards half an inch. Open. It was open.

  Very quickly I pushed downwards and closed the lid.

  I looked towards the pub. Inside the pub was Brian Plender, my old school friend.

  PLENDER

  The door opened and Peter Knott came in.

  He stood in the doorway, looking at me. I smiled and stood up and went to meet him.

  “Peter,” I said, putting my arm round his shoulder. “How does she look, then?”

  I walked him towards the bar. He seemed unable to answer.

  “The car,” I said. “What do you think? Done a good job, eh?”

  Knott nodded.

  “Evening, Mr. Knott,” the barman said.

  Knott turned his head in the direction of the voice as though he was tracking some visible object to its source.

  “What’ll it be, anyway?” I said.

  “Usual, Mr. Knott?” said the barman, putting a glass up to the whisky optic.

  Knott nodded again.

  “Large one,” he said.

  His voice was thick and throaty.

  “Large one it is,” said the barman, pressing the glass against the metal.

  “And I’ll have a Vodka with ice and a twist of lemon,” I said. “Just a small one.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  I put a pound note on the bar. The barman did the drinks. I picked up my change and raised my glass.

  “Cheers,” I said.

  Knott was halfway down his when I said, “Let’s go and sit down, shall we?”

  He followed me over to the table. I sat down first. Knott hesitated for a moment before pulling his chair back and jerking himself down into it like a marionette.

  I nodded at the unfinished half-pint on the table.

  “Masters and Drew,” I said. “Thought I’d have a half for old times’ sake.” I smiled. “Remember Mrs. Burnett? The Volunteers?”

  Knott stared at the half-pint glass. Then he tippled the rest of his drink back. I made signs at the barman and he brought us over two more. When he’d gone back to the bar I took out my cigarettes and gave one to Knott and as I lit us up I said, “No, I suppose it was a bit naughty of me, really, coming back and taking the car like that, not letting you know. But you must admit, the bloke did a good job.”

  Knott just kept on looking at me. I took a sip of my drink.

  “And under the circumstances,” I said, “perhaps it was as well that I did.”

  “What have you done?” he said. His mouth moved like the mouth of a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  I smiled and looked down into my drink.

  “Well,” I said, “really, I think it’s best not to go into details too much. Best for everyone concerned. The less you know the less it can hurt you sort of thing. Although,” I said, turning the smile into a bit of laugh, “I really ought to be the one asking you what you’ve done, eh, mate?”

  “It was . . . an accident,” he said. “An accident.”

  “Sure it was,” I said. “Sure. But whatever it was, it doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve taken care of things. Your old mate Brian’s seen to everything.”

  “What have you done?”

  I shook my head and smiled.

  “Let’s just say this,” I said. “You’re safe. And let’s leave it at that, eh?”

  “I want to know,” he said.

  “No, you don’t,” I said. “You don’t want to know, really.”

  He galloped his drink down.

  “What am I going to do?” he said.

  He began to shake his head from side to side.

  “I’ll tell you what you’re going to do,” I said, “if you start behaving like this. That is you’re going to let the whole of East Yorkshire know what happened last night. That’s what you’re going to do.”

  Knott looked towards the bar. The barman looked away.

  “But I didn’t mean it,” he said. “It was an accident.”

  “What does it matter what it was?” I said.

  “But I haven’t done anything.”

  I smiled.

 
; “You were just taking her home to tuck her up in bed, were you?” I said.

  “I didn’t know what I was doing. I was out of my mind.”

  “Well, it’s a good job I wasn’t.”

  “Now I can’t . . .”

  “Can’t what?” I said. “Go to the Law?”

  He didn’t answer.

  I called for some more drinks.

  “Look,” I said, “I’ve done you a favour. You’re fireproof. I wouldn’t have done it if there was the slightest danger. Because if you’re in the cart, I’m in the cart. So stop worrying.”

  “But why did you do it?”

  I spread my hands.

  “Look,” I said, “what could I do? I came back and took the car and left it round the back of my digs for the night. So before I went in I checked the doors, because you never know, and naturally I checked the boot as well. And the boot was open.”

  “Open? But I’d made sure I’d locked it?”

  “Can’t have done, mate.”

  “But I did. My wife—I tried it.”

  I looked at him.

  “Your wife,” I said. “She’s not . . .”

  He shook his head.

  “I had to tell her about the car. She went and had a look, that’s all.”

  “And she tried the boot.”

  He nodded.

  “Well,” I said, “it must have been jammed. Because it opened easy enough when I got it home.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Lucky it wasn’t locked,” I said. “Otherwise it might have been Cyril down at the garage opened it first instead of me.”

  He drank some of his drink.

  “So,” I said. “I opened the boot.”

  I looked at him for a while but he didn’t look at me and he didn’t say anything.

  “What happened?” I said. “That little bang we had screw things up for you?”

  He took out a cigarette. I lit it for him.

  “Where were you going? The river?”

  He closed his eyes and nodded. I shook my head.

  “You don’t know how lucky you are,” I said.

  “Tell me,” he said. “What did you do?”

  “What you were going to do, only better.”

  “Why?”

  “What else could I do? Go to the Law and tell them my old mate’s been driving around with a dead girl in the back of his car? Do you think I was going to do that? Put an old mate on the spot? Or maybe I should have phoned you up and told you to come and move her yourself. And supposing I had gone to the police? There’s some right bastards down there these days. They might have decided to see how much mileage they could get out of me, as well as out of you. I’m not exactly a blue-eyed boy down there.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Look,” I said. “Why don’t you do as I say—forget it. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  He looked into my face.

  “What did you do with her?”

  Wearily, I closed my eyes.

  “I’ve told you. She’s safe. And so are you.”

  “Where?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I have to know.”

  “That’s the last thing you have to do. What you have to do is forget all about last night and behave normally and live the way you normally live and everything will be fine.”

  “How can I?” he said. “I’ve killed somebody.”

  His voice was hoarse and low, a controlled scream.

  “I thought you said it was an accident?”

  “It was. But it was my fault.”

  I could see that tears were about to appear so I said, “Nothing’s your fault if nobody knows anything about it. And nobody knows anything about it.”

  “You know,” he said.

  “Yes, I know,” I said. “Luckily for you.”

  He moved his glass as if to drink but it was empty again. I made some more signs at the barman and got some more drinks. When the barman had gone away I lifted my glass and said, “So, anyway, here’s to us. To the Old Boys’ Reunion. Remember the motto? ‘Keep Faith’.”

  Knott downed his drink in one go. I began to hum the school song, and eventually the long-forgotten words began to break through into the front of my mind.

  By Hunter’s Green Banks, away from city strife,

  Two words we learn that we shall carry through life,

  Keep Faith in all you do, these words will stand us true,

  On future morrows as the do, here today ...

  I grinned at Knott.

  “Remember?” I said. “Old Price wrote the words and the Boss wrote the music. Remember old Price? He wasn’t half mad that time Mouncey and his crowd put their own words to the song that speech day. ‘Get stuffed and the same to you’ they sang, do you remember? They all got carpeted. Still, Price was all right, really. The only half-bloody-decent bloke in the whole place. English and History. They were the only two lessons I used to enjoy. He used to make them interesting. I remember he got us all interested in Macbeth by telling us the story as if it was like a gangster film. And he was always fair, not like those other bastards. In fact, the one thing he couldn’t stand was a cheat.”

  I took a drink.

  “Mind you, I almost dropped you right in it with him over the Essay Prize. Do you remember? The prize for the best piece in the school magazine? It was a toss-up between me and you. I did a story about a man who lost his memory and you did that thing about the soldier ants eating up this bloke’s plantation in South America. Only you’d happened to lend me the Boy’s Own Paper with the same story in it a couple of months before. I suppose you must have forgotten. And then Mallett awarded you the prize. I could have dropped you right in it,” I said. “But I didn’t.”

  KNOTT

  I drove the Mercedes across the city. Plender looked at his watch.

  “I hope you don’t mind dropping me off like this,” he said. “I really should have grabbed a cab. I mean, it’s right out of your way.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just clutched the steering wheel and stared straight ahead beyond the raindrops on the windscreen.

  “I really do feel bad about it,” he said.

  “It’s all right,” I said, hoping to shut him up. The words came out of me all run together, sounding like one word.

  Plender began to sing again, quietly, as he looked out of the side window:

  Dull clouds may rise,

  To dim the sunlit skies

  Memories like birds

  Will fly back homewards again

  Then we shall recall

  And still feel proud to say

  Keep Faith in all you do,

  These words will stand as true

  On future morrows, as they do, here today.

  When he’d finished the words a second time, he went back to the beginning and began to whistle the tune through again.

  “Where abouts did you say?” I said.

  Plender looked at his watch again.

  “Well, actually,” he said, “I wonder if you’d mind doing me a favour? I didn’t realise just what the time was.”

  I slowed down to approach some traffic lights.

  “Thing is, I have to meet somebody. Only take a minute or two. I wonder if you’d mind waiting?”

  I stopped the car at the lights.

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Do you know Sammy’s Point?”

  I nodded. Sammy’s Point was an acre or so of wasteland in the centre of the dockland, jutting out into the river near to where the Ferry berthed. It was a favourite spot for car-parked families on summer Sunday afternoons.

  Neither of us said anything else
. I turned right at the lights and drove through the city centre and turned down one of the cobbled streets that led to the riverside. The road opened out on to the broad forecourt in front of the Ferry Pier. A small queue of people was standing by the ticket collector’s box waiting for the collector to lift the chain so that they could walk down the gangway and board the last ferry.

  “I should park outside the Tivoli,” said Plender.

  The Tivoli Tavern. Last stop on a Saturday night for the boozers who had to get the last boat home. I stopped the car outside and the light from the multi-coloured windows speckled the inside of the car. Plender put his hand in his coat pocket and took out a flask and unscrewed the drinking cup and filled it and offered it to me, taking his own drink directly from the neck of the flask. I took the cap from him and downed the drink in one go.

  “We’ve had a few in there, at one time or another,” said Plender. “Tanking up before the last boat.”

  Plender took the cap away from me and refilled it and handed it back to me. I took it because I didn’t want to stop drinking; I felt as if I never wanted to be sober again. To be sober would be to see too clearly the events of the last two days, and to see too clearly would be unbearable.

  The ticket collector finally lifted the chain and the queue of people began to file down the gangway towards the waiting ferry. Plender looked at his watch and briefly scanned the forecourt. Two youths clattered across the cobblestones towards the gangway.

  “You’re quiet, Peter,” said Plender.

  I stared straight ahead of me.

  “Stop thinking about it,” he said.

  “What do you want?” I said.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just to be . . . ah, there he is. Right on time.”

  A man in a raincoat was walking across the cobblestones towards Sammy’s Point.

  “Come on,” said Plender.

  Plender got out of the car. I didn’t move. Plender stopped in front of the car and looked at me. He inclined his head and turned away and began to stroll off towards Sammy’s Point. Why didn’t I just drive away and leave him? There was nothing he could do. Except telephone the police and tell them where the body was. And then I’d tell them what he’d done, what had happened—I wanted to be sick. What would it matter then? The police would have me. It would be me they’d lock up for half a dozen years. Christ. I would be beyond caring what happened to Plender.